Bernie Sanders back again

[Kasierith]

Yeah, I feel like he outs himself with the Dem choices - those three are objectively the worst three. And it's still early in the "announcement" phase of the presidential primaries. We know Beto is going to run. Ditto Biden. Both are categorically better than Bernie.

Bernie is great for party motivation. He would not be a good general election candidate.

I like Warren. I know she probably won't win the primary, and I'm far from set on her, but there are far worse possibilities out there.

- - - Updated - - -

That's a slogan. It's not a plan. That's exactly what Trump supporters said. And look what it got them.

I've been saying since 2016 that Bernie and Trump are two sides of the same coin, particularly in terms of how they draw support.

[NED funded]

Times have changed. What has not changed is the amount of blind people not seeing what's going on around them.

You know that most justice Dems lost their elections right? The Blue Wave was won by moderates, I don't get the insistence of leftists on shooting their own foot.

[mvaliz]

Bernie is great for party motivation. He would not be a good general election candidate.

Agreed, which is why I'm believing he's purely there to keep things "on message". I think even he knows he really doesn't have good odds of winning.

The only thing that can backfire from this is if the Russians and/or Dumpsters try to create a phony "Bernie is being descriminated by the Dem establishment again!" story. Doesn't even need any validity/truth behind it this time for them to attempt it IMO.

[Fugus]

Agreed, which is why I'm believing he's purely there to keep things "on message". I think even he knows he really doesn't have good odds of winning.

The only thing that can backfire from this is if the Russians and/or Dumpsters try to create a phony "Bernie is being descriminated by the Dem establishment again!" story. Doesn't even need any validity/truth behind it this time for them to attempt it IMO.

I have said it before but I honestly think it could use repeating unless someone can show me a flaw in the logic.

I fear that all these people on the platform might work against them without ranked choice voting. While Sanders platforms are popular, rational, and fiscally responsible. The fact is, all the people adopting them are poaching votes from each other while the one (Two?) who stick to their views on the other end won't be poaching crap, even if their views are horrible.

That worries me, don't want to see a mob of people with similar views all poaching each others votes to the point they lose to Biden or someone like him talking about cutting stuff because his views weren't poached.

They NEED ranked choice voting to prevent crap like that. Also, if none of them get the majority, the Super Delegates get to swoop in then and screw us for the leadership pick instead.

[Fugus]

Snip

And if it weren't for all the vote poaching, he would have been killing it by even larger margins.

[Kokolums]

You know that most justice Dems lost their elections right? The Blue Wave was won by moderates, I don't get the insistence of leftists on shooting their own foot.

There was no Blue Wave. Wave elections wash over everything and wipe out one party overwhelmingly, even factoring in favorable electorates for the other side. You know, kinda like a wave. The GOP increased their Senate lead. That doesn't happen in wave elections. It was similar to the 2016 election in that the democrats ran up their raw vote total in California but lost elsewhere. The democrats beat the republicans in raw votes in the California senate race by 11 million to nothing. No republican qualified. Democrats already have both California seats so that 11 million advantage gained them nothing. Meanwhile, the GOP burrowed further into the heartland capturing 4 new seats in the middle of the nation and Florida.

And the republicans are favored to increase their lead in 2020.

[Orbitus]

There was no Blue Wave. Wave elections wash over everything and wipe out one party overwhelmingly, even factoring in favorable electorates for the other side. You know, kinda like a wave. The GOP increased their Senate lead. That doesn't happen in wave elections. It was similar to the 2016 election in that the democrats ran up their raw vote total in California but lost elsewhere. The democrats beat the republicans in raw votes in the California senate race by 11 million to nothing. No republican qualified. Democrats already have both California seats so that 11 million advantage gained them nothing. Meanwhile, the GOP burrowed further into the heartland capturing 4 new seats in the middle of the nation and Florida.

And the republicans are favored to increase their lead in 2020.

40 seats flipping, is kinda a wave.

[Nihilist74]

I like Bernie but he never has been able to manipulate anyone into passing any really big legislature. I like Andrew Yang. I like what he is pushing as ideas and I think he is a good speaker. He sounds like a real person. If Bernie gets nominated as the democratic candidate, I will happily vote for him. I would imagine the DMC will push for a klobuchar/booker ticket which i would feel was much better than any republican but I would not be excited about it.

[Benggaul]

There was no Blue Wave. Wave elections wash over everything and wipe out one party overwhelmingly, even factoring in favorable electorates for the other side. You know, kinda like a wave. The GOP increased their Senate lead. That doesn't happen in wave elections. It was similar to the 2016 election in that the democrats ran up their raw vote total in California but lost elsewhere. The democrats beat the republicans in raw votes in the California senate race by 11 million to nothing. No republican qualified. Democrats already have both California seats so that 11 million advantage gained them nothing. Meanwhile, the GOP burrowed further into the heartland capturing 4 new seats in the middle of the nation and Florida.

And the republicans are favored to increase their lead in 2020.

40 seats flipped in the US House, giving control to the Democrats.
7 Governorships flipped to Dems.
Over 300 seats total in State House and Senate races flipped.
Dems lost 1 seat in the Senate (plus 1 seat that was already nominally GOP anyway) for a grand total of 2. In a year with an election map that was HEAVILY favorable to the GOP.
2020 map looks EXTRA tough for the GOP, so I'm not sure what crevice you're pulling this "favored to increase their lead" malarkey from.

It was undoubtedly a Blue Wave, regardless of how you personally feel about it.

[Omega10]

I am not here to make friends. With this out of the way:

- no system is perfect. Each system favors somebody. So yes, there are always "casualties", and the class war is like any other war, there will be innocent victims, which I don't like, but it doesn't mean I'll just give the concept up because of it.
- the "broken system" that we have now already fucks masses of people and generates the mentioned victims above. The rich&powerful have tools to fight, they don't need to go "RHARG". The poor don't have much of anything, but numbers and RHARG. The poor will use what they have

As for compromise, fine by me, but it won't happen IMO. Those that already have enough and are cozy and their stomachs are filled with food are mostly too lazy, too complacent to do anything. There are pictures of this "middle class" in France watching the demonstrators from the safety of restaurants and big stores, like a curiosity, instead of joining them.

The status quo needs to be given a really strong shake. The rich need to realize they stay on a volcano ready to erupt. Electing Bernie would be just one step towards this. Like with the wall, this is more about symbolism, not real change. But symbolism matters - it says "we're fucking pissed off, and this is your last chance to work for the MOST, not for the FEW".

Oh, and by the way.

Imagine me and Skroe having to work on a compromise. That'd be comical. We all know compromise with these types won't ever happen.

So, it's just better to make sure they understand that time is almost up for them and their system.

The compromise would be: you want these 6 things to change. Skroe gets to veto any 3, and the other 3 he has to hold his nose and work to make these things work. In return, you give up on trying for the other 3.

I am hoping that some sort of compromise happens. The odds of political violence becoming a normal thing in America is not zero.

[Felya]

I am hoping that some sort of compromise happens. The odds of political violence becoming a normal thing in America is not zero.

It’s never 0... but, assigning it a number is difficult. What number would sending bombs by mail and stockpiles of weapons for a terrorist attack or shooting up a synagogue, would be? Would shaming MAGA kids and an actor faking an attack be a greater or lower or compounding the number?

[Skroe]

Agreed

While I applaud Skroe for his detailed attacks at Dump's regime, he's clearly allowing previous Southern Strategy rhetoric to cloud his judgement via extreme cognitive bias on personal pride. Want evidence? Here's this funderful quote:



For a guy who does his homework on Dump, he clarly hasn't done any research down to even a basic google search to realize that Singapore has a fully functioning Universal Healthcare that stands alongside private healthcare. He doesn't care because cognitive bias screams SOCIALISM in his brain exactly the same way the word LIBERAL screams in a Dump Supporter's brain. >_<

EDIT: and now watch, he's going to do "research" and start cherry-picking weird stats about Singapore in response to try to lessen his fopa here - which is, again, going to be his cognitive bias searching out basic things to reinforce his pride-based belief - exactly the same way a Dump Supporter trollposter posts in response here.

I'm going to reply to all your posts towards / about me here.

This is a rather unfortunate series of replies from you because I think you're badly misconstruing what I'm saying. @Kasierith got it one. Maybe I'm not being clear.

Re-read what I have written in this thread, including the Bernie list. Did I at any point make any kind of value judgements about "socialist" or "democratic socialist" policies. Did I bash them? Did I compare them to market-based alternatives? I did nothing of the sort. I have talked only about one thing and one thing alone: the mechanism by which the Bernie Sanders wishlist (and he isn't alone in having a wishlist) could become a reality.

What I am doing, and will continue to do at every turn, is this new thing where it's okay for politicians running for office to write checks they can't cash. There is in fact (and coincidentally) an article about this in the Washington Post today, about how Democratic candidates are swinging for the fences Trump-style, rather than offering Clintonite incriminetalism.

I, of course, cannot and will not judge people for wanting great and different things out of this or any other candidate. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with beliving in a candidate who swings to the fences. It's also not a new thing.

What is a new thing, and frankly, you see it in your responses to me, and other responses to this thread, is the anger that is brought about, and the entire lack of any reasonable rebuttal, to the fact that there is no plan to turn the dream into law.

Let me give an example. I have mad no judgement in this thread about "Medicare for all". I have also said on countless prior occasions that if Americans want universal government-run healthcare, then that's fine. My personal preference, as you may recall, is Japan's style of healthcare system which is largely government run. I have also said at other times my preference is for seriously cutting back federal taxes and federal programs and shifting responsibilities (and taxation) to the State level, to more precisely calibrate major governmental programs the needs of citizens in different localities and making funding and administration of them more democratically accountable, compared to "nationalizing everything". Despite your attempts to paint me as otherwise in your posts here, I have nothing intrinsically against government-runs social welfare programs of any time, as the American people are quite admant in liking them. My issue, is how to fund them, how to run them, and how to make them efficient and accountable without creating a enormous bureaucracy.

But Medicare for all does not have 60 votes in the Senate. It doesn't have 50 votes in the Senate. It might not even have 40 when put up against the more centrist "Obamacare reform" alternative. This is no small thing because without 60 votes in the Senate, just like the Wall, any President promising to push it is writing a check that can't be cashed.

It's no small thing because, and I'll repeat myself again, even in the unlikely scenario Democrats run the board in the Senate in 2020 (rather than the far more likely picking up of a few seats and a mere razor-thin majority), they'll only be at, optimistically, ~56 Senators rather than 51. Losing tenured Red-State Democrats in 2016 and especially 2018 (Florida, Missouri, Indiana) numerically makes getting to 60 votes vastly harder. Maybe they can pull it off in 2022. Oh, and they better not lose Doug Jones in Alabama... some how.

This is not a slam about Medicare for all. This is the math of making it happen. It is vote counting. And the vote counting says, there are easily 60 votes for a new nuclear cruise missile (more like 87 votes actually) but something as transformative and historic as Medicare for all the 60 vote requirement doesn't exist until, optimistically, the late 2020s. That would make President Bernie in maybe the last two years of his second term, aka a Lame Duck like every other President.


That's what I'm commenting about. That's what is outrageous. This thought that electing a progressive President is going to in fact, change anything. No. It is a certainty he'll sign the budget for that nuclear cruise missile, because it's contained in a post-BCA, post-earmark ban budget that richly feeds all 435 districts and 50 states very well. That's how sausage is made. Because a place like Massachusetts, liberal land, will get hundreds of millions of dollars in that budget for the Raytheon-built guidance system for that cruise missile. Whats Elizabeth Warren going to do? Vote against it? No. She'll vote for it. Just like Bernie Sanders has been a stalwart defender of the F-35, the largest single defense program in the history of the world, despite it's mountain of troubles (most fixed now). Because it brought a lot of Federal Dollars to the State of Vermont. And the first job of every Representative and Senator, is to bring Federal Dollars home.

This is not cynical. This is how it works. There are people on the right who treat AOC as some kind of ridiculous socialist insurgent figure. I think she's a harmless freshman representative who I respect for the passion of her views even if I disagree with her. I also look at Nancy Pelosi's governing majority in 2019, which is built on a much more numerous foundation of, just like last time, red-state, red-district conserative and centrist Blue Dog Democrats. But this is the nature of governing majorities. The last Republican governing majority was far more "centrist" than the current one, which is insane, and so will the next one. Because control of chambers is decided in places that need either centrist Republicans or centrist Democrats to win. So AOC can say what she likes. The progressives can want what they want. But when it comes to the votes, it's the overall centrist-majority, left and right of center, that has driven forward every budget (and budget makes things happen, see: the wall, which didn't get one). Oh and by the way, you mentioned that the people are getting sick of the centrist budgeteering. Well actually they're not. These budgets are being mostly pushed forward by people elected in the last few cycles. There has been such turn-over in the House and Senate, that it's not the old fogies keeping the status quo, but the new guys who are joining it. The problem with your assessment, is that, the friends of AOC are going to be voting for every cruise missile, stealth bomber and warship to come through the House, because it puts money into their districts.


That's all I'm saying. What is the Sanderista plan to get red state Democrats in Republican-leaning districts to vote for Medicare for all? What is the Sanderista plan to get Democrats representing naval ship building in the Great Lakes region, connecticut, Washington State and Virgina, to vote against expanding the fleet to 355 ships at great expense, thus freeing up the money for free college?

Do you understand what I'm saying? Personally, I want the government to spend hundreds of billions to build a major base on Mars. I can write an essay at length as to why that is important. Why it is an essential use of money. I also have no route to get the 60 votes needed, every year, over 30 years, with Presidents and houses of both parties, to make it happen. So I have happily embraced the incrimentalism that is yielding real results to that end.

Your post also drew a contrast between my dreams of seeing Trump gone. That's a bad comparison for you. I've laid out quite clearly, for two years, the plan for that. In pretty great detail. And as events have changed, I've modified that plan. In fact, the entire plan only has two things involving "hope". The first is that the Mueller report actually says that this wasn't all some kind of enormous co-incidence and the President actually knew things. It's extremely likely it will say that, but it also hasn't been released yet, so we don't know for sure. The second is that Mitch McConnell's political survival instincts will sell Trump out in the wake of it, in favor of pence. But I'm not betting on McConnell, the Gravedigger of American Democracy, to have a sudden burst of patriotism. I'm betting on a raw and cynical political calculation. It could go either way. But it's a piece of a plan, that the shutdown, seriously helped push along.

This is all much better structured and thought out then how Sanders and friends plan to turn Medicare for all and everything else from a proposal... a dream... that they are perfectly entitled to have, into something that can get 60 votes in the Senate... not just this year, but every year.

After Donald Trump, I thought we'd be hungry in candidates that talked to the American people like children, and told the truth about how to achieve things. Donald Trump has been forced to create the fantasy that he is "finishing the wall", in order to not look like a total liar and a loser to his base. You know full well how he got there: because he never had a plan to get 60 votes, even with unified control of the legislative branch under Republicans. So how is that going to be any different, under President Sanders, when Democrats have a majority in the House, and lets say 56 seats in the Senate. Where do they find the four Republicans, all of whom will be in much redder states than the likes of Corey Gardner and Susan Collins?

Again this is not about the virtue of the wishlist. That is besides the point. It's about vote counting. It is about politics, not policy.


Now I want to address the "Singapore" issue. Again, I think what I said is being misunderstood. Yeah, Singapore has state run services, but that's not the point. As I said up-post, I have no problem with such services. I used Singapore as an example strictly because I have colleagues there.

The point I was trying to make, I suppose unsuccessfully, is this delusion that the world hasn't changed. It has. Radically. America is not the only game in town anymore. We haven't be this economically... I'm not sure the word... I wouldn't go so far as to say non-dominant, but more along the lines of "one of many major hubs", probably since the 19th century. Most of how Americans think about the world, particularly economically and politically, begins in 1945. There was a lot of history of our country before 1945. American economic dominance from 1945 until around 2005 can roughly be ascribed to being the only rich and industrially developed country left standing after World War II, and then as the victor in the Cold War (due in no small part due to government investment).

What we're living in now is in fact, more "normal" historically. It is, in a sense, the world recovered fully, finally, from both World War II and the Cold War. And one of those is, of course, China and the Indo-Pacific region.

The thread of Americans of skills and of means uprooting to elsewhere was hollow, because at one time, it was much harder and wealth was here. America loses its' relative wealth compared to the rest of the world every year, because elsewhere is getting rich faster than we are. The foundation of American prosperity is money that can be invested into businesses, that grow, employ workers, create and then dominate industries. This is why, to offer a clear example, Silicon Valley has so many investment firms in it and near it, because the people with the money want to be near the people using the money, and people seeking money know where to go.

Once upon a time, that was limited to New York and London. They're still the big two. But now, there are far more, and most of them are in Asia-Pacific. And that is going to draw talent.

Now you have Tennessee Backwards Man up there saying "good riddance". If he knew what he spoke of, he would not say that. America has never faced an adversary like China. For 200 years, even before we were a world power, superior technology was our economic and strategic advantage. 19th century America was, funny enough, more technologically advanced than the old powers of Europe. In China, we are facing an emerging superpower that understands this advantage and is rapidly moving to equal, and then pass us, in as many technological fields as possible. And it's investing at a rate nearly equal to our own.

An America that doesn't hold on dearly to it's innovators, in favor of being some kind of blue collar industrial throwback, is going to lose its power, and then lose its wealth, as as those islands of wealth that finance American high technology move to where the talent is, which increasingly in this scenario, will not be America, but China and the Indo-Pacific region.

Consider the mentioning of unions. What unions are we talking about precisely? Auto workers unions? Government worker unions? Or maybe the creation of new unions that don't exist in the software industry and information economy. Where precisely is the focus of unions on the left? Is it in propping up the remnant of the industrial unions of decades past, freezing them in time? Or is it about bringing workers rights to industries that have none and maybe should? I have seen and heard little about that latter idea, and believe me, I've been looking.

During the Cold War, everything was done through the lens of Capitalism's competition with Communism and our mortal struggle with the USSR. Civil rights. Workers right. The Great Society. Government investment in education and science. The betterment of our people through these things were all done so that our model of government and society could say "we answer the needs better than the Marxist-Lennist alternative". In the New Cold War, in which liberal democracy and free market capitalism is in a mortal struggle against the Chinese Alternative of illiberalism/autocracy and state capitalism, the same thing applies. Any new policy and old policy - and that includes the wishlist or taxation - must operate through the lens now of how it enhances our competitiveness versus China and other alternatives.

This is, to be clear, a not a plea for low taxes or supremely laissez faire government economic policy or anything of that sort. That's policy details well beyond the scope of the point I was trying to make or was trying to make. My point, and its one I beg Sanders supporters on my knees to just understand, is you need to take a "full system" view of everything Sanders or anybody else proposes about anything, because this is not the 1990s, we are not an island, and there is cost to everything that we do and don't do in a way that there wasn't 15 and 20 years ago. I would not say almost any of this, had Bernie Sanders and these proposals appeared around 1995 or 2000. But now? Everything has changed and the terrain in which America exists in the world is fundamentally different than it was back then.

And because of that, the threat of America losing things, and losing at things, is much more "real" than its ever been, and you'd all be fools to treat it as anything else.

[Kasierith]

The essay above shows how adverse to change some people are, and how desperate in defending the status quo, and how bad they are at conveying their ideas in a few sentences.

I will do just that below.

So we have this system that's resilient to radical change and doesn't serve the people properly.

Whatever shall we do with it, I wonder?

CHANGE IT. If you want something hard enough, there will always be paths to do it.

If you had actually read his post instead of commenting on the length, you would have already seen his answer. Have an actual plan. If you want something hard enough, how will you change it? At this stage, you're really just advertising running around in a circle chasing your tail, while having no idea whatsoever what you'll do when you actually have it. Because ultimately, change doesn't happen just because you really want it to happen.

[Feltima]

You know that most justice Dems lost their elections right? The Blue Wave was won by moderates, I don't get the insistence of leftists on shooting their own foot.

Between Our Revolution and the Justice Democrats, they go over 50% of their candidates elected. For the first election cycle they've ever experienced, that's amazing.

[Kasierith]

First, you need to actually TRY. Electing Bernie is symbolic and a statement.

So your argument for putting Bernie in place mirrors exactly the arguments that Trump supporters make for the wall. And impresses me in equal measure.

I don't care about how much hope, or belief, or whatever you have. If you want to convince me that you have anything more than dreams of glory, present an actual plan for making change happen if you get your way and Bernie becomes president.

[Shalcker]

If you had actually read his post instead of commenting on the length, you would have already seen his answer. Have an actual plan. If you want something hard enough, how will you change it?

Well, remember recent news with guy caught by FBI with printed gun and list of congressmen?

...there is rich history on how obstacles to progress can be removed if peaceful solutions fail.

[Skroe]

Just a notice so we're all on the same page. @CryotriX is from Romania.

He isn't an American and has no voting rights in our country. He is a foreigner advocating from afar for radical policy changes in other people's country.

Americans advocating for Bernie? Fine of course. A dude from Romania being his chief cheerleader? Stinks to high heaven.

[Skroe]

I literally just posted 4000 word essay in detail, on this very topic, you didn’t read a word of you insufferable bad faith poster, rofl.

Want to know why the mods give me some latitude ? Because as my extensive reply to my fellow anti-trump amigo shows, I’m sincere.

But I will call a spade a spade. The one thing I’ve been a tireless advocate of is restoring this historically rich community back the better way it was a few years ago. Consistent with that it’s clear as day exactly what you are.

- - - Updated - - -

And no. I don’t believe for a second you are an American voter.

Now assess my points. What’s the plan beyond symbolism? Symbolism got trumphadis zilch. It won’t serve sanderistas any better.

[Omega10]

So your argument for putting Bernie in place mirrors exactly the arguments that Trump supporters make for the wall. And impresses me in equal measure.

I don't care about how much hope, or belief, or whatever you have. If you want to convince me that you have anything more than dreams of glory, present an actual plan for making change happen if you get your way and Bernie becomes president.

The odds of President Sanders passing Medicare for All in his first term are zero. The odds that he lays the groundwork for passing it in the term after that are much higher than zero. So the first step in achieving our goals is getting either Sanders, or someone like him, elected as President.


We could make progress if Trump is re-elected. But it will go much more smoothly if we have Sanders or someone like him in office.

[cubby]

I already assessed them as worthless and dismissed them as what's essentially concern trolling.

No you didn't. You dismissed them - which is a different word than "assessed".

Which is why no one takes you seriously. Someone provides a very detailed reasoning to why quick change in the United States doesn't and can't happen, and you discount it immediately.

Symbolism is only important if what is behind it will work. Trump proved that to the world.