General US Politics

[Shoblongoo]

Ehhhhh. Bernie’s my first pick because I like Bernie; not because I dislike Biden, Buttigieg, or Warren. If it’s Biden at the top of the ticket and he got there legitimately because he had the most primary votes, I’m fine with that. I just want whoever we put up to be strong enough and have enough of the field behind them to beat Trump—whether it’s Biden or Bernie, it has to be by big wins and a sense that they got there because they earned it. That is all.

[Crysta]

Biden won in states where he literally had zero presence in and spent little to no money on

Forget the debates, what is even campaigning any more

[Tryhard]

Either way would be a struggle against an incumbent, but I've got no faith in Biden to win against Trump.

Biden confused his sister for his wife and has been showing a significant cognitive decline almost every week. His advisors for his campaign were restricting how many public events that he was having because they believed he turns people off him when he has the chance to speak.

I'm sure 200 days more of campaigning and debates will go well.

Edited March 4, 2020 by Tryhard

[Shoblongoo]

1 hour ago, Crysta said:

Biden won in states where he literally had zero presence in and spent little to no money on

Forget the debates, what is even campaigning any more

To grossly oversimplify it:

1)  Bernie's electability is premised on the idea that he energizes the youth vote--his base is younger voters.

2)  Younger voters are a notoriously unreliable demographic that--for all their political proselytizing and engagement on forums like this one--tend to stay home and not bother actually vote on election day

3)  Biden's base is older voters.

4)  Older voters don't just make noise on facebook and bombard comment boards with their hot takes. They vote.

__________

Boomers and Gen X'ers showed up in droves yesterday.

Millennials and  Gen Z'ers stayed home.

Thats why Biden  pulled ahead of Bernie.

[Dr. Tarrasque]

15 minutes ago, Shoblongoo said:

To grossly oversimplify it:

1)  Bernie's electability is premised on the idea that he energizes the youth vote--his base is younger voters.

2)  Younger voters are a notoriously unreliable demographic that--for all their political proselytizing and engagement on forums like this one--tend to stay home and not bother actually vote on election day

3)  Biden's base is older voters.

4)  Older voters don't just make noise on facebook and bombard comment boards with their hot takes. They vote.

__________

Boomers and Gen X'ers showed up in droves yesterday.

Millennials and  Gen Z'ers stayed home.

Thats why Biden  pulled ahead of Bernie.

The polls do suggest this...

I'm 30 and I voted and I'll still reluctantly vote for Biden over Trump even though my vote won't matter in that instance.

[Shoblongoo]

26 minutes ago, Dr. Tarrasque said:

I'm 30 and I voted and I'll still reluctantly vote for Biden over Trump even though my vote won't matter in that instance.

Goood man.

I'm 30 and my voter doesn't matter because I live in New Jersey, but I'll (less reluctantly) be doing same. 

If its any consolation--the very fact that the medicaid-for-all public option is now the mainstream position of 'moderate' dems is a lasting win for Bernie  

Edited March 4, 2020 by Shoblongoo

[Slumber]

I'm 28 and voted in the primary.

I'll vote in the general election against my better judgement, because I'm absolutely positive Minnesota will go red with Biden running, so I really gotta prevent that even though I think he's a dogshit candidate.

The supreme court is too important to just sit back and not do anything. As much as I don't like Biden, if he wins(I think it's a big "if") and he still goes by his "Things will fundamentally stay the same" philosophy, I at least know some of the older liberal judges like RBG can step down safely while he's president.

29 minutes ago, Shoblongoo said:

If its any consolation--the very fact that the medicaid-for-all public option is now the mainstream position of 'moderate' dems is a lasting win for Bernie  

I'm really interested to see if the DNC will throw Bernie any bones this time around. They let him have a hand in reshaping the DNC, what little good that did, for his support last time around. Now that he's arguably an even bigger figure in the party than he was last time, I want to see what they do to court his support. If he gets some say in shaping Biden's platform, then it won't be a total loss.

Edited March 4, 2020 by Slumber

[XRay]

1 hour ago, Shoblongoo said:

Millennials and  Gen Z'ers stayed home.

50 minutes ago, Dr. Tarrasque said:

The polls do suggest this...

 

Damn it. Those numbers show we are still fucking horrible about voting. We are not setting up a good example for Zoomers. I think only 3 or 4 in my group of friends voted.

Is it illegal if I pay my friends to vote? I am not telling them how to vote, but since I know they are going to vote Democrat when given the opportunity, would that still be buying votes? I refused to help my mom to vote since she said she wanted to vote for Trump (she cannot understand English too well, but the ballot does have Chinese on it though I think, so I guess she just cannot be bothered), so if my mom wanted to sue me (just a hypothetical), so if I helped my friends to vote but not my mom, how is that any different from buying votes and telling a person to vote a certain way?

What if instead I offered to drive them to the voting center and offered to cook them dinner afterwards? Does non-monetary rewards still count as vote buying? I am technically not paying them directly and I often pay cook for them anyways when we get together for game night or movie night.

[Interdimensional Observer]

Apparently, the US male life expectancy is 76 for males, Biden, the younger of the two Democratic candidates, is 77. Although that number probably factors in non-disease/aging death instances, which if removed probably means the expectancy should be a few years higher.

Pick your VP very wisely, Andropov.

 

 

...I was reading a few seemingly well-written and fair articles I found on other healthcare systems: Taiwan, UK, and Australia specifically. Anyone out there knowledgable on international healthcare systems who has a preference for one country's specifically for the US to adapt?

Australia seemed interesting, perhaps more viable for the US given its political hesitancy to go fully public. Basically from what I remember, the lower 50% of the population generally uses purely public healthcare and hospitals, not necessarily the best places, but they work well enough. The upper 50% socio-economically can use the public system if they wish, but are required to have private insurance and can use private hospitals which may be of higher quality. In practice private healthcare tends to be used for elective procedures I recall it said. The article argued there is something of a crisis in the Australian system centered around what the purpose of private insurance/healthcare is supposed to be, but, the article wasn't all doom and gloom.

[eclipse]

54 minutes ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

...I was reading a few seemingly well-written and fair articles I found on other healthcare systems: Taiwan, UK, and Australia specifically. Anyone out there knowledgable on international healthcare systems who has a preference for one country's specifically for the US to adapt?

Links, please!

---

I'm older than y'all, and my vote is literally not going to matter.  I can't see any future where Hawaii flips red, especially given that our local politician's campaign points center around dissing Trump.

[Shoblongoo]

1 hour ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

...I was reading a few seemingly well-written and fair articles I found on other healthcare systems: Taiwan, UK, and Australia specifically. Anyone out there knowledgable on international healthcare systems who has a preference for one country's specifically for the US to adapt?

I've had some dealings with the Taiwanese system.  (My wife has Taiwanese citizenship and can get treatment and services through their national healthcare; purposefully scheduled some stuff that she needed to get done around doing it over our Christmas and New Years trip to Taiwan so that we didn't have to use the American system)

Its pretty much exactly what I think we should be doing here.

Basically--everyone in Taiwan is covered by their national healthcare. You can go to any clinic or hospital in the country and get baseline preventative care, diagnostics, and treatment for like $5 out-of-pocket on a standard visit. 

...and then private insurance still exists for the people who have the money to pay for it + want to use it...

But it exists as a supplement to their national healthcare services to cover extra tests and procedures beyond baseline standard-of-care. Not as their primary means of healthcare financing and a thing you must have to access basic services.    
______

It is what in America, our politicians may be inclined to call "medicare-for-all with a private option"  (despite how insistent some of our politicians are that there's nowhere where that system works) 

Edited March 4, 2020 by Shoblongoo

[De Geso]

Hilarious results.

[Seafarer]

...American politics is asinine.

"We have to defeat Trump! Let's spend the year prior to the election shouting at each other about how our diverse plans to fix our country absolutely won't work even a little bit! I can't see how handing Trump that much firepower against us could possibly backfire!"

In other news, most young Americans apparently don't want change; they just pretend to want change to look cool on the internet.

I guess Biden is likely to be the nominee, so the election is now looking like Dementia vs. Racist Dementia, and nobody wins that matchup.

And I saw on Facebook someone saying "Bernie lost? Better vote Trump!" and I just can't even. How the heck does that work? You wanted to vote for the centre candidate, he didn't get nominated, so you go as far right as possible? I will never understand some people. 😕

[eclipse]

19 minutes ago, Seafarer said:

...American politics is asinine.

"We have to defeat Trump! Let's spend the year prior to the election shouting at each other about how our diverse plans to fix our country absolutely won't work even a little bit! I can't see how handing Trump that much firepower against us could possibly backfire!"

In other news, most young Americans apparently don't want change; they just pretend to want change to look cool on the internet.

I guess Biden is likely to be the nominee, so the election is now looking like Dementia vs. Racist Dementia, and nobody wins that matchup.

And I saw on Facebook someone saying "Bernie lost? Better vote Trump!" and I just can't even. How the heck does that work? You wanted to vote for the centre candidate, he didn't get nominated, so you go as far right as possible? I will never understand some people. 😕

Welcome to the mentality that politics is a team sport.  It sucks.

[Zapp Branniglenn]

It took longer than I expected, but Trump has finally placed some blame on the Obama administration for the coronavirus. 

In lighter news, Bloomberg is out. With him and Steyer gone, the question of whether somebody can buy a DNC nomination is back to being a genuine shrug of an answer and not a worried shrug of an answer. Sad news about last night's election results, but I'll keep telling myself that Biden still only has about 25% of the votes needed to secure that nomination and his current lead is pretty modest. In 2016, it took until June to get a winner, and there were only three candidates by the time voting began in February, so this race is going to be much more drawn out in comparison.

[Dr. Tarrasque]

5 hours ago, XRay said:

Is it illegal if I pay my friends to vote? I am not telling them how to vote, but since I know they are going to vote Democrat when given the opportunity, would that still be buying votes? I refused to help my mom to vote since she said she wanted to vote for Trump (she cannot understand English too well, but the ballot does have Chinese on it though I think, so I guess she just cannot be bothered), so if my mom wanted to sue me (just a hypothetical), so if I helped my friends to vote but not my mom, how is that any different from buying votes and telling a person to vote a certain way?

What if instead I offered to drive them to the voting center and offered to cook them dinner afterwards? Does non-monetary rewards still count as vote buying? I am technically not paying them directly and I often pay cook for them anyways when we get together for game night or movie night.

Supposedly yes but it doesn't appear to stop this.

For non-monetary cases, well I think that would depend on the claims by the defense and the prosecution in court but I'm not the lawyer, Shob is.

56 minutes ago, Seafarer said:

And I saw on Facebook someone saying "Bernie lost? Better vote Trump!" and I just can't even. How the heck does that work? You wanted to vote for the centre candidate, he didn't get nominated, so you go as far right as possible? I will never understand some people. 😕

Because left, center and right doesn't really matter to some folks. There is however plenty of disdain for the current establishment and what a response like that can boil down to is just wanting to say 'fuck you' to the democrats pretending to be moderates/center for imposing a candidate that shows no interest in undoing the fact that our politicians are bought, which is something folks from all sides of the spectrum will tell you.

Put it this way, our current politics is a disease, Trump is the symptoms of said disease just getting worse and worse while Biden is a treatment that will alleviate the symptoms for the short term and Sanders would be the first step towards finding the cure for the long term. That's probably what it's like to some people and some would rather say "take your stupid treatment you're charging me money for and shove it" and look to finding a real cure than to keep getting charged for temporary relief.

Edited March 4, 2020 by Dr. Tarrasque

[Interdimensional Observer]

3 hours ago, eclipse said:

Links, please!

The trio of global comparisons is from Vox, which I hope is a reputable source.:

https://www.vox.com/2020/1/28/21074386/health-care-rationing-britain-nhs-nice-medicare-for-all

https://www.vox.com/health-care/2020/1/13/21028702/medicare-for-all-taiwan-health-insurance

https://www.vox.com/2020/1/15/21030568/australia-health-insurance-medicare

And, it looks like they added a Netherlands analysis as well, a private system strictly regulated to remain accessible to all. Albeit, as with Taiwan, doctors might be overworked- no healthcare system being perfect.

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2020/1/17/21046874/netherlands-universal-health-insurance-private

[Crysta]

Just trying to imagine the conniption the right would have had if Obama said he had a “very good call” with the Taliban said this about them: “They will be killing terrorists ... they will be killing some very bad people.” Then the Taliban killed at least 16 Afghan army soldiers.

It's not even a blip on the outrage radar any more.

[Slumber]

35 minutes ago, Crysta said:

Just trying to imagine the conniption the right would have had if Obama said he had a “very good call” with the Taliban said this about them: “They will be killing terrorists ... they will be killing some very bad people.” Then the Taliban killed at least 16 Afghan army soldiers.

It's not even a blip on the outrage radar any more.

It's hard to go anywhere from "Mussolini was cool", which Trump was saying before he was even nominated. That's literally the second worst thing you could say after "Hitler did nothing wrong".

This whole presidency is a fever dream.

Edited March 5, 2020 by Slumber

[Excellen Browning]

12 hours ago, Seafarer said:

...American politics is asinine.

"We have to defeat Trump! Let's spend the year prior to the election shouting at each other about how our diverse plans to fix our country absolutely won't work even a little bit! I can't see how handing Trump that much firepower against us could possibly backfire!" 

This is normal in the primary and the world over. Political parties debate their platform and their candidates all the time. That's not mean or asinine, that's how you come to consensus, or at least majorities. 

12 hours ago, eclipse said:

Welcome to the mentality that politics is a team sport.  It sucks.

Politics in a democracy is a team sport. 

[Seafarer]

9 hours ago, Excellen Browning said:

This is normal in the primary and the world over. Political parties debate their platform and their candidates all the time. That's not mean or asinine, that's how you come to consensus, or at least majorities.

No, it is asinine. Doing that sort of thing in a public forum will confuse messaging and create talking points against any policy that ends up in the platform. I'm used to party leadership and platform being decided behind closed doors then presented to the public, who then use that information to decide how to vote.

It helps that there are functional parties that matter across a broad political spectrum where I live, so if a party moves too far left in its platform, you can find an alternative without feeling like your vote is wasted.

I don't know. I guess I just think that policy should be the deciding factor in voting, not which candidate is best at shouting everyone else down.

[Excellen Browning]

Political parties where you come from probably hold party conferences to figure out their agenda for the election cycle. I can't guarantee you that's how it works in your specific case, but that's how it works in Western Europe, barring parties like PVV and Front National.

And yes, those conferences are heavily publicised.

Edited March 6, 2020 by Excellen Browning

[Nobody]

Polls are showing Biden beating Sanders by 30 points in Michigan, even though the latter won it in 2016. How the fuck is this happening?

[LegendOfLoog]

15 minutes ago, Nobody said:

Polls are showing Biden beating Sanders by 30 points in Michigan, even though the latter won it in 2016. How the fuck is this happening?

Eh, don’t worry too much. Hillary was up by 20 points there in 2016 in the polls leading up to the primary, but Bernie ended up winning by a point and a half. Biden’s average lead per Real Clear Politics is +22, so it’s pretty much the same scenario. 

[Rezzy]

30 minutes ago, Nobody said:

Polls are showing Biden beating Sanders by 30 points in Michigan, even though the latter won it in 2016. How the fuck is this happening?

Single state polls are notorious for being bad in certain areas, especially if there's only been one or two done.  Also, the economy's a lot better than it was in 2016, so people are less likely to vote for a radical.