My thoughts 1000%, DSeid.
Barkley was about 22 years older than Stevenson, and he died even before the next presidential election was half finished, so that might have been an issue. The oldest Democrat to be elected president (initially) in the last hundred years was Jimmy Carter, at 52. Biden and Sanders are ridiculously old to be vying for the most brutal white-collar job in the country.
+++ Agreed. Surely Warren would get huge support from progressives even without going all in on outlandish pipe dreams. “Build gradually on ACA” was always the correct answer to healthcare.
Klobuchar lacks charisma IMO and, anyway, isn’t in the top 8 according to Betfair. The top four are Warren, Biden, Buttigieg and Sanders, with Yang a very distant 5th. I’m afraid all four have serious weaknesses compared with a hypothetical “generic Democrat.”
The Democratic front-runners all seem so flawed that D’s might do best to just focus on electing Not-Trump.
Maybe Biden could win the nomination and pick Warren or Harris as the veep. I think Harris would thrash Pence in a debate.
If Elizabeth Warren actually goes into a debate with Trump or even a high profile interview and candidly tosses around that a) people are going to lose their private insurance - no big deal because ‘Medicare to the rescue’ and b) it’ll only cost $20 trillion dollars and trust me, only the rich will pay for it…that will be her Walter Mondale “Yes, I promise I will raise your taxes” moment. She might not get buried in a landslide the way Mondale did because Trump is a horrible candidate, but even losing to Trump at this point would be a monumental embarrassment – much, much more embarrassing than an unpopular, polarizing members of the establishment losing to a populist demagogue because voters just decided they wanted to see what would happen if we elected a total doofus. We now see what happens, and there’s no excuse for losing this time.
I think it’s crazy disingenuous to hammer Warren for not specifying M4A financing - which shouldn’t be happening anyway because nobody ever hammers GOP magic math on tax cuts and infinite military spending - and to then criticize her for…specifying M4A financing. Pick one line of criticism and stick to it.
That’s ridiculous. You aren’t contradicting yourself if you complain about lack of detail then complain about specific details when they are released.
The argument has clearly changed from “where is the financing plan” to “she shouldn’t have released the financing plan.” It’s dumb.
I’m willing to bet you can’t point to an individual who changed their argument that way.
If your point is that you can’t please everyone, well welcome to the planet.
For her plans, Warren has harnessed the intellects of some top (left-wing) economists; these plans have drawn praise even from some more mainstream economists. Despite the nay-saying we see in this thread and elsewhere, she is far stronger as a policy wonk than any other candidate, and lays out a real progressive vision for America’s future.
But the above link quotes one of Obama’s top economic advisors:
I don’t doubt that Warren’s math adds up; it’s the quote from Obama’s economic advisors that echoes my concerns. It’s easy for the right wing to misinform, especially when you give them numbers during a campaign.
I admire Warren’s integrity - I really do. But the fact of the matter is that American voters - and probably voters in many dumbed down democracies like ours - can’t process information very well. We’re just too easily distracted and misdirected.
It’s been mentioned in other threads and I think bears mentioning again here: This forum seems to greatly over-estimate exactly how politically engaged and informed voters really are. So, so many people vote based on their feelings. A giant portion of Trump’s base don’t have a clue what’s going on when it come to the nuts and bolts of policy or governance, he just speaks to them on their level and they love his greatest hits:“Lock her up, build that wall,” etc. They love that he calls women he doesn’t like pigs and dogs. None of them care about his policies very much. My parents like him because he’s h̶a̶r̶d̶ ̶o̶n̶ mean to Mexicans, whom they are terrified of for whatever irrational reasons. In no way is their vote contingent on fact or policy.
An example: A very well educated retired professor I work with, whom has a doctorate, is always so surprised when I tell him some of the stuff Trump does, because he’s never heard any of it, so much so that he’s *incredulous *that it could be true. And he has zero interest in sussing it out for himself. He also makes statements all the time along the lines of “I just feel like a republican president is better for my small business. I feel like business is worse for me when a Democrat is in office.” He just operates off feelings and votes according to said feelings.
It’s not just the right who does it, either. This country tends to vote with pendulous momentum: Obama was the Anti-Bush, whom the country was sick of and wanted the opposite. Trump was the anti-Obama, and HRC was running as a terrible surrogate for Obama’s 3rd term. I have a strong feeling that Trump has instilled an insurmountable amount of political fatigue that will cause a lot of uninformed voters to vote for the anti-Trump, whoever that ends up being.
So in the end, I don’t think a huge chunk of the voting populous are going to care a tremendous amount about the nitty-gritty of Warren’s policies. We all care here, and are engaged and can dissect the nuances of it, but most voters are not like us.
Warren made an unforced error by coming out with her plan details. First of all, people who are happy with their employer health insurance are not going to vote for someone who wants to take it away. Secondly, people are going to get sticker shock when they see the price. Thirdly, saying “I have a plan” is a tactical mistake. Just say “Here are my goals for health care and with your help we will improve on health care”. Saying “I have all the answers” makes you look like a know-it-all.
I agree that this could be a risk, but I’m not sure there are any candidates who actually avoid this issue.
The other likely nominees are proposing very expansive versions of the “public option,” which would include eligibility for people who don’t like their employer plans, which implicitly means that the public option will have to be financed with an employer-side payroll tax on every employee who opts for the public option (since employer plans are mostly paid for by employer-side premiums).
Some employers will keep on offering insurance plans, but lots won’t (if you’re paying huge amounts of money either way, why bother keeping the HR burden when you can offload it to Uncle Sam?), and I’m not sure BidenCare will be any less of a liability once it’s demagogued, possibly semi-accurately, as likely to lead to tens of millions of people losing “their” insurance (not that it’s really “theirs” when their boss has unilateral dictatorial control over it and they pay for it with company scrip).
And here’s the evidence that Warren would be in some real trouble against Trump:
I go back to what’s been pointed out before, not only by me but by others. Trump will probably do even worse in terms of the national popular vote than he did in 2016, and yet he could still conceivably win the EC even if he did do worse. This is what electoral polarization looks like in a presidential race where you have 51 separate concurrent contests. Don’t get suckered by the national polling data (like we did last time); look at what matters: the EC.
Trump is vulnerable, and will continue to be so. But so is pretty much anyone who competes against him, at least with the field that exists now. I think Biden, with all of his flaws, probably candidate best suited to defeat Trump. It’s not that Biden has great ideas or a mesmerizing persona; it’s that if voters are going to vote for ‘anyone but Trump,’ Biden is probably going to be easy on the brain. People will at least assume that they know Biden and know what they’re getting with him. That’s less true with Warren, Sanders, or even Buttigieg. If voters really do turn on Trump, they’re not going to be in the mood to take another risky candidate; they’ll want someone they can depend on, or at least hope they can.
Unfortunately, it remains to be seen if Biden can inspire and unite progressives of all stripe. And it remains to be seen whether he doesn’t start to look like forgetful gramps when given more mic time at the debates.
I agree that Warren has made a big mistake by embracing MFA and compounded it by going into unnecessary detail about payment cuts to doctors and hospitals. She is an example of the broader problem that much of the Democratic party, both its pundit class and many of its politicians, just don’t have a clue about the voters they need in swing states in order to win elections. They keep pushing issues like MFA and reparations and political figures like AOC who are increasingly defining the party in a way which is electoral poison in the places that matter.
Sanders and Warren have convinced much of the party that there is a desire among voters for a left-wing revolution in economic policy for which there is no polling evidence. The latest NBC/WSJ poll has Trump with a 52-43 approval on the economy. The median voter does want higher taxes on the rich and incremental policies to expand health care, education and other services. What they don’t want is a massive government takeover of much of the economy which is what MFA amounts to.
Meanwhile candidates like Biden and Buttigieg who do have viable platforms have obvious and serious problems of their own.
I agree with this. But, in addition to Biden’s fading charisma and ability to articulate — neither of which were ever great — there’s the risk of physical lapse, e.g. infarction like Bernie had.
I wish we had a “generic Democrat” to turn to: perhaps Hickenlooper, Klobuchar or Booker. Unlike all the people happy to have pruned the field so early, I wish we still had a default moderate middle-aged Democrat in the race. Kamala Harris? She ain’t it.
I kinda wish Mitch Landrieu would get drafted. I know he’s not necessarily high in terms of qualifications, and there were some controversies during his time as New Orleans Mayor, but he might be the right balance between “woke” and Bill Clinton throwback. And he’s good in front of the camera.
The problem for Warren and Sanders isn’t that they’re necessarily ‘wrong’ about the economy; their problem is that the American voter is willing to stick with a system that works just well enough to keep them employed and doesn’t want to risk rocking the boat even if they know that, overall, for the masses, changes could produce a better and more equitable economy 5-10 years from now. And it’s hard to blame them when we consider that with all of the new conservative judges Trump and McConnell have installed, any changes are likely to face serious headwinds in the more right-leaning courts.
It’s going to take time for people - perhaps a long time - before we finally see just what a complete disaster November 8, 2016 was for the average person. Hell, we may never get it.
I should have gotten back to this sooner.
I did a bit of Googling, and it appears that if this is Warren’s argument, it is not as solid as it might be.
Cite.
And also -
Cite. M4A wouldn’t be covering the same patients as Medicare does now. Plus the added costs of unemployment and retraining for the health care administrators needs to be factored in.
I suspect the overall cite that covers this is
Regards,
Shodan