Biden wins most Super Tuesday states; Sanders takes California

[mocon]

@jerwin

JFC. This again?

Not back on it, Joe. Still on it.

They Might Be Giants - Snowball in Hell (Official. Audio only)

[ficuswhisperer]

That site is great - a really nice and no-nonsense breakdown on the candidate positions. I was reading it all like:

[anon3894935]

I certainly won’t deny that Biden has more support from the black community, but the theories I’ve heard for why that is are:

1. His connection to Obama.
2. They feel like America is so conservative that only the most moderate candidate will be able to face Trump.
3. He has a long history of courting black voters that other candidates lack.
4. His black voter advantage is at least partly an illusion because the age divide is still present- younger black voters are more in favor of Sanders, but then don’t bother to vote.

So no, it isn’t all about “stupid voters”. But the parts that aren’t don’t look like factors Sanders can wrest away, either.

[n8_zilla]

The Democrats: All we have is fear itself.

[SqualusAcanthias]

I like smart, humanist and principled old white men just the same as any other folk with those qualities though.

[gatto]

@Brainspore

Since a huge part of Biden’s victory was due to support from the black community,

it seems to be about the olds , regardless of race

There Is No Such Thing as the 'Black Vote'

[Manqueman]

Old Joe did well for the most part in the states that are safe to bet on for voting for Trump in November. That’s not my definition of electability, notwithstanding how much the establishment press wants Biden to be the nominee. Then again, as a cohort that for decades have been overly supportive of the GOP, I don’t know that their judgment here is trustworthy.
All exit polls had the majority of voters wanting private health insurers eliminated and replaced with M4A. You know who won’t be getting his Republican friends to pass even an ACA 2.0 (v.1.0 is getting put down for good by the Republican SCOTUS majority next year)? Old Joe.
Super Tuesday resolved ~1/3 of the delegates (excluding “superdelegates”). It takes shitty reporters and reporting to claim or act in any way that this over.
BTW: Trump will whip Biden’s ass in a debate (and the moderators will allow it).

[LurksNoMore]

I don’t know what drugs you are taking if you think Donald “Can’t make a coherent sentence” Trump is going to whip anyone in a debate, but I suggest you cut back a little.

[simonize]

@CashUNutt

I think there was only one state (Colorado) where the Sanders+Warren vote was over fifty percent, and in most cases, their total was in the thirties. So the idea that a non-centrist could comfortably win seems a lot shakier than it was a month ago.

More proof that the Democrats have not managed to exile the moderates in the same way that the GOP has.

[Otherbrother]

His home state of Delaware (which he represented in the senate for 36 years) has a population that’s over 21% African American, so he’s got a long history working with folks from that background, which isn’t nothing.

[Headache]

They have less power, but there are still an absurd number of them. I think the number is around 15% of all the delegates are super delegates.

is not a good position for electability

They would overturn a Sanders lead precisely for electability reasons. A major component of his base is young people and they don’t vote. I didn’t see what the final numbers were but I think of the youngest demographic, only 13% bothered to vote last Tuesday.

[anon50609448]

@d_r

This is always a danger. Any plan requires careful crafting and governmental goodwill. It isn’t a good use of time to have a discussion comparing two systems if there is a prior assumption that one will be done properly and the other intentionally screwed up.

I agree, but that still leaves me with two reasons to think medicare for all is a better plan than ACA + public option.

First, it’s a question of the character and values of the people proposing the plans. Sanders and Warren seem ready to go to the mat for a plan that really works for people. Sanders welcomes the hatred and anger of insurance companies that will hate the plan. Biden is going to try to make everyone happy and that “everyone” is going to include billionaires, Mitch McConnell and Ted Cruz. That’s not a recipe for success.

Second, medicare for all is modeled after real systems that are really working in other parts of the world. ACA + public option sounds fine in theory. I have a lot more faith in copying something that’s been successfully implemented than implementing something new (I guess I’m just conservative).

@enkidoodler

Biden isn’t great, but he certainly isn’t the worst (Mike Bloomberg… some aspects of Tulsi Gabbard). A Biden/Warren ticket would make ME happier, but to energize the electorate you need something like Biden/Abrams.

This is probably the second most consequential VP pick in American history (to Trump’s VP pick for this election). The odds that the VP ends up being president are going to be higher this election than any other (this probably isn’t true since a couple hundred years ago a 60-year-old was probably as likely to die as an 80-year-old is today, but still).

@Headache

They would overturn a Sanders lead precisely for electability reasons. A major component of his base is young people and they don’t vote. I didn’t see what the final numbers were but I think of the youngest demographic, only 13% bothered to vote last Tuesday.

I think Sander’s candidacy was based around the theory that Sanders could drive young people to vote. I thought that theory was plausible (maybe I hoped it was?). It doesn’t look like that happened on super Tuesday, and now I think Biden probably has the nomination and it’s probably for the best that they do.

[d_r]

@anon50609448

I agree, but that still leaves me with two reasons to think medicare for all is a better plan than ACA + public option.

I agree with that, too. I just think the latter is a pretty major step forward. I also think that the Democrats who favor it are doing so because they think it is more likely to get through the legislature than M4A, and not because they are pawns of the health care industry doing the bidding of their masters. (Biden, after all, did much of the heavy lifting on getting ACA passed. He has pretty direct experience here.) If the Senate brought a M4A bill to President Biden to sign, I’m fairly sure he would sign it. I’m not as convinced President Sanders would sign an ACA+PO bill.

Sanders welcomes the hatred and anger of insurance companies that will hate the plan. Biden is going to try to make everyone happy and that “everyone” is going to include billionaires, Mitch McConnell and Ted Cruz. That’s not a recipe for success.

I don’t think that either is a recipe for success. I wonder how much of Biden’s success last week was due to his being the “un-Biden” during the debates: warm and relatively conciliatory towards the other candidates.

[Otherbrother]

@d_r

If the Senate brought a M4A bill to President Biden to sign, I’m fairly sure he would sign it. I’m not as convinced President Sanders would sign an ACA+PO bill.

For all his rhetoric Sanders can be pragmatic at times. He did vote for the ACA in 2009 even though it didn’t go as far as he wanted, so there’s no real reason to believe that a President Sanders wouldn’t sign off on legislation that was an improvement over the status quo but not everything that he asked for.

[anon50609448]

@d_r

Biden, after all, did much of the heavy lifting on getting ACA passed. He has pretty direct experience here.

The ACA was a positive accomplishment, but I’m not exactly impressed with the people who pushed it through. I think they watered down their original vision heavily to capitulate to people who ended up spending the next 8 years doing nothing but trying to destroy the ACA anyway. And I don’t think Biden has learned from that. Biden thinks success is complete Republican obstructionism and claims that you can smell sulphur around Hillary Clinton.

I think Sanders would sign ACA+PO if it looked like it was actually going to work for the people. I think Biden would sign nearly anything in the interest of appearing to get along with everyone.

@Otherbrother

For all his rhetoric Sanders can be pragmatic at times. He did vote for the ACA in 2009 even though it didn’t go as far as he wanted, so there’s no real reason to believe that a President Sanders wouldn’t sign off on legislation that was an improvement over the status quo but not everything that he asked for.

And vetoing legislation is going way further than voting against it.

[Otherbrother]

@Otherbrother

@Otherbrother

He did vote for the ACA in 2009 even though it didn’t go as far as he wanted, so there’s no real reason to believe that a President Sanders wouldn’t sign off on legislation that was an improvement over the status quo but not everything that he asked for.

And vetoing legislation is going way further than voting against it.

I don’t follow. In 2009 there were no spare votes for the ACA in the senate. Any senator who chose to vote against it would be effectively vetoing it. Which is exactly why it got watered down so much: they had to gain the support of the 60th most liberal senator. (Joe Lieberman in this case)

[anon73430903]

@anon3894935

His black voter advantage is at least partly an illusion because the age divide is still present- younger black voters are more in favor of Sanders, but then don’t bother to vote.

7 hour queues may play a part too

'Wasn't going to let anything stop me': Texas man votes after enduring...

[anon50609448]

@Otherbrother

I don’t follow. In 2009 there were no spare votes for the ACA in the senate. Any senator who chose to vote against it would be effectively vetoing it. Which is exactly why it got watered down so much: they had to gain the support of the 60th most liberal senator. (Joe Lieberman in this case)

It’s like if you let your kids pick a movie and they choose not to watch a horror movie because they don’t want to vs. you let them pick a movie and after they pick a horror movie you step in with your parental authority and say, “No, not that one.” Sure the result either way is the movie doesn’t get watched. But the conditions in the house aren’t going to be the same in each scenario.

If Sanders voted against ACA they’d be no more responsible for it’s non-passage than any other senator who voted against it. If Sanders vetoed adding a public option to the ACA it would seem heavy-handed and unfair.

[d_r]

@d_r

The ACA was a positive accomplishment, but I’m not exactly impressed with the people who pushed it through. I think they watered down their original vision heavily to capitulate to people who ended up spending the next 8 years doing nothing but trying to destroy the ACA anyway.

Yes, they did water it down. Obama wanted a public option. They barely got it passed even without it. Even if Trump managed to destroy ACA, that would still be years of people being covered who weren’t before, but at this point I think any Republican running against ACA is in for an election-day shock.

Democrats had been trying to get an NHS-style health plan passed since Roosevelt. It was a major goal for Teddy Kennedy and Tip O’Neill when they were the Democratic establishment, but they couldn’t get it through. I think, thanks to the Hillarycare fiasco, it was an even harder battle in 2008 than it was in the 1970s. Getting ACA passed was a truly impressive political accomplishment.

I hope you (and @Otherbrother) are right about Sanders signing ACA+OP, though I suspect he would be more willing to do that as a senator (where he might think that was the best thing he was going to see) than as President (who might not want to be identified with a compromise). And if Biden signs good laws just because he wants people to like him, I don’t care as long as he signs good laws.

[anon50609448]

@d_r

I hope you (and @Otherbrother) are right about Sanders signing ACA+OP, though I suspect he would be more willing to do that as a senator (where he might think that was the best thing he was going to see) than as President (who might not want to be identified with a compromise).

Are presidential vetoes that normalized that they can be contemplated for legislation just because the president doesn’t love it? Like I guess they are, but honestly it just seems like the country is has completely broken down. Vetoes should be used to stop an out-of-control legislature from passing laws that do real damage to the country, or to stop obviously unconstitutional laws. It’s downright crazy to me that we could even talk about using a veto to stop adding a public option to ACA, no matter the politics of the president. I think a president who did that would deserve impeachment for abuse of power.