2020 US Presidential Election Discussion

[J.I.L]

Do you have any refutation to what I said or proof that these are just excuses?


I don't know, maybe decades of American foreign policy and war, causing entire regions to be war torn, unstable hell holes, where death is an ever present threat, has something to do with why people might be incentivized to flee to the only country guaranteed to be safe from American imperialism: America.

I didn't say people never emigrate, I said most people don't emigrate. Notice how America makes up about 350 million last I checked, but there are 7 billion people in the world. Unless all of those people are going to try to emigrate to America, I think it's safe to say people generally prefer their homeland.


...They do. And Japan. And the United Kingdom. And China. I don't think there is any first world country that has a negative immigration rate.


You do realize Bernie is the Senator of Vermont, not the Governor right? Meaning he can't legally enact his policies in Vermont, nor are things he advocates for enacted in Vermont. There are a myriad of reasons for why people might immigrate to a particular location, and one of them might be climate. As in, Vermont is cold as hell and out in the boonies. Old people that are more inclined to stay in the place they live in, also die at a faster rate than young people, who generally leave for more exciting areas.


Maybe people who are poor and in a bad spot, don't have the money to move half way across the world? Almost like, they're trapped where they're at or something?


I hope you have sources to back all that. Because I have ones that say the exact opposite:


Except job growth is stagnating, and wage growth is virtually nonexistant. The thing about employment numbers, is that they are pretty much always inflated by part time and temporary jobs, not ones you want. And it doesn't matter if you have a job or not, if it doesn't pay what you need to survive. That's kind of an important thing.


Then,

Why are almost 80% of Americans living paycheck to paycheck?

Why is healthcare the number one cause of bankruptcy?

Why are there constant worker strikes?

Why is the cost of living, outpacing wage growth?


No they didn't.


Not really.


I believe I said that businesses that rely on underpaying workers, aren't making enough to sustain themselves under normal circumstances. Meaning, going by the free market meme, they would naturally fold due to not being attractive enough. And that mega corporations that can afford to undercut them are the bigger threat. Try reading my post.


Newsflash, the Government controls the printing press, if they so desire they can stop pumping money into the economy and let it drain from your accounts naturally. It's their money, not yours. They back and guarantee the money, you're just "borrowing" it.


Well gee, it might be that I was born with several debilitating diseases, that make my life hell on a daily basis. That I'd like to go do things, but am physically unable to. Almost like people aren't born with equal opportunity or something.


Yeah, we kind of really ****ing are.


Sure, and when everything collapses due to that, like it did with the Great Depression, we all will actually finally be equal in our poverty.


Who do you think distributes the wages? Maybe the rich guys that own the means of production? If you notice in those links I posted, the trend is people not being paid enough to cover their basic needs. If it's not the fault of the rich people who own the means of production not paying them enough, then whose is it? Or do you think money just magically falls out of the sky, when people clock out for the day?





You know, for someone who goes on and on about entitlement, you sure as **** don't seem to understand actual difficulty or the hardships people can face on a daily basis. Instead of regurgitating Libertarian memes, how about actually taking a look at the world around you for once. Provided you aren't part of the upper class of course. Economics isn't a religion or a moral system, there are severe consequences for not properly managing or balancing it, that will affect the rich and poor alike.


Look in the mirror, friend.

Whoa... you have diseases? I’m sorry, man. Didn’t know. In that case, I can see why you’d really gravitate to sanders.
Hm... well good talk then.

 

[remilia]

It's time for part 2 of my thoughts on the debates and how they fared. This time around I watched night 1 of the debates. Definitely less eventful than night 2. Like last time, I'll speak about the candidates in alphabetical order.

Cory Booker (NJ) - He certainly gets the award for the worst Spanish I've heard in my life, I'll give him that lol. Between that and his "I live in a bad neighborhood" I'm wondering how much of his "I'm someone just like you!" act is believable. He seemed to try to paint himself as a people's champion too much and I think it came across not very genuine. Even though he got a lot of speaking time, a lot of it was filler and the takeaway was "what was he about again?"

Julian Castro (TX) - That was a really good night for him. As a "middle" candidate in terms of popularity, I think he went about the debates in a very clever way. First of all, he challenged Beto, who is more recognized than him, and emerged successful. Second, he had a good presence and appeared both knowledgeable and confident. Third, he was able to bring up his key issue- immigration- and not only give detailed plans about it but challenge others on stage to meet him where has was on that issue. He went general but also specific and listed policies he made. Overall I think he was one of the winners of the debate.

Bill de Blasio (NY) - Another strong showing in his willingness to take on others with confidence. He also took on Beto and also emerged victorious in that interaction. He listed some of his accomplishments in what he wanted to get done too. I think he spoke with conviction but also was personable, so it was a strong performance. I was wondering if someone was going to challenge him with how New York is doing but no one did, so he got by as a winner. One of the only ones to say he'd ditch private insurance too (the other being Warren). He put his name out there but I'm not sure if it'll be enough to keep up with the bigger candidates.

John Delaney (MD) - A very poor showing in that he didn't seem presidential at all. Too many times where he tried to interject but didn't push hard enough to get into the conversation, and when he finally got to speak it was standard politician speak. There wasn't a lot of clear positions from him outside of "I want to be bipartisan and realistic." but he failed to line out how exactly he was going to do that, and it fell weak overall.

Tulsi Gabbard (HI) - At the beginning she fumbled in that she didn't really answer the question directed at her and instead brought up her foreign policy ideas. That's fine to bring up, but not when the question is completely different and it just led to an awkward moment. As the night went on however she picked up traction. She definitely got the harshest question directed at her which was about he stance about LGBT issues before but she handled it with grace and evidence showcasing she's capable of growth. Her real shining moment was in her cross-talk with Ryan about foreign policy, where she absolutely obliterated him. Expected, as that's her area of expertise. Overall I think she came out more positive than negative.
Interestingly I watched 6 different videos from mainstream news outlets recapping these debates out of curiosity. Not a SINGLE one mentioned her name. Well, one did, Washington Post. They said she didn't have a chance and made her out to be a loser. I can't help but notice that MSM really doesn't like her, to the point of not even giving her coverage to the point of speaking her name.

Jay Insle (WA) - He was neutral, I think. Not a strong showing, but not a weak one either. As one of the lesser known candidates he didn't have a high expectation on him going in but he failed to really stand out. It's clear, however, that climate change is his priority although I'd still like to know more on how exactly he intends to address it, as he was still a little vague. Probably the least amount of talking time but no blunders.

Amy Klobuchar (MN) - In terms of appearing presidential... What was with all those faces she was making? She looked very strangely smug and dismissive which wasn't a good look. There's confidence and then there's overconfidence and I think she overdid it. Most of her answers went back to Trump. I get it, the democrats want to beat Trump. But can you bring up plans you have and stances without mentioning Trump? I think she failed to carve out a name for herself overall.

Beto O'Rourke (TX) - He was absolutely eaten alive. Between getting called out by not one but TWO candidates on stage and losing both interactions and the fact that most of his answers were wishy washy, with the moderator even reminding him to actually answer the question at hand... Well, I'd say he's one of the definitive losers of this debate. I can't think of a positive coming from him in this debate. I'd say as time goes on he's going to lose support.

Time Ryan (OH) - He had a very bland presence and his most memorable moment was in losing his cross-talk with Tulsi on the foreign affairs department. I am pretty sure he has no chance.

Elizabeth Warren (MA) - She blended passion with policy pretty well, especially in the beginning. She went in as a front runner and came out showing she was still a front runner. She spoke on healthcare, moeny in politics, climate change- overall a lot of speaking time- and didn't get challenged by others. I think at this point among the popular candidates she's competing with Bernie for the progressive vote, so it'll be interesting to see if they will debate each other or not moving forward.

OVERALL THOUGHTS:
Most of what I said about the last debates can be put in here- kind of a mess as they tried to cover so much ground at once. Can people PLEASE stop speaking in broken Spanish it is SO blatantly obvious that it's pandering it's painful on the ears. PLEASE stop lmao. I say this as a latino who was raised speaking Spanish first. There will be Spanish translations, one sentence in broken Spanish isn't going to make things suddenly accessible for Spanish speakers and it's just painful awkward.
Ahem- now that I got that off my chest-
Moving forward I think the big names are going to be Biden, Sanders, Harris, and Warren. Biden I believe will lost support as Harris rises. Bernie I think will retain his loyal fanbase. Warren is doing well so far but has to keep it up. Castro has a chance to enter the top contenders but will have to continue doing stellar performances like he did in the debate.

DEBATE OPINIONS (In order):
Debate 1 Winners: Castro, Warren, De Blasio, Gabbard
Debate 1 Neutrals: Insley, Klobuchar, Booker
Debate 1 Losers: O Rouke, Ryan, Delaney

Debate 2 Winners: Harris, Sanders, Buttigeg, Gillibrand
Debate 2 Neutrals: Yang, Williamson
debate 2 Losers: Biden, Swalwell, Hickenlooper, Bennett,

 

[J.I.L]

It's time for part 2 of my thoughts on the debates and how they fared. This time around I watched night 1 of the debates. Definitely less eventful than night 2. Like last time, I'll speak about the candidates in alphabetical order.

Cory Booker (NJ) - He certainly gets the award for the worst Spanish I've heard in my life, I'll give him that lol. Between that and his "I live in a bad neighborhood" I'm wondering how much of his "I'm someone just like you!" act is believable. He seemed to try to paint himself as a people's champion too much and I think it came across not very genuine. Even though he got a lot of speaking time, a lot of it was filler and the takeaway was "what was he about again?"

Julian Castro (TX) - That was a really good night for him. As a "middle" candidate in terms of popularity, I think he went about the debates in a very clever way. First of all, he challenged Beto, who is more recognized than him, and emerged successful. Second, he had a good presence and appeared both knowledgeable and confident. Third, he was able to bring up his key issue- immigration- and not only give detailed plans about it but challenge others on stage to meet him where has was on that issue. He went general but also specific and listed policies he made. Overall I think he was one of the winners of the debate.

Bill de Blasio (NY) - Another strong showing in his willingness to take on others with confidence. He also took on Beto and also emerged victorious in that interaction. He listed some of his accomplishments in what he wanted to get done too. I think he spoke with conviction but also was personable, so it was a strong performance. I was wondering if someone was going to challenge him with how New York is doing but no one did, so he got by as a winner. One of the only ones to say he'd ditch private insurance too (the other being Warren). He put his name out there but I'm not sure if it'll be enough to keep up with the bigger candidates.

John Delaney (MD) - A very poor showing in that he didn't seem presidential at all. Too many times where he tried to interject but didn't push hard enough to get into the conversation, and when he finally got to speak it was standard politician speak. There wasn't a lot of clear positions from him outside of "I want to be bipartisan and realistic." but he failed to line out how exactly he was going to do that, and it fell weak overall.

Tulsi Gabbard (HI) - At the beginning she fumbled in that she didn't really answer the question directed at her and instead brought up her foreign policy ideas. That's fine to bring up, but not when the question is completely different and it just led to an awkward moment. As the night went on however she picked up traction. She definitely got the harshest question directed at her which was about he stance about LGBT issues before but she handled it with grace and evidence showcasing she's capable of growth. Her real shining moment was in her cross-talk with Ryan about foreign policy, where she absolutely obliterated him. Expected, as that's her area of expertise. Overall I think she came out more positive than negative.
Interestingly I watched 6 different videos from mainstream news outlets recapping these debates out of curiosity. Not a SINGLE one mentioned her name. Well, one did, Washington Post. They said she didn't have a chance and made her out to be a loser. I can't help but notice that MSM really doesn't like her, to the point of not even giving her coverage to the point of speaking her name.

Jay Insle (WA) - He was neutral, I think. Not a strong showing, but not a weak one either. As one of the lesser known candidates he didn't have a high expectation on him going in but he failed to really stand out. It's clear, however, that climate change is his priority although I'd still like to know more on how exactly he intends to address it, as he was still a little vague. Probably the least amount of talking time but no blunders.

Amy Klobuchar (MN) - In terms of appearing presidential... What was with all those faces she was making? She looked very strangely smug and dismissive which wasn't a good look. There's confidence and then there's overconfidence and I think she overdid it. Most of her answers went back to Trump. I get it, the democrats want to beat Trump. But can you bring up plans you have and stances without mentioning Trump? I think she failed to carve out a name for herself overall.

Beto O'Rourke (TX) - He was absolutely eaten alive. Between getting called out by not one but TWO candidates on stage and losing both interactions and the fact that most of his answers were wishy washy, with the moderator even reminding him to actually answer the question at hand... Well, I'd say he's one of the definitive losers of this debate. I can't think of a positive coming from him in this debate. I'd say as time goes on he's going to lose support.

Time Ryan (OH) - He had a very bland presence and his most memorable moment was in losing his cross-talk with Tulsi on the foreign affairs department. I am pretty sure he has no chance.

Elizabeth Warren (MA) - She blended passion with policy pretty well, especially in the beginning. She went in as a front runner and came out showing she was still a front runner. She spoke on healthcare, moeny in politics, climate change- overall a lot of speaking time- and didn't get challenged by others. I think at this point among the popular candidates she's competing with Bernie for the progressive vote, so it'll be interesting to see if they will debate each other or not moving forward.

OVERALL THOUGHTS:
Most of what I said about the last debates can be put in here- kind of a mess as they tried to cover so much ground at once. Can people PLEASE stop speaking in broken Spanish it is SO blatantly obvious that it's pandering it's painful on the ears. PLEASE stop lmao. I say this as a latino who was raised speaking Spanish first. There will be Spanish translations, one sentence in broken Spanish isn't going to make things suddenly accessible for Spanish speakers and it's just painful awkward.
Ahem- now that I got that off my chest-
Moving forward I think the big names are going to be Biden, Sanders, Harris, and Warren. Biden I believe will lost support as Harris rises. Bernie I think will retain his loyal fanbase. Warren is doing well so far but has to keep it up. Castro has a chance to enter the top contenders but will have to continue doing stellar performances like he did in the debate.

DEBATE OPINIONS (In order):
Debate 1 Winners: Castro, Warren, De Blasio, Gabbard
Debate 1 Neutrals: Insley, Klobuchar, Booker
Debate 1 Losers: O Rouke, Ryan, Delaney

Debate 2 Winners: Harris, Sanders, Buttigeg, Gillibrand
Debate 2 Neutrals: Yang, Williamson
debate 2 Losers: Biden, Swalwell, Hickenlooper, Bennett,

Yeah... got no comment for debate 1. I didn’t really care to watch it. As you said, it seemed Castro did well from what I heard. Good luck to him. Sucks how far Beto has fallen. Dude went from a media darling who gave ted Cruz a run for his money in armed state - pulling millions of donation money, 60 million I believe, to now being unpopular. How the mighty have fallen.

We await the July debates.

 

[StoicPhantom]

Whoa... you have diseases? I’m sorry, man. Didn’t know. In that case, I can see why you’d really gravitate to sanders.
Hm... well good talk then.

I only really brought that up in all the entitled/spoiled talk and assumptions you kept doing. As long as you knock that off, we're cool.

John Delaney (MD) - A very poor showing in that he didn't seem presidential at all. Too many times where he tried to interject but didn't push hard enough to get into the conversation, and when he finally got to speak it was standard politician speak. There wasn't a lot of clear positions from him outside of "I want to be bipartisan and realistic." but he failed to line out how exactly he was going to do that, and it fell weak overall.

I think he's on his way to be the Jim Webb of 2020. He's pretty much indistinguishable from Hickenlooper, and Biden is also doing this strategy, but with far more influence and name recognition.

Interestingly I watched 6 different videos from mainstream news outlets recapping these debates out of curiosity. Not a SINGLE one mentioned her name. Well, one did, Washington Post. They said she didn't have a chance and made her out to be a loser. I can't help but notice that MSM really doesn't like her, to the point of not even giving her coverage to the point of speaking her name.

I think it's her anti war rhetoric, it makes their "sponsors" unhappy. Of all the candidates I've seen, she pushes it the hardest, and with the current administration's push towards an Iran war, the media is probably trying to keep such dissenting voices out of public awareness as much as possible. Bernie gets a pass, because he brings in the ratings and he isn't particularly outspoken on foreign policy, outside of Israel, but Tulsi isn't as well known, so they're probably trying to keep it that way.

Amy Klobuchar (MN) - In terms of appearing presidential... What was with all those faces she was making? She looked very strangely smug and dismissive which wasn't a good look. There's confidence and then there's overconfidence and I think she overdid it. Most of her answers went back to Trump. I get it, the democrats want to beat Trump. But can you bring up plans you have and stances without mentioning Trump? I think she failed to carve out a name for herself overall.

That's pretty much her natural state. I don't know where this woman gets her confidence, but it is even less warranted then her potential general election opponent. She's another "centrist" without Biden's influence or Harris's polish, so I don't see her going anywhere.

Can people PLEASE stop speaking in broken Spanish it is SO blatantly obvious that it's pandering it's painful on the ears. PLEASE stop lmao. I say this as a latino who was raised speaking Spanish first. There will be Spanish translations, one sentence in broken Spanish isn't going to make things suddenly accessible for Spanish speakers and it's just painful awkward.

I don't speak Spanish, and that was still probably the most awkward thing to come from all this. Lol at Booker's face when Beto started speaking it. It's one thing to try to use this as pandering, it's an entirely other thing to try to compete on this.

Moving forward I think the big names are going to be Biden, Sanders, Harris, and Warren. Biden I believe will lost support as Harris rises. Bernie I think will retain his loyal fanbase. Warren is doing well so far but has to keep it up. Castro has a chance to enter the top contenders but will have to continue doing stellar performances like he did in the debate.

Biden will probably still be loved by old people, but seems to have shaken his donors, and Harris's Attorney General history, will turn off Progressives and possibly black voters. I think it will depend on what the Establishment is thinking is the best shot, which one will get to become the Establishment candidate. I feel like it might be difficult to get older voters interested in Kamala over Biden, but the media narrative shift that might happen in this regard, might be enough to sway them.

As for Bernie and Warren, I'm not really sure what base Warren is drawing from. I'm not seeing any significant drop from Bernie as Warren rises, so I don't think she's siphoning off any support from him. There might possibly be some overlap with Kamala's supporters, but I'm not really sure why, other than maybe some Hollywood liberal "It's her turn" types. She might get the Establishment endorsement if the Third Way types were serious, which could have her supplant Biden and Harris as the Establishment candidate.

I've no doubt Bernie has the most support in the country out of all the potential 2020 candidates, but a lot of that support is made up of Independents, so I think he may struggle in the Dem primary. I feel like his victory hinges on new voters being eligible to vote then, as well as Independents swallowing their pride and at least temporarily registering as Democrat to vote in the closed primary states. I think the big thing for him, is to ensure he has enough of a lead to not force a tie and have things go to the convention. I feel like in such a scenario, the few remaining super Delegates will pick the Establishment candidate. While I'm sure that's a worst case scenario for the Establishment as well, due to the major backlash that's sure to happen, they'll have at least a thin veneer of an excuse then, and would prefer to do that, then let Bernie became the nominee. Although, I might be being too cynical on that last bit.

I personally feel like things will narrow to Bernie, Warren, and Kamala. Biden is just not cut out for this stuff, and is even less adept than Hilary was. Unless he does a complete 180 on what he's been doing, I don't see him getting anywhere. Outside of that, I don't know what's going to happen, and it will really hinge on the performance of those three. I don't think Bernie's true numbers will be reflected in the polls, due to them possibly being new voters, so I don't think we will really know until the primary is actually under way. I don't think he and Warren are drawing from the same base, despite both being labeled as "Progressive", so I don't think he will need to drop out, like a lot of Warren supporters have been saying. I think Warren and Harris will be competing and it will depend on what the Establishment does. Warren could probably handle fundraising on her own, I doubt she wouldn't be able to handle grassroots fundraising, but Harris will almost definitely need some sort of Establishment and big donor support, if she wants to continue.

 

[remilia]

Update: Eric Swalwell just announced he is discontinuing his campaign.

EDIT: Tom Steyer announced his candidacy and will be added to the list of candidates.

 

[J.I.L]

I don’t understand “progressives”. I see them fighting the establishment of the Democratic Party and trying to gain power through like infighting of your own party. Why don’t progressives simply do what sanders has done... break away from the democrat party and brand your own political party. Obviously that would hurt you in the short term, but if your ideas are that good... you’ll eventually get voters and becomone a prominent party and will be free from “establishment” influence. And if your ideas are good, you’ll make the original democrat party die out and just compete against the rebulican party.

I don’t get why progressives don’t do this. Why instead just cause infighting among your party and then try to stronghold your way to power of a party you just bandwagoned on. It’s like you’re an businessman and hire a employee. This employee has some ideas that help the business. Now the employee is fighting the manager and trying to throw him out of power instead of simply branching away and creating his own store.

It’s annoying to look at. Can a progressive please give me perspective here. Why are progressives loyal to democrats? Why not break away and start your own thing?

 

[---]

I think you already answered your own question. I don't consider myself progressive, but I'm sure many in the Democratic Party were wondering the same of the Freedom Caucus versus John Boehner/Paul Ryan. We're in a Two Party/Winner Take All system as well as dealing with the influence of increasingly partisan congressional maps. It's much safer to push/primary the existing party towards your ideology than it is to try and strike it out on your own.

I just think it's both amusing and frustrating to see how much stock the media is putting on the Progressives despite only having around 4 votes (AOC's group of freshmen). Mathematically they don't have the votes to do much of anything, but have the power of Social Media & News Media behind them. IDK how much stock we can put into them considering the influence they're having on the Presidential Primaries as apposed to their lack of influence on how Nancy Pelosi is running the House.


As a political thought piece that somewhat ties in, personally I'm the most interested in seeing what happens to my Congressman: Justin Amash (I), now that he has quit the Freedom Caucus & GOP. Will he stay Independent or join the Libertarians? Will he join the GOP primary in my district or run as an Independent? Will he give up altogether and retire/become a lobbyist?

 

[J.I.L]

I think you already answered your own question. I don't consider myself progressive, but I'm sure many in the Democratic Party were wondering the same of the Freedom Caucus versus John Boehner/Paul Ryan. We're in a Two Party/Winner Take All system as well as dealing with the influence of increasingly partisan congressional maps. It's much safer to push/primary the existing party towards your ideology than it is to try and strike it out on your own.

I just think it's both amusing and frustrating to see how much stock the media is putting on the Progressives despite only having around 4 votes (AOC's group of freshmen). Mathematically they don't have the votes to do much of anything, but have the power of Social Media & News Media behind them. IDK how much stock we can put into them considering the influence they're having on the Presidential Primaries as apposed to their lack of influence on how Nancy Pelosi is running the House.


As a political thought piece that somewhat ties in, personally I'm the most interested in seeing what happens to my Congressman: Justin Amash (I), now that he has quit the Freedom Caucus & GOP. Will he stay Independent or join the Libertarians? Will he join the GOP primary in my district or run as an Independent? Will he give up altogether and retire/become a lobbyist?

Finally, we got someone new talking on this thread. Anyway...

That’s weak. The democrat party wouldn’t have existed if they had the menatily of “be safe” occurred. ... actually that was the rebulican party. But The reference being that there used to be the Whig party and democrats. Whigs has turmoil and some defected because they believed in what they stood for thus creating the rebulican party. The rebulican party turned out to have better ideas and so the whigs become INSTICT. If the progressives have ideas they believe in and that are good... they can have that same fortune as well. The point of politics is to have ideas that best be able to make America the best it can be. If “establishment” democrats get in the way of that...defect. It’s their party, so you leave. And maybe... AND MAYBE. The mere threatening of leaving the party would get the “establishment” to heed your demands. Think of it.... who’d hurt most by progressives leaving?the establishment! The progressives theoretically are the ascending faction. They can wait! Ten years, fine. They will work in secret, wait for “drumph” or one of his successors to enact policy that’ll get us in war or destabilize the government so bad it becomes an pure aristocracy where the economy actually sucks but the top rich people are richer then ever. Then people will be so disgusted and vote for progressives.
Or... the you threaten to leave... establishment caves in to your demands and you get closer to want you want. But here’s the kicker... by doing that... establishment supporters would be disgusted and break ties with them.... thus making establishment have less influence which should get you MORE POWER.

Edit: I guess it really depends on what happens in 2020, who wins (and how authentic was their win) the primary and national election. If someone like sanders wins and loses to trump. Oh man. Normal democrats would blame the progressives and try to ostracize them from the dnc. And progressives would make about 10,000 excuses of why they lost and square up with anyone who blames them for the loss. Lol, I can see it:
“The 1% rigged the entire election!”
“Dnc conspired with trump against sanders”
“Americans are just too stupid and brainwashed to know what’s good for them”

Though if someone like Biden and less extent buttoege, kamala won primary but loss to trump. Progressives would be very unhappy and probably either break away or civil war their way to dnc power. But establishment would blame progressives by saying they didn’t turn out. As a matter of fact, if trump wins 2020 again... the dnc is going to be in trouble. And if they lose the house again and rebulicans retain the senate... WOW. The democrats might go out of power for many years.
Rebulicans with full control and trump in his 2nd term (president in 2nd term get more daring because they don’t have to worry about re election like Obama did in 12’-16’ with his executive orders)?
I wouldn’t mind that. The democrats are annoying to me... but that’s besides the point. There’s pressure for dnc to win. : edit end

This plan of just trying to infight your superiors while having little leverage, credentials or stature is not smart. I feel like progressives don’t understand how much bad publicity some like AOC gets with her tactics and actions.

They have A strong social media presence for sure (which isn’t a good thing... it just means most progressives aren’t working and being proactive members towards society) but news media are largely with establishment dems. Though the news media is paying more attention to them for sure.

hmph, amash. I can understand why the president was so ticked off and happy he left. Trump is the boss of the GOP, everyone who has allegiance to that party should largely fall in line (unless trump does something heinously illegal). If I were trump, that’s what I’d expect. But I can’t blame him. He stook to his conviction. It will be interesting. He probably will just retire. What he did was political suicide.

 

[J.I.L]

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=DX7ZXbEM3FE

I agree mr president. I’m not even that “pro american” since I’m ethnic but even I feel pain and sympathy for true hardcore American nationals and patriots when these ungrateful, disrespectful and obnoxious Congress women run their mouth bad on the president and the country. It hurts. I’m like... “LEAVE!”. These people praise other countries and say America is not this or that or whatever... thinking they are cute because they get media clout (for liberal social views) and twitter followers from mostly edgy no-life twitters losers.

These People are a disgrace, and it’s quite obvious that these people just want to have power on a global scale. And people like Omar and a lot of minoritys who support leftist just want their race/religion to get a leg up on economic and political power with like affirmative action and identity politics... so hopefully their people can be the dominant ones in society in the future. As an ethnic, I can see it very clearly.

Then there are going to be people who say “dude no, we just want an “egalitarian” society where there is no ‘white privileged’, white nationalist, racist cops against PoC and that PoC are good people who’d never be anything like our evil ancestors”. These people actually believing that if they usher a culture of identity politics and affirmative action for certain races that once that race gets huge prominence they’d just “stop”? No, what that race would do is just transform society to their culture and anyone who doesn’t conform gets extradited. It’s in the nature of humans. These people who c*ck for races they feel are “disenfranchised” and disvow their own race, I just look at them with pity and disgust.
And it goes both ways. Don’t get it twisted. People who disvow and look down upon their own heritage, ethnicity etc. to look up to the people who have more power and influcnece -wishing to be them - they too are a disgrace. And that’s 100% facts.

Look, in America - in my opinion - the best way for people to not have inward bad predjuices is for you, and your people, to be the BEST in the american system. Look at Asians, certain ethnic Africans like Nigerians, Koreans and just most Asians in general, Indians, Europeans.... these people go into american society and FLOURISH by working hard, investing well and having true perseverance. And I’m not saying be rich or die...or something so cruel. Most people just want to have a good job in a economy where they can get married and live in their home in peace.
That’s the way....

These people didn’t say “I’m crying. White man look at me bad. Marxist white man help me!” Lol. Okay I’m just kidding. That was funny though.

Sighs... my beautiful political rants on a super smash brother video game forum that probably make people eyes who disagree with me burn up to a crisp. Lol. If someone disagrees with me... more then happy to have a convo.

 

[remilia]

Note: this will be replies to other posts but at the end I will have my own unique post. Feel free to engage with any of what I post even if it isn't directed at you.

I don’t understand “progressives”. I see them fighting the establishment of the Democratic Party and trying to gain power through like infighting of your own party. Why don’t progressives simply do what sanders has done... break away from the democrat party and brand your own political party. Obviously that would hurt you in the short term, but if your ideas are that good... you’ll eventually get voters and becomone a prominent party and will be free from “establishment” influence. And if your ideas are good, you’ll make the original democrat party die out and just compete against the rebulican party.

I don’t get why progressives don’t do this. Why instead just cause infighting among your party and then try to stronghold your way to power of a party you just bandwagoned on. It’s like you’re an businessman and hire a employee. This employee has some ideas that help the business. Now the employee is fighting the manager and trying to throw him out of power instead of simply branching away and creating his own store.

It’s annoying to look at. Can a progressive please give me perspective here. Why are progressives loyal to democrats? Why not break away and start your own thing?

The problem is the short term costs for the long term benefits, as well as the systematic barriers in place for third parties. Look at Libertarians or the Green Party for example.
No standardized ranked choice voting in place.
No significant restrictions on money in politics that prevents monopolies from the Repubs/Dems in candidate runs.
No nuance in public sentiment and conversations. The whole "us vs them" attitude.
Disdain toward third parties- Trump got elected? It was the people who voted Libertarian/Green's fault!!!11
By running democrat, progressive at least get into Congress whereas running for a third party generally is seen as a lost cause. I think that's the biggest reason they go thru democrats. I think it's true for Republicans too- if you're in the Tea Party you're not going to make a separate Tea Party party but rather just run through the republican party. The two party system forces these decisions to happen to get significant results, at least in the upper levels of governments.

I think you already answered your own question. I don't consider myself progressive, but I'm sure many in the Democratic Party were wondering the same of the Freedom Caucus versus John Boehner/Paul Ryan. We're in a Two Party/Winner Take All system as well as dealing with the influence of increasingly partisan congressional maps. It's much safer to push/primary the existing party towards your ideology than it is to try and strike it out on your own.

I just think it's both amusing and frustrating to see how much stock the media is putting on the Progressives despite only having around 4 votes (AOC's group of freshmen). Mathematically they don't have the votes to do much of anything, but have the power of Social Media & News Media behind them. IDK how much stock we can put into them considering the influence they're having on the Presidential Primaries as apposed to their lack of influence on how Nancy Pelosi is running the House.


As a political thought piece that somewhat ties in, personally I'm the most interested in seeing what happens to my Congressman: Justin Amash (I), now that he has quit the Freedom Caucus & GOP. Will he stay Independent or join the Libertarians? Will he join the GOP primary in my district or run as an Independent? Will he give up altogether and retire/become a lobbyist?

I really take issue with the "they just have social media presence" stance towards the progressives in the democratic party's congress. People who support them on social media are American voices. Constituents. I think Nancy Pelosi showcases it with her "you have your public whatever." The problem is that she is out of touch with the public "Whatever."
Their strategy of disruption has been massively successful as we see democrats running trying to appeal more to the left (which, lol it's so transparent), but that really speaks volumes as to what effect they've had despite having only 4 seats. They're shifted the Overton window to the left.
They're kinda like Trump, in a way, because his thing is that he's disrupting the system already in place. And hey, it worked, he's president, despite all the odds.

Finally, we got someone new talking on this thread. Anyway...

That’s weak. The democrat party wouldn’t have existed if they had the menatily of “be safe” occurred. ... actually that was the rebulican party. But The reference being that there used to be the Whig party and democrats. Whigs has turmoil and some defected because they believed in what they stood for thus creating the rebulican party. The rebulican party turned out to have better ideas and so the whigs become INSTICT. If the progressives have ideas they believe in and that are good... they can have that same fortune as well. The point of politics is to have ideas that best be able to make America the best it can be. If “establishment” democrats get in the way of that...defect. It’s their party, so you leave. And maybe... AND MAYBE. The mere threatening of leaving the party would get the “establishment” to heed your demands. Think of it.... who’d hurt most by progressives leaving?the establishment! The progressives theoretically are the ascending faction. They can wait! Ten years, fine. They will work in secret, wait for “drumph” or one of his successors to enact policy that’ll get us in war or destabilize the government so bad it becomes an pure aristocracy where the economy actually sucks but the top rich people are richer then ever. Then people will be so disgusted and vote for progressives.
Or... the you threaten to leave... establishment caves in to your demands and you get closer to want you want. But here’s the kicker... by doing that... establishment supporters would be disgusted and break ties with them.... thus making establishment have less influence which should get you MORE POWER.

Edit: I guess it really depends on what happens in 2020, who wins (and how authentic was their win) the primary and national election. If someone like sanders wins and loses to trump. Oh man. Normal democrats would blame the progressives and try to ostracize them from the dnc. And progressives would make about 10,000 excuses of why they lost and square up with anyone who blames them for the loss. Lol, I can see it:
“The 1% rigged the entire election!”
“Dnc conspired with trump against sanders”
“Americans are just too stupid and brainwashed to know what’s good for them”

Though if someone like Biden and less extent buttoege, kamala won primary but loss to trump. Progressives would be very unhappy and probably either break away or civil war their way to dnc power. But establishment would blame progressives by saying they didn’t turn out. As a matter of fact, if trump wins 2020 again... the dnc is going to be in trouble. And if they lose the house again and rebulicans retain the senate... WOW. The democrats might go out of power for many years.
Rebulicans with full control and trump in his 2nd term (president in 2nd term get more daring because they don’t have to worry about re election like Obama did in 12’-16’ with his executive orders)?
I wouldn’t mind that. The democrats are annoying to me... but that’s besides the point. There’s pressure for dnc to win. : edit end

This plan of just trying to infight your superiors while having little leverage, credentials or stature is not smart. I feel like progressives don’t understand how much bad publicity some like AOC gets with her tactics and actions.

They have A strong social media presence for sure (which isn’t a good thing... it just means most progressives aren’t working and being proactive members towards society) but news media are largely with establishment dems. Though the news media is paying more attention to them for sure.

hmph, amash. I can understand why the president was so ticked off and happy he left. Trump is the boss of the GOP, everyone who has allegiance to that party should largely fall in line (unless trump does something heinously illegal). If I were trump, that’s what I’d expect. But I can’t blame him. He stook to his conviction. It will be interesting. He probably will just retire. What he did was political suicide.

I think a lot of what I said earlier kinda responds to some of the things you brought up, but I want to stress- Trump may be the "boss" so to speak of the GOP, but he is just as fringe in that party as AOC is in the democratic party. There have been many times where Republicans have called him out for what he has or hasn't done, and he has a mind of his own (for better or for worse) that has clashed with members of his cabinet. He doesn't fall in line. The difference is he holds the reigns. He doesn't have a Nancy Pelosi speaking over him telling him that he only has his "public whatever."

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=DX7ZXbEM3FE

I agree mr president. I’m not even that “pro american” since I’m ethnic but even I feel pain and sympathy for true hardcore American nationals and patriots when these ungrateful, disrespectful and obnoxious Congress women run their mouth bad on the president and the country. It hurts. I’m like... “LEAVE!”. These people praise other countries and say America is not this or that or whatever... thinking they are cute because they get media clout (for liberal social views) and twitter followers from mostly edgy no-life twitters losers.

These People are a disgrace, and it’s quite obvious that these people just want to have power on a global scale. And people like Omar and a lot of minoritys who support leftist just want their race/religion to get a leg up on economic and political power with like affirmative action and identity politics... so hopefully their people can be the dominant ones in society in the future. As an ethnic, I can see it very clearly.

Then there are going to be people who say “dude no, we just want an “egalitarian” society where there is no ‘white privileged’, white nationalist, racist cops against PoC and that PoC are good people who’d never be anything like our evil ancestors”. These people actually believing that if they usher a culture of identity politics and affirmative action for certain races that once that race gets huge prominence they’d just “stop”? No, what that race would do is just transform society to their culture and anyone who doesn’t conform gets extradited. It’s in the nature of humans. These people who c*ck for races they feel are “disenfranchised” and disvow their own race, I just look at them with pity and disgust.
And it goes both ways. Don’t get it twisted. People who disvow and look down upon their own heritage, ethnicity etc. to look up to the people who have more power and influcnece -wishing to be them - they too are a disgrace. And that’s 100% facts.

Look, in America - in my opinion - the best way for people to not have inward bad predjuices is for you, and your people, to be the BEST in the american system. Look at Asians, certain ethnic Africans like Nigerians, Koreans and just most Asians in general, Indians, Europeans.... these people go into american society and FLOURISH by working hard, investing well and having true perseverance. And I’m not saying be rich or die...or something so cruel. Most people just want to have a good job in a economy where they can get married and live in their home in peace.
That’s the way....

These people didn’t say “I’m crying. White man look at me bad. Marxist white man help me!” Lol. Okay I’m just kidding. That was funny though.

Sighs... my beautiful political rants on a super smash brother video game forum that probably make people eyes who disagree with me burn up to a crisp. Lol. If someone disagrees with me... more then happy to have a convo.

I disagree. I think there's nothing MORE American than critiquing your government and engaging with it as much you can. We have freedom of speech here, a right that other countries do not have. The truth of the matter is that people should not leave for expressing their opinions on the country, or the government on any level.


-----


Unique post:

Something is brewing in the United States political landscape, and I think it's important to acknowledge it: It is a populist sentiment increasingly growing frustrated with the concentration of power. I think it's a disservice to look at it in a "this is only happening on the right/left" sentiment. It is easy to see AOC if you are on the right and think "ridiculous" just like it is easy to see Trump on the left and think "ridiculous" but this is something that is present everywhere in the political spectrum, and I expect it will continue growing.
I firmly believe this is one of the reasons Hillary lost to Trump. You had a "same ol', same ol'" candidate who's interest would be in her donors and special interests and not in the American people. Then you had someone who was there that would disrupt everything- shake things up, not bring the same old and instead think for himself- and I think that's what made Trump win.
This populist sentiment is very "cut out the middleman and let the PEOPLE get represented and not those behind the scenes." And I think this is something that people on the left and the right have in common. Instead of looking at in a tribal lens, I think this should be something that finally unites people in a time when things are so radically divided.
Honestly this is the reason I don't use terms like "liberal" or "conservative" to describe myself because I would rather describe my policies and positions and not have people judge me based on a label. And I want to extend this same courtesy to others, and get to know them based off their positions and what policies they support rather than just labels.
Recently I've been talking to people across the board and honestly? There are less things dividing people than people might think, especially in the important areas. And I think these ideas that people have all across the board are being misrepresented by the "establishment", in other words politicians being bought out by special interests or serving the people in their own self interest to just get re-elected and not to enact the will of the people.
My big question now is how can we bridge this gap between the two populist tribes who are sick of the establishment? What big changes can we make to the political landscape to finally unite the American people? I'd love to hear thoughts on this.


Also...
I think my above points of tribalism being a disservice are exemplified in public reaction to Tulsi Gabbard's supporters. Apparently, a lot of conservatives have been on board with her based on her positions and policies and I've seen people say that that is a BAD thing! How is it bad if you are attracting support from Americans across the board?! She has also spoken on many outlets, including Fox, which she also received criticism for. This is just one example, but have things grown so tribal that the democrats are willing to denounce MORE support just because the support comes from conservative voters rather than democrats?

Anyways, this is a long post so I'll end it here. My next unique post will probably be more analysis on individual candidates and trends.

 

[J.I.L]

Note: this will be replies to other posts but at the end I will have my own unique post. Feel free to engage with any of what I post even if it isn't directed at you.



The problem is the short term costs for the long term benefits, as well as the systematic barriers in place for third parties. Look at Libertarians or the Green Party for example.
No standardized ranked choice voting in place.
No significant restrictions on money in politics that prevents monopolies from the Repubs/Dems in candidate runs.
No nuance in public sentiment and conversations. The whole "us vs them" attitude.
Disdain toward third parties- Trump got elected? It was the people who voted Libertarian/Green's fault!!!11
By running democrat, progressive at least get into Congress whereas running for a third party generally is seen as a lost cause. I think that's the biggest reason they go thru democrats. I think it's true for Republicans too- if you're in the Tea Party you're not going to make a separate Tea Party party but rather just run through the republican party. The two party system forces these decisions to happen to get significant results, at least in the upper levels of governments.

I really take issue with the "they just have social media presence" stance towards the progressives in the democratic party's congress. People who support them on social media are American voices. Constituents. I think Nancy Pelosi showcases it with her "you have your public whatever." The problem is that she is out of touch with the public "Whatever."
Their strategy of disruption has been massively successful as we see democrats running trying to appeal more to the left (which, lol it's so transparent), but that really speaks volumes as to what effect they've had despite having only 4 seats. They're shifted the Overton window to the left.
They're kinda like Trump, in a way, because his thing is that he's disrupting the system already in place. And hey, it worked, he's president, despite all the odds.

I think a lot of what I said earlier kinda responds to some of the things you brought up, but I want to stress- Trump may be the "boss" so to speak of the GOP, but he is just as fringe in that party as AOC is in the democratic party. There have been many times where Republicans have called him out for what he has or hasn't done, and he has a mind of his own (for better or for worse) that has clashed with members of his cabinet. He doesn't fall in line. The difference is he holds the reigns. He doesn't have a Nancy Pelosi speaking over him telling him that he only has his "public whatever."

I disagree. I think there's nothing MORE American than critiquing your government and engaging with it as much you can. We have freedom of speech here, a right that other countries do not have. The truth of the matter is that people should not leave for expressing their opinions on the country, or the government on any level.


-----


Unique post:

Something is brewing in the United States political landscape, and I think it's important to acknowledge it: It is a populist sentiment increasingly growing frustrated with the concentration of power. I think it's a disservice to look at it in a "this is only happening on the right/left" sentiment. It is easy to see AOC if you are on the right and think "ridiculous" just like it is easy to see Trump on the left and think "ridiculous" but this is something that is present everywhere in the political spectrum, and I expect it will continue growing.
I firmly believe this is one of the reasons Hillary lost to Trump. You had a "same ol', same ol'" candidate who's interest would be in her donors and special interests and not in the American people. Then you had someone who was there that would disrupt everything- shake things up, not bring the same old and instead think for himself- and I think that's what made Trump win.
This populist sentiment is very "cut out the middleman and let the PEOPLE get represented and not those behind the scenes." And I think this is something that people on the left and the right have in common. Instead of looking at in a tribal lens, I think this should be something that finally unites people in a time when things are so radically divided.
Honestly this is the reason I don't use terms like "liberal" or "conservative" to describe myself because I would rather describe my policies and positions and not have people judge me based on a label. And I want to extend this same courtesy to others, and get to know them based off their positions and what policies they support rather than just labels.
Recently I've been talking to people across the board and honestly? There are less things dividing people than people might think, especially in the important areas. And I think these ideas that people have all across the board are being misrepresented by the "establishment", in other words politicians being bought out by special interests or serving the people in their own self interest to just get re-elected and not to enact the will of the people.
My big question now is how can we bridge this gap between the two populist tribes who are sick of the establishment? What big changes can we make to the political landscape to finally unite the American people? I'd love to hear thoughts on this.


Also...
I think my above points of tribalism being a disservice are exemplified in public reaction to Tulsi Gabbard's supporters. Apparently, a lot of conservatives have been on board with her based on her positions and policies and I've seen people say that that is a BAD thing! How is it bad if you are attracting support from Americans across the board?! She has also spoken on many outlets, including Fox, which she also received criticism for. This is just one example, but have things grown so tribal that the democrats are willing to denounce MORE support just because the support comes from conservative voters rather than democrats?

Anyways, this is a long post so I'll end it here. My next unique post will probably be more analysis on individual candidates and trends.

I guess I can see your point, espcially with how much of a rallying cause Illhan omar is right now (which is going to spell doom for the democrat party....at least it should). It wouldn't make sense for threatning of leaving.

Trump is defintintly not a "fringe" in the GoP. He has tranformed that party, like regean and lincoln did. Though he somtimes still does get called out for sure.

They critize it in a way that makes me think they don't have america as their first priorty in terms of countries. That's why them and alot of their supporters should leave. I think they ike the POWER of the USA and the freedom to attain that power, but do these peope REALLY love this country first? I don't think so.

You have to remember, internet poltical culture is not indiactive of politcal voting/movement culture. It's pretty popular on the internet to say i'm "anti esbtlaishment"...most people who don't go on internet and devlve themselves to much into the politcal forums/culture of the internet don't even know what "esbtliashment" is and those people are by far the majoirty.
But to adress your point....I don't think these two tribal factions can work. A lot of conservatives and right wing people are aginst the estbalishement of politcians and buisnesses who are global centered and who sell out their consitutients for global minded agendas to acheive power and their own ends. Instead of being nationally minded and focusing on the needs of YOUR country.
Left wing people are against the establishment of people who are just powerful because of their wealth and poltcians who use such advantage. These people want a soceity where money and class is largely irrevalnt in everyday life and poltical sphere.

So you may "hey, that isn't that diffenrt". It may look savagble at first, but it's not.
Left wing people will soon find out that a lot of the polcies and agendas they want enacted won't work on separate national levels, so progressives and left wing people will be focused on linking up with other nations and creating global orgnaizations so that they may be more interconnected and therefore share money resources to pay and do these programs they want done. This would also mean a stronger concentraction of power and more back handed cencorship/silence of dissention in order to not interruopt their striving for "human solodarity" and "world peace".

Right wing people think more on a national level and enact policies that will benefit their own, and only work with other countries if they have common interest. And some of these thing would against leftist ideals and principles.

There is no salvagabillity here, and people who think there is is naive.
And your point on conservatives warning against tulsi gabbard....GOOD. The only real politcal faction that may get swayed to her are pure right wingers or maybe alt right groups...those people aren't per say always or even usually "conservatives". And tulsi gabbard is a leftist who just a cloak of "conservatism" whith her "no wars" stance which speaks to the tunes of impressionable right wing groups. Those people don't understand that tulsi would be inneffective and weak on foreign policy and would cave harder then obama (and I like Obama) to a lot of these gorups, and tulsi wouldn't really enact and right wing agenda either except like a few bones here and there. Plus trump is already pretty adverse to war as well, but unlike tulsi, will enact it if neccessary.

There's a reason why tulsi is liked by progressives. And it's not to the benefit of right wing/conservative people. Definlty not to conservative.

 

[Dannish]

Taking bets on how long it'll take for this topic to be shut down.

 

[J.I.L]

Taking bets on how long it'll take for this topic to be shut down.

Probably not in any imediate future. And why would it be shut down. It's only me and remillia, and like a few people here and there who are keeping this thread alive.

 

[Dannish]

why would it be shut down.

Because there are people that get unreasonably salty about political disagreements.
But if those people don't show up then it doesn't matter.

 

[J.I.L]

Because there are people that get unreasonably salty about political disagreements.
But if those people don't show up then it doesn't matter.

Yeah. right now you only have an conservtive leaning person and a centrist/indepdent. When the thread first started, there was a ton of liberals here, then they left. I came 2 months later and they've yet to return. And I see a lot of them are still activeon smash board, so it's weird. Though probably for the best at the momment. I sometimes have the urge to tag all of them when I go on my politcal rants (if you've seen my politcal rants...you'd know it ain't friendly to left agendas)
....but i'd get a strike on my account which wouldn't allow me to even comment on this thread for a little while. So i'm playing sort of safe, here.

But I'd do it in a way that looks innocent. I'd tag all of them with saying like "what do you guys think about my opinion", while I know they are liberals, as I proceed to gote them into reading a politcal thesis which roast and lambast their poltical ideolgy and movement. LOOOOOOOOOOOOL. If I had enough conduct credits on my account, I would defintly do it.

This thread is just too dead, need some action, here. lol

 

[remilia]

I guess I can see your point, espcially with how much of a rallying cause Illhan omar is right now (which is going to spell doom for the democrat party....at least it should). It wouldn't make sense for threatning of leaving.

Trump is defintintly not a "fringe" in the GoP. He has tranformed that party, like regean and lincoln did. Though he somtimes still does get called out for sure.

I don't know, I think the argument can be made that he is pretty different. Maybe "fringe" might be too strong of a word but at the very least he does have a lot of intra-party opposition. Of course he holds the reigns, so the party won't complain about that- but there are many Mitt Romneys and Romney-aligned folks that are not fans of Trump. Also the point stands too that he does things to the dismay of his cabinet. I mean, look at Venezuela- he got "bored" with them and decided to leave it alone. He was heavily criticized for that (I actually think he made the right choice to not pursue things further though). But there is definitely a degree of separation from him and the rest of the Republicans.

They critize it in a way that makes me think they don't have america as their first priorty in terms of countries. That's why them and alot of their supporters should leave. I think they ike the POWER of the USA and the freedom to attain that power, but do these peope REALLY love this country first? I don't think so.

What would their priority be if not America?

You have to remember, internet poltical culture is not indiactive of politcal voting/movement culture. It's pretty popular on the internet to say i'm "anti esbtlaishment"...most people who don't go on internet and devlve themselves to much into the politcal forums/culture of the internet don't even know what "esbtliashment" is and those people are by far the majoirty.

You have a point here, although increasingly as we move forward and the internet becomes a larger and larger part of people's lives, there will be more overlap there. I think now we're at a really transformative point in internet and the political sphere and their roles together. I'd say a candidate like Andrew Yang for example has seen large success from his internet fanbase and recently he's been polling at as high as 4-5% in some polls. He's classified as a B-Tier candidate instead of C-tier in this upcoming debate. But yes, true- the majority of political culture is still outside of the internet culture that's been developing. And the money and influence in political spheres is certainly still in the hands of those who are not in the internet political spaces.

But to adress your point....I don't think these two tribal factions can work. A lot of conservatives and right wing people are aginst the estbalishement of politcians and buisnesses who are global centered and who sell out their consitutients for global minded agendas to acheive power and their own ends. Instead of being nationally minded and focusing on the needs of YOUR country.
Left wing people are against the establishment of people who are just powerful because of their wealth and poltcians who use such advantage. These people want a soceity where money and class is largely irrevalnt in everyday life and poltical sphere.
So you may "hey, that isn't that diffenrt". It may look savagble at first, but it's not.
Left wing people will soon find out that a lot of the polcies and agendas they want enacted won't work on separate national levels, so progressives and left wing people will be focused on linking up with other nations and creating global orgnaizations so that they may be more interconnected and therefore share money resources to pay and do these programs they want done. This would also mean a stronger concentraction of power and more back handed cencorship/silence of dissention in order to not interruopt their striving for "human solodarity" and "world peace".
Right wing people think more on a national level and enact policies that will benefit their own, and only work with other countries if they have common interest. And some of these thing would against leftist ideals and principles.

I think the "nation first" point would actually be a good way to unite these two camps. I mean, there's the obvious aspect of globalization that is causing massive shifts in government but I think if we actually pull away from that and focus at home, both camps could get what they want. More money at home means more money in circulation and more business opportunities and also more money in the budget for programs to ensure people get access to what they need.
I honestly think the American people as a whole want there to be a focus on the nation first, and it goes back to the very core of what George Washington said earlier- don't do political parties and don't get involved in world affairs (that awkward moment when we're doing both).
Hmmm... it might be interesting to see if there are any polls on this to gauge the sentiment of the American people.

There is no salvagabillity here, and people who think there is is naive.

Am I naive? Shouldn't there be an effort to branch together people from different ideologies and experiences and try to come up with a way they can agree on some things? I mean obviously everything won't be agreed upon by everyone but I think there are things that can be, no?

And your point on conservatives warning against tulsi gabbard....GOOD. The only real politcal faction that may get swayed to her are pure right wingers or maybe alt right groups...those people aren't per say always or even usually "conservatives". And tulsi gabbard is a leftist who just a cloak of "conservatism" whith her "no wars" stance which speaks to the tunes of impressionable right wing groups. Those people don't understand that tulsi would be inneffective and weak on foreign policy and would cave harder then obama (and I like Obama) to a lot of these gorups, and tulsi wouldn't really enact and right wing agenda either except like a few bones here and there. Plus trump is already pretty adverse to war as well, but unlike tulsi, will enact it if neccessary.

There's a reason why tulsi is liked by progressives. And it's not to the benefit of right wing/conservative people. Definlty not to conservative.

The most I've seen so far is from "old school" conservatives and libertarians, staunch isolationists. Looking at her positions she seems to favor withdrawal specifically in regime change wars but she is by no means a dove. She actually is a self-identified hawk on the war on terror but believes in identifying specific groups and using targeted airstrikes, and not foot soldiers, to take down terrorist organizations. She was a combat veteran who experienced war and values "Service above self," really a patriot and it shows.
Foreign policy is actually my "key" issue in politics and so I've looked pretty closely at her and I think she is a fascinating candidate who has a mind of her own.
Although I am not a fan of Trump I will give him credit in regards to foreign policy in certain scenarios.Venezuela, North Korea... I think Hillary may have entered war there. But he didn't. Granted, he was also responsible to some degree in blocking North Korea and South Korea from reconciling as much as they could have... but avoidance of war is important. My main issue with him is that war with Iran seems imminent due to events that are unfolding and because he is so in favor of Israel- if they start a needless war with Iran, I suspect we will be there right by their side. That would be catastrophic.
But I also fear that a good chunk of the democratic nominees would be worse on foreign policy than he is. Gabbard is one of the few who, after reviewing her foreign policy, I think would be a safe choice for "America first" in that she'd withdraw from the global stage more than others would.

 

[J.I.L]

I don't know, I think the argument can be made that he is pretty different. Maybe "fringe" might be too strong of a word but at the very least he does have a lot of intra-party opposition. Of course he holds the reigns, so the party won't complain about that- but there are many Mitt Romneys and Romney-aligned folks that are not fans of Trump. Also the point stands too that he does things to the dismay of his cabinet. I mean, look at Venezuela- he got "bored" with them and decided to leave it alone. He was heavily criticized for that (I actually think he made the right choice to not pursue things further though). But there is definitely a degree of separation from him and the rest of the Republicans.


What would their priority be if not America?


You have a point here, although increasingly as we move forward and the internet becomes a larger and larger part of people's lives, there will be more overlap there. I think now we're at a really transformative point in internet and the political sphere and their roles together. I'd say a candidate like Andrew Yang for example has seen large success from his internet fanbase and recently he's been polling at as high as 4-5% in some polls. He's classified as a B-Tier candidate instead of C-tier in this upcoming debate. But yes, true- the majority of political culture is still outside of the internet culture that's been developing. And the money and influence in political spheres is certainly still in the hands of those who are not in the internet political spaces.


I think the "nation first" point would actually be a good way to unite these two camps. I mean, there's the obvious aspect of globalization that is causing massive shifts in government but I think if we actually pull away from that and focus at home, both camps could get what they want. More money at home means more money in circulation and more business opportunities and also more money in the budget for programs to ensure people get access to what they need.
I honestly think the American people as a whole want there to be a focus on the nation first, and it goes back to the very core of what George Washington said earlier- don't do political parties and don't get involved in world affairs (that awkward moment when we're doing both).
Hmmm... it might be interesting to see if there are any polls on this to gauge the sentiment of the American people.


Am I naive? Shouldn't there be an effort to branch together people from different ideologies and experiences and try to come up with a way they can agree on some things? I mean obviously everything won't be agreed upon by everyone but I think there are things that can be, no?


The most I've seen so far is from "old school" conservatives and libertarians, staunch isolationists. Looking at her positions she seems to favor withdrawal specifically in regime change wars but she is by no means a dove. She actually is a self-identified hawk on the war on terror but believes in identifying specific groups and using targeted airstrikes, and not foot soldiers, to take down terrorist organizations. She was a combat veteran who experienced war and values "Service above self," really a patriot and it shows.
Foreign policy is actually my "key" issue in politics and so I've looked pretty closely at her and I think she is a fascinating candidate who has a mind of her own.
Although I am not a fan of Trump I will give him credit in regards to foreign policy in certain scenarios.Venezuela, North Korea... I think Hillary may have entered war there. But he didn't. Granted, he was also responsible to some degree in blocking North Korea and South Korea from reconciling as much as they could have... but avoidance of war is important. My main issue with him is that war with Iran seems imminent due to events that are unfolding and because he is so in favor of Israel- if they start a needless war with Iran, I suspect we will be there right by their side. That would be catastrophic.
But I also fear that a good chunk of the democratic nominees would be worse on foreign policy than he is. Gabbard is one of the few who, after reviewing her foreign policy, I think would be a safe choice for "America first" in that she'd withdraw from the global stage more than others would.

Doesn’t mike pence still work on Venezuela? And I couldn’t really care either. Thankful no conflict between trump and maduro. I honestly wouldn’t mind if maduro stayed in power just as long as he really reforms his government so Venezuelans can get infrastructure going and have basic necessities. If he does that, if I’m trump we got no problem. But what do I know... hope wether the interim guy or maduro stays in power, the people get a good government that’ll provide them structure to live.

Their priorities are the planet and their vision for it.


Online forums and discussion are going to be the future? That’ll be terrible. Whoever has the biggest online following will have sway in ruling a country? Ridiculous.
I doubt yang is polling at 5%. I say at max, 3%.

Lol, go tell an anti establishment “pro(re)gressive” camp to have an “American first” mindset and will see if can get any “unification” results. Might just get punched in the face. (Lol, and I’m not that kidding). Here’s what they’ll say:
“Trump schycophant”
“America first is white nationalism”
“America was never that great”
“Every country should be first. We are all human”
“F*%# America.”
“Goeroge Washington white supremacy slave owner? F#%* him, too”
“America first is isolationist and selfish. We should focus on bettering other countries to become an “democracy” Like us. Which means aid, protest support etc etc.”
“the American empire who’s a puppet for Israel? America needs to die off and be rebuilt” - this is more alt right...left don’t like Israel either

Now is this something that many mainstream people may like? Focus more on bettering America? Sure. I mean trump did get elected, but you say conservatives and leftist. And that’s something leftist wouldn’t support in large numbers. Maybe SOME actual workers party/union might... but they aren’t a vocal voice of the left.

You are kinda naive, imo when it comes to progressives. You think these are well disciplined people who have calculated things through, have a first love with America and have it’s best interest truly at heart. They don’t and aren’t. But don’t take my word, go talk to true left people and I’m sure you’ll see what I say soon enough!

America gets into war just to change a regime? Definitely hadn’t had that with trump, so what would tulsi appeal be?
Yeah, she has some sentimental veteran appeal. Don’t know if that’ll translate to successful foreign policy.

Hopefully the nation of Israel doesn’t do something stupid, but we must stand firm with the nation of Israel. Not be a lap dog, but strong ally. Anyone who says we should cut ties with Israel are either leftist people or really REALLY dumb right wingers/conservatives.... nah just right wingers. Conservatives by in large support Israel due to a lot of evangelical support of it.

I don’t think she’d really withdraw from global stage but more so try to place peace keeper with everyone. She screams of the type of person who try to play both sides to make everyone happy. And I think that would just lead to conflict.

Dang, I really do go hard on progressives... lol. I feel bad for any who have read the entire comment thread. Imagine being a smash fan who’s young and a political activist who’s like “wow, this is so cool! Hey we got Bernie supporters! So cool! Feel the burn! Yeah.” And then they get to my comments... and well... ouch. But hey, If you disagree...I’m here if you want to defend yourself. Right now, the only people at the party are me and my boy remilia. Otherwise, keep watching your political movements get criticized by MOO-WAH.
Sorry. but nothing can I do if you don’t defend yourself.

 

[Strong Badam]

I only had a brief period of time to hop in here, sorry to quote a post from a ways up the page and hop in here. A bit of moderation, a bit of joining in on my own.

These people praise other countries and say America is not this or that or whatever... thinking they are cute because they get media clout (for liberal social views) and twitter followers from mostly edgy no-life twitters losers.

I'll say that this kind of stuff (which is extremely common in your posts, actually)
-Is inflammatory
-Is a generalization that needs some sort of source cited to be used here
-Is logically fallacious. This is a case of ad hominem. Your perception of their supporters is not particularly relevant in our current political system, just as any generalizations I could make about the current active Republican voter base aren't. You should have plenty to say about their policies and whether they'd be good for the country. Going down this route leaves a lot on the table for others to refute (or ignore) and doesn't help your argument.

____

Understand that we're trying to instill a culture of effective debate here in the Serious Discussion forum. It's not really a place for unorganized rants and unsubstantiated/unverifiable claims. Since the guidelines here aren't clear (No sticky yet), I'm going to do gentle verbal nudges as opposed to issuing infractions (unless, of course, other site rules are broken). Please try to improve the structure of your posts and avoid fallacies in the future.

That said, I wanted to reply to something else in your post:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=DX7ZXbEM3FE

I agree mr president. I’m not even that “pro american” since I’m ethnic but even I feel pain and sympathy for true hardcore American nationals and patriots when these ungrateful, disrespectful and obnoxious Congress women run their mouth bad on the president and the country. It hurts. I’m like... “LEAVE!”.

Let's talk about this!
So it seems you've identified that these representatives (who were elected by American citizens in order to represent their district) are complaining so much about how the country is that they should just leave. I'm curious, did you feel this way about President Trump during his campaign? As a political candidate, it's extremely common to point out issues with the country or how its run, because changing how its run becomes your job if you are successfully elected. And if you're in the House or Senate, staying on-message is important as you're representing your constituents who got you there. President Trump is no exception; his campaign focused heavily on addressing immigration, funding our military, changing the tax code, and the like. Prior to ever running for President, he also consistently criticized former president Barack Obama. He even went so far as to spearhead the birthing conspiracy, claiming that our former president was born in Kenya and not the United States. So, to use your words, Donald Trump "ran his mouth bad on the president and the country." In that case, shouldn't he have left the country? Or is there something I'm missing here?

On another note, what's your opinion on telling someone who was born in the United States to go back to where they came from?

 

[StoicPhantom]

Online forums and discussion are going to be the future? That’ll be terrible. Whoever has the biggest online following will have sway in ruling a country? Ridiculous.

As opposed to...what? Getting in arguments with relatives at Thanksgiving? Starting bar fights? Having a few minutes to explain complex policies and concepts at debates and on the MSM programs? Discourse isn't inherently better offline than it is online. There are still lots of nonsense in IRL conversations and the posts you see online are still made by real people. If you hadn't noticed, even old people who once scoffed at social media are now the ones predominately using it. Regardless of your personal feelings on the internet, it's undeniable that it's becoming very big in our society.

Lol, go tell an anti establishment “pro(re)gressive” camp to have an “American first” mindset and will see if can get any “unification” results. Might just get punched in the face. (Lol, and I’m not that kidding). Here’s what they’ll say:
“Trump schycophant”
“America first is white nationalism”
“America was never that great”
“Every country should be first. We are all human”
“F*%# America.”
“Goeroge Washington white supremacy slave owner? F#%* him, too”
“America first is isolationist and selfish. We should focus on bettering other countries to become an “democracy” Like us. Which means aid, protest support etc etc.”
“the American empire who’s a puppet for Israel? America needs to die off and be rebuilt” - this is more alt right...left don’t like Israel either

Now is this something that many mainstream people may like? Focus more on bettering America? Sure. I mean trump did get elected, but you say conservatives and leftist. And that’s something leftist wouldn’t support in large numbers. Maybe SOME actual workers party/union might... but they aren’t a vocal voice of the left.

You are kinda naive, imo when it comes to progressives. You think these are well disciplined people who have calculated things through, have a first love with America and have it’s best interest truly at heart. They don’t and aren’t. But don’t take my word, go talk to true left people and I’m sure you’ll see what I say soon enough!

You have a very narrow definition of what a "progressive" and "leftist" is. They aren't monoliths or hive minds, there is a very broad spectrum of people contained in those camps.

Those statements in quotes are referencing a very vocal fringe or taking things completely out of context. Very few of those is disqualifying people from wanting to improve America or loving their country. You can acknowledge a dirty past or that famous figures weren't necessarily as good of people as they were made out to be. You are conflating criticism of America with opposition or hatred of America and that's just not true.

You also haven't backed this statement:

You are kinda naive, imo when it comes to progressives. You think these are well disciplined people who have calculated things through, have a first love with America and have it’s best interest truly at heart. They don’t and aren’t. But don’t take my word, go talk to true left people and I’m sure you’ll see what I say soon enough!

up with anything substantial. What part of making detailed policies and plans modeled after policies that have been proven to be successful in a wide variety of countries and are objectively better than America's current ones, aren't signs of having "calculated things through?" How is wanting to implement these policies to alleviate the suffering and stop the deaths of American citizens, not indicative of having America's best interest at heart? What exactly are "true left people?"

You keep wanting Progressives to defend themselves from your criticisms, but you haven't really given any reasoning to refute.

America gets into war just to change a regime? Definitely hadn’t had that with trump, so what would tulsi appeal be?

It's not like the current administration hasn't been trying to start **** with Iran. They only failed with Venezuela, because the current administration and their Venezuelan patsy were too incompetent to pull it off and the Venezuelan people were staunchly opposed to American intervention.

Hopefully the nation of Israel doesn’t do something stupid, but we must stand firm with the nation of Israel. Not be a lap dog, but strong ally. Anyone who says we should cut ties with Israel are either leftist people or really REALLY dumb right wingers/conservatives.... nah just right wingers. Conservatives by in large support Israel due to a lot of evangelical support of it.

Why? What has Israel done for America? Other than tarnish our image and make the Military Industrial Complex richer at the expense of taxpayers. Israel constantly encroaching on the territory of other nations and trying to start illegal wars by extension puts America in danger. America needs to reprimand them, not stick our necks out for something that doesn't really seem to benefit anyone.

Dang, I really do go hard on progressives... lol. I feel bad for any who have read the entire comment thread. Imagine being a smash fan who’s young and a political activist who’s like “wow, this is so cool! Hey we got Bernie supporters! So cool! Feel the burn! Yeah.” And then they get to my comments... and well... ouch. But hey, If you disagree...I’m here if you want to defend yourself. Right now, the only people at the party are me and my boy remilia. Otherwise, keep watching your political movements get criticized by MOO-WAH.
Sorry. but nothing can I do if you don’t defend yourself.

We have lives dude. Not everyone has the time to type lengthy posts on a specific topic. I was going to respond to your earlier posts, but remilia got the jump on me. People will reply if they have interest and when they are ready and able to.


I'd like to finish this post by saying that regardless of what labels people attach themselves to, they are still people at the end of the day. Just because some one refers to themselves as "left wing" doesn't make them so. For example, if someone is accusing someone of "cultural appropriation" for wearing formal dress from another country at a formal event, that doesn't mean they are fighting racism or approaching this from a true left wing perspective. Cultural appropriation has a specific meaning, which is taking an aspect of a culture and marketing it as something else or something that isn't a true aspect but saying it is.

Using formal attire at a formal event, isn't cultural appropriation. Marketing food or clothing as "authentic" when it isn't, is(Tex-mex, American Chinese chain buffets). This person making accusations of "cultural appropriation" isn't approaching things from an objective perspective, they're running on the idea that people using something from another culture is somehow "dirtying" said culture. Because they aren't the "appropriate race".

That's not only not left wing, but is in fact a racist perspective. The only way you could construe that as ruining the dignity or "purity" of that culture, is if you subscribe to the idea of foreign people or ideas needing to be segregated from things that aren't considered "theirs", because their foreigness inherently dirties other cultures. In other words, you must not mix cultures and must keep cultures "pure".

That is an inherently conservative perspective, even if it appears liberal on the surface. Even if your intent was to try to preserve respect and dignity for other cultures, you're essentially making segregationist arguments. This person might describe themselves as "left wing" or "liberal" or even "progressive" and they might earnestly believe in that and those ideals, but they are taking a conservative and frankly polar opposite approach to actual versions of those things.

You Mr. J.I.L, seem to be misconstruing "leftists" and "progressives" as the person in this hypothetical. You can't take people at their word and judge them by what label they attach to themselves. I'm not a "Progressive" because I say I am, I'm a Progressive because I happen to agree and attempt to further ideals and agendas ascribed to them. It's not a label thing, more so a collection of policies and approach to politics that just happened to get that label attached to it. Progressives overlap with Liberals, but Neoliberals have tarnished the Liberal name with very unliberal things, so that's more or less how Progressives were born.

Neoliberals are much like the person in my cultural appropriation example. They wield left wing ideas as a weapon to further their interests while approaching things from a fundamentally right wing perspective. Much of the Democratic establishment could be considered Neoliberal, who wield identity politics and similar things to smear and attack their opponents with it, while muddying the concept and hurting the actual Liberals and their name. Identity politics isn't a bad thing and it is important to ensure all groups have equal representation, but the Neoliberals have given it a very negative connotation and have turned people who would otherwise support it, against it.

So what I'm trying to drive home is, that you need to examine these things a little deeper and not lump everyone into groups. There has been a lot of ****ery with labels to the point they're pretty much meaningless. I'm hoping that you'll be less generalizing in your future replies and won't see these labels as the media portrays them. Examine how these people act and what they say on a fundamental level, not a surface one of labels and left vs. right.

 

[J.I.L]

Strong Badam
Okay... this is dumb. I’m not one of those people who’ll just regurgitate sources and post a bunch of links. I’m one of those like Wild West grandpa who sit on a rocking chair and tells you the cold hard facts about these things. If you want to challenge what I say with sources and whatnot... go ahead and we will see where things go. But trying to push for one sort of debate style isn’t effective in gaining perspective. Also, that little excerpt is just me being a little passionate about politics. I’m not going to be a robot here, and I think if you start to micro mange this debate hall in such a way where freedom of expression and thoughts is greatly monitored... this forum thread will once again head into the oblivion of inactivity. This is a smash board forum, man. We aren’t law makers, lawyers or professionals out here. Don’t expect us to be or try to be.
And this thread isn’t an debate. It’s just discussion. If it were an official debate thread about the national election, then micro managing to debate ethics is understandable and encouraged. But for a simple politic general discussion? Dude, relax.


And yes, with the complaining they do and the type of complaining they and their supporters showcase; they should leave and go to countries where they have the sort of ideals they seem to aspire like Europe. Or go to Islamic countries and stand in “solidarity” with women and Muslims over there because that is what they say do in America and the Christians and conservatives are bad and oppressive here while Muslims are accepting. Hey, if you really think so... I’ll purchase you a plain ticket to and see what you are able to achieve. And this is a talking point millions of American and people around the world would agree with so I better not see a darn strike on my account for saying this. This isn’t an indictment on any religion, simply just urge these people to put their fit where their mouth is on things they say they support.
Because I said earlier, these people, I believe, love the POWER of the US and the freedom to achieve such power, I don’t believe they actually love the US as first love in the country. A lot of them, don’t at least.

To your point on being consistent to your hardcore supporters... sure. But I also included them as people who should leave the country, too. And talking generally to constituents... lol. Aren’t their approval ratings all in the tank? I saw it might be as low as 10% so I don’t know if they are doing a good job with their constituents. I hope some sharpe democrat or republican throws them out of there by defeating them in an election, so these people can go away with, IMO, their deceptive poison.

And to your point about trump, I agree. Some of the vicious things he said about Obama were hurtful, so it makes me relent on my anger when I see like Obama supporters viciously attacking him. I don’t condone what trump did against Obama. Now trump attacked Obama because he thought the policy Obama was doing weren’t good for the direction of AMERICA. His criticism were based on being American centric. So no, I don’t believe trump should have left. Now if let’s say Obama was doing things, trump disagreed and kept spouting how much better other countries were and how their way of life is better then ours. And became disillusioned with what America had become, I’d say yes: trump should pack his bags and leave. Him and his supporters. As would probably Obama supporters.

And to answer that last question. That’s kinda racist. Someone who’s born in the American and has no real connection and affiliation with another country to be told to go back where they came from because they browned skinned? Most surely pretty racist. I wouldn’t say that
To AOC or Presley or whatever her name is... but I would say they should leave if what I hear them to say about the country is true. And saying “go back to your country” for someone like Omar isn’t always racist... depending on why you said it.

S StoicPhantom
Face to face discourse is a better way of talking politics then online interactions. And if you can’t see a problem where elections are decided based on who’s most popular online, then so be it. This is something that’s not even up for discussion with me.

Please, do explain the “diversity” of thought among true progressive leftist. Just give me examples of what progressives fundamentally disagree about.

And that’s exactly why I don’t believe you guys calculate things through. For example, you were just probably referencing “ medical for all”... saying “well, other countries do it...and it works for them so we should too because we are richer”. Essentially that’s what it gets down too. I don’t think a lot of progressives calculate or even care to calculate the effects a single payer health care plan would do to the country. Because a lot of them sure as heck wont feel the financial burden of paying for it. But now do I agree our healthcare system needs reproof? Sure. But such a conversation needs to be handled with serious care and actually analyzing things thoroughly. Because GOP will blame blame Obamacare for our haphazard healthcare. So there’s need to be a serious conversation. Putting your fist in the air and hive mindley chanting medical 4 all ain’t it. But trump said he’s working on an healthcare plan, so we will see how it stacks up to the regurgitated single payer health plan democrats want to instill.
Wanting fix problems in America is good. Though I just believe you guys care more about achieving your philosophical ideals on America then actually caring about the pragmatics of how to help everyday operations. Grand standing I see a lot of left minded people.

Exactly what I mean by not putting your foot where your mouth. Instead of you to give any sort of credit to trump like remilia did by his fantastic job on not starting foreign conflicts, you instead nit pick with only two things: one of them being a insulting conspiracy theory that trump admin was too “incompetent” to start conflict thus they didn’t do it, and then criticizing him for the tension in Iran... by posing Iran as a victim of teasing and bullying from the bad “trump USA”. Ignoring things Iran did by blowing up one of our drones, and ignoring trump deciding not to attack Iran. Then you are probably going to defend Iran by saying “America did this, or put sanctions on them, or got out of the nuclear deal with hurt them” just defending Iran against your own country, the same Iranian govt who wouldn’t hesitate to slaughter all of us if we didn’t conform to their ways.
Though if Iran were to take over America, if I had to guess which political faction would ditch America... I’d guess progressives. They’d argue “I’m just saying I believe in allah, but don’t actual do. And it doesn’t matter since religion is fake anyway so if I say I do or dont, doesn’t matter. At least I’m not fighting a losing cost and getting killed. Iran has won, so get over it and do what they want. If you play your cards and get power, you can reverse what they’ve done” on some Darth sidious type cheese. It fitting because these are the same people who praise a lot of “Norwegian” countries, the same countries that rolled over for nazi Germany and didn’t bother to fight them, because of “no war”. But that’s none of my business...
And also, if Bernie was able to achieve foreign peace results trump has, you’d be touting him as the greasiest foreign policy president ever. Your bias is undeniable.

My support for Israel is solely on religious doctrine. Though quantifiably, Israel does have a lot of advantages for the US like they are our only ally in that region and they have oil. If Israel were to fall, Islamic countries would get more aggressive on the world stage which would lead America to either cave more and more to their ways or there would be war. But progressives don’t think these things through, I believe which leads them devolpers these conflicting policy and ideas. I don’t want war and peace, but letting Israel lose grip and influence to appease Islamic countries isn’t bad. I want all of these government programs... but I also want to have lax border control. I want to have workers get 15$ an hour, but also want to raise taxes on businesses as well. Conflicting ideals and policy is common through-out “progressives” politics which would destroy the infrastructure of nations. Only on a global level could they actually achieve a lot of what they want. Which is why many progressives are “global” centric people. But in order to achieve globalism you’d have to amass a lot of central power into orgs as well as silence a lot of dissenting opinion in order not to disturb the process of achieving human “solidarity”.
And they’d argue “well, wouldn’t you silence ‘a few’ people in order to create world peace and end world hunger?” Etc. It’s so obvious where leftist politics usually go. It ends in misery, hive mind, propaganda, pain, corruption, deception, oppression and a concentration of power etc. have you ever heard the saying
“Hard times create strong men
Strong men create good times
Good times create weak men
Weak men create hard times”
These are the same people who get offended by the term “STRONG MEN”. And we live in the best economy in the world, drug prices down and economy doing best in 50 years and instead of prasing as well working ways to maintain this success and do better. We have people nit- picking at the economy and success because of tribal politics crying that we are too harsh at the border, raising Mexican flags, and people crying that the president said, in his opinion, that foreign elected representatives who come across as anti American to a lot of people and himself should leave the country. It’s so OBVIOUS where we are at. We are in the good times creating weak men. And this is the struggle that’s going on in American government.

 

[remilia]

So I'm going to turn the conversation back to the candidates for a bit-
The debate stage nights have been set and this is what the debates will look like for July. They are once again organized by tiers, so those in the center are higher tier (polling/contributer support) than those on the sides.
What topics do you want to see explored in this round of debates? Are there any exchanges you hope will happen? Which candidates are you keeping an eye out for? What do you think of the arrangement of candidates?
Let's discuss that and any other thoughts you might have.

 

[StoicPhantom]

Face to face discourse is a better way of talking politics then online interactions. And if you can’t see a problem where elections are decided based on who’s most popular online, then so be it. This is something that’s not even up for discussion with me.

That's a subjective opinion, I'm talking about an objective fact. Those congresswoman showed just how powerful social media is and that's part of what has the Establishment in a tizzy. Trying to pretend that online doesn't matter is why they're losing the popularity war. It's much easier to spread information on social media, where users can retweet or otherwise spread news and information. Who's popular online will translate to who's popular offline, because the voters offline and online are the same people, so I don't know where you are trying to go with this.

Please, do explain the “diversity” of thought among true progressive leftist. Just give me examples of what progressives fundamentally disagree about.

Not everyone is going to be left or right on every issue period. Some might be liberal on most issues, but conservative on a few issues like abortion or gun control. Some are socially liberal, but economically conservative or vise versa. That's why it's a bad idea to lump everyone under one label, people aren't that ideologically clean.

But even when they are left leaning on issues, there is still varying degrees. Some want to legalize certain controlled substances like Cannabis for medical use. Some want to fully legalize it for recreational use. Some want to legalize "harder" drugs for medical use. Some want to fully legalize them. This is similar for all issues that go into personal freedom vs regulation. For "sin taxes" some believe we should tax certain harmful substances like Tobacco or Soda to discourage their use. Some believe people should have the freedom to harm themselves. Some feel those products should be banned altogether.

Even how to go about passing policy and spreading progressive ideas can be hotly debated. 2016 was full of "electable" vs "ideal" and whether it was "her turn" or if we should stick to policy. Even specifically among Progressive circles, we have Jimmy Dore types who are staunch and uncompromising Progressives and Sam Seder types who believe the most important thing is to stop Trump and the GOP and are wiling to compromise with Neoliberals and moderate factions to do so, even if it means Progressives don't get their way.

There are far too many differences for me to list here, but there is a wide spectrum, so it's not wise to lump everyone together.

And that’s exactly why I don’t believe you guys calculate things through. For example, you were just probably referencing “ medical for all”... saying “well, other countries do it...and it works for them so we should too because we are richer”. Essentially that’s what it gets down too. I don’t think a lot of progressives calculate or even care to calculate the effects a single payer health care plan would do to the country. Because a lot of them sure as heck wont feel the financial burden of paying for it.

Progressives don't need to calculate it, economists have already done so. That link is about a Koch-funded study on how much M4A costs, so you know they're going to be inflating those numbers as much as they can. Even with that bias, they still found it would save more money. Meaning, it costs less than the current system by about $2 trillion. No one is going to "feel the financial burden" because everyone will be saving significant amounts of money by not spending tens of thousands on private premiums and copay. And that's with a very anti-M4A source, lots of other have the savings at over $10 trillion. Government doesn't need to turn a profit or pay shareholders and CEOs billions, so administrative costs will be much lower.

But now do I agree our healthcare system needs reproof? Sure. But such a conversation needs to be handled with serious care and actually analyzing things thoroughly. Because GOP will blame blame Obamacare for our haphazard healthcare. So there’s need to be a serious conversation. Putting your fist in the air and hive mindley chanting medical 4 all ain’t it. But trump said he’s working on an healthcare plan, so we will see how it stacks up to the regurgitated single payer health plan democrats want to instill.

The GOP had seven years to come up with a new one prior to the start of Trump's administration. They failed in repealing Obamacare because the insane backlash from their constituents made enough members balk and they couldn't get the votes they needed. They can blame Obamacare all they want, they don't have anything better in mind.

Trump has advocated for single-payor/M4A plenty of times before he was pressured by the private insurance industry. He's written about it in his book and even ran on it in 2000. It's only his recent presidential bid that he's become more vague, but still praises it. Overall, Obamacare was the bare minimum of what you can have in a plan, so there isn't really any way they can go lower nor is anything Trump comes up with going to be cheaper, while covering everyone.

Wanting fix problems in America is good. Though I just believe you guys care more about achieving your philosophical ideals on America then actually caring about the pragmatics of how to help everyday operations. Grand standing I see a lot of left minded people.

That is literally what Progressives formed to fight against. They were tired of empty platitudes and no real policy. Progressives sole goal has been about focusing on effective policy that solves all of the issues currently plaguing America. Like seriously where have you been? All the criticisms that Progressives have launched at the Establishment, has been what you've attributed to Progressives. They were tired of the Establishment dealing in empty platitudes and not providing effective policy.

Exactly what I mean by not putting your foot where your mouth. Instead of you to give any sort of credit to trump like remilia did by his fantastic job on not starting foreign conflicts, you instead nit pick with only two things: one of them being a insulting conspiracy theory that trump admin was too “incompetent” to start conflict thus they didn’t do it, and then criticizing him for the tension in Iran... by posing Iran as a victim of teasing and bullying from the bad “trump USA”. Ignoring things Iran did by blowing up one of our drones, and ignoring trump deciding not to attack Iran. Then you are probably going to defend Iran by saying “America did this, or put sanctions on them, or got out of the nuclear deal with hurt them” just defending Iran against your own country, the same Iranian govt who wouldn’t hesitate to slaughter all of us if we didn’t conform to their ways.

I don't need to give credit where it's not due. The Trump administration absolutely tried to start conflict in Venezuela. They'd been trying to paint Guaido as the legitimate president, despite him not ever having been formally elected, and helped orchestrate a failed coup. Had Guaido not been rejected by the Venezuelan people they'd have a civil war underway.

The Iran stuff is all true, so I don't know why you are preemptively acting like I'm a traitor. Blowing up a drone that entered their airspace without permission is both within their rights and absolutely not justification for a war that would cost a significant amount of lives. Drones are replaceable, lives are not. Trump has waffled back and forth on this, so it remains to be seen what will happen.

This is all before going into how the Trump administration has gone back on their promises of getting us out of the current wars, getting into a Twitter war with Kim Jong-un when he was supposed to be deescalating tensions, and ordering a strike on Syrian airfields. His foreign policy has been far from peaceful and has been more or less inline with previous administrations.

Though if Iran were to take over America, if I had to guess which political faction would ditch America... I’d guess progressives. They’d argue “I’m just saying I believe in allah, but don’t actual do. And it doesn’t matter since religion is fake anyway so if I say I do or dont, doesn’t matter. At least I’m not fighting a losing cost and getting killed. Iran has won, so get over it and do what they want. If you play your cards and get power, you can reverse what they’ve done” on some Darth sidious type cheese. It fitting because these are the same people who praise a lot of “Norwegian” countries, the same countries that rolled over for nazi Germany and didn’t bother to fight them, because of “no war”. But that’s none of my business...

This is what Strong Bad was talking about when he was talking about unsourced generalizations and logical fallacies. Progressives have given no indication whatsoever that they would defect to another country in a hypothetical war. Those are some serious accusations, steeped in hypothetical. And this entire premise is based on the idea that war with Iran is a necessity, even though that has yet to be qualified. Progressives are against pointless wars that ruin lives, including American lives. Or do you think American soldiers don't die or suffer in war?

And also, if Bernie was able to achieve foreign peace results trump has, you’d be touting him as the greasiest foreign policy president ever. Your bias is undeniable.

What bias? Bernie has yet to be president, so I can't judge how he does. Foreign policy is something he has historically been weak on, giving priority to domestic issues. Ideally he would be able to achieve greater results than Trump, who hasn't done much but set things back. What I would do or don't do in this situation, is pure assumption on your part, which you've been asked not to do.

My support for Israel is solely on religious doctrine.

Well uh, that's fine I guess. But you can't force support on others who don't share that doctrine. Not that I think supporting a specific country is mandated by any religion. At least not modern countries.

Though quantifiably, Israel does have a lot of advantages for the US like they are our only ally in that region and they have oil. If Israel were to fall, Islamic countries would get more aggressive on the world stage which would lead America to either cave more and more to their ways or there would be war.

We need to be moving from oil in the first place, both because it's a finite resource and because it's contributing to climate change, which is going to be on track to end all organized life on earth, if somethings not done soon.

You need to actually quantify how Islamic countries would "get more aggressive" and why they would force America to their ways or how this would lead to war. The only aggressive Islamic nation is Saudi Arabia, who has been doing everything from supporting and arming terrorist groups to laying siege to Yemen. They are however, a key ally of America and Israel who have been ignoring and/or supporting them in their endeavors. I fail to see how a country that is actively causing war and trying to institute theocracy in surrounding nations, is less dangerous than Iran or any of the other countries America and Israel have messed with, given those countries haven't been actively causing conflicts.

But progressives don’t think these things through, I believe which leads them devolpers these conflicting policy and ideas. I don’t want war and peace, but letting Israel lose grip and influence to appease Islamic countries isn’t bad. I want all of these government programs... but I also want to have lax border control. I want to have workers get 15$ an hour, but also want to raise taxes on businesses as well. Conflicting ideals and policy is common through-out “progressives” politics which would destroy the infrastructure of nations. Only on a global level could they actually achieve a lot of what they want. Which is why many progressives are “global” centric people. But in order to achieve globalism you’d have to amass a lot of central power into orgs as well as silence a lot of dissenting opinion in order not to disturb the process of achieving human “solidarity”.

This is yet another example of you making baseless generalizations. None of what you posted you here is conflicting or mutually exclusive. You absolutely can tax businesses that make billions in profits, while still instituting a $15 minimum wage. Do the math. No one serious has said anything about lax border control. Nor does that have anything to do with Government programs. Plenty of other countries allow immigrants and foreigners to take advantage of their free healthcare and Government programs. Even staunch opponents of M4A/single-payer like Sarah Palin have hypocritically used it when they needed it the most.

You also haven't provided any reasoning on why Progressives would "destroy the infrastructure of nations" or why they could only do these types of policies on a global scale, when they have all been proven to work in many other countries. And I'm fairly certain Progressives have been staunchly opposed to trade deals and globalizing the work chain.

And they’d argue “well, wouldn’t you silence ‘a few’ people in order to create world peace and end world hunger?” Etc. It’s so obvious where leftist politics usually go. It ends in misery, hive mind, propaganda, pain, corruption, deception, oppression and a concentration of power etc. have you ever heard the saying
“Hard times create strong men
Strong men create good times
Good times create weak men
Weak men create hard times”
These are the same people who get offended by the term “STRONG MEN”.

What even is this? Talk about baseless claims and generalizations. You are saying "leftist politics" create pain and hard times, then you go on to basically say we need hard times to create strong men and that good times create weak men? Wouldn't you desire "leftist politics" then, given that they will apparently create the strong men you so crave? Please step out of whatever far right media bubble this garbage has been spewed in and back into the real world.

And we live in the best economy in the world, drug prices down and economy doing best in 50 years and instead of prasing as well working ways to maintain this success and do better. We have people nit- picking at the economy and success because of tribal politics crying that we are too harsh at the border, raising Mexican flags, and people crying that the president said, in his opinion, that foreign elected representatives who come across as anti American to a lot of people and himself should leave the country. It’s so OBVIOUS where we are at. We are in the good times creating weak men. And this is the struggle that’s going on in American government.

Remember this post, where I provided a bunch of sources stating the economy is not doing great? Did you bother reading them? If drug prices are down, why are so many people still struggling to afford them? People are "nit- picking at the economy" not because of "tribal politics" but because it's not working for them. The absolutely horrific **** going on at the border or Trump saying racist things about congresswoman he doesn't like have nothing to do with it.

Serious question, are you a member of the upper class? Where I live, nobody would even begin to call this "good times".



---

What topics do you want to see explored in this round of debates?

Ideally topics that would start to poke holes in less than honest candidates. It might be too early for it, but I'd like to see some thinning of the rather large amount of candidates we have. I'd rather not have a Democrat version of the GOP clown show that was the 2016 Republican primaries. Topics centered around campaign finance and corporate donors, private prisons and criminal justice reform, abolishing inherently undemocratic infrastructure like the Electoral College or super delegates and general reform of the political system for starters. Any topic that would discuss destroying current power structures, in order to try to see how many of these overnight progressives are actually the real deal.

Are there any exchanges you hope will happen?

Not really. They've separated the top Establishment and Progressive candidates, so I don't really foresee anything interesting. I kind of want to save Bernie and Warren going at each other, until they are among the few remaining. It might be interesting to see if Gabbard and Yang will pick at Biden and Harris, I guess.

Which candidates are you keeping an eye out for?

Bernie, Warren, Harris, and Biden. I don't see any other candidate being relevant in this election(or any really).

What do you think of the arrangement of candidates?

First night

Shark tank filled with all of the Establishment rejects plus lovable but unviable hippie lady and the two biggest Progressive fish. The image that comes to mind is one of a bloodbath.

Second night

I guess? Filled with mostly chaff and not many interesting MUs. Gabbard and Yang might be interesting depending on what they do, but they need to actually do more than they have been. I doubt Harris is going to be able to do anything on the level she did last time and lol Biden.

I feel like this round will solidify the viability of most of the candidates and set the tone and pace overall. I expect to see some thinning after this, even if the unviable candidates are too deluded to realize it.

 

[J.I.L]

That's a subjective opinion, I'm talking about an objective fact. Those congresswoman showed just how powerful social media is and that's part of what has the Establishment in a tizzy. Trying to pretend that online doesn't matter is why they're losing the popularity war. It's much easier to spread information on social media, where users can retweet or otherwise spread news and information. Who's popular online will translate to who's popular offline, because the voters offline and online are the same people, so I don't know where you are trying to go with this.


Not everyone is going to be left or right on every issue period. Some might be liberal on most issues, but conservative on a few issues like abortion or gun control. Some are socially liberal, but economically conservative or vise versa. That's why it's a bad idea to lump everyone under one label, people aren't that ideologically clean.

But even when they are left leaning on issues, there is still varying degrees. Some want to legalize certain controlled substances like Cannabis for medical use. Some want to fully legalize it for recreational use. Some want to legalize "harder" drugs for medical use. Some want to fully legalize them. This is similar for all issues that go into personal freedom vs regulation. For "sin taxes" some believe we should tax certain harmful substances like Tobacco or Soda to discourage their use. Some believe people should have the freedom to harm themselves. Some feel those products should be banned altogether.

Even how to go about passing policy and spreading progressive ideas can be hotly debated. 2016 was full of "electable" vs "ideal" and whether it was "her turn" or if we should stick to policy. Even specifically among Progressive circles, we have Jimmy Dore types who are staunch and uncompromising Progressives and Sam Seder types who believe the most important thing is to stop Trump and the GOP and are wiling to compromise with Neoliberals and moderate factions to do so, even if it means Progressives don't get their way.

There are far too many differences for me to list here, but there is a wide spectrum, so it's not wise to lump everyone together.



Progressives don't need to calculate it, economists have already done so. That link is about a Koch-funded study on how much M4A costs, so you know they're going to be inflating those numbers as much as they can. Even with that bias, they still found it would save more money. Meaning, it costs less than the current system by about $2 trillion. No one is going to "feel the financial burden" because everyone will be saving significant amounts of money by not spending tens of thousands on private premiums and copay. And that's with a very anti-M4A source, lots of other have the savings at over $10 trillion. Government doesn't need to turn a profit or pay shareholders and CEOs billions, so administrative costs will be much lower.


The GOP had seven years to come up with a new one prior to the start of Trump's administration. They failed in repealing Obamacare because the insane backlash from their constituents made enough members balk and they couldn't get the votes they needed. They can blame Obamacare all they want, they don't have anything better in mind.

Trump has advocated for single-payor/M4A plenty of times before he was pressured by the private insurance industry. He's written about it in his book and even ran on it in 2000. It's only his recent presidential bid that he's become more vague, but still praises it. Overall, Obamacare was the bare minimum of what you can have in a plan, so there isn't really any way they can go lower nor is anything Trump comes up with going to be cheaper, while covering everyone.


That is literally what Progressives formed to fight against. They were tired of empty platitudes and no real policy. Progressives sole goal has been about focusing on effective policy that solves all of the issues currently plaguing America. Like seriously where have you been? All the criticisms that Progressives have launched at the Establishment, has been what you've attributed to Progressives. They were tired of the Establishment dealing in empty platitudes and not providing effective policy.


I don't need to give credit where it's not due. The Trump administration absolutely tried to start conflict in Venezuela. They'd been trying to paint Guaido as the legitimate president, despite him not ever having been formally elected, and helped orchestrate a failed coup. Had Guaido not been rejected by the Venezuelan people they'd have a civil war underway.

The Iran stuff is all true, so I don't know why you are preemptively acting like I'm a traitor. Blowing up a drone that entered their airspace without permission is both within their rights and absolutely not justification for a war that would cost a significant amount of lives. Drones are replaceable, lives are not. Trump has waffled back and forth on this, so it remains to be seen what will happen.

This is all before going into how the Trump administration has gone back on their promises of getting us out of the current wars, getting into a Twitter war with Kim Jong-un when he was supposed to be deescalating tensions, and ordering a strike on Syrian airfields. His foreign policy has been far from peaceful and has been more or less inline with previous administrations.


This is what Strong Bad was talking about when he was talking about unsourced generalizations and logical fallacies. Progressives have given no indication whatsoever that they would defect to another country in a hypothetical war. Those are some serious accusations, steeped in hypothetical. And this entire premise is based on the idea that war with Iran is a necessity, even though that has yet to be qualified. Progressives are against pointless wars that ruin lives, including American lives. Or do you think American soldiers don't die or suffer in war?


What bias? Bernie has yet to be president, so I can't judge how he does. Foreign policy is something he has historically been weak on, giving priority to domestic issues. Ideally he would be able to achieve greater results than Trump, who hasn't done much but set things back. What I would do or don't do in this situation, is pure assumption on your part, which you've been asked not to do.



Well uh, that's fine I guess. But you can't force support on others who don't share that doctrine. Not that I think supporting a specific country is mandated by any religion. At least not modern countries.


We need to be moving from oil in the first place, both because it's a finite resource and because it's contributing to climate change, which is going to be on track to end all organized life on earth, if somethings not done soon.

You need to actually quantify how Islamic countries would "get more aggressive" and why they would force America to their ways or how this would lead to war. The only aggressive Islamic nation is Saudi Arabia, who has been doing everything from supporting and arming terrorist groups to laying siege to Yemen. They are however, a key ally of America and Israel who have been ignoring and/or supporting them in their endeavors. I fail to see how a country that is actively causing war and trying to institute theocracy in surrounding nations, is less dangerous than Iran or any of the other countries America and Israel have messed with, given those countries haven't been actively causing conflicts.


This is yet another example of you making baseless generalizations. None of what you posted you here is conflicting or mutually exclusive. You absolutely can tax businesses that make billions in profits, while still instituting a $15 minimum wage. Do the math. No one serious has said anything about lax border control. Nor does that have anything to do with Government programs. Plenty of other countries allow immigrants and foreigners to take advantage of their free healthcare and Government programs. Even staunch opponents of M4A/single-payer like Sarah Palin have hypocritically used it when they needed it the most.

You also haven't provided any reasoning on why Progressives would "destroy the infrastructure of nations" or why they could only do these types of policies on a global scale, when they have all been proven to work in many other countries. And I'm fairly certain Progressives have been staunchly opposed to trade deals and globalizing the work chain.


What even is this? Talk about baseless claims and generalizations. You are saying "leftist politics" create pain and hard times, then you go on to basically say we need hard times to create strong men and that good times create weak men? Wouldn't you desire "leftist politics" then, given that they will apparently create the strong men you so crave? Please step out of whatever far right media bubble this garbage has been spewed in and back into the real world.


Remember this post, where I provided a bunch of sources stating the economy is not doing great? Did you bother reading them? If drug prices are down, why are so many people still struggling to afford them? People are "nit- picking at the economy" not because of "tribal politics" but because it's not working for them. The absolutely horrific **** going on at the border or Trump saying racist things about congresswoman he doesn't like have nothing to do with it.

Serious question, are you a member of the upper class? Where I live, nobody would even begin to call this "good times".



---



Ideally topics that would start to poke holes in less than honest candidates. It might be too early for it, but I'd like to see some thinning of the rather large amount of candidates we have. I'd rather not have a Democrat version of the GOP clown show that was the 2016 Republican primaries. Topics centered around campaign finance and corporate donors, private prisons and criminal justice reform, abolishing inherently undemocratic infrastructure like the Electoral College or super delegates and general reform of the political system for starters. Any topic that would discuss destroying current power structures, in order to try to see how many of these overnight progressives are actually the real deal.


Not really. They've separated the top Establishment and Progressive candidates, so I don't really foresee anything interesting. I kind of want to save Bernie and Warren going at each other, until they are among the few remaining. It might be interesting to see if Gabbard and Yang will pick at Biden and Harris, I guess.


Bernie, Warren, Harris, and Biden. I don't see any other candidate being relevant in this election(or any really).


First night

Shark tank filled with all of the Establishment rejects plus lovable but unviable hippie lady and the two biggest Progressive fish. The image that comes to mind is one of a bloodbath.

Second night

I guess? Filled with mostly chaff and not many interesting MUs. Gabbard and Yang might be interesting depending on what they do, but they need to actually do more than they have been. I doubt Harris is going to be able to do anything on the level she did last time and lol Biden.

I feel like this round will solidify the viability of most of the candidates and set the tone and pace overall. I expect to see some thinning after this, even if the unviable candidates are too deluded to realize it.

Dude... oh man... mods are probably going to give me a strike but oh well.. might as well be honest:





I can’t bing myself to go back and forth with someone....sighs............with someone who’s disabled. I’m sorry... I just can’t. And it’s unfortunate because you got some good stuff there that I want to rip into...but my spirit allows me not to proceed in clear mind to go back and forth with a crippled man. I’m sorry. Because I feel like the things I say can be hurtful/annoying to those who I speak against, and I don’t want to hurt someone who’s life you yourself say is “living hell”.
So I say, between you and I, we agree to disagree.

And I’m not telling you what “class” my family is. That’s none of your beeswax, thank you very much.

 

[remilia]

Ideally topics that would start to poke holes in less than honest candidates. It might be too early for it, but I'd like to see some thinning of the rather large amount of candidates we have. I'd rather not have a Democrat version of the GOP clown show that was the 2016 Republican primaries. Topics centered around campaign finance and corporate donors, private prisons and criminal justice reform, abolishing inherently undemocratic infrastructure like the Electoral College or super delegates and general reform of the political system for starters. Any topic that would discuss destroying current power structures, in order to try to see how many of these overnight progressives are actually the real deal.

Yes, I agree that there needs to start being a thinning in the amount of candidates. People like Hickenlooper and Ryan I think should drop out of the race as not only are they not pulling number in polls but also in finances and they don't have a key thing that really makes them stand out like other lesser candidates who are at least distinguishable.

Not really. They've separated the top Establishment and Progressive candidates, so I don't really foresee anything interesting. I kind of want to save Bernie and Warren going at each other, until they are among the few remaining. It might be interesting to see if Gabbard and Yang will pick at Biden and Harris, I guess.

I don't forsee Warren and Sanders attacking each other as they are friends and they share a lot of ideas. I think they just need to defend themselves from the lesser candidates who will probably be trying to take a shot at them. I think Warren had the biggest net loss in the structuring of the debates because she hasn't gotten a chance to poke at Harris or Biden either time around.
I very much so want Yang and especially Gabbard to grill Harris and Biden. Yang I don't think will, however. He is too polite. Gabbard's cross talk with Ryan showcased she is very good at looking composed while ripping into the opponent at the same time. And she's also came out against Harris's comments in last debate about bussing because Harris's position actually ended up being the same as Biden's.
I think De Blasio will probably be argumentative at them too.

First night

Shark tank filled with all of the Establishment rejects plus lovable but unviable hippie lady and the two biggest Progressive fish. The image that comes to mind is one of a bloodbath.

Second night

I guess? Filled with mostly chaff and not many interesting MUs. Gabbard and Yang might be interesting depending on what they do, but they need to actually do more than they have been. I doubt Harris is going to be able to do anything on the level she did last time and lol Biden.

I feel like this round will solidify the viability of most of the candidates and set the tone and pace overall. I expect to see some thinning after this, even if the unviable candidates are too deluded to realize it.

I agree with your last statement, and again I hope we see some thinning. I think round 2 will be interesting and round 1 will be relatively quiet.

 

[Cyn]

Test post.

 

[StoicPhantom]

I can’t bing myself to go back and forth with someone....sighs............with someone who’s disabled. I’m sorry... I just can’t. And it’s unfortunate because you got some good stuff there that I want to rip into...but my spirit allows me not to proceed in clear mind to go back and forth with a crippled man. I’m sorry. Because I feel like the things I say can be hurtful/annoying to those who I speak against, and I don’t want to hurt someone who’s life you yourself say is “living hell”.
So I say, between you and I, we agree to disagree.

Please do not patronize me. If I couldn't handle it, I wouldn't engage in the first place. Yes I do have issues, but that has no relevance to this debate, other than the specific context I brought it up in nor will you be able to "hurt" me. If you want to concede, that's fine, but don't use my personal problems as an excuse to back out. You might be legitimately well-intentioned, but it comes across as patronizing or belittling to not engage someone on an internet debate/discussion over what amounts to physical issues. You didn't even know until I mentioned it, so there obviously wasn't any need to give special considerations here.

I'm not trying to condemn you for this to be clear, just letting you know for future reference, in hopes that you might better understand.

And I’m not telling you what “class” my family is. That’s none of your beeswax, thank you very much.

That's fair, although I think I've figured out the answer anyways.

---

I don't forsee Warren and Sanders attacking each other as they are friends and they share a lot of ideas.

Indeed, I just mean that one of them will have to back out eventually, so I'm hoping that we won't go the "who's the best progressive?" route that I'm sure the Establishment will try to setup, until late in the campaign. The pundits and the media are already trying to nudge things in that direction and while I think discourse between them will remain fairly amicable, their supporters and other actors might use them as proxies to snipe at each other. Ideally, they would remain to poke at the other candidates in their own unique ways, as I feel they have different approaches to debate and can tackle things from different sides.

If Harris doesn't pan out, I'm sure the "It's her turn" types will try to use Warren as their proxy and she definitely won't go down that route with Bernie, so we will hopefully avoid repeating the 2016 primary smear fest, that caused so much bad blood in the party. Ideally, I would like to see her and Bernie be the last "Progressives" standing among all of the so called ones and then we can have an honest debate among the actual differences in approach and strategy these two have and Warren can attempt to soothe the misgivings I and I'm sure others have about her wishy-washy stances and waffling on important topics like abstaining from corporate donations, without the rest of the circus distracting.

I legitimately like Warren, but she seems like she's easily swayed and influenced and seems to have potential backing of the "moderates" which is always a worrying sign, so I would definitely like to see some clarification on her strategy. I would probably still vote for her in the absence of Sanders, but I would feel better about it if they had a debate on approach and strategy, in the context of actual Progressives trying to implement progressive policy.

I very much so want Yang and especially Gabbard to grill Harris and Biden. Yang I don't think will, however. He is too polite. Gabbard's cross talk with Ryan showcased she is very good at looking composed while ripping into the opponent at the same time. And she's also came out against Harris's comments in last debate about bussing because Harris's position actually ended up being the same as Biden's.

I agree on Yang, it almost feels like he expected his UBI to make a splash and generate discussion, but he really needs to get more involved and speak out more.

Gabbard definitely has it in her to do some amazing take downs, but I feel like she's a little too choosy about what topics she speaks on. She needs to speak on more topics and not just seemingly "pet" issues like war.

Speaking of Gabbard, it appears she was among the few Progressives who voted for that anti-BDS resolution that was voted on by the House. That's likely to tank support for her among the Progressive base, but I also have to wonder if questions around that resolution are going to appear at the debate and if that is going to put Gabbard on the defensive or otherwise distract from any potential digging she could do at other candidates.


There's also rumblings of possible issues with the Sanders campaign and paying their staff's wages. WaPo initially reported this as a possible attempt to circumvent his $15 minimum wage, but following articles have clarified that it seems to be a leak on ongoing negotiations.

From what I gather, it seems to be the result of a misunderstanding on the union's part, stemming from a typical 60 hour work week making the base salary work out to less than $15 an hour. The Sanders campaign initially proposed a pay increase, but it was rejected by the union due to concerns that the contract doesn't require the campaign to pay full healthcare coverage above $36,000. The union was going to offer a counterproposal and that's when someone leaked negotiations to the media. In other words, this all pretty much resulted from the union not realizing the salary/hours issue and have been in negotiations with the Sanders campaign to try to rectify it.

WaPo, which should be mentioned is owned by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, of whom Bernie enacted legislation against in order to force him to pay his workers a $15 minimum wage, picked up this story and made it seem like Bernie was going back on his fight for a $15 minimum wage, AKA that he's a hypocrite. The reality is that negotiations are still ongoing and nobody from the staff or the union is happy about the leaks.

To me, this all seems to be very convenient in it's timing, with an anonymous source bypassing the union setup to address these concerns and going to WaPo, which so happens to have a bone to pick with Sanders, all right before the second debate, and I feel like it suggests a potential mole in the Sanders campaign. There also has been an unfair labor practice complaint filed with the National Labor Relations Board by an anonymous source. As the article notes, you don't even need to be related to the affected parties to file a complaint.

Although subsequent articles have corrected and clarified, it seems the damage has been done as unscrupulous individuals and organizations with an anti-Bernie bias have run with this narrative and people who don't read past headlines or follow up with stories are essentially spreading fake news all over the place. This is a prime example of what Sanders supporters mean when they say he has an unfair media bias against him.

I think we will be seeing him grilled about this at the debate and it won't be anything approaching fair or honest. I hope he has prepared for this and I'm worried it might hurt his legitimacy in the eyes of the uninformed. Even if people don't agree with him in the end, it should still be about factual things about him, not dishonest smears.

 

[remilia]

Indeed, I just mean that one of them will have to back out eventually, so I'm hoping that we won't go the "who's the best progressive?" route that I'm sure the Establishment will try to setup, until late in the campaign. The pundits and the media are already trying to nudge things in that direction and while I think discourse between them will remain fairly amicable, their supporters and other actors might use them as proxies to snipe at each other. Ideally, they would remain to poke at the other candidates in their own unique ways, as I feel they have different approaches to debate and can tackle things from different sides.

If Harris doesn't pan out, I'm sure the "It's her turn" types will try to use Warren as their proxy and she definitely won't go down that route with Bernie, so we will hopefully avoid repeating the 2016 primary smear fest, that caused so much bad blood in the party. Ideally, I would like to see her and Bernie be the last "Progressives" standing among all of the so called ones and then we can have an honest debate among the actual differences in approach and strategy these two have and Warren can attempt to soothe the misgivings I and I'm sure others have about her wishy-washy stances and waffling on important topics like abstaining from corporate donations, without the rest of the circus distracting.

I legitimately like Warren, but she seems like she's easily swayed and influenced and seems to have potential backing of the "moderates" which is always a worrying sign, so I would definitely like to see some clarification on her strategy. I would probably still vote for her in the absence of Sanders, but I would feel better about it if they had a debate on approach and strategy, in the context of actual Progressives trying to implement progressive policy.

Warren has definitely generated a lot of attention to my surprise. I mean, I knew she was popular but I didn't think her campaign would be as successful as it currently is, and polls are showing that she's gaining momentum.
I think unfortunately there will be "Her Turn" types who will votes solely on that basis and not on any policy. At least Warren seems to actually have policy compared to Harris who is very flip floppy and not really bringing forward any central ideas to her campaign.
My main concern is foreign policy, and that's why I have hesitations about Warren as she focuses primarily on domestic issues and I haven't really seen anything in regards to foreign policy from her. Hopefully she will come up with some good plans in that department. If she does I could get on board with her presidency even if she wouldn't be my first choice.

I agree on Yang, it almost feels like he expected his UBI to make a splash and generate discussion, but he really needs to get more involved and speak out more.

Gabbard definitely has it in her to do some amazing take downs, but I feel like she's a little too choosy about what topics she speaks on. She needs to speak on more topics and not just seemingly "pet" issues like war.

Speaking of Gabbard, it appears she was among the few Progressives who voted for that anti-BDS resolution that was voted on by the House. That's likely to tank support for her among the Progressive base, but I also have to wonder if questions around that resolution are going to appear at the debate and if that is going to put Gabbard on the defensive or otherwise distract from any potential digging she could do at other candidates.

I am wondering why Tulsi voted on that when she said otherwise before. Actions speak louder than words and many are confused by her vote on the bill.
Then again, Israel is one of those topics that seems bipartisan at almost every level within each party. A majority of Congress is a servant to AIPAC and I'm not sure if there are any candidates that will have the backbone to advocate against some of the absolutely ridiculous foreign aid packages we send to Israel which cost so much money or the right for people to express their free speech through BDS.
And it looks like there won't be much pushback from Andrew Yang either.

There's also rumblings of possible issues with the Sanders campaign and paying their staff's wages. WaPo initially reported this as a possible attempt to circumvent his $15 minimum wage, but following articles have clarified that it seems to be a leak on ongoing negotiations.

From what I gather, it seems to be the result of a misunderstanding on the union's part, stemming from a typical 60 hour work week making the base salary work out to less than $15 an hour. The Sanders campaign initially proposed a pay increase, but it was rejected by the union due to concerns that the contract doesn't require the campaign to pay full healthcare coverage above $36,000. The union was going to offer a counterproposal and that's when someone leaked negotiations to the media. In other words, this all pretty much resulted from the union not realizing the salary/hours issue and have been in negotiations with the Sanders campaign to try to rectify it.

WaPo, which should be mentioned is owned by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, of whom Bernie enacted legislation against in order to force him to pay his workers a $15 minimum wage, picked up this story and made it seem like Bernie was going back on his fight for a $15 minimum wage, AKA that he's a hypocrite. The reality is that negotiations are still ongoing and nobody from the staff or the union is happy about the leaks.

To me, this all seems to be very convenient in it's timing, with an anonymous source bypassing the union setup to address these concerns and going to WaPo, which so happens to have a bone to pick with Sanders, all right before the second debate, and I feel like it suggests a potential mole in the Sanders campaign. There also has been an unfair labor practice complaint filed with the National Labor Relations Board by an anonymous source. As the article notes, you don't even need to be related to the affected parties to file a complaint.

Although subsequent articles have corrected and clarified, it seems the damage has been done as unscrupulous individuals and organizations with an anti-Bernie bias have run with this narrative and people who don't read past headlines or follow up with stories are essentially spreading fake news all over the place. This is a prime example of what Sanders supporters mean when they say he has an unfair media bias against him.

I think we will be seeing him grilled about this at the debate and it won't be anything approaching fair or honest. I hope he has prepared for this and I'm worried it might hurt his legitimacy in the eyes of the uninformed. Even if people don't agree with him in the end, it should still be about factual things about him, not dishonest smears.

Oh yes, I mean most of the attacks I've seen on Bernie have been (aside from calling him a socialist), talking about he is hypocritical because of his income and now talking about the pay to his workers who are campaigning for him. Honestly I expect nothing else from the media outlets that are owned or affiliated by those who have a vested interest in seeing his campaign do poorly. It'll be vital for him to clarify what you just mentioned as that's going to be something he is ragged on a lot.
He unfortunately has so much against him where the power is concentrated. I mean, there was the whole DNC fiasco that the DNC pretty much got away with at least legally (although people are catching on). The media is out to get him too. And whether people disagree with him or agree with him, this process shouldn't be happening in a country that values democracy.

 

[J.I.L]

FINALLY. I am BACK! Longest one week timeout ever. So much news. Hm, where do we begin?

Democrats once again took another embarrassing showing with the mueller case. Making house congressional members look incompetent and out of touch as they are only care about impeaching trump then making policies to help the American people.

Boris Johnson is now UK prime minster.

Trump once again got himself in controversy as he attacked Elijah Cummings district calling it rodent infested, trashy and something no human would want to go to. Condemned by many to be racist, but his supporters think it’s facts. Personally, I don’t really care.

The dnc debates are coming soon. Stay tuned to that.


Now onto some positive news. If you guys are interested in politics... you should go to this website called “ISideWith.com”. It’s a great political website which gives you a political quiz about so many topics. Once you’ve completed your quiz (you don’t even have to answer all questions), it compares your answers to other politicians or political parties/ideology.
And then you can review all the questions you agreed and didn’t agree with the poltcial/political party. Really cool. They also show graphs and show your political spectrum.

It turns out I’m a lean right wing authoritarian. Lol. Here’s the percentage of issues I agree with for notable politicians. Leastnto greatest:


I think some of the reason why I'm authoratrian is because there are some leftist econmic views I hold. Like I'd break up companies that own 50% of market share in industry. I'd insutite a basic Medical for All plan which is free for everyone, but only those who are really imporveished or working class would be eligble for above standard care in my government system. Therefore, private companies and insurance still could live. I'd also put a donation limit for candiates. Meaning, candiates can only recieve a TOTAL of 1 million dollars from a party/person. This is ensure poltcians are more focused on their consituents then big donors. i'd be tough on immigration. Anyone who enters the country illegally are processed then sent away, and are banished from the country. Any illegal immigrant who is discovered but are stable and have been helping the economy. They are granted a tempary work visa, once that's up they too are deported and banished from the country. I'd allow non citizens to vote. Aka, residents or even someone applying for citizenship. If they pay taxes and have residence, they could be allowed to vote as well. I'd raise the voting age to......25. YES. The same age when you can actually get invovled in politics. And you'd have to carry a voter ID card in order to vote. My elections for my country would be SO CLEAN. Cause the only people who'd vote are mostly hard working indepdent tax payers.
mariuna I'd have to talk to a diverse group of people about its legizaltion. I'd probably federally make marijuna a legal item to use for health concerns, and then leave it up to my provinces/states for recreantional use.
Homosexual "marriage" would be banned too. Now I wouldn't even be anywhere CLOSE to how ruthless some countries are like isamlic countries. They'd still be protected from hate crimes, and discrimation. They'd have the same adoption rights as stright couples. The only differnce is they wouldn't have the same marital rights as a civil union as they would as an actual marriage.
Abortion would be illegal except for incest, **** or mothers/child life in danger. And I'd go hard on **** cases of any kind. However in the same token, false accusation of **** COULD also receive severe punishment.
Burning of my nations flag or burning of any religious books would be a felony.
Captalism would be pretty well in swing. I'd try my hardest to make taxes as low as they can be while still funding money so I can keep a lot ofthe social programs I want. I'd invest heavily into my defense and millitary as well. I'd try to work on devolping energy to produce a clean enviroment. So yeah, some of my poltical actions I'd do.
here's a link to my poltical beleifs based on party: https://www.isidewith.com/profile/3851637070/parties
Here's a link to my poltical beleifs based on 2020 candiaites: https://www.isidewith.com/profile/3851637070/ballot

Once again "ISideWith.com". Great poltical site to discover what your politcal beleifs are.


Edit: I was watching a marriane Williamson video by Dave Rubin. I thought it was okay, still about 15 minutes left of it. I decided to scroll in the comments to see what’s up and I just saw this “progressive” person saying that there’s nothing wrong with “free healthcare”, “free college” and probably other left wing agendas. And then they say, “rich will pay fair share and everyone else will be fine”. I don’t know if these people are generally STUPID or they are just sociopathically dishonest. Programs like this would destory the economy. Would significantly weaken our defenses. Businesses would leave the country creating massive layoffs and unemployment. Our debt would sore and places around the country would look worse then Californian city streets.

It’s just annoying seeing “progressives” on like YouTube and twitter (that’s literally where they seem to spend their time...) talk about GOVERNANCE. These people just don’t know what the heck their talking about. They don’t critically analyze things through to find the best results... they believe in their ideals and enforce on everyone... wether they make sense or not. Like I like that they seem to “care” about the poor (I honestly don’t think they “care” about the poor, not all of them - I believe that most progressive are poor themselves and largely due to ineptitude and being mentally weak... they can’t flourish in the real world so they just tank their anger on the system and use the poor as “moral sentiment” so they can take power for themselves and shutdown anyone that opposes them) but cmon. Can these people just be realistic?


Again, I’m not that worried. Because these people just lose elections all over the planet like every day. Like every few months I see news about this “stunning” right wing/conservative take power in a prominent nation. People of differnt countries usually can see their policies are detrimental to a nations stability.
And these people will probably lose again in 2020. So I’m not like worried, because these people usually never get anywhere. But it’s just annoying seeing these people clog up online forums with their bottomless stupidity.


Note: if a mod, super mod or admin (yes, we have at least 3 of them patrolling or getting notifications of my comments) has a problem with what I’m saying. DM and we can work something. I do not want to see a strike for giving my brute honest opinion about a political faction.

 

[J.I.L]

Yeah I’m double posting. If none of you folks want to respond that’s not my problem. Not going to clog up my comment with differnt subjects:

Anyway, I found the dnc debate 1 to be interesting. I watched all of it. I really thought everyone bar Tim Ryan did well. I feel the people who shined best were Delaney and governor of Montana. They are definitely could to tap into the silent majority of nominal democrat voters which will raise them up from obsecure irrelevance to someone who could get some polling. I feel Amy Klobuchar also did a good job, as well in presenting herself as a electable candidate to not only beat trump but be a good president... for democrats at least.

O’Rourke didn’t do that good, but he did enough to encourage his base and keep in.

Buttigieg presented himself very well like usual and was very professional. He definitely will see uptick. Especially with his comments of doing what democrats believe in instead of worrying about gop.

Warren and Bernie did a good job too. They did a good job of energizing their base now. With Bernie fighting back, he was able to boost the morale of his base and all those who believe him. Same thing with warren too. I think they’ll rise in poll as more like minds like them will be energized to vote for progressive agenda.

Marriane Williamson also did well. She speaks to a lot of “spiritual” people. It’d do her well to focus on spiritual philosophies. She kinda talked to much on either reperations or industries she’ll take on. She introduced to the American audience the “deeper” things she wants to us to learn about why American society is such a struggle for many. So next debate, she should try quoting some spiritual things from many religions, spirituality etc. so you can own a portion of that spiritual left.

Hickenlooper is irrelevant.

Okay, enough of the positivity for the dems. Time to get to the negatives.

Either way, these people aren’t going to win.

RINO gop in Delaney or governor of montano won’t have a snow ball chance to beat trump. Lol are you kidding? Those two would struggle to get turn-out from their own party. They’d get wrekt by trump in debates and it’d just be embarrassing.

Beto couldn’t even beat Ted Cruz and the whole US Hollywood and “pro(re)gressive” people were behind him in that senate. Now he’s against trump and has fallen substantial favor among his base with oil ties and lack of expirence enacting meaningful unquie and bold change? Trump would crush him.

Lol, I’m not afraid of pocohontas. Her ideas are ridiculous and wouldn’t sit with the american public. She is truly too ambitious to a fault with some of her naivety. Trump would be able to run circles around her, because she lacks cunning and being able to decipher things. She won’t get minority turnout, and it’d be hard press to find her appeal outside of New England areas. Though warren is the type to try to appeal to hard to minroties outside of New England, alienate her base in New England and potentially trump could cause havoc their too. Who knows? Point is, pocohontas would just embarrass herself and her movement with a devastating 2020 loss. Though I could care little, The the faster we can throw this little brewing Marxist/soclaist leftist Renaissance disgrace in the garbage can of irrevalncy for politics, the better.

Same with Marxist prophet Bernie, too. He’ll lose to trump though he’ll put up a fight. If guys like Delaney and Montana govenor are able to rip into him and give nominal democrats a reason not to vote for him, imagine what trump will be able to do in THE GENERAL ELECTION? LOOL. Bernie would get ripped apart and put many democrats/centrist independents between a rock and a hard place. Also, you know how many industries would to be fighting like heck to make sure he does not win? Trump could easily use their help to help him defeat sanders. And it’s not like sanders is the master of grassroots, trump has a lot of working class supporters too.
And have you forgotten HOWARD SHCULTS? Yeah, he’s irrelevant now but don’t get it twisted. If Bernie wins, he’ll defiantly run as an independent and give a voice to many who’ll feel displaced by anbernie trump election. AND THATD MOSTLY HURT DEMOCRATS HAHAHAHAHAHA. Marxist prophet Bernie won’t have a chance. Clogging up twitter feeds and YouTube comment sections like jobless losers (oh wait....LOOOL) won’t Change anything. Nor will riding the coketails of “pro(re)gressive woke (they aren’t woke in the least bit)” celebrities won’t help you either. Ask Hillary. Lol.
May the United States never become a soclaist country.

The American people would vote for Donald trump in 2016 (when hadn’t achieved anything) over Hillary Clinton (expirence poltcian) then in 2020 vote for MARRIANNE WILLIAMSON over Donald trump (who has gotten a lot of his promises done). Give me a break. NEXT!

Pete Buttigieg? Tch... that guy could spell trouble. Though he’s just an Obama wannabe. Give me a break. Plus he’s gay. Many people might not feel comfortable with that, plus I question if he’d be able to get enough turn-out, and could he get independents? He’s to petite and many will question if he’s tough. Though he does have military expirence. Idk, he seems like a troubling threat. I wonder if RINO rebulicans and centrist fence sitters (ironic because I’m centrist.... lean right though) would vote for him? Nah. I’m a lean right centrist and I wouldn’t vote for him. So I doubt they would. But he’s a dangerous candidate. Though trump would still be favorite.
Oh I forgot, south bend isn’t even that good of a state. Trump will rip him apart on that. Nope, if he can’t run a city that well... WHAT MAKES HIM THINK HE KNOWS HOW TO RUN A COUNTRY. Plus he doesn’t seem like a guy who has any real trend setting policy. Democrat morale would be average. And conservatives would have amo against him to feed to their base.


All in all. Good debate from dems. But trump/pence I think will win. Non of these people really stand a chance and dems fear so as well. We will see. But if trumps win 2020, can you people Stop with this PATHETIC movement called the “resistance” (how are you a resistance of you have liberal media, Hollywood and most mainstream on your sides? How silly). Go to Europe or Canada. Aren’t they “progressive” heaven?


Trump/pence 2020!

 

[Will]

oh **** yang is still in the race?

i havent heard of him in months after he got popular for that whole "1 grand for every american" schtick

 

[J.I.L]

oh **** yang is still in the race?

i havent heard of him in months after he got popular for that whole "1 grand for every american" schtick

Yeah, he’s actually become a player too. He polls at about 2-3%. Which is like top 8 out of field of 20.

 

[Will]

Yeah, he’s actually become a player too. He polls at about 2-3%. Which is like top 8 out of field of 20.

Yeah, so I heard. Surprised he's been actually doing as well as he did. I want to say it's meme magic but I forgot he's existed so I'm not sure what his policies are or if I agree with them. All in all I still expect Trump to pull through again. Maybe it's just because I live in a more conservative state but I see a lot more people either going for him or just not caring for any of the Democrats.

Why did we have to get McAfee man

 

[J.I.L]

Yeah, so I heard. Surprised he's been actually doing as well as he did. I want to say it's meme magic but I forgot he's existed so I'm not sure what his policies are or if I agree with them. All in all I still expect Trump to pull through again. Maybe it's just because I live in a more conservative state but I see a lot more people either going for him or just not caring for any of the Democrats.

Why did we have to get McAfee man

Definitely the meme magic. His supporters literally swarm online political forums whenever he’s there. I personally don’t like a lot of his policies. Too leftist. Wish he was more independent but whatever.

 

[StoicPhantom]

Ended up sleeping through the debate. For something that is so big and important, it certainly was nearly impossible to find any uploads of it. Lol and **** CNN as usual.

Well anyways, things went about how I expected. Hickenlooper, Bullock, Ryan, and especially Delaney got exposed as the clowns they are and Warren, Sanders, and Williamson did really well. The rest were kind of meh. This needed to happen and the candidates were out for blood, so we should hopefully be seeing some thinning now.


Sanders

This is Bernie in pure Bernie form. Cutting through all the bull**** with the truth. This is what he needed to do and I'm glad he's finally embracing it. When his answer to his first question is "You're wrong", you know things are about to be amazing and they were. I don't think there was any shenanigans he didn't call out that weren't already addressed by Warren. That "I do know and I wrote the damn bill" dunk on Ryan when he was trying to discredit Bernie's knowledge of his own bill had me burst out laughing. There was many more, but that was an early highlight. Oh, and Bernie calling out Jake Tapper's healthcare question as the Republican talking point it was and reminding them who's going to be advertising on that debate was amazing.

Warren

Warren being Warren as expected. Much like Bernie, strong, articulate, and cut straight to the heart of the matter. I like how CNN did exactly as I thought they would and tried to get her to snipe at Bernie, but she expertly avoided it. And not to be outdone in the dunk department, she posed the question "Why would anyone run for President on what you can't and shouldn't do?" (paraphrasing) to Delaney and he looked like she just slapped him. It really drove home how vapid and pointless his and his clone's existences are and what they are truly there to do(shill). That pretty much ended his run.

Williamson

She really doesn't get enough credit. She understands the issues on such a fundamental level, while most of the others are bickering over minor differences in their neoliberal policies. Constantly pointing how a lot of the others are making such a show about being concerned, while taking donations from those causing the issues was also great. It's such a shame that the mere mention of love is enough for America to send you to the loony bin, but her ability to call out the system is an important one. The only issue was her answer for Medicare-for-all which was just bizarre and made no sense.

The Highlight Reel (Delaney, Hickenlooper, Bullock, Ryan)

If there was ever a better example of why there needs to be change in the Democratic Party, this is it. No true Democrat is going to be referencing these guys in any context other than how Warren and Sanders obliterated them. They spent the entire time trying to attack progressive policies and Sanders and Warren and just got demolished on every level. The crowd was constantly cheering against them, they had very little to say in the way of policy, and seemed to only be there to cast doubt on progressive policy, rather than trying to be serious candidates. There wasn't much to distinguish them and Bullock, despite being new, managed to be more smug than almost anyone else, while being completely derivative of the rest of the Reel.

??? (Mayor Pete, Klobuchar, O'Rourke)

Can anyone even distinguish these guys or figure out why they're here in the first place? They had very detailed and serious sounding policies, yet I didn't feel like I gleaned anything from them. Like, this was a case study in how you can airbrush statements to the point people leave feeling like they should be really educated and informed, but aren't somehow. There was a lot of well put together words that I was analyzing very closely for any subterfuge, but couldn't find any sort of meaning or substance in them and just kind of starting glazing over them by the end. Pete had some good points, like how Republicans will call Democrats socialists anyways, so not to get worked up over that, but overall I didn't get anything else from these candidates.


Overall, things didn't really seem to change from how you would expect them to. Everyone planted their flags where you would expect, the cool people were cool, the clowns were clowns, and the mediocre were nonexistent. It seems like only the candidates were expecting anything from this. I guess I'll have to look over the polls now and see what happens, as I'm not expecting much from tomorrow either tbh. The real challenge will be Harris, Biden, Warren, and Sanders, everyone else is completely irrelevant in my eyes.

I am pleased that this became a Bernie-Warren tag team though. Neither candidate fell for the goading from CNN to snipe each other and they seemed to cover every aspect they possibly could in regards to neoliberal attacks. Pretty fun debate overall, even if I didn't glean anything new from it.




I was planning on going over things issue by issue, but there's too much to really do, so I'm going to hit the ones that seemed most confusing.

Healthcare

It gets confusing with all of these different "Medicare-for-all" plans, but the important thing you need to ensure is that it removes the private health insurance industry from the equation. A lot of these "Medicare-for-all" plans by the Neoliberals are incorporating Medicare Advantage, which is basically a trojan horse from the private insurance industry to destroy public healthcare. It allows private health insurance to overcharge Medicare and deny claims, both of which completely defeat the point of Medicare-for-all. There is zero reason for their to be multiple versions of "Medicare-for-all", so someones full of ****.

Also don't trust anyone with a public option or claiming that their plan doesn't raise taxes. Public options don't cover everyone and any "Medicare-for-all Advantage" variant is going to be under insured and not provide comprehensive coverage. It is a fact that true Medicare-for-all will raise taxes, the savings are in the consumer not needing to pay premiums or copay.

Racial Equality

This one is much more complex than it initially appears. Ultimately racism is/was an excuse to enslave. In order to get people to commit acts of oppression you need to first dehumanize your fellow man. Enslavement of Africans was done through convincing the public that they weren't human, in order to get around pesky things like that niggling detail in the Constitution about all men being equal. It was done not because of some abstract idea of "hate", but because cheap labor was a need at the time.

This is true for all forms of discrimination and oppression. Each identity discrimination has served as a tool for the powers that be in one form or another. Some were for cheap labor with slavery or more modern forms of slavery such as wage slavery or prison slavery. Others were a defense against "assaults" on traditional roles (women, lgbt) which were pillars of institutional power.

You cannot make racism illegal as that wouldn't be Constitutional. You cannot "deprogram" older citizens as they are too stuck in their ways and will resist to the end. Legislators have no ability to affect social issues with policy. However, it's been pretty clear that younger people don't share that mindset as much and attitudes are beginning to change in that regard. Not perfect, but it's progress.

As such, the focus should be on what legislators can do, target the institutions that are still actively oppressing. If any candidate claims to be concerned about identity politics, but isn't for policies such as Medicare-for-all, free college, ending the Drug War, ending American Imperialism, abolishing private prisons, etc, then they are not truly serious. And if they take donations from private prisons, they are completely full of ****.

Once you get rid of those who profit from discrimination, the rest is up to education and society improving one death at a time.


Final word: Thirty seconds is not at all a reasonable restriction to getting your point across. No **** candidates went over their allotted time all the time. Lol CNN.

 

[J.I.L]

Ended up sleeping through the debate. For something that is so big and important, it certainly was nearly impossible to find any uploads of it. Lol and **** CNN as usual.

Well anyways, things went about how I expected. Hickenlooper, Bullock, Ryan, and especially Delaney got exposed as the clowns they are and Warren, Sanders, and Williamson did really well. The rest were kind of meh. This needed to happen and the candidates were out for blood, so we should hopefully be seeing some thinning now.


Sanders

This is Bernie in pure Bernie form. Cutting through all the bull**** with the truth. This is what he needed to do and I'm glad he's finally embracing it. When his answer to his first question is "You're wrong", you know things are about to be amazing and they were. I don't think there was any shenanigans he didn't call out that weren't already addressed by Warren. That "I do know and I wrote the damn bill" dunk on Ryan when he was trying to discredit Bernie's knowledge of his own bill had me burst out laughing. There was many more, but that was an early highlight. Oh, and Bernie calling out Jake Tapper's healthcare question as the Republican talking point it was and reminding them who's going to be advertising on that debate was amazing.

Warren

Warren being Warren as expected. Much like Bernie, strong, articulate, and cut straight to the heart of the matter. I like how CNN did exactly as I thought they would and tried to get her to snipe at Bernie, but she expertly avoided it. And not to be outdone in the dunk department, she posed the question "Why would anyone run for President on what you can't and shouldn't do?" (paraphrasing) to Delaney and he looked like she just slapped him. It really drove home how vapid and pointless his and his clone's existences are and what they are truly there to do(shill). That pretty much ended his run.

Williamson

She really doesn't get enough credit. She understands the issues on such a fundamental level, while most of the others are bickering over minor differences in their neoliberal policies. Constantly pointing how a lot of the others are making such a show about being concerned, while taking donations from those causing the issues was also great. It's such a shame that the mere mention of love is enough for America to send you to the loony bin, but her ability to call out the system is an important one. The only issue was her answer for Medicare-for-all which was just bizarre and made no sense.

The Highlight Reel (Delaney, Hickenlooper, Bullock, Ryan)

If there was ever a better example of why there needs to be change in the Democratic Party, this is it. No true Democrat is going to be referencing these guys in any context other than how Warren and Sanders obliterated them. They spent the entire time trying to attack progressive policies and Sanders and Warren and just got demolished on every level. The crowd was constantly cheering against them, they had very little to say in the way of policy, and seemed to only be there to cast doubt on progressive policy, rather than trying to be serious candidates. There wasn't much to distinguish them and Bullock, despite being new, managed to be more smug than almost anyone else, while being completely derivative of the rest of the Reel.

??? (Mayor Pete, Klobuchar, O'Rourke)

Can anyone even distinguish these guys or figure out why they're here in the first place? They had very detailed and serious sounding policies, yet I didn't feel like I gleaned anything from them. Like, this was a case study in how you can airbrush statements to the point people leave feeling like they should be really educated and informed, but aren't somehow. There was a lot of well put together words that I was analyzing very closely for any subterfuge, but couldn't find any sort of meaning or substance in them and just kind of starting glazing over them by the end. Pete had some good points, like how Republicans will call Democrats socialists anyways, so not to get worked up over that, but overall I didn't get anything else from these candidates.


Overall, things didn't really seem to change from how you would expect them to. Everyone planted their flags where you would expect, the cool people were cool, the clowns were clowns, and the mediocre were nonexistent. It seems like only the candidates were expecting anything from this. I guess I'll have to look over the polls now and see what happens, as I'm not expecting much from tomorrow either tbh. The real challenge will be Harris, Biden, Warren, and Sanders, everyone else is completely irrelevant in my eyes.

I am pleased that this became a Bernie-Warren tag team though. Neither candidate fell for the goading from CNN to snipe each other and they seemed to cover every aspect they possibly could in regards to neoliberal attacks. Pretty fun debate overall, even if I didn't glean anything new from it.




I was planning on going over things issue by issue, but there's too much to really do, so I'm going to hit the ones that seemed most confusing.

Healthcare

It gets confusing with all of these different "Medicare-for-all" plans, but the important thing you need to ensure is that it removes the private health insurance industry from the equation. A lot of these "Medicare-for-all" plans by the Neoliberals are incorporating Medicare Advantage, which is basically a trojan horse from the private insurance industry to destroy public healthcare. It allows private health insurance to overcharge Medicare and deny claims, both of which completely defeat the point of Medicare-for-all. There is zero reason for their to be multiple versions of "Medicare-for-all", so someones full of ****.

Also don't trust anyone with a public option or claiming that their plan doesn't raise taxes. Public options don't cover everyone and any "Medicare-for-all Advantage" variant is going to be under insured and not provide comprehensive coverage. It is a fact that true Medicare-for-all will raise taxes, the savings are in the consumer not needing to pay premiums or copay.

Racial Equality

This one is much more complex than it initially appears. Ultimately racism is/was an excuse to enslave. In order to get people to commit acts of oppression you need to first dehumanize your fellow man. Enslavement of Africans was done through convincing the public that they weren't human, in order to get around pesky things like that niggling detail in the Constitution about all men being equal. It was done not because of some abstract idea of "hate", but because cheap labor was a need at the time.

This is true for all forms of discrimination and oppression. Each identity discrimination has served as a tool for the powers that be in one form or another. Some were for cheap labor with slavery or more modern forms of slavery such as wage slavery or prison slavery. Others were a defense against "assaults" on traditional roles (women, lgbt) which were pillars of institutional power.

You cannot make racism illegal as that wouldn't be Constitutional. You cannot "deprogram" older citizens as they are too stuck in their ways and will resist to the end. Legislators have no ability to affect social issues with policy. However, it's been pretty clear that younger people don't share that mindset as much and attitudes are beginning to change in that regard. Not perfect, but it's progress.

As such, the focus should be on what legislators can do, target the institutions that are still actively oppressing. If any candidate claims to be concerned about identity politics, but isn't for policies such as Medicare-for-all, free college, ending the Drug War, ending American Imperialism, abolishing private prisons, etc, then they are not truly serious. And if they take donations from private prisons, they are completely full of ****.

Once you get rid of those who profit from discrimination, the rest is up to education and society improving one death at a time.


Final word: Thirty seconds is not at all a reasonable restriction to getting your point across. No **** candidates went over their allotted time all the time. Lol CNN.

Calling delnay, tim ryan, klobuchar and bullock not true democrats and CLOWNS? lol. I mean, this is exactly why these people never get anywhere in poltical hiarchy. They live in the insulated delusion that the far left progressive wing are the only people who are "true" democrats and everyone else is an outsider. Not realising that the PROGRESSIVE wing is the one hijacking the democrat party.

And I sorta get it. I feel like progressives look at trump and how he was outsider. Blew out everyone in the rebulican party. Won the nomination against "estblaishment" dems. Then was able to amass control as the "thought leader for his party" because the right wing/conservative base accepts what trump wants, and trump does what they want. A trust and bond btween the two that the Gop during obamas year could never really estblaish with the rebulican base. Now there's a powerful news organization dedicated to feeding his base what they want to hear and what the president wants to hear.

Now progressive believe bernie can be that with the democrats. They think that bernie, an outsider (sorta...), can come in. Run through the eclection, win nomination... and win the elction. Then bernie can lead the reshape the democrat party in his image and make everyone get in line with his progressive agenda, like how GoP got in line with MAGA agenda.

iT'S cute....but it's not going to happen. Look at the polls (you're not even close to biden, and stinking kamal harris is near you) , look at the planet. leftist/progressive are losing all over the planet as countries are being more nationalist minded which usually means right wing.
It's understnable your optism, but your guys' polcies are just atrcious, man. And I'M TELLING you... you guys aren't going to get anywhere. You're just ging to suffer Humilating defeat in an election. Americans like to work hard and earn what they have with a good social sinfasctrue around that. We aren't europe, we aren't socliast. You guys are just wasting your time. But again, I could care less. Progressive getting landslided by trump would destory their movement. I might would rather have that, then a centrist getting beat by trump and for progressive to cotinue to whine about and encourage them that their terrible polcies would beat trump.

 

[StoicPhantom]

Second night get. This was much less interesting than the last one overall, and maybe it was the lack of sleep, but I found it difficult to keep watching toward the second half. There was a few standout moments, but it was about how you would expect a debate full of Neoliberals to go. It was mostly candidates flinging **** at each other and there wasn't much substantial discussion on policy. Last debate was much more policy oriented and there wasn't that much said on specific records overall, because the public enemies of Sanders and Warren don't have much in the way of record to attack in the first place.

Biden

Continuing his spectacular self-destruction, Biden had pretty much no defense and every candidate knows it, so he just got dogpiled on. Of all the bad records, his is by far the worst and without daddy Obama to back him, he pretty much is completely useless. Getting dunked on by Booker of all people and even having his selective invoking of Obama called out in the immigration portion was amazing. In a perfect world his career would be over, but old people will still support him anyway.

Harris

Seems like her fifteen minutes of fame are up, she got obliterated this time. Having Gillibrand of all people go after her healthcare plan and then doing the most obvious deflect to Biden's ever was just the tip, as Tulsi just came and made the entire coffin and put the final nail in it. The way she just kept ignoring it and pretending she agrees while going back to criticizing Biden's was pure cringe. Then after trying to recreate the magic she did on Biden with his bus thing, by attacking his criminal justice history, Tulsi came in and recreated the magic on her own. Harris had no real defense on this and was clearly angry. It probably won't do anything to her mostly neoliberal base, but it might turn away some misguided individuals, attracted on her identity.

Gabbard

Really put the hurt on Harris, which is great for Bernie and Warren and Progressives on the whole. Exposing her deceptiveness and faux Progressiveness should hopefully remove any doubt that Harris is a Neoliberal trojan horse. I think she did decently well, but I feel like she still isn't being as aggressive as she can be. She also didn't defend M4A when everyone was gaslighting about taxes and explain how it eliminate premiums and copay. I don't get good vibes from her overall, she seems to be very calculating and more in it for herself. It might just be the way the first debate was framed, but Bernie and Warren were more interested in defending and selling progressive policy, while Tulsi seems to use the Progressive name to promote herself and not the policies. I think not defending M4A shows how Bernie and Warren are the more principled Progressives.

Yang

I'll be honest in that I don't really get this guy. It feels like he's running entirely on UBI and tries to shoehorn it in every topic. When he can't do so he seems to mostly stay quiet, which makes him not very memorable. In this debate, he seemed to waffle between making good points and incoherent points. I'm not personally opposed to UBI, but it needs to be implemented carefully. I'm not one to trust billionaire candidates in the first place, but billionaire proposed UBI is something that seems like it's more of a concession of the rich to get the poor to shut up, not something done in earnest to help the poor. Given it always seems to be proposed in conjunction with automation, there needs to be some ground rules set on who will get what cut of the robot produced profits or the rich will run off with all the profits.

Gillibrand

What even is she doing here? She is completely derivative of all the other candidates, she has nothing in the way of charisma, even when she has a good point, all the energy seems to die half way through making it or she seems to start losing track of it. She spent most of the time going after the lowest hanging fruit and didn't have anything to offer. At least Booker sounded slightly like you'd want to stop and listen to him. She just needs to straight up drop out, both the Establishment and Progressive sides have several better representatives than her.

Mayor de Blasio

Probably the most unapologetic over night Progressive in this race. He knows exactly what is going on and hits every point succinctly in a way that would please Progressive voters. But his record isn't great and it did get brought up and took him down a notch. Again, I don't trust the rich and those with spotty records pale in comparison to Progressive paragons like Bernie and Warren, so he's ultimately irrelevant in that regard and I'm not convinced he isn't doing this as a career booster. He's sharp, so he has to know that he won't win, which makes me feel like there's an ulterior motive.

Booker

Trump. Trump. Trump. TRUMP! He made maybe one or two good points and didn't try to speak Spanish this time, but is still one of the most cringe candidates.

Bennet

I gagged and checked out of him on his opening statement. Not only is he a carbon copy of the previous debate's clowns, but he looks and sounds slow. At least Biden sounds presentable, this guy has absolutely nothing of value to offer and I'm tempted to call him the biggest loser, even with the utter destruction of Biden. And IIRC, he along with Hickenlooper were responsible for killing Colorado's M4A bill, which as a resident of a neighboring state I was excited, so I have personal bone to pick with him.

Castro & Inslee

Eh, they were decent guys with a lot of stuff I agree with, but at the same time they feel completely derivative. There's just too many of the same candidate this time around. I actually had to go look them up in the typing of this, because I could not remember they existed, but knew I was short.


Overall, this was a slog and I had to wrestle with just doing something in the second half. I"m still convinced that Biden, Harris, Warren, and Bernie are the only relevant candidates and this debate didn't change that. Every candidate except Harris and Biden were completely derivative and they mostly seemed to try to use Biden as a way of not being last. I actually felt bad for Biden, given everyone tried to use him as a punching bag and he really looked like the vulnerable old man he probably actually is. He should just **** off and retire already, he has the money to live in luxury.

All of the prominent candidates have spotty records, so it just quickly devolved into **** flinging. This is another good example of why there needs to be change in the Democratic Party and why these candidates are going to lose to Trump, given he's the ultimate **** flinger. Guess we'll see what the polls show.

Calling delnay, tim ryan, klobuchar and bullock not true democrats and CLOWNS? lol. I mean, this is exactly why these people never get anywhere in poltical hiarchy. They live in the insulated delusion that the far left progressive wing are the only people who are "true" democrats and everyone else is an outsider. Not realising that the PROGRESSIVE wing is the one hijacking the democrat party.

If you properly read my post, you'll notice I was speaking of true Democrat voters, not that those candidates weren't Democrats. And I didn't even mention Klobuchar there. And I'm pretty sure that the goal is for Progressives to take over the Party, not that Progressives feel they are the true inheritors of the throne, so I don't know what you are on about there.

iT'S cute....but it's not going to happen. Look at the polls (you're not even close to biden, and stinking kamal harris is near you) , look at the planet. leftist/progressive are losing all over the planet as countries are being more nationalist minded which usually means right wing.
It's understnable your optism, but your guys' polcies are just atrcious, man. And I'M TELLING you... you guys aren't going to get anywhere. You're just ging to suffer Humilating defeat in an election. Americans like to work hard and earn what they have with a good social sinfasctrue around that. We aren't europe, we aren't socliast. You guys are just wasting your time. But again, I could care less. Progressive getting landslided by trump would destory their movement. I might would rather have that, then a centrist getting beat by trump and for progressive to cotinue to whine about and encourage them that their terrible polcies would beat trump.

Well, don't count your chickens before they hatch. As there has been a far right surge, so too has their been a left wing equivalent. Otherwise we wouldn't have figures like Bernie, AOC, Omar, Corbyn, Obrador, the Greens sweep in Western Europe, and many others. Hell, in my home state of Nebraska, a deep red state, Progressives filled every candidacy but Governor in the Democratic Party at the 2018 midterms and only narrowly lost across the board. A small push from the new generation that will be eligible to vote in 2020, might just push Nebraska to purple if not outright blue. 2020 is still far away, so it remains to be seen what the outcome will be.

 

[J.I.L]

Second night get. This was much less interesting than the last one overall, and maybe it was the lack of sleep, but I found it difficult to keep watching toward the second half. There was a few standout moments, but it was about how you would expect a debate full of Neoliberals to go. It was mostly candidates flinging **** at each other and there wasn't much substantial discussion on policy. Last debate was much more policy oriented and there wasn't that much said on specific records overall, because the public enemies of Sanders and Warren don't have much in the way of record to attack in the first place.

Biden

Continuing his spectacular self-destruction, Biden had pretty much no defense and every candidate knows it, so he just got dogpiled on. Of all the bad records, his is by far the worst and without daddy Obama to back him, he pretty much is completely useless. Getting dunked on by Booker of all people and even having his selective invoking of Obama called out in the immigration portion was amazing. In a perfect world his career would be over, but old people will still support him anyway.

Harris

Seems like her fifteen minutes of fame are up, she got obliterated this time. Having Gillibrand of all people go after her healthcare plan and then doing the most obvious deflect to Biden's ever was just the tip, as Tulsi just came and made the entire coffin and put the final nail in it. The way she just kept ignoring it and pretending she agrees while going back to criticizing Biden's was pure cringe. Then after trying to recreate the magic she did on Biden with his bus thing, by attacking his criminal justice history, Tulsi came in and recreated the magic on her own. Harris had no real defense on this and was clearly angry. It probably won't do anything to her mostly neoliberal base, but it might turn away some misguided individuals, attracted on her identity.

Gabbard

Really put the hurt on Harris, which is great for Bernie and Warren and Progressives on the whole. Exposing her deceptiveness and faux Progressiveness should hopefully remove any doubt that Harris is a Neoliberal trojan horse. I think she did decently well, but I feel like she still isn't being as aggressive as she can be. She also didn't defend M4A when everyone was gaslighting about taxes and explain how it eliminate premiums and copay. I don't get good vibes from her overall, she seems to be very calculating and more in it for herself. It might just be the way the first debate was framed, but Bernie and Warren were more interested in defending and selling progressive policy, while Tulsi seems to use the Progressive name to promote herself and not the policies. I think not defending M4A shows how Bernie and Warren are the more principled Progressives.

Yang

I'll be honest in that I don't really get this guy. It feels like he's running entirely on UBI and tries to shoehorn it in every topic. When he can't do so he seems to mostly stay quiet, which makes him not very memorable. In this debate, he seemed to waffle between making good points and incoherent points. I'm not personally opposed to UBI, but it needs to be implemented carefully. I'm not one to trust billionaire candidates in the first place, but billionaire proposed UBI is something that seems like it's more of a concession of the rich to get the poor to shut up, not something done in earnest to help the poor. Given it always seems to be proposed in conjunction with automation, there needs to be some ground rules set on who will get what cut of the robot produced profits or the rich will run off with all the profits.

Gillibrand

What even is she doing here? She is completely derivative of all the other candidates, she has nothing in the way of charisma, even when she has a good point, all the energy seems to die half way through making it or she seems to start losing track of it. She spent most of the time going after the lowest hanging fruit and didn't have anything to offer. At least Booker sounded slightly like you'd want to stop and listen to him. She just needs to straight up drop out, both the Establishment and Progressive sides have several better representatives than her.

Mayor de Blasio

Probably the most unapologetic over night Progressive in this race. He knows exactly what is going on and hits every point succinctly in a way that would please Progressive voters. But his record isn't great and it did get brought up and took him down a notch. Again, I don't trust the rich and those with spotty records pale in comparison to Progressive paragons like Bernie and Warren, so he's ultimately irrelevant in that regard and I'm not convinced he isn't doing this as a career booster. He's sharp, so he has to know that he won't win, which makes me feel like there's an ulterior motive.

Booker

Trump. Trump. Trump. TRUMP! He made maybe one or two good points and didn't try to speak Spanish this time, but is still one of the most cringe candidates.

Bennet

I gagged and checked out of him on his opening statement. Not only is he a carbon copy of the previous debate's clowns, but he looks and sounds slow. At least Biden sounds presentable, this guy has absolutely nothing of value to offer and I'm tempted to call him the biggest loser, even with the utter destruction of Biden. And IIRC, he along with Hickenlooper were responsible for killing Colorado's M4A bill, which as a resident of a neighboring state I was excited, so I have personal bone to pick with him.

Castro & Inslee

Eh, they were decent guys with a lot of stuff I agree with, but at the same time they feel completely derivative. There's just too many of the same candidate this time around. I actually had to go look them up in the typing of this, because I could not remember they existed, but knew I was short.


Overall, this was a slog and I had to wrestle with just doing something in the second half. I"m still convinced that Biden, Harris, Warren, and Bernie are the only relevant candidates and this debate didn't change that. Every candidate except Harris and Biden were completely derivative and they mostly seemed to try to use Biden as a way of not being last. I actually felt bad for Biden, given everyone tried to use him as a punching bag and he really looked like the vulnerable old man he probably actually is. He should just **** off and retire already, he has the money to live in luxury.

All of the prominent candidates have spotty records, so it just quickly devolved into **** flinging. This is another good example of why there needs to be change in the Democratic Party and why these candidates are going to lose to Trump, given he's the ultimate **** flinger. Guess we'll see what the polls show.



If you properly read my post, you'll notice I was speaking of true Democrat voters, not that those candidates weren't Democrats. And I didn't even mention Klobuchar there. And I'm pretty sure that the goal is for Progressives to take over the Party, not that Progressives feel they are the true inheritors of the throne, so I don't know what you are on about there.


Well, don't count your chickens before they hatch. As there has been a far right surge, so too has their been a left wing equivalent. Otherwise we wouldn't have figures like Bernie, AOC, Omar, Corbyn, Obrador, the Greens sweep in Western Europe, and many others. Hell, in my home state of Nebraska, a deep red state, Progressives filled every candidacy but Governor in the Democratic Party at the 2018 midterms and only narrowly lost across the board. A small push from the new generation that will be eligible to vote in 2020, might just push Nebraska to purple if not outright blue. 2020 is still far away, so it remains to be seen what the outcome will be.

The goal for who? Progressives? Sure. Hence why I said they are highjacking. I don’t think nominal and normal democrat want progressives. As a matter of fact, Bernie wing left only make up like a quarter of democrats so be weary of that:

I don’t give a squat. Look at world wide elections, progressives (left wing in general) are losing across the world. Countries are becoming more national/conservative. It’s because progressive policies stinks to many people.

Oh wow, a liberal faction in the stinking EU is growing among liberal countries in the liberal EU...how “remarkable”. Give me a break...no wonder UK is trying to bounce out of there.

Also, have you’ve gone to “isidewith.com”. I’d like to compare answers with you. It turns out I agree with you Marxist students on about 45% of political issues.

 

[StoicPhantom]

The goal for who? Progressives? Sure. Hence why I said they are highjacking. I don’t think nominal and normal democrat want progressives. As a matter of fact, Bernie wing left only make up like a quarter of democrats so be weary of that:

Yeah, I was responding to:

They live in the insulated delusion that the far left progressive wing are the only people who are "true" democrats and everyone else is an outsider. Not realising that the PROGRESSIVE wing is the one hijacking the democrat party.

I'm well aware of and support the Progressive takeover and so do other Progressives. I don't have the numbers of how many Democrats favor the Bernie wing offhand, but the policies and central figures such as AOC and Bernie all generally poll very favorably with the Democratic base. I don't think it would be the "wing" that some Democrats wouldn't like but Bernie himself, given there seems to be some bad blood left from the war in 2016. Warren should do well to.

I don’t give a squat. Look at world wide elections, progressives (left wing in general) are losing across the world. Countries are becoming more national/conservative. It’s because progressive policies stinks to many people.

There have been far right figures such as Bolsonaro, centrist neoliberal figures such as Macron, and more Progressive left wing figures such as Obrador, who have all won their elections. While there definitely has been a far right populist surge, there has also been a left wing equivalent, and the actual election wins have been mixed.

Also, have you’ve gone to “isidewith.com”. I’d like to compare answers with you. It turns out I agree with you Marxist students on about 45% of political issues.

Slight left wing authoritarian, I guess. Nothing I didn't already know in there.

Parties

Ballot

 

[J.I.L]

Yeah, I was responding to:

I'm well aware of and support the Progressive takeover and so do other Progressives. I don't have the numbers of how many Democrats favor the Bernie wing offhand, but the policies and central figures such as AOC and Bernie all generally poll very favorably with the Democratic base. I don't think it would be the "wing" that some Democrats wouldn't like but Bernie himself, given there seems to be some bad blood left from the war in 2016. Warren should do well to.


There have been far right figures such as Bolsonaro, centrist neoliberal figures such as Macron, and more Progressive left wing figures such as Obrador, who have all won their elections. While there definitely has been a far right populist surge, there has also been a left wing equivalent, and the actual election wins have been mixed.


Slight left wing authoritarian, I guess. Nothing I didn't already know in there.

Parties

Ballot

Stop deceiving yourself. There is no “left wing equivalent”. Look at:
US
Hungary
Brazil
Australia
UK
India

AND THESE ARE JUST THE new Right wing countries. Not to mention the countries that have already been one (which is majority of the world)I mean, Canada is about to have a new election and who knows if trueade or whatever that mans name gets elected. All it takes is the Canadian Conservative party to elect a serious/responsible candidate and Canada will be added to the list.

The only countries you have really is largely irrelevant small EU countries, New Zealand, North Korea and China. LOL. And the only reason North Korea and China are soclailist is because it’s the only way they can maintain power, not because they really think it’s in the best interest of its people. And even those two countries are nationalist minded.

If your policies were that good. People would be in mass immigrated to “EU” countries and New Zealand. Socialism would have a proven track record of even WORKING ( don’t give me the crip crop of Norwegian countries... they are small, ruled by an international body which gives them protection (meaning they don’t have nearly as much sovereignty as America), and they are a homogeneous culture. And if you’re going to sit here and say having a unified culture has nothing to do with pushing the success of “social democracies” you are a very very unlearned person. Also, you do know those eu countries are very non accepting at their border too?
Cities that are liberal run would be the envy of the world. But instead, a lot of cities of leftist policies are rat infested, high levels of homelessness, dirty streets, and have high emigration numbers to MORE CONSERVATIVE states since it’s, IRONICALLY, EASIER TO LIVE THERE. And don’t dare blame “neo liberalism”. If you progressives were serious about your beliefs (a lot of you aren’t, you’re just impressionable delinquents), you guys wouldn’t clog up soclail forums on neoliberal news station and celebrity feeds. Anytime msnbc/cnn gives a political disentment about Bernie, guess who complains in the comments: progressive. Any time a liberal comedian doesn’t agree with far left, he gets roasted by PPRGRESSIVES. Well, gee, if all of you dislike “neoliberalism” so much, why do you watch it so much for political avenues. I don’t see you people on Fox News or as much on centrist siteslike cbs/abc. So get the heck out of here with “neoliberals” you progressive attach yourself with them probably the dam most. Most annoying thing about your base. You guys don’t do anything to advance the country in any significant way, yet complain and screech the most. And throw everyone under the bus when you all do the least to make this country run because a lot of you are low achieving LOSERS. That’s why you people lose elections across the world, lose in your country and a good chance to lose again, in 2020.

I rest my case.

 

[J.I.L]

This guy believes in universal basic income, free college tuition and universal pre school, 15$ minimum wage, mandatory single payer healthcare system, increased business regulation, public funded elections, substantial increase taxation of the rich plus would be laxed on illegal immigration, also give them free healthcare and college, and wouldn’t allow law enforcement to turn them into custom agencies. Also, he would increase aid to countries that “don’t have human rights violations”.


This dude country would go bankrupt and in a state of chaos in like 5 years. Who the heck would want to live there.

My government beliefs/policies are way better.