I think the point was, more people can die during a crisis if they don’t have the option to work/school/shop from home. Nowadays, would anyone even raise an eyebrow if high-speed internet was part of a big infrastructure improvement plan?
Exactly. Lack of steady internet access is just another way that being poor can cost you money. With the internet, I routinely research the best price/value for something I want to buy. Or the best doctor/specialist nearby. I can find the exact car I want, within 50 miles, with the internet. But without it, I’d have to go to the nearby used car lots and hope they’re not selling me a pile of junk. Just as an example. Improved internet access would save lives by reducing unnecessary contact, and help the economy by enabling more people to take part.
First, Trump has already started to co-opt the Dem’s point that he has mismanaged the COVID-19 crisis. Where once he was claiming that it was a hoax and only a few Americans would die, he’s now saying that “only” 100,000 dead is a huge victory for his administration.
I’ve long thought and still think that Biden’s campaign needs to stress looking to the future, that our best times as a country are yet to be, and that America will help lead the world into that better and brighter future.
After all, what is “Make America Great Again” but a look to the past? It’s a past that never really existed, and even if it did exist, we can’t travel back in time. And even if we could travel back to those days, no one really wants to. I can remember the 50’s a bit, and even as a privileged white person I can tell you they weren’t that friggin’ great.
Biden’s only talking point might only have to be: When America needed a leader, Trump proved he wasn’t one.
That’s a great line!
These aren’t at odds. You can leverage outrage while still proposing a comprehensive plan. That’s why you shouldn’t be persuaded by someone like Shodan. He doesn’t, even as an intellectual exercise, want to give good advice to Democrats. He wants Democrats to think Republican plans are a good idea. Or just get Dems to do stupid suicidal stuff.
Thanks – let’s start printing bumper stickers!
But are you talking about the telecommunications infrastructure aka fibre-optics, subsidised Internet access, or free Internet for everyone? I agree with treating the Internet as a utility, and that people should have the same access to high speed Internet as they do to electricity. I could also get behind providing a cheap Internet package to the unemployed as part of job-finding assistance, although I’m not sure Biden should campaign on something that nuanced. Subsidised Internet access to the poor sounds a lot like a handout, and there’s a lot of blue-collar disfavour, especially among white blue-collar workers, to government benefit programs that can be categorised as handouts. How do Americans view poverty? Many blue-collar whites, key to Trump, criticize poor people as lazy and content to stay on welfare - Los Angeles Times That’s Joe Biden’s most needed demographic. Free Internet for everyone? Democrats are in the process of rejecting big state programs as represented by Bernie Sanders. The last thing Biden’s going to want is to be viewed as a big state proponent by the general public.
Joe “This is a really big fucking deal!” Biden? That Biden?
Remember, getting people to say “Ugh, they both suck” is the ideal strategy for Trump, so just pointing out that Trump sucks isn’t likely to work. If the campaign ends up being about ‘look, I’m not Donald Trump and he sucks’ instead of ‘here’s why I’m a great leader and you should vote for me’ I predict another red victory.
¿Porque no los dos?
I don’t disagree. I was being a bit hyperbolic when I said that should be Biden’s only talking point – he should absolutely describe what a real leader should have done and clearly outline what he will do starting Jan 20, 2021.
From Biden’s campaign website:
“When we passed the Affordable Care Act, I told President Obama it was a big deal – or something to that effect.”
— Joe Biden in Dubuque, Iowa, April 30, 2019
https://joebiden.com/healthcare/
I didn’t read the full text on Biden’s healthcare plan, but it seems reasonably centre-left. At least he’s not trying to nationalise the US healthcare system. A public health insurance option, tax credits, elimination of price protections and increased competition for prescription drugs, and increased funding for community healthcare centres all seem to hit the right note. There’s some other stuff there that I could quibble about, but Biden’s still in primary season. If he focuses on the above highlights, I do think it will be a decent November election message. And, especially now, I think any election candidate has to have a public healthcare message. It’s the most prominent current issue for nearly everyone.
My point was that ACA was viewed very much like a Big State policy and was (still is) fought tooth and nail by Republicans of all stripes. So I’m not sure I understood you right. Should Biden be seen as pushing a big state issue like healthcare, or internet access, among other large initiatives, or not?
In terms of election strategy, I don’t think Biden should walk away from the ACA. He’s indelibly identified with it and retreating from it would turn into a rout. So he should look for the best way of selling it, or some alternate version of it, to the key demographic sectors of the US electorate that he needs to win. The demographic sector I believe he most needs to win is blue-collar workers. I’m not going to pretend like I have any type of expertise on US blue-collar opinions. But on a superficial level, a package of a public health insurance option, tax credits, elimination of price protections and increased competition for prescription drugs, and increased funding for community healthcare centres strikes me as a pretty good sales pitch.
In my opinion, I don’t think Biden should propose any new big-state initiatives, especially ones that can be construed as handouts. I just browsed around a bit more, and I noticed that yesterday Biden proposed making “public colleges and universities tuition-free for all families with incomes below $125,000” and came out for student loans debt relief. So obviously the Biden camp doesn’t agree with me. Go figure.
I’ll also note that I acknowledge tax credits are a form of government handout. However, I don’t think they’re perceived that way. The government is asking taxpayers to spend money on a specific thing, and letting them know they won’t be taxed on the income they spent for that thing. That’s different from a direct payment or a direct service. They’re both government benefits. However, I think they’re different enough that the general societal perception of them isn’t the same.
How’s this for starters?
My bold.
“Convene top experts”?? You mean people who claim to know more than the President? Nah. They just want to get on TV.
I don’t see how this plan differs significantly from what we are doing already.
Actually, no we don’t, which is presumably why Biden needs to meet with people to find out what we have to do.
OK, we need enough respirators and test kits, and be sure the ICUs aren’t overcrowded, and we need a vaccine, and social distancing has to continue. That’s certainly true. But does Biden have anything specific to speed any of that up?
When you are managing an urgent project, and this is an urgent project, just saying “we need to move faster” achieves nothing.
Regards,
Shodan
Biden should use images of white people in their cars and pickups in long lines at the food banks, images of bodies being loaded on trucks and mass burials, show in one slide how inept early response by Trump caused delay and confusion on what we needed to do and when (using his “hoax” comment) on a calendar, another slide can be unemployment claims exploding with boarded-up businesses, yet another can be video of Trump patting himself on the back as the death count numbers are spiraling, images of exhausted doctors and nurses, ambulances with sirens blaring, etc, etc.
There is a lot of material out there that can be used to hammer Trump. Not all of it needs to be directly his fault; this is a political campaign after all. But, it should be fairly straightforward to tie all of this together with the message “Trump’s America: Not Great!”.
Biden should explain what he would have done/do differently than Trump, but he also needs to go on the offensive directly with Trump voters, and I think the above imaging will get thru to them: Trump has been a disaster that everyone has felt, even them.
I know it’s unbearable, but I hope that anyone who considers themselves a political animal is watching these White House press conferences if for no other reason than to stay abreast of how Trump is spinning the situation. And, frankly, I think it’s working very well and will continue to work well. He continues to be petty and vindictive and relentlessly self-congratulatory, as in today’s briefing, but he is successfully crafting a narrative that he WAS on top of this situation from the very beginning, that he was being reasonable and prudent by not “shutting down the economy” when it was supposedly too early to know that the virus was going to become as big of a problem as it is, yet was also vigilant with his travel restrictions. He’s making a case that’s going to be convincing to a hell of a lot of people.
All this is to say, that Biden NEEDS to get out there (on live streams) and rebut this narrative. If he doesn’t aggressively push back on it, he is forfeiting the game.
Oh to return to those innocent days of mid-March when I started this thread… 
Before the tsunami of COVID engulfed the nation, the world, and the upcoming presidential election.
Headlines now are saying Biden’s virtual campaign is a complete failure, a bust. He can’t make himself heard above the din of pandemic. But even if he could, what should he be saying? Name-calling trump didn’t do Hillary any good.
Biden’s Virtual Campaign Is a Disaster
The candidate has reached the peak of his career in the rec room of his basement, talking into a computer.
That’s the last paragraph of the article linked to.
Okay, so what SHOULD Biden be doing? What can he do? Trump is in every headline, every story, every sound bite-- for good or for ill (mostly the last), but “there’s no such thing as bad publicity,” right?
In an article I cited elsewhere today (in the thread about COVID ending the trump presidency-- which it, won’t BTW), a focus group from Iowa didn’t know Thing One about Biden because they only follow local news.
If the Tara Reade thing pulls the rug out from under Biden… <can’t contemplate the results>