JFLNYC wrote:

pacino wrote:Why should an "illegal immigrant" ,as you write, not receive healthcare

You’ve proven the point.

Trump and his team succeed by appealing to people’s worst emotions. They do, and will continue to, use the most emotionally-charged terms to divide and conquer.

And you walked right into it.

The anger you feel when you see the term “illegal immigrant” cuts both ways. As much as it angers you it invigorates Trump and his supporters and the angrier you get the more sure they are they are right.

Stop letting your negative emotions overcome your reason and better angels. You can’t beat Trump playing his game on his home turf. He’s too good at it. And you’re better than that.

This is a strange post.

thephan wrote:Take it to the bank that reliable voters will "stay home" for Bernie and there is no reason to think the unreliable voters will bother to show up at the poll this time. Past performance and all that.

I take your latter point, you may be correct, but about your former point... what makes you think so? Any evidence to back up that assertion?

I don’t think you can beat someone like a Trump, who is now both a proven winner and of course an unorthodox candidate, with just any old run of the mill orthodox candidate, in an economic environment like this one. Bernie gives people a reason to show up more than he turns off people who vote on the regular.

A few pages back, someone posted a graphic of political orientation along social and economic axes. Buck was surprised at how many people were in the "socially conservative, economically liberal" quadrant. The other thing to note is how empty the "economically conservative, socially liberal" quadrant is. That's Bloomberg's constituency, one that is over-represented in the elite media and among wealthy white people. Just looking at numbers and coalitions and such, Bloomberg is not the most electable candidate. There simply aren't enough people in his quadrant to make a difference.

The other thing is that Bloomberg poses a real risk--he is unlikely to motivate the left and people of color. But he also risks firing up that populist quadrant of socially conservative and economically liberal voters to go ahead a vote for Trump.

I am no fan of Sanders--I don't think a Sanders Presidency would be good for the long term prospects of progressive politics because I don't think Bernie has the executive and political skills to get much done. One huge challenge the next President faces will be repairing massive damage the Trump misadministration has done--entire departments are going to need rebuilding, agencies like ICE and Homeland Security are going to need to be purged of their fascist elements, and this work is going to take time and attention. But I think Bernie has a chance of winning, while Bloomberg does not.

I'd rather Bernie fill all those departments than Biden (or Bloomberg of course). What's the danger, he would put radical people in that can't deal with the day-to-day needs? I suspect even if he found radicals for things like education, energy, etc., they would do far more good than harm even if they couldn't really impose their agenda.

CalvinBall wrote:

JFLNYC wrote:

pacino wrote:Why should an "illegal immigrant" ,as you write, not receive healthcare

You’ve proven the point.

Trump and his team succeed by appealing to people’s worst emotions. They do, and will continue to, use the most emotionally-charged terms to divide and conquer.

And you walked right into it.

The anger you feel when you see the term “illegal immigrant” cuts both ways. As much as it angers you it invigorates Trump and his supporters and the angrier you get the more sure they are they are right.

Stop letting your negative emotions overcome your reason and better angels. You can’t beat Trump playing his game on his home turf. He’s too good at it. And you’re better than that.

This is a strange post.

Not really . JFL's point a couple pages ago was that it does Democrats no service to reduce everyone's less-favored candidates to a string of epithets emphasizing their most easily assailable policies or previous behavior. We've got Trump to do that. So dismissing Bloomberg as a racist or Klobuchar as a racist or Buttigieg as a, I guess, racist* (okay may it's not really a string, more like a solitary object) ignores anything they could bring to the ticket, should they be chosen, and obviously generates animosity toward them from the electorate and beyond. Rather than react to this example pac chose to seize on the use of the term illegal immigrants, which in some minds tends fully identify the speaker as, again, a racist. If you want to not engage voters and convince then that the Democratic choice is not better than Trump anyway, that's a good way to do it.

*I would say that what these three have in common is perhaps their racism, but more likely that they've served as mayors or district attorneys, where problems rarely have clear cut solutions that are intrinsically fair to everyone. Senators can float above this.

CalvinBall wrote:Any nominee will be labeled a socialist.

But few of them will self id that way. Candidates can attack their opponents for all sorts of things, true and untrue. It's usually easier to convince persuadable viewers about the true things.

Trump also believes in redistribution of wealth, from the poor and middle class to the rich. Look at his tax break. Look at the public money he's taken as a businessman, look at the number of times he's filed bankruptcy, look at his willingness to charge secret service $600+ a night for hotel rooms. The argument/ad writes itself.

I think Sanders will be very successful in hitting Trump back, not that Trump will have the courage to debate.

Wolfgang622 wrote:

thephan wrote:Take it to the bank that reliable voters will "stay home" for Bernie and there is no reason to think the unreliable voters will bother to show up at the poll this time. Past performance and all that.

I take your latter point, you may be correct, but about your former point... what makes you think so? Any evidence to back up that assertion?

I don’t think you can beat someone like a Trump, who is now both a proven winner and of course an unorthodox candidate, with just any old run of the mill orthodox candidate, in an economic environment like this one. Bernie gives people a reason to show up more than he turns off people who vote on the regular.

It is not steeped in empirical evidence of any size. It is a statement driven by talking to several groups of people.

The boomers who voted Dem for a lifetime that look at Bernie's cost of his vision and are scared. They are also scared for their retirement savings which I heard called 'at risk' more then once in different discussions (where is that talking point coming from?). Essentially there is a sense that their saving will be taxed at extremely high levels blowing up the plans they have made. The least of these is a retired couple living in Michigan that said they are going to have to just take their chances.

The next tier down would be my peer group looking at the ever increasing national debt (thanks Donald), and not hearing much about addressing it. It is a real problem, and with a lot of hand waving about expensive programs from Bernie it looks like this will be an exploding problem of which there are plenty of examples of what can happen. It is not a real argument to say 'don't worry' nor is is credible to cast his notional plans as rewarmed, existing programs. I would say that his proposed agenda is not as audacious as FDRs programs, but I think they are probably as substantial as anything non-military since.

I live in a very GOP world, and there are many people who have been very turned off by Trump. These are not dem voters, but they are very interested in a different candidate, or at least having a chance to run out the door away from Trump in the next term. At best I would hope that they do not vote for any presidential candidate.

So that is the microcosm.

jerseyhoya wrote:

CalvinBall wrote:Any nominee will be labeled a socialist.

But few of them will self id that way. Candidates can attack their opponents for all sorts of things, true and untrue. It's usually easier to convince persuadable viewers about the true things.

Pretty sure an effective retort if it ends up being Bernie vs. Trump is “better a socialist than a fascist!”

jerseyhoya wrote:

CalvinBall wrote:Any nominee will be labeled a socialist.

But few of them will self id that way. Candidates can attack their opponents for all sorts of things, true and untrue. It's usually easier to convince persuadable viewers about the true things.

I'm glad you added the "usually" qualifier because Trump has spent more than four years proving he can convince large swaths of the population of anything that pops into his mind (the vast majority of which is pure fiction).

I can’t believe people think Bernie can’t win or would be a “bad” president after living through Donald fucking trump as president.

Elected republicans will be obstructionists no matter who the dem president is and I think he understands that. Most of his policy priorities individually poll well and I think he can make a case about his agenda to all kinds of regular Americans, from rural voters in WV to urban voters in cities.

He said in an interview once that if local congress members were not getting on board with his agenda, he will fly Af1 out there and hold a mini rally. Would be incredible to see

traderdave wrote:

jerseyhoya wrote:

CalvinBall wrote:Any nominee will be labeled a socialist.

But few of them will self id that way. Candidates can attack their opponents for all sorts of things, true and untrue. It's usually easier to convince persuadable viewers about the true things.

I'm glad you added the "usually" qualifier because Trump has spent more than four years proving he can convince large swaths of the population of anything that pops into his mind (the vast majority of which is pure fiction).

It's all a matter of degrees though. Like he convinced 25%-30% of people that he had a perfect phone call with Ukraine and did nothing wrong. He's convinced 40-45% of people that he's doing a good job as president. He's convinced 55% of people that he's doing a good job on the economy.

I don't think the Democrats are forfeiting the election or anything if they nominate Bernie. Anyone can beat Trump and anyone can lose to Trump. I continue to hold most of these thoughts from last year about electability. The main changes are Trump is at the higher end of his range due to the economy and Biden clearly does not have his fastball.

My largely arbitrary ranking of who has the best chance of beating Trump at this point would be the below, with there really being three tiers of two each:

Klobuchar
Biden
Bernie
Bloomberg
Buttigieg
Warren

Klobuchar has the staff stuff, but anyone has some baggage, and I think she comes across pretty well and is the archetype of the candidates who won the Dems back the House. People like Joe Biden and he's not offensive, but he's old and not inspiring. Bernie and Bloomberg are complete opposites in some respects, but both have strengths and liabilities the rest of the field don't have. Bernie will turnout voters no other Dem will & has the authenticity/outside the system thing that Trump also weirdly has, but I think he'll really, really test the strength of the Dem gains made recently in suburban America. Also he is very old and recently had a heart attack. Bloomberg has unlimited resources, might do well in the burbs and appears pretty good at swinging back at Trump. Of all the people on the list, I could see a Green Party candidate getting the most traction if Bloomberg is the nominee, and I'd imagine he won't be the man to win back Rural America for the Dems. Also he is very old. Mayor Pete is young and gay, both of which I think will be liabilities at the margins. The online Left seems to uniquely despise him too, so maybe softness there. Warren, as I have written about before (see link above), is not good at getting people to vote for her and sucks. I think her nomination would be as bad as the Dems could do from a winning perspective.

I dunno. We'll see. Or we won't see since only one of them is going to run against Trump.

06hawkalum wrote:

jerseyhoya wrote:

CalvinBall wrote:Any nominee will be labeled a socialist.

But few of them will self id that way. Candidates can attack their opponents for all sorts of things, true and untrue. It's usually easier to convince persuadable viewers about the true things.

Pretty sure an effective retort if it ends up being Bernie vs. Trump is “better a socialist than a fascist!”

It would be effective for me but there are a lot of folks out there who don’t have a clue what fascism is, even more who don’t care and too many who actually would pick a fascist over a socialist.

Apologies for long post...

I speak glibly about Bloomberg for a number of reasons. One, politics is a glib game. Voters make choices that are ideologically inconsistent and based upon limited information. Campaigns work to microtarget certain talking points to certain groups; I happen to think that the group who will be turned off by Bloomberg’s racism is more vital to Democratic chances than the group that will be turned off by the honeymoon in the USSR stuff.

Second, the man is racist. I think there’s a major distinction here between him and candidates like Klobuchar and Buttigieg. Those two probably hold some problematic views, and Mayor Pete’s record with the black community in South Bend stunk. However, Bloomberg seems to view the existence of black people as a problem to be solved by technocratic scientific management. Whether it’s stop and frisk, his promotion of colonialist no excuses charters, or his gleeful reaction to gentrification, the man has clear disdain for people of color. His maneuvering around term limits, use of aggressive policing, and his outright buying and selling of endorsements are also all indicative of a fascist worldview.

Third, I’m much more bullish about Bernie’s chances with conservative Democrats and independents who went from Obama to Trump than others are. He did very well with self identifying conservative Democrats in 2016. He speaks about class while centrist Democrats try to speak about culture and identity, and do it in clumsy ways which alienate both white voters and people of color (see Hilldawg in 08 and 16 or Warren’s Native American fiasco). Even though Bernie is probably to the left of most of the moderates on identity issues, he’s not as associated with these positions in the minds of the electorate. Talking about culture divides Democrats and unites Republicans. Talking about class unites Democrats and divides Republicans. I think Bernie has major liabilities as a candidate, but his is the only winning message I hear against a candidate like Trump.

Fourth, I’m much less bullish on the whole suburban swing voter idea than some of you seem to be. White people and wealthier people are just Republican voters now. They pay lip service to the idea that they “could vote for Biden” or whoever, but they’ll vote for Trump. They’re behind the “shy Trump” effect in the polls in 16. Hillary got 39% of the white vote in 16. Obama in 12? 39%. These people are not the path to victory.

The whole strategy of trying to appeal to mythical swing voters is dumb. You win by mobilizing a base. Trump might win this thing, but not because he's trying to appeal to swing voters.

That's why Bloomberg is terrible--he doesn't motivate the Dem base, but he very well may motivate Trump's base--especially because gun control is a central part of his campaign. (And yes I know he's talking about environmental issues, but if he really cared about that, why did he do almost nothing to prevent mass transit in NYC continue to crumble?)

He's opposed minimum wage, he's pro harassing people of color and has in fact been pretty terrible to women he's employed.

I don't have an electability ranking, but if I did, Bloomberg would be at the bottom.

Bloomberg floating Hillary's name as a possible running mate.

stevemc wrote:Bloomberg floating Hillary's name as a possible running mate.

Tell me again about how Bloomberg is electable? Makes Biden look like a winner.

stevemc wrote:Bloomberg floating Hillary's name as a possible running mate.

This is from Drudge...most likely bullshit.

stevemc wrote:Bloomberg floating Hillary's name as a possible running mate.

I’m out

John McEntee, who spent about a year as Trump’s personal assistant before being dismissed based on security clearance concerns, has been elevated to oversee the Presidential Personnel Office. The shift gives McEntee significant influence over the vetting and appointment process for scores of executive branch positions.

Getting the band back together.

https://thehill.com/homenews/administra ... mpeachment