I think Bernie’s supporters don’t get it. “Yeah, well fine, they’re going to call any democrat a socialist.”
That is true, but not every democrat calls himself a democratic socialist. Not every democrat in the race wears that on his sleeve. Not every democrat is proposing policies that, nice idea or not, represent a radical and sudden shift in the relationship between government and business, and government and people. There will come a point - probably when the pundits really and truly begin to take him seriously - when people will begin taking into consideration the likelihood of his legislation passing (not very good, honestly), and more than that, the real impact on businesses and people if they somehow do pass - a major question mark. And I’ve some news for you: voters don’t like supporting something or someone with that sort of uncertainty lurking in the background.
Biden’s far from a sexy candidate, but his approach is better than Bernie’s: we live under a political system that was designed for incremental change. The really successful presidents are those who recognize opportunities for steps or even small skips or hops forward, like Obama did in 2009/2010. Bernie brings passion and energy - I get that. But he’s promising his supporters the moon, and I don’t think he has a snowball’s chance in hell of delivering.
Biden is a pro forma candidate. It is a retreat to “safety” to vote for him, as you are admitting. Sometimes that’s not the safest choice.
How does he feel like a winner when he is all about waiting for trump to “wear off” on the republcians, so that he can step in and save us and be Mr bipartisanship? You like that plan?
I’m simply applying the same standard to Biden that people like SlackerInc are applying to Bernie. If you think that’s nonsense, fine. But then so is what Slacker is complaining about. Which was kind of the point.
Again, the point is to highlight the double standard between how people like Slacker treat Bernie and how they (and you) treat everyone else. If Bernie had eulogised someone like Gus Hall (google him), do you honestly think we’d ever stop hearing about it? Of course we wouldn’t. Yet somehow it’s considered impolitic to mention that the guy who’s probably going to win the first majority Black Primary sang the praises of a segregationist? Fuck that.
And by the by, eulogising the man who once proudly proclaimed that no force on Earth could ”Ever bring the South to let the nigra race into our swimming pools and theaters” isn’t decent. It is, in fact, terrible, and worse than anything Bernie has said in any of these scaremongering clips.
Joe’s responsibility was to say ‘No’. Because that’s what a decent human being would’ve done. I’ve no doubt it’s what Bernie would’ve done. And that’s just one more reason why I respect him. Because Bernie puts principle above protocol.
No it isn’t. That’s an incredibly stupid, blinkered, and agenda-driven misreading of both my post, and the intention behind it.
Sadly, there were more people in 2016 who thought Hillary could beat Trump than there were people who thought Bernie could beat Trump. Those people were wrong. They need to own their error. The way they do that is by shutting the fuck up for a minute and being humble.
No. You have, very predictably, completely misunderstood what I was saying. I state, clearly and unequivocally, that under the rules established by the DNC, Hillary Clinton won the Democratic nomination for President in 2016 fair and square? D’you get that? Good. Now, here’s the point: The people who picked her chose possibly the only politician in America capable of losing to Donald Frigging Trump. For this reason, those people should think twice before they deign to lecture the rest of us about who is and who isn’t “electable”. Because they clearly have no fucking idea what that word means.
It’s a stupid reason and you should be ashamed of yourself for holding it. And Bernie’s won three of the last four Primaries so it seems to me that plenty of Dems do like him.
I didn’t lose anyone Jack shit. This is a tiny message board that no-one reads. Get a grip.
As I said, I acknowledge his shortcomings as a campaigner, and I agree with you that no Democrat is going to have much success with bipartisanship unless the general public completely sours on republicans and the dems as a party become really popular - not likely, I agree.
I wish there was a candidate out there that had the secret sauce. There just isn’t any right now. But of the candidates that have the best opportunity to close the argument in favor of dumping Trump, it’s the occasionally loopy elder who people remember once as a vice president. I had thought until very recently that Bloomberg would be the best chance, but I admit that I didn’t see his disastrous debate performances coming.
You are missing the point. This person has 200,000 in vested stock. They pay, let’s say, 70,000 in taxes on it. The next day the stock goes to 0. They now have 0 dollars in vested stock that they paid 70,000 in taxes on. That’s just an entirely stupid policy and I don’t take seriously the intentions of any candidate who proposes it.
As I already noted, the idea is not entirely crazy and has precedent in tax law. It only applies on the excess over $100,000 if more than that is vested in any single year for a high-salaried individual. I worked for companies that gave out stock options and I’ve never received anything even close to that. But I agree it’s one of those ideas that Bernie should probably drop, and concentrate on tax rates and loopholes that benefit corporations and the very wealthy.
Bernie needs to stop calling himself a socialist, especially heading into the general campaign. I’ve never heard him explicitly call himself a “democratic socialist” but he’d better put a stop to that, too. There’s a big difference between a social democracy (what most advanced western countries are) and democratic socialism, as only the former relies on capitalism to drive its economy. Bernie is a social democrat, which in practice means leaving most of the economy as it is but providing much greater social services and health care.
I was initially a strong Biden supporter but his lackluster performance has been disappointing. What does Biden stand for? Aside from bringing integrity and sanity back to the White House, I’d be hard-pressed to come up with specific policies without looking it up. Whereas everyone knows what Bernie stands for, and it seems to be resonating with voters. Despite my skepticism, I note that RCP has him about 4.7 points ahead of Trump. That’s not a very big margin, however, and the Trump-style attacks haven’t even started yet.
Did they ever do the type of Trump vs Sanders poll I told them to? Where, before checking a box, the pollee watches a 15-minute lying rant against Sanders? (Voters in the real November election will be faced with the worst lying propaganda campaign in history.)
The enemy are already ranting their hardest against Biden, while playing Sanders with kid gloves.
All true … except for the “certainly be brought up later” part.
The intelligent and truthful objections being raised against Sanders — however damning in the minds of millions of Americans(*) — are NOT the objections that will be raised by the Putin-Hannity axis after Sanders is the nominee. Those attacks will be exaggerated caricatures of the more truthful objections; shrieked with all possible scariness and with a budget of many dozens of millions of dollars. The anti-Bernie slurs will be so over-the-top that even grand-daddies will be Googling Politifacts, but may see “Mostly True.” :smack:
The tirade of Lies and Hatred we will witness in the late Summer and early Autumn will astonish even the most jaded of us.
I don’t care if it only applies to 10,000,000. The type of person who would suggest that anyone in this country should pay taxes on any money at all that they don’t have is not one that I can support. The whole point of these stock options is to get more individual employee ownership of the companies that they work for. The fact that this is aimed squarely at people who are working their asses off at startup companies and the like means that Bernie is not a candidate I can support as perhaps he is closer to what the Republicans portray him as than what I’m comfortable with.
If it is Bernie vs. Trump, I will have a big problem.
Ok, I don’t recall quoting any of your posts though. :dubious:
Whatever is and isn’t exaggeration, if it just seems salacious, it’s sufficient to use as a cudgel against an opponent in a campaign. Who would’ve thunk an email server with no scandalous contents would sink a presidential hopeful? Sounds too stupid to be plausible, right? But it did. Please stop thinking Sanders can’t get hurt the same way because of how amazing his platform is.
I don’t want to keep arguing about this since we both agree it isn’t a great idea and furthermore I don’t think it’s that big a deal. People working their asses off at startups may be collateral damage in this regulation, but that’s not who it’s aimed squarely at – it’s aimed at executives at large companies building up astronomically huge retirement funds. It wouldn’t be hard to carve out an exception for startups and smaller companies.
And yes, I do understand the point, but as I said, taxes on putative income that you don’t actually have is not unprecedented. You could equally be paying taxes on putative interest on a strip bond, and then have the company go under prior to maturity so that the certificate isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on. And if someone is worried about the stability of their stock options, they could estimate their marginal tax rate and sell enough to cover it on the day that it vested, which is presumably when the IRS values it. Then if the stock goes south, they’ve lost potential gains, but haven’t lost any actual personal money.
Unreconstructed Man:*“…Biden for buddying up with segregationists…” *
Sure they are- and so? Why bring them up again? Why help re-elect trump? Because that’s all they do.
Look, suppose someone came to you with a terrible rumor about a friend. You had already heard something about it. Is the right thing to do :
Spread the rumor, tell everyone, after all, the cat is out of the bag!
Or
Keep your damned mouth shut and not spread rumors.
I dont give a rats ass if bernie honeymooned in Russia or anything else bernie or biden or bloomberg did decades ago. Old news.
Let’s assume for the purposes of argument that you are right and this trip is “misrepresented.” The fact of the matter then remains that it will be misrepresented to swing voters in the general election.
It will be told to swing voters that he travelled to the Soviet Union directly after his wedding and he is on video getting drunk with Soviet Communists. That is true. You can explain it by saying what you did, but it plays right into the narrative that he is a closet communist, along with his praise of Castro.
Why did Burlington choose a sister city in the Soviet Union? Why not one in England or Germany or France or any non-communist country? The inference will be that Comrade Bernie chose it to give him an opportunity to visit and so Burlington could “learn” from their sister city.
No poster on this board is giving the RNC any ideas. This will happen.
As they say at Wikipedia, this is not original research.
Taking your comment seriously, having message boards which are echo chambers for one side doesn’t hurt the other. All it does is insure that people from the other side won’t ever see it.
Then, I don’t see the fact that Bernie was sympathetic to non-Stalinist communism, well into adulthood, to be a scurrilous rumor. It makes me question his judgment and means I’d vote against him almost regardless of opponent (Donald Trump being the almost here).
I disagree that this isn’t a big deal. I just started up my own company (not hypothetical). A biotech therapeutic company, actually. Myself and other the other founders are paid in nothing (no salary) but stock options until we raise series A financing. I am not an executive building up astronomical anything. We have nothing to offer any other people we are bringing on right now except stock options. Everyone joining up believes in what we are all doing, and wants to be a part of it and to own a part of it.
If this were to pass, our company would be done a minute later. Nobody I know starting a company could survive this, and it is not just collateral damage.
This is my point. Sanders isn’t just opposed to generational wealth. He appears opposed to anybody trying to make significant money at all. I have no problem with people getting rich. The problem is people handing down wealth. Bernie’s own policies are not something I can support and this is a prime example of it.
Oh no. Please! Bernie, whatever his faults and however bad his ideas, is a good-spirited man. His most left-wing ideas will never pass Congress, even if the majority of Ds are on-board. Compare this with Donald Trump who is doing huge damage even without GOP complicity (encouraging Americans’ racism, revealing secrets to Putin); and is now the leader of a Party which is fully on-board for a program of Lies, Racism, and Stealing from the public treasury.
Suppose you’re in the market for a pet. You want a fluffy Persian cat but such is not available. Your only two choices are a mangy dog, stupid but loyal; and a poisonous centipede with a taste for human flesh. Do you really pick the centipede?
Bernie called it a “very strange honeymoon” in his book. Jane has referred to it as a “honeymoon” as well. When George Will said in 2015 that they honeymooned in the Soviet Union, PolitiFact rated the claim Mostly True: PolitiFact | George Will describes Bernie Sanders' Soviet Union honeymoon
FiveThirtyEight on how there are maybe more “Biden bros” than “Bernie bros” (though the numbers of Bernie bros are understated, because the survey only included over-thirty-year-olds, since it tracks a group
of specific voters over the past eight years):
Look on the bright side: Sanders won’t get any of that passed and he’d quickly become a lame-duck president. Of course, that’s a problem in its own right. But at least his policies wouldn’t sink your business.