I hope no one is using “Mayo” to describe white supremacists. But I guess there are lots of people out there who think mayo is a disgusting thing to be shunned.
I get how bad Trump is and I am not going trying to get at your throat because I 100% respect the “Bloomberg is better than Trump” belief. Personally (and keeping in mind I can afford to be distant because I don’t actually get to choose) I genuinely worry that Bloomberg would just fucking loot the country, sure that given the politics the Democrats would never, ever impeach them. I’m not talking about making bad decisions or data-driven racism (those are definites).
I’m saying I’m worried Bloomberg would literally just start cutting themselves checks for billions and roll troops into any state that complained. I mean, why not? (And even then I can imagine an argument to vote for them over Trump)
he could have used his mike to… i dont know… explain it?
look at what warren has done. she looked at the facts, has seen m4a is a good goal, and built on it. rather than tear her rivial down, she says: here’s why i’m different.
what pete did is tell people on the left and in the center, you know what: fox news is right on this one.
the party will tear itself down? jeebus pete. you’re the party. you’ve got volition.
For the others who are less likely to vote if they don’t like the eventually Democratic candidate, this succinctly points out that for most Democrats, the real election is right now.
The future in 3 stages.
Now is effectively the real election. Pick a candidate, build support, convince people to join you. But, please don’t antagonize people who support another candidate as their first choice.
The convention, either someone shows up with a majority, or they don’t. If not, one of them is going to need to build a coalition that gets them a majority. Convince people to switch to a second choice. Not antagonizing them earlier will help a lot here.
The actual election. Please vote. I don’t care if you vote “for the democratic candidate”, “against Trump”, or “for not the democratic candidate because you believe they’re worse than Trump”, please vote no matter what.
That’s a little lie, I do care who you vote for, and I would like you to at least vote for the democratic candidate as “against Trump” because I believe first none of the possible choices are actually worse than Trump even if some are only marginally better. Second, I don’t think an only marginally better is going to be the winner of the second stage.
The rest is just noise, practically all of the primary so far has just been noise. In the first three contests, there was roughly half a million votes, in the fourth half a million by itself. Let it play out, we’ll have a better feel in a few days when at least more than 2% of Democrats have voted…
There’s also the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. Which would basically end round the EC using State authority over electoral vote allocation.
But it doesn’t come into effect until it’s adopted by enough states to make it effective. Which pretty much requires control of states by parties interested in electoral reform.
Which pretty much means Democrats.
And requires people to vote in those down ballot races.
But I’m sure obstinately refusing to participate until exactly the right singular personality shows up will be just effective.
Clear announcement and immediate endorsement makes a bit more sense than dangle it out there and announce it after everyone already knows.
Part of the issue here is how close SC is to Super Tuesday. There’s a sort of one two punch there in one of the few places with a majority Black electorate, and a day with so many and such large states being just a few days a part.
One of the only reasons so many candidates are still involved is the way the schedule makes all those early states kinda mathematically meaningless. The other one is that long, stupid debate schedule with it’s insanely ineffective qualifying standards. That shit was an over cautious mistake.
And it’s basically a stage in Warren’s plan, and potentially in Bernie’s. Anyone pitching a public option is basically taking the “what we can do fast” bit and stopping there.
It doesn’t show a lot of depth of thought on the issue.
I think it’s slightly different. Pete looked at the facts, saw m4a was a good goal, then looked at the political reality, wondered what could be passed through congress, and built from there. I think he was convinced (rightly or wrongly) that running under m4a, and trying to pass full-on m4a weren’t do-able, even if m4a was the best option long-term. Basically, same goal, different way to get there.
“A single-payer environment is probably the right answer in the long term, but I think any politician who throws around phrases like Medicare for all has to explain how we would get there. What you want to do is you take something like Medicare, you put it on the exchanges as a public option, and if people like me are right that that is both good coverage and more cost efficient, then more and more people will buy in and it will be a very natural glide path towards the single-payer environment.”
That’s a fairly false criticism though. Because the Medicare For All side of it, Warren especially, is doing exactly that. Even Bernie to some extent.
But the Biden/Buttigieg response is basically saying “We can do X in the short term” and taking it no further. What is Buttigieg’s plan for after he adds medicare as a public option? To make it work, to make it better, to allow it to be built into the single payer system that’s “Probably the right answer long term”?
What’s Biden’s?
In large part that position is short term thinking, a bone thrown to the attention Medicare for All attracted. Intended to leave the bulk of the solution to someone else at some undefined future point.
The more ambitious position, at least where thought out, even if it doesn’t pass as is in full in short order. At least leaves a basis to build that single payer system.
If that’s the case then he clearly didn’t look at the political reality. Republicans and republicans-in-disguise aren’t going to vote for either, so push the correct one.
That doesn’t help as much as everyone pointing it out thinks it does. Bloomberg has a history of religious and ethnic persecution, as well as a remarkably pro corporate outlook. justices he appoints are likely to be better on abortion, but probably further centralize power in the executive and strip a huge amount civil liberties protections.
It’s more like antagonistic neglect. Even the big one that people point out, stop and frisk. He basically inhereted that (and broken windows) from Guiliani. He didn’t give a shit that it was ineffective, that it was wrong, and that it was unconstitutional. And so long as it wasn’t harming well off, enfranchised white folks or impacting developer profits he was gonna fight to preserve it cause everyone in his bubble told him it was good.
He did much more harm overall by restricting resources to communities he just didn’t give a shit about. Brown folks in the outer boroughs didn’t put him in office, so brown folks in the outer boroughs didn’t get shit.
Those people weren’t important so they could just rot. But if their neighborhood was gentrifying, or they wandered into a popular tourist destination. Now they’re an active problem.
He’s not a Trump grade, put em in camps racist. He’s and out of sight, out of mind racist.
On top of that he’s a pure plutocrat. His entire viewpoint is predicated on the investment class, and his solution to nearly everything boils down to attracting and servicing rich people. He’s not corrupt per se. Just more concerned about what Jeff Bezos thinks than whether you have food.
If nothing else, Bloomberg is far less likely to just outsource the process of choosing judges (especially SCOTUS Justices) to the Federalist society. So yeah, even a billionaire pro-corporation candidate like Bloomberg would be an improvement over Trump on that front.
Bloomberg could be exactly as bad as your worst-case scenario and still be light-years better than Trump. I honestly do not think is is an exaggeration to say that the country we have a shot at getting back after four more years of Trump (and a solid “conservative” majority cemented for a generation) may be fundamentally and irretrievably different than the county was in 2016.
Couldn’t agree more. I don’t think people appreciate how much difference the SC makes, and what this country could look like with 1 (or god forbid 2) more Trump nominees. These are people that will be on the bench for 30+ years making the county over in their image.
Not much you can do in the time allotted at the debates: in the moderated ones the moderators tried hard to keep the candidates from getting into details, in the last one the candidates were screaming over one another. Even Bernie hardly got time to do more than repeat “I wrote the damn bill” whenever possible.
At least on his campaign web page, Pete gave considerable more detail than Bernie. Here’s Pete.Here’s Bernie.
Warren is famously a detail person, and look where that has got her so far. However, at this stage what Pete and Bernie have produced is all you need; the POTUS will set a philosophy, the bills themselves will be drafted by legislative committees.
he spent his time shouting that sander’s was dividing the party and saying his plan was too expensive, too socialist, too impossible.
he could have stuck with the facts on m4a, and found something to distinguish himself on… otherwise why be in the race at all?
( though, i guess he’s answered that now by exiting the race. )
look, i would have voted for him in the general, he’s not the worst candidate up there. ( booker or harris were in the same general lane and would have been better. )
it’s just he managed to undermine his own campaign, and he didn’t do the party any favors in the process.
Leicester City were given a 0.02% chance of winning the Premier League in 2016. There is always a chance.
Leicester City won the championship for the first time in their 132-year history, becoming the 24th club to become English football champions, and the sixth club to win the Premier League. Many commentators consider this to be one of the greatest sports shocks in history, especially considering that Leicester spent half of the previous season at the bottom of the table before finishing 14th.
He pretty openly advocated stop and frisk oversaw a massive increase in its application. I was actually thinking more about the demographics unit when I typed that, which was instituted under his watch.
Being an improvement over Trump isn’t enough to make it a compelling argument. There are things about Bloomberg that actually constitute arguments for him and are compelling, climate change and transportation policy come to mind. He’s too mixed on the likely outcome of the justices to make it a great argument.
I think what scares a lot of us about Bloomberg is the idea that he would be the Augustus to Trump’s Caesar. He’s the competent manager who cements the death of our republic. I’ll probably manage to set that fear aside by November because of the points of difference, but he is the first viable Democratic candidate in my lifetime where I’ve legitimately thought about skipping the presidential if he’s on the ballot and that is a high risk situation when we have the state legislatures that will handle a census redistricting on the ballot.
Yeah Silver caught way too much flack for the odds he put on Trump, both before and after the election.
If the forecast says there’s a 30 percent chance of rain and you get caught in a shower on your way home then you don’t get to yell at the meteorologist just because you didn’t bring your umbrella.
