Omnibus Politics Thread: Campaign 2016 EditionFollow

False. There are people who like his ideas, and like them more than Hillary's, or think that he will more aggressively pursue them.

Cruz might be the nominee, so it's time to shove fingers in ears and spin everything in his favor even though he's just a quieter Trump.

I'm confused didn't Hitlary win in Iowa? Sounds about par for Democrats. Show up en masse for Bernie speeches then turn around and vote for Hitlary while praising what a great guy Bernie is.

I think Cruz is hilarious. He slams New Yorkers for our "values" one second, then trumpets how he's the champion and defender of the brave and selfless 9/11 firefighters and cops, while opposing reauthorizing the Zadroga bill. There's also all the "freedom of religion as long as it's only my religion" and similar junk he likes to make speeches about.

Mel Brooks couldn't write a better parody character.

Edited, Feb 4th 2016 1:03pm by lolgaxe

There's a surprise.

Yeah, I can see that making sense to people in the coasting phase of their life. I just think there are a lot fewer people in coasting territory now than there was in the past so the demographic you're describing has shrunk. I'm not about to spend any significant time checking how accurate that is though.

I don't think it's "coasting" since that suggests a level of comfort or ambivalence that I don't think is there. More like people who aren't comfortable but see themselves getting closer to it and don't need someone taking risks with the government/economy. A family where one spouse was unemployed for five years and just started working again a year ago isn't "coasting" but they might not be especially excited about a revolution either.

Everyone I know, save for the rednecks and wife's-family neocons, want Bernie Sanders to be president, but will support Hillary if it comes down to it. I don't see Bernie having much of a chance at this point. We're all kind of hoping Hilary will have him as his running mate or something at least.

Considering Bernie's essentially running on pocket change from average citizens and blacked out by the media, bringing the Wall Street-backed Hillary to practically a tie is a huge win.

Except he's not telling the truth. He's telling a popular untruth that happens to appeal to young people who haven't yet figured out that what he's saying is a set of BS wrapped in a nice semantic burrito. That might account for him getting Ron Paul level support. Maybe. It can't explain his current numbers. My speculation is that most of what's giving him the huge numbers we're seeing is people who don't know much about him other than that he isn't Clinton.



The luxury to focus on health care, paychecks, and education is granted because other people deal with the much harder issues of dealing with wars, terrorism, foreign policy, trade deals, having sufficient business infrastructure to have a tax base to pay for things, etc, etc, etc. Ignoring all of those isn't a sign of his strength. It's a sign that he has no answers for those things and wants to just focus on how to divvy up a pie that others have baked. Again, this appeals to a very very simplistic understanding of national level politics, but just doesn't actually work as real policy.



Which is part of the lie he's telling. Who do you think replaces the "rich people" in his alternative ideal world? Um... Other rich people. All his policies and plans do is change what criteria we use to make someone "rich", and thus "in power". Under Bernie Sanders, the same/similar people would be in power. The difference is how they gain that power, and that he would give them more power because he would grant the government more power over the people. That's the big lie of socialism. Ultimately, it just makes the poor even more subject to the whims of the rich.

Socialism is not about granting power to the poor. It's about paying the poor off with goodies so they'll give more power to you (well, the rich and powerful that is). If you actually think that you're hurting the powerful by supporting someone like Sanders, then boy have I got a bridge to sell you.



And money. And a large political apparatus. And the support of most of the rank and file Democratic Party structure. Which is what usually makes a politician successful. Her name recognition is actually her worst aspect. She's doing as poorly as she is because of that recognition. She's only successful because she's got the party power behind her. She's their anointed candidate this time around. There's a reason why the closest threat to her in the Democratic nomination process is someone as utterly unelectable as Bernie Sanders. No one electable was supposed to challenge her. Thinking that Bernie's numbers change his electability in the general is totally wrong.



His hard core supporters? Sure. The 4-5x more people (and I may actually be lowballing that ratio) who are currently polling for him in the "if the election were held today" polls? You're kidding right? That's purely about most people not knowing much about him. Once those people hear him talk and hear him unabashedly say the word "socialism" in a positive way, his support will plummet.



Sure. And again, that's most of what's driving Sander's numbers. People hate Clinton. She's got absurdly high negatives, even among Democrats. Sander's is the only other choice. So what do you suppose someone sitting at home, who hasn't been following the election at all will say when a pollster calls and asks which of those two they like more? They know Clinton, and know they don't like her. So they'll say "Sanders". Not because they think he's a great candidate and support his positions but purely because he's not Clinton and is literally the only other choice.



Yes. And I think you are grossly underestimating the negative effect of anything that looks overtly like socialism here in the US. There's a reason why politicians on the Left have to very very carefully frame their policy in free market terms. There's a reason why they go through hoops to label spending as "tax cuts" when possible (and actually doing the spending in the form of tax credits rather than via legislatively budgeted spending so they can do this). There's a reason why Obamacare isn't called "national health care" or "socialized care" but rather "the Affordable Care act", and structured such that it's still people buying health care with dollars rather than the government just giving it to them. Subsidies and rebates are tacked on after the fact specifically so that it looks less like socialism. It's not "free care", or "government provided care". It's "affordable" care. That language is not accidental.

Sanders is trying to do this with the overt language of socialism, thinking that the American people are more accepting of it. Which they are, to a degree, but not that much. Believing that his numbers are the result of a sufficient acceptance of socialism in the US rather than a significant hatred for Clinton as a person, is a huge mistake IMO.

Edited, Feb 4th 2016 4:39pm by gbaji

So based on this, is it safe to assume that among the set of "everyone you know" the portion that consists of rednecks and your wife's-family neocons, significantly outnumbers the portion who want Bernie Sanders to be president? It's just strange to write it that way, since the first portion suggests a majority support Sanders, but then you say he doesn't have much of a chance. Is that based on your own circle of people, or the assumption that your circle is not typical of American voters? I guess I was hoping for some kind of statement explaining that discrepancy. Why do you think Bernie doesn't have much of a chance at this point? I mean, I get the numbers, but what is your opinion?

He's focusing on those issue, because, shocker, those are the issues that voters care about. People broadly don't care about the petty wars the US is fighting. There is no existential threat, there are just a lot of annoyance level groups that we'd like to die in a hole somewhere, but what we'd like more is to spend that money on ourselves rather than random acts of violence. The average voter neither understands trade deals, nor really thinks much of them other than the nagging sensation that they are getting screwed over somehow.

The reason he is doing well is he is focusing on issue that people care about, instead of sweeping them under the rug and focusing on (and this is a direct quote) "boring **** that no-one cares about".