No, but I think at some point you can’t just translate dollars with time value of money. Also, you can’t compare the value of stuff for stuff: how do you compare cotton fields to flush toilets and color TVs? That’s why I said “enormously wealthier” rather than "billionaires.
Over the centuries the US has actually done a pretty good job of letting people from modest backgrounds become president. Even the two billionaires who are current Democratic contenders grew up middle class.
"Mike Bloomberg has on repeated occasions faced and fought allegations that he directed crude and sexist comments to women in his office, including a claim in the 1990s that he told an employee who had just announced she was pregnant to “kill it.”
“He told me to ‘kill it’ in a serious monotone voice,” the woman alleged in a lawsuit. “I asked ‘What? What did you just say?’ He looked at me and repeated in a deliberate manner ‘kill it.’”
" There is no question: The youngest candidate in the 2020 presidential race, at age 37, isn’t doing well with young Democratic voters. In the latest Quinnipiac poll, Buttigieg gets the support among just 2% of voters under 35. And in an average of CNN polling in October and November, Buttigieg gets slightly better with 8% of voters under 35 – still a single-digit number."
Psst, Pete… he’s talking about you.
Click through to see the entire thread on twitter
Problem is, unless the strike at Loyola is resolved, there won’t be a debate, as most if not all the candidates are refusing to cross the picket line to attend.
Of course, one of the benefits of making competing private insurance illegal under M4A is that, when M4A is the only game in town, you can choose any provider at all. They’re all in the “network” when there’s only one network.
Good for them. And that’s one of the differences between every single Democratic candidate, no matter how much some people think that Buttigieg and Biden are really Republican, and the actual Republicans.
I hope they find a new venue.
I see an Asian-American, a Jewish-American, a gay man, and two women in a lineup of 8. That’s a remarkable thing. For those who find the group insufficiently diverse, well, I don’t disagree. For example, I would like to have seen both Booker and Castro up there, I like them both very much. That said, I haven’t seen a huge outpouring of support for the candidates of color (the two above, Harris, Patrick, Tulsi, are/were there others?) from the same crowd that is complaining about their absence. And of course there is also the crowd that thinks there are too many candidates up there.
Premise 1: Buttigieg et al are not actually stupid. They know that this line is a bullshit talking point manufactured by the healthcare industry in order to maintain the status quo.
Premise 2: The status quo is monstrous and is responsible for the premature deaths of countless poor people.
Conclusion: Buttigieg et al are willing to kill large numbers of poor people in the pursuit of personal wealth and power.
ding-ding We have a winner!
Speaking of which…
Shit. I’m not optimistic for a two-phase approach that Phase 2 will ever come. I’d rather see her emphasize the very compelling nature of M4A on its own merits. It sounds like the lag in voter support for M4A is more about counter-messaging than any real swing in voter opinion.
I greatly prefer Sanders’ plan of tackling it in one step. The real benefits only accrue when private health insurance is killed dead.
I’m glad to see that younger Dems are now acutely aware that Third-Way neoliberalism-lite isn’t sustainable any more going forward, no matter what the age of the candidate (and of course, the two progressive candidates they do support are septuagenarians).
Dem Politics 101: never, ever get the unions angry at you. Campaigns have been lost because of amateur-hour mistakes like not putting the union “bug” on printed materials and signs. The worst instance I remember was from 2016, when the Sanders campaign staff managed to piss off the super-powerful Las Vegas service worker’s union.
Now consider that factor in respect of the point that the US President has at least nominal control of the most over-funded and consistently aggressive military in the history of the world.
From an Afghan/Iraqi/Libyan/etc perspective, it is very much not the case that “any Dem will do”.
From an earlier thread:
^that instagram post was removed lol
It’s nice that they have a kid’s table?
That Gym Jordan look doesn’t work.
I’m sure I’ve said this before, but when I hear about offering a public option I think: Yeah, that’s good. Make a public option that runs exactly like the private insurers except that: 1) It has infinite cash flow to muscle competitors, establish networks, etc., 2) Zero profit.
But of course that’s not what they mean by public option. They don’t mean having the public enter the free market swinging and crush the private interests like bugs. They mean creating some carefully contrived thing to exist alongside the private insurance. They will protect the private industry from actually having to compete with the public.
