Zkribbler
Deity
Pretty soon they will be up there with Trump's tax giveaway to his billionaire buddies.
2020 US Election (Part One)
- Thread starter Lexicus
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Pretty soon they will be up there with Trump's tax giveaway to his billionaire buddies.
Hmmm. Back in the far-off days of 2016 Hillary Clinton also had a lot of detailed proposals and nobody bothered to read them, not least because the Republicans managed to turn the campaign into ‘Stop the Republicans’ v. ‘Stop those who want to stop the Republicans’. Do you think that people might have wisened up by now?
Naskra
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Hillary's proposals were a cut-and-paste job from Bill's '92 best seller, Putting People First. I kid you not.
You should be. Learning to understand one of the most powerful people to have ever existed, just to give oneself greater insight into history, is scholarship that the world needs more of.
Pulling ideas from books isn't shameful if they're good ideas
Pulling ideas from books isn't shameful if they're good ideas
sophie
Break My Heart
Yes and no.
Hillary Clinton had a lot of plans, yes, but they were essentially in service of a narrative which read "things are essentially good and have been for the past 8 years. Here are a list of small tweaks I'm going to make to tune up the engine in order to expand on an essentially good system," whereas Bernie is saying "no the system is totally broken and has been screwing over ordinary people for thirty years, here's how we totally rebuild the system from the ground up to actually help people." Donald Trump demonstrated conclusively the veracity of the latter statement and the utter intellectual bankruptcy of the former. Sure things have been good for the coastal élite and investment bankers, but the laboring class in Michigan, in Wisconsin, in Iowa, in Pennsylvania, etc. have been getting totally f'd over for years. Hillary lost on a platform of "things are good something something incremental change." Any candidate running on the same platform will lose again in 2020. If it's Biden we will lose period.
Secondly, I think Hillary's big problem with her plans (and incidentally a problem I see in Warren's campaign), was that Hillary's plans were framed in this technocratic expert device. Hillary's fundamental message was "give me the power and I will tweak the system in the following ways." The call to action in Hillary's campaign was simply to place your face in her, the anointed expert. Which has the dual problem of a) playing into the above optics-problem of an ivory tower coastal elite telling ordinary people they're essentially good in direct contradiction of their actual lived experiences, and b) doesn't actually motivate anybody for whom that message of "the Obama years have been good," might actually resonate. If all you're asking of a supporter is to "Be With Her," then that's all they're going to do. Bernie's "plans," by contrast read much more as a declaration of principles for a movement. They serve merely to make concrete and possible to people what up to this point were viewed merely as "nice ideas, but there's no way they're practical." The Green New Deal is essentially the same sort of idea: "Yeah yeah, fight climate change, let's do that...NO! here are the specifics we must, and in fact CAN work towards." I think Bernie is also aided in this political framing by his slogan and the way he presents his campaign. It's literally the exact opposite of Hillary's campaign. As I said, Hillary's slogan was "I'm with her," as in "place all of your faith in me and I will do the rest." Bernie's is "Not me, us." It's a direct call to action. Hillary's plan signalled to me "oh yeah, there's nothing objectionable about that, hope that happens." Bernie's makes me want to get up and join a picket line. I think there's a profound difference between the two campaigns.
So I said yes and no- what I mean by that is that no because there's no "wisening up" to be done here on the part of voters. You can pull it up, but I distinctly remember posting to this site on election night something to the effect of the wrongness of blaming voters for electing Trump for "voting against their interests," whatever that means. The way a voter votes is by definition "in their interests." It is not the responsibility of a voter to divine some absolute Hegelian/Socratic essence of the National Interest in the first part because that's fundamentally undemocratic, and on the second because such a thing axiomatically does not and cannot exist. On the other hand, I hesitate to say this is a "Bernie has wizened up" situation because his message in 2019 is more or less the same as it was in 2015-16, the difference, inasmuch as it exists, is that Bernie's objective, from my perspective, in 2015-16 was to get Medicare 4 All and Fight For 15 into public discourse and little more, and here in 2019, it seems that Bernie either has the same essential goal but is much more ambitious in his overall objectives (i.e. creating an actual labor movement for the first time in this country in 40 years) or else sees the presidency as an actually attainable goal this time, and so is actually articulating his manifesto more robustly. I will say though, that the Democratic party has definitively wizened up though. The Overton Window has definitely shifted left, and the candidates have all recognized the importance of appealing to the populist "middle" of this country. Biden is essentially running a carbon copy of Hillary's policy platform and he is coming across as an out-of-touch incoherent buffoon, and I think that says a lot about how dramatically the political milieu has changed in the last three years.
@Azem.Ocram What part of middle class includes renting? Luxury apartments? We can do without those.
From the outside looking in, I'll tell you the part of Bernie's 2015 campaign that make me sit up and notice was his complete declaration of war on Citizen's United, with the call that he couldn't do it alone.
We have less odious and banal elections up here, and I'm reasonably confident that keeping dark money slightly at bay is what makes the difference.
We have less odious and banal elections up here, and I'm reasonably confident that keeping dark money slightly at bay is what makes the difference.
hobbsyoyo
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The part that lives in high cost of living areas with student loans where renting forever is the only option on the table. The luxury apartments make that a bit easier to swallow.
(Also, those are the only apartments that get built in said areas which is a massive problem)
Azem.Ocram
King
Luxury studios, or average 1-3 BR. Luxury apartments with bedrooms are upper-middle-class or upper class.
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He was still in the race?
Warren (or maybe Bernie) can win, but it depends on them motivating you (the royal you). Biden can win, but it depends on you motivating yourself... which...
IMNSHO, the latter is a much heavier lift, because, as you say, people are largely motivated by what they see as their own self interest. Biden is more heavily depending on voters to read their own self interest into him via the "electability" narrative
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Azem.Ocram
King
The materials, appliances, and lobbies of luxury apartments are different from average or below average apartments. I live in a below average 3 BR, and used to live in an average 3 BR marketed to students but available to all. 3-BR apartments can even be working class if they are affordable to 3 unrelated flatmates. A 3-BR apartment with 2 baths and the same materials, appliances, and fancy lobby as a luxury studio is ultra-luxury. I would say so would be a spacious 1-BR meant for 1 (usually a tech worker when talking Seattle’s market).
I’ll vote for Sanders in the primary (which doesn’t matter because WA relies mostly on caucus) and will vote for Democrats in every national position.
I’ll vote for Sanders in the primary (which doesn’t matter because WA relies mostly on caucus) and will vote for Democrats in every national position.
Ironsided
Flower of happiness
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Good man.
innonimatu
the resident Cassandra
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And despite that he's still being carried...
sophie
Break My Heart
Eh. At this point I'm optimistic that he won't keep that up. Biden's support is based on name recognition plus a game theory process whereby Democratic voters convince themselves that other Democratic voters will only vote for Biden and so themselves choose Biden. The fact of the matter is that the Biden gaffe machine continues apace and Biden's numbers consequently continue to slump. I think eventually it's going to reach a point where Biden's horsehockey gaffes cease to justify him as the "pragmatic candidate" and then the party will shift either to a milquetoast centrist like Biden just without the gaffe-baggage (i.e. Kamala assuming people continue to not talk about her extremely yikesy cop-takes, or Buttigieg), or they'll shift to Warren, who is an actual "pragmatic compromise candidate." I think Bernie is the only candidate who can convincingly contest Trump because he hits the same populist f-- Neoliberalism points that Trump does (and so can directly contest Trump in the Mississippi triangle that constitutes his base), but he also actually resonates with Latino and Black voters (like, a lot, for obvious reasons). Kamala, Biden, Buttigieg, et al. will lose out of hand because they face precisely the same demographic problems that Hillary faced - affluent educated urban whites on the coast will vote for them, but Midwestern unionists will stay home and Trump will win by default. I think Warren has the same problem - and this is borne out by the fact that her coalition at this point is almost singularly composed of college-educated white voters, but she does speak to a Bernie-esque populist policy platform, so who knows. I'm pessimistic though: she's a (smart) woman which is a major handicap, she's a highly educated coastal elite, which is another major handicap, and she has some seriously problematic skeletons (all of the Pocahontas stuff, the fact she says she'll take corporate money in the general, and her relationship to Hillary), that WILL be exposed by Trump.
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