US Politics XIX: Just an Echo Chamber Living In Your Heads

The friendliest place on the web for anyone that follows U2.
If you have answers, please help by responding to the unanswered posts.
See posts with no answers
Status
Not open for further replies.
Gzusfrk said:
Frame it in two different ways?? This is just as tone deaf as Irvine’s response.

NONE of these things lift anyone out of poverty. No PROGRAM can do that. I have been poor, I have been working poor, I have been on government assistance. Half of these things aren’t even dealing with the topic, FDIC, really? Read the question again before Googling “Democrat Policies that lifted people out of poverty “.

The Democratic plan for government assistance is to get votes. If you can make more money being unemployed than working (which is what Obama’s plan was huge on, and is still that way to a certain degree), then many will choose not to work . If you incentivize having children out of wedlock, and make single moms get a raise with each child they have, and , oh, but if they’re married or Dad lives at home, no money for you, that’s NOT lifting people out of poverty, but exacerbating it. Why do you think states who’ve recently adopted stricter welfare guidelines have seen more people get off of food stamps and go to work? Because it works.

Think all you want that the government assistance is designed to do anything but keep people poor( which it has done for over 50 years—see all Democrat run cities that I had mentioned a few months ago), then you’re just too brainwashed to look at reality.

There is NOT a finite amount of wealth in the world. Wealth can be created, that’s what free market capitalism does. And you cannot multiply wealth by dividing it , makes no sense. So seizing money from “rich “ people and giving it to poor people, does NOT create a healthy economy.

Incentivize people to work hard, get off of government assistance and live their dreams. Nothing is guaranteed, but the opportunity, which yes, EVERYONE ALREADY HAS. Get rid of the Democrats victim mentality that they like to push on people who are not oppressed by anyone
Click to expand...

And just so we’re clear. 13 out of the 15 states with the highest poverty level are Red states. But go on about how Democrats keep people in poverty. Stunningly ignorant.
 
Gzusfrk said:
What? Seriously?? Those LIFT people out of poverty? Please understand what the definition of someone in poverty is.

If these these lifted people out of poverty, then someone who receives these benefits would NOT be poor.

Strike one, two, three
Click to expand...

Sure, it's a coincidence that nations with strong social programs including public healthcare have lower rates of poverty than the US. It has nothing to do with people the ot have spend ungodly amounts of money on medical bills.

You don't need to lift people out of poverty if they aren't there in the first place.

People like you are the reason America scores so poorly on social metrics among first world countries.
 
Last edited:
Saw a snippet of Trump’s rally yesterday - they are still chanting “lock her up”. It’s like a mental illness with that crowd.
 
?

President Donald Trump isn’t pleased with this year’s Oscar wins.

Thursday night, at a rally in Colorado, Trump, 73, mocked both Korean film Parasite and Brad Pitt for their victories.

“The winner is a movie from South Korea. What the hell was that all about? We’ve got enough problems with South Korea, with trade. And after all that, they give them best movie of the year?” Trump said, The Hill and Variety reported.

Trump’s rant was also shared by Vox journalist Aaron Rupar.

In the clip Trump is heard saying “Can we get Gone with the Wind back?” in reference to the highly controversial film about the Civil War film that won Best Picture in 1940. The film has been slammed as racist over the years as it follows Scarlett O’Hara and her life on a plantation during the war.

Twitter users were quick to condemn Trump’s Gone with the Wind comment with CNN analyst Max Boot writing, “Trump talks far more harshly about South Korea than North Korea. And of course he loves pro-confederate Gone with the Wind. Very telling.”

Pusan National University Political Science Professor Robert E Kelly tweeted, “The most revealing part is that Trump asked for Gone with the Wind back. Patriarchy, slavery, celebrating the Old South. Yikes. Trump really does sign to his voters’ worst instincts.”

“Gone with the Wind is a romanticized white wash of slavery and the antebellum South and the author Margaret Mitchell had tremendous ‘economic anxiety.’ Of course Trump would prefer it over PARASITE, a brilliant movie commenting on classism and income inequality,” CNN contributor Wajahat Ali tweeted.

Trump then called Pitt “a little wise guy.”

“And then you have Brad Pitt. I was never a big fan of his,” Trump said of the actor. “He got up and said a little wise guy statement. Little wise guy. He’s a little wise guy.”

While Pitt, 56, and Parasite director Bong Joon Ho have yet to react to Trump’s insult, the Korean film’s distributor NEON has fired back on Twitter.

In response to a video of his rant, NEON wrote, “Understandable, he can’t read. #Parasite #BestPicture #Bong2020.”
 
Donald Trump's brain is degenerating in front of our eyes and there is a total reluctance to discuss this in the media. I was a caretaker from my grandmother who died of Alzheimer's 11 years ago, and I know how this story goes.

The fact that he's behaving this way and not receiving proper medical care is a testament to two things - nobody cares about him and his children are assholes just like he is. If it was any of our parents, we'd be sitting in a neurologist's office every day of the week and twice on Sunday until we got a diagnosis.

The criminal cabal otherwise known as the GOP is enabling this and needs to be held 100% responsible when it all inevitably goes down hill to an untenable state.
 
Gzusfrk said:
What? Seriously?? Those LIFT people out of poverty? Please understand what the definition of someone in poverty is.



If these these lifted people out of poverty, then someone who receives these benefits would NOT be poor.



Strike one, two, three
Click to expand...



Gzus, I want you to read this again.

Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, hell maybe a few years from now. BUT if you ever want to truly be honest with yourself, then one day you’ll be able to read this and say, this is one of the dumbest statements I’ve ever read in my life.

According to your “logic”: If capitalism lifted people out of poverty, then someone who lived in a capitalist society would NOT be poor.
 
anitram said:
Donald Trump's brain is degenerating in front of our eyes and there is a total reluctance to discuss this in the media. I was a caretaker from my grandmother who died of Alzheimer's 11 years ago, and I know how this story goes.

The fact that he's behaving this way and not receiving proper medical care is a testament to two things - nobody cares about him and his children are assholes just like he is. If it was any of our parents, we'd be sitting in a neurologist's office every day of the week and twice on Sunday until we got a diagnosis.

The criminal cabal otherwise known as the GOP is enabling this and needs to be held 100% responsible when it all inevitably goes down hill to an untenable state.
Click to expand...

I don't disagree with you. But I do think that the whole Parasite/Gone With The Wind thing was an intentional dog whistle. Don't think Trump was "intelligent" enough to devise it.Was probably that scummy racist guy Stephen Miller.

I read many comments online after Parasite won, in general it was a resentful rant that the Oscars were once again anti American. MAGA
 
Regular Democrats Just Aren’t Worried About Bernie
Many in the party elite remain deeply skeptical of the Vermont senator, but rank-and-file voters do not share that hesitation.

FEBRUARY 18, 2020

Peter Beinart
Professor of journalism at the City University of New York

Judging by media coverage and the comments of party luminaries, you might think Democrats are bitterly polarized over Bernie Sanders’s presidential bid. Last month, Hillary Clinton declared that “nobody likes” the Vermont senator. Last week, James Carville, who ran Bill Clinton’s 1992 campaign, said he was “scared to death” of the Sanders campaign, which he likened to “a cult.” Since the beginning of the year, news organization after news organization has speculated that Sanders’s success may set off a Democratic “civil war.”

But polls of Democratic voters show nothing of the sort. Among ordinary Democrats, Sanders is strikingly popular, even with voters who favor his rivals. He sparks less opposition—in some cases far less—than his major competitors. On paper, he appears well positioned to unify the party should he win its presidential nomination.

So why all the talk of civil war? Because Sanders is far more divisive among Democratic elites—who prize institutional loyalty and ideological moderation—than Democratic voters. The danger is that by projecting their own anxieties onto rank-and-file Democrats, party insiders are exaggerating the risk of a schism if Sanders wins the nomination, and overlooking the greater risk that the party could fracture if they engineer his defeat.

Strange as it sounds, Sanders may be the least polarizing candidate in the presidential field, at least according to surveys of ordinary Democrats. A Monmouth University poll last week found not only that Sanders’s favorability rating among Democrats nationally—71 percent—was higher than his five top rivals’, but also that his unfavorability rating—19 percent—was tied for second lowest. Sanders’s net favorability rating was six points higher than Elizabeth Warren’s, 16 points higher than Joe Biden’s, 18 points higher than Pete Buttigieg’s, 23 points higher than Amy Klobuchar’s, and a whopping 40 points higher than that of Michael Bloomberg, whom more than a third of Democratic voters viewed unfavorably. (By contrast, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn—whom Sanders’s critics often cite as a cautionary tale—enjoyed the support of only 56 percent of his own party members in the months leading up to December’s British election.)

A Quinnipiac poll earlier this month found similarly favorable results for Sanders. Among Democrats nationally, only Warren enjoyed higher net favorability ratings; on that measure, Sanders outpaced Biden, Buttigieg, and Bloomberg. (The pollsters didn’t ask about Klobuchar.) And according to a recent USA Today/IPSOS survey, Sanders is the candidate who Democrats say best shares their values.

Although political handicappers sometimes presume that centrist Democrats are hostile to Sanders, the Quinnipiac poll suggests that Sanders enjoys widespread affection even outside his ideological lane. Among self-described moderate or conservative Democrats, Sanders boasts a net favorability rating of 43 points—far higher than Biden or Bloomberg fares among the “very liberal” Democrats who compose Sanders’s ideological base. Ninety-eight percent of Warren supporters, 97 percent of Buttigieg supporters and 92 percent of Biden supporters say they would back Sanders against Donald Trump. Only among Bloomberg supporters does that number dip to 83 percent. Overall, Sanders voters are significantly more likely to say that they won’t back one of his rivals in the general election than the other way around. Sanders’s critics within the party may resent his supporters for threatening to stay home in November. But most Democratic voters, including most centrist ones, have little problem with Sanders himself.

None of this means Sanders would necessarily beat Trump. His ultra-progressive policies and socialist self-identification could energize Trump’s base and alienate the independents and Republican moderates who backed Democratic candidates in 2018. But the evidence does suggest that, if Democratic elites let him, he’s capable of unifying his party’s rank and file behind his campaign. He’s far better positioned than Trump was at this point in 2016, when his net favorability rating among Republicans was almost 20 points lower than Sanders’s is among Democrats today.

But many Democratic insiders remain deeply skeptical. Sanders’s support among party elites dramatically lags his support among Democratic voters. According to FiveThirtyEight’s Endorsement Tracker, which awards candidates points when party officials endorse them, Sanders ranks fourth in endorsement points, behind Bloomberg and Warren and far behind Biden. While ordinary voters don’t exhibit much hostility toward Sanders, party leaders do. When Seth Masket of the University of Denver interviewed Democratic activists in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, Nevada, and Washington, D.C., this month, he found that almost two-thirds said they feared a Sanders nomination. The only candidate who elicited a more negative response was Tulsi Gabbard, the representative from Hawaii who some Democrats fear will run a spoiler third-party campaign against the eventual nominee.

This animosity seeps into the mainstream media, where Democratic strategists often express their opinions, and inform the opinions of journalists who cover the presidential race. According to an In These Times study of MSNBC’s prime-time coverage, in August and September of last year, Sanders received less coverage than Biden and Warren, and the coverage he did receive was more negative. “The media keep falling in love,” the Washington Post media columnist Margaret Sullivan noted last week, “with anybody but Bernie Sanders.”

Democratic insiders tend to be institutionalists. They are more likely than ordinary voters to care about the fact that Sanders hasn’t always been a registered Democrat, that he often criticizes party officials, and that he didn’t do more to help Clinton in 2016. Masket told me that many of the party bigwigs he interviewed resented Sanders for “being a spoiler for 2016” by supposedly undermining Clinton, and for “sticking his finger in the eye of the Democratic establishment.”

The other reason Democratic insiders disproportionately oppose Sanders is that party elites and the journalists with whom they interact tend to distrust radicals of any stripe. “A quarter-century covering national politics has convinced me that the more pervasive force shaping coverage of Washington and elections is what might be thought of as centrist bias, flowing from reporters and sources alike,” the former Politico editor John Harris recently observed. “This bias is marked by an instinctual suspicion of anything suggesting ideological zealotry, an admiration for difference-splitting.” Pundits may not always express this fear of extremism as openly as MSNBC’s Chris Matthews did earlier this month, when his discussion of Sanders’s candidacy morphed into a broader indictment of socialism and of unspecified people who, Matthews said, would have cheered on “executions in Central Park” had “the Reds had won the Cold War.” But the centrist bias that Harris describes skews elite perceptions of public opinion. It keeps party and media insiders from recognizing that Bloomberg, a former Republican now running as a centrist, is a far more divisive figure among ordinary Democrats than the putatively radical Sanders.

The greatest danger to Democratic unity is that, once primary voting is done, Sanders receives only a plurality of delegates—an outcome that the forecasters at FiveThirtyEight view as a strong possibility—yet party elites try to steer the nomination to Bloomberg or another moderate. They could do so through the roughly 770 superdelegates, politicians and party officials who, although now barred from voting on the first ballot at the convention, could vote on the second ballot if no candidate receives an initial majority. According to the Monmouth poll, Bloomberg enjoys a net favorability rating among Democrats of only 14 points. If he polarizes Democrats now, imagine how polarizing he’ll be if he wins the nomination because party insiders subvert the will of Democratic voters and pick him over Sanders.

Across the ideological spectrum, ordinary Democrats like Bernie Sanders. That doesn’t mean he’ll beat Donald Trump. But his nomination won’t tear the party apart. Denying him the nomination just might.
Click to expand...

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/a...-arent-least-bit-worried-about-bernie/606688/
 
He's stacking the field in his favor. If there actually was a deep state, they've long missed their opportunity to stop him. He's got great economic numbers, and he'll be going up against a non vetted socialist who may or may not be in good health.

WE GOT THIS!!!
 
The biggest problem Democrats have is that they think the general population thinks just like they do.

The house was taken back by moderate Democrats in purple states - NOT by progressive candidates. That should speak volumes to what the non political voter wants.

But no. Let's nominate a fucking socialist.

Swell.
 
"the democrats should not nominate the candidate that they largely prefer, that they have the most favourable opinion of, and who aligns with their values most closely and instead choose someone who panders to non-political centrists" is a spectacularly hot take.
 
Last edited:
Headache in a Suitcase said:
The biggest problem Democrats have is that they think the general population thinks just like they do.

The house was taken back by moderate Democrats in purple states - NOT by progressive candidates. That should speak volumes to what the non political voter wants.

But no. Let's nominate a fucking socialist.

Swell.
Click to expand...

I understand where you're coming from, but this point of view is increasingly leaving a bad taste in my mouth.

If you look at national polls pitting the Democratic candidates against Trump, they are all winning, but Sanders is in the top 2-3 in terms of margin size. Left-hand side is the RCP average point differential in national polls pitting that candidate against Trump, right-hand side is the point differential of the most recent national poll:

Pete 2.2/3.0
Warren 2.0/1.0
Klobuchar 2.2/2.0
Biden 4.8/7.0
Bloomberg 4.6/5.0
Sanders 4.6/6.0

If Bernie is holding one of the biggest margins of victory against Trump in national polls, it would indicate that the "general population" is not as against him as you argue it is. What you're really saying is that the general population of a handful of states in the Midwest that determine the winner of the electoral college may not be in favor of Bernie to the same degree that the national consensus is.

That's a legitimate concern, but frame it honestly. The reality, and this was also true in 2016 when Hillary, who at minimum had given lip-service to some of Bernie's ideas, won by 3M votes - is that the national consensus seems to be ready to take leftward steps, but is being held hostage by a tiny percentage of swing voters in 4-5 states, including the one I live in(Ohio).

Now, you may be right, the rational political thing to do in the interest of winning in November might be to pander to that tiny percentage of swing voters in those 4-5 states, but it pisses me off that we may have to pump the breaks on a progressive agenda that has momentum in order to do so.
 
DaveC said:
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/a...-arent-least-bit-worried-about-bernie/606688/
Click to expand...

Very interesting article, great read.

I particularly found this to be a scary scenario, and it's one that I'd already been thinking about:

The greatest danger to Democratic unity is that, once primary voting is done, Sanders receives only a plurality of delegates—an outcome that the forecasters at FiveThirtyEight view as a strong possibility—yet party elites try to steer the nomination to Bloomberg or another moderate. They could do so through the roughly 770 superdelegates, politicians and party officials who, although now barred from voting on the first ballot at the convention, could vote on the second ballot if no candidate receives an initial majority. According to the Monmouth poll, Bloomberg enjoys a net favorability rating among Democrats of only 14 points. If he polarizes Democrats now, imagine how polarizing he’ll be if he wins the nomination because party insiders subvert the will of Democratic voters and pick him over Sanders.
Click to expand...

I recently read somewhere else, someone predicting that if this scenario came to pass, where the superdelegates thwarted the will of the people and took the nomination away from Bernie despite having a plurality of delegates, that mayhem would ensue. That thousands of Bernie delegates would walk out of the convention before it was even over, and that his entire base would stay home in November.

I personally think it would be completely idiotic and self-destructive for the party to try to take the nomination away from him in that scenario.
 
DaveC said:
"the democrats should not nominate the candidate that they largely prefer, that they have the most favourable opinion of, and who aligns with their values most closely and instead choose someone who panders to non-political centrists" is a spectacularly hot take.
Click to expand...



Yeah, the most important thing for Democrats is energizing the base. I worked in campaigns and that was always the mantra, there are large numbers of people who will vote if they have a candidate that they like. Sanders has those people and if he is the nominee you are going to see a lot of left-leaning people who don’t typically vote in elections voting. He’ll win because of it too.
 
agree. if Bernie has the most votes/delegates, then it's his. Get behind him and hopefully he does his part to support down ticket races.

There's a reason why Trump favors a Bernie match up. He probably isn't calling up Ukraine for dirt on Bernie because Russia already has provided enough, and if not Russia....Bernie's own statements in the past will be good enough
 
nbelcik said:
Yeah, the most important thing for Democrats is energizing the base. I worked in campaigns and that was always the mantra, there are large numbers of people who will vote if they have a candidate that they like. Sanders has those people and if he is the nominee you are going to see a lot of left-leaning people who don’t typically vote in elections voting. He’ll win because of it too.
Click to expand...



I really really really hope you’re right.
 
Headache in a Suitcase said:
The biggest problem Democrats have is that they think the general population thinks just like they do.

The house was taken back by moderate Democrats in purple states - NOT by progressive candidates. That should speak volumes to what the non political voter wants.

But no. Let's nominate a fucking socialist.

Swell.
Click to expand...



Purple states went blue because that’s generally the trend with “down with the current people! They’ve done ya no good!”

I’m not sure what you expected in a purple state. A progressive? No. Local and state elections are totally different from national elections though. Donald Trump won many purple states and he’s not a centrist either.

He didn’t win because he’s a centrist and Clinton did lose because she’s a centrist either. The notion that where you are on the spectrum is what determines if people will vote for you is out the door. It’s 2020. What matters? 1) how much do you hate the other candidate? 2) how enthusiastic are you for this candidate? 3) how well is this candidate deconstructing the other candidate? 4) did this candidate apologize?

Done. End of. Burn the notion of “people won’t vote for a socialist” with a fire. 2016 polls disagreed with that. 2016 primary vote tallies disagreed with that. Open primary states in 2016 hella disagreed with that. 2020 primaries disagrees with that. 2020 polling disagrees with that. I said it in 2016 and I’ll say it again, Trump and Sanders have a share of voters that, for no fucking reason, are enthusiastic about the both of them. White old men who are political outsiders of some respect and are unapologetic in their presentation and do not cave to media demands, and appear to be conspiratorially up against the machine, warranted or not.

I don’t know how else to say it. You can rabble socialist but at the end of the day this is red versus blue and not every voter is an educated individual who consumes information and media in the way that you or others do here.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Similar threads

Janet H
  • Sticky
Forum Update - We're back! Ask your questions here.
2
Replies
36
Views
2K
Popmartijn
Popmartijn
MrsSpringsteen
Gilead States Of America
Replies
16
Views
911
MrsSpringsteen
MrsSpringsteen
Headache in a Suitcase
  • Sticky
U2 in Vegas - Tips for booking hotels, flights and other Vegasy type things.
20 21 22
Replies
642
Views
33K
Headache in a Suitcase
Headache in a Suitcase
Headache in a Suitcase
  • Locked
Songs of Songs, Books & Fat Puns - New Album Discussion #8
33 34 35
Replies
1K
Views
53K
Headache in a Suitcase
Headache in a Suitcase
N
NBA 2023-24 Thread
12 13 14
Replies
393
Views
11K
Headache in a Suitcase
Headache in a Suitcase

Latest posts

Back
Top Bottom