Are You Going to Watch the Debates?

[hobbsyoyo]

Yeah but who beyond the stale one are getting anywhere near 30-40%? No one.
But yeah, something could happen before February. (PLEASE)

Wasn't that effectively the polling numbers for Hillary in 2008? Then the voting started and things coalesced around Obama who hadn't really been able to challenge her poll lead before that. Or am I misremembering?

 

[schlaufuchs]

CNN had the following in Nov 2-4, 2007 (roughly the same point in the election cycle):

Hillary Clinton - 42%
Barack Obama - 23%
John Edwards - 14%
Bill Richardson - 4%
Joe Biden - 3%
Chris Dodd - 2%
Dennis Kucinich - 2%
Mike Gravel - 1%

Barack Obama didn't crest 40% in a poll until January 30-February 1, 2008 (at the same time that he for the first time was leading in some polls). This was shortly following the South Carolina primary, which Obama won decisively, and nearly a month after the Iowa caucuses, which Obama (narrowly) won in dramatic fashion despite every national poll up to that point showing him an 8-10 point underdog.

 

[Ferocitus]

Wasn't that effectively the polling numbers for Hillary in 2008? Then the voting started and things coalesced around Obama who hadn't really been able to challenge her poll lead before that. Or am I misremembering?

Now I'm really confused.
Are people actually serious about Hillary getting anywhere near the numbers to run?
I thought that the Democratic Party would be so riven, so vehemently against her, that she couldn't muster anywhere near the required numbers for the final nomination.
Or is there some arcane DNC magic spell that can be cast by party grandees that quadruples her nomination votes?

 

[rah]

Who is currently at 23% except for the stale ones.
But yeah, I guess there's still hope.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Now I'm really confused.
Are people actually serious about Hillary getting anywhere near the numbers to run?
I thought that the Democratic Party would be so riven, so vehemently against her, that she couldn't muster anywhere near the required numbers for the final nomination.
Or is there some arcane DNC magic spell that can be cast by party grandees that quadruples her nomination votes?

No, I'm comparing today's polling with the old polling of 2008 and 2016 to show that the polls of today are not that important or indicative of the final result this far out from voting. Hillary was up at this point in 2008 but still lost. Trump only won primaries in 2016 because of first past the post and therefore only got outright majorities in a couple of states voting results and polls, yet was clearly the winner in the end.

 

[Socrates99]

Time is passing and no one new is separating themselves from the pack. This leaves us the stale leftovers from the last time.
My biggest nightmare is Hillary swooping in to save us by offering herself up as the compromise candidate.

I'd be shocked if she'd get anything other than a token following out of the Biden bunch. Nobody really wants to relive 2016's lesser of two evils BS.

 

[Berzerker]

She always qualifies her opposition to wars: "regime change wars," "endless wars," "interventionist wars"...the obvious conclusion is that she isn't really antiwar. And the bit about "the only people I've heard speak highly of her are right-wingers who are voting for Trump anyway" is right on the money.

Hawaii's full of right wing Trump voters

Of these four, I've only ever heard of Jimmy Dore, and this is where I've heard of him:

Is Owen a right winger too? Hell I'm not even right wing (the compass test said so) or a Trump voter. I'm a Jimmy Dore fan because he's funny, seems honest and doesn't support war mongers. Who did you vote for the last couple of presidential elections? Do you think Tulsi and Dore are to their right? I'm sure many right wingers and centrists would depart from them on a variety of domestic issues, foreign policy built this bridge connecting left and right.

Thats true for the pro war crowd as well, thats how we got a Republican administration lying us into a war to remove Saddam followed by a Democrat administration starting wars to overthrow governments in Libya and Syria. Didn't you vote for Obama and Clinton but Tulsi isn't sufficiently anti-war for your likes?

I mean, I was simply noting where I'd heard of the guy.

And why is that relevant if you weren't trying to smear him with guilt by association? I think I found out about Dore from other posters here, maybe it was Friendly Fire or Kyriakos.

 

[Berzerker]

Well, you can assume whatever you want about invoking Berzerker's name, I don't really care. I was simply explaining why I don't watch Jimmy Dore (who, last I checked, is indeed a white man) with the "white man speaking into camera" thing. And, actually, I am intrigued with the idea that "the majority" of those folks are fine calling themselves socialists - who, specifically, is fine with that?

Who did you check with? So you dont watch Dore because he's a white man, but you invoked me instead?

I generally distrust self-labelled "progressives" and prefer to get my commentary from people willing to use the s-word.

But no white men of course

 

[Kyriakos]

I do hope this isn't true, though. I mean, in at least semi-civilized countries, those in government are potentially immune for the duration they are in government ONLY if the accusation is about their governmental responsibilities

 

[AdrienIer]

AFAIK only France has a system that stalls all ongoing investigations on the president during his presidency

 

[Berzerker]

Now I'm really confused.
Are people actually serious about Hillary getting anywhere near the numbers to run?
I thought that the Democratic Party would be so riven, so vehemently against her, that she couldn't muster anywhere near the required numbers for the final nomination.
Or is there some arcane DNC magic spell that can be cast by party grandees that quadruples her nomination votes?

they're called super delegates

 

[Zkribbler]

Or is there some arcane DNC magic spell that can be cast by party grandees that quadruples her nomination votes?

Although Berzerker guesses superdelegates, they make up only 15% of the total delegates, and they're independent, not some great voting bloc.

The only people talking about a Hillay candidacy is Fox News,

 

[Lexicus]

they're independent, not some great voting bloc.

Don't they tend to vote in a bloc though?

 

[Berzerker]

they may be 15% but dont they count for more?

somebody here said they changed the rules, super delegates have to vote for the primary winner but are free to vote as they please if no one wins on the 1st ballot

or something like that

 

[Ferocitus]

they may be 15% but dont they count for more?

somebody here said they changed the rules, super delegates have to vote for the primary winner but are free to vote as they please if no one wins on the 1st ballot

or something like that

Thanks for your other reply.
I understand that super-delegates can play a large role, but I'm still not convinced that they would be all in favour of endorsing Hillary and that the numbers they could bring would be enough. Shrug. But weirder things have happened in US politics.

 

[AdrienIer]

IIRC superdelegates can't vote in the first round of voting this time around

 

[schlaufuchs]

Yeah, Biden's "where will the money come from" talking point is ridiculous.

This one:

Spoiler :

View attachment 536853

Where do the other 8 months come from? Yes your paycheck. But currently 3.5 trillion dollars are being taken from everybody's paychecks to pay for current healthcare plans. Even if we take Biden's claim that M4A will cost 35 trillion over 10 years at face value (and note 35T represents the upper bounds of the projections we've gotten so far; even Charles Blahous, writing on behalf of the Koch-funded Mercatus Center is projecting 27-32T over ten years), then we're looking at a situation in which if everybody who is paying into health insurance plans now pays the exact same amount in taxes, then M4A is fully funded. In that case (and again, this is really a worst-case scenario: upper-bound cost projection i.e. no savings from better negotiating drug prices, no savings from dramatically expanding the risk pool, no savings from reducing administrative costs) we're still effectively getting a win-win situation: everybody pays exactly what they were before, but now everyone inside of 4 years gets dental, vision, OB/GYN, pediatrician, and mental healthcare coverage and nobody has to: haggle with insurance reps, stress about copays and deductibles, or make complicated at-the-margin calculations about coverage minutiae that are all going to get fobbed off the instant you get sick anyway. In other words, Biden's hemming and hawing amount to precisely what Bernie (and Warren, albeit more evasively) have been saying all along: the rich will pay more in taxes than they were previously paying in premiums, and everybody else will see a price cut on their premiums, an expansion of covered services, and the only difference is the check will be made payable to the US National Health Service instead of to Aetna or whatever.

So, yeah, People's Policy Project just did a quick breakdown of how to fund a M4A program, and more or less came to the conclusion I outlined above. All current public funding gets redirected into M4A funding, and that already gets you halfway there. Cut capital gains loopholes and remove itemized deductions. That gets you to 2.8T/yr for funding M4A just through existing funding and closing loopholes that are really only materially relevant to rich people. If you ratchet up the income taxes 6-7 points at each income level, then that 2.8T goes up to 3.6T. Yes it's raising taxes, but it net benefits citizens as regards costs, cf. this graph from the article:

Spoiler :

And that's just with a simple flat tax increase across the board. Even here you're only net-losing out on healthcare costs at the 85th percentile and above, and even at the 99th percentile, the added costs are a rather marginal proportion of their overall earnings.

After employee income taxes, the last component is upping payroll taxes, which 3P says would need to go up by about 13 percentage points to hit 4.5T (after redirecting current employer medicare contributions and closing the SocSec payroll tax cap). Which would take the effective payroll tax rate up to 20.85%. Which seems dramatic, but would actually be lower for the vast majority of employers when you compare current employer payments to private plans against the new payroll tax straight up. In aggregate current Private Employer healthcare expenses are currently 1.194T/yr ($235B for Medicare taxes and $959B for contributions to private healthcare premiums), and under 3P's framework, that would go down to $892B (the same $235B from current Medicare taxes, plus $657B from the new payroll tax increase). Net this would save private employers $302B in healthcare expenses.

So to reiterate: Buttigieg's and Biden's and Klobuchar's criticism of M4A as being unfeasibly expensive is dumb and bad.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

There is a Democratic Debate on right now, live streaming on MSNBC and NBC's websites.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

Why can't they stream in a way that lets you back up to the start? I missed the first half hour because my mom's blood sugar was crashing. It is back to normal now, but I wish I could go back to see the start.

Also, I am use to listening to everything at double speed and find it really annoying to hear the candidates talking so slowly. They should really give us playback speed options.

Edit: How could Warren stand next to Biden and bring up how so many people are burdened with students loans that cannot be forgiven without mentioning that Biden (when he was the "Senator from MBNA") is the one who wrote the bill that made it impossible to discharge such debts in bankruptcy?

When Biden bragged about his support from Black Voters because "they know him" someone really should have interjected that name recognition is really the only thing he has going for him, and that Obama most certainly did not pick him to appeal to Black voters but to assuage the fears of white racists.


I really don't understand why Gabbard would close talking about MLK but bring up an obscure quote about Hawaii's aloha spirit rather than quoting from his speeches supporting her policy positions. Mentioning his support for a UBI could have been nice too, but the strongest line she could have quoted was probably from his sermon against the Vietnam War:

"And don't let anybody make you think that God chose America as his divine, messianic force to be a sort of policeman of the whole world. God has a way of standing before the nations with judgment, and it seems that I can hear God saying to America, "You're too arrogant! And if you don't change your ways, I will rise up and break the backbone of your power, and I'll place it in the hands of a nation that doesn't even know my name."

 

[Zardnaar]

Apparently Klobucher was trending the most after this debate.

Biden probably needs to go away.