Damn. Well I will grudgingly admit that if Sanders were president right now then he would be the frontrunner for the Dem nomination in 2020. 
I called Ronald Reagan in '76.
…you haven’t hurt my feelings. Stop making this personal. You don’t get to demand that I have no business in this thread. That is simply not your place.
“Data” doesn’t mean jack-shit if you misrepresent that data. I haven’t demonstrated gross ignorance of the topic at hand. Do you have any thoughts at all on how Bernie marginalised black and minority voters last year? Do you think that will affect his chances in 2020? If not: then why not?
Oddly enough I’ve done just that. But cheers for ignoring **that **post.
I would say to the would-be politician formerly known as The Rock the same thing I would have said to trump or Ben Carson. Run for governor somewhere, hopefully not my state, then come back when you have a track record in the political realm.
You stated that Donald Trump had a positive net approval rating. That’s not just a factual error, it’s so incredibly wrong that nobody could make it who isn’t…well, grossly ignorant of the topic at hand. And in your exchange with pjacks, you demonstrated that you don’t really understand how the concept of net approval rating is and how that data is used by political scientists.
I have not misrepresented any data. You already accused pjacks of misrepresenting data, when in fact the study you linked said exactly what he said it did.
You, on the other hand, have seriously misrepresented the facts. Your only links (in post 50) supporting your argument that many Democrats hate Bernie and wouldn’t vote for him don’t show any such thing.
They are both horse-race opinion pieces from early 2016 discussing Clinton’s dominance of the black vote. Both focus mainly on the positive reasons for black voters’ loyalty to Hillary, and gave a few (IMO weak) reasons why blacks might have felt less confident in Sanders’ understanding of their issues. Not a single person in either article is quoted as expressing anything resembling “hatred” for Sanders or as threatening not to vote for him.
And you haven’t said who you think has a better chance, although you did express your personal preference for Joe Biden. Do you really not understand the difference between those two concepts?
…calm down dude.
About Biden: He could arguably be co-frontrunner. He has universal name recognition, is generally well liked and could certainly raise money. He certainly seems like he is running. His numbers in the one poll that included him are good.
My gut lean is that he will fizzle. Almost all Democrats* like* Biden, but does he have a core constituency of passionate supporters? And he’s old.
Put it this way: IMO, if Bernie runs, Liz Warren probably won’t. They would be competing for essentially the same group of voters. Bernie’s polling twice what she is, and has huge head starts in organization and name recognition. What’s the upside of her getting into that? I’m not sure who is going to be discouraged from running by Joe Biden’s candidacy.
Thought experiment: If Biden and Sanders both run, they would be the big fish in the pond. Presumably a candidate would rise to contrast their old-white-guy-ness. I’m not sure Warren could pull it off unchecking only one of those boxes, but someone like Kamala Harris or Cory Booker might do well (or Tammy Baldwin!:)). If neither of them run…I would like Warren’s chances.
I’m quite calm. I am stating calmly that you have been doing nothing but spewing BS and contributing nothing whatsoever of value to this thread. I will not be responding to you further.
…net approval rating means something different down under. No need to accuse me of being grossly “ignorant of the topic at hand” over a difference of opinion over a couple of words.
pjacks did misrepresent the data. pjacks accepted that they misread the data. It didn’t say what pjacks claimed it did. If pjacks can accept that, then so can you.
Many Democrats do hate Bernie. Is that a statement you disagree with? Then express your disagreement with me, and we can debate it. I’m not going to provide citations for things are commonly understood without a request. Are you asking for a cite?
Yep. They are both horse-race opinion pieces from early 2016 discussing Clinton’s dominance of the black vote. Do you want more? Why do you think the reasons were weak? Do you think that Bernie would get the black vote if he ran? What are you basing that on?
Yes: I think Biden has a much better chance than Bernie, and if he runs he gets the nomination, for all the reasons I said. Do you agree or disagree?
You’ve demanded I stop posting here. You’ve accused me of gross ignorance. You’ve accused me of misrepresenting facts when I haven’t. You’ve dismissed my cites with a handwave. You’ve accused me of doing nothing but spewing BS. I’m not the one being unreasonable here. Do you want a debate? Then lay off the attacks and bring something to the table.
Well, that almost proves my point. If a near super human prognosticator like yourself only gets one in the last 40 years then it must be pretty difficult!
The higher education system is a bubble that’s about to explode – and it’s in no small part attributable to the conduct of people such as Bernie Sanders’ wife. The powers that be in higher ed mismanage institutional resources, run up expenditures, and make the students end up paying for it. And for what exactly? I’m all for higher education, but there’s no evidence that it results in a candidate being prepared for the job market or for life. I don’t want to see public dollars subsidizing a model that doesn’t work. Adult education and training needs to be transformed so that we’re investing in a productive workforce that actually produces graduates with skills.
This is not to say that there’s something wrong with getting a classical college education. Indeed there is something to be said for training a person to think critically and being exposed to different opinions and attitudes. But let’s face it: when people talk about college in economic and political discourse, we’re almost always speaking in reference to the supposed economic benefits it produces (i.e. access to the middle class and so on). We need a paradigm shift, not more subsidization of a system that yields questionable benefits and unsustainable waste and debt.
Beyond that, I think there’s something to be said for making an adult spend at least a little bit of his own money on his own education and training. Otherwise he won’t appreciate the experience and will end up wasting everyone’s time and resources.
I don’t disagree and your question will become only more and more crucial to answer as technology such as AI threatens the careers and livelihoods of everyone. We’re going to be forced to redefine the relationship between people and work, and between the state and the individual. I predict more socialism in the future, but it won’t be without intense push-back from the far right.
There’s nothing wrong with big business per se – it employs about 1/4 of the people in this country IIRC. The problem is that they’re too powerful in Washington. We need a grassroots fight to limit their ability to lobby and influence elections. Easier said than done but that’s really what we need to be looking at.
In addition, I think the Democrats would be far more effective in reaching across party lines if they would actually start talking more to small business owners instead of simply just focusing on hard-luck people only. When people talk about the white working class, a large chunk of these voters are either small business owners, independent contractors, or people who work in small companies and more intimate settings. There’s an opportunity because these people don’t relate to big corporations, and in fact they’re competing with them. If Democrats could sell this population on things like Medicare for all and how it could actually empower them, I think they’d have a good chance of making some inroads.
I assume you meant to add “except for the substantial increase in lifetime salary one can expect with higher education”?
I’m sorry, but this is patent nonsense. Do you really think the black voters are completely and totally blinded by race? That we wouldn’t turn out to elect someone who was arrested for agitating for desegregation and marched with MLK at Selma just because he’s from the bit pasty aisle of the melanin department?
Hillary didn’t lose because of a lack of turnout, she lost because of the electoral college. She won the popular vote, hands down. Do you really think black voters would have unflipped that bastion of blackness… Wisconson?
I agree with the idea that Sanders is too old to run in 3 years. I doubt be in sufficient health to run, nor do I think it would be a good idea from a purely human perspective - look at the toll on strapping young Obama.
What the Democrats need is someone who speaks to the problems facing America today in a way that actually appeals to voters. Elizabeth Warren might agree with Sanders almost across the board, but have you listened to both of them speak? Sanders talks about solutions almost like a salesman who rattles off product features. He’s not wrong by any means, but that’s not how sales works. (For those not in sales, you never list features, you talk only about benefits).
Warren discusses at length the problems facing Americans through the eyes of the people suffering these issues in simple to understand ways. I was very sad that Warren didn’t run, I’d have voted for her over Sanders in a heartbeat (though, before primary season I was hoping for a Warren/Sanders ticket, as Sanders was an excellent VP candidate!).
The left needsanother candidate to run on something akin to hope and change, but not a staunch moderate like Obama was. In an ideal scenario from the left’s perspective, 2018 will be a wave election and set the stage for radical reforms in early 2020 that will be difficult to roll back in the right wing blowback that will inevitably occur. Remember, it’s been demonstrated that “the other party” is now meaningless - the United States is almost a one party state (that oscilates between parties) now that outrageous acts like the Nuclear Option or wanton abuse of Reconciliation is par for the course (never mind excessive filibusters and all the other shenanigans that were unthinkable even 20 years ago). Whoever is to be president in 2020 must serve as a firebrand to get and keep congress rolling, and to get to the presidency that person will have to address both the largescale problems facing the US as Warren and Sanders Do but also the hopelessness and despair facing rural America in a way that Americans understand and* relate to***. Warren might tap a little of that, but I’m waiting for a candidate who has a platform that can actually swing votes from rural areas too. I don’t feel she does that quite so much as she would need to.
I’d keep my eye out for any such candidate, alas one has not presented themselves. Any talk of “capturing moderates” or “shifting to the center” is a nonstarter way of losing yet another election. When has “Republican, Light” ever worked??
And just slapping another black person onto the ticket is no way of succeeding either.
How about in Michigan?
Bill Clinton’s election.
I agree with most of what etasyde says, but Wisconsin has IIRC just about as many blacks per capita as the USA overall. The vote in Wisconsin was very close, so I don’t doubt that an increase of a mere percentage point or two in black turnout might have changed the result there.
But the idea that Bernie’s failure to win the support of most blacks in one particular election against one particular opponent somehow proves that he is doomed to never win black support in any future election definitely qualifies as “patent nonsense”.
…are you conceding that Bernie did fail to win the support of most blacks in the race against Clinton? Do you understand why he lost that support? What is he doing differently this time around that will fix what he did wrong last time?
Not running against Bill Clinton’s wife should help, if she cooperates.
And of course the substantial increase in debt that they take on, so one would hope that they indeed get a lifetime salary that provides some sort of return on that ‘investment’.
I know there are a lot of “studies” that purport to show the economic value of getting a college degree, and I remain unconvinced because I don’t think the studies are entirely valid. There are a lot of variables that need to be considered. Studies indicating relationships between educational attainment and earnings indeed suggest a correlative relationship between these two variables but by no means is that relationship causative. Without going into detail as to what I do for a living, I talk to people on a regular basis who are doing just fine financially without a college degree. I talk to people who have tens of thousands of dollars in student loan debt that can’t be discharged even in bankruptcy and they’re worried about the possibility of calling their vehicle ‘home’.
On average, does a degree holder earn more than a non-degree holder? Probably so, but that likely has more to do with the kind of person who attends college to begin with. More likely born into a wealthier family to begin with, more likely to have family connections, and absent of these advantages, it’s probably more likely that someone who has the self-discipline to complete a program of study has the self-regulatory and social skills to function in the professional world. But a college education isn’t the catalyst for success, and the bubble’s going to pop in the future. There are already AI programs out there that sort through applications and select candidate finalists based on nothing more than how they prepare their applications, irrespective of their education. The interview, which also uses AI, poses problem-solving tasks to applicants and then a final selection is made based on how well they perform.
Those are great objections to the studies. If only the people studying these things were as smart as you and included parental income in their research.
Yes, I also wish they were as smart as I, but just to clarify, I don’t ‘object’ to the studies. I just think they have limited validity and don’t really say much. I’ve met a lot of people who do just fine without a college degree. If you’re looking at the general population, yeah, people with lower levels of education tend to have worse economic metrics than those with more advanced education. But you could replace the college experience with apprenticeships and they’d be just fine, and without the crushing debt.
When statisticians compare college graduates to non-college graduates, they’re not isolating the variables that they need to. They’re just looking at outcomes that have more to do with socioeconomic class than educational attainment.