2020 Democratic presidential primary

wouldn't be too fair to judge bernie by the actions of his kids either

yeah honestly I am a berner but that's reaching hard.

― longtime caller, first time listener (man alive), Thursday, August 29, 2019 9:41 AM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

no, it's completely stupid. take that thoughtless shit back to twitter.

― Yerac, Thursday, August 29, 2019 9:43 AM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

Just to be clear, I'm agreeing with you

tbf the current supreme court is likely to strike down most federal statutes they don't care for as unconstitutional on the basis that the federal government isn't allowed to enact statutes

that the federal government can establish a healthcare system is settled law. that the federal government can explicitly outlaw entire private industries, not so much.

(I don't disagree w you btw, just sayin some things are likelier to make it past the court than others)

I kind of feel like the whole "would you abolish private insurance" question was a setup, but they did raise their hands so IDK. As has been pointed out, there is really no need to do so. To paraphrase Grover Norquist, you don't need to destroy it, you just shrink it to the size that you can drown it in a bathtub.

The constitutional question is an interesting one to ponder and I'd have to give it some thought. It's especially weird since insurance is one of the few national businesses that's still done and regulated on a state-by-state business, so that makes the whole "interstate commerce" question more difficult. Obviously it is possible for government to outlaw an entire line of business, for example the sale and trafficking of cocaine.

But it's pretty academic since I can't see any reason why a law banning private health insurance would be necessary.

xpost, oh my thing was in response to j listing dead people, which I may have totally misread.

exactly! It isn't necessary at all.

xp

It's just weird to me that it became an issue, because I don't remember bernie or anyone else saying "abolish private health insurance" until it was raised at the debate. Maybe I'm wrong.

Don't they mean that they'd establish an all-encompassing public insurance system that would make private companies redundant?

that nuance is often lost on the general public. The GOP will just say "they are going to take away your health insurance"

also the debate question was literally phrased to accentuate the abolition of private insurance

Yeah, it was definitely a setup. But doesn't the Bernie plan call for banning health care plans that 'duplicate' what is being offered by the M4A plan?

yes, which is a sort of stupid provision imo

overemphasis on the wonky specifics of "plans" during a presidential campaign is irritating anyway. No president EVER has the ability to enact a "plan" exactly the way it was laid out in a campaign platform.

yeah I brought that up earlier

it's just a tactic for ginning up conflict/trying to get the candidates to draw blood

I was happy that during the last debate Booker? kept bringing up that the questions and conversations were all circling GOP talking points instead of asking real questions.

It is fair enough to be suspicious of the specifically announced promises made by a candidate during a campaign, because the US legislative system prevents most of them from being delivered. Mostly it prevents anything from being done at all by anyone.

But the tweet Simon H. posted displays more of a conspiracy theorist mindset, taking an isolated fact that is, at best merely suggestive, and presents it as a dark secret that demonstrates what Warren REALLY thinks is actually the opposite of what she says. That's just hugely stupid. If passing M4A were easy, it would have happened under Truman. Or LBJ. Or Bill Clinton. Or Obama.

Yeah while I won't support Booker or Buttigieg, for example, I'm glad that it's become a more general tack among the democratic field to emphasize opposition to the republican party in general and to try to avoid getting caught in their traps.

If passing M4A were easy, it would have happened under Truman. Or LBJ. Or Bill Clinton. Or Obama.

Not so sure about this though. I mean, what are we actually talking about here, what politicians believe in their heart of hearts? That only has so much relevance -- who they take money from, who they kowtow to to get elected, what their track record is, what they've consistently publicly said over time, these are much important factors imo in discerning what you can consider to be the "true" goals of a politician.

I have no idea if deep down in their souls Obama or Clinton believed in something like M4A. It's irrelevant.

The main difference between Bernie and Warren for me is more in approach. Bernie is the one building the movement, pushing the discourse, moving the overton window. I've always liked Warren and would vote for her in a heartbeat, but she hasn't shown the same kind of leadership on these issues. The difference between Bernie and Warren is that M4A wouldn't BE a key 2020 issue if not for him.

I don't think you need leadership. To be a good politician is a product of timing as much as talent. Sanders has proven by far the most influential pol of the last decade, for which he has my gratitude; Warren, though, has the right age and mien.

let's *effectively* kill private insurance

For example, for a gay voter of color such as moi to hear a black man named Barack Hussein Obama mention gay Americans living in red states in a 2004 DNC address made suddenly irrelevant and embarrassing twenty years of DLC-inspired waffling and hewing to the middle; it aged John Kerry about twenty years. That's timing. It couldn't have happened in 2000 or 2002.

Warren, though, has the right age and mien.

70, and... a capitalist to her bones?

we're facing an extinction event, we need leadership

A seventy-year-old woman is not a seventy-seven-year-old man, c'mon.

lol if you think capitalism's going anywhere.

There's an existential threat, and only she and Sanders know it.

i just want a capitalist who's skin deep, like Bernie

Tbc I was asking about Warren's daughter because I was surprised it hadn't come up before, cause the slightest tinge of potential conflict of interest or whatever tends to get raised when it comes to direct family (how many times has the press tried to make something out of Jane Sandees' college misadventure, for example), and I'm sorry but it is weird given her love of plans that M4A is seemingly the one major issue she hasn't rolled out her own detailed plan for. (I'm half expecting her to release one today tbh)

how many times has the press tried to make something out of Jane Sandees' college misadventure, for example

Zero? I mean, they¨ve told the story, which is kinda sorta news-worthy, a lot more news-worthy than the founding of some health start up, but has anyone tried to go 'btw, Sanders does not have a plan about punishing struggling universities'?

I don't even see an appearance of a conflict of interest. Her daughter is currently 47 yrs old. 20 years ago she had a start up for two years in the healthcare sector. so what. This is turning into that Mister Gotcha comic strip.

Ridiculous that Yang is hanging in there rmde

ABC News, the organization hosting the debate, first disclosed the official list of participants: former Vice President Joe Biden, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.), South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg (D), former Rep. Beto O’Rourke (D-Texas), former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julián Castro and tech entrepreneur Andrew Yang.

I kinda like the way it's been used when all the mediocre men complain that the rules were too hard: But Andrew Yang made it, how hard can it be?

Ridiculous that Yang is hanging in there rmde

yang sucks but he's "hanging in there" better than others, despite things like this

CNN: "We have decided that if @AndrewYang didn't exist, these would be the top 6 from the Quinnipiac poll, so despite Yang polling 3% in this poll, there is no point in displaying him in the top 6."#YangGang #Yang2020 #WhoIsAndrewYang? pic.twitter.com/S3geCQ0HC9

— Scott Santens (@scottsantens) August 28, 2019

The reason to ban private insurance from competing with the public system is that it would lead to a two-tier system where the wealthy could buy a higher or faster level of care, potentially draining resources from everyone else's. I guess if you regulated private insurers so heavily that they couldn't do this, you would avoid the problem but you would also eliminate the reason for a private insurer to exist at all, so that seems m/l like a ban.

#YANGinginthere

we're facing an extinction event, we need leadership

With a two-party system and all-or-nothing voting, the US requires you to vote for the least-intolerable option, rather than picking the closest-to-your-ideal first and then numbering the others in preference.

It's absolutely wild and unprecedented that the primary vote is almost certainly going to be between two candidates who are both good-to-great on most issues. They're both too old, but they're experienced and visibly productive. Bernie is more fiery and has single-handedly changed the national narrative to a point where universal health-care is no longer a pipe dream, but Warren is firing off Quite Good policies week by week, and getting great at campaigning (15k at her Seattle rally on the weekend, enraging Trump just on numbers). Yes, Warren is in favour of individuals owning businesses, but she has shitloads of plans for antitrust and re-regulation that would ameliorate some of the most destructive effects of late capitalism.

Would I personally get behind a candidate who promised to open all prisons, refill them with bankers & pharma lobbyists, and give billionaires three months to divest or have their heads placed on pikes? Probably! Is there the faintest chance of getting someone with a better agenda than Warren, with more and better policy propositions drafted and published already, and with popular support that matches Bernie, on the ticket by next year? No.

Bernie's a remarkable organiser. Warren looks like a better leader of one branch of government right now. You can bemoan specifics of her policies not meeting your preferences, but you're blessed if your lesser-of-two-shitbags choice has to be between those two.

boomin' post, sic

As opposed to the mighty leadership of Joe Bipartisan:

“This is the God’s truth,” Biden had said as he told the story. “My word as a Biden.”

Except almost every detail in the story appears to be incorrect. Based on interviews with more than a dozen U.S. troops, their commanders and Biden campaign officials, it appears as though the former vice president has jumbled elements of at least three actual events into one story of bravery, compassion and regret that never happened.

Biden visited Kunar province in 2008 as a U.S. senator, not as vice president. The service member who performed the celebrated rescue that Biden described was a 20-year-old Army specialist, not a much older Navy captain. And that soldier, Kyle J. White, never had a Silver Star, or any other medal, pinned on him by Biden. At a White House ceremony six years after Biden’s visit, White stood at attention as President Barack Obama placed a Medal of Honor, the nation’s highest award for valor, around his neck.

The upshot: In the space of three minutes, Biden got the time period, the location, the heroic act, the type of medal, the military branch and the rank of the recipient wrong, as well as his own role in the ceremony.

cheers, Alfred!

whatever they may say now, the last election suggests the vast majority of Bernie people would fall in line behind Warren (and, I hope, vice versa). Biden? not so sure it would be so easy to keep the enthusiasm up. xps

xp Sund4r: Actually I think the reason private insurance is banned is not so much tiers of care, but because otherwise private insurers would drop more risky/costly populations onto the public option.

As for banning private insurance, I think simply not subsidizing it would be enough. The current system where private health insurance is tax advantaged to both employer and employed compared to ordinary income or other benefits began in WWII, because the War Labor Board feared large strikes due to wage controls. Treating private health insurance premiums similarly to other financial services in tax law would markedly reduce incentives for private insurance. Yes, there would be millionaires with better coverage than Medicare, but so long as that population in small enough to little effect aggregate demand, healthcare pricing, and the parasitic load of excess health care/finance on the rest of the economy, I don't care.

I'd like to keep Greenland, so I obviously hope everyone in the US will do whatever they can to get the Dem candidate elected, but if it's Biden, I'm honestly pretty happy I won't have to vote for him and tell others to do the same...

xp Sund4r: Actually I think the reason private insurance is banned is not so much tiers of care, but because otherwise private insurers would drop more risky/costly populations onto the public option.

That's kind of what Medicare and Medicaid already do to a large extent. Putting more healthy people into govt healthcare and raising overall taxes going to pay for it would actually make it more financially sound, not less.

The 4 Democratic presidential candidates who cosponsored Bernie Sanders’ Medicare for All Senate bill either no longer support it or won’t say if they do https://t.co/v2bJxFjjlh

— Politics Insider (@Politicsinsider) August 20, 2019

I don’t take “we didn’t hear back from them” as indicative of anything

Warren will probably release her own legislative proposal, Gillibrand has other concerns right now, who cares whether Booker answers phone calls from @Politicsinsider