Heh, I phrased it like that to not get anybody in trouble for Doing Drugs but I just dug up the MSPaint:
Summary
3 Likes
Shill? No.
I said I’m a Warren/Bernie man with Pete as my 3 after them.
But, I am all in on you grassrooting Pete, and I salute you for it.
Couple months old but a nice takedown of Pete
1 Like
The three people I noticed in the debates. Like they have a great answer for everything
Bernie
Pete
Castro
Warren would be next
Booker. The man never answers a question. Ever. His speech is so affected.
Not a fan.
I’ve gotta admit I’m confused about what Pete has going for him beyond his calm sounding voice. Are there issues where you guys think he’s better than Bernie/Warren?
1 Like
I think his most important quality is he seems genuine. I believe he is pretty much the person he presents himself as. But I feel the same way about Warren and Sanders so he doesn’t have anything over them.
I don’t feel that way about anybody else in the race. All the rest of them are politicians putting on a show.
lmao these MSPaints were the height of comedy circa like 2007. Still recognize the avatars
1 Like
Not enough Harris love here, she’s #1 with Warren #2. Don’t like any other candidate. Franken was up there for me until the scandal hit.
So yeah… Yang is right about climate change. It’s already much too late to stop really bad stuff from happening, which means the conversation does need to turn to mitigation somewhat. That doesn’t mean we don’t need to do something drastic to reduce it to stop it from getting worse… but we aren’t going to put the horse back in the barn. Particularly not with China and India building tons of coal plants.
This is the core problem with the ‘moderate’ positions from the last 20 years. They are now completely and irrevocably out of date. The time to do those things was 20 years ago, and the window for their viability is now closed. We gotta go bigger, and the longer we wait to do anything the bigger we’re going to have to go when we finally do something.
We’re well past the point where we need to start hiring Dutch consulting firms to talk about sea level rise and moving people to higher ground. The ship has sailed on avoiding those steps.
3 Likes
I’d imagine the reason there isn’t a lot of Harris love here is that this is a fairly progressive community, and Harris made her career on oppressing poor brown people.
What is there to love? Serious question. Zikzak a few posts ago brought up the few genuine politicians; Harris seems BY FAR the least genuine.
1 Like
I agree that mitigation plans should be in the conversation. As bad a rap as geoengineering gets, and I understand the criticisms, it might be worth looking into. Probably relatively cheap to investigate.
Realistically though, that’s never going to happen. It’ll be opposed as “defeatism” by the terminally optimistic until it’s too late.
Most recent episode of The Weeds is a good review of the recent debates, and a discussion of the race more generally. It’s just Ezra and Matt.
They make a lot of points that I think would irritate people here. Two of them stand out.
-
It’s really puzzling why people are actively campaigning on really unpopular stances. For example, providing free healthcare to undocumented immigrants, abolishing private health insurance, de-criminalizing unauthorized border crossings. These are things that an active branch of the left really believe in, but they’re also things that a broad base of people (both within and outside the Democratic party) actively don’t like. That’s partially a result of the debate moderators driving exactly these issues, so maybe it was unavoidable in the debates.
-
It’s funny that the people with the best ability to express their ideas (they mentioned Sanders and Warren explicitly, and I think that’s right) are the ones whose ideas are often the least popular. There’s a large block of moderate voters (as evidenced by Joe Biden’s polling) who want someone to run on a more moderate/conservative platform. And there are politicians who fill that space. The problem is that those politicians are so uninspiring – Biden, Klobuchar (who I still have a soft spot for), Colorado dudes – that they’re not gaining any traction. What would really represent a powerful force is someone who tilts toward that moderate side but can actually generate enthusiasm. I think the two best candidates here are Buttigieg (nailed it without checking the spelling) and Harris. Sherrod Brown (OH senator) was someone who was expected to fill this gap before he decided not to run.
I thought this podcast was well worth listening to, and I found myself agreeing with a ton of what they had to say. (This includes a repeat of Matt’s general point that it’s especially silly to argue for some of the more extreme positions because in the current federal political system, there’s no chance that even a Democratic president would be able to enact, say, free healthcare for undocumented immigrants. So it’s all the downside of talking about something controversial without the possible benefit of actually getting that controversial thing done.)
I’m definitely more conservative than a lot of people here, and what’s appealing to me may be terrible to some. So consider yourselves warned.
1 Like
I like that he learned Norwegian just because of some book he was into, that is some epic nerdy fanboi shit.
1 Like
Which is where all the pushback we’re getting from people about ‘Yang’s climate change plan’ because he said we need to be moving people to higher ground. We do need to be moving people to higher ground… because a lot of what is currently coastal real estate is going to be underwater in a decade or two.
I’m obviously unhappy that in my mid 30’s the weather will probably get worse every year from now on… but that’s something I think we all have to accept and learn to live with.
I think it’s weird that the moderates don’t seem to get that sane and rational options from the mid 90’s-early 2000’s aren’t sane or rational anymore. Time passed. Stuff happened. If Gore had been elected in 2000 maybe it would have been different. That was going on 20 years ago now though, and we’re already basically out of time.
1 Like
They aren’t “campaigning” on giving health insurance to undocumented immigrants or abolishing private health insurance. That’s not remotely their pitch when they’re on the stump. They were asked a loaded questions by moderation panels hell-bent on appearing unbiased by way of asking questions rooted in Republican bad faith attacks designed to sound scary. They gave truthful answers consistent with their policy positions. A natural consequence of M4A is that tourists, foreign students, and documented and undocumented immigrants all get the same health care as a citizen. Documented and undocumented immigrants will all pay into the system just like any citizen. If you think they should just lie and deny that those things are natural consequences of their systems to sound better, you’re probably a Republican.
6 Likes
Speaking of podcasts, there is a very good Citation’s Needed from last year on Jake Tapper and the Art of Faux-Adversarialism:
Jake Tapper’s career trajectory is an object lesson in how to succeed in corporate media. The formula generally goes like this: go after the fringes of the left and the right––but mostly the left. Never offend any traditional centers of power. Mug. Constantly mug for the camera. Hitch your brand to “The Troops” And-always, always––attack from the neoconservative right.
I’ve gotta listen to that Tapper podcast. The summary seems accurate. Like I’ve had random, “Dammit Tapper” thoughts a couple of times in the last few days.
Also, love Weeds episodes with just Ezra and Matt. I like Ezra fine, but Matt checks Ezra’s sometimes tendency to be flaky or a wuss.
Sure, the M4A discussion (including its consequences) was largely driven by the moderators’ questions. (To put my cards on the table, I’m more in favor of the Public Option than a true M4A.)
But Matt’s general point is to campaign on popular stuff, and to place less emphasis on unpopular stuff. And I think even in a debate like this, is possible to merge the moderator’s question with some very popular stuff. For example, I thought Buttigieg did a good job marrying his Public Option preference to the undocumented immigrant question - under his plan, they would not receive free healthcare. If I were on the M4A side, I’d try harder to respond to the healthcare question by emphasizing how that makes it even more important to establish a path to citizenship for those immigrants.
And again, maybe this is entirely driven by the debate format, where it’s not productive to spend time talking about topics that are universally agreed upon among the people on stage (e.g., universal background checks for gun purchases/transfers). That discussion doesn’t distinguish any of them from one another, so it’s not informative to the marginal voter. I just wish there was an alternative debate format that would focus on differentiating items like:
- What are your top 1-2 priorities?
- Assuming that you do not carry the Senate and/or House, what executive actions are you willing to take to implement your top priorities?