Every candidate is now attempting to prove they are more "progressive" than the next. Government taking over healthcare, mandated energy policies, expanding medicare and welfare. Never ending new ways to spend other people's money.
I'm kinda OK with it. Makes it easier for the Republican's to win in 2020.
Don’t agree with any of that, I do think the Democrats are moving too far left. I’m looking for a centrist candidate, someone who knows that the pendulum is best when it’s in the middle, I’m hopeful that the country, doesn’t make a left turn because of distaste for Donald Trump, my preference would be a Republican challenge to this president.
Democrats in 2020 are Reagan Republicans from 1984. Although they are swinging back left a bit lately
Totally agree 1000 % on a more centrist candidate as Trump went too far on some policies. Clinton succeeded being middle of the road, but his wife wanted to keep going further left, pandering to coastal elites.
Not sure anybody from the right can put up a challenge with the momentum Trump has on the base. The Democrats need a youthful centrist who can gather attention from suburbanites and the working class, like Beto O’Rourke. I could support someone like him to get my vote. Klobuchar is a good campaigner but she comes from too far left of constituency. Warren and some of the other liberals turn too many people off with their far left thinking.
@JameSD I don’t think there are any Reagan Democrats any more, they were a backlash to the failed presidency of Jimmy Carter, at this point in time the center doesn’t really exist in any form in either party and that’s the real reason for all of the rancor.
Keep in mind that 82% of the independents agreed with what was in the State of the Union speech--granted to all the naysayers SoTU doesn't mean all that much when compared to what gets done.....but it sets the tone and much of what is being said by the talking heads on TV is not what is in the minds of the silent majority. And it is the silent majority that rose up and bit Hillary in the ass in 2016.
Pelosi being Speaker was a bad move long term--a very bad move. I'd like to see a competitive race in both parties primaries and a good independent run ( but I also find it very telling that when Mr. Starbucks decided to throw out there he might run as an independent how liberals reacted. )
Confucious say: When pendulum sit in middle clock stop running.
^ Confusions never had a clock only sundial ;)
Confucius say, man who run through airport turnstile sideways going to Bangkok..............beyond that I tend to ignore his wisdom.
First off, there is not going to be a Republican challenger in the primaries, so just let go of that notion. The last 3 times incumbent Presidents were challenged in the primaries ('76, '80, '92) not only did the challengers lose, but it weakened the incumbents enough that they also lost in the general election. Also, Trump has very strong approval ratings from the Republican base, which comprise most of the Republican primary voters in many states. Net-net it would be political suicide for any Republican challenger, unless of course something highly unusual happens between now and then to seriously hurt Trump with Republican voters.
Where Trump needs to shore up more support is with the Independents, who generally cannot vote in the primaries (in many states) but are very active in the general election. If the Dems trot out some left wing wack job, it's going to go a long way in helping Trump firm up support with the Independent swing vote. OTOH, someone like Biden could pose a serious challenge to Trump, so here's hoping that Warren or Harris get the Dem nomination. ;)
Warren posted: "Keep in mind that 82% of the independents agreed with what was in the State of the Union speech"
This is important to understand. Trump looked very Presidential up there, like him or not. Trump is, first and foremost, a showman who understands his audience. If the Dems trot out some nut job, you can bet that Trump is going to switch gears and position himself as the voice of reason, just like he did during the SOTU.
Okay, I made up that Confucious saying.
^ you mean you haven’t actually met Confusius back in the day ;)
@Warrior- You should get your facts straight. Not all of the Democratic candidates want the "government to take over healthcare." In the thread that spawned this one, I pointed out that moderates like Klobuchar are interested in leaving the private insurance market intact and giving those under 65 the option of buying Medicare coverage.
I've asked this question to @Dugan, @25, and @Warrenboy but I've yet to get an answer: What would you do under the old healthcare system if you had a pre-existing condition (say metastatic cancer) that knocked you out of the workforce? Under the old system you would be denied health insurance, perhaps for the rest of your life. Under the old system, you lose your job, you run out of COBRA, you go bankrupt and die. It's not an academic question -- there about 50M people who could not buy insurance under the old system and another 50M that would pay substantially more.
So what would you do @Warrier? Guessing you'll be the 4th to ignore the question.
As far as socialism, I can't think of a more sensational example than the $750M TARP program that was signed into law under GW Bush, with support of Republicans Paulson and Bernanke. The government took partial control of our biggest banks, basically a welfare program for investment banks. Nobody wanted to bail out the banks; we had to.
@Random I didn’t ignore the question you just didn’t like my answer, and I’m really not going to get into it again right now, if you wish PM me later and I’ll give an answer but you’re probably not going to like it.
The answer you gave me was "I don't know." Should I dig out the thread? Just post your explanation here.
Not now and truthfully I still don’t know.
Well, that's my point. And someone like @Dugan (with a 1950's stay-at-home mom) would be wiped out. There's something in the healthcare laws for everyone.
Obamacare is the same thing as Romneycare which was invented by Jonathan Gruber (MIT economics professor, and probably one the countries most prominent experts on healthcare policy). It's the most market-friendly system available to keeping everyone covered.
Doesn't much matter these days. Those with any thought processes, knowledge of history, and an ability to read and digest know that democrat and socialist are nearly synonymous these days.
@25 Fuck you.
I’m not really worried about Dugan that’s his job I can tell you this, single payer is on the horizon, before you guys start hollering socialism, remember evolution applies to markets as well, the light bulb killed the whaling industry, and the automobile killed the buggy makers, the mall killed Main Street, now the internet is killing the malls, the government had a pretty large role in all of this, the insurance industry will adapt to not being in control of health care, and eventually single payer will be the way it is done, this system that we have now exists only because of the insurance companies and government workings hand in hand, and eventually health insurance will go the way Sears is, heading for the graveyard and something better will take its place.
@Random: The problem in your premise is that you position it as an "either/or" scenario. I have no problem with a humane social safety net for people who get very sick and need help, but that's not what this is.
Obamacare is a monstrosity designed to pander to a variety of special interests while moving us one step closer to a government takeover of healthcare. The main problems are the essential health benefits, which created bloated and obscenely expensive policies, and allowing anyone who voluntarily reduces their income (without any sort of disability) to become subsidized with lower deductibles and out-of-pockets. All of this had made it unaffordable for anyone who is NOT getting a handout.
Even worse, they knew this was going to happen, yet they went ahead anyway. The politicians who created it lacked the political courage to do what they truly wanted, which is to make everyone contribute via their premiums. So instead they built a system destined to fail, no doubt figuring by that point that politicos would be forced to fix it. Every knowledgeable pundit at that time was saying the same thing, which was that the individual market was too old and too sick to support Obamacare by itself and they were right. Instead all we did was substitute subsidized people for the millions of unsubsidized who were once in the market, but have since been forced out and instead pay cash now.
Trump 2020. ;)
twentyfive I can't say I disagree but I'd prefer to be a bit more cautious about change before we change for the sake of change......( as I said when Obama ran and nobody really knew much about him except he ran on he was for change without details) I change my underwear every day --doesn't mean I should be president.
As a rule our government tends to complicate whatever they get themselves involved with --more costly--more red tape--more problems . I use to say the one thing we did well was go to war but even in recent years that hasn't been the an exception either.
Our government from both parties isn't very good at taking a macro view of how changes impact other sectors and how the changes are typically more far reaching than anticipated. and liberals are worse at it then conservatives from what I have observed. To a large extent it is why everything ends up costing three times as much as what they budget for and think it is going to cost.
I don't mind progress but before we roll out the new vehicle for health care lets make sure the tires are not square and we have a real plan in place with a good understanding of what impact it's going to have on everybody and everything else we are dealing with at the present and into the future.
Going back to the original question...
The only reason I can come up with is the cost to change the branding on collateral (stationary, signs, buttons,... )
^ it’s not change for the sake of change, the tires wore out, and now the insurance industry is killing medical care, between their malpractice payouts and their refusal to allow people who need access to health care the insurance companies take a shitpile of money out of the system and add very little in the way of value, that’s unAmerican.
^ that was to Warrenboy
You still didn't answer my simple question, @Dugan, but let me help you with the answer: In the days before Obamacare, a serious illness would make you uninsurable. You would have the choice of (1) dropping dead in the emergency room or (2) having your wife get a job with health insurance (Starbucks?).
No, Obamacare was not designed to fail. Moderate Democrats don't want single-payer. Moderates don't want to wait in line for medical care, they don't rationing, and they don't want MDs pushed into the middle class.
The "mandate" that you've been complained about in other threads was intended to keep healthy people in the insurance pool, to reduce the premiums for everyone else; so you're complaining about the mandate, yet the mandate was there to reduce premiums for people like yourself.
It's governmental regulation that kills competition in the insurance industry.
So you get penalized for being healthy. Just like with the bail outs a decade ago you got penalized for being responsible.
^ You really don’t know how insurance works do you flagooner, first of all the insurance industry wrote the regulations second medica insurance companies block any measure to make medical care cost competitive, they actually set the rates and mostly force the doctors and hospitals to accept the amounts that are paid
Sure I do, I'm referring to premiums and coverages. Yes, the insurance companies are the beneficiaries of the regulations, the consumer gets screwed by them.
Because that would be inaccurate. They should merge with the Republican Party, and call themselves the National Socialist Party, since they’re all fucking fascists anyway.
@Random: If they didn't know that it wasn't sustainable, then they were the only ones. See everything else I wrote above, and actually read it this time, so that I don't have to repeat it again.
@Flag: As 25 rightly stated, insurance is precisely designed to spread risk across a broader pool of participants. The problem with Obamacare is that they tried to do this by relying upon too few healthy and unsubsidized participants to pay for the medical care of too many sick and older subsidized participants. This was of course doomed to fail, as was predicted by many insurance experts prior to its passage. So instead we've just brought one uninsured group into the fold and forced another group out of the insurance market in the process.
Socialism sounds great on paper, and it has its benefits - communism also sounds great on paper, i.e. everyone will be equal; the downside is that everyone is equally fucked.
Having a government w/ so much control means one is at their mercy and the government will dictate a big portion of your life and how much you can progress, if they allow you to progress at all - big government means its citizens are beholden to it (the bigger the government, the more they will have you by the balls).
Well, the government has long run health care, energy, and welfare. Its just that moving in a more progressive direction these will be run more for the benefit of everyone, not just the rich.
Up through the mid-1960's, the US and Western Europe were largely in sync. Canada's first U-Health Care was patterned after our Medicare. And expanding welfare was a first move to address what John F. Kennedy saw as an expanding permanent unemployment rate coming up to 1%.
Advanced industrialization pretty much mandates that you go to a large degree of Socialism, or you have to sacrifice democracy and go to a two tier society. This later is what we are coming to have. It does not work.
So while Europe continued to the Left and much of Western Europe has a moderate degree of Social Democracy, with the unveiling of Richard Nixon's Southern Strategy, using racism to take over the South, and then with the Republican Party adopting the doctrine of Christian Reconstruction and main streaming the views of the John Birch Society, the US has gone far to the Right.
We need to reverse this and move to a moderate social democracy. It is said that we will need to have about a 15% higher top tax bracket.
Likely our society is already paying far more than this to deal with the consequences of not now having it.
SJG
Lee Atwater teaching us how we can still say "N.... N.... N...." in a post 1954 world democracynow.org
Mexico City, has so many people and cars on the streets, that if one is interested in hookers, likely best to find a bar, or you would really have to know that area.
Richard Smoley, Inner Christianity youtube.com
Business Law Today, 10th and 11th Edition, Roger LeRoy Miller textbooks.com
New, Used, purchase as ebook (pdf) and in libraries
IMO the problem w/ medicine pre-Obamacare is that it seems the government allowed the special-interests to dictate the rules of the game and turned medicine into big-business over providing good-care - I assume there is a way for the free-market to be able to provide quality care where competition would drive prices down - in the medical field, the consumer usually has no-idea what something should cost; that seems like a clear problem; it's ridiculous that pre-Obama one would get charged a $1000 for a simple iv in a hospital.
IMO Obamacare happened b/c of the abuses and special-interests pre-Obama - but I def don't believe the government running anything is the best-option; it only becomes an option when the special-interests fuck over the vast-majority of people and too-often politicians allow this.
Talking about big-medicine - I heard the other day that only two countries in the world allow commercials/ads for drugs/medicines, the US and New Zealand.
^^^^^^^^ Very True!
SJG
Very good points all. I love the spirited debate.
The concept of political left and right is not as relevant these days as the concept of elite versus the majority. For decades, the establishment in Washington, Democrat and Republican, has been accumulating power for itself. They’ve controlled the levers of power and filled their pockets from Wall Street, not Main Street.
Trump is challenging that, but he’s still pretty much on his own. The supposed battle between left and right is Kabuki theater.
If you can count money, then you know that the Right benefits those with more money, and the Left benefits everyone else.
As Marx and Engles explain, society has always involved class conflict.
The idea which you are expressing Mark94, is just one of the disinformations of Right Populism. It runs on Christian Fundamentalism and Racism, to broaden its base of support beyond the super rich.
SJG
SJG you are a fucking retard.
^^^^^^^^ ime, the one incapable of contributing to any kind of reasoned civil debate.
SJG
SJG you have never been reasoned with even when presented with facts. You just spout the same inane shit over and over again. You contribute nothing to this site. Thousands and thousands of comments of drivel, not a single review.
I agree with warrior15 100%
And I agree with IME!
Honestly anyone in this thread with below $1M in assets who voted Republican is fucking stupid and being robbed by the rich.
Politics in one big circle joke led by that buffoon Donald. If I had 4 billion you wouldnt hear a peep from me. Id probably be in Brazil, Dominican Republic, or Thailand creating an army of kids through thoroughly screened 19 year old women. I probably wouldnt even be able to masturbate because my cock would be too sore.
Id be cumming so often near the end of the day my ejaculate would come out as dust
SJG would say that before Reagan era, politics were centering around more of a Western European approach. Not sure how that was a good thing because our Republic centers more around a holistic approach to the people involved in their government from both private and public sectors, and the swinging pendulum helps balance out powers.
We’ve had too much of a swing from extreme left thinkers wanting the answers to have government take care of our problems, when I’m fact Hitler, Mousalini, Stalin, and many other dictoators also promised the same things Ortasio-Cortez and Elizabeth Warren politicians are stating. We all know how that ended up, because their policies take too much from the people and hand it over to the government. You can’t have a progressive society when a few powerful people control over the majority of the working class, and that’s what these liberals are trying to do, force their beliefs of socialism.
The right drives the cart, and the left is along for the ride....