Joe Biden beats Donald Trump, officially making Trump a one-term twice impeached, twice popular-vote losing president

[Massdriver]

20 hours ago, b_m_b_m_b_m said:

On the bold, that was Joe Lieberman, not a swing state senator, that killed the public option in addition to Scott Browns election/Ted Kennedy kicking the bucket.

 

On the alt right, it doesn't come to it's strength without the long running migrant crisis, made worse by deliberate American policy in the middle East (hello Iraq war), central and south America (hola CIA contra funding and the drug war), and policy in post-Soviet Eastern Europe (privatization leading to mass corruption and powerful, wealthy oligarchs in Russia who got hit by sanctions as a result of the invasion of Crimea). Throw in tech allowing formerly niche racist/nativist ideas being amplified by social media and far right political parties, and all backed in part by the aforementioned oligarchs (and our own native oligarchs, lest they be forgotten). And I agree that other factors are at play, but I'm looking exclusively at the realm of items that were deliberately done by our government. 

 

On the right and left I did keep that post fairly superficial, but only to be glib. Regarding the rise of the left, there are a few items where they're wrong (rent control bring the most egregious) but the problem I have is your framing of the problem. I'm rephrasing here, but your ideal policy seems to be the one that helps the "most" people, not "all" people. The problem with this, in the frame of health insurance is you deliberately leave people behind, and people still go bankrupt because of medical bills, and every single person who needs care is on the hook for an unknown amount of money, which increases at an insane rate year over year. That's not even mentioning the absolutely Byzantine bureaucracy of navigating paying for care once you receive it. And insurance companies are already fighting against a public option, calling it the same thing as M4A (based on an ad from an insurance lobby I heard a week or so again). Not too get too much farther into the healthcare woods, but M4A is the best policy. Basically, profits need to take a hit, and costs that can only be controlled by the government should be done so because healthcare takes up so much of our GDP to no benefit for us.

 

As for the carbon tax, again, being glib, but I think a carbon tax even with a refund is wholly inadequate to take on the task of stopping emissions worldwide, let alone taking measures to remove carbon from the atmosphere.

I'm not sure why you think my ideal policy would leave anyone bankrupt. No one has to be left out of a universal insurance system that has mandates and subsides for the poor and middle class. My evidence is the developed world. There are many other developed countries that have universal health care systems that are not single payer and people aren't going bankrupt. The point is M4A isn't the only policy that produces good outcomes. I think there is a misunderstanding with my position overall. I'm flexible, you aren't. I would accept M4A if it was transitioned to properly and the tax revenue was collected in an efficient and fair way. I don't believe in passing it without determining where the revenue is going to come from. As for the lobbying industry fighting against the public option, all I can say is expect the fight to pass M4A to be much harder than a public option. The public is behind the public option more now than they used to be, but M4A's support is lower and insurance will fight for survival with all they have. Many Democrats don't favor M4A, so you are off to a rocky start. But overall single payer works, so I'm not against it, I just am not obsessed with it as the only option that works since it isn't.

 

But why do you always act like a carbon tax has to be done in isolation?  I don't subscribe to the view that it is the only thing the government should do to combat climate change. I simply am pointing out it is the best single policy to get the ball rolling that we could do and it is a necessary component in an overall strategy to stop emissions. I also think you tend to downplay its effectiveness, or think a carbon tax has to be very minimal. Carbon taxes can be ramped up fast and would be extremely effective at steering us away from carbon sources of energy and fuel. I don't see what's wrong with that. 

[SaysWho?]

31 minutes ago, Massdriver said:

The Hill's article on it shows that Obama wanted the public option for several months and pushed for it. Do you have transcripts of the private meetings that took place between Obama's admin and various lawmakers? My guess is he dropped it after he realized the support wasn't there. Yeah, he could have fought harder for it, but he wanted to get something done. Which leads me to....

 

It just seems like this is all a giant counterfactual fallacy. Some are saying that X would have happened if all Democrats would have said or done Y, but since we can't go back in time and test this, there is no way of knowing. It could have been that Obama could have pushed harder for the public option and the ACA wouldn't have passed at all, just as cap and trade failed. No one here can tell me what would have happened if Obama would have done something different since it is impossible for you to know.

 

If you want to test your theory, then by all means go for Warren and Sanders, but stop pretending it is a well known fact that if Democrats would have just done or said certain things, history would have unfolded in a different way when there are so many  variables.

 

We know how it unfolded in 2009/2010: he didn't go for the public option as a way to get Republican votes, he received no Republican votes anyway, and there were already signs before Obama stepped into office that Republicans would not give the any votes on any big bills:

 

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Vice President Biden told me that during the transition, he was warned not to expect any bipartisan cooperation on major votes. “I spoke to seven different Republican Senators who said, ‘Joe, I’m not going to be able to help you on anything,’ ” he recalled. His informants said McConnell had demanded unified resistance. “The way it was characterized to me was, ‘For the next two years, we can’t let you succeed in anything. That’s our ticket to coming back,’ ” Biden said. The Vice President said he hasn’t even told Obama who his sources were, but Bob Bennett of Utah and Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania both confirmed they had conversations with Biden along those lines.

 

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“So I promise you — and the President agreed with me — I never thought we were going to get Republican support,” Biden said.

 

So wtf were they compromising for if they knew they had no support on anything? And why does Biden think Trump is the problem and not the Republican Party when he should know better? 

 

Why not go for the public option and get it passed instead of compromising when you were already told that Republicans wouldn't vote for anything you were going to do? Because the Dems who voted against the ACA were the ones who lost anyway, why not make a good vote for an ACA with the public option that would have made it a better law and easier to run on in the future? 

 

Obama called the public option a sliver and offered limp-dick support for it; no Republican wants to support a public option now. What makes center-right moderates think that the majorities in Congress now, and Republicans currently control the Senate, will make it easier for Dems to pass it? 

 

And I want to go back to my earlier point: Democrats did not vote for the Iraq War thinking it was a good idea, barring a war hawk like Lieberman. Thousands are dead. So why not actually stop bad shit from happening even if it costs you your seat instead of demonizing the progressive left like the Democratic Leadership Council did by trying to be Republican-lite "rah rah America" politicians? Because progressives were correct with the public option, and Iraq, and marijuana, and criminal justice reform, and gun control, and gay marriage first before being lectured by center-right pseudo-moderates about how they don't know what they're talking about when they knew what they were talking about 20 years before the moderates did.

[Jwheel86]

The public option is only main stream now because M4A is on the table. Remove it and the public option becomes "far left" forcing democratic moderates to run away from it out of fear of no longer being seen as moderates. 

[RedSoxFan9]

Someone needs to push for an NHS 

[RedSoxFan9]

 

[Jason]

 

[Ghost_MH]

12 minutes ago, SaysWho? said:

We know how it unfolded in 2009/2010: he didn't go for the public option as a way to get Republican votes, he received no Republican votes anyway, and there were already signs before Obama stepped into office that Republicans would not give the any votes on any big bills:

 

So wtf were they compromising for? And why does Biden think Trump is the problem when he should know better? 

 

Anyone that thinks any president that isn't a Republican can get any votes on anything coming from Democrats is not paying attention to the last decade of politics. The only ones that think there's some middle ground to be found with the modern Republican party are no different from every bank that thinks maybe Trump's next business venture will be successful. It's often said that we should believe people when they tell us who they are. Modern Reublicans have been very vocal about being all in on liberal tears, so unless something drastic happens, I don't see that changing anytime soon. Maybe something will when all the boomers die or when Texas goes blue. Until then, it would be a better use of any Democrat's time and effort to control the public narrative than it would be to reaching over the aisle.

 

Would that mean moving more toward the left? Sure, but even the more left-leaning Democrats in this country are positively centrist compared to the rest of the world.

[RedSoxFan9]

 

lol

[Anathema-]

1 hour ago, Jason said:

 

 

 

[elbobo]

43 minutes ago, Anathema- said:

 

 

 

hilarious that he thinks companies would actually pass those savings onto the employees 

[Jwheel86]

56 minutes ago, Anathema- said:

 

 

 

I work in employer benefits, the numbers are massive. 

[elbobo]

2 hours ago, Jwheel86 said:

 

I work in employer benefits, the numbers are massive. 

 

We get a total compensation report and I have what I consider great insurance, low copays, see any doctor you want, no premiums for single and a $1500 max out of pocket for the year. It was listed at about $8300 on last year's compensation report.

[Anathema-]

10 hours ago, elbobo said:

 

hilarious that he thinks companies would actually pass those savings onto the employees 

 

They can be made to, but chances are societal pressures would force it. People might not know numbers but they know it's compensation.

[Commodore D]

13 hours ago, elbobo said:

 

hilarious that he thinks companies would actually pass those savings onto the employees 

That, maybe they give half, but that would just be to get/ keep talented people.

 

Also, people don’t know what their total compensation? They don’t see what their employer pays into health care every month? Maybe that information is just readily available to me.

[SaysWho?]

Ed Markey out-raises Joe Kennedy III in third quarter, with a caveat

 

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Incumbent Edward Markey flexed his money muscle in the U.S. Senate race over the past three months, out-raising his big-name rival U.S. Rep. Joe Kennedy III in the third quarter — though the congressman didn’t enter the race until the end of the summer.

 

Markey posted $1.1 million in contributions in the quarter that ended Sept. 30 and finished the month with nearly $4.4 million cash on hand, according to his campaign and third-quarter Federal Election Commission filing. He also spent nearly $800,000.

 

538 looks at the race and the role reversal:

 

Quote

This year, Markey will play the role of the grizzled incumbent (though he has only been in the Senate since 2013, he was a U.S. representative for 36 years before that), and Kennedy will play the young upstart (he turns 39 next week). But in reality, the race doesn’t break cleanly along “establishment vs. progressive” lines. First, the primary is not about ideology. Kennedy has a -0.423 DW-Nominate score — DW-Nominate measures politicians on a scale from -1 (most liberal) to 1 (most conservative) based on their congressional voting records — while Markey’s score is a similar -0.507, so if anything, the incumbent is more progressive than his challenger. And while Markey has marshaled the endorsements of most of the political establishment — the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, a majority of the Massachusetts congressional delegation, the leaders of the state legislature — he is also the pick of several progressive state legislators and Sen. Elizabeth Warren. Most notably, he has also received the endorsement of democratic socialist Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, with whom Markey has worked closely on the Green New Deal. Despite coming to power herself by primarying a longtime incumbent, Ocasio-Cortez has called Markey “the generational change we’ve been waiting for,” arguing that generational change is about issues, not necessarily age.

 

 

[Signifyin(g)Monkey]

Saw this article that serves as a thoughtful critique of the argument that Warren would be the best nominee because she'd rally the progressive base:

@Massdriver

Quote

This gets back to a piece that I wrote in 2013, well before Trump famously descended that escalator to announce his presidential run:

 

"But the GOP still has something of a choice to make. One option is to go after these downscale whites. … It can probably build a fairly strong coalition this way. Doing so would likely mean nominating a candidate who is more Bush-like in personality, and to some degree on policy. This doesn’t mean embracing 'big government' economics or redistribution full bore; suspicion of government is a strain in American populism dating back at least to Andrew Jackson. It means abandoning some of its more pro-corporate stances. This GOP would have to be more 'America first' on trade, immigration and foreign policy; less pro-Wall Street and big business in its rhetoric; more Main Street/populist on economics." 

Quote

This, then, is the nub of Warren’s problem. It is not that she is liberal. It is that the issues on which she has taken the most prominent liberal stances are issues that are likely to give suburban whites pause. In particular, her pledge to abolish private insurance  is likely to cause resistance among suburbanites, many of whom have top-notch health care plans.

 

You may be thinking, “But Republicans will accuse any Democrat of being an extremist on health care.” This is probably true. But most Democrats will be able to run commercials and point to speeches denying the claim. For voters who want to vote Democratic, that will probably be enough. Warren, however, has to make a different argument: “Yes, I want to do away with private insurance, but your anxiety over Medicare for All is misplaced.” That’s a much tougher sell, as it forces voters to abandon their preconceived notions, rather than supplement them.

 

Or, as one of my readers put it: There’s a big difference between having a Republican attack ad run against you, and running on a Republican attack ad.

 

Will it be enough to sink Warren? I don’t know. We’re more than a year out from Election Day, so polling is of little value at this point. As noted above, the candidates’ specific stances on issues probably don’t matter as much in elections as we would like to believe. But if you believe this election is likely to be close, as I do, Warren may turn off voters that Democrats can’t afford to lose. 

 

I've vacillated between thinking that the populist zeitgeist of our times makes Warren more competitive than a centrist nominee would be, and thinking that things haven't changed as much from the 90s as we'd like to believe and nominating a centrist is still the Dems' best bet to win in 2020. (this is an issue quite apart, of course, from what would be best for the country in general)

 

I agree with the writer that either way the economy will probably be the biggest factor--or possibly foreign policy, if the Syria situation escalates. (sans, of course, some big, decisive turn in the impeachment investigation) 

[RedSoxFan9]

 

[Jwheel86]

18 hours ago, elbobo said:

 

We get a total compensation report and I have what I consider great insurance, low copays, see any doctor you want, no premiums for single and a $1500 max out of pocket for the year. It was listed at about $8300 on last year's compensation report.

 

I quoted a small business today, Gold Plan $2000 deductible $4000 OPM 80% coinsurance at just shy of $1000 a month for Employee Only and only $2700 a month for Employee Family. 

[osxmatt]

2 hours ago, RedSoxFan9 said:

 

 

 

[GeneticBlueprint]

This contest is over. Give that nan the $10,000.

[Anathema-]

 

[MarSolo]

Tulsi is garbage. She’s polling bad so now she thinks going after Hillary will help her, especially after no one bought the “the DNC IS ALL IN ON WARREN!!!” line of bullshit.

[RedSoxFan9]

Hillary should consider moving to Antarctica until the election is over

[Jason]

I'd vote for Tulsi if she threw Hillary into a volcano. 

[RedSoxFan9]

 

[johnny]

Tulsi is BASURA 

[Signifyin(g)Monkey]

3 hours ago, MarSolo said:

Tulsi is garbage. She’s polling bad so now she thinks going after Hillary will help her, especially after no one bought the “the DNC IS ALL IN ON WARREN!!!” line of bullshit.

I think she’d actually be a surprisingly strong candidate.

 

She’s the only one of the candidates I’ve heard blue collar ‘Trump Democrats’, run-of-the-mill centrist Dems, far left peaceniks and anti-imperialist libertarians—who rarely agree on anything— all say they’d consider voting for.  I think her potential appeal to the broader electorate is underappreciated.

 

But she doesn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell, so it doesn’t matter.

[Anathema-]

Her appeal to those people is a pretty face with no real chance. There's no risk in saying they'd vote for her; they would not. It's just like Bernie bros in 2016 saying they'd vote for Warren turning around and shitting on her now. It was safe for them to deflect charges of sexism by saying they'd vote for someone they weren't being asked to choose.

[Joe]

I love when my girl HRC triggers everybody.

[Signifyin(g)Monkey]

2 hours ago, Anathema- said:

Her appeal to those people is a pretty face with no real chance. There's no risk in saying they'd vote for her; they would not. It's just like Bernie bros in 2016 saying they'd vote for Warren turning around and shitting on her now. It was safe for them to deflect charges of sexism by saying they'd vote for someone they weren't being asked to choose.

I suppose that’s possible—we’ll never know—but at the very least I don’t get that vibe from the far-left and libertarian supporters.  I think her appeal to them is that she’s the most openly isolationist, anti-war candidate —they speak approvingly of her attacks on ‘regime change’ wars and her willingness to meet with Assad.

 

And for the Trump Democrats I mentioned, aside from also saying they like her isolationism, they also say they perceive her as more ‘authentic’, partially for her willingness to piss off the party machinery and political kingmakers, which, as populists, they view as corrupt, and partially because they see her as less calculating than the other candidates. (and more moderate on taxes than Warren)

 

It’s always possible it’s a facade, though; again, we’ll never know, unless all hell breaks loose and she’s the nominee.

[GeneticBlueprint]

 

[Anathema-]

3 hours ago, Signifyin(g)Monkey said:

I suppose that’s possible—we’ll never know—but at the very least I don’t get that vibe from the far-left and libertarian supporters.  I think her appeal to them is that she’s the most openly isolationist, anti-war candidate —they speak approvingly of her attacks on ‘regime change’ wars and her willingness to meet with Assad.

 

And for the Trump Democrats I mentioned, aside from also saying they like her isolationism, they also say they perceive her as more ‘authentic’, partially for her willingness to piss off the party machinery and political kingmakers, which, as populists, they view as corrupt, and partially because they see her as less calculating than the other candidates. (and more moderate on taxes than Warren)

 

It’s always possible it’s a facade, though; again, we’ll never know, unless all hell breaks loose and she’s the nominee.

 

When you get right down to it there's a fundamental question of what voters we'd lose nominating someone so clearly authoritarian sympathetic and likely anti-Islamic, a Tucker Carlson guest-ing right winger with no track record of supporting real progressive causes.  The group who votes Democratic isn't a given under the most ideal of circumstances much less the current situation of state governments hostile to voters turning in ballots for Democratic candidates. We can stipulate that she appeals to a certain segment of voters but your argument just begs the question of whether chasing these voters in this way is even worth it.

[Anathema-]

And the real reason she won't ever be the nominee is because she will never protect the vote and the real power in the Democratic party can see right through her.

[PaladinSolo]

 

[SaysWho?]

28 minutes ago, PaladinSolo said:

 

 

Thank goodness they feel they can do this only when not running for reelection.

 

Like, what's the difference between not running for reelection and losing in a primary, which would have the same outcome as declining to run?