Mega-Thread: Democratic 2020 Primaries

[Levelfive]

Bernie Sanders had a heart attack and has since gone up in the polls, to the point that he now has the best Fav/Unfav ratio of any candidate running, the most committed support base, and a strong position in every state in an overall contest where convention delegates will be awarded proportional to the vote share. He's also got the most reliable fundraising base, consisting of repeat small donors, such that he functionally has his own political party.

People who write him off are substituting their own ideological priorities, and, in some particular cases around here, their own financial interests, for analysis. My own personal position of "I will never vote for Pete Buttigieg or Michael Bloomberg, and certainly won't volunteer time or money for their campaigns" doesn't cloud my assessment that the former has a decent chance of becoming the nominee - lamentably - and the latter does not.

I think that's a fair point, although it underscores mine as well--people don't vote logically: they vote for a feeling and a way of seeing themselves, or an extension of themselves, the same way they make any other "purchase." All this hand wringing Democrats do about shades of moderation and what voters really want and policy issues--that Republicans never do because they don't actually give a shit what their constituents want and vote accordingly, and rarely pay a price*--and all the puzzling Democrats do about why people vote against their own interests, or why it's consistently irrelevant that Democrats are on the right side of issues voters say they care about, can be explained by something much simpler and more primal. I know I'm not saying anything new--Republicans understood this a really long time ago; it's (sort of) what Howard Dean was trying to stress when he talked about "conviction politics." Trump's ludicrous Rocky photoshop mainlines right into it, by design.

*I recently read an article to this effect that covered several decades' worth of Republicans flat out ignoring and voting contrary to voters' preferences. If I manage to find it, I'll post it, not that anyone will be shocked.

[Draco-Onis]

I think that's a fair point, although it underscores mine as well--people don't vote logically: they vote for a feeling and a way of seeing themselves, or an extension of themselves, the same way they make any other "purchase." All this hand wringing Democrats do about shades of moderation and what voters really want and policy issues--that Republicans never do because they don't actually give a shit what their constituents want and vote accordingly, and rarely pay a price*--and all the puzzling Democrats do about why people vote against their own interests, or why it's consistently irrelevant that Democrats are on the right side of issues voters say they care about, can be explained by something much simpler and more primal. I know I'm not saying anything new--Republicans understood this a really long time ago; it's (sort of) what Howard Dean was trying to stress when he talked about "conviction politics." Trump's ludicrous Rocky photoshop mainlines right into it, by design.

*I recently read an article to this effect that covered several decades' worth of Republicans flat out ignoring and voting contrary to voters' preferences. If I manage to find it, I'll post it, not that anyone will be shocked.

The biggest mistake democrats are making this election cycle and every election cycle is giving detailed policies. If you look at the republican primary all they had was vague policy plans with no details when asked about details they would say it would work great without saying why.

Medicare for all for example all democrats had to do was say it will be just like medicare for everyone without giving any details if people ask just say it will work great and everyone will be happy. The average American is pretty stupid and just wants a simple one liner democrats are just bad at selling they are giving people way too much credit when it comes to intellect.

[Slybak]

The biggest mistake democrats are making this election cycle and every election cycle is giving detailed policies. If you look at the republican primary all they had was vague policy plans with no details when asked about details they would say it would work great without saying why.

Warren's campaign decided to make her "The Plans Candidate" back in Spring because "I have a plan for that" got some applause at a few candidate fora, and even though it got her noticed its ultimately what's caused her to tank over the past month.

First, as you said, because plans aren't politics. Politics is dispositional, not technical. I'd only add that Republicans understand this to the extent that conservative dispositions are broadly unpopular, so by necessity are forced to aestheticize those dispositions to make them at least palatable to the public. This is also why the right-wing has become, at home and abroad, more and more fascistic.

Second because once you become "The Plans Candidate" its expected that you'll have your own unique pitch on every issue, even the one's that aren't in your wheelhouse, when there are perfectly serviceable proposals available for you to take. This is initially what she did: backed Sanders-Jayapal. It wasn't her plan and that was fine. Politicians normally take proposals from various sources; from other candidates to support instutitions of their party.

But once she became "The Plans Candidate" she had to have her own unique policy, and obviously prioritized immunizing herself from the right-wing "tax increase" canard so much so that it developed into something more convoluted and opened herself up to skepticism from her left flank. It also didn't stop that fuckin snake Pete Buttigieg from continuing to attack her from the right, so it failed in its basic purpose.

This isn't a matter of the average voter being stupid, but a matter of the average voter operating in a system where being a highly informed political agent is both actively and structurally discouraged. No one has the time to become an expert on every conceivable subject, to the extent that they can thoroughly evaluate policy papers on every issue. Because, again, politics isn't technical.

[Draco-Onis]

Warren's campaign decided to make her "The Plans Candidate" back in Spring because "I have a plan for that" got some applause at a few candidate fora, and even though it got her noticed its ultimately what's caused her to tank over the past month.

First, as you said, because plans aren't politics. Politics is dispositional, not technical. I'd only add that Republicans understand this to the extent that conservative dispositions are broadly unpopular, so by necessity are forced to aestheticize those dispositions to make them at least palatable to the public. This is also why the right-wing has become, at home and abroad, more and more fascistic.

Second because once you become "The Plans Candidate" its expected that you'll have your own unique pitch on every issue, even the one's that aren't in your wheelhouse, when there are perfectly serviceable proposals available for you to take. This is initially what she did: backed Sanders-Jayapal. It wasn't her plan and that was fine. Politicians normally take proposals from various sources; from other candidates to support instutitions of their party.

But once she became "The Plans Candidate" she had to have her own unique policy, and obviously prioritized immunizing herself from the right-wing "tax increase" canard so much so that it developed into something more convoluted and opened herself up to skepticism from her left flank. It also didn't stop that fuckin snake Pete Buttigieg from continuing to attack her from the right, so it failed in its basic purpose.

This isn't a matter of the average voter being stupid, but a matter of the average voter operating in a system where being a highly informed political agent is both actively and structurally discouraged. No one has the time to become an expert on every conceivable subject, to the extent that they can thoroughly evaluate policy papers on every issue. Because, again, politics isn't technical.

The polling says different the MSM is very against medicare for all and pretty much every progressive plan but I do agree with you that once she labeled herself as the plan candidate she was backed into a corner. Medicare for all is far cheaper than the status quo and current insurance is horrible but that is getting lost in the MSM bias against it. She should have anticipated this and found a way to be more evasive and focused more on how broken the current system is, it's one of those topics where details are bad kind of reminds me of the death panel BS that they put on Obamacare. The only these progressive agendas are going to pass is to keep the public in the dark because both the MSM and the democratic party are going to twist every detail to scare the average person. My opinion is if we get a Biden type of candidate we lose, mayor Pete will 100% lose unless the economy tanks this country is not ready for a gay president.

[Spectral]

AOC blasted an new ad of his because it doesn't blanket make college free for all. It has a cutoff at 150k with some extra things to drive down costs.

Seems like a winning point for Buttigieg. This is more than generous enough to cover tuition, room, and board at any normal university. The only people that actually need more than $150K for undergraduate education are rich kids with mediocre academics - everyone else can go to the most expensive schools with either need-based aid or partial scholarships and come in with a 4-year bill way under $150K.

For example, UCLA's 4-year cost with zero aid and paying the school the full costs of room, board, and everything else is ~$140K. U of Michigan is similar. These are the outer bounds of possible public costs - no aid, no scholarships, the best public universities in the country, no effort to cut costs with online book buying or a cheaper rental than campus dorms, no living at home. Literally just spending the most you possibly can and it's still free with the Pete plan.

[Slybak]

The polling says different the MSM is very against medicare for all and pretty much every progressive plan but I do agree with you that once she labeled herself as the plan candidate she was backed into a corner.

The polling on single payer is all over the place, and its entirely because you get different responses depending on how the policy is characterized by the polling question.

[Spectral]

The polling on single payer is all over the place, and its entirely because you get different responses depending on how the policy is characterized by the polling question.

Which makes sense, right? There isn't one thing that's currently referred to as "single payer" that everyone being asked the question has a shared understanding of. If you ask questions that are more around the starting point for these policies ("should the United States government guarantee basic healthcare for every American?"), you're going to get very strong results. If you ask questions that are more on the far fringe end ("should private insurance be abolished entirely?"), you're going to get weak results. I don't want to say that there's a consensus position, because there's not, but there are some basics that a strong plurality of people agree on.

[Slybak]

Seems like a winning point for Buttigieg. This is more than generous enough to cover tuition, room, and board at any normal university. The only people that actually need more than $150K for undergraduate education are rich kids with mediocre academics - everyone else can go to the most expensive schools with either need-based aid or partial scholarships and come in with a 4-year bill way under $150K.

The cutoff is $100,000, and its not the cutoff on the sticker price of tuition but the annual income of the household paying it. For reference, median tuition for in-state public colleges and universities is $10,000 a year, and $20,000 if you include fees and room & board.

What this policy would likely do is exacerbate the phenomenon of families who make a little bit too much money to qualify for existing means-tested tuition assistance emancipating their college-bound kid so that they qualify. This would, in turn, sour the public against the program because it has led to "cheating," thereby creating the political will for the right-wing to demand even more means-testing; i.e. more qualification hoops that people who could already qualify would have to jump through.

Its bad politics.

- - - Updated - - -

Which makes sense, right? There isn't one thing that's currently referred to as "single payer" that everyone being asked the question has a shared understanding of. If you ask questions that are more around the starting point for these policies ("should the United States government guarantee basic healthcare for every American?"), you're going to get very strong results. If you ask questions that are more on the far fringe end ("should private insurance be abolished entirely?"), you're going to get weak results. I don't want to say that there's a consensus position, because there's not, but there are some basics that a strong plurality of people agree on.

This happens largely because politicians focus on the macro questions while voters focus on the micro questions. Voters aren't interested in GDP impact analyses or effects on existing insurance markets, which is the kind of shit Democratic politicians needlessly obsess over, they're interested in how the policy affects their own lives. The way you sell a policy like single payer is by literally walking people through how it changes the way, for the better, they go to the doctor or hospital. It's not rocket science. You don't need a Vox Explainer to understand it.

We saw this in stark relief during the GOP effort to repeal the ACA; people weren't angrily shouting at their Republican Senators and Representatives over reductions in Cost-Sharing Payments to Insurers that offer Qualified Silver-Rated Plans, they were angrily shouting at their Republican Senators and Representatives because they didn't want to lose various insurance protections like guaranteed issue (i.e. the ban on pre-existing conditions) and bans on yearly/lifetime benefit caps, or they didn't want to get kicked off Medicaid. It's basically the same reason more comprehensive systems you find in other countries, like Canadian Medicare and the British NHS, have such political strength; they have an existing and broad-based microeconomic benefit that people don't want to lose.

[Spectral]

The cutoff is $100,000, and its not the cutoff on the sticker price of tuition but the annual income of the household paying it. For reference, median tuition for in-state public colleges and universities is $10,000 a year, and $20,000 if you include fees and room & board.

My bad, misread the post and wasn't previously familiar with the Pete-specific version of things.

What this policy would likely do is exacerbate the phenomenon of families who make a little bit too much money to qualify for existing means-tested tuition assistance emancipating their college-bound kid so that they qualify. This would, in turn, sour the public against the program because it has led to "cheating," thereby creating the political will for the right-wing to demand even more means-testing; i.e. more qualification hoops that people who could already qualify would have to jump through.

Its bad politics.

Agree - a family income of $100K/year is a pretty odd cutoff if a goal is to help the broadly construed "middle class" afford college for their children. In most states, the median household income for families with children is ~$80K; drawing a cutoff at six-figures seems like the politics of resentment, drawing a line that will resonate with people that despise the professional class, but ring hollow for many very typical families.

Capping the actual amount that can be spent makes sense to me, but means-testing mostly just seems like you're going to bump into divisiveness where people above the line dislike the program and people below it like it. I'm surprised that more politicians haven't learned the lesson that universality of a program is one of the things that can make it difficult to defeat.

[kaelleria]

My bad, misread the post and wasn't previously familiar with the Pete-specific version of things.

Agree - a family income of $100K/year is a pretty odd cutoff if a goal is to help the broadly construed "middle class" afford college for their children. In most states, the median household income for families with children is ~$80K; drawing a cutoff at six-figures seems like the politics of resentment, drawing a line that will resonate with people that despise the professional class, but ring hollow for many very typical families.

Capping the actual amount that can be spent makes sense to me, but means-testing mostly just seems like you're going to bump into divisiveness where people above the line dislike the program and people below it like it. I'm surprised that more politicians haven't learned the lesson that universality of a program is one of the things that can make it difficult to defeat.

100k -150k Adjusted Gross Income... there's a sliding subsidy over 100k AGI.

But that doesn't take into account the rest of the plan which is aimed at keeping costs lower.

The only issue with the plan right now is maybe throwing in a COLA for different regions.

At the end of the day it comes down to priorities. You can subsidize everyone to go college 100% for free or you can have 80% go for free and 10% go at greatly reduced cost and save the extra money for things like investment in HBCUs, childcare subsidies, pre-k education, meal plans for low income students etc...

The absolute rub with the entire college affordability discussion... Sanders introduced a similar plan in 2017 with a strict cutoff at 125k.
https://www.sanders.senate.gov/newsr...act-introduced

[Spectral]

100k -150k... there's a sliding subsidy over 100k.

But that doesn't take into account the rest of the plan which is aimed at keeping costs lower.

I'm going to be immensely skeptical of a plan that increases subsidies simultaneously lowering actual total cost. This is simply not consistent with what we've seen of American government programs broadly or with regard to college subsidies more narrowly. I can't predict the exact mechanism ahead of time, but I'm entirely comfortable knowing that giving universities more money increases the cost.

That might be worth it, but I'm not going to be sold on subsidies decreasing total cost. I'm sure there's a website somewhere that explains how that'll work, but in practice what we see over and over again is that the subsidy part gets through legislation and the cost control measures don't.

[kaelleria]

I'm going to be immensely skeptical of a plan that increases subsidies simultaneously lowering actual total cost. This is simply not consistent with what we've seen of American government programs broadly or with regard to college subsidies more narrowly. I can't predict the exact mechanism ahead of time, but I'm entirely comfortable knowing that giving universities more money increases the cost.

That might be worth it, but I'm not going to be sold on subsidies decreasing total cost. I'm sure there's a website somewhere that explains how that'll work, but in practice what we see over and over again is that the subsidy part gets through legislation and the cost control measures don't.

States are forced to keep costs low by only receiving subsidy money if they invest in their universities and keep tuition increases reasonable.

You bring up an interesting point that would affect all the college affordability plans tbh.

[Spectral]

States are forced to keep costs low by only receiving subsidy money if they invest in their universities and keep tuition increases reasonable.

You bring up an interesting point that would affect all the college affordability plans tbh.

Note that this is cost shifting rather than cost reduction. Requiring a state to control tuition doesn't necessarily imply that the university system will do anything to control costs to taxpayers. Were I a chancellor, I'd be pretty enthusiastic about a plan that gets me consumers that don't have to pay for the end product and a statutory requirement for my state to keep raising spending to keep up with arbitrarily large increases in cost. I don't actually think tend to think they're quite that cynical, but it lines up a set of incentives that almost surely will continue to spike actual costs. A lot of this money isn't going towards things that actually improve education - spending on amenities, administrative expenses, and so on have grown sharply as universities compete with each other to have the shiniest campus. Surely that's going to keep ballooning in a universe where "free" schools increase demand.

At a glance, it also seems like it disadvantages poor states - places like California and Minnesota can afford to allocate more state capital to universities to get federal subsidies, but I'm not clear how that's supposed to work for Mississippi or Louisiana. I guess someone could say that they can fuck off because they're not doing a very good job educating people, but a policy that provides something like a federal match is going to exacerbate that. Perhaps there's an exception carved out for that, but then we're back to just straight up increasing total costs across the board.

To be clear, I'm not against public universities being free or near-free for qualified students. The investment is worth it and the principles are sound. I'm just very skeptical when people tell me that it's also going to be a cost savings.

[Slybak]

My bad, misread the post and wasn't previously familiar with the Pete-specific version of things.

Agree - a family income of $100K/year is a pretty odd cutoff if a goal is to help the broadly construed "middle class" afford college for their children. In most states, the median household income for families with children is ~$80K; drawing a cutoff at six-figures seems like the politics of resentment, drawing a line that will resonate with people that despise the professional class, but ring hollow for many very typical families.

Capping the actual amount that can be spent makes sense to me, but means-testing mostly just seems like you're going to bump into divisiveness where people above the line dislike the program and people below it like it. I'm surprised that more politicians haven't learned the lesson that universality of a program is one of the things that can make it difficult to defeat.

I mean even if you want to create any kind of public benefit that scales in its remuneration proportional to the needs of actual beneficiaries, it's both more politically, economically, and logistically expedient to do it on the back end via funding (i.e. the taxes that pay for it) than on the front end via means-testing the benefit distribution. Rich people get the same benefit - regardless as to whether they actually use it - but pay more for it.

To think otherwise is really to assume that, to use this specific proposal as an example, very wealthy New Yorkers just cant wait to "save" $25k a year by sending their kids to SUNY Binghamton even if they're paying hundreds of thousands more to create that savings in the first place. When the reality is, either way, their kids are still probably gonna go to Princeton.

[NED funded]

The leftists now support bullying kids I guess

[Theodarzna]

The fact that Kamala had a conference call to figure out and discuss what her "core values" where is itself a disqualifying factor. She shouldn't have run.

[segara82]

Harris is bleeding badly, while Yang just made 750k in 24 hours. Biden at least has a Super PAC behind him to keep him afloat. If nothing good happens to her then Harris could be out by Christmas (and some candidates will thank Santa for that gift).
How is Warren holding up? I hear she dropped massively in some polls.

[Kreuger]

Bloomberg buying lots of ads the last few weeks seems to be paying off

https://thehill.com/hilltv/rising/47...is-in-new-poll

Biden 31, Sanders 15, Warren 10, Buttigieg 9, Bloomberg 6

[Theodarzna]

Harris is bleeding badly, while Yang just made 750k in 24 hours. Biden at least has a Super PAC behind him to keep him afloat. If nothing good happens to her then Harris could be out by Christmas (and some candidates will thank Santa for that gift).
How is Warren holding up? I hear she dropped massively in some polls.

Warren collapsed because of M4A stance started to Waffle and she has started to lose confidence from voters. Sanders is able to capture and hold voters because people have faith based on his consistency. In a world of weather-vanes he has always been a sign post. Warren said she wouldn't even get to M4A for three years? What the hell is she doing for three years?

[TexasRules]

Warren collapsed because of M4A stance started to Waffle and she has started to lose confidence from voters. Sanders is able to capture and hold voters because people have faith based on his consistency. In a world of weather-vanes he has always been a sign post. Warren said she wouldn't even get to M4A for three years? What the hell is she doing for three years?

According to her speeches in Iowa, she is going to spend it getting rid of the electoral college. Even though that would take a constitutional amendment and would be impossible in the political climate currently. But hey, pitch that to people in Iowa--where if the electoral college was abolished no politicians would ever go again because Iowa would not matter.

In other candidate news, Trump's officials have told bloomberg news that they would not be issuing them credentials since they will not investigate democratic candidates. Campaign manager Brad Parscale said:

Since they have declared their bias openly, the Trump campaign will no longer credential representatives of Bloomberg News for rallies or other campaign events. We will determine whether to engage with individual reporters or answer inquires from Bloomberg News on a case-by-case basis. This will remain the policy of the Trump campaign until Bloomberg News publicly rescinds its decision.

Oh and let's not forget the latest Biden gaffe about kids on his lap.
And you guys seriously think these people can beat Trump by just running on the fact they are not Trump?