Do you believe that Bernie will beat Trump?

Politics & Elections
101

If not now when?

Really…when?

I am not irrational about this stuff. I get the opposition to these proposals is massive. I honestly cannot see them succeeding any time soon.

But when do we start working towards them? If you (general "you) always say it is impossible this year, and the next and the nest so don’t bother trying then it is impossible forever.

We have had 30-40 years of “moderate” democrats and here we are in the mess we have today. They have done nothing to stop the rampant cost increases and done nothing to protect workers or wages. They will nod that something needs to be done about climate change but nothing happens there either. Same with infrastructure. They will all say we should do something but…nothing. Endless wars? Same thing.

When is it you think enough is enough? That something must improve in politics?

I am amazed that the people here want to let them have another bite at the apple. Why would you ever think a “moderate” like Bloomberg is what we really need? Is he better than Trump? Sure…but that is a mighty low bar. You would get more of what has gotten us here.

Change is needed. Continuing as we have been for decades is the real danger. I get people are afraid of change but embrace it because the mess we are in now is worse.

So, among the candidates today who is most likely to at least try to affect some change? (Hint: Sanders) Only Sanders has a solid, lifelong record championing these causes…even when he goes it alone. That is integrity.

Warren was close but then Warren, “I won’t take superpac money” has taken superpac money. Buttigieg was for M4A untill he took lots of money from billionaires and now he is not for it and…dunno what he is on about really. “Not Bernie” is as close as I can figure.

Amy (never met a Trump judge I didn’t like) Klobuchar…no chance, no thanks.

Joe Biden is Clinton re-warmed. Third-way politics to the core. His policies from a lifetime in politics are bad. Really bad.

Bloomberg…honestly I think if the republican party had let him run against Trump he would have run away with the whole thing. But he ain’t no liberal (he used to be a republican) and people bitch that Sanders is an independent. Gimme a break.

So yeah, if you are a liberal, and believe in liberal values and want a better world for everyone and not just the 10% then Sanders is really your best choice.

102

I assure you that my generation, and the generations younger than myself that will be voting this year, don’t think “socialism” is a four-letter word and couldn’t give a flying fuck about party politics, where he went on honeymoon, or what he said 40 years ago about people who are now long dead.

It’s going to be Millennials and Zoomers that decide this election, and we’re far more concerned with climate change, wealth inequality, crushing debt, and endless wars than whether we have to cut funding for the Space Force so that our friends and families aren’t dying because they can’t afford insulin.

103

This.

If Sanders gets the nomination the swing voters will finally look at his position site and actually pay attention to what he says and has said in the past. I wager 95% of them will shit bricks. HTF is he going to do any of all that without bankrupting the nation, YTF is most of it the governments business, and why would anyone vote for an agenda that basically can only get done at gun point? I’ve always loathed Trump but he’s going to beat Sanders like a drum.

104

Sanders has issued some fairly detailed plans for paying for his proposals. I have no opinion on whether these plans are realistic, and am not qualified to make that judgment anyway; and I suspect this website is brand spanking new (I looked for such a page literally yesterday and couldn’t find it, but it was the first Google result this morning). He may even have released it just in time for the debate tonight.

But it’s no longer accurate to say he doesn’t have any details on how he’s gonna pay for everything.

105

I’m curious, has anyone ever won the presidency while promising to raise taxes a metric fuckton? Yes I know, he’s promising to raise taxes on “them” and not “us.” But still he’s not shy in saying how much he is going to raise taxes.

106

Damn! Details! Details are bad, at least during the primary (and probably during the general too). At least these details are still pretty damn simple, mostly summed up in a single short sentence. But I kind of wish he had held back the details.

107

only way Sanders wins is a really big turnout of under 30 voters. That is very unlikely to happen based on the past few presidential elections. But maybe he is the guy to finally get young people to vote .

108

You are spectacularly wrong and I do enjoy catching you at being spectacularly wrong.

I make no secret of not being a huge Bernie fan, but seeing him make an honest attempt at explaining how he intends to pay for his policies makes him a much more honest and decent pol to my mind and his stock just rose immensely to me, and I hope many others who appreciate a level of honesty in politics. And I say that as someone whose taxes have been significantly reduced under Trump and are going to go up significantly under Bernie’s plan.

Now, can he get this done legislatively (if he wins it all), probably not. But for the first time since this shit show election cycle has begun, I’d really like to see him given an opportunity to give it his best shot.

109

Gambling is no longer allowed at SDMB. Otherwise I’d offer to bet that Didnt.Bother.To.Vote wins in a landslide among “Zoomers” in November.

110

I hope I’m wrong on this, because I want to see Bernie win! May my wrongness always be in ways that coincide with greater chances of success for progressive politicians!

111

Will he? Can he? I honestly could not predict it at this point. 2016 blew away predictability.

One thing I’ll grant Whack~ and others is, maybe if with the socialist outsider in the mix, the Dems finally end four decades of running away from the word and concept “Liberal”, and &^%$ own it, and say, hell yes, we want a better place to live by a metric other than the S&P Index, that would be helpful.

People in farms and deindustrialized cities where Trump’s policies are hurting them, are sticking with him because they feel it’s worth the pain to get whatever illusion he sold them. Maybe, just, maybe, there could be enough other people who will feel it’s worth it paying more taxes or collecting less in their stock fund dividend to improve health and education? Can’t find out if we are too scared to even propose it seriously because we’re still too traumatized by 72, 80, and 84.

And if you conclude it’s flat out impossible to win as a Liberal, never mind outright Leftist, and all you can hope for is to propose regaining a semblance of civility in administration, then invade the Republican Party and moderate it.

112

I agree with both of these posts. I personally am not in favor of some of Bernie’s specific proposals, but I respect him immensely for putting them forward and believe this is something politicians should aspire to. But my personal respect doesn’t mean anything in the general election.

113

I also don’t favor “how do we pay for it?” as an assumed “good question”, because I think it assumes right wing conventional wisdom as true (i.e. that all spending must necessarily be paid for by taxes). Deficit spending can be fine, and obviously the last few decades have proven that the public doesn’t care much about deficit spending.

114

His comments on the Cuban revolution mean that he’s not going to win Florida. The billionaires will mobilize to destroy him and wen the Republicans are done with him, he will be the second coming of Fidel Castro. I think that Trump will add to the states he won in 2016.

115

Nate Silver on electability:

“I don’t think “which Democrat is most likely to beat Trump” is literally an unknowable question. But there are questions where the uncertainty can be well-quantified and others where it can’t, and that one’s in the latter group. If you saw big polling differences vs. Trump among the Democrats, or at least among the high-name recognition Democrats, that’s a case where the uncertainty, though great, starts to become semi-modelable. But for the time being, you don’t see those differences.”

I don’t think there’s any reason to treat anyone’s opinion on who is more electable as better than a guess right now. There are logical-sounding arguments that can be made in favor of electability for all of the candidates, but there’s no way to know right now which of those arguments are better.

116

Is anyone claiming that they are doing anything but guessing at this point? I didn’t think Trump was going to be elected. My guess was wrong. The day after the election I thought there was no way the next election was even going to be competitive. Trump was going to lose spectacularly. The democrats are proving me wrong. I can only guess who is going to win but it’s certainly been competitive.

117

Lots of folks have pushed back on this notion when I’ve called their predictions “guesses”. I’m still surprised smart people have any confidence in their own predictive abilities after 2016. I certainly don’t. I have hopes, and feelings, but no confidence at all that I have an idea of what will happen in the general election.

118

I have no idea. After Trump’s election I naturally assume that Americans are crazy who love crazy. It’s just a different world over there.

119

:Sigh:

I checked what Bernie said, he clearly did condemn all authoritarians and Castro too, he just did the sin of pointing that educating the Cuban people was still a good thing to do, what the media did there is omit the context and get all others to react just to the “Hitler ate sugar” fallacy.

120

I don’t think it matters who the Democrats nominate. This election is going to be about the incumbent.

Emotions are high on the Democratic side because of the stakes involved. Everyone has their favorites and it’s good to get it all out in the open. The diversity of opinions and hearing that diversity are strengths. That emotion is going to continue to the general election no matter who gets the nomination, because the great unifier to still going to be unifying the opposition.