Eleven op-ed columnists for the New York Times weighed in on last night’s debate, giving their take (and 1-10 rating) on how the ten candidates did. I stopped watching after about an hour and a half; I didn’t realize it was three hours long. Oy!
I don’t like rating debate performances, and I didn’t watch the last half, but here are the average ratings, in decreasing order, of the eleven columnists (their brief comments are also in the article):
Elizabeth Warren: 7.5
Kamala Harris: 6.2
Cory Booker: 6.1
Pete Buttigieg: 6.0
Beto O’Rourke: 6.0
Joe Biden: 5.9
Bernie Sanders: 5.7
Amy Klobuchar: 5.2
Julián Castro: 4.6
Andrew Yang 3.0
My take on the ratings: I would put Cory Booker, who impressed me, above Harris, and move her substantially down on the list, with Harris below Buttigieg. Warren belongs at the top, and Bernie and Biden occupy appropriate positions. And yes, Castro and Yang are at the bottom. O’Rourke seemed a bit patrician and pompous to me, but of course those are personality traits, or what derives from them in a debate.
You might read Frank Bruni’s take on Warren, which is that she was the winner as well, but he thinks she’s slick and a bit mendacious. I for one agree that she was clearly evasive on the Medicare-For-All issue, something that I still oppose (I think everyone needs to be enrolled in a healtcare plan, with a government option available at low cost, but I don’t yet favor elimination of private insurance).
I guess we have many more of these to watch (or miss) in the next year, but I’m betting the final candidates will be Biden and Warren. But of course it’s early days.
Your take?
That statement should always be kept in mind. I would like to have it on a t-shirt. Probably couldn’t wear it into a polling place.
As long as they’re legally dressed, voters can wear anything they want into a polling place, and that includes political statements on clothing, buttons and other accessories. Poll workers (of which I am one) are not allowed to wear anything partisan (we can, however, wear non-partican items; I live in a neighborhood known as Riverwest¹, which is politically very active, and can get away with wearing a “Riverwest Votes” button when I work). Voters can wear a Bernie button or a MAGA hat if they want. Since the Adams quote doesn’t endorse any particular political candidate or position, but merely states a political opinion, its presence on clothing should be no problem, so get to a custom t-shirt place and go for it.
What voters cannot do is engage in any activities which can be considered electioneering, either inside the polling place or within a certain distance of it. This includes handing out campaign literature or verbally promoting a candidate to other voters. Regulations on this vary from state to state. Here in Wisonsin, for example, political activity is forbidden within 100 feet of a voting location, and it is also illegal to take pictures inside the location, so you couldn’t take a selfie of you and your ballot, which is permitted elsewhere.
¹I call Riverwest “The place where ageing hippies come to die.”
I work the polls across the river from you at Riverside High.
Everything you say is correct, except that there are quite a few younger hippies in Riverwest, too! Maybe I’ll head over to Black Husky this evening! 😉
I think the “elimination of private insurance” issue is a bit of a red herring. Nearly everyone on Medicare has a private-market supplement which covers bits that the main program doesn’t. I don’t know that any of the candidates are opposed to this sort of private coverage.
I think that both Sanders and Warren want to do away with private insurance in total. Private insurance would not be necessary because under the proposal, Medicare would pay for everything. Deductibles and co-pays would disappear. Thus, Medicare as it works today would be greatly transformed and cover every citizen (I’m not sure about non-citizens), not just those over 65.
Yes, I think Historian is right here, at least according to what I know of the candidates’ views.
Still false, in case of Sanders:
and …
https://feelthebern.org/bernie-sanders-on-healthcare/
“Private insurance would not be necessary …”
I see this as at the center of these claims that candidate X wants to eliminate private insurance. These candidates want to make simple, bold statements about their policies for political purposes. Finer points are lost.
Does private insurance not being necessary mean that it actually becomes illegal? I doubt anyone would answer “yes” to that question. Whatever health solution they come up with will have gaps in coverage or will lack the ultimate in service and private insurance will fill the gaps. No one is motivated to prevent that as far as I know.
Making all forms of private insurance “illegal” could pose some constitutional issues, as well.
Plus, what public policy interest would doing so actually serve?
Yes, and the idea of removing the private insurance middle-man is very appealing. Except, people hate the idea of being left without that option. I wonder how private insurance can actually be eliminated. It’s just an business agreement between the insured and the insurer. You couldn’t make private deals illegal could you?
The problem is that private insurance is necessary. One of my favorite Youtubers came down with stage 4 colon cancer. As a citizen of the UK, he was told he’d have to wait at least a year to get treatment. He was forced to move to the US and get private insurance so he could start being treated immediately (at stage 4, this was critical).
I don’t trust our government to do any better than that.
“I don’t trust our government to do any better than that.”
If that were the case, Medicare, as it currently exists, would not be overwhelmingly popular. Medicare beneficiaries have as a much access to doctors as anyone else, as long as the doctor accepts Medicare, which most do. Medicare is a government run program that people are happy with and very few except those on the far right want to see it abolished for an exclusive private insurance program.
I disagree. I think it’s very different when you only have to be responsible for people over 65 years old who mostly supplement their medicare with private insurance, rather than being responsible for 330,000,000 people without any private insurance.
I remember when ACA/Obamacare was being worked out in 2009 and conservatives were fear mongering over it, there were some older conservatives worried that the government was going to take over Medicare.
“Keep the government out of Medicare!”
Haha, classic.
But look at all the other modern democracies that are clamoring to dump their single-payer systems to adopt the US’s current cockamamie, patchwork system of providing healthcare coverage for its citizens.
Oh, wait, there aren’t any, are there?
Yes, that would be my point, why are we trying to invent something out of nothing when there are plenty of better systems in other countries from which we could learn? It would appear that they almost always involve some combination of government and private coverage, and they cover everyone at much less expense and with better outcomes.
Exactly. And things can always be done better than other countries.
Because America doesn’t learn from other countries; it dictates to them.
I don’t believe that story about UK cancer treatment. Firstly, the UK target is 31 days. No doctor would say more than a year, they would be sacked.
Secondly, anyone can get private insurance and private treatment in the UK.
Thirdly, anyone moving to the US for treatment would be charged a fortune for insurance if they were already diagnosed with cancer. They would have to pay for the treatment directly instead.
That story smells to high heaven.
Agreed, that was my reaction as well.
I agree on the story of the UK citizen who was forced to come to the US for cancer treatment. I think it’s likely a made-up story.
It was probably made up by the same guy at Investor’s Business Daily who said, in 2009, that if Stephen Hawking were on Britain’s National Health, he’d have died a long time ago. The exact statement:
Hawking’s reply:
Dr. Hawking died in 2018 at the age of 76.
Jon, I posted (below) before I saw your post. Indeed I think BJ’s Youtuber made up that story.
I fear our good BJ has been conned by one of those stories propagated by those who oppose a single payer or mixed system.
Who would those be? I think we all know, and that I do not need to go into detail there.
The Youtuber in question supported a single-payer system supplemented by private insurance.
Please read my further comments below. Feel free to read about TotalBiscuit if you want. That was the Youtuber’s name.
BJ, I’m not sure that is the whole story. Staging of cancers are threefold, local invasion, lymph node invasion, distant metastases. And for colon cancer there is the liver metastases inbetween there somewhere. A ‘stage four colin can er without giving details is not a very clear description.
If there is any treatment that would make a lifesaving difference to a patient (such as a liver ‘amputation’ operation, or chemotherapy), it is treated as a semi-emergency.
I do not know the details of your Youtuber’s condition, but I strongly suspect he doesn’t know himself either, or that the whole story is simply not true. And note, even if true it is anecdote.
If these things were systematic it would be difficult to explain the better outcomes in most industrialised countries, for most conditions, compared to the US.
It’s not a false story. First of all, he’s a very famous (former) Youtuber named TotalBiscuit. Second, he didn’t move to the US after finding out he had cancer just to make up a story. Third, his treatment only got him about another five years. Unfortunately, he died several years ago.
So insurance companies in America will let you join with a preexisting condition and start paying immediately will they?
Something doesn’t seem right. We could all just forget insurance until we got sick and then join.
I have private health insurance in Australia but there are waiting periods for known preexisting conditions.
Actually, the ACA stopped insurance companies from rejecting people due to preexisting conditions.
More importantly, he moved here not just because of the wait time, but because the treatment was light years ahead of what was available to him in the UK. While I support a single-payer system supplemented by private insurance with an opt-out for those who have or want completely private insurance, the privatization of insurance coupled with robust research facilities has led to the best cancer care centers in the world.
You’ve been listening to US insurance companies. I don’t have a reference but my understanding is that we have worse outcomes here in the US compared to other rich countries. Regardless, the claim that the US has “the best medical in the world” seems like something that has been repeated so long that it has lost its meaning and is no longer the case.
This is a complete misrepresentation of what I wrote. I never, ever said the US has “the best medical in the world,” so it seems strange to put that in quotes. What I said was that it has the best cancer treatment and many other treatments in the world. That does not mean that most people can afford them.
Also, the Youtuber in question was not allowed by the UK’s public insurance to use many different treatments that ended up adding years to his life. Only certain types of treatment were covered.
Sorry, I wasn’t attributing the quote to you, BJ, but I can see how one might read it that way. Still, talking about treatments that most who need them will not receive, makes the discussion about something else completely.
Also, anyone here without private would still get treated for a condition like that.
Medicare would cover it.
I find this dubious. I suspect there is something more to the story.
I was in surgery within days of the NHS discovering my colon cancer and in chemo as soon as I was recovered from the surgery.
My father is currently waiting to find out if he has it.
He was in hospital having a CT scan two days after seeing the Doc’, kept in for several days for IV anti-biotics, as his bowel had an infected perforation. His colonoscopy is on the 4th of next month as the CT scan couldn’t rule out a tumour but any sooner would be dangerous following the existing damage/infection.
This is what most people find with the NHS it can move very fast when it knows there is a serious problem.
As you can tell my personnal story makes me quite defensive of the NHS. At the time of my cancer I was in my mid 20’s not long out of Univeristy, my father had not long lost his job when the firm he worked for went bust. In the US it is likley I would have been uninsured.
I was also aware of John Bain, Totalbiscuit,and having done some googling I find nothing resembling your verson of the story. I think you may have got things in a muddle.
I think I did get muddled the part about having to wait too long, but I know he did move here because the NHS refused him certain treatments that would have extended his life dramatically, treatments he ultimately was able to get in the US.
This is totally untrue!
I can find no evidence for this either.
In the UK we do have The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE)which assess which treatments the NHS uses. Their decsions are evidence based and yes included assessments of cost effectivness.
‘certain treatments that would have extended his life dramatically’ is a very emphatic assertion. NICE is about avoiding treatments with insufficent evidence effectivness or treatments that do not appear significantly more effective than existing (often cheaper) alternatives, it is about making sure the best (which includes cost effective) treatments are used.
Look, the NHS is not perfect, NICE can add a delay in new effective treatments becoming avialble (although on the other hand it filters out some that are a waste), wait times for less major issues can still be excessive etc but at least base the arguments against it on reality.
Survival rates for cancer treatment in the UK are definatly lower than they should be, and compared to similarly developed nations they lag behind. However the reasons are complicated and range from British peoples attitude to getting routine tests and screening to the quality of surgical training.
The US does appear to have the best survival rates and this should be applauded but many of those survivors end up heavily in debt or even bankrupt which as appauling.
BJ:
BJ you don’t have a clue what you’re talking about. You don’t wait a year on the NHS for cancer treatment & the case you’re citing as evidence is entirely misreported by you in just about every respect.
Let’s start with this: Bain was NEVER treated by the NHS for cancer for one good reason, he had been living in the USA, married to an American woman for seven years BEFORE he was diagnosed.
THE DETAILS:
An American woman from Charlotte, NC named Genna & John Bain first met in 2005 when he began reporting on Blizzcon and he kept in touch. They decided he should move to the States permanently in 2007 to be close to Genna & they married IN AMERICA that same year.
Note that this is five years before his cancer diagnosis. The irony of your story is that John Bain clocked up seemingly huge medical bills in the States for stuff that probably would have been free in the UK**
BACKGROUND:
This is what I found re the video game critic John Bain [AKA TotalBiscuit, The Cynical Brit, TotalHalibut, SumCookie, SoulCake & TB]. He died 16 months ago in Charlotte, NC, not “several years ago”. His American wife Genna, a long time ‘Twitch Partner’ gaming streamer, host, voice actress & cosplayer, broke the news on his & her own Twitter accounts, on 24th May 2018. She reported he’d fallen into a hepatic coma & died – complications from bowel cancer – liver failure is my best guess.
[1] THIS is John Bain’s long, detailed announcement on Reddit of his retirement from gaming on 1st May 2018 [no criticism of medicos nor NHS of course]:
[2] He appeared in the US studio of the H3 Podcast in October 2017, seven months before he died & spoke of living with stage IV cancer & he makes no mention of the NHS or negative experiences to do with his medical treatment.
SOURCES [Close gaps]:
Wiki: https:// en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TotalBiscuit
H3 Podcast: https:// youtu.be/Ozb2r7c0hxA
TB’s Co-optional Podcast: https://www. youtube.com/channel/UCy1Ms_5qBTawC-k7PVjHXKQ
Independent newspaper: https://www. independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/totalbiscuit-dead-john-bain-dies-youtube-star-vlogger-gamer-a8368586.html
The Sun newspaper: https://www. thesun.co.uk/news/6376573/totalbiscuit-dead-wife-genna-bain-when-marry-youtube-star/
TB’s Twitter [later posts are by Genna using his account]: https:// twitter.com/Totalbiscuit
Genna’s Twitter: https:// twitter.com/GennaBain
Genna’s YouTube: https://www. youtube.com/user/GennaBain
Genna’s Twitch gaming channel: https://www. twitch.tv/gennabain
Cute Bengal Cat Loki Video Fail with TotalBiscuit [July 2016]
https://youtu.be/4Ic3Fm6cGC0
** Not 100% on this – the bills are large, but I don’t know how much was covered by insurance, but the insurance premiums themselves were large as they both had the top line product reportedly – I ain’t seen the details. That info comes from a Genna message from after his death. She had a GoFundMe to get her back on her feet after the IRS got heavy, although it’s not clear how the finances broke down – far from all of it was medical matters: READ THIS
That last bit, READ THIS, is good support for improving the US system. Bernie could use the case as a negative example.
Absolutely right!
BJ: IMO the likely causes of your many misunderstandings about the TotalBiscuit story [I have a detailed post in moderation] are:
Because of how vile the Gamer world can be [I’ve seen Discord comments & Twitch comments!] a lot of streaming gamers protect themselves – they often don’t speak of where they’re living very precisely.
Pro Gamers travel about a LOT – Genna was in & out of Seoul right up to just before her husband’s death & was at various Gamer Con’s – the same was true of TB while he could still travel [the last six months he couldn’t
99% of TotalBiscuit’s followers were completely unaware he’d permanently moved to Charlotte, NC years before his cancer diagnosis & jumped to the conclusion the NHS had treated him badly. After his death the story became he’d moved to the USA because the NHS wouldn’t touch him.
Kids [& grown up kidz] on Discord are toxic critters. That’s Gaming for ya.
I would agree with your results in the end. However, Biden just does not do well in debate and if he was rated without any prejudice for his years in politics he would not even be there. I would lower all the debaters for not hammering Trump on economics and his disaster Tariffs. I did not watch much of it but did anyone go after him on the Bahamas?
I like Booker a lot, he seems to be the only politician who understands that we can only cut our carbon emissions with nuclear energy. Sanders and Warren’s plans to get rid of all our nuclear plants will lock us in to fossil fuels forever – just look at how Germany messed this up… I voted Sanders in 2016 and like Warren a lot, but this policy terrifies me. I wish Booker were polling higher, I don’t want to have to vote for Biden (who is at least pro-nuclear research).
It’s freaking insane to me that being anti-nuclear energy is considered an environmentalist position. Are people unaware of France’s existence?
Nuclear energy could save the world, but a bunch of nitwits who only know how to go along with the crowd vehemently oppose it.
Yes, that really bugs me too though I think I detect a softening of that negative opinion lately. We just have to keep fighting for it.
Many people are under the impression that nuclear “disasters” have killed a lot of people but that is just not the case.
By luck they haven’t yet, although the true death toll from Chernobyl is unknown. And that event could have been a LOT worse. But it is an inherently dangerous energy source that produces a lot of dangerous waste, for which we still don’t have a good plan for disposal.
The future is renewables, unless fusion becomes a reality.
Any energy source potent enough to provide utility scale power is inherently dangerous. Statistically speaking nuclear is very safe. And that’s with designs that haven’t changed much since the ’60s.
There are plans for the dangerous waste. The main one is based on the fact that the waste produced so far is worth many times its weight in gold. About 10%, or less, of the energy possible to extract from it has been extracted. The waste is a very potent energy source that can be utilized by new reactor designs which will be able to extract most of that remaining 90%. If they ever get built. And there is dangerous waste from all energy sources, even wind and solar.
AFAIK, a good plan for waste disposal would be to consume it as fuel in an integral fast reactor (IFR). Whereas traditional nuclear power plants consume only about 5% of the energy available in their fuel (and only 0.6% of the energy in the ore), leaving waste that’s still highly radioactive, IFRs can consume about 99.5% of the available energy, producing far less and far safer waste for the same amount of energy produced.
I think nuclear power is only inherently dangerous with outdated reactor designs. We now know how to build reactors with passive safety features that make meltdown (theoretically) impossible. Unfortunately, most nuclear power plants still use 50-year-old designs since we haven’t been updating our nuclear power plants.
The future might be renewables, but at the present time our choice is between nuclear and fossil fuels. When Germany shut down its nuclear power plants, they couldn’t fill the gap with renewables (even though they’re probably the renewable energy leader in Europe) and had to greatly increase coal burning. Even when nuclear goes wrong, it kills very few people. Meanwhile, coal, under normal conditions, kills over a million people each year due to air pollution and emits far more radiation than nuclear power plants (due to radioactive components in the ash) and spreads that radiation far and wide.
Chernobyl occurred because of a potential system failure that the Communist Party brass knew about, but decided to hide anyway. When that system failure occurred, they tried to cover up what was happening. Chernobyl shouldn’t have happened and, even after it did, the number of people who died and got sick shouldn’t have been nearly as many.
France has over 50% of their energy come from nuclear and this has been true for decades.
I read an article somewhere that pointed out that Fukushima had all the elements of a full blown nuclear disaster, and yet in the end had a relatively mild impact. Even with all the mistakes and bad design decisions, it was not a huge catastrophe. Nuclear is safer than it seems.
The real issue with nuclear is not “can it be safe,” because it can be, but rather “will it be safe if we let private investors do it?” To be safe, lots of rules need to be followed, and specific designs need to be implemented, etc. Cost cutting is not a good idea.
If the right choices were made, we could have a safe reliable nuclear power grid. If the usual suspects implement it, though, it could turn out much worse. Therein lies the fear of nuclear power.
The Fukushima disaster is not over yet.
Yes but I wonder if this really is that big a deal. I remember when scientists started to detect radioactivity from Fukushima on the California coast and people started worrying. It was explained that although it was detectable, it was orders of magnitude lower than the background radiation everyone is exposed to every day of their lives.
Sure a “billion tonnes of radioactive water” sounds like a lot but water is heavy and it doesn’t say how much radioactivity it has. With nuclear power, everything is a headline. I skimmed the article, so I may have missed it, but I didn’t ever see anything that quantified the danger this represents. That is a major red flag right there.
Yes, I read that about Fukushima also. It was said that more people died as a result of the unnecessary evacuation than of any kind of radiation.
There are risks with everything but I believe nuclear power is a bit like air transport. Every time there’s an incident, and there have been quite a few more than just the ones that enter our historical memory, there is a response by those who engineer and manage the reactors. At the same time, scientists improve the basic technology. I have to think that, if measured rationally, nuclear power is a lot safer than it used to be and even back then it was not as unsafe as people think.
The potential for new and better nuclear energy is out there. A big hurdle is overcoming the public’s skepticism.
France’s pro-nuclear position is an inconvenient truth.
In any discussions about nuclear energy that I’ve heard, so far I haven’t heard any good answers as to how the radioactive waste products are to be dealt with. To me that is a far larger concern than the issue of disastrous accidents.
Nuclear waste is a very tricky problem, but in hindsight I think it’s a more tractable problem than the alternative greenhouse gases.
It’s true, traditional reactor designs consume only 5% of the energy in their fuel, leaving behind highly radioactive waste. By contrast, an integral fast reactor (IFR) can consume 99.5% of the energy in its fuel, producing far less and far safer waste. Furthermore, IFRs can consume the waste from traditional reactors as fuel. The problem is that we’re stuck with ancient, Cold War reactor designs because we haven’t updated our infrastructure or invested in scaling up IFR fuel reprocessing…
Chernobyl, on the one hand scared most of the world away from nuclear power. On the other hand, it broke the Soviet Union.
The biggest argument against nuclear being a significant portion of a green energy portfolio is that if you started the process to select sites and build new plants today they might be operational in 10-20 years. That’s simply not soon enough to make a difference.
There is no technology that has a timetable to make an impact right now. Nuclear would work as soon as anything else, really. As Chris noted below, even if we initiated renewables plans immediately, we don’t have the ability to store the power created.
I agree that ‘nuclear’ is a good intermediary option. There are some problems with it, such as nuclear arms proliferation, and disposal of highly radioactive waste (for centuries and even millennia), although in volume it is quite compact. These are serious drawbacks, but not impossible to overcome. However, it is a limited resource too.
It should be pointed out that any way of procuring energy has drawbacks.
I think the best way by far is solar. The sun delivers about 23.000 terawatts to the Earth annually, for comparison: total Uranium reserves: 90 to 300 TWy, oil: 240 TWy gas :215 TWy and coal 900 TWy.
Our battery technology (storage) has improved tremendously over the past decades, PV has become an order of magnitude cheaper, and there is CSP (concentrated solar power). If we had invested in research into solar energy instead of nuclear power, or worse Iraq wars*, the West could have been completely energy independent with solar by now.
* an added advantage of going completely solar (or nuclear) is that it would suck the financial lifeblood from fundamentalist Islam.
The problem with solar, and all renewables, is that we simply cannot store the power, the battery designs are not there and are not getting here anytime soon. Why does Germany still burn so much coal (and the worst, dirtiest coal for that matter)? Because they still need a 24/7 supply of electricity for when solar doesn’t do the job (which is almost all the time).
We simply do not have another solution within our grasp right now. Even the issue with waste isn’t as bad as people make out, and next generation reactors will be able to recycle the waste as more fuel. Sure, there’ll be some (safely deposited) waste, but it’s not as bad as climate change.
Are you including the heated waste water used to cool the reactors?
Normally the hot water is sent through cooling towers which loses the heat to the atmosphere. There should be ways to capture and use the heat though. One thing I’m happy about is the clever ways necessity seems to prompt the invention of new solutions.
Why does Germany burn so much coal? At least part of the answer is that the ruling parties are in the pockets of the big energy corporations. Yes, storage is a problem that isn’t fully solved yet, but there are plenty of promising solutions (e.g. power-to-gas using the current natural gas infrastructure). A government really interested in switching to regeneratives would throw a few billions in the direction of such approaches, rather than thinking up ever-new bureaucratic hurdles for solar and gas now that they’re economically competitive.
Battery technology is advancing rapidly and utility-scale installations are beginning to appear.
https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=40072
BJ, I’d be with you — if we had permanently disposed on any of the (huge number of) tons of nuclear waste that keeps right accumulating.
I also just finished reading Midnight in Chernobyl which dampens my enthusiasm for nuclear. And I don’t think the current administration would be any more forthcoming in case of an accident than was the USSR in 1986.
And: Denmark
ugh, typos: disposed of … that keeps right on accumulating.
(And, post script, I find that most nuclear advocates have a Pollyanna-ish attitude towards all those tons of waste.)
Cory can get a bit high on his own supply, but he’s smart, dynamic, has a compelling personal story, and is probably the best retail campaigner the Democrats have. I’m surprised he hasn’t caught fire yet. He still might.
He’s big on reparations which would hand the election to Trump. In gay circles he’s thought to be a closet case.
Maybe they just heard he was a tight end.
You know, at Stanford.
The NYT commentators reviews of the debate varied widely. Such will be the case if one takes the time to read the hundreds of other reviews posted on the Web. This means to me that reading such reviews are a waste of time. People should watch the debate themselves, reach their own judgments, and not be swayed by the pundits.
As I have stated before, being a pundit for a major news outlet is one of the greatest jobs a person can have. Pundits have notoriety, influence, a decent income, can say anything they want that crosses their minds, and, best of all, there are no consequences for being constantly wrong.
Agree. Punditry has become a career field for many out there with a political science degree or previous job in government. I think this really took off when CNN closed all its overseas offices and cut way back on journalist. It became a battle of the talking heads and it sucks. It is cheap television and it is also used allot on MSNBC. Sometimes it is hard to separate the pundits from the true journalist that are being interviewed. They have unlimited opportunities on the internet and many make their living there I guess.
Pundits are the opposite of Journalism. Journalist that are professionals give you the story and let you make your own conclusions. Pundits give you their conclusions and often skip the story.
I agree that debate reviews are worthless. They seem to depend almost solely on the reviewer’s bias toward their candidate of choice.
“Joe Biden: 6.9” [actually 5.9]
I think you’ve given Joe a one point bump. By many accounts he needed it.
Existential despair: The awareness that even one of these ten could lose the election to Trump.
I’ll fix that, thanks.
As in the first debate, this one started with an extended discussion of healthcare, largely dealing with the merits of doing away with private insurance. I will reiterate what I previously commented on this. The debate was inane because the participants gave the impression that the new president on inauguration day could snap his/her fingers and by magic a new health plan would suddenly materialize. In fact, this is what would happen before a universal health plan, regardless of its details, becomes effective and secure.
1. The president would make a proposal to Congress.
2. Assuming the Democrats control both houses of Congress and are able to overcome a Republican filibuster in the Senate, hearings would be held, the original proposal by the president (whatever it may be) would be greatly altered as compromises would be needed to secure the necessary votes for passage. This process could take up to two years.
3. Once the bill is passed and signed, there will be a transition period from four to ten years before the new system is implemented. It is highly likely that this legislation will be the most complex ever passed by Congress as it will effect almost every aspect of the economy and tax law.
4.If during this transition period, the Republicans retake Congress and the presidency, they will do everything in their power to repeal the law and could possibly succeed.
5. During the transition period and even after, there will be a multitude of judicial challenges to the constitutionality of the law. It is not at all inconceivable that the law could be stopped dead in its tracks by a right wing judiciary.
Because of the realities of the American political system, it is foolish to pick a candidate based on his/her health plan. Just hold your breath and hope that in a decade or so there is something approaching universal health care available to all citizens.
+1
I watched the entire debate including some of the post debate interviews. I had more moments of disappointment in this debate than what I’ve watched of the previous ones.
The dreariest moment was when Castro got nasty with Biden. Mayor Pete spoke up about it and expressed my thoughts on it pretty well. I don’t know much about Castro but that little scene dropped him right to the bottom of my list.
I learned something new about Yang last night that has caused me to reevaluate his views, ideas and policy positions with a bit more caution. Going by what a moderator quoted Yang to have said in the past regarding charter schools, Yang’s reply and then poking around on the internet for Yang on education it appears that Yang is a pretty strong proponent of charter schools. A few years ago I spent a good deal of time looking into charter schools. Charter schools are very largely a racket, dominated by a few large corporations and purposely designed and operated to suckle as much as possible off the tax payer teat. And they fail egregiously at education compared to public schools. Sure, there are some good ones. The majority range from not good to horrible. I’m pretty sure Betsy Devos hasn’t done anything to clean this racket up. Is Yang ignorant of all this or is his view skewed by ideology tinted glasses?
There’s a third option: Yang (like I) believes that charter schools can work if properly implemented. In 2009, of the 53 participants in an OECD survey, 25 countries had charter school program. I know that, currently among First World nations, at least Germany, the UK, Sweden, Norway, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and the US all have charter school systems.
Sure, I don’t doubt that it is possible to do charter schools much better than we do. There are some good ones in the US that actually provide good education and allow oversight by the community. But not many.
From what I’ve seen so far, after a bit of looking into it, Yang has not addressed the serious problems with our current system, identified the issue or proposed ways to fix the system. The most he has said is that “I am for good schools.” I appreciate that, so am I. No snark intended. But he seems to be either ignorant of or ignoring the rather significant problems with the current system. That is worrying to me.
Anything can work if properly implemented, no?
Yes, it’s a tautology.
Only if others haven’t already done it successfully.
“If it’s done right, then it’s done right” is a tautology.
Sure, but it’s been proven by multiple countries similar to ours that it can work. It’s not theoretical.
John Olivier’s take on charter schools is priceless.
For one reason or other I can’t link, but searching John Oliver charter schools will get you there. Worthwhile.
Have you lived in a place with bad schools? I have but was fortunate enough to be have enough money to move when my son was five. My poorer neighbors were stuck.
Research on charter schools tend to show a slight improvement. From the Stanford CREDO project:
“This research shows that many urban charter schools are providing superior academic learning for their students, in many cases quite dramatically better. These findings offer important examples of school organization and operation that can serve as models to other schools, including both public charter schools and traditional public schools.”
https://urbancharters.stanford.edu/news.php
Yes, I’ve lived in places with bad schools. For example, right now I live in a place that has pretty poor public schools and several very poor charter schools. I’ve also lived in places that had very good public schools.
I’m not against charter schools in principle. I’m against them as they are, the system as a whole, right now in the US. Overall they are a leech that sucks money and does not benefit the host. The primary solution should be to work at preventing the grifting and cheating endemic in the charter school system and work on fixing public schools.
My instinct is to be anti-charter school, so this is one of the few things on which I don’t fully support Yang’s position. But since I like most of his other ~99 policies I’m willing to give him the benefit of the doubt on this one for now.
“And they fail egregiously at education compared to public schools. Sure, there are some good ones. The majority range from not good to horrible.”
This is correct. MN pioneered them and they are, by and large, a clear failure.
It’s just another GOP plan to: Siphon off taxpayer money to private companies; and, the primary intent:
Kill off the last strong unions in the US (public employees) by attacking public education (you know, the most successful social program ever invented). If millions of kids are hurt, well, that’s required collateral damage for subduing working people.
Nicely said!
Warren is a brilliant woman and understands the policy the way that experts do. But she isn’t popular; she is the 5’th least liked US Senator according to Morning consult (as measured by constituent approval/disapproval).
part of being electable is to get much of the public to like you.
Biden; gaffes, incoherent at times, but manages to connect as “authentic” to many voters; he might well win some of the disaffected Trump supporters over (in the key states)
I love Klobuchar who did very well, but she is simply too low profile to have a realistic shot at the nomination. If she is still in the race when the Illinois primary is held I’ll vote for her, but I don’t see her lasting that long.
Bernie: NO.
I like Buttigieg but I wish he was either in Congress or a governor OR the mayor of a large city (like, say, Chicago)
Booker has an appeal, but I wonder if it is the old “football team captain” reaction in me (yes, he played at Stanford).
I would be somewhat careful using professional polling firms to make your case on any candidates or concluding they know what they are talking about. Saying that Warren is ranked as very low in approval means what? A poll taken where and was likely more of a name recognition thing. You do know that Michael Ramlet is a republican who works for many republicans? Nothing subjective there?
I think Warren has the chance to unite the Dems, which might be enough.
Our main issue is going to be TURNOUT. If we really turn out, we win.
http://www.berettaconsulting.com/barbarossa/M/stuff/inc/El/Popular_Vote_B.jpg
Nobody brings the stats and charts like jblilie. Thanks, bro.
I am also frustrated, disgusted even, by how the press continues give the few front runners a disproportionate share of attention and exposure. They always put the same few in the center. They always ask them questions first. They always give them many more opportunities to respond than the other candidates. This is irresponsible. It skews public opinion. It prevents the public from learning about the other candidates.
It is also annoying how the press will ask questions formulated to stir shit up between two specific candidates. Almost like grade school playground behavior. Yes, they shouldn’t shy away from asking questions about contentious issues. But they shouldn’t be posing them in ways obviously intended to start a fight.
> They always put the same few in the center.
I think this is by design (by the DNC) – the candidates with the best polling get center stage.
Yes, it is by design. It is more or less all by design. On occasion they say so explicitly. For example at the beginning of this debate.
It is frustrating, but I think it’s the network, not necessarily the DNC, that decides this, and I always keep in mind that the goal of the media. is not to find the best person to be president, it’s simply to get people to watch and read their content (and buy their advertisers’ products). Sure, it would be nice to change that incentive, but they aren’t doing anything “wrong” by pursuing their own goals rather than the ones we think they should.
I think they are doing things wrong. Pursuing their own goals beyond a certain degree is bad for society. A free press with a certain level of journalistic ethics is vital to maintain a decent society.
I too think the abolition of private insurances is politically dangerous because it can be easily leveraged by the opposition to scare people. Trump’s campaign is going to be all about fear.
If Warren can somehow moderate her healthcare policy to “Medicare for all that want it” I think she’d be in great shape. I really hope she can figure out a way to thread this healthcare needle.
Warren/Booker is looking like the best package to me right now.
“Trump’s campaign is going to be all about fear.”
I worry that the Dems’ campaign is going to be all about fear—fear of Trump getting re-elected, fear about “racist” immigration policies, fear about climate change catastrophes, etc. I still think the best strategy would be to ignore Trump altogether—the lack of attention would drive him up the wall—and just concentrate on what the Dem candidate intends to do if elected. Even that might not work given that much of what they’re proposing now just won’t fly with the American people, but we’ve already seen that getting dragged down into the mud with Trump is a losing battle. The man is a street fighter who thrives on no-holds-barred smear tactics and who never apologizes. No Dem can beat him at that.
That pair would guarantee a second Trump term.
O’Rourke’s, “yes we are going to take your guns away” takes him off the table for me. Dead certain to lose the election.
And Bernie’s “I am a socialist” video does the same for em with him.
These things are pure poison in US politics.
And, come what may, we need to beat Trump.
Yes. As I said below, O’Rourke is a dead candidate walking. Forget him. He’s toast now.
If Sander’s statement gets more press, he’ll be toast too, if he isn’t already. Odd we don’t see it being played up by the GOPers. Yet.
They (GOP) don;t need to — yet. Just like in 2016, Bernie was doing their work for them(tearing down HRC).
If he had been nominated, the “I am a socialist” and “breadlines are good” vids would have run wall-to-wall to the election day.
They are pure poison until they aren’t. They are betting that these ideas’ time has come. I wouldn’t make that bet but they still might be right.
PA, WI, MI 2016.
Oh, and the whole healthcare debate is frustrating in several ways. All of the candidates’ policy views are in the same ballpark and yet this topic continues to illicit the most acrimonious exchanges, as if they were worlds apart.
Even more frustrating is that none of them have been able spell out how Medicare for all (compulsory or not) gets paid for, in general, on the debate stage. Opponents continue to throw down talking points like, “It will cost $30 trillion and where’s that coming from?”, and “Will it raise middle class taxes?” And no one answers it. Warren maybe was about to last night but got cut off. Bernie almost did in the post debate interview but apparently couldn’t bring himself to clearly state it.
Those two talking points are a bit disingenuous and I don’t understand why they aren’t answered. It’s pretty easy to understand the basics. Yes, taxes will go up to pay for it. Even middle class folks will pay more taxes. That’s how it gets paid for. Opponents want that to sound bad, taxes are evil after all, and want explanations to stop with that admission. However, obviously if a person has Medicare for all coverage then they will no longer be paying a private insurer for healthcare coverage. Their healthcare coverage is not costing them any more than it was. The money is simply being paid to a different entity. In fact, it is nearly certain that Medicare for all will cost the individual less than private insurance and give them not only better coverage but the security of knowing that a serious health issue will not put them in financial distress or bankrupt them.
And then there’s this “$149 million people have health insurance they like,” talking point being thrown around. As some of the candidates last night opined, I call bullshit. I’ve never heard anybody say they like their health insurance but I hear many regularly, routinely, complain about their health insurance. Dealing with health insurance is a tedious nightmare, far worse than dealing with cable companies. $149 million has got to be a large percentage of private polices in the US. I can’t imagine that this claim comes from anywhere other than thin air.
A last note on the healthcare debate, I was a bit disappointed to see several of the candidates use the talking point, “I trust the American people to make their own decisions,” to argue against compulsory Medicare for all. Even Mayor Pete (Dammit Pete, that was a bit trite). I actually do favor elective participation. But really? You trust Americans to figure this shit out and make good choices? If that were reality then we wouldn’t need any kind of government oversight, protections or regulation. No, competence in murky matters like this is not particularly well represented among the individuals that make up our society and there are other humans eager to prey on the rest. No, the reason for favoring elective over compulsory is because that aligns more closely with values that most people in our society hold dear.
I like ol’ Uncle Joe, but doubt he can go the distance. As a campaigner, Biden does great one-on-one, pressing the flesh at county fairs (as long as he keeps his schnoz outta women’s and girls’ hair). But otherwise he’s not impressive — not now, and not in his two earlier runs for the presidential nomination in ’88 and ’06.
Plus, sad to say, but Joe’s just too damn old. Were he to be elected, he’d be 78 on inauguration day, a year older than Ronald Reagan was when he left office. And should he serve two full four-year terms, he’d be 86 at the end, an age when most fellas are cutting back on their shuffleboard schedule ’cause it’s gotten too damn strenuous, not keeping up with other world leaders two decades their junior, or maintaining the grueling daily schedule of recent presidents (at least until Donald Trump instituted “executive time” so he could spend his mornings farting around the WH residence live-tweeting Fox News).
Plus, I think Biden’s popularity, and the perception that he’s the candidate to kick Trump’s ass, is thin, based primarily on name-recognition and the goodwill left over from being Obama’s veep and from 45 years in the middle of the Washington, DC, Democratic fray. Eventually, the support of the progressive wing of the Party, which is currently spread out, will consolidate behind a single candidate, likely Elizabeth Warren, and Biden’s undisputed front-runner status will deliquesce. I don’t know that his loins are girded for that kind of one-on-one battle.
Also, much of Biden’s current support is coming from black voters, particularly older ones, part of the “halo effect” of his connection to Obama. I think Booker and Harris stand a chance of drawing off that support, similar to the way Obama did from Hillary in 2008. This is particularly crucial in the early South Carolina primary, where the Democratic base is almost entirely African-American.
Based on past experience, to remain viable, a Democratic candidate will need to win at least one of the first four primary contests — Iowa (technically, a caucus state), New Hampshire, Nevada (another caucus state), and South Carolina — or at least finish within a point or two of winning three of the four, so as to have a running start at the “Super Tuesday” showdown on March 3rd of next year.
Well, if Biden is too old so is Sanders who is even older. Even Warren, currently 70, would be the oldest president at first inauguration if she wins.
Yeah, Sanders (who’s got a year on Biden) is too old, too.
When it comes to being president, this is No Country for Alter Kockers. 🙂
I would say old is specific to the person. Some stay very sharp at 70. I believe that applies to Warren. Biden is another story and to a lessor degree Bernie. And they are both older than Warren by a number of years. Last night at one point Biden was attempting to but a few sentences together and became very strange, almost off the wall. Talking about what to do with kids in the welfare system or something a was saying turn on the record player, no the radio or TV and on and on. It was goofy and made little sense. Like Ken says, I don’t think he has the staying power. We know how incompetent someone can be as president, we see it everyday. I would like to get away from that.
I think Biden had in mind something like this.
https://images.app.goo.gl/tE3XenHNG8NXtxd87
Yes, I really like the gramophone with bluetooth. Really takes you back to the good old days.
Watch out; Joe’ll crank that LP up to 78 rpm. 🙂
Seems to me Julian Castro was auditioning last night to be the attack-dog VP candidate on the bottom half of the anybody-but-Biden ticket.
I can see where Beto can come off as “pompous” on occasion (see, e.g., his Vanity Fair interview), but I’m not sure “patrician” is an adjective I’d use to describe a former El Paso congressman, or any other pol what’s ever come outta the Lone Star state.
You want “patrician,” check out William Weld, the former Massachusetts governor who’s launched a quixotic, mostly sight-unseen primary challenge against Donald Trump for the Republican nomination. Now that guy, there’s the quintessence of old-school, WASPy, Eastern-establishment patricianism.
Hope he puts a bee in Trump’s bonnet.
I can’t see Trump doing any debates with Weld, there is just nothing in it for him. If he is still around I don’t think he will do any debates period. The only one up to debating Trump is Trump. It’s a how much does everyone love me political event.
I see that the Republican Party cancelled its South Carolina presidential primary as soon as former South Carolina governor and congressman Mark Sanford announced he was mounting a nomination challenge to Trump.
In today’s GOP, it’s Trump first, Party second, and nation thir … er, nation, what nation?
Yes and Mark Sanford compares very well with Trump. He can take off with another woman with the best of them.
Yeah, the old Appalachian Trail — though Trump (who’s hardly one to talk) keeps calling it the “Tallahassee Trail.” Maybe he’s got it mixed up with the Tallahatchie Bridge, you know, the one Billy Joe MacAllister jumped off of. 🙂
The GOP has also cancelled Republican primaries in Nevada, Kansas and Arizona. What are they afraid of? No candidate is polling above 1%. I think Trump and the GOP aren’t at all confident re. the 2020 election.
You’d think the GOP would at least keep an option open, what with Trump being the least popular incumbent ever. Plus, with Trump, there’s always the chance that something so dirty could spill as to render him nonviable. Or, hell, the old lard-ass could keel over. (He’s never been the picture of health.)
Then we’d see some real scrambling.
Cults don’t behave like that.
Yeah, there’s that.
You spelt it wrong.
(Cheap, but I don’t care.)
Ahhh, either of those scenarios might lure me into believing that some sort of benevolent deity was involved. 🤩
Supreme Court justice Felix Frankfurter, as secular a Jew as ever there was, was reported to have remarked upon the death of Chief Justice Fred Vinson (who had stalled the Court’s landmark desegregation decision in Brown v. Board of Education, and was replaced by Earl Warren, who pushed it through) that it was the first solid piece of evidence he’d ever seen for the existence of God. 🙂
Nice anecdote Ken…thanks for that.
In France, everybody has Assistance Maladie, which is run by the state. But that doesn’t cover everything — in fact, less and less, as liberalism moves ahead. So everybody also has coverage with a mutuelle, which may pay a lot of the rest, depending on the mutuelle. The mutuelles can fix their own fees and payment schedules. The USian equivalent would be to leave the private insurance companies in place, but have Social Security or Medicaid, or whatever it would be called, pick up the tab for the most important stuff. Besides, we all know that neither pure socialism or pure capitalism works — or ever has.
If I am understanding the mutuelle it is run by the state but I guess is private? And the process is to reimburse the patient after the fact? I wonder, in France does the government get involved in determining prices charged by the doctors and hospitals?
The mutuelle is not run by the state, it is private, but … well, mutual. It’s (supposedly, at least) non-profit. I know at least some of them are, like the MGEN, the biggest one, which I subscribe to. The thing is that the mutuelles decide their own rate of reimbursement for various things, so some are better for old folks, for instance. If you have a big operation, you can tell the mutuelle about it beforehand and then you don’t have to pay before you are reimbursed, as the pay directly.
I spent a week in hospital for a prostectomy in 2001 and all I paid for was the telephone. Similar more recently for other things, but I won’t bore you with my medical history.
As for prices, there are ceilings on standard prices. But there are two other categories, one of which has higher ceilings and the other none. So designer doctors for the rich still exist, but most people don’t go to them. You do choose your own doctor and hospital. Obviously, the higher categories are not reimbursed at the same rate.
It’s all a bit complicated, of course. I think that’s unavoidable. But it still works.
Ironically, the candidate I in a way know the most about is Beto O’Rourke, as I recently read a book about his (and others) youth – he was a member of the Cult of the Dead Cow, which is was a famous “hacking” group back in the day.
I did not see the debate (nor am I especially interested – have to focus that part of my brain on the more immediate Canadian election), but I would want to understand the pundit ratings a bit more by normalizing them to some degree: look at variance in scores for any one candidate and those given by a given pundit. (To determine standards and polarizations, which might help.)
O’Rouke is now a dead candidate walking. His “Hell yes, we’re going to take your AR15s” was his death sentence. Forget him. He’s toast now.
I think the Dems are talking about healthcare wrong. Instead of sketching a new system, they should base it on one of the more effective/efficient existing systems (Taiwan?).
It’s more reassuring and easier to understand something based on an existing, working system.
Conservatives will be digging up the worst horror stories they find about “socialized medicine” and we could counter with “Taiwan doesn’t have those problems.”
Yes, the idea that we might look at other successful systems just would not occur. It’s like, if I did not think of it, can’t be any good. Or, we would prefer to invent a system ourselves and then go through all the pain a fixing it. What the hell is wrong with us?
At the very least they need to show they’ve extensively analyzed existing systems.
Once there is a nominee that person needs to assemble the proverbial blue ribbon team to do this analysis and produce an outline for going forward.
I like Warren a lot, but I think they have her number on the Useful Idiots podcast where they said she’s identity politics for journalists. I wonder how “electable” she’ll be in the general election. Bernie, by contrast (and despite his performance last night), is the candidate most likely to peel away from Trump those most coveted of voters, the working class voters who became disenchanted with the Dems after Obama and went for Trump. But no one who’s concerned about “electability” seems to consider that. Weird.
The GOP never went after Bernie in 2016. Why would they, he was doing their work for them.
They never had to make up those commercials based on Bernie “I am a socialist” and “breadlines are good” videos. These would easily overbalance any popular appeal he may have with Joe and Mary Sixpack.
I don’t think anyone but the most partisan voter believes any of that spin (about the content of the alleged ads or why the GOP didn’t feel like they had to run them). Meanwhile : https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/08/02/us/politics/2020-democratic-fundraising.html
Bernie wrote the ads for them.
Bernie 2016 was doing their work for them: Beating up on HRC for months, splitting the Democrat party. (Bernie was never a Democrat, in his life, until 5-Nov-2015.)
I wasn’t being clear; I know he said that. Anyone can look that up, and if I recall correctly, Fox already tried to make an issue out of it this cycle. I should have said “effect” instead of “content” — I had rewritten the sentence and missed that.
In any case, if this is such dynamite, I wonder why none of his opponents this primary or the last have bothered to use it? Maybe they recognize that there’s nothing there? Or it gives ammunition to Bernie? After all America had bread lines in the 30s; are you saying they shouldn’t have and should have let people starve? And the GOP is running a candidate who says things that sound more outrageous on a daily basis. Doesn’t seem to move his numbers too much. You think people are going to hear that in the general election and that’s what’s going to tip them over to Trump?
To be clear, I’d prefer a President Warren, but the buzz word around these primaries is “electability” and Bernie has that more than anyone.
I’m afraid Bernie has jumped the shark. He really didn’t look or sound good in last night’s debate. Socialism doesn’t scare me but a guy who thinks calling himself a “socialist” is a way to win the Presidency scares me. IMHO, it scares a lot of voters and buys him nothing.
Sorry to keep posting, but I also take issue with “Bernie…doing [the GOP’s] work for them… splitting the Democratic Party.”
Hillary got 65.8 million votes in 2016 compared to Obama’s 65.9 million votes. I don’t see a split there. And Bernie didn’t do anything off-side when he attacked her as a primary candidate and he certainly had nothing to do with Hillary losing the general election. He didn’t talk about “deplorables”, he didn’t reopen an FBI investigation on her emails, and he didn’t give her 2 decades of political baggage and a white-hot hate from the right. It sucks that she lost, but in my opinion it sucks even more that she won the primary in the first place.
The “debates”, primaries, and election are somewhat like “fantasy football”; an amusement for some perhaps, but ultimately insignificant.
We still have the Electoral College, where only a 538 votes actually count in a Presidential election, and those voters can vote as they wish: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/22/us/politics/electoral-college-faithless-elector.html
The Federal Election Commission is essentially defunct: https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/459557-federal-election-commission-is-now-out-of-commission-thats-downright-scary
So it really doesn’t matter for most of us: the next President will be decided by a few, and nobody’s going to be paying attention to any shenanigans that might take place before, during, or after the election (unless things change, and the GOP currently in power doesn’t want that). Electoral College results go before the combined Congress, and if there are problems with that, the courts may get involved, as has happened in the past (Gore vs. Bush); this time the courts will have been packed by Trump appointees (thanks to McConnell, with help from Schumer and Pelosi).
With that in mind: I missed the first couple of minutes, and I stopped watching when ABC broke for commercials after 2:20. Sanders still sounds like an angry old man (with a crackly voice), Harris sounded drunk, Biden incoherent at times (and we was just plain wrong on weapon ownership vs. the Constitution; there are laws preventing private ownership of tanks, cannon, etc.; there’s no Constitutional reason in principle why private ownership of military assault rifles cannot be banned). The rest sounded mostly reasonable (although O’Roarke’s remarks won’t sit well with gun nuts). Other topics (e.g. reparations) are a distraction and will alienate many. Still others (UBI, health care) are too complex for sound bites.
My worries:
Bernie’s “I am a socialist” and “breadlines are good” videos make him non-viable at the national level. (The GOP never had to bring out those attack ads in 2016.)
O’Rourke’s “Yes, we’re going to take away your guns” from last night does the same for him.
The Dems need a clear policy on immigration. Lacking this, it’s smirking Drumpf for another 4 years and I don’t think RBG (Hank bless her) can last that long.
The Dems need to be wary of reparations, wokeness, being too fierce on gun control (which I favor), free this that and the other.
The Trump voters in WI, MI, and PA that gave him the POTUS seat will not be swayed back by such stuff.
Sorry but I think you are wrong on O’Rourke. I have been watching some of the reruns today and his moment on the guns was a really good one. He said, yes, we are going to take your AR-15s and AK-47s. Assault weapons, guns of war. Why would not every reasonable democrat and republican say the same. I would be disgusted if they did not. We are not looking for votes from the NRA. We are not looking for mental cases and ignorant people who think these guns are used in hunting. We are attempting to stop the killing of innocent people with these things.
Obviously you are entitled to that opinion (and I would love to be wrong); but I’ve watched that issue my entire life and it’s no different now.
He wrote the commercial for the GOP. It’s the exact quote that the GOP scare tactics use (and the conspiracy nuts use). They won’t provide context in those TV commercials.
I live with the people that went for Trump in 2016. This is poison for them. After the school shooting at Stoneman Douglas HS, they interviewed a young man whose sister was killed during the Pulse night club shooting. He was still against any restrictions on guns (and ammo, magazines, silencers, etc.). This is what we are up against.
My wife’s relatives wear camo. They will never vote for anyone who says anything about gun restriction of any sort.
The GOP strategy is to pull the economic rug out from under the working class while distracting them with the 4 Gs: God, guns, gays, and blacks. We can’t make it easy for them.
Remember the backlash against Obama’s guns and Bibles comments? “They get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.” These are the Trump voters.
Some independents will be repulsed by Trump’s idiocy, corruption, tariffs, trade war, misogyny, racism, etc.; we have to make sure we can appeal to those people. Saying “we will take away your guns” is not the way (in my opinion). How about: “stronger background checks” or “close gun show loopholes” or “stop people on the terrorism no-fly list from owning or buying guns”.
You don’t seem to understand what was being said. The ONLY guns he is speaking of are the guns for war. If the people you live around do not get it, too bad. Times have changed and these guns must go. I do not care one bit about the republicans or anyone who think we need these weapons of death. That old garbage about the slippery slope or crying that they are coming to take our guns is just not going to work. This should be used by any democratic candidate that gets the nomination. By the way, the corrupt NRA is likely in very bad shape and losing followers. If you think I am some liberal who knows nothing about guns, think again. I grew up with and around guns. I probably know more about them than you. If it were my call, we would be getting rid of hand guns as well.
They’re not guns for war. A semi-auto .223 carbine like an AR-15 wouldn’t be considered a weapon of war. No modern military would actually use them in a war. And people do use them for hunting.
If AR-15s are banned, someone will make a different shaped semi-auto .223 carbine that takes big magazines and is equally deadly.
I don’t think banning semi-auto carbines is feasible, but magazine size should be addressed. Limiting magazines to 6 rounds might be feasible.
FWIW I’d wouldn’t mind if all semi-autos were banned, but I don’t think that’s possible.
What you are claiming simply is not true. The AR-15 semi-auto rifles, made by Winchester are nothing more than a replica of military rifles like the M-16. Allowing these type guns total deregulation in the 90s when the assault weapons ban was lifted allowed this company and others to make a fortune. Every kid and nut case had to have one, along with 15 and 30 round clips. What the hell you would hunt with these, I have no idea. In the state I grew up in and hunted, there is nothing you can legally hunt. You cannot even use a rifle in Iowa to hunt deer. Guess why….it is to damn dangerous. Deer hunting in this state is with a shotgun. Do you know what that is? You would use slugs. Much safer than a rifle of any kind. That 223 caliber you speak of is exactly the same as an M-16. Only difference is that the military ammo is steal jacket.
These war rifles are handy for the nuts and criminals because they have short barrels and they can hide them easily to get into schools or shopping centers….you know, places where they hunt. And yes, I have wasted enough time on folks like you who know nothing about this subject.
No, they’re not the same. The M-16 has full auto fire mode.
When misinformed people call an AR-15 a “weapon of war” they lose credibility with people that know guns, making the argument even more difficult.
The AR-15 is a semi-auto carbine, and there are lots of semi-auto carbines that look less military-like but are equally deadly. A Ruger Mini 14 looks like a small hunting rifle but is just as lethal as an AR-15 and wouldn’t be covered by an “assault weapon” ban.
I will repeat what I said last week on this issue that if only every American was a gun expert and could tell a M-16 from an AR-15, nobody would be calling for gun control because it won’t help. In my view it isn’t the technical subtleties of automatic or semi-automatic, or assault vs home protection. It’s the psychological aspect that if people start reigning in the gun culture, we will begin to see a change in metal attitudes. We need to shift the political atmosphere from one of total apoplexy to a rational, problem solving mode. It’s going to take legislation that sends a message more that a silver bullet that ends the violence.
It always amazes me when a gun advocate shifts the conversation to typology. As if this makes a damn bit of difference to the victims of mass shootings.
I’m not a gun advocate, I’m a gun control advocate. If you want to make progress on gun control you must be clear and understand the issues.
If “assault weapons” are banned, people will simply switch to other guns that are equally deadly, then we go through another fight to ban more kinds of guns.
Magazine size is the important thing that can be feasibly addressed. Banning all semi-auto carbines over a certain caliber (.22) would be effective in lowering the accessible lethality, but that would be very difficult because it would include many more utility/hunting rifles.
In another comment I mentioned that I wouldn’t mind if all semi-auto guns were banned, but that would be very very difficult, so I think magazine size is the hill to die on at this time.
I’m sorry, but arguments about weapon typology is simply a distraction at this point. We’re trying to establish the most fundamental features of sensible gun laws in the US, the idea, for example, that people who own firearms should have to hold licenses at least as “onerous” as those we require for automobile drivers.
Arguments about whether an AR-15 constitutes a proper military weapon is at best a distraction. We can fret about that come the time when we’re working out implementation details of a systematic gun removal program.
Yes, this irks me too. Like it really matters what you call a weapon that fires many rounds without reloading. (Hey! Did I get that right?) My answer to them is, if you’re honest, perhaps we’ll hire you to help us with the wording of the legislation that will ban them.
Yes, I agree with this. Although it seems insane that someone would think having more guns makes one safer, it seems very unlikely we will move many people that feel this way by simply making logical arguments more strongly.
Our best hope is for society to make a gradual move away from its current gun-happy state. After all, it wasn’t always like this. When I was a child in the 1950s, I certainly don’t remember all this talk about guns and the 2nd amendment. If this is going to happen, it will be by chipping away at it — passing background check laws, closing loopholes, etc. Unfortunately, we’re going to have to endure a lot more mass shootings.
On the other hand, we know that societal change can happen quickly. We have had a black President, gay rights, and legalization of marijuana. I would not have predicted all those things would happen so fast. The tipping point can be real!
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I don’t have a direct oar in this race, but I wonder what the leading Democrats views are on Woke ideas on ‘Free Speech’ such as this from 2015.
“Free speech is the right to educated speech. If you utilize your right to ‘freedom of speech’ but then are socially or politically apathetic, you don’t vote, educate yourself on social issues, if you are not involved in the community, if you are not involved in being a citizen, an educated citizen, you have no right to free speech.”
That’s a great audience question for the next debate! My guess is that, being politicians, their answers would be unsatisfying to people who read this website. They wouldn’t agree with your 2015 quote but also wouldn’t embrace the simple, unalloyed right of free speech. They’d shoehorn something in against hate speech.
I rate them thusly:
Warren
Yang
Booker
I anticipate that a lot of disadvantaged and young people would flock to Yang. UBI makes sense.
If you’re a Democratic centrist, then you are missing out on the intelligent, practical Amy Klobuchar, as the reasonable replacement for the elderly and somewhat halting Joe Biden.