Mega-Thread: Democratic 2020 Primaries

[mvaliz]

He was a Democrat.

And then objectively, overtly switched his party allegiance to run for NYC Mayor as a Republican. And won, as a Republican.

And now he claims to be a Democrat again.

So there's a question that needs to be answered, in there; why did he switch, to run as Mayor? And why did he switch back, to run for President?
Is it because he's picking the Party with the best opportunity for him to win? This makes him an exploitative manipulator without an ideological grounding for his candidacy.
Is it because his views legitimately swung that significantly? Then A> I expect him to admit his mistakes in holding his prior views, dismiss those views as "bad", and B> I question whether his views might swing again, since he doesn't seem to have a firm ideological grounding.

Looking him up briefly, he did apparently state once he regretted instituting Stop n' Frisk in New York, saying it didn't work (not necessarily that it was morally wrong). The date for that, however, was November of last year... 4 months ago. Conveniently right on the eve of him starting his presidential bid.

For me, the problem with him is we have seen him in political action when he was mayor - and his actions were always went towards Traitorpublican desires, never Democrat. He's done little to disavow his previous actions, and indeed some of his current policies are aligned with Traitorpublican Views, particularly healthcare.

And lets not forget he was a 1-term mayor, who immediately got his ass booted out of office for being an awful mayor. For most companies I've known, when you get fired - you don't get promoted to CEO. >_<

[Rasulis]

Looking him up briefly, he did apparently state once he regretted instituting Stop n' Frisk in New York, saying it didn't work (not necessarily that it was morally wrong). The date for that, however, was November of last year... 4 months ago. Conveniently right on the eve of him starting his presidential bid.

For me, the problem with him is we have seen him in political action when he was mayor - and his actions were always went towards Traitorpublican desires, never Democrat. He's done little to disavow his previous actions, and indeed some of his current policies are aligned with Traitorpublican Views, particularly healthcare.

And lets not forget he was a 1-term mayor, who immediately got his ass booted out of office for being an awful mayor. For most companies I've known, when you get fired - you don't get promoted to CEO. >_<

He was NY mayor for 3 terms. Stop n' frisk was and is controversial. However, NY crime rate went down a lot under his terms. He also pulled NY out of a 6b dollar budget deficit courtesy of Giuliani.

[NED funded]

I absolutely despise Bloomberg but his team did an excellent job on making a compilation showing the toxicity of Bernie Bros

https://twitter.com/MikeBloomberg/st...69357471551488

There are worse offenders out there that should've been included but I'm glad they bothered collecting all of it

[I Push Buttons]

I absolutely despise Bloomberg but his team did an excellent job on making a compilation showing the toxicity of Bernie Bros

https://twitter.com/MikeBloomberg/st...69357471551488

There are worse offenders out there that should've been included but I'm glad they bothered collecting all of it

Lol I love the blue check mark replies... "How could Twitter allow this!? This is harassment!"

If merely showing what BernieBros are saying is harassment then what the fuck would you call the vile nonsense they themselves are spewing?

[Edge-]

ah, yeah. considering how berkeley is these days, they were probably pro-communist, which communism should be banned(antithetical and subversive to american culture).

Man, you're so wildly inconsistent in your views about freedoms and what the government should do that I legitimately wonder if you've ever actually sat down to look at your own views. Because they're contradictory as fuck.

[bmjclark]

Here you go buddy, because you haven't heard of a small website called google:

https://www.truthorfiction.com/mods-...ns-black-book/
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2019...ial-black-book
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019...-contacts.html

I googled bloomberg and epstein connection and didn't really get anything helpful. Thanks for the links though

[Skroe]

Looking him up briefly, he did apparently state once he regretted instituting Stop n' Frisk in New York, saying it didn't work (not necessarily that it was morally wrong). The date for that, however, was November of last year... 4 months ago. Conveniently right on the eve of him starting his presidential bid.

For me, the problem with him is we have seen him in political action when he was mayor - and his actions were always went towards Traitorpublican desires, never Democrat. He's done little to disavow his previous actions, and indeed some of his current policies are aligned with Traitorpublican Views, particularly healthcare.

And lets not forget he was a 1-term mayor, who immediately got his ass booted out of office for being an awful mayor. For most companies I've known, when you get fired - you don't get promoted to CEO. >_<

He was a 3 term mayor. They actually changed the law to allow him to run for a 3rd term. Previously, Mayors were limited to 2 terms (which is why Guliani did not run for re-election after 9/11... afte briefly floating that idea).

There was an article in Foreign Policy some time ago about how in a world ("in a world where.....") where more people live in cities than in rural areas and with growing cities due to sprawl, the leaders of the future across the world may be sourced less from national legislatures and territorial governors, and a lot more from mayors of megacities. It's an interesting idea to say the least. The ascent of Boris Johnson and Vladimir Putin to some degree is a waypoint on the way to that thesis coming true. But a handful of individuals doesn't constitute a rule, or even a trend. But still, as urbanization continues this century, the idea of a President or a Prime Minister having executive experience in a Mayor position seems almost... sensible.

But that being said the needs, motivations and politics of a city (and the mayor) are obviously considerably different than State governors, Senators or national politics. We should be very careful transposing one to the other.

Case in point, Bloomberg was a generally very popular mayor:


Bloomberg gets - and deserves - a lot of credit for modernizing and improving the city. Infrastructurally. Institutionally. His successor, de Blasio, aimed to be a liberal bull-in-the-china-shop and a national figure from the get go, and ended up mostly just faceplanting. He currently enjoys an approval rating in the 20s and most of the city is eager to see the back of him. To a large degree this reflects the practicalities a mayor is responsible for. Bloomberg had 12 years to basically remake New York City in a better image in a very practical manner. de Blasio has tried to do more esoteric liberal project stuff, and frankly, the people there don't love it.

One place I think I can relay information on is on criminal justice. As you know my brother was an Assistant District Attorney in New York. He, like most of peers, have an extremely low opinion of de Blasio. Crime is up. Corruption (where my brother focuses) is way up. Enforcement power has been curtailed due to activists lobbying him. My brother is no conservative. He's a centrist Democrat married to a feminist college professor. And he thinks de Blasio is garbage who has let garbage, and homelessness, accumulate.

The question is... to what degree does any of this matter? Not a lot. Michael Bloomberg or Bill de Blasio as POTUS would have essentially no overlap in terms of job experience with the President (indeed, what job does?). And while it is the job of Mayor of a City to worry about things like the plows being out in a snow storm - and be held responsible for it - the President's impact on the lives of every day Americans is far more abstract.

This beggars the question, why should he "disavow his previous actions"? After all, he was popular in the job he held and his successor, a much more run-of-the-mill progressive figure, has spent the past 2 years demolishing his own political future. Look at it from Bloomberg's shoes - why should he seek to emulate the positions of his unpopular successor? Where does he win in that?

He doesn't.

More to the point, I know i've been on vacation a week, but are we all seriously back to the land of magical thinking, whereby the next President does more than sign 4 budgets he has no input in, talks tough about China and cuts some ribbons? Seriously? Because there is no Medicare For all coming. There is no public option. There is no free college. There is no big tax increases on the wealthy or progressive budget in the offering. The same reason why Trump isn't getting his fucking wall (and is instead, putting up Obama-style fencing and, calling it a wall using a loophole that can't be used for healthcare) is the same reason the liberal wishlist is Dead on Arrival.

And while we're at it, we're all going to die on Earth (not in space), in our 60s, 70s and 80s, probably of cancer, heart disease or a degenerative neurological disorder. There will be no signularity, we will not be uploading our minds to computers and there is no post-capitalist society coming. So get used to it.

Please tell me in a weeks time we haven't gone back to actually living on Bernie Sanders' fantasy island.

So why worry about the agenda of the next President anyway. Does an Avocado have an agenda? Because I'd vote for that, if it would beat Trump. Once again - really for the 400th time - this is not a policy election no matter how hard the left tries to make it one. It is a referendum on Donald Fucking Trump.

The only thing that matters is getting people to hate Trump more than they hate Sanders... not enticing people with some ridiculous scheme that won't happen because Mitch McConnell walks the earth.

- - - Updated - - -

I absolutely despise Bloomberg but his team did an excellent job on making a compilation showing the toxicity of Bernie Bros

https://twitter.com/MikeBloomberg/st...69357471551488

There are worse offenders out there that should've been included but I'm glad they bothered collecting all of it

Bernie's thug gang is exactly like Trump and need to be called out on it.

We've been calling the Trumphadis un-American for 4 years. The BernieBros are exactly the same. America's always had popular political figures with followings. That's noting new. But the importing of Eastern European-style cults of personalities by the Sanders cult and the Trump cult is the most revolting political development of my life time.

A lot of people just showed how thin their American-cred is. American politics are about ideas. Politicians are disposable. They are vehicles. When we're done with them we're done with them.

But not with Saint Sanders and King Don. No sir. Not with them. They are personally infallible. I almost want to post the video of the incredible stupid things Bernie Sanders said about the Soviet Union in the mid 1980s just to see the cult circle the wagons. I predict a few of them will have the intellectual honesty to say what Bernie said was just weapons grade idiocy. But most will defend their hero's honor. Damn the truth.

[beanman12345]

He was a Democrat.

And then objectively, overtly switched his party allegiance to run for NYC Mayor as a Republican. And won, as a Republican.

And now he claims to be a Democrat again.

So there's a question that needs to be answered, in there; why did he switch, to run as Mayor? And why did he switch back, to run for President?
Is it because he's picking the Party with the best opportunity for him to win? This makes him an exploitative manipulator without an ideological grounding for his candidacy.
Is it because his views legitimately swung that significantly? Then A> I expect him to admit his mistakes in holding his prior views, dismiss those views as "bad", and B> I question whether his views might swing again, since he doesn't seem to have a firm ideological grounding.

The first is reason to not support him, all by itself. The second requires explanation and a disavowal of his own Mayoral legacy, which he has not really done.

This isn't like the bullshit "Warren used to be Republican" nonsense. Yeah, she used to. And then she changed. And she has admitted that her older views weren't great and that she's got a firm belief in the ideological underpinnings of what she supports now. She meets that second option's expectations, where Bloomberg does not.

Biden, Hillary, and Harris aren't "republican", but they are center/center-right leaning, on the right-leaning edge of the Democratic Party. They would've been among the group with which there was ideological overlap with Republicans, if we went back to the '90s with them. This is valid reason to not support them for the primary.

It's the former. He became a republican to become mayor immediately after Rudy stepped down, and Rudy was super popular because of 9/11 and knew he couldn't have won unless he was running as republican, so he switched. He was however a pretty popular mayor on his own right, in spite of stop and frisk, was re-elected twice, so that says something, and he changed to independent which paved the way back to a democrat winning mayor after him, I think the current one who shortly ran for president.

[Skroe]

He was a Democrat.

And then objectively, overtly switched his party allegiance to run for NYC Mayor as a Republican. And won, as a Republican.

And now he claims to be a Democrat again.

So there's a question that needs to be answered, in there; why did he switch, to run as Mayor? And why did he switch back, to run for President?
Is it because he's picking the Party with the best opportunity for him to win? This makes him an exploitative manipulator without an ideological grounding for his candidacy.
Is it because his views legitimately swung that significantly? Then A> I expect him to admit his mistakes in holding his prior views, dismiss those views as "bad", and B> I question whether his views might swing again, since he doesn't seem to have a firm ideological grounding.

The first is reason to not support him, all by itself. The second requires explanation and a disavowal of his own Mayoral legacy, which he has not really done.

This isn't like the bullshit "Warren used to be Republican" nonsense. Yeah, she used to. And then she changed. And she has admitted that her older views weren't great and that she's got a firm belief in the ideological underpinnings of what she supports now. She meets that second option's expectations, where Bloomberg does not.

Biden, Hillary, and Harris aren't "republican", but they are center/center-right leaning, on the right-leaning edge of the Democratic Party. They would've been among the group with which there was ideological overlap with Republicans, if we went back to the '90s with them. This is valid reason to not support them for the primary.

It's really quite simple.

Post-Clinton and post-9/11, the Republican Party was percieved as the party of competence and the future. The Democratic Party's hangover from the Clinton years last long, and it wasn't until the Iraq War occupation damaged the Bush Administration's reputation - followed by Katrina obliterating it - that Democrats had found their voice again. That was 2006.

Bloomberg left a party that was a mess in the Early 2000s and had no way to win politically and no major ideas that had currency with the American people. The big one was "Universal Healthcare". Once again, Americans, 85% of whom had healthcare, really didn't care about the 15% who didn't. Certainly not voting Americans. So Democrats get cleaned out in 2002. And Bush gets to run in 2004 on a pro-defense platform and win.

I'm not sure how anyone can blame Bloomberg for that. He like most Americans and like most good businessmen, isn't terribly ideological. So he sets up shop where he currently feels.

I think that's a very healthy thing for American democracy. The opposite is something akin to the Communist Party of China.

[Cthulhu 2020]

This is so wrong on so many levels.

It is like claiming that if Bernie or Warren got the nomination that the 'moderate' democrats would be gobbling up the Trump camp propaganda.

Truth is that progressives already strongly dislike Bloomberg and Buttigieg and wont need to wait for anyone to start shooting their ammunition. It was the progressives who found the stop and frisk Bloomberg scandal. It is progressives who found Buttigieg supporting the Breathe Easy police t-shirts.

Is there a shared dislike for 'moderate democrats' between progressives and Trump supporters? Sure. But that doesn't mean anything. It just means that people who really want to get rid of Trump shouldn't support moderate candidates.

When the choice comes down to Trump and a moderate, you bet I'm voting for a moderate. The primary is a different story, but if the progressives get salty and don't vote moderate just because they're omega salty, it sounds like a reversal of logic on them that they refuse to follow. i.e. hypocrisy.

But after 2016, the Trump campaign and Russian troll farms were churning out conspiracies about Hillary. It didn't take long for the progressive to latch onto them and accept their sympathy. We can see the effects of the radicalization of the progressives even today, with how aggressive and toxic they're being.

[Skroe]

I just can't wait for this whole primary process to be over and done with. The Trump camp is holding their cards close to their chest - mostly because their news outlets of choice have not issued commands for what kind of one liners and propaganda they want Trumpers to spread yet. You know they're lining up big attacks for whoever wins the primary. I also guarantee you, if Biden or Bloomberg win the primary, they've got some random BS lined up to feed the Whackobins, something where they claim Bernie got cheated out of the nomination by the DNC because cheating or something.

You know, exaclty what happened in 2016. The worst part was, most of those people bought that shit. They ate right out of the palms of the Trump crowd because they simply wanted to hate on Hillary some more. People seem to forget, but the right was railing on Bernie, calling him a communist and raking him over the coals early in the primary. But the moment they saw an opportunity to leverage the fanatical Bernie Cult against the moderates, the moderates took their pity, they took the propaganda, and swallowed it without chewing it a bit to think on where it was coming from.

I'm fairly convinced at this point Trump is going to win re-election, and it's not going to be close. I think he'll lose Michigan, but hold Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Arizona, and gain New Hampshire. I reserve the right to change my opinion, but this is my gut feeling at the moment.

I'm going to explain why.

Congressional and Senate Democrats have been masterful at fighting Trump since 2017. The historic 2018 election win was seismic and Nancy Pelosi and her team in particular has utilized that win to its full effect, both in constraining / foiling Trump, extracting things of value from him, and hamstringing him. The Ukraine investigation alone lasted from around August 2017 until this month. Almost 7 months. That's 7 months Trump will never get back. Coupled with Trump's lost 6 months before that and the lost time with Mueller limiting Trump, Democrats in congress have done as much as they could to reasonably stop Trump. A key thing now will be to find ways to fuck with him the rest of 2020.

The weak point since last year though has been with Presidential politics. The field has never been great. A 78 year old non-Democratic Senator who had a heart attack. A gay 38 year old mayor from a small city. A 79 year old ex-VP. A Senator from Massachusetts. A billionaire businessman who has been only occasionally a Democrat too. The 2020 Democratic field speaks to how much the Obama Administration looting the Democratic bench of talent and not refelling it has damaged the party. It's not unlike the 2012 Republican field. These are not the best and brightest, nor the future. Where is the young-to-middle age successful 2 term governor ex-Obama cabinet official with crossover appeal? We had a couple who were so low-profile they never rose to the top. There is a massive talent gap in the 40s/50s of the Democratic Party right now. The fact that people seriously floated Corey fucking Booker as President is indicative of that.

But frankly, that wouldn't even have been a problem. Because this is not - and should not - be a personality / policy election. It should be a pure negative partisanship-centric referendum on Trump. There is no real policy issues at stake or even at question here, because Mitch McConnell is a thing. Or even in terms of Presidential personalities. The winning strategy - the strategy that won in 2018 - is simple: if you hate Trump, vote Democratic. You don't eve have to like the Democrat in question. If you despise Trump and his cult, vote (D). The end. That's how you win. It's literally enough. In election after election, it has been proven the winning strategy. Trump is the kiss of death. Run a Democrat who says "vote for me and Trump is damaged/gone", works.

The problem is that while this is clearly the way to win, and it won in 2017 2018, and 2019 elections, Presidential Democratic nominees have generally avoided this strategy for real bad reasons.

One of the reasons is that Donald Trump has successfully set up a Trump Hotel inside the head of the progressive opposition. Trump hasn't just made them feel beaten. He's made them feel humiliated. He's took a lot from them, not in the least a sense of historic inevitability about the direction of our society. He has said things, and commited actions in extraordinary bad faith, purely to basically use the power of the presidency to troll progressives. SO what's the natural, emotional counter-response? To want to Demonstrate the supremacy of those beliefs. To show their universality. To show Trump he is wrong. It's not enough to just beat Trump, the thought goes, but beat him a certain way.

It's romantic. It's also completely idiotic.

There is a second side of it. Progressive interest groups felt sidelined by the Obama Administration (they were). They feel with Sanders there time has come. And I don't mean for governance. I mean to be a kingmaker inside the Democratic Party. Much as Tea Party groups supplanted pre-Tea Party groups in the Republican Party, and many historic groups became more Tea Party-ish (see: Heritage, AEI, and to a degree even Cato), the same thing is starting to happen in the Democratic Party.

It's not about ideas. It's about power. It's about influence. Ideas are s word. We've seen on the right how pliable ideas are once actual governing authority and influence over it becomes a thing. It will be the same thing on the left. Folks like Justice Democrats may say things like "M4A", and to a degree may even mean it. But what they really mean is "we pick the candidates who run". It's old, old politics in a shiny new cover. It's the politics of political houses. There is nothing new about it. Even the approach - promising stuff - is not new.

So here we have, on one hand, Congressional Democrats setting Trump up so well for a really bad 2020, and on the other the Presidential crop squandering that opportunity because their advisors and outside groups are hell bent on making this a policy election about things that will NEVER get passed through the House or Senate.

So there is no confusing the issue: there is no Congressional majority for M4A. There isn't even one for a public option, as AOC hilarious pitched as a "last ditch compromise" when discussing a hypothetical Sanders Presidency. There is not even 30 votes in the Senate for M4A, much less 60. There probably isn't even 40 for a public option. That will not change after 2020. Or 2024.

Bernie Sanders' fans pissed off at the Nevada Culinary Union lambasting M4A in order to protect their own union-negotiated healthcare entirely miss the point. Universality of healthcare has _NEVER_ been a vote winner. Most Americans care about themselves. They don't care about their fellow man. The NCU doesn't give a shit about other Nevadans. It's job is to care about it's members. Once again, Americans don't care about healthcare for people who don't have it (generally). They very much do care about healthcare for themselves. Democrats need to learn this lesson and apply it generally: the way to win is not to preach to people about why they are wrong in what they believe, but to harness that into an electoral mandate and then, once in power, do what you want to do anyway. There is no win-condition in trying to get the NCU to change its ways.


Thus we see the core of the issue and why I think Trump will win. Because Democrats, particularly humiliated progressives who really want a progressivized-rubberband effect to the post-Trump era, really, really want to make this an issues election. They want to show the supremacy of their ideas.

Nothing would make Donald Trump happier.

Again, when you start going into details about M4A, taxing some to provide services for others and so forth, it divides the essential - AND WINNING - electoral coalition, which is, in a word "everyone who hates Donald Trump".

Donald Trump will win by making Sanders or Biden or whoever is the nominee start talking about the specific things they stand for, and Americans will come down on one side of it or another. Donald Trump will then run on a "fuck all that, unity and make America great, especially against that un-American driven." And it'll work just enough.

Democrats can attempt to do whatever they like once in power. They can try M4A, doomed as it is. They can try to break the bipartisan budget consensus that will ensure $800 billion defense budgets, and no wall and no free college, for years to come. But it's insanity when you're running against Donald fucking Trump, to tell people the things you'd do. You make Donald Trump run against himself. You hold the worst President in American history, a consummate failure and charlatan, responsible for the discrete things he HAS done and make him defend it.

Instead, they walk right up to where Donald Trump wants them - defending the things they hope to do (but won't be able to, because McConnell) once in power.

Is it too late? No. There is lots of time left. And I will vote for any Democrat and donate the maximum amount in the general election as promised. But this election is going to be closer than it should be - and to the Democrats disadvantage - because of self-inflicted wounds, such as a primary season designed to respond to the needs of a non-Democrat who lost the nomination in 2016, such as an utter lack of professionalism by state parties to run their fucking affairs, and most of all the campaign's completely wrong reading on the mood of the American people and the pathway to winning. Because make no mistake, when Sanders loses, his advisers will end up in the cushy progressive PAC job just the same. It's like how people legitimately wonder how Simone Sanders, a crucial member of Sanders 2016, could possibly support Biden in 2020 and be a key adviser. Because this is a business, and these are business people and the things progressives hold important are a product to these people who will be fine, win or lose. That's the real swamp. Not the fictional "deep state", but the standing political-interest apparatus of K-street, where lobbyists, staffers and campaigns all incestuously fuck each other.

I will do everything I can to make sure Trump loses. But as it stands, my faith in Democrats being able to seize a historic opportunity is minimal. I already see how in 2024, we'll have a different primary season, a streamlined nominee process, and probably some kind of middle-aged central-casted candidate... the antithesis of the 2020 free for all. The thing is, right now, Trump isn't beating Democrats - Congressional Democrats nailed him quite effectively. Democrats outside of them are beating Democrats. And Trump and his team are just waiting to walk over a bunch of broken corpses to finish off the weakened last men standing.

But at least the last progressive will have their motherfucken beliefs.

[Martymark]

Not to be THAT guy but there are literally zero rape and sexual assault cases against him. The company has some which is a different topic.

The dude is deffo guilty of fostering an environment tho

However, there are no sexual assault or rape charges against him personally. At least not yet. Also, although he did have a lot of girlfriends when he was single, there is not a hint of infidelity while he was married to his first wife and with his current live-in partner.

Sorry, you are correct. I heard about it on a podcast and either misremembered or they used dramatic language.

He has 40+ sexual harrassment cases that have been filed against him, no assault cases.

https://www.gq.com/story/bloomberg-sexism

[Draco-Onis]

Sorry, you are correct. I heard about it on a podcast and either misremembered or they used dramatic language.

He has 40+ sexual harrassment cases that have been filed against him, no assault cases.

https://www.gq.com/story/bloomberg-sexism

All he needs to do now is to have parited with Jeffrey Epstein and have some lurid tape about grabbing women by the genitals and Trump supporters will flock to him in droves.

[Orbitus]

He has more money than Trump.
He's won more elections as a Republican than Trump.
He has more rape/sexual assault cases against him than Trump.

So he's like Trump+++

You think he is worse than Trump with sexual assault and rape cases? Trump has over 67 sexual assault cases and 3 rape allegations. Including one on a 13 year old.

[Orbitus]

Is that your objective standard? My guy raped less than Trump did.

Think about what you just wrote. Observe that you are a cunt.

I'm trying to be an arsehole, I can't even keep up with you guys.

There are no rape allegations against Bloomberg. There are no sexual assault allegations against him. There are sexual harassment allegations, sure, but not assault or rape allegations.

[NED funded]

Sorry, you are correct. I heard about it on a podcast and either misremembered or they used dramatic language.

He has 40+ sexual harrassment cases that have been filed against him, no assault cases.

https://www.gq.com/story/bloomberg-sexism

The multibillionaire was grilled on the campaign trail Sunday following an article that revealed Bloomberg LP had been slapped with nearly 40 discrimination and harassment suits from 64 employees over the past two decades.

https://nypost.com/2019/12/16/bloomb...iple-lawsuits/

Again that is the company

[Orbitus]

So that's alright then. He's a lower tier of sex criminal! Slam dunk for president! USA USA USA!

So, the ban evading alt account, is trying so fucking hard to twist the facts to fit his narrative. Not surprising. Just FYI, I am not on the side of Bloomberg here, I just don't like liars.

[Elegiac]

But at least the last progressive will have their motherfucken beliefs.

You do realise it's incredibly unfair to put the entire failure of the American system on a party that needs to win the popular vote in excess of 6-10% to even keep parity with the opposition, yes? And that's just in the House.

Here's the simple truth: the American system of government was set up by wealthy white men principally to benefit their own interests and as they did not deem their own social class even remotely capable of producing a Donald Trump (a laughable notion even at the time) they left no real safeguards in place to prevent it. Nor did they ever really have a vision of the United States as a unified country in the post-Vienna and post-Bismarck senses of the term, and the government they designed is thus hamstrung at performing the basic functions of a central government - and I'm not even getting into bells and whistles like universal healthcare, I'm talking about shit like infrastructure.

It's one thing to complain about having unrealistic goals, but this line of thinking just erases the systemic problems and puts the entirety of the problem at the feet of people who are, Constitutionally speaking, the least empowered people to do anything about it.

And it's also kinda mystifying to me why there's this insistence that we need to return to a traditional method of governance when there's a very, very solid argument to be made for the fact that the role you wish America to perform internationally is fundamentally irreconcilable with the way its domestic political structures are set up.

So no, the Whackobins are actually extremely correct in having identified the cause of America's woes as being systemic.

[Orbitus]

How many women are accusing Bloomberg of sexual assault? Work out the compound probability they are all liars. Even assuming a high probability of them being liars individually and assuming some stochastic dependence the probability he is innocent is absurdly small.

Oh wait!, I forgot!,you can't do that! Because you are a moron!

None, as far as I can find.

And thanks for admitting you are delusional.

[Thekri]

How many women are accusing Bloomberg of sexual assault? Work out the compound probability they are all liars. Even assuming a high probability of them being liars individually and assuming some stochastic dependence the probability he is innocent is absurdly small.

Oh wait!, I forgot!,you can't do that! Because you are a moron!

As far as I am aware the answer to the first question is zero. He has been accused of a great many lewd and sexist comments, but I am not aware of a single instance of assault or unwanted contact, even allegedly.

So the compound probability of zero women all being liars is a null value. Since there are zero women alleging that, they are neither liars nor honest.