Small aside for other non-Americans like myself, it took me a while to figure this one out but it means "Medicare For All" a.k.a. universal healthcare.
M4A
Small aside for other non-Americans like myself, it took me a while to figure this one out but it means "Medicare For All" a.k.a. universal healthcare.
posting this again. just so everyone needs to know that medicare for all would be a boon for mental health in general. https://i.imgur.com/uGDNbQW.png I'm on disability and have medicaid. I would...
posting this again. just so everyone needs to know that medicare for all would be a boon for mental health in general. https://i.imgur.com/uGDNbQW.png
I'm on disability and have medicaid. I would literally be dead if my mother didn't jump through hoops for me. medicaid for all is just the obvious thing that needs to happen.
Sanders, because while I would prefer Warren, I care more that it not be Biden, and I think Sanders has a better chance of becoming the nominee, and beyond that, of beating Trump.
Sanders, because while I would prefer Warren, I care more that it not be Biden, and I think Sanders has a better chance of becoming the nominee, and beyond that, of beating Trump.
If Warren can't carry at least one state tonight, I'll be casting my vote next week for Sanders, for similar reasons. The Democratic Party has been stalled on progressive policy for too long to...
If Warren can't carry at least one state tonight, I'll be casting my vote next week for Sanders, for similar reasons. The Democratic Party has been stalled on progressive policy for too long to allow the Wall Street wing another chance, and Biden doesn't have the nimbleness or charisma to take Trump on.
There's so much focus on who wins each state, and I can't understand why. It makes sense in the general election, where most states award all their delegates to a single person, but that's not how...
Texas would be a contest between Sanders and Biden, and I didn't want Biden to win.
There's so much focus on who wins each state, and I can't understand why. It makes sense in the general election, where most states award all their delegates to a single person, but that's not how the primaries work. Biden won the state, but got less than half the state's pledged delegates.
It's theoretically possible to win the nomination without winning a single state. Or Sanders could have won California by a landslide and Biden narrowly won the other 14 states and territories and...
It's theoretically possible to win the nomination without winning a single state. Or Sanders could have won California by a landslide and Biden narrowly won the other 14 states and territories and Sanders would have received the most delegates. Heck, it's even possible to lose the popular vote in a state and still get the most delegates in it, look no further than Iowa.
I just find it strange. Sure, winning states is important, especially now that it's basically a two-person race. But winning delegates is a lot more important, yet seems to get less focus, both from the media and from commenters. I don't just want to know who won each state, I want to know by how much.
What's stopping them from just speaking it then? Also you can shorten it to something like 'Bernie won the votes, but Buttigieg won the delegates in Iowa'. Why not do that instead?
It's not easy to fit "Bernie Sanders took the Popular Vote, however, Pete Buttigieg brought home the most delegates in the Iowa Caucus last night" into a title.
What's stopping them from just speaking it then? Also you can shorten it to something like 'Bernie won the votes, but Buttigieg won the delegates in Iowa'. Why not do that instead?
Cool to hear someone invoke utopian aspirations as partly motivating their vote. I myself think politics needs more focus on long-term vision. If we pursue the politics of X, where will we be in...
where starfleet seems possible
Cool to hear someone invoke utopian aspirations as partly motivating their vote. I myself think politics needs more focus on long-term vision. If we pursue the politics of X, where will we be in 100, 200, and 1000 years?
I think planning for the future is an aspect of politics that has dissipated with the advent of instant gratification (ie, internet, social media, tv, &c). We need to continually look past our own...
I think planning for the future is an aspect of politics that has dissipated with the advent of instant gratification (ie, internet, social media, tv, &c). We need to continually look past our own experiences to where the butterfly effect will be.
Utopias aren't possible, but the ideas behind them can be.
I feel that mentions to the influence of social media to justify our intellectual misery frequently fail to acknowledge that: we were already pretty dumb before the Internet. in many...
I feel that mentions to the influence of social media to justify our intellectual misery frequently fail to acknowledge that:
we were already pretty dumb before the Internet.
in many circumstances, social media facilitates access to quality information.
Maybe 10 years from know "reductio ad socialus medium" will become a well-known fallacy.
I fully believe we were vastly less intelligent as a collective prior to the internet. Social media lends itself to discovery of both magnificent and fantastic works of arts and knowledge, but has...
I fully believe we were vastly less intelligent as a collective prior to the internet.
Social media lends itself to discovery of both magnificent and fantastic works of arts and knowledge, but has reduced the ability to be 'bored' and encourages instant gratification versus long-term goal oriented methodologies. Collectivist thought is faster and ever more changing than ever before, and that is both a benefit and a deficit for society at large.
I will still stand that majority of social media usage is a detriment for a majority of things, but the parts that are a benefit clearly outweigh the bad ten fold.
I voted for Sanders. I believe in universal education, universal healthcare, getting money out of politics, and a strong labor movement. Sanders has been on the right side of history. I think Joe...
I voted for Sanders. I believe in universal education, universal healthcare, getting money out of politics, and a strong labor movement. Sanders has been on the right side of history.
I think Joe Biden would flat out lose to Trump. People are concerned with Bernie Sanders's socialist label, but that won't be nothing compared to what the GOP will throw out with Biden and his behavior around women/kids. I think they will lean 100% into Joe Biden being a pedophile of some sort, tie him to Clinton and Obama, and then just go ahead and call him a socialist anyways. And judging by the sheer amount of votes Michael Bloomberg is receiving from advertisements alone, its going to work. Biden's campaign was literally on life support after Iowa, he has no grassroots support, and he doesn't inspire. I see him being a John Kerry/Walter Mondale candidate. At least Clinton had a semblance of strategy and an actual idea of building up her campaign network. Joe Biden is relying pretty much on external factors to keep his campaign going. He is not in control.
If somehow Joe Biden actually beats Trump, wealth inequality is going to skyrocket. The rich are going to get richer, the poor poorer, all the while climate change is going to destroy our planet. The rate at which people declare bankruptcy will go up, and nothing progressive will get passed because Joe Biden has literally 0 grassroots support. Because things would continue to be the way they are today, expect a further right, outsider candidate to rise up for a 2024 challenge, further pushing the Overton Window to the right.
But that's my take. I'm probably wrong on a lot of details but I did predict that HRC wouldn't win in 2016.
Left outlets like Current Affairs could pick Hilary Clinton would lose, and they got the causal factors right too. Today Current Affairs and others are already documenting why Biden won't win, and...
Left outlets like Current Affairs could pick Hilary Clinton would lose, and they got the causal factors right too. Today Current Affairs and others are already documenting why Biden won't win, and are doing analysis on the right-wing that shows alarming near-future interactions between right-wing politics and Climate Change.
Meanwhile the morons on MSNBC/CNN will enact the same 2016 song and dance, and be (or pretend to be) baffled if Biden loses.
Calling one election isn't actually enough of a track record to go on. Prediction models need to be judged by their results in lots of elections and most of us aren't dedicated enough to make a...
Calling one election isn't actually enough of a track record to go on. Prediction models need to be judged by their results in lots of elections and most of us aren't dedicated enough to make a serious model and calibrate it.
It's especially hard to judge for predictions based on probabilities. You need a lot of data to decide whether saying someone has a 20% chance is too high or too low.
I am still going by 538 by default, though I haven't looked seriously at the others.
Nate Silver (of 538) got famous after calling one election very well, but point taken. Current Affairs wasn't using a prediction model. They used human beings with a positive theory of how USA...
Calling one election isn't actually enough of a track record to go on.
Nate Silver (of 538) got famous after calling one election very well, but point taken.
Prediction models need to be judged by ...
Current Affairs wasn't using a prediction model. They used human beings with a positive theory of how USA presedential political campaigns work. Very different thing to a 538 model. Both are useful.
I am still going by 538 by default ...
538 is good, but my comment was more about contrasting the orchestrated idiocy of the mainstream media pundit class with the political analysis of leftists. What's specifically interesting, and unadressed by both pundits and 538 models is this:
Icarus: "Because things would continue to be the way they are today, expect a further right, outsider candidate to rise up for a 2024 challenge, further pushing the Overton Window to the right."
Lefists like Nathan Robinson, Naomi Klein, Noam Chomsky, etc etc are using their political intelligience to analyse the long-term direction of USA politics in the context of political and environmental science that pundits refuse to account for and that a prediction model like 538's can't account for.
A statistical model fitted on past electoral voting data can't predict the consequences of an increasingly nationalist right-wing confronting escalating climate disaster. Intelligent human beings can at least try, and both left and right have their brightest suggesting that if things go wrong we're headed for fascism.
This is my concern too. Both the Republicans and Democrats keep drifting to the right and more Authoritarian. Clinton won in 92 because the Democrats adopted a more Conservative approach and...
Lefists like Nathan Robinson, Naomi Klein, Noam Chomsky, etc etc are using their political intelligience to analyse the long-term direction of USA politics in the context of political and environmental science that pundits refuse to account for and that a prediction model like 538's can't account for.
This is my concern too. Both the Republicans and Democrats keep drifting to the right and more Authoritarian. Clinton won in 92 because the Democrats adopted a more Conservative approach and snuggled up with the Republicans. Perot helped take away from the Republicans, but it was a new direction for the Democrats which was a significant shift and it is leaving Progressive Independents in the cold. That is the segment Bernie is really attracting and to a somewhat lesser extent Warren. Biden is just a repeat of 2016 and if he should happen to win, it won't shift how anything is done. This election, as 2016 should have been, should be a reset back to the left to refocus on what is important. We need to focus on basic necessities to improve the lives of everyone, and eliminate the growing economic inequality.
If I recall, he was famous for calling every state, which is sort of like calling 50 elections? But he said he got lucky. Also many of those states were easy and that's probably not the right way...
Nate Silver (of 538) got famous after calling one election very well
If I recall, he was famous for calling every state, which is sort of like calling 50 elections? But he said he got lucky. Also many of those states were easy and that's probably not the right way to calibrate a model anyway. It just made a good meme.
My strongly-held assumption is that nothing predicts the long term direction of US politics. To do that, you'd have to predict everything else, including things like the Bush vs. Gore election, 9/11, the timing of Obama's rise when nobody had heard of him yet, the 2008 recession, social media's political effects, when Trump becomes popular, when Sanders becomes popular, the timing of Hillary's emails and the FBI's investigation of them, and Coronavirus.
Like, good luck with all that? Foundation was a work of fiction. Small, unpredictable events change history and there's no reason to believe it all cancels out. If Trump got hit by a bus and died in 2014 we wouldn't be where we are today.
In a chaotic system, we need to be comfortable with uncertainty rather than having false hope that someone has it all figured out. Pundits predict and occasionally people get lucky, that's all.
If somehow Joe Biden actually beats Trump, wealth inequality is going to skyrocket. The rich are going to get richer, the poor poorer, all the while climate change is going to destroy our planet. The rate at which people declare bankruptcy will go up, and nothing progressive will get passed
No, not more so than Trump. The point was that the symptoms that caused a person like Trump to rise up will not be fixed, leading to another Trump-like figure. I believe the US needs some large...
No, not more so than Trump.
The point was that the symptoms that caused a person like Trump to rise up will not be fixed, leading to another Trump-like figure. I believe the US needs some large structural changes and to divorce itself from the influence of big money special interest groups. My feelings are that Biden will build his cabinet based off input from these groups rather than progressive choices. He won't take bold approaches that will radically shift the political dynamic in America, leading more and more people to feel disenfranchised. He already has a history of wanting to cut Social Security, Medicare, veterans benefits and so on. And his aim when he started this campaign was to swing right rather than left.
If he wins the nomination, I expect his message and platform to continue drifting right.
I went with Warren. I'm not very happy with my reasons or with deciding at the last minute, but here they are: It's at least half a vote against Sanders. I think his policies are wildly...
I went with Warren. I'm not very happy with my reasons or with deciding at the last minute, but here they are:
It's at least half a vote against Sanders. I think his policies are wildly unrealistic and will only lead to disappointment if he wins.
I couldn't find a reason enough to vote for Biden. I am not good at going along with the consensus for no reason other than it's the consensus, even though it might be logical to do that.
I liked the story about how Warren got involved in politics.
At the last minute, I changed my mind about student loans. I think it would be a good idea to discourage students from spending too much on fancy schools when cheaper ones would do the job, and student loans would seemingly be a way to encourage that. So, maybe student loans should be restricted somehow, in favor of some other kind of profit-sharing agreement that only needs to be paid when the student has a good job? But, given where we are, and the fact that student loans are so difficult to discharge in bankruptcy solely due to a quirk of legislative bargaining, Warren's plan to forgive a lot of them by executive order seems like it would at least accomplish something?
Interested to hear which you think is the mostly wildly unrealistic, and how you'd contrast Sanders' policy with the equivalent policy proposal of Warren.
I think his policies are wildly unrealistic and will only lead to disappointment if he wins.
Interested to hear which you think is the mostly wildly unrealistic, and how you'd contrast Sanders' policy with the equivalent policy proposal of Warren.
Medicare for All and the Green New Deal to start. But I should clarify that. I haven't studied their plans in detail, as a side effect of backing Yang until he dropped out. And I think all the...
Medicare for All and the Green New Deal to start.
But I should clarify that. I haven't studied their plans in detail, as a side effect of backing Yang until he dropped out. And I think all the candidates are making unrealistic promises, which makes me reluctant to study stuff that won't happen. But Warren seems to know what she wants to do if passing major new laws turns out to be out of the question?
That is too much of a surface-level impression. I only read the books by Yang and Buttigieg and somehow never got around to reading the others.
FWIW the layman's version of Warren's healthcare policy seems to be pretty much "pass the Bernie bill, but with some extra transition time". Bernie's plan is honestly very solid and grounded, and...
FWIW the layman's version of Warren's healthcare policy seems to be pretty much "pass the Bernie bill, but with some extra transition time". Bernie's plan is honestly very solid and grounded, and if I were a US voter I'd be less worried about the feasibility of the plan itself and more about whether or not Sanders has the political pull to push it through.
I think the side effect that's unrecognized is that Bernie attracts a very underrepresented demographic of under 30 Liberal/Progressive Independents. It's the fact that they are Independents which...
I think the side effect that's unrecognized is that Bernie attracts a very underrepresented demographic of under 30 Liberal/Progressive Independents. It's the fact that they are Independents which is the biggest challenge to his nomination. They will show up in the General Election and if they vote, they will support a lot of other Democrat races for the House, Senate, and local races. But they are not registered to easily secure his nomination. Finally, if Bernie isn't the nominee, they will be less likely to vote at all in the General Election.
My concern is that the strong Establishment Democrats push to keep him off the ballot will block success in other highly critical races, such as taking back the Senate, and that will stall any efforts to pass significant legislature. But, if Bernie can tap into that sizable demographic and the Democrats can use that to capture the Senate this election, then his policies and agenda becomes obtainable.
(Broad and sweeping generalizations ahead.) How? If you're a white, old and culturally conservative farmer/factory worker in Oklahoma or Kentucky Trump's presidency has gone swimmingly, he has...
Piss poor Trump presidency.
(Broad and sweeping generalizations ahead.)
How? If you're a white, old and culturally conservative farmer/factory worker in Oklahoma or Kentucky Trump's presidency has gone swimmingly, he has deported immigrants and put them on camps, has gotten many states to ban abortion and he has left many trade agreements and managed to get the Republican party to practically bend over to him, meaning his only opposition is us filibustering as much as we can simply because deporting people and repealing/weakening Obamacare would be horrible for millions of people, even those same Trump voters who rely on it to live.
Is it really though? Trump's approval rating among Republicans is around 85-90% and Bill Weld and others' performances in the GOP primaries reflect this. Also the purging of voter rolls, closing...
Don't get me wrong, I don't discount a certain level of doublethink with suffering conservatives, especially in deep red states. That 30% base will always show up. But there is certainly enough dissatisfaction that 30,000 voters in Wisconsin won't vote red unless given a better reason to.
Is it really though? Trump's approval rating among Republicans is around 85-90% and Bill Weld and others' performances in the GOP primaries reflect this. Also the purging of voter rolls, closing of polling stations and approval of stricter VoterID laws means that 2016's figures might be optimistic by default. Also are you saying these people would vote for a Democrat like biden or just not vote at all?
Thinking that Bernie's plans were too unrealistic but that Yang's UBI had a chance is an interesting position. Edit: To clarify, I say this not to sound snotty, but more as a remark on the power...
as a side effect of backing Yang until he dropped out
Thinking that Bernie's plans were too unrealistic but that Yang's UBI had a chance is an interesting position.
Edit: To clarify, I say this not to sound snotty, but more as a remark on the power of messaging. There was a narrative created that Sanders plans were unrealistic, and apparently that resonated with you. Yang policies, on the other hand, were considered so unrealistic that they weren't even worth creating a narrative to dismiss.
Yes, Yang was always a long shot, as is passing UBI any time soon. I was being lazy about not having a plan after he dropped out. On the other hand, implementing UBI would in theory be easy since...
Yes, Yang was always a long shot, as is passing UBI any time soon. I was being lazy about not having a plan after he dropped out.
On the other hand, implementing UBI would in theory be easy since it's just a redistribution scheme. It's the politics that's hard.
"Just a redistribution scheme" could apply to Medicare for All, too. The US is projected to spend roughly $35T with M4A and roughly $35T without M4A over the next 10 years. Therefore, M4A would...
"Just a redistribution scheme" could apply to Medicare for All, too. The US is projected to spend roughly $35T with M4A and roughly $35T without M4A over the next 10 years. Therefore, M4A would essentially redistribute the roughly $35T from private health insurance into roughly $35T in public insurance.
Obviously, both UBI and M4A are more complicated than that, though.
Medicare for all means that the government setting prices and standards for an entire industry, which is a huge change. For every new medical treatment, there will need to be some procedure for...
Medicare for all means that the government setting prices and standards for an entire industry, which is a huge change. For every new medical treatment, there will need to be some procedure for deciding when it gets covered (is it effective?) and how much to pay for it. (This already happens for Medicare, but in part those rates are based on prices set outside of Medicare.)
I make no claim that it's not doable, but there's no way that's not a huge change. Decision-making is much more centralized and it affects how much money everyone in the healthcare industry makes.
UBI doesn't set prices. It may have complicated effects on prices when poorer people have more buying power, but decision-making is decentralized.
M4A isn't some kind of pie in the sky concept that's never been tried on a national scale, unlike UBI. What is unique about America that would make it not work in your mind? A huge scary change...
M4A isn't some kind of pie in the sky concept that's never been tried on a national scale, unlike UBI. What is unique about America that would make it not work in your mind? A huge scary change isn't a reason to keep the current frankensystem. You can still get insurance in countries with M4A, if that's your thing...
I never said it was pie-in-the-sky. I'm just saying it's a big change, and our government isn't all that good at it. Remember the Obamacare website launch? Each country is different - they have...
I never said it was pie-in-the-sky. I'm just saying it's a big change, and our government isn't all that good at it. Remember the Obamacare website launch?
Each country is different - they have their own systems, and they're quite different from each other based on their histories. Vox did an interesting series on this. Also, one thing that makes the US different from other countries is that we apparently pay our doctors more than twice as much? And despite that, our doctors are pretty unhappy.
A big deterrent for Medicare today is that there is private insurance which is constantly applying pressure to keep prices higher. In theory those insurance companies would be trying to negotiate...
A big deterrent for Medicare today is that there is private insurance which is constantly applying pressure to keep prices higher. In theory those insurance companies would be trying to negotiate with suppliers and providers to keep rates lower, but it is often easier to accept the higher costs and reject more claims.
One of the benefits of Medicare For All would be that the negotiation with a single entity means that is will be more difficult to sell products and services at a higher mark up. Not only would it recover lots of waste which the private insurance companies syphon today as profit, but it will also recover the waste and expenditures pharmaceuticals spend on advertisment and marketing.
Refocusing the healthcare industry on providing a vital service for everyone in the country will improve the general health, allow us to catch problems earlier so that they don't become chronic issues, and give people the treatment they need so that the system can function more efficiently lowering overhead operating expenses.
I'm not sure why the advertising or marketing would go away? Pharmaceuticals would still want to sell more drugs rather than less, and the way to do that would be to make consumers more aware of...
I'm not sure why the advertising or marketing would go away? Pharmaceuticals would still want to sell more drugs rather than less, and the way to do that would be to make consumers more aware of the benefits and likely to ask about the drug, and encourage doctors to be favorable to them.
With Medicare it is still doctors and patients making decisions, so they are still a target for advertising.
I am also not sure whether the U.S. government would be any better at holding down costs when people are complaining about restrictions? U.S. trust in government is low and there are likely to be conspiracy theories about people being denied life-saving treatments. (That are actually not.)
But anyway, people have done many studies and they don't agree on savings. I doubt a couple of us eyeballing it based on common-sense reasoning are going to figure it out.
Appointing a committee to study the issue is an all-purpose answer. It doesn't say much other than it's a valid concern. So, vaguely reasonable I guess?
Appointing a committee to study the issue is an all-purpose answer. It doesn't say much other than it's a valid concern. So, vaguely reasonable I guess?
I voted for Sanders. Same as 2016. I wouldn’t have minded Warren but she clearly isn’t generating support and Biden is just.....he’s not the worst candidate(I give that to Bloomberg) but he...
I voted for Sanders. Same as 2016.
I wouldn’t have minded Warren but she clearly isn’t generating support and Biden is just.....he’s not the worst candidate(I give that to Bloomberg) but he doesn’t inspire anything. He’s running off name recognition and being Not Bernie.
As another user here remarked, I want to live in a world reminiscent of Starfleet and the Federation of United Planets. Bernies vision is closest to that.
But with Texas(my home state) being called for Biden, and Biden winning most of the Super Tuesday states, I fear the Democratic establishment got exactly what it wanted tonight. A big enough turnaround for Biden to justify throwing their full support behind him instead of Bernie.
It’s hard to judge. The support feels like it’s there, at least among the people I personally know, but I have to wonder if Texas Democrats maybe feel like they blew their proverbial load trying...
It’s hard to judge. The support feels like it’s there, at least among the people I personally know, but I have to wonder if Texas Democrats maybe feel like they blew their proverbial load trying to get Beto elected in 2018 and are wary of putting too much effort and support into any Democratic candidate in a state that Trump won by 9 points in 2016.
I also wonder if moderate/conservative Texas Democrats are buying too much in the “Don’t California my Texas” narrative and, as a result, have come to view Sanders as too liberal for their tastes. Biden offers them a choice that says “I’m still a Democrat but Biden won’t California my Texas”
I realise I could have done a better job communicating that I absolutely think millions of Americans have a deplorably aesthetic disposition towards politics. In my home country of Australia...
I realise I could have done a better job communicating that I absolutely think millions of Americans have a deplorably aesthetic disposition towards politics. In my home country of Australia whether the candidate for Prime Minister seems like a "good bloke" is genuinely treated as a more serious political issue than Climate Change. Such is life under the Murdoch Empire.
Just painful. Hard to blame ordinary people though when media elites being paid literally millions of dollars a year express political opinions barely more sophisticated.
... Buttigieg one American replied that Buttigieg is "too articulate".
Just painful. Hard to blame ordinary people though when media elites being paid literally millions of dollars a year express political opinions barely more sophisticated.
Sanders because I want everyone to live happy productive lives on a planet thats not literally on fucking fire. Fuck me for wanting everyone to have nice things right?
Sanders because I want everyone to live happy productive lives on a planet thats not literally on fucking fire. Fuck me for wanting everyone to have nice things right?
Sanders. Universal healthcare and beating Trump are my two biggest concerns that I think the candidates differ on. Biden's policies aren't great in this and others, and I don't believe at all that...
Sanders. Universal healthcare and beating Trump are my two biggest concerns that I think the candidates differ on. Biden's policies aren't great in this and others, and I don't believe at all that he can beat Trump.
Warren seems okay, but with her numbers, a vote for her is just a protest vote that risks giving it to Biden, so I'm baffled by her current support. Her policies seem so much closer to Sanders than Biden, so I assume her supporters are evaluating Sanders very differently than I am (maybe they think he'll flub it all or lose to Trump and that even Biden would do better), or they just aren't into her for her policies or even a real chance at winning. A lot of support I've seen for her seems to just focus on some relatable quality in her personality that people want to see rewarded (in votes even if not a win) like a kind of self validation. (This tweet thread put it into words for me.) (I think every candidate gets this kind of vapid support, but in Warren's case it makes up a larger fraction of her support because people into her policies already hopped over to Sanders for a more realistic shot at getting something like them done.)
Part of what makes me accept this explanation is that the converse of it explains one of the reasons why I dislike that Trump won so much: he's a lying asshole, and I don't like the idea of lying assholes being rewarded. (Though the reasoning is more valid in this case since those qualities are closely tied to bad policies.)
Sanders. I'm not a socialist, but he's the only viable candidate other than Biden, and I'd like someone to left of Biden as I have no confidence in him to undo Trump. I still strongly disagree...
Sanders. I'm not a socialist, but he's the only viable candidate other than Biden, and I'd like someone to left of Biden as I have no confidence in him to undo Trump. I still strongly disagree with his foreign policy and a lot of his socialist aesthetic (because he's a socdem at best) but generally agree with him on all other issues.
"I'm a democratic socialist" - Bernie Sanders, from (coauthored) book Outsider in the House Although I suppose some people will say that "democratic socialism" isn't the same as just "socialism",...
"I'm a democratic socialist" - Bernie Sanders, from (coauthored) book Outsider in the House
Although I suppose some people will say that "democratic socialism" isn't the same as just "socialism", but I think that's very nitpicky. Again, he's not a socialist - he's just a social democrat - but he clearly states he believes he is one.
For me, he'd be a Socialist politician if he was seriously talking about nationalising some significant part our the USA economy beyond healthcare. If he was talking about nationalising education,...
For me, he'd be a Socialist politician if he was seriously talking about nationalising some significant part our the USA economy beyond healthcare. If he was talking about nationalising education, or hell something like the energy industry, then strap in we're starting to do Socialism.
Sanders. He's the only guy I know of that has been as consistent as he has been through his entire history, aside from changing the party he's aligned with to be able to run for president. He's...
Sanders. He's the only guy I know of that has been as consistent as he has been through his entire history, aside from changing the party he's aligned with to be able to run for president. He's set the Democratic trends for platforms and pushed the Democratic party a bit further to the left, I think. Aside from Sanders only original dude this time around was Yang, and even then he's approaching similar problems as Sanders, with a different solution (Yang was my #2).
Sanders. We need Universal care and education and Capitalism is not the answer this time. Biden "return to normalcy" is a return to conditions that lead to Trump in the first place. I'll vote for...
Sanders. We need Universal care and education and Capitalism is not the answer this time.
Biden "return to normalcy" is a return to conditions that lead to Trump in the first place. I'll vote for him if I have to, though.
I voted Sanders. Universal Healthcare and fixing the corruption in politics were my main reasons for voting for him. Most of his other issues I believe he is pushing too far past what I think is...
I voted Sanders. Universal Healthcare and fixing the corruption in politics were my main reasons for voting for him. Most of his other issues I believe he is pushing too far past what I think is reasonable. For example, free college, we could do a set amount per student per year and offer low 1% interest rate loans through the government. This way students are relieved of some of the burden and risk of higher education while still keeping them accountable for how well they do, what they choose to do and where they choose to do it. Another example, $15 minimum wage is a terrible idea. Look at who is working a minimum wage job, mostly food service industry, that runs on tip based culture. Don't expect to be able to go out and eat at a sit down restaurant for less than double what you are paying now. Look at regional pricing for housing, it's very different everywhere and minimum wage should be reflective of the region you are living in similar to what it currently is being modified by the states. A much better idea is UBI and a small increase to minimum wage like $9.
Personally I would have voted for Yang first. His plan for UBI is realistic to accomplish among both parties and would have immediately offered a lot of financial support to everyone in need of it. Aside from the healthcare system getting fixed we would have gained more as a nation than anything anyone else is even trying to accomplish from this one plan.
Warren. She's smart, she's feisty, I hope she runs again in 2024. Plus I find it hard to get excited by Biden and Sanders. They ran before. Why is this time different?
Warren. She's smart, she's feisty, I hope she runs again in 2024.
Plus I find it hard to get excited by Biden and Sanders. They ran before. Why is this time different?
It’s not that they are running again. I said that poorly. I didn’t vote for Sanders last time. He hasn’t changed. I haven’t changed. Plus I think Warren is the smarter candidate.
I think Warren is intellectually smarter too, but she's made so many politically dumb moves in this campaign that it's easy to wonder how much that even matters.
I think Warren is intellectually smarter too, but she's made so many politically dumb moves in this campaign that it's easy to wonder how much that even matters.
Pocahontas. Acting like she was all-in on Medicare for All and then backtracking. This put her in neither the progressive nor the moderate lane, so she never really got support from either. It...
Pocahontas.
Acting like she was all-in on Medicare for All and then backtracking. This put her in neither the progressive nor the moderate lane, so she never really got support from either. It also made her look weak and disingenuous. She likely would've been much better off if she'd simply started in the "public option" lane.
The Bernie sexism attack.
Let's assume the worst-case scenario and Bernie literally said "a woman can't be President". She should've known that accusing him of this would play out politically poorly and that no one would believe that a guy with a 40 year history of the opposite behavior actually said it. In this case, she should've simply said that those leaks were "not an accurate characterization of the conversation" and dropped it.
She didn't deny it happened, but she also didn't actually say what he said or did. Instead, all she said was what he didn't do ("he disagreed" without specifically saying what he said or what exactly he disagreed to). This further made her seem disingenuous or dishonest.
Either way, she should've denied it, not to protect Sanders but to protect herself. This was never going to be a win for her.
Deciding to go around attacking Bernie Bros. Attacking the electorate seems like an incredibly stupid thing to do. Hillary Clinton also attacked the electorate ("Bernie Bros" and "deplorables"), and that worked out poorly for her too. "Don't attack people who could be convinced to vote for you" seems like a pretty basic political principle.
Biden was the conservative, white attachment to Obama's ticket to appease the racists and attempt to sway the conservative vote. Hate to be so blunt about that, but sadly race (and identity)...
Biden was the conservative, white attachment to Obama's ticket to appease the racists and attempt to sway the conservative vote. Hate to be so blunt about that, but sadly race (and identity) politics are still a driving factor. As far as presidential races go, he doesn't bring anything new to the table, and his most progressive policies are echos of what Sanders was pitching 4 years ago.
Sanders, even though he didn't win nomination last time, was able to pull the entire Democrat platform to the left for 2020. If he wins the presidency, he might be able to do the same with a bigger loudspeaker (easier to neglect a primary candidate in the mass media, harder to ignore the POTUS).
I like Sanders integrity, consistency, and I am on board with all his policies. I don't see him being the most effective agent of change. I think a vote for Warren is still an effective way to...
I like Sanders integrity, consistency, and I am on board with all his policies. I don't see him being the most effective agent of change. I think a vote for Warren is still an effective way to pull the party back to the left.
I voted Sanders. His consistency through the years and blunt communication appeal to me. I want to see the establishment change and Bernie has the plan that aligns best with what I'd like to see...
I voted Sanders. His consistency through the years and blunt communication appeal to me. I want to see the establishment change and Bernie has the plan that aligns best with what I'd like to see for things like universal healthcare, reducing corruption, fair taxation from the 1%. I also would be fine with Warren or even a Sanders/Warren. I don't want Biden and I'm glad Bloomberg is out now but annoyed he was ever allowed to run. Bloomberg was just there to divide and distract; I don't believe he actually wanted to win the ticket.
I was expecting lots of Bernie, but not almost exclusively Bernie. Honestly I was hoping for a lone Biden vote. Tildes is obviously fairly politically homogeneous.
I was expecting lots of Bernie, but not almost exclusively Bernie. Honestly I was hoping for a lone Biden vote.
Tildes is obviously fairly politically homogeneous.
Keep in mind that it's all information people are volunteering. If someone did vote for Bernie, they're going to look at the thread and see a lot of other people who did too, so they'll be more...
Keep in mind that it's all information people are volunteering. If someone did vote for Bernie, they're going to look at the thread and see a lot of other people who did too, so they'll be more comfortable saying so. They know there's a level of support and approval of their choice.
It's very possible that there are plenty of Biden voters, but the opinions of him in here obviously aren't positive, so they may not be comfortable mentioning their vote. Even if someone did, they might feel the need to be defensive about it, or expect someone will probably argue with them about it.
This sort of thing is a big part of why it's so difficult for a community site to truly have diverse political opinions.
Small aside for other non-Americans like myself, it took me a while to figure this one out but it means "Medicare For All" a.k.a. universal healthcare.
It’s a specific implementation of universal healthcare. There are others (though in our political system it’s probably the most realistic).
posting this again. just so everyone needs to know that medicare for all would be a boon for mental health in general. https://i.imgur.com/uGDNbQW.png
I'm on disability and have medicaid. I would literally be dead if my mother didn't jump through hoops for me. medicaid for all is just the obvious thing that needs to happen.
Sanders, because while I would prefer Warren, I care more that it not be Biden, and I think Sanders has a better chance of becoming the nominee, and beyond that, of beating Trump.
If Warren can't carry at least one state tonight, I'll be casting my vote next week for Sanders, for similar reasons. The Democratic Party has been stalled on progressive policy for too long to allow the Wall Street wing another chance, and Biden doesn't have the nimbleness or charisma to take Trump on.
There's so much focus on who wins each state, and I can't understand why. It makes sense in the general election, where most states award all their delegates to a single person, but that's not how the primaries work. Biden won the state, but got less than half the state's pledged delegates.
It's theoretically possible to win the nomination without winning a single state. Or Sanders could have won California by a landslide and Biden narrowly won the other 14 states and territories and Sanders would have received the most delegates. Heck, it's even possible to lose the popular vote in a state and still get the most delegates in it, look no further than Iowa.
I just find it strange. Sure, winning states is important, especially now that it's basically a two-person race. But winning delegates is a lot more important, yet seems to get less focus, both from the media and from commenters. I don't just want to know who won each state, I want to know by how much.
What's stopping them from just speaking it then? Also you can shorten it to something like 'Bernie won the votes, but Buttigieg won the delegates in Iowa'. Why not do that instead?
Bernie Sanders - I want to live in a world where starfleet seems possible.
M4A, Climate Change, are all very important to me.
Cool to hear someone invoke utopian aspirations as partly motivating their vote. I myself think politics needs more focus on long-term vision. If we pursue the politics of X, where will we be in 100, 200, and 1000 years?
Ezra Klein had a podcast related to this: https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/the-ezra-klein-show/e/62717474
I think planning for the future is an aspect of politics that has dissipated with the advent of instant gratification (ie, internet, social media, tv, &c). We need to continually look past our own experiences to where the butterfly effect will be.
Utopias aren't possible, but the ideas behind them can be.
I feel that mentions to the influence of social media to justify our intellectual misery frequently fail to acknowledge that:
Maybe 10 years from know "reductio ad socialus medium" will become a well-known fallacy.
I fully believe we were vastly less intelligent as a collective prior to the internet.
Social media lends itself to discovery of both magnificent and fantastic works of arts and knowledge, but has reduced the ability to be 'bored' and encourages instant gratification versus long-term goal oriented methodologies. Collectivist thought is faster and ever more changing than ever before, and that is both a benefit and a deficit for society at large.
I will still stand that majority of social media usage is a detriment for a majority of things, but the parts that are a benefit clearly outweigh the bad ten fold.
I voted for Sanders. I believe in universal education, universal healthcare, getting money out of politics, and a strong labor movement. Sanders has been on the right side of history.
I think Joe Biden would flat out lose to Trump. People are concerned with Bernie Sanders's socialist label, but that won't be nothing compared to what the GOP will throw out with Biden and his behavior around women/kids. I think they will lean 100% into Joe Biden being a pedophile of some sort, tie him to Clinton and Obama, and then just go ahead and call him a socialist anyways. And judging by the sheer amount of votes Michael Bloomberg is receiving from advertisements alone, its going to work. Biden's campaign was literally on life support after Iowa, he has no grassroots support, and he doesn't inspire. I see him being a John Kerry/Walter Mondale candidate. At least Clinton had a semblance of strategy and an actual idea of building up her campaign network. Joe Biden is relying pretty much on external factors to keep his campaign going. He is not in control.
If somehow Joe Biden actually beats Trump, wealth inequality is going to skyrocket. The rich are going to get richer, the poor poorer, all the while climate change is going to destroy our planet. The rate at which people declare bankruptcy will go up, and nothing progressive will get passed because Joe Biden has literally 0 grassroots support. Because things would continue to be the way they are today, expect a further right, outsider candidate to rise up for a 2024 challenge, further pushing the Overton Window to the right.
But that's my take. I'm probably wrong on a lot of details but I did predict that HRC wouldn't win in 2016.
Left outlets like Current Affairs could pick Hilary Clinton would lose, and they got the causal factors right too. Today Current Affairs and others are already documenting why Biden won't win, and are doing analysis on the right-wing that shows alarming near-future interactions between right-wing politics and Climate Change.
Meanwhile the morons on MSNBC/CNN will enact the same 2016 song and dance, and be (or pretend to be) baffled if Biden loses.
Calling one election isn't actually enough of a track record to go on. Prediction models need to be judged by their results in lots of elections and most of us aren't dedicated enough to make a serious model and calibrate it.
It's especially hard to judge for predictions based on probabilities. You need a lot of data to decide whether saying someone has a 20% chance is too high or too low.
I am still going by 538 by default, though I haven't looked seriously at the others.
Nate Silver (of 538) got famous after calling one election very well, but point taken.
Current Affairs wasn't using a prediction model. They used human beings with a positive theory of how USA presedential political campaigns work. Very different thing to a 538 model. Both are useful.
538 is good, but my comment was more about contrasting the orchestrated idiocy of the mainstream media pundit class with the political analysis of leftists. What's specifically interesting, and unadressed by both pundits and 538 models is this:
Lefists like Nathan Robinson, Naomi Klein, Noam Chomsky, etc etc are using their political intelligience to analyse the long-term direction of USA politics in the context of political and environmental science that pundits refuse to account for and that a prediction model like 538's can't account for.
A statistical model fitted on past electoral voting data can't predict the consequences of an increasingly nationalist right-wing confronting escalating climate disaster. Intelligent human beings can at least try, and both left and right have their brightest suggesting that if things go wrong we're headed for fascism.
This is my concern too. Both the Republicans and Democrats keep drifting to the right and more Authoritarian. Clinton won in 92 because the Democrats adopted a more Conservative approach and snuggled up with the Republicans. Perot helped take away from the Republicans, but it was a new direction for the Democrats which was a significant shift and it is leaving Progressive Independents in the cold. That is the segment Bernie is really attracting and to a somewhat lesser extent Warren. Biden is just a repeat of 2016 and if he should happen to win, it won't shift how anything is done. This election, as 2016 should have been, should be a reset back to the left to refocus on what is important. We need to focus on basic necessities to improve the lives of everyone, and eliminate the growing economic inequality.
If I recall, he was famous for calling every state, which is sort of like calling 50 elections? But he said he got lucky. Also many of those states were easy and that's probably not the right way to calibrate a model anyway. It just made a good meme.
My strongly-held assumption is that nothing predicts the long term direction of US politics. To do that, you'd have to predict everything else, including things like the Bush vs. Gore election, 9/11, the timing of Obama's rise when nobody had heard of him yet, the 2008 recession, social media's political effects, when Trump becomes popular, when Sanders becomes popular, the timing of Hillary's emails and the FBI's investigation of them, and Coronavirus.
Like, good luck with all that? Foundation was a work of fiction. Small, unpredictable events change history and there's no reason to believe it all cancels out. If Trump got hit by a bus and died in 2014 we wouldn't be where we are today.
In a chaotic system, we need to be comfortable with uncertainty rather than having false hope that someone has it all figured out. Pundits predict and occasionally people get lucky, that's all.
More so than if Trump gets reelected?
No, not more so than Trump.
The point was that the symptoms that caused a person like Trump to rise up will not be fixed, leading to another Trump-like figure. I believe the US needs some large structural changes and to divorce itself from the influence of big money special interest groups. My feelings are that Biden will build his cabinet based off input from these groups rather than progressive choices. He won't take bold approaches that will radically shift the political dynamic in America, leading more and more people to feel disenfranchised. He already has a history of wanting to cut Social Security, Medicare, veterans benefits and so on. And his aim when he started this campaign was to swing right rather than left.
If he wins the nomination, I expect his message and platform to continue drifting right.
I went with Warren. I'm not very happy with my reasons or with deciding at the last minute, but here they are:
Oh well, it's only one vote.
Interested to hear which you think is the mostly wildly unrealistic, and how you'd contrast Sanders' policy with the equivalent policy proposal of Warren.
Medicare for All and the Green New Deal to start.
But I should clarify that. I haven't studied their plans in detail, as a side effect of backing Yang until he dropped out. And I think all the candidates are making unrealistic promises, which makes me reluctant to study stuff that won't happen. But Warren seems to know what she wants to do if passing major new laws turns out to be out of the question?
That is too much of a surface-level impression. I only read the books by Yang and Buttigieg and somehow never got around to reading the others.
FWIW the layman's version of Warren's healthcare policy seems to be pretty much "pass the Bernie bill, but with some extra transition time". Bernie's plan is honestly very solid and grounded, and if I were a US voter I'd be less worried about the feasibility of the plan itself and more about whether or not Sanders has the political pull to push it through.
I think the side effect that's unrecognized is that Bernie attracts a very underrepresented demographic of under 30 Liberal/Progressive Independents. It's the fact that they are Independents which is the biggest challenge to his nomination. They will show up in the General Election and if they vote, they will support a lot of other Democrat races for the House, Senate, and local races. But they are not registered to easily secure his nomination. Finally, if Bernie isn't the nominee, they will be less likely to vote at all in the General Election.
My concern is that the strong Establishment Democrats push to keep him off the ballot will block success in other highly critical races, such as taking back the Senate, and that will stall any efforts to pass significant legislature. But, if Bernie can tap into that sizable demographic and the Democrats can use that to capture the Senate this election, then his policies and agenda becomes obtainable.
My concern is no Bernie, no Blue Wave.
(Broad and sweeping generalizations ahead.)
How? If you're a white, old and culturally conservative farmer/factory worker in Oklahoma or Kentucky Trump's presidency has gone swimmingly, he has deported immigrants and put them on camps, has gotten many states to ban abortion and he has left many trade agreements and managed to get the Republican party to practically bend over to him, meaning his only opposition is us filibustering as much as we can simply because deporting people and repealing/weakening Obamacare would be horrible for millions of people, even those same Trump voters who rely on it to live.
Is it really though? Trump's approval rating among Republicans is around 85-90% and Bill Weld and others' performances in the GOP primaries reflect this. Also the purging of voter rolls, closing of polling stations and approval of stricter VoterID laws means that 2016's figures might be optimistic by default. Also are you saying these people would vote for a Democrat like biden or just not vote at all?
What about the suppression efforts going on then, especially in said states? Here's an article on it, although it's not too grim.
Thinking that Bernie's plans were too unrealistic but that Yang's UBI had a chance is an interesting position.
Edit: To clarify, I say this not to sound snotty, but more as a remark on the power of messaging. There was a narrative created that Sanders plans were unrealistic, and apparently that resonated with you. Yang policies, on the other hand, were considered so unrealistic that they weren't even worth creating a narrative to dismiss.
Yes, Yang was always a long shot, as is passing UBI any time soon. I was being lazy about not having a plan after he dropped out.
On the other hand, implementing UBI would in theory be easy since it's just a redistribution scheme. It's the politics that's hard.
"Just a redistribution scheme" could apply to Medicare for All, too. The US is projected to spend roughly $35T with M4A and roughly $35T without M4A over the next 10 years. Therefore, M4A would essentially redistribute the roughly $35T from private health insurance into roughly $35T in public insurance.
Obviously, both UBI and M4A are more complicated than that, though.
Medicare for all means that the government setting prices and standards for an entire industry, which is a huge change. For every new medical treatment, there will need to be some procedure for deciding when it gets covered (is it effective?) and how much to pay for it. (This already happens for Medicare, but in part those rates are based on prices set outside of Medicare.)
I make no claim that it's not doable, but there's no way that's not a huge change. Decision-making is much more centralized and it affects how much money everyone in the healthcare industry makes.
UBI doesn't set prices. It may have complicated effects on prices when poorer people have more buying power, but decision-making is decentralized.
M4A isn't some kind of pie in the sky concept that's never been tried on a national scale, unlike UBI. What is unique about America that would make it not work in your mind? A huge scary change isn't a reason to keep the current frankensystem. You can still get insurance in countries with M4A, if that's your thing...
I never said it was pie-in-the-sky. I'm just saying it's a big change, and our government isn't all that good at it. Remember the Obamacare website launch?
Each country is different - they have their own systems, and they're quite different from each other based on their histories. Vox did an interesting series on this. Also, one thing that makes the US different from other countries is that we apparently pay our doctors more than twice as much? And despite that, our doctors are pretty unhappy.
A big deterrent for Medicare today is that there is private insurance which is constantly applying pressure to keep prices higher. In theory those insurance companies would be trying to negotiate with suppliers and providers to keep rates lower, but it is often easier to accept the higher costs and reject more claims.
One of the benefits of Medicare For All would be that the negotiation with a single entity means that is will be more difficult to sell products and services at a higher mark up. Not only would it recover lots of waste which the private insurance companies syphon today as profit, but it will also recover the waste and expenditures pharmaceuticals spend on advertisment and marketing.
Refocusing the healthcare industry on providing a vital service for everyone in the country will improve the general health, allow us to catch problems earlier so that they don't become chronic issues, and give people the treatment they need so that the system can function more efficiently lowering overhead operating expenses.
I'm not sure why the advertising or marketing would go away? Pharmaceuticals would still want to sell more drugs rather than less, and the way to do that would be to make consumers more aware of the benefits and likely to ask about the drug, and encourage doctors to be favorable to them.
With Medicare it is still doctors and patients making decisions, so they are still a target for advertising.
I am also not sure whether the U.S. government would be any better at holding down costs when people are complaining about restrictions? U.S. trust in government is low and there are likely to be conspiracy theories about people being denied life-saving treatments. (That are actually not.)
But anyway, people have done many studies and they don't agree on savings. I doubt a couple of us eyeballing it based on common-sense reasoning are going to figure it out.
What are your thoughts on Warren's stance on facial recognition after the Clearview AI story broke?
Appointing a committee to study the issue is an all-purpose answer. It doesn't say much other than it's a valid concern. So, vaguely reasonable I guess?
I voted for Sanders. Same as 2016.
I wouldn’t have minded Warren but she clearly isn’t generating support and Biden is just.....he’s not the worst candidate(I give that to Bloomberg) but he doesn’t inspire anything. He’s running off name recognition and being Not Bernie.
As another user here remarked, I want to live in a world reminiscent of Starfleet and the Federation of United Planets. Bernies vision is closest to that.
But with Texas(my home state) being called for Biden, and Biden winning most of the Super Tuesday states, I fear the Democratic establishment got exactly what it wanted tonight. A big enough turnaround for Biden to justify throwing their full support behind him instead of Bernie.
Do you feel support for Sanders has increased since four years ago?
It’s hard to judge. The support feels like it’s there, at least among the people I personally know, but I have to wonder if Texas Democrats maybe feel like they blew their proverbial load trying to get Beto elected in 2018 and are wary of putting too much effort and support into any Democratic candidate in a state that Trump won by 9 points in 2016.
I also wonder if moderate/conservative Texas Democrats are buying too much in the “Don’t California my Texas” narrative and, as a result, have come to view Sanders as too liberal for their tastes. Biden offers them a choice that says “I’m still a Democrat but Biden won’t California my Texas”
Surely no one is this aesthetic in their political concerns when things like Medicare4All and Climate Change action are on the line.
I never put it past anyone in this country anymore
Maybe they're old enough so that when they were young they didn't need college and they think we don't?
I realise I could have done a better job communicating that I absolutely think millions of Americans have a deplorably aesthetic disposition towards politics. In my home country of Australia whether the candidate for Prime Minister seems like a "good bloke" is genuinely treated as a more serious political issue than Climate Change. Such is life under the Murdoch Empire.
Just painful. Hard to blame ordinary people though when media elites being paid literally millions of dollars a year express political opinions barely more sophisticated.
Sanders because I want everyone to live happy productive lives on a planet thats not literally on fucking fire. Fuck me for wanting everyone to have nice things right?
Sanders. Universal healthcare and beating Trump are my two biggest concerns that I think the candidates differ on. Biden's policies aren't great in this and others, and I don't believe at all that he can beat Trump.
Warren seems okay, but with her numbers, a vote for her is just a protest vote that risks giving it to Biden, so I'm baffled by her current support. Her policies seem so much closer to Sanders than Biden, so I assume her supporters are evaluating Sanders very differently than I am (maybe they think he'll flub it all or lose to Trump and that even Biden would do better), or they just aren't into her for her policies or even a real chance at winning. A lot of support I've seen for her seems to just focus on some relatable quality in her personality that people want to see rewarded (in votes even if not a win) like a kind of self validation. (This tweet thread put it into words for me.) (I think every candidate gets this kind of vapid support, but in Warren's case it makes up a larger fraction of her support because people into her policies already hopped over to Sanders for a more realistic shot at getting something like them done.)
Part of what makes me accept this explanation is that the converse of it explains one of the reasons why I dislike that Trump won so much: he's a lying asshole, and I don't like the idea of lying assholes being rewarded. (Though the reasoning is more valid in this case since those qualities are closely tied to bad policies.)
Sanders. I'm not a socialist, but he's the only viable candidate other than Biden, and I'd like someone to left of Biden as I have no confidence in him to undo Trump. I still strongly disagree with his foreign policy and a lot of his socialist aesthetic (because he's a socdem at best) but generally agree with him on all other issues.
Which Sanders policies do you consider socialist?
Basically none. Which is why I'm constantly confused by his branding.
"I'm a democratic socialist" - Bernie Sanders, from (coauthored) book Outsider in the House
Although I suppose some people will say that "democratic socialism" isn't the same as just "socialism", but I think that's very nitpicky. Again, he's not a socialist - he's just a social democrat - but he clearly states he believes he is one.
For me, he'd be a Socialist politician if he was seriously talking about nationalising some significant part our the USA economy beyond healthcare. If he was talking about nationalising education, or hell something like the energy industry, then strap in we're starting to do Socialism.
Sanders. He's the only guy I know of that has been as consistent as he has been through his entire history, aside from changing the party he's aligned with to be able to run for president. He's set the Democratic trends for platforms and pushed the Democratic party a bit further to the left, I think. Aside from Sanders only original dude this time around was Yang, and even then he's approaching similar problems as Sanders, with a different solution (Yang was my #2).
Sanders. We need Universal care and education and Capitalism is not the answer this time.
Biden "return to normalcy" is a return to conditions that lead to Trump in the first place. I'll vote for him if I have to, though.
I voted Sanders. Universal Healthcare and fixing the corruption in politics were my main reasons for voting for him. Most of his other issues I believe he is pushing too far past what I think is reasonable. For example, free college, we could do a set amount per student per year and offer low 1% interest rate loans through the government. This way students are relieved of some of the burden and risk of higher education while still keeping them accountable for how well they do, what they choose to do and where they choose to do it. Another example, $15 minimum wage is a terrible idea. Look at who is working a minimum wage job, mostly food service industry, that runs on tip based culture. Don't expect to be able to go out and eat at a sit down restaurant for less than double what you are paying now. Look at regional pricing for housing, it's very different everywhere and minimum wage should be reflective of the region you are living in similar to what it currently is being modified by the states. A much better idea is UBI and a small increase to minimum wage like $9.
Personally I would have voted for Yang first. His plan for UBI is realistic to accomplish among both parties and would have immediately offered a lot of financial support to everyone in need of it. Aside from the healthcare system getting fixed we would have gained more as a nation than anything anyone else is even trying to accomplish from this one plan.
Warren. She's smart, she's feisty, I hope she runs again in 2024.
Plus I find it hard to get excited by Biden and Sanders. They ran before. Why is this time different?
But, in 2024 she will have run before?
It’s not that they are running again.
I said that poorly.
I didn’t vote for Sanders last time.
He hasn’t changed.
I haven’t changed.
Plus I think Warren is the smarter candidate.
I think Warren is intellectually smarter too, but she's made so many politically dumb moves in this campaign that it's easy to wonder how much that even matters.
Aside from how she handled "pocahontas", what other dumb moves did she make?
Pocahontas.
Acting like she was all-in on Medicare for All and then backtracking. This put her in neither the progressive nor the moderate lane, so she never really got support from either. It also made her look weak and disingenuous. She likely would've been much better off if she'd simply started in the "public option" lane.
The Bernie sexism attack.
Deciding to go around attacking Bernie Bros. Attacking the electorate seems like an incredibly stupid thing to do. Hillary Clinton also attacked the electorate ("Bernie Bros" and "deplorables"), and that worked out poorly for her too. "Don't attack people who could be convinced to vote for you" seems like a pretty basic political principle.
Biden was the conservative, white attachment to Obama's ticket to appease the racists and attempt to sway the conservative vote. Hate to be so blunt about that, but sadly race (and identity) politics are still a driving factor. As far as presidential races go, he doesn't bring anything new to the table, and his most progressive policies are echos of what Sanders was pitching 4 years ago.
Sanders, even though he didn't win nomination last time, was able to pull the entire Democrat platform to the left for 2020. If he wins the presidency, he might be able to do the same with a bigger loudspeaker (easier to neglect a primary candidate in the mass media, harder to ignore the POTUS).
I like Sanders integrity, consistency, and I am on board with all his policies. I don't see him being the most effective agent of change. I think a vote for Warren is still an effective way to pull the party back to the left.
I voted Sanders. His consistency through the years and blunt communication appeal to me. I want to see the establishment change and Bernie has the plan that aligns best with what I'd like to see for things like universal healthcare, reducing corruption, fair taxation from the 1%. I also would be fine with Warren or even a Sanders/Warren. I don't want Biden and I'm glad Bloomberg is out now but annoyed he was ever allowed to run. Bloomberg was just there to divide and distract; I don't believe he actually wanted to win the ticket.
Interesting that all the top line replies here are for Sanders, save two for Warren.
I was expecting lots of Bernie, but not almost exclusively Bernie. Honestly I was hoping for a lone Biden vote.
Tildes is obviously fairly politically homogeneous.
Keep in mind that it's all information people are volunteering. If someone did vote for Bernie, they're going to look at the thread and see a lot of other people who did too, so they'll be more comfortable saying so. They know there's a level of support and approval of their choice.
It's very possible that there are plenty of Biden voters, but the opinions of him in here obviously aren't positive, so they may not be comfortable mentioning their vote. Even if someone did, they might feel the need to be defensive about it, or expect someone will probably argue with them about it.
This sort of thing is a big part of why it's so difficult for a community site to truly have diverse political opinions.
bernie, early voted like 3 weeks ago. I'm getting more and more jaded on the whole process because of the DNC