What you don’t get is that the skills you need to get the job are different from the skills you need to do the job. The skills you need to get the job are likability and charisma. Mayor Pete has those in abundance. Therefore, he’s the best candidate. Whether he’ll be a good president is a different question, but as long as he gets rid of Trump I don’t much care.
…what makes you think that “I don’t get this?”
Likeability and charisma are subjective.
Bullshit.
White people like Mayor Pete. He’s a safe, middle-of-the-road-don’t-rock-the-boat-focus-tested candidate.
But he is also full of hot air. He spouts word-salad half-the-time and GOP talking points the other. Black people don’t like Mayor Pete. Black people also didn’t like Trump and voted overwhelmingly against him last time. One would think that now is the right time to start listening to the people who got it right last time.
That isn’t how it works. That isn’t how any any of this works.
Are you personally guaranteeing a vote for Mayor Pete will defeat Donald Trump? Have you decided the outcome of the next election already? We should just pack it all in and go home?
You’re talking about policy and history. Those things don’t matter. Maybe they should, but they don’t.
They’re semi-subjective. Most people know it when they see it and most people generally agree when it’s there and when it isn’t. I’ve got a thread in Elections asking - independent of politics - who the most charismatic Dem candidate is. Mayor Pete currently has 40% of the vote, with 31. Liz Warren is second. With 11.
So yeah, it may be a bit subjective, but it’s clearly not entirely subjective.
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White people are about 80% of the US population.
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White people aren’t the Borg. We don’t have a hive mind. Some of us like Mayor Pete, some of us don’t. The fact that most of Mayor Pete’s supporters are white doesn’t mean ‘White people like Mayor Pete’.
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I guess ‘word salad’ must also be subjective because he always makes perfect sense to me. I never have trouble understanding him.
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He doesn’t spout any GOP talking points. He has criticisms of some of Warren’s plans and Bernie’s plans, that’s all.
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Okay. So ‘black people don’t like Mayor Pete’. Does that mean they’d stay at home if his opponent is Donald Trump? Because that’s really the key question here.
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The majority of Black people also preferred Hillary to Bernie IIRC, and Bernie would’ve won. So their track record isn’t exactly unblemished.
That’s exactly how this works. If you disagree, please provide an example of a US election from 1960 onwards where the less charismatic candidate won.
I think that if Mayor Pete gets the nomination then the election is good as won. In fact, if he gets the nod then I plan to place a few pretty substantial bets on his victory. I’m more than prepared to put my money where my mouth is.
…of course they matter.
Bullshit. I don’t consider Buttigeig either charismatic nor likeable. Complete disagreement with your thesis is about as subjective as you can possibly get.
And how many of the people responding to that poll are white? For the record: my skin colour is…not white. And I certainly didn’t vote for Mayor Pete in your silly little poll…
That poll doesn’t mean jack-shit. You really think that your tiny little poll on an obscure liberal messageboard on the internet means anything to anyone?
It is entirely subjective.
No shit sherlock.
It isn’t that “white people like Mayor Pete.” Its the fact that “black people do not like Mayor Pete.” The distinction is important.
Of course it would. You obviously speak “peak liberal.”
You do understand what a “talking point” is? it isn’t a critique. When Mayor Pete said “there are some voices in the Democratic Primary right now who are who are calling for a policy that would eliminate the job of every single American working at every single insurance company in the country” that isn’t a valid critique. Its a fucking lie. Its spin. Its a complete recontextualization of Warren and Bernie’s plan wrapped up in a pithy sentence, AKA as a Talking Point, and this particular one is a GOP Talking Point. And by not including the word “health” to insurance this Talking Point turned into literal fake news.
And I’m the wrong person to be asking. If this is a key question you should be asking black people what they think. What will get them out to vote? Why aren’t you directing that question to them?
Bernie probably wouldn’t have won. Trump was the perfect storm, he defeated all of the Republicans in the primaries, he had help from a complicit press, from foreign governments, and he won with the most narrow of margins. To call the track record of black voters blemished, a people who were bought to your country in chains, have been massacred, didn’t even universally get the vote until the 60’s, and who at the last election were actively targeted to suppress their votes, is quite simply disgusting.
They made the right choices at the last election. Trump won because of white people. They deserve all of the blame.
Donald Trump is infinitely more “charismatic” in my opinion than Mayor Pete, who in my opinion has the charisma of a wet fish. So if this is “how it works” then if Mayor Pete gets the nomination we are on a track for four-more-years of Trump.
But that isn’t how it works. And elections in 2020 are going to be a very different thing to what we had in 2016, which was a very different thing to what we had four years before. The situation is chaotic. Its “butterflies flapping their wings in Siberia” chaotic. The next election isn’t going to hinge on a single metric and you would be a fool to think that merely nominating the “charismatic” candidate is going to give you the election. This is a war on multiple fronts that you are hoping to win by fighting from the Maginot Line.
Is this a guarantee Mister Random Person on the Internet? Are you going to guarantee he is going to win or not?
That really isn’t fucking good enough. Lives are on the line. If you expect people to vote based on a bullshit metric like “charisma” a few dollars out of your pocket don’t mean jack-shit.
This is just confirmation bias. Head-to-head all of the leading Democratic candidates defeat Donald Trump. So stop worrying about things you can’t quantify like “charisma” and worry more about who is the best candidate to both defeat Donald Trump and to serve as the next President of the United States. I think Biden, Warren, Sanders, I think all three are capable of doing both.
But here is what **you **don’t understand. Trump & McConnell and his merry band of co-conspirators have broken your system. As Sarah Kendzior correctly puts it: this is an international crime syndicate masquerading as a government. Every single government office right now is under-manned, being lead by incompetent and dangerous people. There is a literal white supremacist in charge of immigration. Today’s news about designating Judaism as a race or nationality should be scaring the fuck out of you. They are taking over the courts. Do you know how many refugees America allowed to be resettled in October? Zero. There are concentration camps on the borders.
If Trump does loose the next election then it will not be a normal transition. There is going to have to be a purge followed by a long period of rebuilding that could take decades. And all of that has to happen while fighting the Republicans in the Senate and every other dirty trick that they will throw in the way.
I personally don’t think that Mayor Pete’s charisma will be enough to defeat Trump. But even if it were, what is it about Mayor Pete’s background that you think makes Pete “I’m not asking for your vote” Buttigieg is remotely qualified enough to deal with any of this?
Hey, remember when I said you were a conflict junkie and you strenuously denied it? Well…
…concession accepted.
“Could be”. “Maybe” “Might have a problem”. “We’re not supposed to talk about that.” And no cites. Got it.
Since we’ve changed forum, let’s note that it could be - no, it blatantly is - the case that you’re going to pull the same shit you’ve done in previous elections and pepper every thread with vague insinuations, unsupported assertions and handwringing over “Oh, if only the Democrats had nominated that candidate instead of the one they did, I might have voted for them” while ignoring everything remotely similar or worse on the Republican side. Because you’ve got form, man, and you’re already starting it up again.
I wasn’t conceding. I was making an off-hand remark about your temperament, which is deeply off-putting and unnecessarily combative. I mean, I sometimes get angry on this site, but I don’t enjoy it. Usually, I feel bad afterwards. I certainly don’t get that vibe from you.
Not in electioneering. That’s why Trump won. That’s how GW Bush beat John Kerry after starting an immoral, needless war. That’s why the most charismatic candidate has won every US General election since they started televising the debates.
What’s your evidence that policies and history matter in US General Elections post 1960?
Okay. Who’s more charismatic, Mick Jagger or Stephen Miller? Robert Mueller or Kanye West? Tom Cruise or Jacob Rees-Mogg? If charisma is truly subjective you’d expect a wide range of opinions on these questions. But you don’t see them. Why not?
Fact is, charisma is like physical attractiveness. It’s impossible to define, but most people know it when they see it.
So you don’t think Buttigieg is charismatic. Fine. But a lot of people do. More so than for any other candidate. Which is my ‘silly little poll’ saw him pick up 40% of the vote on a board full of Warren and Sanders supporters.
How should I know?
Who did you vote for?
Most people who voted in that poll don’t support Buttigieg, yet he got three times as many votes as the second highest scoring candidate. Therefore, I can conclude that even people who don’t like Buttigieg are willing to concede he has more charisma and is more likeable than their preferred candidate.
As I’ve said, charisma and likability are the only things that matter in a US election. 40% will vote Democrat no matter what, 40% will vote Republican. The next election will be decided by the uncommitted 20%, and they’ll vote for the candidate who makes them feel best - and that’ll be the candidate with the most charisma.
As such, if you really want to beat Trump you should nominate Mayor Pete.
Cite please.
A majority of black Democrats currently prefer other candidates. That’s as much as you can safely say and that could easily change. But if Buttigieg were to become the nominee, do you think black Democrats would stay at home? Why?
- He’s clearly talking about health insurance. It’s abundantly obvious from the context. To call it fake news is just nitpicking.
- As I understand it, Bernie wants to eliminate private health insurance. How are private health insurance workers going to keep their jobs if private health insurance is eliminated?
I think it’s safe to assume that black voters aren’t going to take a second Trump term sitting down, don’t you?
- Not my country.
- Bernie would’ve won.
- There’s nothing ‘disgusting’ about pointing out that black voters called it wrong in backing Hillary. And there’s nothing ‘disgusting’ about pointing out that black voters are (shock horror!) fallible just like everyone else.
- I wasn’t ‘blaming’ black people for Trump (although 10% of black people who voted in 2016 voted for Trump). That’s just more of the same disingenuous straw manning I’ve come to expect from you in particular and this board in general.
I’ll respond to the rest later. Probably over the weekend.
…yeah, I’m just the angry brown man.
Its the fucking pit. Its the place to rant, I’m fucking ranting, what the fuck do you expect? You want me to feel sorry for speaking my mind? Why the fuck would I do that? Is that the standard you hold everyone else to in the pit, or are you reserving that just for me?
Of course it does. Of course it matters. You can’t pin everything on a single metric that you can’t objectively measure.
That isn’t why Trump won. Trump won for many different reasons: and to ignore those reasons in favour of a single metric is a dangerous strategy.
I’ll be polite, and call this a valid possible hypothesis. I’m not going to accept your hypothesis though without the evidence: and even if you provided the evidence I’d have to point out to you that the next election won’t be won over television, it will be fought for and won over the internet. The landscape is changing. It is chaotic. People are locked into their own personally curated propaganda channels, and whatever you think was the key to previous elections won’t be the case in 2020.
Where is your evidence that “charisma” was the **only thing that mattered **in every US General Election post 1960?
The wide-range of opinions is what makes something subjective. People do find Miller and West and Rees-Mogg charismatic. This isn’t an objective measure.
If it is impossible to define it is, by definition, a subjective measure.
Your silly little poll on an obscure message board is statistically meaningless.
You could ask.
None of your fucking business. (I said you could ask. Never said you would get a polite answer.) But if you don’t know the answer to that question then what does the poll actually tell you?
You can make whatever conclusions you like from your unscientific tiny little insignificant poll. But your conclusions don’t mean jack-shit.
You make a lot of assumptions here. Voting for the “candidate that makes them feel best” won’t necessarily be the one who is most “charismatic.” The decision making process at the voting booth is complex. And we aren’t probably talking about 20%. The votes that matter will probably be a (figuratively) handful of voters in a handful of battleground states. You want to hedge your bets on a single subjective measure? I think you need to do much better than that.
I find this statement…unconvincing.
I think that black voters will come out in force regardless of who the nominee is. They will come out in force despite efforts to suppress their vote, despite threats to their safety and security, they will come out to vote because America is creeping toward a white-supremacist authoritarian state.
It isn’t about whether or not they stay home or not. Its about not taking their vote for granted. Its about listening to what they have to say. They have valid concerns about a potential Buttigeig presidency and the very least you can do is give them the time of day.
It isn’t nitpicking. It was a clearly rehearsed talking point that he used to deflect attention from the question he was being asked.
Well, yeah. What is it do you think a Talking Point is? Its a short, pithy sentence that recontextualizes complex arguments into a media friendly sound-byte.
What is it, do you think a properly running healthcare system should be?
I live in New Zealand. We have universal healthcare here. I went into hospital a couple of months ago. My blood had elevated levels of something and my GP recommended I go to A+E to get checked up. They kept me overnight. I got a bed in the ward. They gave me free drugs. I got a CT scan, blood tests. I got dinner and breakfast.
And it turned out that there was nothing wrong, so they discharged me. Do you know how much I paid out of pocket for that experience?
Nothing. Zero. Zilch. I even got a voucher for my car so I didn’t even have to pay for parking.
I pay less in taxes for my stay in hospital (as a percentage of total tax take) than I would if i lived in the United States. **And **I don’t have to pay insurance on top of my taxes. I don’t have a deductible to pay, nor co-pays. I don’t have to worry about getting taken to a hospital that is “out of network”. I’m not going to get a bill that will bankrupt me in a couple of months time. Our hospital system is designed to fix people, get them better, then back out into society.
And we manage to be able to do that **and **our country currently operates at surplus.
What value does the insurance industry add to healthcare? We have private medical insurance here, but all it gets you is a private room and maybe speed up the process in some non-urgent procedures. What is the point of this additional layer of bureaucracy?
I don’t agree with “eliminating private health insurance.” But that’s a quibble that would be on the negotiating table if Bernie were to ever come close to implementing his plan.
But it is disingenuous to compare the sort of job cuts that Buttigieg was being asked about to the loss-of-jobs in an industry that probably never needed to exist in the first place. We don’t need coal as much any more and while I have sympathy for coal miners the closing down of many coal mines is simply inevitable. One-hour photo labs used to be on every street corner and now there are only 200 in the US. There are hardly any video stores any more.
Entire industries become obsolete all the time. If the goal of your healthcare system is to fix people without them going bankrupt, and you can do that cheaper and more effectively without a healthcare insurance than with it, then why would you need healthcare insurance?
This is why talking point are so effective. To respond to a talking point with a pithy talking point doesn’t do the debate any justice. This is also one of the reasons why Buttigeig is seen by many as charasmatic. He doesn’t have to explain anything. He can deflect, he can be curt, he can ignore and hide from debate. Buggigeig has been ruder than Castro but Castro gets the reputation for rudeness.
Of course. Even if you advocate for the worst possible candidate to represent their interests (and Pete is the worst possible candidate out of all the Democratic nominees for black people) they will still keep standing up because unlike you, their lives are on the line.
Not your country what?
You do realize that all the polls showed that Hillary should have beaten Trump don’t you? Its very easy to be right “after the fact.”
But they weren’t wrong. They did their job at the last election. Trump didn’t win because black people voted for the wrong person. Trump won because white people voted for the wrong person.
They weren’t fallible here. They did their job at the last election and they will do the job at the next election. It isn’t the black voter that needs to step up.
89% of black people who voted voted for Hillary, only 8% voted for Trump. 52% of white men voted for Trump, 41% of white women voted for Trump. It should be pretty fucking crystal clear who deserves most of the blame.
You don’t even know what a strawman is. The next President of the United States is going to have to deal with things that no President has ever had to deal with before. In Dungeons and Dragons the Fighter with high-charisma but low strength and no constitution is going to die a horrible death. The next President of the United States need to be able to fight a battle on multiple fronts. I just don’t thing Buggigeig is up to it.
LOL.
You are only going to “respond to the rest later” because you are a conflict junkie. Imagine not only committing to responding to my posts later, but announcing that commitment to everyone as well. You are here for the conflict. Just in a passive-aggressive way.