Off Topic Politics Thread

Pelosi ripping up his speech at TSOU has damaged the Democrats. What a silly thing to do.

 

Nah, no one cares. It's not like it was Trump's copy. The speech was over, it was going in the trash or a recycling bin any way. It's just a little petty hahah moment for Democrats and a way for the GOP to make something out of nothing to stay outraged.

The debacle in Iowa though... that's a different story.

 

So, it turns out Mitt Romney is the last honourable Republican left on Capitol Hill.

Probably a Mormon thing.

 

I missed the Impeachment aquittal because I knew from weeks back that it was almost certainly fixed.
I'm guessing then that Mitt Romney was the only Republican to find Trump guilty.
The guy was guilty as hell, and he wasn't even tried on the more obvious crimes. Of course, when they banned witness testimony then it was all over.

 

Those crazy Iowans and their voting procedure. Earlier in the week, Corporate Democrat Pete Buttigieg declared himself the winner way before all the votes were declared. Yesterday [I think], the real winner was declared - Democratic Socialist Bernie Sanders. The Democratic National Party [DNC] are now going to do everything in their power to sideline Bernie Sanders. All because of that evil thing called Socialism. Which I'm sure they believe is the sibling of Communism.

 

So, I mean, a few things:

- Bernie has declared victory. Bernie does not appear to have actually won, based on the metric normally used: state delegate equivalents. Buttigieg is the apparent winner, though no news organization has called the race.

- The DNC has done absolutely nothing to sideline Sanders. The changes that were made to the Iowa caucuses (which aren't run by the DNC; the DNC does not run state primaries and caucuses) were made to appease those in his camp who found the reporting of results in 2016 opaque. That led the state party to try to report 3x as much information, calculated on-site, which was a complete and utter mess. Caucuses are silly.

- The DNC is not a monolithic entity. You'll always hear breathless talk about some "DNC member" or another, but that's because the DNC's membership is a broad cross-section of officials from the state and national party itself. Bernie Sanders has roughly as many endorsements from current DNC members as any other candidate (from what I can tell, it's Biden at 12, followed by Sanders at 11).

- The Young Turks is the sort of source of information that really need to triple-checked. They have a somewhat inconsistent relationship with fact, heh.

 

Can you feel the Bern yet guys?

 

No, they will try to stop him because he is not a Democrat. The only time Sanders is actually a Democrat is when he's trying to stop Democrats from taking office.

Every election in Vermont, he runs in the primary as a Democrat just to prevent any challenges from the left. Then, having won the Democratic nomination, he promptly declares himself an independent.

Politics is a dirty game, and none of us are all that fond of party politics. But at the same time, if you join the team, you play the game. When a Democrat embarrasses themselves, or needs some help or funding, or the party screws up (like in Iowa), the Democrats all band together to try and minimize the damage. Sanders will seize the opportunity to trash them. So of course they don't want a non-Democrat who has no qualms about attacking the party to win the nomination.

He's actually somewhat similar to Corbyn. A lot of left wingers, and particularly younger people are attracted to his policies. And he is (or used to be) more legitimate. He fought for minorities and all sorts of left wing causes that were unpopular when the Democrats refused to. I respect him for that. But he's also a populist. And because of that, and because he trashes the system, and he craps on Democrats, he has some appeal to Trump voters. He's trying to play up that angle. He thinks he gets the rural and blue collar Americans. But he really doesn't. He's somewhat correct that those voters are not as averse to Socialism as he thinks. But he's entirely wrong about their feelings on social issues. He's Jewish, he's isolationist but not anti-immigrant, he's pro-choice, he's pro-LGBTQ. He will not trash the Democrats or left wing policies to the degree that Trump does, and so he cannot satisfy the anger of the workers he wants to represent.

And so, the same thing will happen to Sanders that happened to Corbyn. He can't beat Trump. It's possible he can win the election because the Democrats will still vote for him over Trump. But if he does, then he just becomes part of the system and a Democrat, and he's not going to stack the court with conservative justices, etc. And then they'll turn on him. You cannot unite the idealist, far left, intellectual college crowd with the low education, far right, anti-intellectual Trump support.

He's basically running on a platform of trashing Democrats, conspiracy theories, and a lot of silly promises he cannot possibly deliver on. He's really sort of the left wing Trump. He does not have strong support from blacks and some other minority groups which is actually kind of a shame because no one has fought harder for them over his career than he has. But that's not how Sanders is running. And if you don't have that support, you are in trouble.

Yes, he's farther left and a little less compromising and willing to work within the system than Democrats are comfortable with. But they also have very legitimate reasons to oppose him.

 

They aren't really doing anything to stop him, though. There's some hand-wringing, but Democrats in general like to wring their hands. The current state of the primary is exactly the opposite of what it'd be if there was a concerted effort underway to prevent Sanders from winning: if that were the case, they'd be pushing out all of the Klobuchars and Bloombergs and Steyers to allow someone (presumably Biden or Buttigieg) to monopolize the not-Bernie vote, banking on him being a factional candidate that can't reach a majority in a two or three candidate race. That hasn't happened at all...the party has taken a very hands-off approach, because ultimately no matter who the candidate might be, they need everyone showing up to vote in November.

 

Biden’s a terrible candidate though, surely? Just another establishment hack who plays the game, but is so far removed from the concerns of working people, he might as well be on another planet. Or is that unfair?

 

I agree that Bernie is too far left to become President, but I believe his motives are sound. Just that no American can stand the idea of Socialism. Even the watered down Democratic Socialist variety.

No, if I was able to choose the candidate to go up against Trump and beat him, I'd go for Andrew Yang. He's not part of the system, and his ideas/policies are radical. Read his book too and it's an eye opener.

 

Biden's base *is* working-class people. It's the lower/middle class white voters, plus the vast majority of the over-40 African American populace. That's always been his appeal...he was the least-wealthy person in the Senate, grew up poor in a factor town, rode the train every day as a Senator, loved meeting with constituents and the general public, that sort of thing.

I don't really want him to win, but he's very far from an elitist. His base is essentially the traditional (small-l) labour base in the US.


Just in terms of the demographics that each candidate is doing best in, the current state of the primary (in really broad strokes) is something like:

Urban/some suburban college-educated white voters - Warren.
Rural/some suburban college-educated white voters - Buttigieg.
Rural white moderates - Biden.
Rural white not-moderates (which is everything from very liberal to "just wants to blow things up") - Sanders.
Black voters that aren't under 35 or thereabouts - Biden.
Young voters across all ethnicities - Sanders.
Latino voters - ???

The last one is pretty important, but unlike a lot of demographic groups, Latino voters haven't traditionally moved as a bloc or anything close to it.

 

You won't like this but the candidate to beat Trump is Bloomberg.

 

Doesn't matter to me. I mean, I think that's Bloomberg's biggest strength. He is not overtly offensive to most Democrats, and if that means that he can get every Democrat to the booths, the Democrats win.

Right now, Bernie has a share of the wild-eyed crazy youth vote (though Yang has a lesser share). He also has the disgruntled worker vote, at least among Dems. Biden has blacks, and the moderate "Never Trump but Never Socialist" conservative vote. Those groups are critical as they're both the ones who will push the vote over the top, while at the same time also being the most likely to just sit out the election unless they get their candidate.

Bloomberg won big just by not being involved in the Iowa debacle. But the downside is that Buttegieg won, and he and Buttegieg are likely going to be positioning themselves similarly. The ideal result for him would have been Sanders or Warren emerging as a victor while all the other votes were split evenly.

 

It's a repeat of our GE isn't it? They can have Sanders who I would imagine has policies that wouldn't upset any of us on the left but the yanks regard him as a mad socialist. He would get beaten by Trump easily. Bloomberg is a centrist candidate with a good record as NY mayor. I really think he could put the wind up The Donald's kilt.

 

Yep. Trump with a landslide. Can't see any other result.

 

Well no, there's no massive conspiracy to rig the primaries. Why would they embarrass themselves with what happened in Iowa only to allow Sanders to emerge as a (relative) victor? Even if he didn't win the caucus that was a big result for him. It's just the Berniebros being idiots like usual. It's why I don't like Sanders, and I'm just kind of sad about what he's turned into.

But behind the scenes, I'm sure they are sending out worried emails about how they can strategize against him, and pulling little dirty tricks. Basically just like they did last time and was in the emails in the DNC hacks (the actual emails, not the stupid conspiracy theories). And I don't really care, just like last time, because Bernie is not a Democrat. And Democrats trying to pull together a party strategy to defeat a non-Democrat is hardly surprising or even that nefarious.

I mean, I think we all know what happened. The Democrats let Sanders run last time and gave him a platform, under the expectation he would lay down. His job was to go out there and talk some hippy **** to get the far left and the college kids excited. He was to avoid criticizing Clinton, but he would get a chance to get his message out. He would then lose in the primary, and then concede graciously to Clinton, maybe even get a VP nod. And then the party would be united.

But instead Sanders started doing better than people thought. And once that happened he was like "**** this, I'm going for it." So he started freely criticizing Clinton on like really some dumb ****. Like if Clinton said she wanted the minimum wage at $15, then Sanders would say $18. Knowing full well that there was zero chance that an $18 minimum wage could be delivered. Or even a $15 one.

But now Sanders is popular enough that the Democrats have to let him run. And his band of BernieBro idiots are so conspiracy-driven and annoying but also legit powerful that the Democrats can't afford to shut Sanders down. He is kind of hijacking the party just the way the far right/tea party did to the GOP.

 

That is a ****ing disgrace
Where is all that money? Gone to prop up the rich bastards in the government?