The wealth inequality gap and disappearing middle class is not sustainable. Sure the corporations are thriving and so people think the economy is rocking and rolling but the truth is many people are struggling and don't think the economy works for them. Many people go into debt with just one medical bill. This is not how this American dream thing was supposed to work. I truly believe this, when you see how many people vote in the country (not nearly enough) it's easy to see that most elections are won by driving enthusiasm. That's why Obama won, that's why Trump won.
Yup. Getting people off their ass is where it counts. And it comes down to which states were feelin' the candidates and felt like they were promised enough. Go and tell people you'll open the factories. Doesn't matter much if you do, but you have to give them that dream. Afterward they go smoke cigars and drink scotch in their ivory towers.
Yet, that 30% candidate is the only one with strong enthusiasm among voters willing to come out for him consistently. Hence, the rest of the "okay" candidates struggling to make a dent in this race. Sure mathematically, there is a 70% bloc that Buttigieg, Biden, Klobuchar should be able to consolidate, but neither candidate has shown the ability nor the enthusiasm among voters to be able to do so. Have we learned nothing from 2016? You can't take voters for granted. Hillary had the "okay" going for her and she failed to energize enough voters in key states to come out for her. You can't make people stand in line in hours to vote for someone who is "okay" at best. As for Sanders comparison to Trump and his popularity among his base, that is the best case study for the Democratic Party to understand the seismic shift happening in the electorate of this country. Trump carved out a new voting bloc from the GOP. So many right-wing voters wanted wholesale change in American politics that they were swept up by Trump's promise to shock and awe the system. Same thing is happening to the democrats right now, Sanders has pushed the conversation so far to the left and his platform of wholesale change is the only one resonating with any bloc of voters even if it's only 30% of the pie at the moment. Nobody else is getting anywhere with their moderate business as usual message. Remember if the GOP establishment had its way in 2016, Jeb! would be their president. So the DNC needs to lay off trying to make their moderate dream happen. DNC had 4 years to prepare and to come up with an ace prospect to go up against Trump and the best it could do is Biden. Finally, I love how the 70% keeps threatening Bernie they won't go along with him. Yet, when a fraction of Bernie's 30% decided not to show up, Trump won. So yeah Bernie needs the democratic party as much as the party needs him.
Yup, but more specifically Trump won because the Democrat base was not enthusiastic about Hillary. Turnout was low in heavy blue districts in swing States such as Pennsylvania and Michigan.
But will a faction of the "70%" not show up to support an avowed Socialist? The 2016 campaign had a lot of unusual stuff happen and certainly Hillary was a very unpopular candidate. I will look though to the 2018 campaign where strong turnout among moderates flipped more than 40 GOP held seats in the House. Pelosi is speaker today not because of AOC, Tlaib or Omar but because of Connor Lamb, Angie Craig and Melissa Slotkin.
I think I've made it clear that I realize single payer is an inevitability .... and I'm not particularly against nor am I against eliminating the for profit insurance company as the collection agent - I've made that statement many times. But that's not the only issue we're talking about with Bernie and his free everything when its really not free and its an absolute fallacy that "the rich are gonna pay for it all" , its a mathematical impossibility. Everyone is going to see a significant tax increase. Companies are going to see massive tax increases - how do you think they are going to adjust for that loss of income / profit ?
Maybe that has to do with the fact that a majority of voters think the Dems policies are bad idea's ? No .... It couldn't be that.
I admit I don't know if the math works out that way. Living in Minnesota a state that Clinton barely won and bordering Wisconsin and Iowa two potentially swing states that could not only decide the Presidential race but also control of the Senate I'm not sure there is enough votes in blue districts if they can't win purple suburban counties. Democrats can and have won Madison and Milwaukee overwhelmingly yet still lost statewide races in Wisconsin. Milwaukee is blue district but keep in mind that Scott Walker also comes from the Milwaukee area so it can't be taken for granted that we just need to excite a liberal base there. In Minnesota Ilhan Omar is firmly in control of the 5th district but right next door a very conservative Republican controls the 6th. The 4th and the 3rd Districts swung from Republican to Democrat in 2018 to two moderates who won the suburbs there. In Minnesota the same case of Democrats dominating the cities yet losing statewide because they couldn't win the suburbs has happened and I'm willing to bet that this pattern also happens in states like MI, PA, and AZ.
If he wants to be a majoritarian party then going with the Republican light strategy won't work. Even Republicans have rejected moderate Republicans. The whole Bannon strategy was about taking the Republican party back from the elites. Bernie is about the same thing on the Democrat side. I hate when the corporate media frames the debate in a way that you have to vote for the corrupt middle so that you can beat the other team. Its bullshit. It doesn't matter if you beat Trump with Michael f'ing Bloomberg. Nothing will change. Most people are waking up to the fact that taking a swing and a miss for something different is better than nothing. They did it with Trump and it was a foul ball, it might be the same with Bernie, but at least its taking a swing.
Believe it or not , I agree with you here .... but not because one medical bill or other catastrophic event can ruin people. I think the people within a company who add value to it should be compensated over those who do nothing but buy in because the company is successful (stock market / share holders / dividends). Those people add no real value to the companies .... Or the lack of enthusiasm .... which is why Hillary lost. I really don't know what to make of this presidential election - Trump's unlikable but Bernie (or Warren) downright scares a lot of people. Who wins with a record low turnout on both sides ?!
Bloomberg, Buttigeig, Biden - all superior to Sanders who is just another populist with unattainable ideas. We need on of the B's as the nominee. Sanders can be Veep.
I live in California. Sometimes i think life is too important for some dems to vote. That or they’re emotionally attached to one candidate and don’t care other than that. I like judokas opinion that suburban voters are crucial. They have to make time to drive out mostly during dinner hours. They also fit a spectrum where centrist policies fit more as opposed to drastic policies that can cost families in the thousands or tens of thousands. Trump's one for you ten for me tax cut was sneaky in the sense of giving away stolen money future generations. That's something Dems should understand when they **** around with public funds. Also Democrats is not a majority party. The tent is too big for common agreement. Their visceral emotional message is not of policy but rather personal. Figuring out a unified national message is like herding a nation of cats.
Then that means the party is at an impasse. So much has been said about increasing voter turnout to guarantee victory and so far the only candidate bringing voters from the sidelines is Bernie. The youth vote is solidly behind Sanders and the future of the party is shifting further to the left. The question is can the older generation moderate voters compromise on Sanders or will they let Trump win again against weak candidates like Biden, etc? Now you can try to dismiss 2016 with all sorts "unusual stuff" explanations, but that is the only case study we have to work with. Hillary was the moderate choice of a lifetime -- two decades in the making. She crossed every single checkmark on the party's dream moderate wishlist and was given every resource available at her disposal yet she still lost to Trump in close races. Now you're telling me Biden and Co are somehow going to do much better than "unpopular" Hillary even though they can't win primaries at this point? Like I said, the compromise will to have to come from moderate voters this time around if they want their party to be relevant in presidential elections because they don't have an Obama type in this race.
If Bernie Sanders wins the Democratic nomination by default, he would be the most extreme left nominee in the history of the party. He would also be the first socialist nominee. I am not sure he is capable of winning a Presidential election and would likely greatly injure the Party worse than McGovern.... but things do change so maybe I am wrong.
Tea party started in early 2009, prior to the health care reform or much of anything. If you have to put a policy on what drove the Tea Party, it would be the ARRA - a $800B stimulus pkg in Feb 2009. If Obama and the DEM went further left - said a public option or even left of that, the left-wing would show up to support him. That probably would have offset some of the TEA party energy in the 2010 midterm. But that didn't happen and the TEA party energy help crushed the DEM in 2010 and started a new political wing of the GOP. It's pretty standard that the opposition is more energized while the President's base isn't as engaged and that could be because most President tends to move somewhat back to the center once they win election. One case where that isn't true is with Trump. As a result, his base was engaged and turned out in 2018. That probably prevented a bigger loss. If he did govern from the center, the opposition might not be as great, but still great while his base would not be as engaged. From my perspective, he would probably have a bigger loss governing more from the center.
Well sometimes you also have to look to hit a bloop single or bunt. You don't have to always swing for the fences. This idea that we have to go from one extreme to the other and that the middle is corrupt is one of the biggest problems with our society. Yes Trump won but he won with a very depressed turnout and again to remind people with 3 million fewer less votes than Clinton. Coincidentally Clinton also beat Sanders in the primaries by around 3 million votes also. The idea that since the other side is so extreme so the only way we can get excited and passionate is for our side to get extreme is frankly a recipe for civil war. It's like in Northern Ireland when the IRA aligned themselves to Marxist revolutionary groups like FARC and the PLO so Protestant militias started aligning themselves with white supremacist and Neo-Fascist groups. Back to your baseball analogy yes swinging for the fences is great but a swing and a miss can be very demoralizing and a major rally killer. With Trump yes he says we're swinging for the fences but has that made his supporters less angry or appeased his opponents? If anything we are more polarized now to Trump's strategy than we were in 2016. A Bernie swing for the fences strategy isn't likely going to bring the country any closer together. My own view is that once Sander's rhetoric meets the reality of trying to get implemented there will actually be more frustration and division on all sides.
Except that Sanders hasn't increased voter turnout so far in 2020 and at the moment Buttegieg is matching him. Further you can't just say well 2016 is the only case study we have and ignore most of what happened in it. For that matter if we do take the 2016 case study I will remind people that Sanders did lose the Democratic primary by 3 million actual votes. It wasn't the DNC fix, super delegates, etc.. that did him in but actual voters. In fact by late in the primary it was Sanders who was asking for the Super Delegates to step in on his behalf. This idea that only Sanders can bring in votes just isn't supported when he got less votes than Clinton in the primaries, Clinton still got more votes than Trump, and Sanders hasn't even gotten more votes than Pete Buttegieg so far. Again though this is a a common refrain that we hear from Sanders supporters is that only Bernie can bring in the votes and energize voters and that everyone else has to follow him to win. The numbers don't actually show that.
My analogy was bad. Its more like we are told there is a great game. Here is a great person to play with. If you don't play with this person you will surely lose because the other team has someone who is really good at the game. But now we have played the game many times and figured out it doesn't matter who we play with or which team we play on because the game is rigged and not very fun. Lets play a different game.
Well you're right there but the same is true for Trump. People say Bernie is radical, but so is Trump. Trump scares a lot of people, it's about every day I hear that Trump is going to turn into a dictator if you give him 4 more years or that he's going to start a war (Almost did last month...) and that he's going to continue to trample over the constitution. I think people are just as scared of Trump, if not more so, than Bernie. Even if you elect Bernie I'm not sure he gets much passed, not now, not yet, I bet even people in his party would go against him...but I do think the Dems, since they have lost, will be more willing to swallow their pride and vote for Bernie, at the very least just to make sure that Ruth can retire and be replaced by a liberal judge. I guess we'll see, I think Bernie will have higher turnout. I'm telling yall his stance on weed along is going to drive turnout. I just wonder if people like Pete and Klobuchar move the bar any. A lot of the base HAAAAAAAATES Pete too, more than Biden even. I know uggh the guy that hosts with Sam Seder flat out said if Pete wins he's not voting. I've seen things like this said a lot.
