Andrew Yang Drops Out of Presidential Race (washingtonpost.com) 329
Andrew Yang, tech entrepreneur and founder of Venture for America, will end his campaign for president after a disappointing showing in the New Hampshire primary. The Washington Post reports: "I am a numbers guy," Yang said in an interview before addressing supporters at Manchester's Puritan Backroom. "In most of these [upcoming] states, I'm not going to be at a threshold where I get delegates, which makes sticking around not necessarily helpful or productive in terms of furthering the goals of this campaign. If I become persuaded that there's a particular candidate that gives us a superior chance of beating Donald Trump, and I think it's important to make that opinion known, then I would consider it for sure," Yang said. He also said he would be open to becoming another candidate's running mate or joining a presidential Cabinet.
In his stump speech, Yang warned of the societal and economic changes automation would continue to bring to the United States. He proposed countering it by implementing universal basic income in the form of a $1,000-a-month "Freedom Dividend" for U.S. citizens. His sometimes bleak message on the campaign trail was contrasted with his upbeat, irreverent style of campaigning: Yang once crowd-surfed at a candidate forum and sometimes challenged other celebrities to pickup basketball games. He half-danced onto just about every stage to the '90s Mark Morrison R&B hit "Return of the Mack" and spawned a loyal following of supporters who dubbed themselves the "Yang Gang." They often showed up at his events wearing trademark "math" hats, a nod both to his self-described emphasis on facts and research and to the geek culture that surrounded his candidacy. "This is the nerdiest campaign in history," Yang told The Washington Post last year. Yang was also the first presidential candidate to use campaign funds for a pilot program meant to resemble his universal basic income proposal. "He told CNN on Monday that the concept of a freedom dividend was 'not going anywhere,' and emphasized on Tuesday that he had forced a new idea into Democratic politics," reports The Washington Post. "He made that point with math."
"Now, 66 percent of Democrats support a universal basic income," Yang said. "It's got 72 percent of young people, aged 18 to 34."
In his stump speech, Yang warned of the societal and economic changes automation would continue to bring to the United States. He proposed countering it by implementing universal basic income in the form of a $1,000-a-month "Freedom Dividend" for U.S. citizens. His sometimes bleak message on the campaign trail was contrasted with his upbeat, irreverent style of campaigning: Yang once crowd-surfed at a candidate forum and sometimes challenged other celebrities to pickup basketball games. He half-danced onto just about every stage to the '90s Mark Morrison R&B hit "Return of the Mack" and spawned a loyal following of supporters who dubbed themselves the "Yang Gang." They often showed up at his events wearing trademark "math" hats, a nod both to his self-described emphasis on facts and research and to the geek culture that surrounded his candidacy. "This is the nerdiest campaign in history," Yang told The Washington Post last year. Yang was also the first presidential candidate to use campaign funds for a pilot program meant to resemble his universal basic income proposal. "He told CNN on Monday that the concept of a freedom dividend was 'not going anywhere,' and emphasized on Tuesday that he had forced a new idea into Democratic politics," reports The Washington Post. "He made that point with math."
"Now, 66 percent of Democrats support a universal basic income," Yang said. "It's got 72 percent of young people, aged 18 to 34."
We need UBI (Score:5, Insightful)
Once we have a strong social foundation in place then comes UBI. We need that or the rent seekers will just buy up everything and suck it right back out of us.
First things first (Score:3)
Before you can even start in with any of those plans, you need to fix the entire government first. The federal government can just *barely* run the VA hospital system. Military spending is out of control. There are no financial controls to speak of on any executive branch agency to speak of. If a private business were run like most governmental agencies the CFO would be in prison. Institute GAAP and regular external audits, get the bureaucracy under control, THEN you can start talking about instituting enor
Re: First things first (Score:2)
Indeed! Slash the military budget by 50-75%, ban health insurance companies, slash drug company profits by 50-75%, then MAYBE you would have a start to some of these universal programs. Who is going to pay for them?!? Not the 1% because they never do, it will be the middle and upper class and then they will be fucked even more. They already pay nearly all of the taxes. Maybe itâ(TM)s time to start taxing owning capital. Any entity (business or person) that owns or leases over 10 million in capit
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https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/RS22897.pdf [fas.org] (PDF) Congressional Research Service report on the VA budget from 1940 through 2012. The tables start on page 7, and there is a graph on page 8, in case anyone is too busy to actually read the report.
Ok, but that was 2012. What since then? The VA office of budget has detailed files here [va.gov] going back to 2008 if you want the full picture. If you just want the highlight reel: Trump's 2018 budget gives V [federalnewsnetwork.com]
We need an energy policy (Re:We need UBI) (Score:5, Insightful)
We need to get off fossil fuels, for environmental reasons yes but also for political & economic reasons (we can't keep fraking, we're destroying our groundwater and that stuff is getting scarce).
What do you propose as an alternative? I liked Yang because he did the math and saw that without hydroelectric and nuclear power we will not get off of fossil fuels. We have people like Bernie and Warren that want to close all the nuclear power plants and tear down all the dams. If you want to see an economic and environmental disaster then getting rid of nuclear and hydro power would do that.
I did see Warren concede that we should keep existing nuclear power plants open and this simply destroys her argument against nuclear power. If nuclear power is not safe then we should be closing them all down as soon as possible. If there is a problem with the disposal of the radioactive waste then the longer they run the more waste gets produced. If this is a matter of solar and wind being cheaper than nuclear power then we should close them down for cost reasons alone.
Yang didn't buy into this bullshit on the "Green New Deal" which called for abandoning nuclear and hydro power, and that's one big reason I liked him in the race. With him gone who is left to bring sense to this debate on national energy policy? It looks like "Mayor Pete" might be supportive.
I'm seeing a lot of Democrats running that still think gun control is a good idea, it is not. Voters aren't screaming for gun control as most are simply neutral on it, the rest is either a very small (if perhaps quite vocal) minority or pro-RKBA. This is just a losing policy. Also a loser is abortion, and this was demonstrated in a recent rally Mayor Pete held where he was asked about where pro-life Democrats fit in the party.
The Democrats would be doing far better right now if they backed off on the loser issues and actually did what they said we should do, that is "listen to the science". Science tells us how to get off fossil fuels but they are not listening to the ecologists, economists, physicists, meteorologists, geologists, and so on. All they seem to listen to are the "climate scientists" which is just a bunch of people that self selected into thinking on one problem with one solution. That's not listening to the science if the outcome is predetermined and then going out to look for evidence to support it.
This is even assuming that things are as bad as they are claimed. Right now the environment is very clean, and the USA has been lowering it's CO2 output for years. This will not continue with the policies from many of the Democrats running for POTUS now.
I saw polling that Yang could win against Trump in the general election, with far better chances than all the others running right now. The Democrat party though is increasingly being run by socialists, and that doesn't sell well with the general public.
Re: We need an energy policy (Re:We need UBI) (Score:2)
Re:We need UBI (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, and we also have a record number of people on food stamps; the Job Quality Index has been sliding for over a decade; half the population can't afford a $500 emergency; 80 million people are uninsured or under-insured; real wages have been stagnant for decades, while costs have gone WAY UP for education, child care, health care, and housing.
Ironically, although a majority say "the economy is good"; almost as many people also say "the economy isn't working well for me."
Trump's fixing the food stamp problem (Score:2, Interesting)
One of the challenges I have with folks is that the ideas they've picked up from our Right wing, Establishment media are so wrong that it takes a lot of unpack them. You've got to spend a good half hour 45 minutes just debunking stuff they're wrong abou
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Re: We need UBI (Score:2)
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That's too bad, I had hopes for Yang (Score:5, Interesting)
I liked what Yang brought to the debate. I believe his idea of a universal basic income is just a fantasy but he at least had some basic understandings on how the world works that the professional politicians, university professors, and lawyers, that he ran against did not understand.
He's young enough that we could see him again.
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I think he focused on discussing a few specific points too much (his autistic son, robots, UBI) while the rest of his platform was pretty solid and reasonable... though 'solid and reasonable' isn't really the kind of thing that gets people riled up and eyes on you. I'm betting if he sticks at it, he can land a government position and climb into the political spotlight again. As long as he doesn't talk about UBI too much. That thing is like a political lead balloon, whether or not you're in favor of it or no
Re:That's too bad, I had hopes for Yang (Score:5, Interesting)
I think Yang is a smart guy, and I think he understands enough about both math and politics that he knew that his chance at the nomination was about a snowball's chance in Hell. But he ran to draw attention to UBI, to automation and AI, to a green economy requiring nuclear, and a few other things. And maybe he ran to get a hand up from whoever becomes the nominee, possibly to step into a cabinet position. So while I also like Yang, I suspect he's about where he expected to be at this point, if not a little better off. I'd like to see him the cabinet, and continue to see him in the future.
Styer (sp?) is out as well (Score:2)
Hallelujah... (Score:2)
I would kill for a Bernie/Warren ticket (Score:2)
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We''d be better off spending the money on education, obviously.
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* Current SS recipients and government pensioners don't get it
Why do people have a massive problem understanding the U part of UBI. If it's not universal then it's not UBI and you're therefore talking about something else.
Re:I did the math and UBI is surprisingly not bad (Score:4)
Google says we're at 290m adults. That times 12 months in a year times $1000 per month for UBI comes out to 3,480,000,000,000, or $3.48 trillion per year. I don't think that's manageable with the current state of our economy. Even if we generously exclude everything you said and guesstimate that we'd only have to pay a third of that, that's still over a trillion per year.
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You're off by a factor of ten on cost. It would take $2,400,000,000,000/year (2.4 Trillion) to give 200,000,000 (200 Million) people $12,000/year.
Idiots, the lot of you! (Score:2)
Nobody saw T coming either (Score:2)
There are a LOT of people suffering from PAINFUL undiagnosed medical conditions that are just waiting till they can finally see a doctor without going bankrupt or giving up their dreams. This includes many poor T voters who developed problems over the past few years.
Just like a lot of people quietly voted DT in '16, I expect they will quietly vote BS in '20. Every broke republican with a toothache is a closet Bernie supporter.
I don't think they can get away with blatantly rejecting Sanders a second time, an
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Ahhh... huh? What's your reasoning there?
Waiting for Yang 2.0 (Score:2)
Bad at numbers (Score:2)
"I am a numbers guy," Yang said in an interview
Really? Because you effed up on the math for your $1,000/mo FREEEEEEEEDOM Dividend. No way your 5-10% VAT is going to come even CLOSE to paying for that.
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So let me get this straight Yang's VAT tax has zero chance of paying for his 'Freedom Dividend' (dumbest name ever) and your plan is to to cut bureaucracy, cut waste, end wars AND stop paying for a military, things that every single administration in forever has been unable and/or unwilling to do?
(in best Moran Freeman voice): Good luck.....
Re:Bad at numbers (Score:4)
UBI was a shortsighted idea anyway (Score:4, Interesting)
UBI will only be a thing if there is ever a time that so much is automated that there are just not enough jobs by a large margin and decent standard of living is cheap to maintain, and it wont really be in the form Yang is proposing.
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It's 4 trillion dollars invented out of thin air every year
Wrong, it isn't invented out of thin air, it is simply a redistribution of money. You're moving money from a generally fairly inactive part of the economy to a very active part of the economy (local consumer spending by working and lower middle class people generally does much more than the foreign investments of the upper class people). See also the concept of the diminishing marginal utility of money. Redistribution (to a certain extent) increases total utility with the same amount of money.
The people and companies best positioned to take over that new money will just get even richer.
Actually, the
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Sure!
There are many variants of UBI of course. The most sensible one is more or less neutral. UBI isn't the same as taking the existing system as-is and slapping on an extra $10,000 per person.
A good example is for instance a UBI of some amount (e.g, $15,000) which gets given to everyone regardless. This is combined with a higher flat tax rate also applied to everyone. For people on low income, their net goes up. For people on high income their net goes down. For some people in the middle, they see no net c
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Someone who's not even running has the best chance of unseating Trump? Unlikely.
Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the average American voter. God help us all.
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Well, Kolbushar came in third. If she's not running, she's doing extremely well.
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Hypocrite. [slashdot.org]
Re: Its going to come to Bernie Sanders (Score:5, Insightful)
However, your generalization of US voters is something that should be examined. Generalizing voters this way undermines the credibility of the electorate as a whole. This is a problem because one of the fundamental assumptions of democracy is that, in aggregate, people are reasonably intelligent and well-intentioned. If people can't trust in the intelligence and good intent of the electorate, the principle of majority rule and any systems that rely on it are called into question. While the US isn't a direct democracy, many of our institutions are heavily based on democratic principles. Generalizing US voters as idiots undermines the validity of a principle many of our institutions are based on. Now, maybe you think those institutions should be called into question. But is that really what you were hoping to accomplish, and it is really what you believe? Or were you just taking a pot shot at US voters being idiots because it makes you as an individual feel smarter to treat other people as stupid?
Re:Its going to come to Bernie Sanders (Score:4, Interesting)
and whomever the establishment things has the best chance of keeping Bernie from the nomination
Obviously, Mayor Pete. Biden was the anointed, but when he failed hard in Iowa, certain "irregularities" were necessary to move the crown to Pete mid-count. But one vote is not a pattern: lets see if, despite Bernie's obvious lead in the polling in NH, we get another "tie" in delegates.
The other theory is that it will be Bloomberg in a brokered convention, but that's so much more obvious.
That person won't be the one with the best chance of unseating President Trump.
IMO, Mayor Pete is the only one with a chance to beat Trump. Given the stellar economy and the boys coming home from war, only Mr Rogers can beat Trump, and Pete is the only one who (perhaps with some coaching) could respond to every-increasing vitriol from Trump with ever-increasing niceness. I don't see any other strategy that could possibly shift independent voters besides charm.
Remember, most Americans have already locked in their opinions of Trump, the only people in play are those who don't care about politics. Since things are going pretty great right now, Trump's abrasiveness is the only angle to work against.
Pete won't make it (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Pete won't make it (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Pete won't make it (Score:5, Insightful)
Trump did NOT show he was above the law via impeachment. The House showed it did not care about due process
The House followed the rules and procedures Republicans authorized and used [nbcnews.com]. Don't blame the Democrats for that.
and couldn't even bring articles that stated any law that Trump broke.
Did Trump need to break a law? If we follow what Lindsey Graham said in 1999, then the answer is no.
“You don’t even have to be convicted of a crime to lose your job in this constitutional republic if this body determines that your conduct as a public official is clearly out of bounds in your role. Impeachment is not about punishment. Impeachment is about cleansing the office. Impeachment is about restoring honor and integrity to the office."
and
"What’s a high crime? How about an important person hurting somebody of low means? It’s not very scholarly, but I think it’s the truth. I think that’s what they meant by high crimes. Doesn’t even have to be a crime. It’s just when you start using your office and you’re acting in a way that hurts people, you’ve committed a high crime."
What's good for the goose is good for the gander
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Note that I'm not implying anything either way about this particular case (I still don't even know how I feel about it, to be honest). This is more of a general observation about the behavior of both parties going back quite some time.
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and couldn't even bring articles that stated any law that Trump broke.
Well, since breaking a law is not, nor has it ever been, a requirement for impeachment, I'm not sure what your point is.
Re: Pete won't make it (Score:3)
Federalist 65 explains it well, the House's role in impeachment is to accuse, the Senate's is to judge. This court's discretion is not limited, as it normally would be, in favor of personal security. Due process is something _entirely_ different at this level. Impeachment should not be confused with a criminal trial, those happen with regular judges, where the punishment is not removal from office.
"The necessity of a numerous court for the trial of impeachments, is equally dictated by the nature of the p
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You're just feeding a troll.
I think we learned two things:
(1) The Trump Gang is in charge and is going to do whatever they want for as long as they can get away with it.
(2) Impeachment is NOT going to stop them. I am sure that if the Founders got a do-over based on the historical record of impeachment they would NOT write that worthless mechanism into the Constitution. The only president who was removed was actually taken out by a (secret GOP) vote of no confidence (though the impeachment could have been th
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The defendant refused to participate. (Score:4, Insightful)
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False. McConnell followed what was done with Bill Clinton, which means any of the House's witnesses - called and deposed during the impeachment process - could be called in the Senate. The problem for the Democrats was those witnesses were so weak, so useless - that Schiff, Nadler and the others had nothing. They needed a new slate of witnesses to try to find some reason to justify the vote they already took. Sorry, the investigation was done, it was time to hear the evidence - and there wasn't any.
If y
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Did you forget to read your latest talking points? The Republican story now is that Trump totally did it, they're just cool with it.
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Try harder, please. This level of cognitive dissonance is embarrassing.
Bob Portman: " “I believe that some of the president’s actions in this case — asking a foreign country to investigate a potential political opponent and the delay of aid to Ukraine — were wrong and inappropriate.”
Lamar Alexander: “There is no need for more evidence to conclude that the president withheld United States aid, at least in part, to pressure Ukraine to investigate the Bidens; the House man
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But do you seriously believe that a 20min phone call, politely asking a head of state to try his best to address corruption in his country is "abuse of power"?
I mean, Obama flew $400 million in untraceable cash a mere 3 months before the 2016 election, to the terrorist-funding regime of Iran, under the guise of it was "their money", despite the fact that the money came from the Shah's government, which the current regime violently overthrew.
Conveniently that wasn't abuse of power as far as the Democrats wer
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But do you seriously believe that a 20min phone call, politely asking a head of state to try his best to address corruption in his country is "abuse of power"?
Requesting an investigation into domestic political opponents is an abuse of power, regardless of how polite you are. This has nothing to do with corruption inside Ukraine or Trump's sudden and inexplicable desire to root out corruption globally, and everyone knows that. He ran a corrupt charity, a corrupt university, and has literally said that he wants to repeal the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.
I mean, Obama flew $400 million in untraceable cash a mere 3 months before the 2016 election, to the terrorist-funding regime of Iran, under the guise of it was "their money", despite the fact that the money came from the Shah's government, which the current regime violently overthrew.
Assuming this is a problem - what's the evil motive behind it? Or are you just saying things which sound bad
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>it gets problematic when you start talking about a timeframe of a year or more to work through the court system ... before the 2020 election
>The House may have rushed things too quickly, but that doesn't mean their case wasn't valid
Yes, these things are slow and for a reason. Process is more important than outcome. The basis of Obstruction of Congress was because there was no time that you even mention. The problem with this is that, besides the House sitting on ass for a month disproving their own a
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he's too cosy with Billionaires,
People who don't care about politics don't care about that. They care about "things are going OK", "he seems nice", or "he seems presidential" (with no one hitting that last note in this election).
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By selling out the black community you would mean, he fired a very popular black police chief after the FBI informed him that the guy was secretly recording conversations and blackmailing people.
The Black community does (Score:2)
Also, go look up videos from Status Coup, The Young Turks and Tim Black. I'm not going to sit here and list out all the evidence. If you can't be bothered to look it up yourself when it's right there in front of you (all well researched and backed up by sound journalism) then you're too in love with the Establishment (or with general trolli
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Re:Its going to come to Bernie Sanders (Score:5, Insightful)
Biden was the anointed, but when he failed hard in Iowa ...
Don't write off Biden just yet. So far, two lily-white states have voted. Next is Hispanic heavy Nevada, and then South Carolina, where the majority of Democratic voters are African-Americans. Biden is more popular with both of these groups than either Sanders or Buttigieg.
If Biden wins South Carolina on Feb 29th, he will have a boost for Super Tuesday three days later when half the country votes. Including Hispanic heavy California and Texas.
OTOH, if Biden loses SC, he is finished.
The big wild-card is Bloomberg. He is sitting out the first four states and betting everything on an advertising blitz on Super Tuesday. This strategy has never worked for anyone in the past, but no one as rich as Bloomberg (who is WAY richer than Trump) has ever tried it.
Bloomberg is unlikely to win but will pull votes from other centrists like Biden and Buttigieg, making a Sanders win more likely.
Warren is losing badly. She was 4th in Iowa and trailing badly in early NH results. NH was considered a "must win" for her. If she drops out, most of her votes will likely go to Sanders.
If Sanders wins even a plurality, his supporters will be furious if he is denied the nomination. They will sit out the general election just like many of them did in 2016.
My prediction: Four more years of Donald Trump.
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Biden is going to be popular with hispanics you claim. I'm laughing here, but we'll know soon enough.
Bloomberg is unlikely to win but will pull votes from other centrists like Biden and Buttigieg, making a Sanders win more likely.
Isn't there a "no delegates unless you get 15% of the vote" rule to keep that from happening? Or is that just in NH?
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Biden is going to be popular with hispanics you claim.
More so than Sanders, Buttigieg, or "Stop-and-Frisk" Bloomberg.
He doesn't need a majority in Nevada to win, just a plurality.
But, as you say, we will see soon enough. I am not a Biden fan, so I won't be disappointed if he loses.
Isn't there a "no delegates unless you get 15% of the vote" rule to keep that from happening? Or is that just in NH?
Not just NH. But not universal either. Some states are proportional with a 15% "viability" cut-off. Others are winner-take-all. Some have a hybrid system.
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Don't write off Biden just yet. So far, two lily-white states have voted. Next is Hispanic heavy Nevada, and then South Carolina, where the majority of Democratic voters are African-Americans. Biden is more popular with both of these groups than either Sanders or Buttigieg.
Yeah, the good ship President Gay is about to crash on the shoals of Black Church. Biden is dragging the Democratic ticket down, but the Black South is going to keep him in it a long time.You're going to continue to see a fractured Dem field for months.
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You're going to continue to see a fractured Dem field for months.
There are two Dem fields.
The lefties are rapidly consolidating on Sanders. Warren is fading fast (4th in Iowa, 4th again in "must win" NH).
The moderates are splintered between Buttigieg, Biden, Bloomberg, and Klobuchar, with little hope of any consolidation before Super Tuesday.
The primaries are much more front-loaded this year, so Sanders may win the nomination against a splintered moderate field.
So that most likely means four more years of Trump.
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Re:Its going to come to Bernie Sanders (Score:4)
Biden's betting it all on SC. I think 538 was right when they pointed out that this is focusing too much on a single state that's pretty different from the rest of the country. Biden's betting on SC because he needs to win SC to even stay in the game, but winning SC is nowhere near enough to keep him in it. He needs to at least pull some decent numbers in a state like Nevada, which he just unceremoniously skipped to focus on SC; I don't think that was a good move, but it may have been his only move if he thinks he's at risk in SC. And while you're right that Cali and TX are hispanic-heavy... hispanic-heavy is not black-heavy. Those are two different populations who tend to vote different ways. Even if Biden does better than expected in black-heavy SC (and I don't think he will, I think he'll do worse than expected), that doesn't say much about how he'll do with Hispanic voters.
I think once we see how Nevada goes, we'll have a much better idea of how things might play out. I suspect Biden will win SC, but not by the margins he really needs. And I think he'll drop out after Super Tuesday. I think Warren's probably in a similar position, she's just not pulling the numbers needed to stay in.
I don't have any predictions about the rest of the race. Honestly, I think it's too early to predict much besides this. Sanders is in the lead, but he's got several moderates hot on his trail. If one of them drops out and most of the remainder move to the remaining moderate... I think Sanders will have a real challenge on his hands. If all the viable moderates stay in it through Super Tuesday, though, which looks pretty likely, they might pull enough off of each other to hand the victory to Sanders, or at least to force a contested convention. And speaking of the moderates, what about them? Will Pete keep pulling the higher than expected numbers he's been pulling? Will Amy surge ahead? What's going to happen with Bloomberg? It's really hard to say at this point, I think.
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Other than the fact that Bernie polls very well in all the states that voted Obama in 2008 and 2012 but went to Trump in 2016, sure. And polls better against Trump than any other Democrat. What color is the sky on your world?
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Re:Its going to come to Bernie Sanders (Score:4, Interesting)
But what if, and I'm just spitballing here, things are only great for a small percentage of Americans? What if corporate media wants us to think that what's good for corporations is what's good for the average citizen? What if we've been lied to about how great things are, and told that if things aren't great for us, personally, then it is our fault, and we should shut up about how bad things are because everyone will know that we're a failure?
What if people's views on the health of the economy have more to do with their partisan leanings than with actual facts? https://fivethirtyeight.com/fe... [fivethirtyeight.com]
What if most Americans are repeating the line "The ecnomy is great!" while personally feeling a high degree of economic insecurity themselves? https://www.marketwatch.com/st... [marketwatch.com]
What if two thirds of Americans do not feel better off then they were in 2016, despite the "booming economy?" https://www.ft.com/content/ce7... [ft.com]
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Don't worry, if our overlords want him out they'll cause a recession leading up to November.
Fortunately, our overloards care more about staying rich than they care about this specific election. A strong US economy is great for the globalist billionaires too, after all. The bigger the disparity between the US and the poorest nations, the more they benefit from shipping jobs overseas, or shipping people here to compete for jobs.
Klobuchar can't win (Score:5, Interesting)
Second, and there's no easy way to say this, the polls are very, very clear on women in politics. People will vote for a man they don't like but feel is qualified. They will not do the same for a women. It's not that a women can't be elected president. It's that a women people don't like can't be elected.
Klobuchar is a Karen. She's the women who calls for your manager. She's a stapler thrower who yells at people about salads. Again, in the general these stories will be hammer relentlessly. Turnout gets suppressed and it's over.
Those are the reasons you won't get Baby Boomer moderates out. For the kids (and by "kids" I mean Gen X & Millennials) Klobuchar is Hilary Clinton 1.5 (Biden's 2.0). Offering lower interest rates on loans they can't pay, no solutions to skyrocketing costs [external-preview.redd.it] and stopping just short of saying learn to code [slashdot.org]
I get it. Change is scary. But you're not going to win with moderates. Moderates didn't win the House in 2018, turnout did. We got that turnout because folks got scared of losing the ACA pre-existing condition coverage. But the media moved on, the GOP stopped trying to repeal it and instead they are using their stacked courts & the DOJ to get it overturned (Look it up, Trump's GOP is quietly pushing a lawsuit through that will kill the law if if ever makes it to SCOTUS). Right wing Dems, bought off by the insurance industry (I'm looking at you "Wine Cave" Pete) are looking the other way instead of sounding the alarm. That means you won't get the 2018 bump that moderates benefited from. Go ask Claire McCaskill how well being moderate does in a tightly contested race.
What we need is turnout from the biggest political party in America, non-voters [youtu.be]. You don't get that by promising folks on the verge of homelessness status quo. As somebody other than me put it best:
Moderates: Vote for us because we get things done!
Moderates: Let's do nothing, that's the safest thing.
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Elections are won by small margins (Score:2)
And it's not that they didn't care, it's that they love Trump so damn much that they don't care. They will forgive all his faults, whatever they are, because they love him. That's the level of likability we're up against.
Like it or not Likability _matters_ in an election. This election will be won by a margin of about 3-5%. You can bring folks to the polls with policy, likability, or some mix o
Then go dig up the polls on 538 (Score:2)
"sent an innocent black kid to jail" couldn't possibly be more clear. There are several very troubling cases. Watch the v
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Exactly. Klobuchar is boring at best.
"There are several very troubling cases. Watch the video I linked to from Tim Black. He has others. In one case there were two defendant, one of which testified he committed the crime and that the other defendant wasn't present at the time. It appears Kloubuchar suppressed the evidence in order to get the conviction."
You don't get it: NO ONE CARES ABOUT THIS STUFF. Only guys like you who have time to view Youtube videos on the subject. People care if the
People absolutely care about this stuff (Score:2)
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Democrats are going to do the same thing that Republicans did last time: vote for the radical guy they think will blow the most stuff up. They will nominate Bernie.
In November, it will be basically Alien vs. Predator.
Now would be a good time to ask why (Score:3)
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From where I sit it looks like Bloomberg, the one who is currently projected to beat Trump by the most. I would not call Bloomberg "establishment", not in terms of politics.
Dang, Yang's parents were right (Score:2)
One of the things I liked about Yang as a candidate was his sense of humor, but I think the real reason he had no chance was because he never managed to convince me (and lots of other people) that he really wanted it. Another joke (besides his parents telling him he had no chance to be president) was his theme of having to be crazy to want the job, while consistently failing to act crazy.
Having said that, you [saloomy] just brought Bernie into it. I actually like Bernie on a lot of issues, but I think he is
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I knew the Democrats would get rid of their one pro-science guy. The field has now gone full clown car.
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a Friedman negative income tax makes economic sense.
We have the Earned Income Tax Credit [wikipedia.org], which is a negative income tax. But it only helps the working poor, not the non-working poor. You need to have a job to qualify for the credit.
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Yes, and it gives a maximum of $2747 per year. Nowhere enough to live on...
Re:Duh. (Score:5, Interesting)
The only thing getting in the way is the twisted American idea of freedom where they would rather have the more expensive, crappier option that looks like freedom on the surface, but ends up with less freedom in actuality.
Americans don't want something that directly and quickly fixes a problem. Americans want solutions that "trickle down" and takes forever to work its way through a "market".
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Yes, but there are hundreds of solutions that are cheaper than the current welfare system, some of these are even already proven to work. For example we have done testing with drug screening welfare programs to outrageous success.
1) The cost of the screening is practically nil as 90% of all previous recipients voluntarily withdraw from the program when informed of the policy change.
2) The cost of Welfare to the tax payers goes down 90%
3) You also save money in any substance abuse programs and in your police
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UBI would be cheaper than the current convoluted welfare system.
Perhaps, but it would not be effective.
Programs like Section 8 use a voucher system where the government pays the landlord directly. Same thing for child care. This complexity is necessary because when the cash goes directly to the tenants, the tenants often don't pay the landlord or child care provider at all. Sometimes it is because the tenant doesn't know how to budget, other times because don't have bank accounts so they take the money to check cashing places that each large portions of the money. I
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This is the position of 99.9% of all the sane people.
Who is Bill Weld? (Re:It's a shame) (Score:2)
I expect Weld to drop out soon too.
Who?
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I expect Weld to drop out soon too.
Who?
the canidate running against trump in the republican primary.
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Even if it comes down to a Giant Douche and a Turd Sandwich, you might as well vote.
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So you prefer the same nonsense, and far worse, spurting from the orfices of all the other democrat candidates, who *aren't* good with math (or are, at least, much worse)?
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If you're going to shove partisan bullshit at me then you can bugger off. I'm sick and tired of it.
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That's the way to exhibit the tolerance you proclaim. I'm not the one trying to get more handouts, I am the one you plan on robbing.
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I don't think that would fit into a UBI system, though. And I still can't figure out how anyone plans to pay for a $1k/mo UBI that would cost us probably around $1t/yr.