Forums / Discussion / General

>Just a reminder that BernieBros = MAGA.

This is the stupidest thing you have ever said.

Yeah I've literally never understood that narrative. Well, actually, I understand the when and why of it developing, but not why people still unironically claim it to be true.

I'm not even particularly fond of Sanders, but at least try and find a criticism – if you can even call this that – with some degree of reality to it.

Just a reminder that “berniebros” are a made up concept, created to smear Sanders supporters as sexist

I think "just a reminder" might be my least favourite phrase.

Brent, why don't you go suck Bloomberg's cock? Suck it enough and he might even give a tip.

Are you implying Biden supporters don't get upset when someone insults biden? or Buttigieg supporters when buttigieg is insulted? etc
Bernie doesn't have a cult any more than anyone else does.
Literally even BENNET has die hard fans

One die hard Bennet fan here in Marshalltown. Jeff Harris, substitute teacher. His wife's with Klobuchar. "Only need 19 more now!" Gotta respect it. pic.twitter.com/28T73H2RGk

— Jada Yuan (@jadabird) February 4, 2020

It's fucking happening! I told you so.

She's back and she's with Bloomberg. The establisment DNC will screw Bernie over AGAIN and the left will lose again. GG lefties. President Trump for the next 4 years is a lock now.

ah yes, the Drudge Report, what a very credible source /s

You can't come back if you never left in the first place.

Daily mail if you checked the link, the pic of Hillary and Mike is where I could first find the two of them together.

Alright, that is true. Still, this is the biggest "FU" to the bernie/AOC wing of the party I have seen in ages. They are not even bothering to hide it any more with the DNC's brokered convention now.

you should maybe actually read an article before posting it.

! https://i.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/original/000/011/512/mrbones.jpg!
top fucking kek
it’s like he’s trying to sink his own campaign

I can't believe it but I have to agree with Poochy here. That IS dumb.

More like he is crashing the whole DNC's chances this cycle.

Hopefully, down with the dnc, up with Gabbard and Sanders

You didn't criticize them, you just parroted a neoliberal smear that's completely unfounded and only exists because they can't form a proper argument against Bernie's policies.

Yeah, what a funny joke to vote for someone you actually support and feels will represent your ideology. What a crazy idea that is.

I mean come on guys we gooooota beat Trump, blue no matter who! Never Trump! Real liberals are against everything Trump represents! We can't have a racist pro war homophobic billionaire so we should vote for a racist pro war billionaire whos pro gay marriage

BTW fokes

IM STILL WITH HER, YASSS QUEEN!!!!!

My pro war billionaire is more moral than your pro war billionaire!

“Anyone who isn’t one of the elites is a joke”
you are peak neolib

BrentD15's a literal neolib, got it

A part of me wants real bad for it to be Bloomberg and Hillary vs Trump and Pence, goddam what a show that will be. I'm probably going to be hated for saying this, but it would be an amazing political season.

A populist billionaire that is a sledgehammer to the sanctity of the Presidential office versus an elitist billionaire that is ideological anathema to so, so so much of the Democratic party.

The sheer irony of a former Clinton supporter turned Clinton enemy versus a former Republican now wholly elitist Democrat who's runninng with Clinton as a running mate.

This is HBO level politics.

And… underneath it all the acceleration will continue.

>Bloomberg and Hillary vs Trump and Pence

I hate people who say "both sides are the same", but wow would they be 100% right if it came to that. They are identical.

I really really want to see a debate between Sanders and Trump. I think that would be incredible.

You think trump will debate. That's cute.

>Just a reminder that BernieBros = MAGA

Brent, the fuck are smoking and can I have some

Im super fine with anyone not liking Sanders and Yang's policies or even if you like neo liberal aka "Diet Republican" stances

Its the disingenuous horse shit arguments that bug me. The "electable" argument especially

Even if they were right and Sanders is less electable (which is wrong) than the other shills. Im not going to throw my vote at some piece of shit puppet who I hate on the off chance they might win

Oh boy the guy with the blue tie might win. He will keep deregulating private sectors at the cost to our health say we can't afford to fix medical issues we caused then enter into more trillion dollar wars. But maybe he will push left social reform when it polls above 60% and ban big gulps.

There are multiple ways to interpret this.

In one way, Bernie and Trump are flip side of the same coin. That coin being populism. I.e. Trump represented the right-wing populism, and Bernie Sanders, represents a left-wing populism. Both have similar view points in America's trading policy in the last few decades, primarily, selling out the "working class" (both interpret it differently) to an internationalism. Both are pariahs of the establishment within both parties, and both are a threat to a particular stain to neoliberalism/neoconservatism world view. As Steve Bannon pointed out, both have identified a particular problem, the difference being the solution. (In my opinion, they both have a very shallow view of the problem, and shallow solutions to the problem).

The other way of looking at it is this: Bernie Sanders politics, his views on economics/social issues is extremely out of touch with the common American. The subset of hard-leftists who want socialism are a minuscule percentage of the over all populace. His ideas for "medical for all" is fairly unpopular. His history with cavorting with actual communists and socialists during the height of the cold war does not make a great position to vote from, especially from a demographic that still remembers the coldwar, and tends to outvote the generation that does not. And even among the hard left he is a divisive figure – the so called incident with Joe Rogan is a testament to that.

He may have a particular, and very passionate subset of the democratic party rooting for him, especially when you compare him to the line up hes going against, but when it comes to the general election?

The people he aligns with? The so-called "Squad" that endorses him? They are not particularly popular with the mainstream.

Frankly, neither the Democratic party establishment, or the GOP, or many of the stronger-political wonks out there have much faith in Sanders actually winning a federal election. So, for him to win the nomination in the Democratic party is, effectively, handing over 2020 to Trump on a silver platter.

edit

In the end what matters most is the economic well being of the nation. Sanders is arguing from a position as if we are deep in some sort of recession. We aren't. And it's going to be hard to resonate the idea that you're in an economic disadvantage when so many statistics prove otherwise.

What can flip this entire thing is the intensity and impact of the Corona Virus on the world economy. A global pandemic, even one that is primarily isolated in China, could seriously shake up – if not collapse the Chinese economy. And although the US is far- FAR- better to handle such a collapse it won't be unfelt. If timing is right, and an economic crash in China causes a world wide economic downturn, it could greatly affect the election.

If I may ask, what positions does Sanders holds that makes him so damn electable on a federal level – when it's the entire nation voting?

Are you implying the south could go blue? Because it won't. No matter who gets the nomination. Also just so you know Bernie won most of the midwest in the 2016 primaries.

And to answer chewybunny's question, Bernie Sanders doesn't have any dirt on him that Trump and msm use against.

Are you implying the south wouldn't reject non-bernie candidates? Because thats not what polling suggest. In fact, Sanders does best in Texas out of all of them, probably due to his large latino support base.

And i'm unclear why you suggest Sanders won't do well in the midwest. Supposedly Trump won them over because of his "america first" policies, which one could argue Sanders is even stronger in that regard

250 pages.

37,500 words.

Not a single damn mention of “climate change.”

Trump’s NAFTA is a giveaway to the fossil fuel industry.

I voted NO because the future of our planet is more important than the short-term profits of Exxon Mobil and Chevron. pic.twitter.com/YgSZcigjjX

— Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) January 17, 2020

Strong america first trade policies
Medicare for all/single payer that eliminates waste spending and increases freedom by getting rid of the shackle employers have on healthcare
End the profit greed from hospitals, which will allow rural hospitals to continue to operate, instead of closing due to lack of profits.
Organic support base
"anti-establishment", but also experienced
Is able to raise significantly more money than any other candidate
Extremely stable views, making attacking his record very difficult and can't call him out on flip flopping on issues.
Incredibly little dirt on him, no years of dirty history like Clinton/biden/Trump has
Supports legalizing cannabis
strongly supports public schools
Increase access to banking by allowing every post office to offer basic and affordable banking services
election reform by restoring the Voting Rights Act and overturn Citizens United, making Election Day a national holiday, secure automatic voter registration, and guarantee the right to vote for every American over 18, including those Americans currently incarcerated and those disenfranchised by a felony conviction.

Should I go on?

I'm confused on the assertion that Bernie Sanders is unpopular, considering how well he seems to do with getting the popular vote. The idea that medicare for all is unpopular is also confusing as outside of places here in Eastern Washington, which is pretty red, a lot of people would welcome medicare for all due to having to deal with the nightmare of scheduling a doctors appointment compared to anywhere else on the planet. The only people who don't are the same ones who want white-nationalists to have their own holiday so yeah, not exactly a good look.

The mainstream democrats themselves are not popular, nobody who supports them seems actually enthused or trusting. It's more "the devil you know" kind of cynical reliance then anything else. Bernie on the other hand seems actually, genuinely, popular with people. So I'm confused by the very premise that he's some kind of exiled demon-man in the eyes of most Americans. Maybe in 1980, but it's not 1980 anymore no matter how much boomers want it to be. 40 years have gone by and in those 40 years, free-reign capitalism or socialism-for-the-rich as it were, has put a boot on the throat of most people, if only in terms of entertainment, education, and health. Everyone is starting to feel the weight as it were, of having unregulated mega-corps able to decide how everything goes, to the point many refer to it as "late-stage capitalism" as if it were a disease. A lot of the younger generation truly are fed up with the same spiel of socialism bad, capitalism good their parents tried to teach them, and it's hard to pull yourself up by the bootstraps when touching the bootstraps comes with hundreds of thousands in debt and no promise of a career. Basically, I don't know anyone under 40 who hates Bernie Sanders as much as you describe chewy, and i don't even think the Chunk over 40 who hates sanders is that big, considering there are folks i know voted trump in 2016 who say they'd vote Bernie in 2020. It's precisely his view as not a standard democrat that's made him such an attractive votw, and discounting that as bad feels like it misses how genuinely unpopular neoliberal democrats have become among the common people.

I'm confused on the assertion that Bernie Sanders is unpopular, considering how well he seems to do with getting the popular vote. The idea that medicare for all is unpopular is also confusing as outside of places here in Eastern Washington, which is pretty red, a lot of people would welcome medicare for all due to having to deal with the nightmare of scheduling a doctors appointment compared to anywhere else on the planet. The only people who don't are the same ones who want white-nationalists to have their own holiday so yeah, not exactly a good look.

The mainstream democrats themselves are not popular, nobody who supports them seems actually enthused or trusting. It's more "the devil you know" kind of cynical reliance then anything else. Bernie on the other hand seems actually, genuinely, popular with people. So I'm confused by the very premise that he's some kind of exiled demon-man in the eyes of most Americans. Maybe in 1980, but it's not 1980 anymore no matter how much boomers want it to be. 40 years have gone by and in those 40 years, free-reign capitalism or socialism-for-the-rich as it were, has put a boot on the throat of most people, if only in terms of entertainment, education, and health. Everyone is starting to feel the weight as it were, of having unregulated mega-corps able to decide how everything goes, to the point many refer to it as "late-stage capitalism" as if it were a disease. A lot of the younger generation truly are fed up with the same spiel of socialism bad, capitalism good their parents tried to teach them, and it's hard to pull yourself up by the bootstraps when touching the bootstraps comes with hundreds of thousands in debt and no promise of a career. Basically, I don't know anyone under 40 who hates Bernie Sanders as much as you describe chewy, and i don't even think the Chunk over 40 who hates sanders is that big, considering there are folks i know voted trump in 2016 who say they'd vote Bernie in 2020. It's precisely his view as not a standard democrat that's made him such an attractive votw, and discounting that as bad feels like it misses how genuinely unpopular neoliberal democrats have become among the common people.

lel what do you mean “loosing”
the only way you’ll gain the southron vote is through being a reactionary
the democratic party doesn’t give two shits about the people
aside from Bernie, and a few others they are the same as the reps with a couple of token progressive policies sprinkled in

>"yet":https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/01/bernie-sanderss-biggest-challenges/605500/<

As the Atlantic article I linked mentions, Bernie hasn't been held to personal scrutiny during his own campaigns and his own elections.

"None of his Democratic rivals is subjecting him to such scrutiny in 2020. Hillary Clinton refrained from scrutinizing Sanders in 2016. It did not happen, either, in his many races in Vermont. A Politico profile in 2015 by Michael Kruse argued that Sanders had benefited from “an unwritten compact between Sanders, his supporters, and local reporters who have steered clear” of writing about Sanders’s personal history “rather than risk lectures about the twisted priorities of the press.”"

It argues that Trump will attack him on every front, frightening would-be voters with economic positions that Bernie has maintained.

But it's not just Bernie's problematic history of praising brutal communist regimes – USSR included – or his current economic stances. I think it's going to be highlighting that Bernie surrounds himself with problematic people. That, ultimately, his appeal is to a particular subset of Americans.

But it's not just Bernie's problematic history of praising brutal communist regimes – USSR included – or his current economic stances. I think it's going to be highlighting that Bernie surrounds himself with problematic people. That, ultimately, his appeal is to a particular subset of Americans.

Bernie's """Praising of Communist regimes, USSR included""" is fake news. There are things you can like about a country without praising the ideologues and the metrics behind them.

You’re joking right?
the only canidate that’s faced as much scrutinty as Sanders is Trump

Medicare for all vs Public Option is the fundamental difference.
While the majority of Americans want to significantly want government to provide universal healthcaren they still prefer the option for private insurance in the US, 70% of them view their own healthcare coverage as good or excellent.

Medicare for all however – which is what Bernie is arguing for – the single payer solution provided by the government is unpopular. Largely because American trust in Government Institutions is shrinking, according to gallup.

Public Option has consistently out polled Medicare for All and has a far greater bi-partisan support than m4a.

And yet…It's still a goddamn lie to think that it won't upheaval the current system we have. the US doesn't put strict price controls mechanisms on healthcare providers like most OECD countries do. To extend quality coverage to americans who are under insured or uninsured means either two things:

You either force providers to accept drastically lower payment rates which would radically upend a business model that underpins 1/5th of the US economy or you increase federal spending on US healthcare beyond even what Bernie Sanders dreams up.

Keep in mind, Bernie Sanders' price tag for his plan is 32.6 Trillion a decade, or 3.2 Trillion a year. To put that into perspective, the spending in 2019 was 4.45 trillion. Literally, it would be a 80% increase in our federal spending almost doubling what we spend today. And his plan does include dramatic cuts to health-care providers, while securing administrative efficiencies through the elimination of redundant private insurance bureaucracies.

No matter how much you circle the numbers, (even hypothetically cutting ALL military spending for example) you wouldn't be able to afford a lot of it without substantial increases in taxes – across the board. That's going to be a really tough cookie to sell to the American public man.

I argue that both m4a and public option are unsustainable solutions. And that we need to solve the issues in a more radically different way.

>you wouldn't be able to afford a lot of it without substantial increases in taxes – across the board. That's going to be a really tough cookie to sell to the American public man.

Instead of paying insurance companies, you'll pay the government for healthcare, and you'll pay less.

How is that a hard sell? Telling americans they will spend less money on healthcare sounds incredibly easy to sell.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/latest_polls/general_election/

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2020/president/us/general_election_trump_vs_sanders-6250.html

Everything im seeing hes either 2-3 points below or above Biden and Bloomberg. Either way its not easy to knock down a sitting president, his voters are still passionate he broke records for a sitting president primary turn out in NH

Biden whos been dropping like a damn Japanese fighter pilot to Sanders state by state, Bloomberg whos been mostly ignored and had to have the last debates rules changed just so he qualifies is going up in key states because of his fucking ad spending so we still don't know if his support holds up.

Mayor Petty has pretty much no minority support lets see how he does in states that aren't 90% white

This is all with MSNBC, CNN, The Times, Fox and what evers left endlessly dog piling on Sanders whos done nothing but surge in polls, closed the massive built in gap with Biden going from the clear favorite in the last two states knocking his ass down to 4th and 5th place.

I can't find it anymore but I saw a poll saying Yang and Sanders supporters are least likely to vote if their main pick doesn't win, yet Biden, Chief Warren, and Pete are more likely to be blue no matter who.

This "electable" argument is the only thing they have, Ever watch a Biden or Bloomberg ad? Thats all they EVER say is im more electable because when they actually talk about policy they don't hold up. What the fuck are they going to talk about in the general? No seriously answer that because "we gonna beat trump guys!" isn't going to work in a general

And personally, we tried a center neo liberal last time, didn't work out too well. How about we quit being a bunch of pussies and not let ourselfs get fear mongered into running nothing but center left candidates to appease Republicans when Republicans are happy to support right wingers and don't give a fuck about us.

Id rather at last TRY to get an actual liberal and go down in flames on the ship than win in a land slide only to get another fucking racist cutting deals for his other rich friends letting banks do what ever the fuck they want until we crash again and they get fucking bailed out AGAIN while the middle class shrinks to nothing and the rest of the world passes us even further.

Other countries citizens literally laugh our heath care. Richest super power ever on earth yet its some how impossible to have a better system than Cuba, Finland, South Korea

Sure, I can agree with that.
And fake news or half news, or whatever you call it is going to be brought up a lot here. Especially his praising of Sandanistas, and Venezuela, Cuba and USSR. Even with context that the praising was in contrast to the US involvement in Nacaragua. But that context is going to be difficult to put into the heads and minds of Americans who view Bernie as a Socialist praising elements of Socialist regimes.

Yes Sanders pointed out they have free healthcare but their hospitals suck, yes they have cheap housing but it's shoddy quality and not enough. And yet he added " “At least some of the people that we met, from some of their lips, I was very impressed by their desire to become a democratic society and to move forward into some of the early visions of their revolution -- what their revolution was about in 1917. They understand that they have had, in many ways, a dismal history since then, and they want to go back to some of their early visions. And we certainly wish them well in that.”"

There has been a poignant history of US leftists, dissidents, and what not being courted by the USSR and shown everything from potemkin villages, to heaps of praise. It is no secret the USSR even courted black Americans by fermenting racial tension (ironic, that one of the earliest black communists that went to live in USSR was sent to the gulags). I get why, either willful ignorance, or blindness, or the fear of being lumped in with the cartoonish right-wing criticism of USSR (the Red Scare).

Susan Sontag called this out famously in 1982.

"I have the impression that much of what is said about politics by people on the so-called democratic left–which includes many people here tonight–has been governed by the wish not to give comfort to “reactionary” forces. With that consideration in mind, people on the left have willingly or unwittingly told a lot of lies. We were unwilling to identify ourselves as anti-Communists because that was the slogan of the right, the ideology of the cold war and, in particular, the justification of America’s support of fascist dictatorships in Latin America and of the American war on Vietnam. (The story, of course, starts much earlier, in Europe in the late 1920s, with the rise of fascism, whose principal war cry was anti-Communism.) The anti-Communist position seems already taken care of by those we oppose at home….

…The émigrés from Communist countries we didn’t listen to, who found it far easier to get published in the Reader’s Digest than in The Nation or the New Statesman, were telling the truth. Now we hear them. Why didn’t we hear them before, when they were telling us exactly what they tell us now? We thought we loved justice; many of us did. But we did not love the truth enough. Which is to say that our priorities were wrong. The result was that many of us, and I include myself, did not understand the nature of the Communist tyranny. We tried to distinguish among Communisms–for example, treating “Stalinism,” which we disavowed, as if it were an aberration, and praising other regimes, outside of Europe, which had and have essentially the same character.

It's from this particular view that Sanders went into USSR, oh he hated Stalinism, and he praised the people wishing to go back to1917. But let's be honest. Soviet Communism didn't become evil under Stalin. It started in it's inception. In it's earliest inceptions.

I find it a terrible irony that Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn resides only several miles from Bernie Sanders. I find it a terrible irony that despite having one of the biggest and most notable Soviet dissidents in his own state, the two never met, never even spoke a word.

You can visit a brutal regime and come back with some words of praise. You can be honest about it too.

Audre Lorde, poet and feminist activist went to the USSR and Uzbekistan in 1976. She praised the Soviet government stated policy on multiculturalism, but contrasted that with the reality on the ground. She wrote "I felt that there were many things we were not seeing." Excited that the USSR promised to put people "at it's core" but she was not convinced that the human beings are the core in the USSR either.

That's assuming that the cost in new taxes (that everyone will pay for) would be lower than the premiums that (most people) pay. I find that difficult to believe to be true across the board, or even for a majority of people.

>I find that difficult to believe to be true across the board, or even for a majority of people.

Why? You don't think money will be saved when there is a larger pool, the government is able to better negotiate prices, and insurance expenses such as advertising and corporate profits eliminated? Its cheaper in every country that has single payer.
the data suggests its cheaper, as I pointed out in my essay here

Because the numbers that I am concerned about already incorporate Government negotiated prices from providers. The numbers I quoted was the numbers that came from Sanders' campaign, after the implementation of all the other things like price-control and drastic cuts to the costs of healthcare providers reduction in overhead, etc. 80% increase in government spending, would need to be offset by tax hikes of some sort, and the kind of money needed to be generated are going to come across the spectrum, not just the rich. His own plan proposes increasing payroll taxes, income taxes, etc, which benefit all working families. Would the tax-increase be higher or lower than what Americans are paying in premiums? That is a complex question in my opinion because you'd have to assess the average cost of premiums out of pocket, or employer provided premiums. For example, my employer provided a healthcare plan for me and my wife for less than what the average American spends on individual healthcare insurance, because Employer provided insurance is always cheaper. In 2019, I earned 64,000, of which my employer provided insurance took about 6.5 % of the total cost (roughly $350 a month in ppo). So here's my question, would the tax increases to provide for single payer be more than $350 a month? Well according to Sanders' own plan, yeah, there's a high probability I'd be paying more.

Now I am in total agreement that the costs in the US is astronomically absurd. I am also in agreement that the amount of bureaucratic overhead that makes those costs go up higher is also, largely absurd. And we should find practical, sustainable solutions, with as little trade off as possible. And there are trade offs always, always always. The US, for example, virtually subsidizes the world's cost in R&D and Innovation in the field of medicine. Largely because pharmaceutical companies can offset the significant cost in earnings from other countries by increasing the earnings in the US, and much of the Pharmaceutical industry's investment is into R&D. In fact, the US is a world's largest investor in medical R&D. The average biotech company in the US spends 12.3% of all it's earnings on R&D alone. Twice as much as companies in Norway and Sweden, 10 times as much as companies in Germany and Finland, and twenty four times as much as Russia.

And in terms of Raw Spending in OECD countries, the US puts in 44 Billion a year in biotech R&D alone compared to France (3.5 Billion) Switzerland (3.1 Billion) South Korea (1.4) and Germany (1.4) .

I don't know if Bernie's Plan takes that into consideration, however.

Sanders now has the most support from Hispanic voters in Nevada.

This is good news for him, as he's previously been struggling with minority voters, who were previously Biden's base.

That being said, the same poll also shows that Hispanic voters from Nevada would rather have literally anyone else besides Trump.