2020 Democratic presidential primary

No one who volunteered to go to Afghanistan in 2014 has "good instincts."

lol 2014 are you serious i thought that shit was like last decade

he joined in 2009 but was in the reserve until 2017

Warren like every candidate has to triangulate between a progressive primary platform and a more centrist general election platform

it may be necessary right now but I don't think intense partisanship is a good thing

why

it's become tribal and toxic

I know it doesn't mean much in the face of the current insanity of the republican party, more in the abstract

https://media1.giphy.com/media/1nDm900wgGU1O/giphy.gif

cool, well its the historical norm for american government except for the anomalous cold war years. southern white segregationists and northern democrats shared a party until the the civil rights agenda scared off the white segregationists. it took a generation, but they all joined the republicans by the 1990s. the parties have been far apart ever since.

reversing this trend would require an overlap of agendas between the two parties which seems unlikely since one side's base wants free health care and the other base wants white nationalism.

in this situation, partisanship is v good and bipartisanship means giving white nationalists a concession.

xxp

you're right of course

*kisses biceps* goddamn right

may I recommend reading anything about history ever

― Simon H., Saturday, November 16, 2019 10:46 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

My view of history is that countries that are long stable and act with moderation have much higher scores when it comes to social progress.

The problem is that only American citizens don’t understand that at this moment in history, single payer health care is the actual moderate choice.

I was only trying to say that "progress is achieved incrementally" is ahistorical or at least not consistently true.

I think it's fair to criticize Warren's strategy (who knows what the congress is 3 years into her presidency) but I'm always shocked when someone expresses that she doesn't care about Medicare for All. One thing is analysis, the other is just being part of the cult.

I take no position on whether she "cares about" M4A but if I were a supporter of hers who was a strong proponent of M4A, earnest sentiments like this would concern me

Negative fallout from Medicare For All? @ewarren has a plan for that!
Her transition plan to MFA sounds more like that of @PeteButtigieg and @Joebiden, preserving private choice with a robust public option.
It’s a better place to be.https://t.co/HtoIiJDXsq

— David Axelrod (@davidaxelrod) November 16, 2019

xp I disagree with that. I think progress has been achieved in many ways, increments is one of them. Comparing situation from beginning of 20th century, Nordic countries/Can/Australia/NZ had incrementalist approaches to social progress and have been more successful than most nations, including powerful nations that have tried to achieve social progress through more direct methods. I think there is such a thing as a populist trap where one side only think about its base which riles up the other opposing base who then only think about its base and then it just escalates from there into instability, and no progress seems to get done within unstable timeframe. In the case of the us, the big mistake of moderates is to not recognize that medicare for all can break the lock. I think the big mistake from the Warren/Sanders side (I support Warren) is to think everyone will and should get behind it in no time because it is the good policy. Deep down, I believe that had the US population wanted universal health care they would have voted for it a long time ago.

I said it upthread but I think preserving private choice is going to work long term because people will realize that there is no use paying much more for the same service than people with medicare will get.

I believe that had the US population wanted universal health care they would have voted for it a long time ago.

when have they had the chance to vote on this

Any day since it has been invented?

I mean electoral history chose a clear preference for racist demagogues over universal health care over the what? last 60 years?

again, when has that EVER been the choice presented

unless I've missed all those times M4A, single payer or an equivalent proposal was part of the Democratic platform as opposed to slight expansions/reforms

Simon isn’t it two in the morning

incremental progress

NHS wasn't incremental

Not that you’re wrong I just question your priorities

If it were such a winning electoral issue that was beloved by americans all over it would have been used as an electoral issue to win votes. American people have made the choice to not care about it. Heck it seems half of the democratic base still doesn't give a shit about it.

Anyway millions will die needlessly waiting for incremental progress

you're not alone xps

If it were such a winning electoral issue that was beloved by americans all over it would have been used as an electoral issue to win votes.

I wonder if maybe there's a set of powerful actors more invested in stuffing their pockets than improving people's lives who have gotten in the way of making the case for it

Yeah there was never any massive corporations in France, Germany, Canada, Japan and in the UK.

I don't think it's controversial to say there'a a difference in magnitude between

actually silby was right I'm going back to alan rudolph

The benevolent people who voted for Reagan twice, Bush once, Clinton twice, Bush twice, Trump once, all they ever wanted was universal health care but ugh no one came up with that idea and presented it to them!

Yeah there was never any massive corporations in France, Germany, Canada, Japan and in the UK.

Germany's healthcare system dates to the 19th century, the UK and France to the immediate aftermath of WW2. Massive corporations have put in quite a bit of work in all three undermining things in the neoliberal era.

Incremental change in dismantling the NHS has been relatively successful, and it should be pointed out in that case that outright removal is unfeasible. The way to do it is to underfund it to the point where people complain about the service, and the question of privatisation becomes palatable (it still isn't yet, that still at least 5 years away I would say, depending on Brexit)

Incremental change and radical change are like a knife and fork. Useless if you have no dinner

I appreciate when male white posters posture about incremental vs radical change early Sunday mornings

When’s the best time?

In the bathroom, door closed, posting to your Livejournal account

Let’s see if that kind of policing will have an effect.

I've lit a candle to St. Jude.

I believe that had the US population wanted universal health care they would have voted for it a long time ago.

I believe this shows an almost willful ignorance of the history of US politics and how the system operates. The political power of "the US population" is heavily diluted and diverted into channels that are defined for them by the wealthy, whose major interest is the maintenance of a global empire.

ugh I am really tired of ignorant crackpot energy. incrementalism is fucking bullshit, come fucking on

just shut the fuck up and stop trying to be a pundit or whatever. Please. For the children at least

not you aimless

Honest question then: how come other ultra-wealthy countries, some of which have higher rates of billionaires per capita (Sweden, Norway), others who have vast corporate interests abroad (France, Canada, UK), have managed to build solid universal health care institutions?

Honest answer: smaller, less mobile populations operating under parliamentary systems, and the adoption of universal health care during their post-WWII, post-imperial, post-colonial 'reconstruction' periods.

Smaller populations I can get behind, parliamentary systems not as much. France and Italy and some latin American nations have systems that are closer to the US than to Westminster style politics and they have UHC.

cant forget the specific strength of health care corporate lobbying and american exceptionalism i guess

Why would corporate health care lobbyism thrive in the US and not nearly as much in other nations?

You might find some answers in this Beatrix Hoffman paper in '03 which seems to foretell the more unified push for M4A we're seeing now

Abstract

Because of the importance of grassroots social movements, or “change from below,” in the history of US reform, the relationship between social movements and demands for universal health care is a critical one.

National health reform campaigns in the 20th century were initiated and run by elites more concerned with defending against attacks from interest groups than with popular mobilization, and grassroots reformers in the labor, civil rights, feminist, and AIDS activist movements have concentrated more on immediate and incremental changes than on transforming the health care system itself.

However, grassroots health care demands have also contained the seeds of a wider critique of the American health care system, leading some movements to adopt calls for universal coverage.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1447696/