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US PoliEra 2019 |OT10| Go Absent Yourself

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Poodlestrike

Poodlestrike

Smooth vs. Crunchy
Administrator
Oct 25, 2017
13,530
That Rand Paul plan is maybe the dumbest thi ng I've read in a minute. There's certainly *worse* Republican plans out there, more destructive and hateful, but Rand has outdone himself in sheer pointlessness.
 
AnotherNils

AnotherNils

Member
Oct 27, 2017
11,936
Feels like with Kamala out and Warren fading, the resignation we feel here is starting to show up with some new endorsements for Biden nationally.

Or I'm reading too far into things.
 
Diablos

Diablos

has a title.
Member
Oct 25, 2017
14,672
The Chosen One said:
As soon as she released her healthcare plan, I knew she just pulled the blue wire on the ticking time bomb on her campaign. Kamala got a lot of shit for waffling on her healthcare plan early on, but it was actually the smart thing to do because she was thinking ahead to deeper in the primary race and the GE. I was a short-term hit, meant to keep her viable in the long run. The problem was Kamala's campaign never fully fired on all 4 cylinders, so she couldn't go the distance and see the benefit from the early pivot.

Whereas Warren played hard for the fervent progressive vote and won a lot of hearts from the Left in the summer, but she played the game not like someone who expected to actually win the nominee and be viable in the GE. She mistook Twitter as the Democratic base when it's actually just a vocal minority. The base of the Democratic party is definitely trending left, but it's still much closer to the center than the socialist/revolutionaries.

Also when you have an absolutely crazy opposition party in the GOP, not everyone wants to go hard in the opposite direction creating more uncertainty. There are a lot of people that just want a "stabilizing" force in the White House after the insanity of Trump. They want someone who is actually competent to pass a sensible healthcare plan. I don't think the majority of the public thinks the ACA is inadequate to the point of overhauling the system again. They basically just want Trump and co. to stop shitting on the ACA and actually just fix it. I think once it's fixed and it appears there are still problems, then people may be open to more drastic change. But not yet.

Healthcare is probably the most important issue to the vast majority of Americans and Warren completely misread the room by pandering to Bernie's crowd when electability in the GE was always one of the nagging issues hanging over her head. Allowing herself to be painted as "extreme" on healthcare was a campaign-ending blunder that many of us saw a mile away.

It's not too late, but she now has to rely on some external factors to break her way to get back in it.
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Pandering to the Bernie crowd seems to be a loser every single time. It might be great early on in the debates or in a competetive primary state, but if we're talking about having a cohesive general election strategy, it's poison.

Kamala just wasn't ready for this running for President thing. I wish she would've had a better campaign in place and thus a real chance of being the nominee. She would've been awesome.
 
Diablos

Diablos

has a title.
Member
Oct 25, 2017
14,672
Remember when Biden was trying to advocate for a Kerry/McCain ticket? Those were the days.
 
adam387

adam387

Member
Nov 27, 2017
5,215
AnotherNils said:
Feels like with Kamala out and Warren fading, the resignation we feel here is starting to show up with some new endorsements for Biden nationally.

Or I'm reading too far into things.
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I don't know that it's that, or if the Biden team had some of these lined up, senses blood in the water, and is going to roll them out boom boom boom. That's a really good idea if it's what they're doing.

But it's probably just happenstance.
 

Avinash117

Member
Oct 25, 2017
1,603
Allard said:
Its actually not that hard to understand, modern day conservatives (social and economic in respective fashion) do not want government to function, they literally want to put it in a place where you can drown it in a tub at a moments notice and not notice anything wrong. They don't want it involved in regulation, they don't want it involved in their lives unless it means to subjugate things they don't like. They want people to think government is broken and then run on that message, not as fixers but as people trying to get government out of peoples lives (again unless it means hurting things they don't like). They are saboteurs who don't want things to work, but they also acknowledge that despite what they wish goverment is involved in money regulation so they know if they push too hard one way they could see a collapse which is why despite their blustering McConnell and company at least know a market or financial collapse would not go well for them.
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I'm aware of the starve the beast belief that Republicans have; I'm just amazed that the Republican Party thinks on the short-term on such a massive scale. It is like they are on a perpetual survival mode. They literally have no long-term strategy and the crazy thing is, some them even know this.
 
NihonTiger

NihonTiger

Member
Oct 25, 2017
10,551
Sho_Nuff82 said:
Her biggest problem was actually having a healthcare plan it would seem. People like nebulous wishy washy bullshit in their candidates.
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It lets them project their dreams and fantasy onto reality.

That's why Trump's so popular with his base. They can project their views onto him (coincidentally, he shares a lot of their views)
 
Joe Shlabotnik

Joe Shlabotnik

Member
Oct 27, 2017
5,900


There goes my hope for a completely unanimous popular vote win

Voter at @JoeBiden event in New Hampton about why he "sent his son to Ukraine," and whether he was selling access to the presidency like Trump there. "You're a damn liar," Biden says.
 

Crocodile

Member
Oct 25, 2017
8,121
The Chosen One said:
As soon as she released her healthcare plan, I knew she just pulled the blue wire on the ticking time bomb on her campaign. Kamala got a lot of shit for waffling on her healthcare plan early on, but it was actually the smart thing to do because she was thinking ahead to deeper in the primary race and the GE. I was a short-term hit, meant to keep her viable in the long run. The problem was Kamala's campaign never fully fired on all 4 cylinders, so she couldn't go the distance and see the benefit from the early pivot.

Whereas Warren played hard for the fervent progressive vote and won a lot of hearts from the Left in the summer, but she played the game not like someone who expected to actually win the nominee and be viable in the GE. She mistook Twitter as the Democratic base when it's actually just a vocal minority. The base of the Democratic party is definitely trending left, but it's still much closer to the center than the socialist/revolutionaries.

Also when you have an absolutely crazy opposition party in the GOP, not everyone wants to go hard in the opposite direction creating more uncertainty. There are a lot of people that just want a "stabilizing" force in the White House after the insanity of Trump. They want someone who is actually competent to pass a sensible healthcare plan. I don't think the majority of the public thinks the ACA is inadequate to the point of overhauling the system again. They basically just want Trump and co. to stop shitting on the ACA and actually just fix it. I think once it's fixed and it appears there are still problems, then people may be open to more drastic change. But not yet.

Healthcare is probably the most important issue to the vast majority of Americans and Warren completely misread the room by pandering to Bernie's crowd when electability in the GE was always one of the nagging issues hanging over her head. Allowing herself to be painted as "extreme" on healthcare was a campaign-ending blunder that many of us saw a mile away.

It's not too late, but she now has to rely on some external factors to break her way to get back in it.
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Why is it pandering and not just what she believes in? Pretty much every politician has some number of "morally correct but politically toxic" positions. Her "plan" is not likely to come into fruition but it actually seems like the best plan to transition to single-payer if that's what you eventually want to do. What it looks like to me happened is that by actually trying to find a way to do it, she pissed of leftists who want/expect the President to wave a wand to get single-payer through and she revealed herself as more left than some White liberals expected/were willing to tolerate.

FWIW, corruption and democracy reforms are more important and without them improving healthcare will be hard/impossible. I wish more of the primary was focused on that and Warren has some of the best plans for dealing with corruption and democracy reform.
 
dabig2

dabig2

Member
Oct 29, 2017
5,116
lmcfigs said:
We really can't keep running on cutting taxes for the middle class every election either. Eventually you do need to raise taxes for everyone. Especially if you want to expand the welfare state.
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The ol Two Santa Claus theory at action. I agree it's beyond old by now and partly the reason we keep going in circles as a country:
www.commondreams.org

Two Santa Clauses or How The Republican Party Has Conned America for Thirty Years

Goldwater, however, rejected the "liberalism" of Eisenhower, Rockefeller, and other "moderates" within his own party. Extremism in defense of liberty was no vice, he famously told the 1964 nominating convention, and moderation was no virtue. And it doomed him and his party.
www.commondreams.org www.commondreams.org
But Wanniski had been doing his homework on how to sell supply-side economics. In 1976, he rolled out to the hard-right insiders in the Republican Party his "Two Santa Clauses" theory, which would enable the Republicans to take power in America for the next thirty years.

Democrats, he said, had been able to be "Santa Clauses" by giving people things from the largesse of the federal government. Republicans could do that, too – spending could actually increase. Plus, Republicans could be double Santa Clauses by cutting people's taxes! For working people it would only be a small token – a few hundred dollars a year on average – but would be heavily marketed. And for the rich it would amount to hundreds of billions of dollars in tax cuts. The rich, in turn, would use that money to import or build more stuff to market, thus increasing supply and stimulating the economy. And that growth in the economy would mean that the people still paying taxes would pay more because they were earning more.

There was no way, Wanniski said, that the Democrats could ever win again. They'd have to be anti-Santas by raising taxes, or anti-Santas by cutting spending. Either one would lose them elections.

When Reagan rolled out Supply Side Economics in the early 80s, dramatically cutting taxes while exploding (mostly military) spending, there was a moment when it seemed to Wanniski and Laffer that all was lost. The budget deficit exploded and the country fell into a deep recession – the worst since the Great Depression – and Republicans nationwide held their collective breath. But David Stockman came up with a great new theory about what was going on – they were "starving the beast" of government by running up such huge deficits that Democrats would never, ever in the future be able to talk again about national health care or improving Social Security – and this so pleased Alan Greenspan, the Fed Chairman, that he opened the spigots of the Fed, dropping interest rates and buying government bonds, producing a nice, healthy goose to the economy. Greenspan further counseled Reagan to dramatically increase taxes on people earning under $37,800 a year by increasing the Social Security (FICA/payroll) tax, and then let the government borrow those newfound hundreds of billions of dollars off-the-books to make the deficit look better than it was.
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Reagan, Greenspan, Winniski, and Laffer took the federal budget deficit from under a trillion dollars in 1980 to almost three trillion by 1988, and back then a dollar could buy far more than it buys today. They and George HW Bush ran up more debt in eight years than every president in history, from George Washington to Jimmy Carter, combined. Surely this would both starve the beast and force the Democrats to make the politically suicidal move of becoming deficit hawks.

And that's just how it turned out. Bill Clinton, who had run on an FDR-like platform of a "new covenant" with the American people that would strengthen the institutions of the New Deal, strengthen labor, and institute a national health care system, found himself in a box. A few weeks before his inauguration, Alan Greenspan and Robert Rubin sat him down and told him the facts of life: he was going to have to raise taxes and cut the size of government. Clinton took their advice to heart, raised taxes, balanced the budget, and cut numerous programs, declaring an "end to welfare as we know it" and, in his second inaugural address, an "end to the era of big government." He was the anti-Santa Claus, and the result was an explosion of Republican wins across the country as Republican politicians campaigned on a platform of supply-side tax cuts and pork-rich spending increases.

Looking at the wreckage of the Democratic Party all around Clinton by 1999, Winniski wrote a gloating memo that said, in part: "We of course should be indebted to Art Laffer for all time for his Curve... But as the primary political theoretician of the supply-side camp, I began arguing for the 'Two Santa Claus Theory' in 1974. If the Democrats are going to play Santa Claus by promoting more spending, the Republicans can never beat them by promoting less spending. They have to promise tax cuts..."
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And around around we go. That article already needs to be updated to 40 years, and I'm certain I'll still be posting this in 2029 too, which then means we can just say 50 years.
 
Wraith

Wraith

Member
Jun 28, 2018
8,892
enempi said:
I mean, people clearly just like the guy. It wasn't that long ago that everyone loved Uncle Joe until he got in the way of Warren and Sanders. He might stumble over his words but he's an affable, kind man who people seem to connect with. More than just name recognition he is a known quantity with experience in the executive branch. Compared to Warren or Sanders you know you are getting a pretty standard Democratic administration with Biden. He has been able to position himself well as a less 'extreme' option. This country is a lot more conservative than we'd like to acknowledge, and most people are simply uninterested in upending the system or following up Trump with an extremely progressive candidate. Unfortunately. Biden lets people feel like our norms haven't been entirely eroded and we can still have a "normal" President.

I wouldn't consider myself a Biden supporter but its not a mystery why people like him and this kind of rhetoric about all his supporters being low information voters who jumped when they heard a name they recognized is unhelpful and ignorant. Biden has been leading the polls the whole time and has rock solid support from black folks. Throw a VP like Harris and that sounds to me like a pretty solid coalition. Acting like it's all just name recognition and no one "actually" supports him is why the online left has been predicting his imminent demise since the race started. This country is not full of people who are secretly massive supporters of progressive ideas and only support Biden because of name recognition - people just like what he has to offer. Something that very few people "actually" support and only polls well because of name recognition is more like M4A, not Joe Biden.
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To be clear I'm not trying to cast his supporters, or people who chose him in a poll, as "low information" or insincere in their support. Or ragging on people who prefer a more moderate candidate.

Maybe I'm trying to understand why people are passionate, excited, motivated by his campaign/platform, and will that bring out the vote in the general if he gets the nomination. Biden isn't Hillary, 2020 isn't 2016, but one of the (many) problems in 2016 was voter apathy, low turnout, even people leaving the top of the ticket blank. At least the GOP hit jobs on Biden seems to be less successful, and even more groundless (using a private email server was a bad decision, even if it wasn't nefarious; so far there's nothing real suggesting Biden did anything improper re: Ukraine and his son). And hopefully Trump's "win" was a wakeup call for enough people that their vote/non-vote did matter.
 
RastaMentality

RastaMentality

Member
Oct 25, 2017
13,162
I hate Biden but it's kinda hilarious seeing people contort themselves to attack Biden's ad on Twitter for being Hillary "policy-free" like. This re election is a referendum.

Even Bernie realizes people are searching for electability arguments which is why his team posts GE matchups on instagram all the time.
 
cameron

cameron

The Fallen
Oct 26, 2017
23,864
Joe Shlabotnik said:


There goes my hope for a completely unanimous popular vote win

Voter at @JoeBiden event in New Hampton about why he "sent his son to Ukraine," and whether he was selling access to the presidency like Trump there. "You're a damn liar," Biden says.
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>





Marc Caputo @MarcACaputo

"You're a damn liar" Biden tells a New Hampton Iowan at a town hall who said Biden "sent" his son to work in Ukraine at Burisma.

Biden then angrily told him to get his facts right and, because the man said he was too old, challenged him to a push-up contest or an IQ test

12:48 PM - Dec 5, 2019



​
Matt Viser @mviser

The Iowan also challenges Biden over his age.

"I'm not sedentary," Biden says, growing agitated. "You want to check my shape man, let's do pushups together here, man. Let's run. Let's do whatever you want to do. Let's take an IQ test. Ok?"


Not the first time this happened. In 1987, Biden challenged a New Hampshire voter asking a contentious question.

"I think I probably have a much higher IQ than you do, I suspect...I'd be delighted to sit down and compare my IQ to yours."https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=4&v=D1j0FS0Z6ho&feature=emb_logo …​

1:03 PM - Dec 5, 2019
 
MMBosstones86

MMBosstones86

Member
Oct 25, 2017
3,203
cameron said:
>





Marc Caputo @MarcACaputo

"You're a damn liar" Biden tells a New Hampton Iowan at a town hall who said Biden "sent" his son to work in Ukraine at Burisma.

Biden then angrily told him to get his facts right and, because the man said he was too old, challenged him to a push-up contest or an IQ test

12:48 PM - Dec 5, 2019




Matt Viser @mviser

The Iowan also challenges Biden over his age.

"I'm not sedentary," Biden says, growing agitated. "You want to check my shape man, let's do pushups together here, man. Let's run. Let's do whatever you want to do. Let's take an IQ test. Ok?"


Not the first time this happened. In 1987, Biden challenged a New Hampshire voter asking a contentious question.

"I think I probably have a much higher IQ than you do, I suspect...I'd be delighted to sit down and compare my IQ to yours."https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=4&v=D1j0FS0Z6ho&feature=emb_logo …

1:03 PM - Dec 5, 2019
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"do you even lift, bro?"
 
Sain

Sain

Member
Nov 13, 2017
1,534
I mean, I appreciate that Biden isn't taking anyone's shit about his health or his son.
 

VectorPrime

Banned
Apr 4, 2018
11,781
Would you rather Biden have some tepid jellyfish response to some shithead accusing him of a right wing conspiracy theory?
 

Deleted member 13101

Banned
Oct 27, 2017
17,973
Sho_Nuff82 said:
Kerry endorsed Biden, it's a wrap ya'll.
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He was on morning Joe this morning trying to sell his campaign of "needing to reach out to young people" to have conversations about climate change, etc. but using a newspaper ad with a coalition he assembled of successful prominent people (like for instance Hillary Clinton and Susan Rice) but also faces of entertainers (like DiCaprio) and ones who directly gave Trump a pass leading up to the 2016 election and should have known better (Fallon).

Then he goes and endorses Biden.

When will the conversations actually take place?
 
Slim Action

Slim Action

Member
Jul 4, 2018
5,614
Biden was designed in a lab to be unappealing to Online people and appealing to everyone else.

Regular folks love that "how dare you insult my son, I'll fight you" stuff (from a man).
 
YamchasRevenge

YamchasRevenge

Member
Oct 25, 2017
4,819
Usually Bill Maher is full of shit, but he was right in saying the Clintons should just fuck off for this election. Go away.
 
adam387

adam387

Member
Nov 27, 2017
5,215
Biden's defense is going to play well with the right kind of people that we need to peel away to win, tbh.

I don't respect the whole RAWR I'M ANGRY LET'S PUSH UP BRAH but I won't deny that it's probably effective.
 
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