American Politics

[kkck]

Its a basic "follow the money" theme. Those who profit from healthcare the most, are the biggest reason for healthcare being unaffordable.

Health insurance profit margins around 5%. Big pharma and healthcare provider profit margins range from 20% to 40%.

Those who believe medicare for all reforming health insurance will cut healthcare costs fail to know basic science, money or logic. For the same reasons upgrading a PC's RAM won't make a difference if the performance bottleneck lies elsewhere.




Bush era tax cuts were a golden age of trickle down economics aka tax cuts for the rich.

Obama's era was defined by the federal reserve expanding balance sheets to inject liquidity into banking and investment markets. Obama era "economic growth" was merely an expansion of the finance sector's balance sheet. Which some contend is not real economic growth.

That's a weird way of saying "I don't have a fucking clue of what either of those policies are".

 

[shionoro]

Who said there's not as much bad blood between the left and the Biden camp? I've seen plenty of left refuse to vote for Biden or start criticizing him after he won. How many moderate/centrist Republicans voted for Biden?

I have answered this question already: There were more people switching from rep to dems than vice versa, which was the other way round with clinton and obama II.
What you see on social media does not matter here, the 'we lost due to bernie bros' story was exaggerated in 2016 and it just did not happen at all in 2020.

What was his campaign about? Unity, which is the bare minimum that any politician should advocate. He also went from attacking millennials and the left to trying to reach out to them.

Bernie didn't really know what Trump was about, otherwise he probably wouldn't have spent time trying to make concessions with Clinton.

Of course he would. That is his job. Clinton did not lose because she made concessions to Sanders. Sanders himself thought these concessions will give her a better chance to be elected.

 

[Sanity Check]

That's a weird way of saying "I don't have a fucking clue of what either of those policies are".

Trying to prove what I don't know (without citing specifics) is attempting to prove a negative last I checked.

Wasn't it trendy to cite that as a "logical fallacy".

 

[kkck]

Trying to prove what I don't know (without citing specifics) is attempting to prove a negative last I checked.

Wasn't it trendy to cite that as a "logical fallacy".

It's not. You simply haven't evidenced actually knowing what medicare for all or obamacare are.

 

[M3J]

Bush era tax cuts were a golden age of trickle down economics aka tax cuts for the rich.

Please tell me you don't think the trickle down theory is actually a good theory when that's done so much damage to the people.

I have answered this question already: There were more people switching from rep to dems than vice versa, which was the other way round with clinton and obama II.
What you see on social media does not matter here, the 'we lost due to bernie bros' story was exaggerated in 2016 and it just did not happen at all in 2020.



Of course he would. That is his job. Clinton did not lose because she made concessions to Sanders. Sanders himself thought these concessions will give her a better chance to be elected.

I wanted to ask for your source, but I don't even remember where I got mine from. Brookings seems to prove you correct.

I know. Bernie bros weren't at as much fault for losing as Clinton was for not campaigning more.

Possible theory that delaying his support for Clinton hurt Clinton as Bernie supporters did not like her. But then again, I saw a lot of Bernie supporters renounce Bernie or rage when Bernie endorsed Biden.

 

[kkck]

I will also add that you can prove a negative. just not with science.

 

[shionoro]

Possible theory that delaying his support for Clinton hurt Clinton as Bernie supporters did not like her. But then again, I saw a lot of Bernie supporters renounce Bernie or rage when Bernie endorsed Biden.

The point really is that an endorsement only really works when it comes from an organic place.
Sanders endorsing clinton was good, but sanders could only legitimately do it if she made some conessions to him (like biden did, too). Because then he had legitimate grounds to say 'look, she has something in store for you'.

Being 'endorsable' is a quality of a politician, too. Look at the GOP primary. Trump would not have had a chance if these people did what the democrats did against sanders. If Rubio or Cruz had called it quite quickly enough, Trump would not have won. But they didn't.

Biden was able to get the support of most of the other contenders. Sanders was not able to get a Warren endorsement (which would have mattered, had she dropped before super tuesday). These things are not just dependent on the other candidates, but on yourself.

And Biden is really good at that game. He started out with very little support, even by other centrists or the people who, by all means, should have been his friends (the obama sphere). He worked for these endorsements, and he was successful.
He banked on south carolina giving him a boost in the primary when most others would drop and he'd be the last moderate standing in sanders' way. Exactly that happened. That was the smarts of his campaign, not fool's luck.

 

[M3J]

I don't think Bernie was organically endorsing Clinton as he was Biden. According to people's facial expressions, they weren't really for Clinton, they just hated Trump enough to support her.

What do you mean? The GOP did try to screw Trump, he was just too popular to be affected by that much. The Democrats and the left are not the same, and not all Democrats think similarly the way the Republicans and the right do.

These things are dependant on other candidates as well, like Biden promising to do this and that whether or not he will carry it out.

 

[shionoro]

What I mean is that Ted Cruz, Rubio and Kasich could have banded together after they saw Trump was winning and ended his run, just like the opposition to sanders did.
Trump would not have had a chance in that case. But Rubio waited until after super tuesday and Kasich waited even longer.

In case of Biden, almost everybody who still had a campaign going (cept bloomberg and warren and obviously sanders, I dont count gabbard as having a real campaign) dropped after the south carolina primary.
Buttigieg, Yang, Harris, Steyer, Klobuchar, they all Endorsed Biden before super tuesday happened.

Only that prevented a brokered convention (and I guess team biden knew that).

That did not happen with Trump.

Biden, in a field of many more contestants, won more than 50% of the primary popular vote. Trump did not, Cruz,Rubio and Kasich together had more votes than him. They could absolutely have stopped Trump, had one of them been as smart as team Biden and created a situation in which one can easily endorse the other (Kamala dropped and endorsed Biden, probably to get onnto the VP shortlist. Buttigieg and Klobuchar were called by Obama after the south carolina primary and then endorsed biden. That was work, not luck. Cruz and Rubio were not that competent.)

 

[Sanity Check]

Joe Biden promises to cure cancer if elected President.

How long will this take?

 

[M3J]

What I mean is that Ted Cruz, Rubio and Kasich could have banded together after they saw Trump was winning and ended his run, just like the opposition to sanders did.
Trump would not have had a chance in that case. But Rubio waited until after super tuesday and Kasich waited even longer.

What makes you think that Trump would not have had a chance?

 

[kkck]

Trump basically steamrolled mainstream republicans back then. Had jeb, cruz, rubio banded together... it wouldn't have made a damn difference. Trump had already become the republican party by then.

 

[shionoro]

What makes you think that Trump would not have had a chance?

Trump basically steamrolled mainstream republicans back then. Had jeb, cruz, rubio banded together... it wouldn't have made a damn difference. Trump had already become the republican party by then.

We can go through the primary:

2016 Republican Party presidential primaries - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

2016 Republican Party presidential primaries - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Trump did gain traction in the early elections, but in Super Tuesday and between the super Tuesdays, he didnt even very decisively outpace Cruz. Had Kasich and Rubio fallen in line here and given Cruz their endorsement like Buttigieg, Klobuchar and so on did, the moderates would have consolidated behind Cruz. If Cruz had won super tuesday and some primaries after that decisively, the Trump hype would quickly have died down.

Trump was not very dominant in the primary. He was less dominant than Biden in his, even tho Biden was hardly a phenomenon. He would never have won had the republicans done what the democrats did before the first super tuesday.

Trump runs on hype. Losing super tuesday decisively (which would have happened, he already only won rather closely) would have ended his run.

 

[kkck]

We can go through the primary:

2016 Republican Party presidential primaries - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

2016 Republican Party presidential primaries - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Trump did gain traction in the early elections, but in Super Tuesday and between the super Tuesdays, he didnt even very decisively outpace Cruz. Had Kasich and Rubio fallen in line here and given Cruz their endorsement like Buttigieg, Klobuchar and so on did, the moderates would have consolidated behind Cruz. If Cruz had won super tuesday and some primaries after that decisively, the Trump hype would quickly have died down.

Trump was not very dominant in the primary. He was less dominant than Biden in his, even tho Biden was hardly a phenomenon. He would never have won had the republicans done what the democrats did before the first super tuesday.

Trump runs on hype. Losing super tuesday decisively (which would have happened, he already only won rather closely) would have ended his run.

The trump hype precedes the primaries by a decent bit... the only reason this was ignored is that way too many media outlets were focusing on fundraising capacity. but the actual polls had trump winning pretty bigly from the get go. republican voters simply wanted trump. And the politicians they specifically did not want (jeb, kasich, rubio...) banding together wouldn't have changed that. Also, trump had 82 delegates by february while the next candidate had 16 or 15... In super tuesday trump got almost half of all available delegates. In march his victory wasn't as overwhelming but he still won and had a substantial delegate lead... And you are vastly overstating the capability more mainstream republicans could have had to get votes against trump by joining together. During the election it was fucking ted cruz that was second most if not all of the time. A far right religious fanatic who is easily the most hated republican within the republican party. Cruz was never going to get support from the rest of the party to get rid of trump. For the republican party at the time getting behind cruz to get rid of trump would have been equivalent to trading pancreatic cancer for a bullet to your head.... I really can't stress enough how much curz's colleagues hate him... And republican voters were just not in the mood for jebs or rubios or kasichs...

 

[M3J]

From my recollection, the republicans did try to screw over Trump and did what they could to stop him, but he had too much momentum and popularity, and the attention from the press was helping him. I'm going by my memory of what happened, but Trump couldn't have been stopped by anything but himself.

 

[shionoro]

The trump hype precedes the primaries by a decent bit... the only reason this was ignored is that way too many media outlets were focusing on fundraising capacity. but the actual polls had trump winning pretty bigly from the get go. republican voters simply wanted trump. And the politicians they specifically did not want (jeb, kasich, rubio...) banding together wouldn't have changed that. Also, trump had 82 delegates by february while the next candidate had 16 or 15... In super tuesday trump got almost half of all available delegates. In march his victory wasn't as overwhelming but he still won and had a substantial delegate lead... And you are vastly overstating the capability more mainstream republicans could have had to get votes against trump by joining together. During the election it was fucking ted cruz that was second most if not all of the time. A far right religious fanatic who is easily the most hated republican within the republican party. Cruz was never going to get support from the rest of the party to get rid of trump. For the republican party at the time getting behind cruz to get rid of trump would have been equivalent to trading pancreatic cancer for a bullet to your head.... I really can't stress enough how much curz's colleagues hate him... And republican voters were just not in the mood for jebs or rubios or kasichs...

Which brings us back to my argument: Biden did amazing work by being a candidate everyone else could fall in line with. Cruz did not manage that. If he had managed that, he would have won.
As i said, Trump getting 'almost half' of the delegate is not really such an amazing feat. The moderate candidates got more than half. Most of the time, Trump managed to get about 30% of the vote and the people who did not vote him back then were not exactly his fans.
Trump was not even able to secure more than 50% of the popular vote in this primary in which he was hyped up to be a phenomenon. Biden did that.

And Cruz could probably have done that had the rest believably fell in line with him. Him not being able to do that because he has no good connections (like biden has) to the other contestants is a political shortcoming that biden does not have.

 

[xi0]

What I mean is that Ted Cruz, Rubio and Kasich could have banded together after they saw Trump was winning and ended his run, just like the opposition to sanders did.
Trump would not have had a chance in that case. But Rubio waited until after super tuesday and Kasich waited even longer.

And all three of those, with exception to maybe Kasich, would have had just as good of a chance being as damaging to this country as Trump was. All this scenario does is make Clinton's chances of election better, it doesn't reflect what the republican base wanted.

The biggest mistake liberals make is acting like the things Trump stands for (if you can pin them down in the first place) are somehow "new" or "worse" because they come from Trump. They're not, this is what the majority of Republicans are when they don't give a fuck about negative PR and have no one to hold them accountable.

 

[shionoro]

And all three of those, with exception to maybe Kasich, would have had just as good of a chance being as damaging to this country as Trump was. All this scenario does is make Clinton's chances of election better, it doesn't reflect what the republican base wanted.

The biggest mistake liberals make is acting like the things Trump stands for (if you can pin them down in the first place) are somehow "new" or "worse" because they come from Trump. They're not, this is what the majority of Republicans are when they don't give a fuck about negative PR and have no one to hold them accountable.

2016, in this very thread, people were pretty sure that Trump would lose against Clinton and was a gift for the democrats.

Predictions like these are rarely accurate without any stats to go by. Had sanders won against clinton or biden, people would have said his win was unavoidable because the democrat establishment is unelectable.
But sanders has lost, so they say he never had a chance.

Had trump lost, people would have kept saying he never had a chance. But Trump won, so people say his win was unavoidable.

My initial point was that Biden was able to do something that Cruz oder Rubio were not able to do, namely unify most contenders behind him before super tuesday and all of them soon after. That is a political accomplishment that is not a given.
Biden's campaign was actually really competent. They knew what they were doing while everyone mocked them.

All the what ifs do not really apply here. Had corona not happened, then Biden would have run a different kind of campaign. But Corona did happen, and Biden adjusted really well to that. While being mocked for being in a basement. While winning.

Biden is a smart guy. He is old, he is cringe, but he has some political skills that give him a format other even high level politicians do not have.

 

[kkck]

Which brings us back to my argument: Biden did amazing work by being a candidate everyone else could fall in line with. Cruz did not manage that. If he had managed that, he would have won.
As i said, Trump getting 'almost half' of the delegate is not really such an amazing feat. The moderate candidates got more than half. Most of the time, Trump managed to get about 30% of the vote and the people who did not vote him back then were not exactly his fans.
Trump was not even able to secure more than 50% of the popular vote in this primary in which he was hyped up to be a phenomenon. Biden did that.

And Cruz could probably have done that had the rest believably fell in line with him. Him not being able to do that because he has no good connections (like biden has) to the other contestants is a political shortcoming that biden does not have.

But... there was no scenario where cruz managed that. It's not an issue of campaign competence, it's the simple fact that republican party members hate ted cruz with a passion. Cruz built his entire career being a detestable asshole. If the main contenders during the race were trump and cruz then the republican establishment simply was not in the race at all, there wasn't a coalition they could have built if they banded together. Ted cruz is not a part of the republican establishment. He just barely looks the part on account of being a religious zealot but he has been hated by his own party for years and years. For the republican party this is basically the trolley problem if both lanes have the same number of people....

 

[shionoro]

But... there was no scenario where cruz managed that. It's not an issue of campaign competence, it's the simple fact that republican party members hate ted cruz with a passion. Cruz built his entire career being a detestable asshole. If the main contenders during the race were trump and cruz then the republican establishment simply was not in the race at all, there wasn't a coalition they could have built if they banded together. Ted cruz is not a part of the republican establishment. He just barely looks the part on account of being a religious zealot but he has been hated by his own party for years and years. For the republican party this is basically the trolley problem if both lanes have the same number of people....

The republicans fell in line with Trump. Had Cruz given his opponents a really good reason, they would have fallen in line with him.
But once again: It is part of political skill to not make everybody hate you.

Rubio DID endorse Cruz. Just far too late. It isn't like Rubio wanted Trump instead of cruz. It is about doing it earlier. And Rubio's voters mostly DID go to Cruz AFTER the endorsement. Had Rubio done that before super tuesday, Cruz would probably have won, at least if Kasich had followed suit and probably even without that. It would have meant a very decisive victory on super tuesday, killing trump's hype and at least leading to a brokered convention in which they would probably have tried to extinguish trump.