2020 Election

A problem of course would be the transition. So much is embedded in the way the economies of the planet intertwine that the risks go well beyond the US. What sort of schedule can be mapped out to do some other form of economy? In the past it has meant substantial austerity requirements for the population while the leaders fatten up and get the new system running. I doubt the US could pull it off in less than a decade.

There's also the economic momentum to be considered. There are only a few ways to switch it off like a switch, none of them good.

It's like an aircraft carrier's momentum. At full steam it takes about 8 miles to bring one to a complete stop. A torpedo could stop it in half that distance.

 

Ha, I'm concerned about the opposite- that support of the status quo and a fear of pushing for bold policies will cause voter turn out to be low and will cost us the election.

Bernie is polling very slightly further ahead than Biden against Trump right now, so I dont think there's any real reason to think a lurch to the left guarantees a win for Trump, or that progressive ideas arent popular. The second and third highest polling candidates are progressive.

I'm interested to see how the numbers shift after the debates. I think the strongest candidates last night were the ones who endorsed bold ideas and change. Joe Biden is riding on name recognition now, I suspect we'll see his numbers go down as support shifts to lesser known candidates

 

"Pragmatism" lost us the election in 2016

And voter turn out among the 18-44 age group was the highest it's ever been in 2018, which resulted in the election of the most diverse Congress ever

And these arent pie in the sky ideas, they work in every other first world country on earth

 

Monopolies can only exist with weaponized regulation

 

The only reason Bernie and Biden are polling so high right now is because they are straight white men.

Systemic racism, sexism, and homophobia I tell you!!!

 

Bernie is just ahead of the curve. Things he talked about four years ago are all the major issues now. And everyone is parroting him. He's exactly what we need.

 

So if Sanders is the nominee, and he loses to trump. What will the excuse be?

 

Why are you even suggesting the possibility that he would lose to Trump?

 

Some people listening are actually saying " why hadn't someone thought of this before " ?

Welcome to the " Ignore Bernie Show ".

 

My own belief is the constitution should be amended to enforce that every politician must wear a clown suit and red nose.

 

He's beating Trump by a bigger margin than Biden right now in the polls
You're parroting something that has no basis in reality. Why?

 

Kamala Harris had to stop Sanders and Pete from talking over each other like children. She was also the only one to do any potential damage to Biden.

This seems objectively wrong. Standard Oil.

 

As I said upthread, trump, and the republicans will start with demonizing socialism, and Bernie is history.

 

I'd vote for Pete before I would vote for Kamala.

 

I'm not a fan of Kamala but she was definitely the most well prepared and had the most commanding presence last night

 

I guess, on the basis of past electoral behavior and personal observations of prevailing prejudices, I'm convinced that if a 77 year-old Socialist Jewish humanist New Englander born in Brooklyn becomes President of the United States, we'll know the Apocalypse is near. I'd love to be proven wrong, and would certainly support him in a showdown with Trump, but I wouldn't want to bet the farm on him. Of course, Biden is just one year younger (Trump three years), so the age factor may not be such a big deal. But I think "Socialist" is still a big negative for American voters, as a result of decades of Cold War conditioning. He isn't really a Socialist, so he should explain that. Elizabeth Warren handles it well. "Mixed economy", Bernie--"Social Democracy"--not against free enterprise, but against big oligopolistic corporations!

 

I would like to see her in a one-on-one debate with Trump. On the other hand, she raised her hand, along with Bernie (and Elizabeth in the previous debate), as one who want to eliminate private health insurance. That could hurt her.

 

To me Senator Harris provided the biggest surprise. I would say she cranked up her act to just short of diminishing marginal returns then elegantly throttled back, meaning she will wipe the floor with President Trump in debates if she does that.

The surprise though, was busing for racial integration.

Busing came up as a variation on the anti-Biden theme of the week, essentially, did it not? It seemed like a settled issue to me a few years ago, given that public opinion research (the usual, methodologically sound research, not the polling like the 2016-election-suggestion-sex-magick type stuff that led to such confusion) showed that segregationists are thinner on the ground in the United States than people who believe the sun goes around the earth, the Charlottesville abomination notwithstanding.

 

Which polls were those"? The Quinnipiac poll earlier in the month had New poll numbers of Trump vs. top Democratic candidates were just released and Twitter has a field day had Biden beating him by 13 points and Sanders beating him by 9 points. The Economist/YouGov poll last week had Biden ahead of Sanders by 10 percentage points, although who knows what it will be after lat night's debates.

 

Busing was a shell game that had more to do with protecting jobs than actually accomplishing any of the lofty social goals used to sell it. When I first experienced busing I was a 6th grade A/B student. So I got on a bus at the school where I went to 5th grade and rode an hour across town to a school in a lower performing district. I became a straight A student almost overnight. The work was easier than 5th grade.

What I later learned is that a nearly equal number of black kids had been bused to my former school. They said it was good for us, so the parents obliged.

The net effect though was that lower-performing schools magically had grade improvements. So everybody figured it was working. Does anyone think that now? What really sucked was when the bus dropped us off as it was getting dark in the winter. A small army of 6th graders marching into our neighborhood from the bus stops. Of course the black kids going the other way faced the same issue. Only their neighborhoods were very different at night.

I wonder if all of those geniuses who came up with the idea of forcing people to like each other ever considered the lives of the children they were using as test subjects in their grand experiment? Or were their eyes always on the Utopian prize instead?