Really? Cause TIL Inso is still an idiot.
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Will Obama be the left’s Reagan? Touted as a political deity by his colleagues for decades to come despite everyone even Dems saying hol up
I’m just kidding. At least in my experience, the only people showing up to say “BUT WHERE WAS YOUR OUTRAGE WHEN OBAMA” are the people who conveniently ignore how outraged people have been about those things from the beginning.
Can you talk about some of the specific differences? I’m curious as someone who’s only seen campaigning from West Wing episodes.
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I love it when a plan comes together 
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Whatever the intent was, the results are pretty clear. Insurance costs skyrocketed and now you have people paying far more than they used to for a fraction of the benefit and are too scared to use it because they might wind up on the hook for their entire $10,000+ deductible on top of those ultra high premiums.
Medical bankruptcies have remained steady since Obamacare passed.
I’ve seen the news stories from people who were uninsurable before Obamacare and that they’re grateful now to be covered, even if it does mean forking over $8,000 a month in medications on top of the premiums. That has value, but the price we paid for those people has come in the form of new stress on the part of those referenced in the first paragraph.
I’m on record saying that I fully understand universal healthcare is coming to the USA. It’s inevitable and I’m personally fine with it. My wife has a condition that costs a small fortune every year. I pay $1,800/mo in premiums on top of the out of pocket expenses. I pay cash for her medication from Canada because it’s $475 there vs $2,500 in the US. But I’m not so naive as the people who simply think those savings will come entirely from additional buying power and cuts in administrative expenses. The true cost of that medication lies somewhere in the middle of $475 and $2500, and the US customers are subsidizing the Canadian ones.
Something is going to give, and that something is the quality and availability of healthcare options in the US. Or, the already high costs are going to be even higher as you dump all sorts of people into the user pool. There’s no other possibility. Economies of scale my ass. Doctors and nurses aren’t sitting around right now twiddling their thumbs waiting for patients to care for. Healthcare industry profits are a rounding error.
But as I said, I’m on board with it. We’re coming for you, Bezos. All your monies are belong to us.
“Healthcare industry profits are a rounding error”
(Rainbow meme)
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There are tons of specifics that I could go into, but what they ALL boil down to is that Pete’s campaign was truly grassroots and volunteer-driven. The staff would guide and then EMPOWER volunteers to go out and campaign for Pete. Need content or swag? Here’s our design toolkit, go make whatever you want. Textbanker who receives a reply from a questioning voter? feel free to have that persuasive conversation. No canvassing events in your area? Set one up, we’ll support you.
These folks going to volunteer for Joe have basically run into a brick wall. It is top down, micromanaged, arrogant in the “oh we don’t have to do this because we’re gonna win” kind of way. No freedom for volunteers to do their own stuff. No grassroots groups. No empowerment of volunteers. They are currently doing a text bank to ask people to volunteer for Joe’s campaign and the texters are not allowed to reply, even to people who say yes! The Pete people try to gently make suggestions and are shot down (and sometimes the Biden people are super rude, too). The canned text they send says “Hi, this is Ryan with Team Biden…” Like, literally, Ryan, whoever the fuck that is. Someone suggested they add a variable that uses the texter’s own name, and got shot down. Then someone else suggested they just delete “ryan” and say “hi,I’m with Team Biden…” and got shot down. It’s stupid little shit like that which tells me all I need to know.
I know campaigns are all different, but the Biden campaign is old-school, and dammit if we weren’t spoiled by the Pete campaign. California is a great example. Pete’s folks knew they could never afford to fully staff CA for ground game like other states. So in September they started reaching out to all of the local grassroots groups that were already there, and basically leveraged them into regional organizing groups. The work I was doing for Pete on a volunteer basis would be considered “Regional Organizing Director” level on any traditional campaign. I was given all of the tools and freedom I needed to mobilize volunteers in San Diego county. This happened across the state.
Joe’s campaign, I fear, would never even think to do it like that. This is another reason I think Biden would be destroyed in the general.
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Turns out having an actual campaign organization doesn’t matter, at all ¯_(ツ)_/¯ I was surprised too!
well, it does, unless you’re riding on complete name recognition and nothing else. If you’re coming from a staff of 4, no money, and an email list of 20k people, it really does matter.
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FYP. Thanks for the insight. I have to ask if this is remotely surprising to you? He is a horrible campaigner and has not been running an actual campaign to this point in the cycle. He didn’t even have offices in most of the ST states FFS.
It’s yet another reason I’m baffled at what the DemE wing did here. Annointing a senile man who was a buffoon in his good years with 1000 skeletons in his closet who had never even finished top 3 in a primary until this cycle over multiple attempts seems really dumb. But what do I know.
They didn’t have any other choice, what were they going to do? Give poor people healthcare? Come on.
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Not surprising at all. we saw it in Iowa back in November. Joe’s staff actually gave an entire section of their tickets to Pete’s folks at that giant dinner because we had so many and they couldn’t even fill their quota.
The DemE wing realized that the most reliable bloc of voters weren’t going to vote for anyone but Biden, so Pete and Amy fell on their swords and got out of the way.
I already mentioned why Biden did well in the states where he had no campaign infrastructure. It’s because Pete and Amy did (for the reasons I outlined above…they leveraged their pre-existing grassroots groups) and then they put out the bat signal by endorsing Joe. Also Beto, I guess, but fuck that guy.
For those of you still doing SC post-mortems, here’s a thread which sums it up nicely, by the guy who called Pete a lying MFer. This is really hard to overcome and Bernie’s campaign should have known this, or talked to people who understand this. Read the whole thread.
https://twitter.com/michaelharriot/status/1235747743005642753?s=20
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I’ll admit I’m a bit worried that you’re going to work yourself into a state where a Biden victory is going to crush you inside because it will feel like everything you worked for was invalidated.
There was no one in this race who was a slam dunk winner against Trump and no one who was a sure loser. Politics fandom really is turning into sports fandom, with hot take artists everywhere who see things in binary instead of probability.
I absolutely agree with you that this is the right approach. However even at the lower level of politics you probably need some support from the party machine.
Not too long ago there was a segment on some show about people trying to run for office for the first time. In each case when they reached out to the DNC the one question they got was “How much many can you raise?”. The party had a specific answer in mind, answer less than that and they wouldn’t even bother with the candidate.
Of course, a candidate might manage without any party support but they shouldn’t have to. For every AOC that made it on her own there will be hundreds who were doomed to fail.
No way. I don’t regret a second of it, and I never will. If Biden somehow wises up and hires/leverages Pete’s campaign infrastructure, then maybe I’ll feel a little better about him, but that remains to be seen. I wish Bernie would, actually. But Im not sure that will happen.
The CA state organizing director for Pete is a longtime campaign veteran, and I was talking with him the other day. The reality of campaign work is that you’re gonna lose a lot more often than you win, and the key is to understand that’s how it works without getting jaded about it.
It’s actually kind of freeing to not be as invested right now, and to watch it unfold. I’m more critical of moves by both sides, and less angry about them at the same time.
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That’s so gracious of you, thank you so much kind sir for being personally fine with it.
Do you even realize what an entitled prick you sound like?
El Oh Fucking El
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Make sure to wash your hands after every dunk.
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Good call, cause we all know a lot of people have dunked on that basket you’re defending.
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Sounds like Pete’s campaign was run in a similar fashion to Bernies as far as the volunteer efforts go. Convince some of the now disillusioned Pete>Biden volunteers to go dip their toes in the Bernie volunteer world. They’ll likely feel way more at home and welcomed.
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