The 2020 Presidential Election - Convention & General Election

[Guy Chamberlin]

As much as I've enjoyed Avenitti's tweaks, taunts, and articulate savvy, my first thought was "opportunist and narcissist" and we already have one of those.

 

[Ric Flair]

I think the Democratic primaries will have 15-20 candidates and resemble the Republican primaries from last cycle. It should be wildly entertaining and they fight to appeal to the left-wing base.

 

[RedDenver]

I think the Democratic primaries will have 15-20 candidates and resemble the Republican primaries from last cycle. It should be wildly entertaining and they fight to appeal to the left-wing base.

I know what you're saying, but I hope it's less entertaining and more thought-provoking.

 

[Ric Flair]

I know what you're saying, but I hope it's less entertaining and more thought-provoking.

Unfortunately there aren’t any real deep thinkers among the names being bandied about. It looks to be various degrees of socialists competing to be the one who promises the most free stuff to the masses. 

 

[Nebfanatic]

Unfortunately there aren’t any real deep thinkers among the names being bandied about. It looks to be various degrees of socialists competing to be the one who promises the most free stuff to the masses. 

All we can hope for is that the people see through the bs and elect the fiscally conservative Republican party

 

[RedDenver]

Unfortunately there aren’t any real deep thinkers among the names being bandied about. It looks to be various degrees of socialists competing to be the one who promises the most free stuff to the masses. 

This is why it's hard to take you seriously. Do you have anything of substance about the likely Dem candidates, or just more old and tired attacks and talking points?

 

[Ric Flair]

This is why it's hard to take you seriously. Do you have anything of substance about the likely Dem candidates, or just more old and tired attacks and talking points?

Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton, Kamala Harris, Jerry Brown, Bill de Blasio, and Julian Castro.

All look to be advancing some version of a socialist agenda. None seem to be offering anything new or exciting. Can you think of anything they’re proposing or talking about that’s likely to rally the nation behind them? 

One thing the Democrats should really think hard about is universal college loan forgiveness. With one fell sweep, wipe out all federal student loans. That would be wildly popular. Sure if would add a trillion or two to the debt, but at this point, no one seems to care.

 

[RedDenver]

Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton, Kamala Harris, Jerry Brown, Bill de Blasio, and Julian Castro.

All look to be advancing some version of a socialist agenda. None seem to be offering anything new or exciting. Can you think of anything they’re proposing or talking about that’s likely to rally the nation behind them? 

One thing the Democrats should really think hard about is universal college loan forgiveness. With one fell sweep, wipe out all federal student loans. That would be wildly popular. Sure if would add a trillion or two to the debt, but at this point, no one seems to care.

First, Hillary and Jerry Brown aren't advancing socialism.

Second, almost all socialist ideas are new to modern American discourse as we haven't heard them discussed since before Bill Clinton. As for exciting ideas, here's the ones that are polling as popular among the voters:

Medicare-for-All (59% support, and a 58% wanting to replace ACA with federally funded system)

Increasing the Social Security tax cap (67% support)

Increasing taxes on the wealthy (61% support)

Increasing taxes on corporations (64%)

Raising the minimum wage (66% support a $10.10 federal minimum wage, 59% support $12, and 48% support $15)

Worried about climate change (64%, although that's more of an issue than a policy)

Having majority voter support for your policies is a pretty good start for rallying the nation. Not to mention Bernie continues to poll as the most popular politician in America, so his ideas must generate at least a little excitement.

EDIT: And I agree that we should take a look at federal student loan forgiveness. There's probably not a faster or more direct way to juice the economy.

 

[Ric Flair]

First, Hillary and Jerry Brown aren't advancing socialism.

Second, almost all socialist ideas are new to modern American discourse as we haven't heard them discussed since before Bill Clinton. As for exciting ideas, here's the ones that are polling as popular among the voters:

Medicare-for-All (59% support, and a 58% wanting to replace ACA with federally funded system)

Increasing the Social Security tax cap (67% support)

Increasing taxes on the wealthy (61% support)

Increasing taxes on corporations (64%)

Raising the minimum wage (66% support a $10.10 federal minimum wage, 59% support $12, and 48% support $15)

Worried about climate change (64%, although that's more of an issue than a policy)

Having majority voter support for your policies is a pretty good start for rallying the nation. Not to mention Bernie continues to poll as the most popular politician in America, so his ideas must generate at least a little excitement.

Socialist ideas have been discussed since the advent of socialism. They just haven’t gained traction here. 

Medicare for all would cost trillions and lead to worse outcomes. 

We have incredibly high tax rates on both the rich and corporations. That’s why lowering taxes helped the economy. Obama-era taxation and regulation were choking the economy and making is uncompetitive.

Raising the minimum wage hurts those it is intended to help, leading to fewer job opportunities for those who need them most. Seattle is now discovering that.

Bernie is unelectable. He’s like Hillary, the more people see him, the less they like him. 

Some will always vote for free stuff that someone else has to pay for. It’s hard to build a governing philosophy around that. Venezuela is a great example.

As Thatcher used to say, the problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money.

 

[Guy Chamberlin]

Jerry Brown has wanted to be President his whole life, but is too old to run now, and wouldn't stand a chance, either. 

But it's worth studying his career a bit. He's still a deep thinker, but nowhere  near the "Governor Moonbeam" moniker from the 70s/80s.  His last two terms as California governor, he made extremely difficult economic decisions, challenging his own monolithic Democrats and the perpetually angry Republicans and forging a pretty amazing recovery from the 2008 economic meltdown. Like Schwarrzenneggar, he figured out that the green industry was indeed an industry, and both the state and the private entrepreneurs could profit from doing the right thing. Unlike, say reviving the asbestos industry, weakening fuel efficiency standards, and making it easy for rich people to hide money.  Socially, Brown was liberal in the way that civilized people should be. 

Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders may sound like fringe candidates, but they would absolutely wipe the floor in a debate with Ted Cruz, Ben Carson, Marco Rubio, and pretty much the entire 2016 Republican field, including a handful of candidates slightly smarter than they looked, playing to the simple-minded partisans. Kamala Harris isn't remotely a socialist and 30 years ago her stances could have passed for moderate Republican 

As someone just pointed out, Americans are often highly supportive  of (and excited by) policies that are extreme only by a partisan's definition, but not when they are properly explained. 

 

[Guy Chamberlin]

We have incredibly high tax rates on both the rich and corporations. That’s why lowering taxes helped the economy. Obama-era taxation and regulation were choking the economy and making is uncompetitive.

No we don't. We had far, far higher taxes on the rich and corporations during the years when American was supposedly "Great" 

Obama let the temporary Bush tax cuts slide during his term, a term in which the American economy rebounded from the Global Credit Crisis that saw trillions of dollars disappear from the ledgers virtually overnight, the result of Bush-era deregulation that let wealthy private investors play with other people's money without the personal risks and consequences. 

As has been pointed out many, many times to no effect, Trump is 18 months into an economic recovery going back to Obama's first term. If you were paying attention, you would have noticed that Obama spent a lot of time reassuring the financial infrastructure that he was no socialist firebrand, and he was rewarded with an economic recovery that his opponents were loathe to credit him. 

 

[TheSker]

No we don't. We had far, far higher taxes on the rich and corporations during the years when American was supposedly "Great" 

Obama let the temporary Bush tax cuts slide during his term, a term in which the American economy rebounded from the Global Credit Crisis that saw trillions of dollars disappear from the ledgers virtually overnight, the result of Bush-era deregulation that let wealthy private investors play with other people's money without the personal risks and consequences. 

As has been pointed out many, many times to no effect, Trump is 18 months into an economic recovery going back to Obama's first term. If you were paying attention, you would have noticed that Obama spent a lot of time reassuring the financial infrastructure that he was no socialist firebrand, and he was rewarded with an economic recovery that his opponents were loathe to credit him. 

Speaking of the global credit crisis, please don't forget to give Bill adequate "credit" for his tinkering with the Community Reinvestment Act.

 

[methodical]

Jerry Brown has wanted to be President his whole life, but is too old to run now, and wouldn't stand a chance, either. 

But it's worth studying his career a bit. He's still a deep thinker, but nowhere  near the "Governor Moonbeam" moniker from the 70s/80s.  His last two terms as California governor, he made extremely difficult economic decisions, challenging his own monolithic Democrats and the perpetually angry Republicans and forging a pretty amazing recovery from the 2008 economic meltdown. Like Schwarrzenneggar, he figured out that the green industry was indeed an industry, and both the state and the private entrepreneurs could profit from doing the right thing. Unlike, say reviving the asbestos industry, weakening fuel efficiency standards, and making it easy for rich people to hide money.  Socially, Brown was liberal in the way that civilized people should be. 

Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders may sound like fringe candidates, but they would absolutely wipe the floor in a debate with Ted Cruz, Ben Carson, Marco Rubio, and pretty much the entire 2016 Republican field, including a handful of candidates slightly smarter than they looked, playing to the simple-minded partisans. Kamala Harris isn't remotely a socialist and 30 years ago her stances could have passed for moderate Republican 

As someone just pointed out, Americans are often highly supportive  of (and excited by) policies that are extreme only by a partisan's definition, but not when they are properly explained. 

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The way I view it, there needs to be a public campaign for publicly funded elections and a ban on outside political donations and PACs.  If that actually happened, then more of those things would probably happen, but until you take the moneyed special interests out of the equation they will always hold sway enough to make a few well placed "donations" and torpedo any of those things or fund candidates to go torpedo them after they would be implemented by cutting funding.

It's that old saying, follow the money, until politicians are dependent on their actual electorate for the funding they need to stay elected, they sure as hell aren't working for us.

 

[RedDenver]

1) Socialist ideas have been discussed since the advent of socialism. They just haven’t gained traction here. 

2) Medicare for all would cost trillions and lead to worse outcomes. 

3) We have incredibly high tax rates on both the rich and corporations. That’s why lowering taxes helped the economy. Obama-era taxation and regulation were choking the economy and making is uncompetitive.

4) Raising the minimum wage hurts those it is intended to help, leading to fewer job opportunities for those who need them most. Seattle is now discovering that.

5) Bernie is unelectable. He’s like Hillary, the more people see him, the less they like him. 

6) Some will always vote for free stuff that someone else has to pay for. It’s hard to build a governing philosophy around that. Venezuela is a great example.

7) As Thatcher used to say, the problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money.

That's a whole lot of opinions without any evidence. I've numbered them to respond:

1) Socialist ideas have been around a long time and not only have gained traction but have also been around in America for a long time. Goods and services that we own together as a society like the military, police, firefighters, roads, airports, seaports, canals, dams, sea walls, etc. etc. have been around for the entirety of US history. Economically, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, unemployment benefits, etc. have been around since capitalism collapsed in the US in the 1930's and was saved by socialist ideas like bank bailouts and federal jobs programs in addition to the programs already mentioned. And as I showed in my previous post, socialist ideas are again gaining traction and popularity.

2) The healthcare system already costs trillions, so it's expected Medicare-for-All should cost roughly the same, which it does. Most analyses show it should cost less. And it doesn't lead to worse outcomes, as shown by the fact that among the 31 other OECD nations that have single-payer, the US ranks about in the middle for outcomes. In other words, we only have average outcomes right now, so a single-payer system should be roughly the same.

3) Whether the tax cuts will actually help the economy is yet to be seen. The trends all look roughly the same as they were before the cuts. After a few years we'll be able to look back and the data and determine what the short-term effects were and it'll take a decade or more before we'll know the long-term effects. However, since 82% of the cuts went to the top 1%, there's no way those cuts address basic problems like income-inequality or poverty rates.

4) The data actually shows the opposite of your claim. For an extensive list of research papers that show that minimum wage raises do not lead to fewer jobs see this article. There was one study that found Seattle's minimum wage increase hurt employment, but that study's assumptions and findings have been challenged by other studies.

5) What? Bernie's popularity has been increasing since he announced his primary campaign back in 2015.

6) Venezuela is one example. Norway, Sweden, Netherlands, Germany, Britain, and countless other examples of various levels of socialism that works. Also, Venezuela isn't a very good example as their entire economy is based on their oil exports, so any disruption of that one resource would tank their economy regardless of whether it's capitalist or socialist. And a socialist government that does bad planning is always going to fail.

7) Interestingly enough, Margaret Thatcher also said, “The National Health Service is safe with us. The principle of adequate healthcare should be provided for all regardless of ability to pay must be the function of any arrangements for financing the NHS. We stand by that.”

 

[Ric Flair]

I’ve met Kamala Harris and she’s not a bright woman. Her whole career is built on an relationship she had with Willie Brown, who has been the one pushing her career ever since. 

Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders would be destroyed in a debate with the likes of Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio. Warren and Samders have mastered their talking points, but know shockingly little about basic economics. That fact would become painfully obvious were they paired with any competent debater. I’m no fan of Cruz, but he’s a very skilled debater.