The Democratic Presidential Nomination 2020

[peter12]

Originally Posted by afc wimbledon

If I and most of my fellow proletariat are doing ok, have a decent life, food a place to live etc why do I care if Bill Gates has 99% of the wealth, as long as the 1% left over looks after everyone else who gives a ####?

The US is probably more than any other country an example of what Nassim Nicholas Taleb calls "extremistan." A place with extreme freedom to take risk driving extreme outcomes. The good news is that the risk-takers have, more or less, been responsible for a ton of very good things.

Also not everyone can belong to mediocrestan like Denmark or Canada.

[HockeyIlliterate]

Originally Posted by nfotiu

If you are using Virginia as an example. Yesterday's turnout doubled 2016, and they went 53-23 for Biden over Bernie. That seems pretty solid evidence that at least that state in your example will turn out in full force for Biden, and might not for Sanders.

Yes, that is probably correct.

Originally Posted by nfotiu

Is trying and not accomplishing anything worth something? I struggle to see why.

Sure it is.

To believe otherwise is to essentially give up on the entire idea of progress, because not every attempt will succeed. And if not every attempt will succeed, then your query would suggest that one should not even try at all.

Originally Posted by Azure

You literally have the strongest economy the world has ever seen, and then you have a Presidential candidate who runs around telling everyone the whole country is screwed.

Massive disconnect and detachment from reality. There is a lot that needs to be fixed, but lets not kid ourselves. Many Americans are doing very well.

Well, hold on a second.

Many Americans might be doing very well, but they are also massively in debt, tethered to an employer they would prefer not to be and doing a job they'd rather not be doing in order to have health insurance, and seeing continual cost increases for higher education.

Take away one's employment and just how great are many Americans really doing?

I'd wager that they might be okay for a month or two, but not for much longer than that, given that, for example, their health insurance would disappear (and, if they made upper-middle-class wages, would likely have earned too much during the year to avail themselves of ACA subsidies to get affordable health insurance for the remainder of the year).

Furthermore, many Americans are not among the "investor class," and so a great stock market doesn't directly benefit them, at least not to a degree that can be immediately appreciated by most.

No, I don't really think that many Americans are doing very well. I think that they are drowning in debt, running on a consumerist treadmill, and that they think that they are just barely keeping up (but in reality are actually falling continually behind due to wage stagnation and ever-higher health insurance costs being passed on by their employer). Take away their job---whether due to outsourcing or a sudden economic downturn---and the whole "I'm doing fine" façade will quickly fall away and the truth will be revealed.

[opendoor]

Originally Posted by PsYcNeT

So the strongest economy in the history of world can't solve rampantly growing income disparity?

Pretty depressing.

Or handle a Federal Reserve rate above 1-2%.

[JohnnyB]

Originally Posted by CliffFletcher

Record-High Optimism on Personal Finances in U.S.

https://news.gallup.com/poll/284264/...-finances.aspx



Millennial progressives act as though they're the first generation to feel discouraged and resentful about the economy. But note how in '82, when the median Boomer was 27 years old, only 23 per cent of Americans felt better off than in the past, versus 59 per cent today.

This just shows that optimism reaches highs at the end of a business cycle shortly before it crashes. This has been a very long cycle, largely being fueled by low rates and several rounds of QE. We're due for those lines in the chart to cross again and the big question is just whether or not it happens quickly enough for Trump to lose the confidence of Americans before November, assuming the elections are even fair in November. It has possibly already started.

[afc wimbledon]

Originally Posted by JohnnyB

This just shows that optimism reaches highs at the end of a business cycle shortly before it crashes. This has been a very long cycle, largely being fueled by low rates and several rounds of QE. We're due for those lines in the chart to cross again and the big question is just whether or not it happens quickly enough for Trump to lose the confidence of Americans before November, assuming the elections are even fair in November. It has possibly already started.

I suspect the 10% loss of wealth last week suggests that yes it has

[JohnnyB]

Originally Posted by afc wimbledon

I suspect the 10% loss of wealth last week suggests that yes it has

I think so too.

Originally Posted by afc wimbledon

If I and most of my fellow proletariat are doing ok, have a decent life, food a place to live etc why do I care if Bill Gates has 99% of the wealth, as long as the 1% left over looks after everyone else who gives a ####?

That sounds good, but the real question is whether or not you can actually count on having a good life in a society with massively unbalanced wealth distribution. Wealth provides power, and huge power imbalances lead to vulnerable populations. Vulnerable populations tend to be taken advantage of, abused and suffer as a result.

[Flamenspiel]

I think that a lot of people voted for Bernie because the US would then have its own Trudeau. Someone who would crater the economy by any means possible and allow investment to flow to a neighbouring country that was open for business. Heck bring it on we love Bernie!

[Mathgod]

Originally Posted by afc wimbledon

If I and most of my fellow proletariat are doing ok, have a decent life, food a place to live etc why do I care if Bill Gates has 99% of the wealth, as long as the 1% left over looks after everyone else who gives a ####?

Because if all workers are working together to create the nation's wealth, but only some are basking in the bulk of the created wealth, the system is pretty much a scam. Not hard to see.

This just shows that optimism reaches highs at the end of a business cycle shortly before it crashes. This has been a very long cycle, largely being fueled by low rates and several rounds of QE. We're due for those lines in the chart to cross again and the big question is just whether or not it happens quickly enough for Trump to lose the confidence of Americans before November, assuming the elections are even fair in November. It has possibly already started.

And when a crash does happen, do you really want someone like Donald Trump, who has already shown overt autocratic tendencies, to be the president? A severe economic crash, coupled with civil unrest, would give him pretext to declare a national emergency and grant himself sweeping dictatorial powers. Is there historical precedence for such a thing happening? There absolutely is...

Originally Posted by Azure

You literally have the strongest economy the world has ever seen, and then you have a Presidential candidate who runs around telling everyone the whole country is screwed.

Massive disconnect and detachment from reality. There is a lot that needs to be fixed, but lets not kid ourselves. Many Americans are doing very well.

An estimated 40% of Americans are living paycheque to paycheque and wouldn't be able to cover a sudden expense.

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/07/20/here...d-expense.html

There are still hundreds of thousands of homeless people in America

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homele..._United_States

And, like it or not, Trump's economy is a house of cards

https://www.google.com/search?&q=con...porate+debt+us

[Aarongavey]

Originally Posted by Flamenspiel

I think that a lot of people voted for Bernie because the US would then have its own Trudeau. Someone who would crater the economy by any means possible and allow investment to flow to a neighbouring country that was open for business. Heck bring it on we love Bernie!

Kind of an odd argument, the Canadian economy went from a position where it created less jobs than the Americans on a per capita basis from 2010-2016 to a place where it has created more jobs than the US economy on a per capita basis from 2017-present day. There are a couple factors to that equation, the Canadian economy has created close to double the number of jobs per year over the past 3+ years compared to the yearly average from 2010-2016 and the US is creating slightly less jobs per year since the end of 2016 than it did from 2010-2016. But it is not like the economy has cratered or has even done poorly over the last three years in Canada, it was doing much better than it had in any other time in the last decade.

[Azure]

Honestly, most people in Canada are doing well.

Just like most people in the US are doing well.

The media makes it worse. Candidates prey on that and try to steal political points. I love what Sanders has done in his career, but he has gone WAY too negative about everything.

[GGG]

Originally Posted by Flamenspiel

I think that a lot of people voted for Bernie because the US would then have its own Trudeau. Someone who would crater the economy by any means possible and allow investment to flow to a neighbouring country that was open for business. Heck bring it on we love Bernie!

No it’s becuase the continued tactic of the right to elect people further and further to the right results in the middle shifting right. Having a voice that far left as president ensures the comprise move back toward the middle.

[peter12]

Originally Posted by GGG

No it’s becuase the continued tactic of the right to elect people further and further to the right results in the middle shifting right. Having a voice that far left as president ensures the comprise move back toward the middle.

I'm not totally sure that's how it works. I think that radicals on both the right and left distort rather than shift the political spectrum. It's an extreme example, but look at Weimar Germany. You could not imagine a more diverse spectrum of radical political options. They, of course, distorted the debate until the moderate liberal centrists were basically drowned as different ideologues argued, battled, and fought over whose utopian vision was best suited for the Volk, workers, whatever.

We all know what happened next.

The genius of America is that it typically segments and isolates radical voices so that they don't have a disproportionate impact across government and society.

[icecube]

Originally Posted by peter12

I'm not totally sure that's how it works. I think that radicals on both the right and left distort rather than shift the political spectrum. It's an extreme example, but look at Weimar Germany. You could not imagine a more diverse spectrum of radical political options. They, of course, distorted the debate until the moderate liberal centrists were basically drowned as different ideologues argued, battled, and fought over whose utopian vision was best suited for the Volk, workers, whatever.

We all know what happened next.

The genius of America is that it typically segments and isolates radical voices so that they don't have a disproportionate impact across government and society.

So called moderate liberal centrists suck. They don’t give a #### about anyone but themselves. Selfish and quicker to criticize the left than they are to criticize actual fascists and racists. It’s true. It’s true.

[peter12]

Originally Posted by icecube

So called moderate liberal centrists suck. They don’t give a #### about anyone but themselves. Selfish and quicker to criticize the left than they are to criticize actual fascists and racists. It’s true. It’s true.

I disagree but I know that won't do you any good.

The biggest miscalculation of every fascist or authoritarian state has always been that liberal democrats wouldn't kill them.

As for your rabble, you don't understand how good you have it under a liberal constitution as opposed to anything else.

[dino7c]

Biden for president was paying +2000 just last week

[doozwimp]

The thing Im having a harder time explaining to myself than I expected is the whole "hold your nose" in every circumstance in order to remove trump. Intellectually I realize you have to reset the clock on the zero hour of democracy. But the thing is the ballot you cast doesn't say "screw this guy, but screw this guy even more" It ends up just being a number that represents full endorsement of whatever mandate the candidate represents. Honestly, and I know it's moot now, I'm not sure I could vote for say Bloomberg and would probably end up spoiling the ballot. Biden I'm seriously on the fence for as to whether I I would want to even bother. Thank god I'm not an american voter.

[Rutuu]

Originally Posted by Aarongavey

Kind of an odd argument, the Canadian economy went from a position where it created less jobs than the Americans on a per capita basis from 2010-2016 to a place where it has created more jobs than the US economy on a per capita basis from 2017-present day. There are a couple factors to that equation, the Canadian economy has created close to double the number of jobs per year over the past 3+ years compared to the yearly average from 2010-2016 and the US is creating slightly less jobs per year since the end of 2016 than it did from 2010-2016. But it is not like the economy has cratered or has even done poorly over the last three years in Canada, it was doing much better than it had in any other time in the last decade.

Don't bring facts to the oil and gas debate. Albertans live in a bubble...the rest of the country isn't in recession and just re-elected the Liberals because of it.

[GirlySports]

Originally Posted by doozwimp

The thing Im having a harder time explaining to myself than I expected is the whole "hold your nose" in every circumstance in order to remove trump. Intellectually I realize you have to reset the clock on the zero hour of democracy. But the thing is the ballot you cast doesn't say "screw this guy, but screw this guy even more" It ends up just being a number that represents full endorsement of whatever mandate the candidate represents. Honestly, and I know it's moot now, I'm not sure I could vote for say Bloomberg and would probably end up spoiling the ballot. Biden I'm seriously on the fence for as to whether I I would want to even bother. Thank god I'm not an american voter.

The problem is the Democrats are running against Trump, the guy. This should have been a normal election against a 2nd term President, but the Democrats are pouring the hearts out and the angry 70 year olds think this is their last and best chance to be President.

I'm going to use SCD's analogy from earlier. There are 1000 people shouting vitriol against Trump and are louder than the 5000 people whispering that things are ok.

To me, this election in November is simple question for all voters. It your day to day life better or worse than it was 4 years ago?

Here's an over/under. Will Biden get more or less votes than Hillary? Is there a voter who voted for Hillary who would not vote for Biden? Is there a voter who didn't vote for Hillary who would vote for Biden?

[CorsiHockeyLeague]

I'd pretty much bet my house that Biden gets more votes than Hillary.

[Johnny Makarov]

When you have people in Texas standing in line for 7 hours until 2am voting for Biden it's pretty much a guarantee he is going to get more votes than Clinton.