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22 hours ago, Lewyn said:

Your hyperbole comment was in relation to my post just above said comment, right on this page.  There was no exaggeration in it.  

. . .man, you're overdue for this.  So I'm going to ask you to do this voluntarily.  Next time, it won't be. . .well, at least on this side.

For a week, don't read the news (whether it be on the Internet, what you see in a newspaper, watch on TV, etc.).  Full stop.  If someone brings up politics, don't engage them.  Instead, log down everything that happens in your daily life.  After that week, go back and read what you've wrote, then tell me if the world's ending.

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okay i thought the statement nahhhh the boomers were always rightwing shitlords was self-explanatory enough on its own to not be labeled hyperbolic, but apparently it requires context.

CONTEXT:

The Boomers hail from a moment in history where "well the people saying the negroes shouldn't be allowed to use our schools or drinking fountains and that the homosexuals should be locked up in mental hospitals to receive treatment for their sickness have some really good points. But so do the people saying that maybe we should just integrate them into the general population" was what passed for moderate, mainstream, middle-of-the-road centrism.

And that thinking didn't go away when their children's politics moved the national point-of-center leftward, so much as it just went underground.

But thats always been where that generation hails from, and what their point-of-center was raised to believe. 


They didn't "get more conservative with age"

They've just arrived at another moment in history now in The Age of Trump where they feel comfortable openly saying things that they've felt were too socially unacceptable to say out-loud for the past few decades.

Because now they feel like its mainstream and socially acceptable again.   

Edited by Shoblongoo
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1 hour ago, Shoblongoo said:

okay i thought the statement nahhhh the boomers were always rightwing shitlords was self-explanatory enough on its own to not be labeled hyperbolic, but apparently it requires context.

CONTEXT:

The Boomers hail from a moment in history where "well the people saying the negroes shouldn't be allowed to use our schools or drinking fountains and that the homosexuals should be locked up in mental hospitals to receive treatment for their sickness have some really good points. But so do the people saying that maybe we should just integrate them into the general population" was what passed for moderate, mainstream, middle-of-the-road centrism.

And that thinking didn't go away when their children's politics moved the national point-of-center leftward, so much as it just went underground.

But thats always been where that generation hails from, and what their point-of-center was raised to believe. 


They didn't "get more conservative with age"

They've just arrived at another moment in history now in The Age of Trump where they feel comfortable openly saying things that they've felt were too socially unacceptable to say out-loud for the past few decades.

Because now they feel like its mainstream and socially acceptable again.   

In other words, the political spectrum shifted.  But back in their day, they weren't on the right side of it.  Which means that the statement itself could be taken in two drastically different ways, hence why you need to explain it.

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I was expecting more activity in this thread, considering what went down this week. 

Donald Trump taking the time to tell us it's all a liberal fake media hoax as we're in the opening stages of a global pandemic that's looking like it'll rival the Spanish flu. And then making a guy who thinks sick people dying is God punishing the unjust the one in charge of the response. 

The only very, very dark silver lining to this is that a significant portion of the Trump voters will be dead from corona virus by election night.

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44 minutes ago, Excellen Browning said:

I was expecting more activity in this thread, considering what went down this week. 

Donald Trump taking the time to tell us it's all a liberal fake media hoax as we're in the opening stages of a global pandemic that's looking like it'll rival the Spanish flu. And then making a guy who thinks sick people dying is God punishing the unjust the one in charge of the response. 

The only very, very dark silver lining to this is that a significant portion of the Trump voters will be dead from corona virus by election night.

Of course the Donald is.  Right wing media is all ablaze about how the Democrats are trying to weaponize this and shouldn't criticize Trump, I guess they know their followers have the memory of a goldfish and already forgot how Obama was treated with every single thing he did or said including Ebola.  They even defend Pence, the man who doesn't believe in evolution but creationism, who doesn't think smoking kills, and well doesn't believe much in anything scientific just the good book.

https://www.newsweek.com/mike-pence-coronavirus-science-hiv-aids-smoking-evolution-climate-change-1489458

This joker will be in charge and communicate to us what is going on.  

If a significant portion of the Trump voters died from Corona, well the average intelligence of this country would take quite the leap.  I'm wondering is their a limit to their stupidity and naivety though?  Trump fired the pandemic response team among other actions that hurt our preparedness to deal with this.  He continues to lie even about this.  

Yeah and what happens when you hire a bunch of unqualified/underqualified people to head/work in departments on your staff?  When there is an actual crisis, that absolute slavelike loyalty isn't going to help much.  

Looks like Bernie vs Biden, I think Bernie gots this...certainly hope he does.

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1 hour ago, Excellen Browning said:

The only very, very dark silver lining to this is that a significant portion of the Trump voters will be dead from corona virus by election night.

 

15 minutes ago, Lewyn said:

If a significant portion of the Trump voters died from Corona, well the average intelligence of this country would take quite the leap.

jesus fucking christ you two

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I'm a bit surprised Buttigieg didn't stick around until Super Tuesday was over. Maybe he's realized that after Nevada and South Carolina, that his lack of diversity support is too fatal? Or, maybe it was calculated to give Biden a boost to his underprepared (so I hear) Super Tuesday turnout?

Edited by Interdimensional Observer
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44 minutes ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

I'm a bit surprised Buttigieg didn't stick around until Super Tuesday was over. Maybe he's realized that after Nevada and South Carolina, that his lack of diversity support is too fatal? Or, maybe it was calculated to give Biden a boost to his underprepared (so I hear) Super Tuesday turnout?

It's difficult to tell right now. His base seems pretty evenly split between who they support between Biden, Bernie and Warren. If he had dropped out before South Carolina, it probably would have helped Bernie. But now that Biden has some momentum, it's really tough to tell. Ultimately it just frees up some perspective delegates that he might have gotten in the future, but some people are also saying it's just more likely to lead to a contested convention(Which ultimately helps Biden), since more candidates may reach viability with Pete gone.

Super Tuesday was going in Bernie's favor before, so we'll have to see in a few days.

Edited by Slumber
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I’m wondering if Buttigieg is trying to get out early and not take anymore unnecessary shots at Biden or Bernie because he’s angling for a VP spot (seems like he’d be exactly what a ticket running an old man with concerns about his age and health in the #1 would want for the #2) 

Edited by Shoblongoo
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Just now, Shoblongoo said:

I’m wondering if Buttigieg is angling for a VP spot (seems like he’d be exactly what a ticket running an old man with concerns abou his age and health in the #1 would want for the #2) 

I don't know about VP, but he'll probably angle for a cabinet spot.

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I'd sooner wager it on the richer donors requesting that he step down so they can funnel all the money to Biden to stand a better shot of stopping Bernie from getting the nomination.

Bernie apparently raised 46 Million in February. If there's a lesson to take in from Bloomberg, it's that those at the top still believe that you just buy a nomination and election so it would make sense for the top donors to centralize their funding (as well as Delegates, people who voted Buttigieg might move to Biden) onto one candidate than to split it onto several. 

The corrupt portion of the Democratic party hasn't learned the harsh lesson of how much money in politics is despised. The Republican party doesn't have that concern since their base won't truly understand the damage from Trump until it's too late and a large portion of them are still all-in for the guy.

Edited by Dr. Tarrasque
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Aw, heck. Please don't let it be Biden. I was so hoping that the Democratic nominee could be an actual centrist (instead of an American-style "centrist") for once after Bernie surged last week.

I'm a bit surprised that Mayor Pete dropped out, but on reflection, it seems fairly obvious why he did it - his donors will have asked him to. From my perspective, his main flaw was that he was quite content to let the oligarchy continue to buy politicians, so I think it makes sense to suspect his every action of angling towards that outcome.

From my naive, not-very-poltically-adept viewpoint, it looks like the Democratic party is aiming towards exactly the same thing as in 2016 - propping up an establishment candidate against Bernie, despite the latter's substantial support from demographics that don't usually vote in presidential elections. If Biden is nominated, I suspect voter turnout will be similar to what it was in 2016, with probably the same result. I don't know whether Biden is more popular than Clinton was, but I expect Trump to get a boost from being the incumbent. Bernie may not do better, given that many Americans are so scared (and ignorant) of socialist policy that they actually think the Democratic party is left-wing, but he may cause a surge of voter turnout in his favour.

If I was a Democratic strategist, I'd be thinking that the conservative approach utterly failed to stop Trump last time, so gambling on Bernie is probably going to have a better chance at taking the executive branch. But then, I'd probably also have some very conservative bosses leaning on me to appease their rich donors. *shrug*

I'd also like to note the irony that the candidate with the highest support from the progressive youth is the oldest in contention. That's just hilarious.

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On 3/1/2020 at 12:01 PM, Excellen Browning said:

I was expecting more activity in this thread, considering what went down this week. 

Missed this one. Did you really? What's really there to talk about? The incompetence of the administration has been obvious throughout the years, Michael Cohen testified that Trump just ran the campaign to boost his brand and never expected to win the Presidency, the VP thinks the Coronavirus can be prayed away and the party backing the current president thinks you can ignore problems noted by science and things will work itself out.

Anyone who thought this administration could take such things seriously and prepare hasn't been paying attention. If there's anything to expect, it's for infected people to be quarantined and left to die with no significant help unless they're a rich donor.

To the most loyal Trumpists, there is no real problem with the Coronavirus other than it being propped up by the media to hurt Trump's reelection.

3 hours ago, Seafarer said:

From my naive, not-very-poltically-adept viewpoint, it looks like the Democratic party is aiming towards exactly the same thing as in 2016 - propping up an establishment candidate against Bernie, despite the latter's substantial support from demographics that don't usually vote in presidential elections. If Biden is nominated, I suspect voter turnout will be similar to what it was in 2016, with probably the same result. I don't know whether Biden is more popular than Clinton was, but I expect Trump to get a boost from being the incumbent. Bernie may not do better, given that many Americans are so scared (and ignorant) of socialist policy that they actually think the Democratic party is left-wing, but he may cause a surge of voter turnout in his favour.

That's spot on actually. I assume that Biden is supposedly more popular than Hillary because he's male and doesn't have as much negative baggage as Hillary did (BUT HER E-MAILS) but he's definitely easier for the Republicans to attack due to the Ukraine fiasco. They haven't found any real substance on that but they'll keep investigating it and make it Biden's equivalent to Hillary's E-mails while ignoring the nepotism under Trump.

There's no real telling which candidate will actually beat Trump but the polls generally favor Sanders above the rest and he will indeed get more non-voters interested in participating... the question then becomes how many "moderates" buy into the fear-mongering from the right-wing of which we can many from those aged 65+ and being the incumbent does a lot for him.

3 hours ago, Seafarer said:

I'd also like to note the irony that the candidate with the highest support from the progressive youth is the oldest in contention. That's just hilarious.

It's the attacks against him, they've mostly backfired and made him more popular because with any politician that's been around for decades, you can dig up dirt of awful decisions they made and things they did. With Bernie, that's rare and Bernie's willing to admit when he's made mistakes like he did in the most recent debate. On the other hand you have Biden who sometimes seemed like he was playing the Trump tactic of "nothing you did is wrong if you don't admit it".

Biden is definitely Hillary 2.0 in this primary.

Edited by Dr. Tarrasque
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4 hours ago, Seafarer said:

From my naive, not-very-poltically-adept viewpoint, it looks like the Democratic party is aiming towards exactly the same thing as in 2016 - propping up an establishment candidate against Bernie, despite the latter's substantial support from demographics that don't usually vote in presidential elections. If Biden is nominated, I suspect voter turnout will be similar to what it was in 2016, with probably the same result. I don't know whether Biden is more popular than Clinton was, but I expect Trump to get a boost from being the incumbent. Bernie may not do better, given that many Americans are so scared (and ignorant) of socialist policy that they actually think the Democratic party is left-wing, but he may cause a surge of voter turnout in his favour.

That is the problem with non-voters, not the Democratic Party leadership itself. It does not do the party very much good if they prop up someone frequent voters do not care about. If I remember correctly, most Democratic voters still chose Hillary last election.

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1 hour ago, XRay said:

That is the problem with non-voters, not the Democratic Party leadership itself. It does not do the party very much good if they prop up someone frequent voters do not care about. If I remember correctly, most Democratic voters still chose Hillary last election.

Yeah, Clinton won the nomination by total votes in 2016. I was referring to the financial support the party threw behind Clinton, which may have influenced more people to vote Clinton over Sanders. And the reason I brought that up is that people are dropping out and endorsing Biden, which makes me think that the party leadership is going to throw the same weight behind him to encourage people to vote him over Sanders as they did for Clinton in 2016.

And you're right that the nomination going to someone that frequent voters will find distasteful is a potential risk, but I think that a frequent voter is more likely to hold their nose to get rid of Trump than someone who supports Sanders is to go out and vote whoever gets nominated.

Edited by Seafarer
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41 minutes ago, Seafarer said:

Yeah, Clinton won the nomination by total votes in 2016. I was referring to the financial support the party threw behind Clinton, which may have influenced more people to vote Clinton over Sanders. And the reason I brought that up is that people are dropping out and endorsing Biden, which makes me think that the party leadership is going to throw the same weight behind him to encourage people to vote him over Sanders as they did for Clinton in 2016.

And you're right that the nomination going to someone that frequent voters will find distasteful is a potential risk, but I think that a frequent voter is more likely to hold their nose to get rid of Trump than someone who supports Sanders is to go out and vote whoever gets nominated.

That is true. While I prefer Biden over Bernie, I would not mind voting for any of the top Democratic candidates. I would take Sanders and Warren over Trump any day of the week. I personally lean more towards Warren over Bernie though, since she seems a tidbit more moderate than Sanders.

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14 hours ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

I hope the DNC chooses to stop having debates now. Old Socialist Yeller vs. a man who can't get three sentences out without gaffing, and nothing else. That is as awkwardly feeble as they are old.

The problem with this is that this only helps Biden and Bloomberg, who are pretty wishy-washy on the issues. If you went to a poll today and asked a Sanders or Warren voter why they're voting for them, you'd probably get an answer on one of their policies.

If you asked a Biden or Bloomberg voter, you'd probably get "He's the ex-Vice President" and "Obama endorsed Bloomberg". Biden's coasting on reputation and Bloomberg is relying on sheer presence and misinformation.

Bernie gets bumps form debates, while Biden and Bloomberg(ESPECIALLY Bloomberg) usually plummet.

So I'd rather have more debates at this point. Now that it's effectively down to 4 candidates, the strengths and weaknesses of each candidate become that much clearer.

Edited by Slumber
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5 hours ago, Slumber said:

The problem with this is that this only helps Biden and Bloomberg, who are pretty wishy-washy on the issues. If you went to a poll today and asked a Sanders or Warren voter why they're voting for them, you'd probably get an answer on one of their policies.

If you asked a Biden or Bloomberg voter, you'd probably get "He's the ex-Vice President" and "Obama endorsed Bloomberg". Biden's coasting on reputation and Bloomberg is relying on sheer presence and misinformation.

Bernie gets bumps form debates, while Biden and Bloomberg(ESPECIALLY Bloomberg) usually plummet.

So I'd rather have more debates at this point. Now that it's effectively down to 4 candidates, the strengths and weaknesses of each candidate become that much clearer.

Good counterpoint. Bloomberg has to be kept down, though since in all likelihood Warren will be leaving very soon, we'll be losing the very best Bloomberg stabber, even if Sanders is a very good alternative.

But I hope they change the supposed DNC rule I heard that anyone who gets delegates can appear in debates, since, it was a very brief mention I overheard, they said Tulsi Gabbard could grab some in American Samoa. We don't need her to get any airtime.

 

Though, my Sanders-concern/appreciation wavers and grows on a very short-term basis.

  • Reading articles criticizing the unacknowledged failure of moderate Democratic candidates and fear of the Democratic elite of the lack of electability of more leftist candidates since McGovern in the 70s made me warmer to Bernie in the last two weeks.
  • But a few days ago, I read how Scandinavian countries don't sustain their great welfare-state on high taxes on the rich- no inheritance tax for instance, and no minimum wage either. And whether Sanders understands this and that the 60s-90s experiments at Scandinavian socialism were economic disasters, is a small source of new worry.

Yet, Biden is consistently a debate failure, a not-failure at best, and even in interviews he stumbles sometimes. Maybe there is real talent behind the senile jester visage, hopefully there was when he was position of the modern and powerful Vice Presidency. But he sure doesn't show it.

Edited by Interdimensional Observer
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Ayyy. DNC pulled a big-dick-energy move getting klobuchar and Buttigieg to dropout and endorse Biden right before Super Tuesday, and it looks like it paid off. That’s a blowout. (what a comeback) 

3 hours ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

Biden is consistently a debate failure

In light of recent events, I’m beginning to wonder how much the debates even matter 

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2 minutes ago, Shoblongoo said:

In light of recent events, I’m beginning to wonder how much the debates even matter 

The debates were why Biden was a distant third in the first 3 primaries.

The debates impact a lot, but it's short term stuff. There hasn't been one recently enough to stop Biden's momentum from SC and the shit tons of endorsements.

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Unfortunate but unsurprising... I knew that eventually the establishment would centralize on one candidate and they did it just in time for super Tuesday.

Joe appears to be the one that Trump wants to go up against in the general election. The 2 have clear mental health issues but Trump gets a free pass on it from his base. Not to mention the man is essentially Hillary 2.0.

As for the debates, they've been stupid but they highlight how shitty the media covers our politics (I mean look at this shit, reminds me of wrestling commercials) as well as put the candidates in a position where they have to fess up about mistakes they've made in the past. I don't believe the impact is significant enough to matter when it comes to the votes for the nomination because most folks made up their minds before the debates began, but continued exposure to these candidates makes it easier to see what we can expect if they do beat Trump (or whether or not they'll lose to him) and Biden's been consistently confirming my thoughts on him.

Edited by Dr. Tarrasque
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