Just saw some footage of a Christian nationalist group planning to take over state legislature races and some city/county races. This was truly some scary shit. Christian nazis? Bernie is pretty much a pendulum swing left after Trumps hard right. That's the main reason McConnell is packing the courts: the Republicans are outnumbered in the electorate, and this ensures some level of survival and a policy buffer. I think universal healthcare is a tricky, nuanced subject and it is being described as though it's not, just like Brexit. Its not binary, and there are some forms of it that will unleash our economy and culture and some forms of it that will look like 3rd world shithole clinics. My fundamental issue is at this point we are not getting what we pay for in terms of healthcare. The next president is the one who convinces they benefit labor, as there is no labor party. It might be just that simple. Right now the bulk of the voting labor force is for Bernie. He animates the electorate in the way that Obama did. None of the other candidates right now do that. I keep waiting for some dark horse Democrat to emerge and take the lead, but there simply isnt one. Lastly, the trump supporters simply dont operate on logic. They don't care. Its like being anti vax or a flat earther. The truth and evidence simply do not matter. In most respects, this president is as close as we will get to a personality cult. That's the only way I can understand the lack of accountability.
Why do you want a dark horse candidate if hes just like Obama? I think people are vastly over-estimating how popular and electable Bernie Sanders is. He's own party are on the verge of fucking him over again because he doesnt even have universal appeal with Democrats, and he's supposed to be the contender in a national election? He'll be 79 on Election Day, had a heart attack two months ago, and his ideas are absolutely insane. How is he even being considered a serious candidate? Thats mind-boggling.
You can actually see him angling for Trumps strategy. He’s going the complete outsider thing. Hoping to hit the same nerve of people that just wanted to throw a wrench into the political system because they were so tired of business as usual. Funny thing is Trump for all his bluster and demagogy is fairly moderate in terms of his position on the spectrum of the right. He’s not a conservative absolutist like Ted Cruz. Bernie and AOC are the Mirror version on the left and want to reshape the party like The Tea Party tried.
Trump can win if he highlights how a robust economy and continued reduction in wasteful spending will benefit them, I think. You're right about the noisy ones, the wacko far right Christian Nazis. But, that's true about the wacko far left or the wacko whatevers. None of them operate on logic. Not everyone who voted for Hillary is a wacko socialist who values the life of trees over people, and not everyone who voted for Trump is a wacko Bible thumper who hates black people. I didn't vote for Trump in the last election, but plenty of people did, because there wasn't another option for someone who they think can get rid of wasteful spending (https://www.openthebooks.com/wall-street-journal-100-examples-of-taxpayer-abuse/), lower the tax impact, strengthen our border security, improve trading, and so on. So, most people who hold those things as important are going to vote for Trump, whether or not they wear a red MAGA hat.
I dont want a dark horse candidate like Obama. Two separate points. A dark horse candidate that could actually win, coming in late in the race when the Trump defamation machine had focused on a target. Bloomberg but actually electable. Bernie is the front runner because he is animating his electorate. Simple as that. His electorate is small, but vocal. The people excited about Warren or Biden, as compared to Bernie, are tiny. That's the comparison to Obama: he animated the electorate in ways no other candidate did (2008 version). Biden might be doing the work, but no one is excited to vote for him. Is Bernie electable? Sure, we elected Trump. Will he be a good president? No, he has no political capital to work with, aside from an animated base. Will he single handedly impose socialism? Not possible, any more than Palm Beach Palpatine imposed fascism. I want to distinguish between a voter and someone who goes to his rallies. Let's hope a voter makes some informed decisions, no issue with a Trump voter. You believed him, and that's that. The supporters are terrifying in that they hold him accountable for nothing, and that's simply not how our system is intended to function. The folks who consider trump a brand, and are not at all concerned with his lies, theft and corruption scare me, because they simply dont abide by logic. I mean, Trump for vets except hes done awful shit to vets. Trump for Jesus, except you know...his whole family issue. Trump for anti corruption except for the federal government paying millions to put him up in hotels. On and on. The dude robbed a children's cancer charity so egregiously he cant open a charity in NY, and not one of the MAGA crowd is like, hey what actually happened there?
No I know, I meant that if Bernie was as appealing as Obama, why the desire for another person to jump in? But I think you answered the question anyway. So far on the tracker(s) for the NH primary, Amy Klobuchar is in first, which is odd. That wont last, but not the person I expected to have an early lead.
Let’s hope it doesn’t last. The Democratic voters are sending a bad message if that’s what they see as quality leadership.
I fail to see why it's a bad thing for poor people to vote in their self interest. Considering how many poor people vote decidedly against their own interests, this is actually refreshing to hear. I am not sure how making rich people and huge corporations pay their taxes just like the rest of us to pay for universal healthcare equates to hating rich people. If the location in your profile is up to date, Texas refused to accept Medicare/Medicaid expansion under Obamacare. This is potentially hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars in Federal money. I will grant you that wait times are probably longer and finding doctors who accept Medicare/Medicaid is more limited, but this is generally due to the difficulty of billing services to the government. The goal with universal healthcare is that it would be designed to standardize billing practices so these types of issues are much more limited. This reduces administrative costs and essentially cuts out the middleman who inflate the cost of care and pharmaceuticals to line their own pockets. I would much rather be taxed at a higher amount if it meant that I didn't have to pay for insurance, keep track of co-pays, stress out over deductibles, out of pocket maximums, and wondering if my doctor was going to be in my network after my job invariably switches insurance carriers again so they can save a few bucks. This is especially stressful for me personally because my daughter requires special services, which means specialized therapists and care. If I switch health insurance, I potentially have to choose between my daughter losing access to those doctors and the progress she's made, or I get fisted by out of network out of pocket expenses. That's a really fucking awesome choice to have to make and I can totally see why people want to continue using this inhumane and fucked up healthcare system. The only reason why people go into medical debt is because they can't afford higher priced insurance that others that are better off financially can afford. The notion that something that literally keeps you and your family alive and healthy should sit behind a paywall is as morally bankrupt as the sociopaths running these insurance companies to begin with. Nobody asks to develop cancer, or have a crippling accident that prevents them from working. Treating these people so they can return to being productive members of society is a far greater net positive to society than just stepping over their bodies with 30 pieces of silver in your pocket. Also, have you considered that employer-provided health plans keep a great deal of people working in shitty jobs that they hate for barely enough money to make ends meet because their barebones health insurance is better than having no health insurance at all? The idea that we, the people who make these businesses money, are essentially being chained to these jobs because we're afraid of an accident or sickness making our families homeless is yet another way in which businesses are fucking the labor market in the ass. Not surprisingly, a lot of these big tech companies are forcing people either to work as a 1099 or not at all, because they don't want to pay for their employee's healthcare. This was just midnight voting from like 12 people. Real results will start coming when the polls close at 7 PM EST.
I definitely agree that Trump is corrupt, but man, if you're going to act like he invented this shit, or that he's the first one to get away with it you're just as delusional as the people you're insulting. You do remember who the democrat nominee was last time around, right? I don't recall her supporters demanding accountability for anything. Nope, instead they were busy coming up with terms like 'buttery males' to dismiss it entirely. I'm not bringing that up because I want a rehash of Hillary discussions, I'm just using it as an example. Corruption is not a partisan issue, or at least it shouldn't be. Washington's ability to frame it as such is why they continue to get away with it. For fuck's sake, they basically determined Menendez was guilty, but dropped all charges anyway, and he got nothing more than a finger wagging letter from the ethics committee. And what did the democrat voters do? The fucking reelected him. He even had a primary challenger who got decisively crushed. It's unreal. You think democrats hold their politicians accountable in some way that definitively distinguishes them from republicans? They don't. Oh, unless it's a sexual scandal. They're all over that shit. With complete disregard for the circumstances, details, or anything at all resembling due process, but hey, they are on top of it. I really hate this characterization. I don't support public healthcare because I want a free hand out, I support it because it works better. I've posted a lot of sources in this thread that show how terribly we compare to the rest of the first world. We spend the most and get some of the worst results. We're so fucking bad that organizations like the WHO often rank countries still considered to be part of the developing world ahead of us in terms of the quality of care that is delivered to their citizens. I have never seen a reputable source that gathered data, or conducted a study, and determined that our private healthcare outperforms the public systems of other first world nations. It's for good reason that we are the only country that does not have a public system. It's because it's a fucking failure that nobody else in the world wants. Medicare only for those who want it is a terrible idea to me. I could see the republicans actually letting the democrats try to implement that simply because they know it would fail, and then they can claim they've been right all along. Medicare 'for those who want it' is essentially creating a system where the only people that are going to willingly buy in are going to be those who can't get insurance anywhere else. There would be no risk pool to spread around the cost. It would be a total mess that would eventually be repealed, or gutted entirely. It would just be a question of when. The only reason you see some politicians supporting this stupid idea is so that they can go up to the podium and tell voters they can just have whatever they want. There are some ways public and private systems can be balanced, but this isn't one of them.
One day you will read the word "Trump" and not respond with "...but Hillary..." One fine day. The issue isn't just corruption (which to be fair, Trump is uniquely positioned to be corrupt given he's not released his tax returns, and has essentially directed the Secret Service to fill his hotel, and has his son in law bartering real-estate deals under the guise of diplomacy...few other politicians have such a set of business ventures to abuse), it's the lack of accountability. Trump's assertion that he could shoot someone on 5th avenue and wouldn't get touched is true. It's also not how America is supposed to be run. Hillary sat for hours being questioned for Benghazi, thanks to my then-representative Trey Gowdy, with no outcome. Same with a series of FBI investigations into her emails. The key point is that these proceedings HAPPENED. They were allowed to go to the full extent of the law, in public, in full transparency with no threat of retaliation or intimidation. When appropriate, they had witnesses. If/when a politician admits to an illegal act on camera, they face consequences. The people who are supposed to do that are failing to do so with Trump, and it's damaging beyond his personality cult.
Agreed, this is a real dick comment. Let me guess, you have a non-shitty job with decent insurance? I HATE that shitty "Fuck you, I got mine, and I'm pulling up the ladder behind me!" attitude. I've been saying the same thing for years, and everyone ignores me: THEY ARE CHARGING TOO GODDAM MUCH FOR MEDICAL CARE. Seriously, they are just making up their prices as they go along. Lower the prices, and healthcare won't be as big of an issue.
It seems rather damning that Biden isn't even trying. Nobody thinks Buttigeig is going to win NH, but he's still campaigning there.
If you're going to cite Hillary Clinton as someone who got held accountable to the full extent of the law then you're exactly same as those Trump supporters you think are such morons. Saying because she got investigated for the e-mail scandal and didn't get nailed to the wall so therefore everything was on the level is like a Trump supporter saying he was completely innocent of any wrongdoing in the Ukraine scandal because the senate acquitted him. The FBI found plenty of instances of wrong doing. Did they pursue anything because of it? Of course not. Did she obstruct justice when she destroyed a huge chunk of the evidence? I mean, I guess I can't quite prove that, but who the fuck else would have went through that much trouble to bury all of it? Did anything come of this? Fuck no. Was it a completely fair, and impartial investigation? Is that why her husband had a clandestine meeting with the current AG? You're calling that shit full transparency. Dude... And how did Hillary supporters react to all of her bullshit(that went well beyond the email scandal)? Buttery males! Conspiracy theory! Russia! It could be laid out in plain language, said by Hillary herself in a leak, and they would find some goddamn reason it meant something totally different than what it did. As for these matters being looked into, it's not as if Trump doesn't get investigated as well. Not for everything of course, but then none of them really do. I don't want to beat the Hillary horse to death any further. If you think she was mostly honest, and that most of the democrat politicians aren't corrupt I don't really know what to do other than just shake my head. Believe me, I have no delusions that I can convince people of this. Like I said when giving an example beyond Hillary, the voters knew (or should have known) Menendez was guilty of at least a significant chunk of the malfeasance he was accused of, and they just reelected him anyway. It's a fucking joke. The solution to getting rid of these terrible representatives is pretty easy. Stop voting for them. But they won't. If it's the other team they're guilty no matter how ludicrous the accusation, and if it's their team it's a never ending loop of rationalizations and dismissals. Your post is a perfect example of how this does not only apply to Trump supporters.
Agreed. The wife and I watch 60 Minutes and they've done several segments on how the *same exact drug* in Canada costs 1/10 of what the manufacture charges here. We disagree here. My wife and I have made smart financial decisions and can afford "better" healthcare than some people. I'm not saying they shouldn't have coverage but that we can pay extra to have better coverage and that's what I'd prefer. In the same way poor people have terrible car insurance; high deductibles, lousy customer service etc. (Obviously I'm not comparing peoples lives to their car insurance but you get the idea)
FTFY. Might wanna check your keyboard connection. The real shocking news, however, is that Michael Bennet is out. Take some time to process this, it’s okay.
I had completely forgotten that Bennet was still in the race. I was never going to vote for Yang but his following was loyal as fuck, I’m interested to see who they choose to rally behind.