Here's the video Gabbard made that essentially blames the united states for the bombings in Aleppo. Watch this video and tell me this isn't pro-Assad propaganda. Video of her driving down the streets of Aleppo while there is a voice over narration talking about how terrible the US foreign policy is & how we need to leave Assad alone. Shockingly enough, she also accuses the US of aligning with Al Qaeda as well to overthrow Assad. Which is a talking point from Assad & Putin that Assad was only attacking terrorists that were trying to overthrow the government. Then there is a priest of some sort that apparently is an expert at missile technology makes the assertion that there is NO WAY the Syrian government did this. I'm no fan of Trump's policy in Syria, but holy crap this is bizarre. If you want to make that case that the US aligned with Al Qaeda was really the ones bombing Aleppo that's a direction you can own if you want to, but based on the FACTS I know... Assad is responsible for murdering his own people with Putin's help.... NOT the US... even as much as I cannot stand Trump. (I'll add there's no doubt in my mind that the Trump admin's CIA & other military special units have no doubt looked at ways of removing Assad either via assassination or political dynamics in the region. However that's not what Gabbard is alluding to here. I want to be clear about that).
It's not just fine to consider - it's *vital* to do so. I mean, Medicare-for-all was on the Colorado ballot in 2016 and lost 80-20 in a state that voted Democrat. It passed in Vermont, and then they had to scrap it when they realized they had no idea how to do it at a reasonable cost (Vermont, being relatively wealthy and geographically small is one of the easiest places to theoretically make this work outside of maybe Alaska and Hawaii). People who want to push it on the whole nation should be prepared to explain how and why it will work. And why people shouldn't be fearful of losing their current jobs or why they should be OK with losing the insurance they like. It's not like these candidates just came up with these ideas. Sanders has been running on this for 3 years now. They should preemptively have answers for people's very real concerns. There's only one way to lose this election - people are 100% ready to vote against Trump because they dislike him personally and how he conducts himself. But economically, people feel they are currently doing pretty well. The only thing that will make them reconsider voting against Trump is if they fear that Dems will f*** with their individual success/happiness. Dems can be progressive, but they have to proactively address these concerns. Not doing so is how you get a wave election the opposite of what you want.
Yeah - Dems don't like to talk about this at all. Republicans, if they are smart, will not bring it up until next summer. But it's a huge issue that Dems need to figure out. Some articles: Colorado: https://www.vox.com/policy-and-poli...lorado-single-payer-ballot-initiative-failure On the day the state of Colorado voted for Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump by about 5 points, voters there also rejected a ballot measure to enact a state-based single-payer system by an astounding margin of 79 percent to 21 percent. Amendment 69, the Colorado Creation of ColoradoCare System Initiative, would have created a system in which all Coloradans would gain insurance through a tax-funded government insurance program. Private health insurers would have been rendered obsolete. The Colorado initiative bears a resemblance to the Medicare-for-all legislation released by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) this week and endorsed by leading Democrats like Sens. Kamala Harris (D-CA), Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Cory Booker (D-NJ), and Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), and to HR 676, Rep. John Conyers’s (D-MI) single-payer proposal which has the support of a large majority of House Democrats. Colorado’s initiative, in other words, matched the 2017 health care platform of the Democratic Party. And it failed — really, really, really badly. “The proposal came too soon and too fast for where voters were,” Joel Dyar, who worked as state field director for the ColoradoCare Yes campaign, says. ... Vermont: https://www.washingtonpost.com/nati...07b06d0257b_story.html?utm_term=.2a9eb3143856 Three and a half years after then-Gov. Peter Shumlin of Vermont signed into law a vision for the nation’s first single-payer health system, his small team was still struggling to find a way to pay for it. With a deadline bearing down, they worked through a frozen, mid-December weekend, trying one computer model Friday night, another Saturday night, yet another Sunday morning. If they kept going, the governor asked his exhausted team on Monday, could they arrive at a tax plan that would be politically palatable? No, they told him. They could not. Two days later, on Dec. 17, 2014, Shumlin, a Democrat who had swept into office promising a health-care system that left no one uninsured, announced he was giving up, lamenting the decision as “the greatest disappointment of my political life so far.” The trajectory of Green Mountain Care, as Vermont’s health system was to be known — from the euphoric spring of 2011 to its crash landing in late 2014 — offers sobering lessons for the current crop of Democrats running for president, including Vermont’s own Sen. Bernie Sanders (I), most of whom embrace Medicare-for-all or other aspirations for universal insurance coverage. Vermont’s foray into publicly financed health care — in a state that in many ways offered the optimal conditions — demonstrates the extraordinary difficulty of trying to convert liberals’ dream of a more just, efficient health system into reality. ...
Good lord. Is she totally ignorant of the actions in that country by Assad, and his father before him, against their own people? What a propaganda win for the Assad regime. It's sad seeing a congresswoman led by the nose of the brutal dictatorship there and apparently falling for it. What on earth was she thinking? I noticed that she was wearing all black on a large portion of her tour. Quite a contrast to the recent outfit she wore for the debate. She has zero chance of getting my vote in the primary.
I agree they should be able to explain how it will work and why it would beneficial. They should absolutely find a good way to address these issues and communicate that.
Me too, and the sad part is I know that zero of the Trump supporters here that fawn over her would ever actually change their vote and the red flags we are calling out now would be amplified x1000 in the general election. This would be a sh$t storm in the general election. Would I still vote for her over Trump... yes, but I think she would be destroyed in the general election with this stuff coming up and ginned up by the media. “I was vindicated by MY Attorney General... Tulsi is the real Russian asset” ... and let the conspiracy theories and compromat flow... The adoration from the Right has nothing to do with her platform and everything to do with them falling in line with right wing propaganda that is allied with Russian disruption of the US government.
The debates seem too early to me. Maybe I'm getting old. I also think the format has been crazy. Way too many people on the stage and not nearly enough time for the candidates to express their takes on the issues. In my opinion, the debates should have waited until the primaries were closer. Give the candidates time to shake out who's going the distance, and who isn't. Have a smaller group in these debates so people can get a better sense of who they are and where they stand on a variety of important things. In my opinion. Exactly. I think that's perfectly obvious, but apparently not to some people.
Per @Deckard above statement I agree about the debates. It’s too early to have this consequential of a debate with so many people. And I just feel that having true grassroots support is key and we really fast tracked that process which undercuts these candidates. Most important thing I’ve learned though... you have to get outside of CNN and MSNBC and find a media medium that gets you a platform to connect on your turf. I know CNN means well and can’t fault them for being a business but they will do you no favors. Don’t emulate Beto but look at Beto in 2018. He found a way to have his own controlled media stream. Donald Trump will always own the news cycle on cable news and the debate gets framed on the turf of the DC consultant instead of a real authentic energy that you get when you have your own platform that goes straight to the source.
Gabbard got a huge bump. 12k donors in the last 24 hours. Now 2k donors away from the 130k qualifying mark.
no worries. Joe Biden pledged to do away with all fossil fuels, so there ain't gonna be any 35-year-old oil and gas guys anymore. https://www.realclearpolitics.com/a...s_bidens_vow_to_ban_fossil_fuels__140916.html
I think it's not fair to compare 1992 election to 2020 election. Fewer candidates, actual live debates started later in 1992, and there was not this thing call social media. When Clinton was an unknown, he was barely registered in polling. But as soon as he was known, has a chance to speak and were seen, he jumped to 8% by fall of 1998. All of these current 2020 candidates had 2 live debates chances and their own social media outlet. If they were standout like Clinton was, they would make some noise by now. I overall think it's fine to shake out the field and get to a smaller field soon. With this many candidates, starting early allow that. I don't know what rules have been set for 2020 debates, but there shouldn't be anything that would exclude a comeback candidate from joining the live debates again - someone that failed to make the Sept/Oct or whatever upcoming debates, but came back stronger later would be up there again in live debates in 2020.
It's only weird if you ignore reality - or are a person that just retweets things without thinking about it. Campaigns didn't start as early back then, so summer of 1971 would be before campaigns got heavily underway. The first debate in the 1972 election took place 2 days before New Hampshire (March 1972). The first debate in the 1992 race took place in December 1991, and they cut a lot of candidates out of it to keep it managable. There were also far fewer candidates, less media coverage, etc. Basically, everything about the campaigns were different - it's silly to single out one thing to compare. Unless you're just a partisan shithead who has a really transparent agenda.
The point of the early debates was to give everyone an opportunity to get in front of the country. These lesser candidates *need* the debates to have any shot to get from 1% to anything higher. We've already seen how it gave Harris an opening and people praised a lot of secondary candidates the last few days. Who knows if it moves the polls much, but it gives them exposure and an opportunity to make up ground. Outside of Biden (frontrunner) and people outside the top 20, I doubt any of the candidates are unhappy with the early debates.
