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Author Topic: New Politics Thread 2018  (Read 35488 times)
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Chocolate Shake Man
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« Reply #50 on: June 18, 2019, 05:13:23 AM »

 Ultimately free tuition would never be free and within 30 years the value of a public university education - both monetary and intrinsic - would be degraded.

  Nominating Bernie Sanders would be a gift to Donald Trump. Look elsewhere, please.


  


It is quite staggering how supporters of establishment Democrats are not just out of touch with reality, they believe the opposite of reality to be the truth. Let's not forget what the gift to Donald Trump was in 2016: ignoring the most comprehensive analysis of the polls that showed that Sanders had a better chance of beating Trump than Clinton, using nefarious tricks to undermine Sanders, and putting forth another neoliberal establishment politician. If there was an actual gift to Donald Trump, it was that.

Given that you entirely ignored the facts that I brought up in my previous post and just merely repeated what you said before, I will assume that you are uninterested in engaging with these topics.
« Last Edit: June 18, 2019, 06:11:08 AM by Chocolate Shake Man » Logged
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« Reply #51 on: June 18, 2019, 04:04:50 PM »

  Each of us constructs his own reality yet I am fairly certain that Sanders will never be elected President or nominated for President.

  I'm not really a supporter of establishment Democrats, just a relatively objective observer.

  The interesting thing was that in 2016 both parties were nearly usurped by candidates from outside the party. It fascinated me that the Republicans fell and the Democrats held. Then again, the GOP didn't invest in a coronation or construct a wall of super delegates (i.e. party hacks) to protect the "inevitable" favorite. If they hadn't, we may have seen an open convention.

 The context is different in 2020 - it's a crowded field. Bernie, 78 this year, is one of many.


 BTW - Supporting allowing convicted felons to vote WHILE IN PRISON is a losing issue. One of several embraced by Bernie Sanders.


 Vote for BILL WELD in 2020
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Chocolate Shake Man
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« Reply #52 on: June 18, 2019, 05:55:01 PM »

 Each of us constructs his own reality yet I am fairly certain that Sanders will never be elected President or nominated for President.

  I'm not really a supporter of establishment Democrats, just a relatively objective observer.

  The interesting thing was that in 2016 both parties were nearly usurped by candidates from outside the party. It fascinated me that the Republicans fell and the Democrats held. Then again, the GOP didn't invest in a coronation or construct a wall of super delegates (i.e. party hacks) to protect the "inevitable" favorite. If they hadn't, we may have seen an open convention.

 The context is different in 2020 - it's a crowded field. Bernie, 78 this year, is one of many.


 BTW - Supporting allowing convicted felons to vote WHILE IN PRISON is a losing issue. One of several embraced by Bernie Sanders.


 Vote for BILL WELD in 2020

I should re-state that I don't know for sure myself if Sanders will ever be elected President or nominated for President because his obstacle - the Democratic neoliberal establishment, has done and is continuing to do everything possible to thwart his chances. However, the reason why Sanders wouldn't be nominated nor elected has nothing to do with the population, as Sanders is an enormously popular political candidate whose views generally align with the views of the majority of Americans.

The fact that you pick out one of the issues where he does not align with the population is not particularly convincing. Most polls show that the American population has been far to the left of all US presidents for decades and generally disagree with most of the policies that emanate from the White House. Take, for example, health care. While the numbers do vary, poll after poll for decades now have shown the majority of the US population to be in favour of a single-payer healthcare system, which is remarkable since no US president has ever advocated such a position. Now healthcare is a much more significant topic for people than whether or not prisoners get to vote - healthcare is something that deeply affects people, often on a day-to-day basis. I hardly think this one issue would tank Bernie, when one considers that Presidents get elected all the time on platforms that the majority of Americans disagree with.
« Last Edit: June 18, 2019, 06:30:38 PM by Chocolate Shake Man » Logged
Chocolate Shake Man
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« Reply #53 on: June 19, 2019, 06:30:52 AM »

There's a great article just published a couple of days ago in New York magazine. I will paste below but here are a few highlights:

Some Democratic presidential candidates say that America’s economic system is badly broken and in need of sweeping, structural change. Others say that the existing order is fundamentally sound, even if it could use a few modest renovations. The former are widely portrayed as ideologues or extremists, the latter as moderates.

And it’s certainly true that Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren are ideologically “extreme,” if our baseline is the median member of Congress or the median policy agenda pursued by recent American presidents. But it’s not clear why these would be the appropriate metrics.

In 2011, Michael Norton of Harvard Business School and Dan Ariely of Duke University published a study on Americans’ views of how wealth was distributed in their society, and how they felt it should be distributed. They found that, in the average American’s ideal world, the richest 20 percent would own 32 percent of national wealth. In reality, the top quintile owned 84 percent as of 2011. And that share has grown in the intervening years. Today, the one percent alone commands roughly 40 percent of all America’s wealth.

Given all this, any politician who insists that American capitalism is “already great” is clearly a far-right extremist whose indifference to inequality puts him or her wildly out of step with ordinary people. But is it the case that Warren and Sanders would take things too far in the other direction?

Not remotely. I do not have the relevant data or skills to project precisely how the full implementation of either candidate’s agenda would influence America’s wealth distribution. But neither candidate is calling for a series of reforms that would place the United States far outside the Western European norm. In fact, both Warren and Sanders have cribbed their signature policies from European nations. As the 2018 World Inequality Report demonstrated, policy choices do matter — and income inequality is much lower in Western Europe than it is in the U.S.

http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/06/the-fed-just-released-a-damning-indictment-of-capitalism.html
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Chocolate Shake Man
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« Reply #54 on: July 03, 2019, 10:55:10 AM »

Latest polls of Democrats and Democrat-leaning independents place the top two candidates as Biden (29%) and Sanders (23%). It is almost as if history is literally repeating itself.

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/harris-scores-debate-performance-electability-biden-front/story?id=64092090&cid=social_twitter_abcn
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« Reply #55 on: July 03, 2019, 12:06:20 PM »

I normally don't get involved in these discussions, and will likely keep it that way for the most part, but I wanted to respond to a political post made in another thread (seemed more apt to respond to it here):

A crying shame that the national non-political birthday party is being hijacked by that detestable embarrassment to human dignity for his own political glorification. Imagine the backlash if it were Obama promising parades tanks and aircraft...

Sad to witness, but the United States of America is going down rapidly these days. And I used to be one of few to highlight the positives of the USA in conversations with friends. Quite sad, but relieved to no longer be that guy.

As someone who lives in the United States, I can say that the United States portrayed by the news and the United States I live in are two very different places. I'm not disputing the many problems that occur here, but man, mostly everywhere you go in this country you will be greeted with genuine hospitality and warmth. This is a huge country with so many different types of people: this is a land of artists, mechanics, inventors, dreamers, farmers, blue-collar workers. We have gone from a country who's people mostly detested gays and people of color to a country who openly votes for an African American president, who more and more support gay rights.

Racism still happens here, anti-gay movements still exist here. But look at how far this country has come since the 1960s! People can say we are "rapidly" going downhill, but I'd argue we are on a long and arduous journey UPHILL. Yes, sometimes there are slumps, sometimes we step back before we take a major stride forward. You can claim because Trump was elected president that that is a sign that this country is full of racist nationalists but, it's funny: I recently had a conversation with a very liberal college professor, he held no punches as to the problems with Hillary Clinton (he voted for her, but jeesh did he know nearly every lie and awful thing that woman (and her husband) did and he detested her for it). Point being: many hardcore liberals themselves weren't happy that they had to vote for her...if many liberals weren't happy with her then how many moderates were going to vote for her, or even want her as president? I guarantee that many weren't happy for their vote for Trump...I guarantee it because I know many people who did exactly this. It was the lesser of two evils (edit: lesser of two evils from whatever point of view you take, not that Trump was solely the lesser of two evils). It's not that every person who cast a ballot for Trump was out to revert this nation to pre-civil war nationalism (or whatever people think).

This is the country that fought for the right for freedom for EVERYONE. We have had some major problems before, but the core of this country and what it stood for has always broken through. Despite some setbacks, despite some very negative things done by people in power (on both sides) over the decades and centuries, this country is still full of beautiful and friendly people.

I think that people need to be aware of the good that is still firmly threaded into the fabric of this nation. It's not all doom and gloom here, despite what is claimed. Go to anytown USA and see what I mean.
« Last Edit: July 03, 2019, 01:22:12 PM by rab2591 » Logged

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« Reply #56 on: July 03, 2019, 12:16:09 PM »

Great post, rab2591.
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« Reply #57 on: July 03, 2019, 12:44:30 PM »

I normally don't get involved in these discussions, and will likely keep it that way for the most part, but I wanted to respond to a political post made in another thread (seemed more apt to respond to it here):

A crying shame that the national non-political birthday party is being hijacked by that detestable embarrassment to human dignity for his own political glorification. Imagine the backlash if it were Obama promising parades tanks and aircraft...

Sad to witness, but the United States of America is going down rapidly these days. And I used to be one of few to highlight the positives of the USA in conversations with friends. Quite sad, but relieved to no longer be that guy.

As someone who lives in the United States, I can say that the United States portrayed by the news and the United States I live in are two very different places. I'm not disputing the many problems that occur here, but man, mostly everywhere you go in this country you will be greeted with genuine hospitality and warmth. This is a huge country with so many different types of people: this is a land of artists, mechanics, inventors, dreamers, farmers, blue-collar workers. We have gone from a country who's people mostly detested gays and people of color to a country who openly votes for an African American president, who more and more support gay rights.

Racism still happens here, anti-gay movements still exist here. But look at how far this country has come since the 1960s! People can say we are "rapidly" going downhill, but I'd argue we are on a long and arduous journey UPHILL. Yes, sometimes there are slumps, sometimes we step back before we take a major stride forward. You can claim because Trump was elected president that that is a sign that this country is full of racist nationalists but, it's funny: I recently had a conversation with a very liberal college professor, he held no punches as to the problems with Hillary Clinton (he voted for her, but jeesh did he know nearly every lie and awful thing that woman (and her husband) did and he detested her for it). Point being: many hardcore liberals themselves weren't happy that they had to vote for her...if many liberals weren't happy with her then how many moderates were going to vote for her, or even want her as president? I guarantee that many weren't happy for their vote for Trump...I guarantee it because I know many people who did exactly this. It was the lesser of two evils. It's not that every person who cast a ballot for Trump was out to revert this nation to pre-civil war nationalism (or whatever people think).

This is the country that fought for the right for freedom for EVERYONE. We have had some major problems before, but the core of this country and what it stood for has always broken through. Despite some setbacks, despite some very negative things done by people in power (on both sides) over the decades and centuries, this country is still full of beautiful and friendly people.

I think that people need to be aware of the good that is still firmly threaded into the fabric of this nation. It's not all doom and gloom here, despite what is claimed. Go to anytown USA and see what I mean.

I agree with so much of this.

I would also add that Trump is a bit of a scapegoat - yes, he is truly awful but it's not like he came out of the blue. He represents beliefs and ideas that have been around for a very long time.

But from both personal experience and from my reading of the polls, my thoughts are that the beliefs and values of the majority of Americans are simply not aligned with Trump nor with the Clintons. And that's a good thing.
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