You saw with Obama that major change doesn’t happen in the centre & Biden will be much the same.
If Bernie doesn’t get the nomination, I hope Biden loses. America needs Trump for another 4 years to learn. It’s amazing how many people have to be brought to their knees to bring about change. Sad but true.
I thought 4 years of Trump would be enough to educate people. Doesn’t look like it.
My SO is a Psychologist and lawyer and she's been saying for months she sees a tremendous amount of trauma in this country right now. Most of the country is suffering from Trump induced PTSD. The first thing people run to when they are traumatized is run for safety, stability, and the familiar.
For many who may basically agree with Bernie in principle, they want the madness to stop first, then when their limbic system calms down they will think about how to make changes for the better. With the under 30s most in favor of Bernie's ideas, that shows that these ideas will be moving to center stage eventually, but this is not the year for it.
I see it more as messaging the Democrats that business as usual just won't cut it. Their tactics failed in 2016, they are using the exact same tactics now. Why would they think it will work better this time? Trump's win was a signal that the Dems are still ignoring.
Hillary Clinton was a despised candidate who was terrible at campaigning and that's what lost the election. Biden is not a great speaker, but he is much more liked.
I posted a thing a few months back looking at every presidential race in the TV era. The theme that seems common is the more interesting or more likeable candidate wins every election. If a candidate is good at both, they are hard to beat. In 2016 both candidates were loathed, but Trump was more interesting. This time around Trump is more loathed than 2016 and Biden may not be the greatest candidate, but he's very likable.
A critical thing is he's the most liked candidate among never Trumper Republicans who are seriously thinking about crossing over and voting Democrat for the first time. I would much rather have a million never Trumper Republicans in red or purple states voting for the Democrat than a candidate that's going to get a million more votes in California, but turn off a lot of people in purple and red states. The latter is a losing strategy because California nets 55 EV whether you win the state 51/49 or 99/1. The political game set up by the constitution is to win the right states, not win the popular vote. It may not be fair, and the Democrats would like to change it (because a straight popular vote favors them), but they aren't going to be able to until they control enough governments and they do that by winning over disaffected Republican voters.
This country has been ripping apart by extremists on both sided of the political spectrum. Flipping the White House from one extreme to the other would just continue the situation. Let’s elect someone capable of unifying everyone, most especially including those of us who are moderate independents.
I agree completely.
I happen to agree with the sentiment (somebody more middle / unifying), but I tend to think that we're going to need an MLK / Abraham Lincoln / ... (more inspirational) to do the unifying.
I'd love to have Biden (over Trump) in office, but I think that it won't change the extremism from both sides.
Actually - "both sides" is part of the problem I see. We talk about politics in the US as a "democrat / republican" thing, or a liberal / conservative thing. But there are lots of issues that aren't on that continuum.
The primary thing is that on the liberty / authoritarian dimension (liberty being personal freedoms and responsibility as opposed to government paternalism and telling-you-what-to-do), the two parties have done an excellent job of both going heavily authoritarian (there's no problem we can't solve with a good (or bad) law and lots of enforcement) and getting most voters to think there's an important difference in who is making the laws.
At the margin there is a difference in who is making the laws, but we end up living in an authoritarian society either way.
(Going on behind the scenes for me are the notions found in
The Political Compass. They recommend taking the test (
The Political Compass) first as they feel like if you read the analysis first, that will influence your answers. The purpose of the test is to get you thinking, and to help you figure out where you fit in the 2 dimensions.)
I've taken the political compass several times. I've always been very libertarian and at least a bit left of center.
This country is very divided, but look around the world, most democracies are. Japan is about the only democracy that isn't, but it has the most homogeneous population too. The internet has brought a lot of good to the world, but it has also allowed the extremes to congregate like never before.
Most extremists now feel there are a lot more people like them out there than there really are. This is true of every political movement as well as in other areas like the growing problem with angry involuntarily celebrate men.
Some political media has also set up the memes that those who think different from us are evil rather than just have a difference of opinion and that drives the wedges deeper. It's also easier now to make anonymous death threats, so those have gone way up.
Similar studies that showed Obamacare was going to save money for everyone. We all know how that turned out . . .
To be fair every major legislation passed before the ACA has needed tweaks to make it work correctly, but the Republicans have refused to take up any bill to fix the problems so the ACA limps along with its flaws in place. There were also plans to do other tweaks to fix the healthcare system as time went on, but none of those have happened either.
The failures of the ACA have more to do with lack of political will than the fact the legislation was passed in the first place.
thought this was a tremendous article
Bernie’s Revolution Failed. But His Movement Can Still Win.
Personally I think Bernie made some strategic errors relying on new voters instead of trying to convince normie dems at all. Think he had an easy way to try and attach himself to FDR/Obama instead of just being super anti party. you see guys like Ro Khanna make the case for Bernie in this fashion and it's extremely effective imo
Bernie's message is coming at the wrong time for the bulk of the population. And if you listen to the moderate candidates, including Biden, there really isn't that huge a gap in what they feel should be done, the difference is more about pragmatism vs idealism.
If you were to start a healthcare system from scratch, something like Medicare for all is the way to go. However, the US doesn't have that. It has a patchwork quilt of medical insurance. There are a lot of holes in the quilt, which is a major flaw in the system we have. But the majority of Americans do have some form of health insurance and some have plans that are way better than Medicare. They don't want to lose their plan to go with something that is not as good.
People fall into a bell curve between those who are the early adopters of new ideas to those who are the tail end charlies to anything new. Many on this forum are early adopters or early mainstream who took a flyer on a new type of car from a new company. My mother was the opposite end of the spectrum. She refused to use any tech newer than the 1950s even when her health problems could have been helped quite a bit with newer tech. For example she was a voracious reader her whole life, but became depressed when macular degeneration made her legally blind. I tried to get her into audiobooks, but a CD player was too scary for her in 2010.
The middle of the bell curve is in the middle between the two extremes. They will adopt something new, but are wary of everything new that comes along. And they are wary of any idea that is going to change their healthcare options if there is any risk of losing something they like. These people might be open to a Medicare for all option (people can buy in if they choose), but right now they are going to have a knee jerk reaction against mandatory Medicare for all.
Due to pragmatic political expediency a Medicare option is going to be much easier to pass right now than Bernie's plan. Biden is for a Medicare option. Biden also said in an interview the other night that you have to be pragmatic and do what can get done rather than what you would like in a perfect world.
The Medicare option is more popular now than it was 10 years ago. It might be passable in the next Congress with the right people there.
As for Biden sounding like someone with dementia, I wish he would publicly address his disability. When he was a child he had a bad stutter. Through therapy he was able to eliminate the stutter, but most people with his kind of stutter end up trading the stutter for aphasia. They make a lot of brain farts about picking the right word and it gets worse when they are stressed or tired. I understand it because I live it. I have aphasia from mild dyslexia and I've had a lifetime of frustration trying to spit out the right words sometimes.
I notice that Biden sounds more coherent now that his campaign has turned around, though he's still having the occasional gaff. That's baked in and will always be there. Even if Biden's mind is failing, he's going to surround himself with significantly more competent people than Trump ever did.
