So Pete showed his stuff by going after the most long-shot candidate, the one with the least support? Cool!
“A hundred forty-one could draw faster than he,
but Irving was looking for one-forty-three.”
-“The Ballad of Irving” (“the 142nd fastest gun in the West”)
It’s safe to say the Bloom has wilted. He did seem to be a prissy little snot who felt it below his dignity to mingle with the help. And Mike, so your taxes aren’t done yet? Fine, show us last year’s return.
We have to cull the moderate herd pretty soon as it seems Bernie is getting the left lane consolidated. I love Biden, Pete, and Amy but one of them has to pull out after SC else Bernie is going to hit 1.21 gigawatts at 88mph and shoot himself right into November. The trouble with Bernie is that everybody who is going to support him already does. I don’t see taking away people’s private insurance that their unions have fought for is going to be a winning issue.
Because it would be a lie. Bloomberg L.P. 88 percent owned by Michael Bloomberg. He can absolutely decide that unilaterally.
Klobuchar cemented herself as my favorite candidate left on the Dem side last night I thought she did a good job.
Buttigieg was a bit too much of a puppy jumping in whenever the older dogs were fighting and trying to stay relevant. I overall liked him and he landed the best shots of the night and I think think he’s probably my favorite of the canidates that have a chance.
Biden seemed to be awake and engaged through the whole debate. I dislike that his whole spiel is nothing but Obama part two and he doesn’t seem to have any ideas.
Warren came across as a total bitch with her rapid fire attacks slamming everyone on the stage with her. Near the end my wife was yelling at the tv every time she opened her mouth telling her to stop attacking people. In our house the contrast to Buttigieg’s uniting message was pretty strong and helped Pete score points. The shutting down all mining and drilling on public lands was one of the craziest things that was said all night too.
Sanders is a cranky old man. It was fun watching him get slapped around by Bloomberg. The millionaire bitching about billionaires being immoral is just such a weird side show.
Bloomberg did terribly even his climate change answer didn’t make a lot of sense since his response to climate change as president was to use his foundation to do stuff. I thought Warren’s (and Biden’s) attacks on his NDA were the most effective thing but the couldn’t take a joke stuff was terrible too. I’m surprised he wasn’t better prepared on the topic. He fumbled ‘stop and frisk’ too but not as badly as the harassment stuff. Like Bernie, he is who we thought he is, he’s still my wife’s favorite candidate.
Actually, he did a great job hammering Bernie over his toxic supporters, he also got in one of my favorite shots of the night saying the Bloomber and Bernie weren’t Democrats and shouldn’t be considered. He didn’t have any memorable shots at Warren or Biden though he went after Warren during the Healthcare portion of the debate
It didn’t feel like he was going after Klobuchar specifically but they happened to be next to each other so their arguments was more fun to watch similar to Bloomberg and Sanders being next to each other.
There’s a weird tension for folks who want to use the levers of government to change economic inequality: a senator earns $174,000 annually. That’s well more than twice what my wife and I earn together as government workers, and we’re above average in our community. In the past thirteen years, just on his own Senate salary, he’s earned over 2 million bucks.
Calling for a massive social change while benefiting from current inequality opens a person to insincere or ill-considered charges of hypocrisy. It’s not really wrong to say we need to change the system while still benefiting from the system the way it’s currently set up. He’s not asking to carve out an exception for himself in the new system he’s advocating.
As for the idea that folks who aren’t Democrats shouldn’t be considered, I think that’s trifling bullshit. If Pete really believes that, he should be talking to the DNC rules committee about possible changes. It’s an issue of the fine print of the rules, not anything approaching a significant point about policy or fitness for office. It’s just a cheap shot for folks who aren’t paying attention.
Politically savvy move. And just so it’s clear, I believe Klobuchar drew first.
I am only now hearing the sound bites. I do believe Mayor Bloomberg has disqualified himself with his inability to deal with the sexual harassment attack. I am not happy with having a candidate who cannot attack President Trump on morality. I am not happy with a candidate who handled this issue so poorly during the debate.
Best talking head morning news headline I heard today was: “Bloomberg’s campaign hopes that what happened in Vegas, stays in Vegas.”
Didn’t watch the debate, just catching the highlight reels on local news, and YouTube. Looks like Bloomberg got his bell rung plenty of times mostly by Warren (that’ll cost him another $100 million in commercials to get back on track). Sanders is still Sanders. Biden seems to have done a bit better, but I doubt it’s enough. Buttigieg is like a bot that is programed to give ready-made responses on every conceivable question, already rehearsed down to the last word, polished, but maybe too much so, check to see if he’s really human. There are times he should just not but in as much. Didn’t see much of Klobuchar on the highlight reel, so went to You Tube to find everything she said, I still think she should be doing better in polling numbers, but guess she still isn’t getting through. Overall, judging from what I’m seeing, it looks like Warren probably came out pretty good in this debate. I’ll still take any of them over Trump.
Even factoring in that all of this is speculative and anybody can basically posit whatever they want and be equally “right,” I think this approaches being demonstrably false. Sanders has consistently been at or near the top of the second choice polls among supporters of other candidates, and he’s certainly the most likely candidate to appeal to people who aren’t Democrats at all, and thus haven’t played as much of a role in the horse race narrative so far. Besides which: how has relying on “he may be the leader now, but he won’t pick up any other support” worked out for you in recent national politics?
Your second sentence there is in very bad faith. It’s like framing abortion in terms of murdering babies and saying “I can’t see how that is a winning issue.” Can you, perhaps, see how someone who isn’t you might frame that issue a little more generously?
I don’t think it’s in bad faith. What Sanders and Warren do is essentially say “Hey, you working class! I know better than you! You may like the insurance that your union busted their ass to get for you, but I’m going to take that away from you and give you what I think is better!” They don’t say it in so many words, but that’s what I take from it. I think a better approach is to say “We’re going to expand Medicare eligibility slowly, improve the ACA, and try to do something about drug prices.” It’s the difference between what’s possible and what is pure fantasy that has no chance of happening.
:dubious:
The bolded part has me questioning every other thing you’ve written about this debate.
Most people think they have good insurance. But most people are overpaying and it will fail them when it counts. They just have nothing better to compare it to, other than no insurance at all.
Yes, their unions busted their asses, but unions are limited by their negotiating positions and the wall-of-employers manipulating the marketplace. No union leader with half a brain will tell you that the deal they got is better than universal health care.
Sanders and Warren are right. Most people are wrong when they think they’re better off keeping their current insurance as opposed to a universal health care plan.
We do live in a world in which a huge proportion of voters vote based on their ignorance. What do you do about that?
I really like Amy, but she needs to take a valium before doing the public speaking thing. She always looks nervous and her voice quivers, but she knows her shit. Ordinarily I could look past that, but against Trump a shaky voice is going to be like blood in the water for a shark.
I think Joe could do a good job of quickly righting the ship and getting it back on course, but I don’t know that I want to be back on the same course we were on before Trump happened.
I don’t know what to make of Pete. He could really use Sanders for a VP, though.
Bernie…I…I want him to set domestic policy. See to infrastructure, civil rights, poke his head into the senate chamber and shame those greedy cowards into action from time to time, and yes construct a universal healthcare system. He is definitely needed somewhere in the administration. But he hasn’t got 8 years left in him.
Warren (like Bernie & Amy) is needed in the Senate.
So it’s Joe (blech) or Pete (not worse than Trump).
Money can’t buy you everything, Mike: https://twitter.com/TheDailyShow/status/1230319057523609601/photo/2
One thing that suggests to me that it is in bad faith is that instead of saying what they actually say (to the extent Warren and Sanders say the same thing in this regard), you’re saying what you “take” as what they are “essentially” saying.
What a proponent of single-payer says is they’re going to give everyone in the country new insurance that they don’t have to pay premiums or deductibles or co-pays on, and private insurance that duplicates the free insurance will be eliminated. What Sanders has said, in response to this exact complaint, is that “wrap-around” private coverage for things single-payer doesn’t cover will still exist, and so if your union has busted its ass to negotiate better coverage for you, then there you go, you’ve still got better coverage. What that leaves a person in that union with is the same doctors, the same list of covered services, and fewer bills. That’s a very different thing from “I’m taking your insurance away from you.” And it’s certainly not the majority of unions who have come out and said universal coverage is something they oppose; it’s just a big story that one of them did.
You could shift the frame like that to make basically any change the government has ever made to benefit people into a regulatory taking, if you wanted. Republicans do it all the time. But it’s usually something the putative left sees through in the end, on account of being willing to take into account the people who don’t already have everything.
I’m not disagreeing with you, I just want to vote numb nuts out of office and I don’t think you can do that with Sanders. Let’s postulate that single payer government run health care would give the best results for the least money for the most people. The question is- how can you get there? I think the Sanders approach of taking that giant leap in a single bound isn’t practicable. I think you have to go incrementally, perhaps by making Medicare for all available but not mandatory. Maybe make Medicare more attractive and more cost effective by allowing it to negotiate drug prices. We have a complex system in place and I think most people are rightfully nervous about making such a drastic change.
Yes, voters do vote based on their ignorance. Also on their bigotry and fear. You don’t win them over by ranting with scorched earth fever like Bernie does. You tell them it’s going to be a long journey that we’ll take one step at a time and making adjustments every step of the way. Tell them that you understand their fears and will listen to them instead of shouting over them.
I wouldn’t put it exactly how you did, but yeah, generally you’re correct. The anti-BILLIONAIRE thing can’t be emphasized enough and most people in America don’t really understand just how big of a gap there is between millionaires and billionaires.
That guy who’s a successful construction company owner or a doctor who owns investment properties or something, who has a 15,000 square foot house with pools and tennis courts and 5 Porsches, and a sportfishing boat in a slip at Gulf Shores and a hunting camp in the Upper Peninsula and maybe even a Beechcraft King Air that he flies himself around the country - THIS GUY IS STILL NOTHING compared to a BILLIONAIRE. His lifestyle, his level of influence on society, his sheer POWER in the world - it’s still absolutely NOTHING compared to a billionaire.
People see “billionaire” and they think, “eh, it’s just like a multimillionaire, but more so.” NO! Those are two very separate tiers and the billionaire class are the ones who need to be curtailed here.
dup