Hating on liz for not saying “taxes will go up” shows a massive disconnect with what will happen. If Bernie somehow wins the nom every single ad will be him the soundbite of him raising taxes on the middle class. Thats all your grandparents will hear. Have fun trying to “but actually” explain that one away to them.
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Economics suggests that employee pay would simply increase by the amount that employer’s save on insurance costs.
But practically employers will use the lack of knowledge/sophistication of their workers to keep at least some of the cost savings for themselves, and even for workers who do get 100% of the employer’s cost savings added to their paycheck, it will be an aggravating/stressful process for many.
It’s selfish yes, but is rational for some people to just be like I’m happy w/ what I have, would rather just keep what I have rather than dealing w/ a bunch of aggravation just to stay at my personal status quo.
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This is the crux of the problem for Warren’s plan. What needs to happen is that the law either needs to require employers to pay out as salary what they spent on healthcare (if that’s even Constitutional, which I doubt) or to require them to notify their employees of how much they were paying as benefits, and how much of that is being passed on to them. Make the employers who pocket the savings the bad guys.
Yeah Pete on M4A pisses me off big time. I think he’s mentioned being for court packing before, and I liked that more than his eventual 5/5/5 plan, but 5/5/5 beats the hell out of what we have now and would improve the quality of the SCOTUS and its rulings significantly.
Right now you have 44% right wing nuts, that’d go down to 33%. Right now the swing vote is Roberts, the swing votes would vary on the issues and likely be closer to the center than Roberts.
I don’t see the 5/5/5 reform specifically ever happening, but just playing hardball on SCOTUS and trying to fix the problem there is a huge plus for Pete… and in the context of my reply, a MASSIVE difference between him and Biden.
Economics basically dictates that employees will be paid more. I’m hardly a fundamentalist when it comes to economics, but it tends to accurately capture the direction of first order effects. And while there are 100 reasons why labor markets are not efficient, the “free market” for employment has more than a negligible effect on compensation.
The more I think about Pete’s plan for SCOTUS, the more I hate it.
He said yesterday:
Now, one way to fix this would be to have a 15-member court where five of the members can only be appointed by unanimous agreement of the other 10.
So if you have 5 Democrats, 5 Republicans, and 5 appointed only by unanimous consent, all you’re doing is creating a situation where the most extreme Republican members can hold hostage any nominee they don’t like. (Yes, in theory a Democrat member could do this too, but you know how that will go).
I like that Pete is at least talking about this issue, but I really think his solution sucks.
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This is a good point.
But I wouldn’t go that far.
That’s a fair point too.
Yeah, that’s what I was getting at originally. People painting him as just as bad as Biden are misreading the situation.
Yeah, putting Pete in the Biden tier is not good at all.
That said, for someone who had a decent shot of being my #1 early in this process, I’m not even sure he’s ahead of Castro, Booker, or Beto for me right now. His disingenuous attacks on M4A have really pissed me off lately.
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Are you not union?
And the replies were deliciously savage.
On the SCOTUS
First, it’s not Pete’s plan, it’s from some Yale law profs. I’m not in a place to search out the reference right now but it’s out there. I’ll find it later.
Second, he said it’s one of several he’s looking at, along with term limits and rotating justices from the appellate bench. Both of which have other issues.
Third, he doesn’t want to pack the court, he wants to depoliticize it.
It needs to be discussed. I’m glad they asked the questions.
M4A isn’t the only way to be progressive and I’m pissed that people gatekeep that term based on one fucking issue. Also, he’s right:
I’ll believe this. Fair point.
I don’t know if these are good options either, but I’m willing to listen to pros and cons.
I don’t think this is possible.
Agreed.
I’m happy to gatekeep on this issue. It’s that important, both morally and politically.
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What are some issues besides healthcare that Pete is progressive on? Like is there some policy where he’s left of Warren? Because it seems to me that he has essentially the same policies as Biden but is younger and smarter and wasn’t around to collect the baggage Biden has.
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I don’t get why were scrutinizing Mayor Pete so heavily when he’s like a distant fourth place in the primary.
Well, for example, on Citizens United, the liberal side is also overwhelmingly the populist side. And if the Supreme Court becomes more politicized, there could be more pressure on politicians to pick 5 justices from their side who will do the populist thing. It’s tough to game out without knowing more specifics on the process, and without seeing it in action.
It has a better chance of overturning recent bad rulings than we have with the status quo, though.
The things that are wrong with him are symptomatic of the things that are wrong with the party at large. And Skydiver bombards the forum with pro-Pete stuff, so it’s difficult to not respond.
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I don’t know if I’d call skydiver’s posting bombardment but I think you’re right that like with thinslicing’s pro Yang posts it causes people to pick apart candidates who really don’t need to be.
But it’s probably the most important.
So by he’s right, you’re bragging that he chose the position that polls the best, while hurling disingenuous attacks that he knows are bullshit at Warren to weaken support for her plan?
What percentage of people who prefer his plan do you think would say yes when asked if Warren’s plan would cost the middle class more?
The issue here goes beyond which plan polls better right now, in an environment where the plan that would be the best when implemented (true Medicare for All/single payer) is being attacked disingenuously based on an intentional misconstruing of the end cost to the average American.
That’s why I say Pete can fuck off on healthcare. If he was up there arguing about giving people choices and about the merits of his glidepath to single payer, I’d have no problem with it even though I disagree. But I know how intelligent he is, so I know that he knows that his attacks on Warren are disingenuous. For that, he can fuck off on healthcare.
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So, Trump wields massive power to get everything he wants done in legislation with the GOP House and Senate? No. Can Congress run a president like Trump? Usually. The president, overall, is pretty limp outside of executive orders/breaking the law/defying Congress. The President can give a wish list, but if the Congress says for the president to eff off, what’s the president going to do if legislation passes, veto it? You really think any Dem president will veto anything Congress passes, including Sanders or Warren signing a weaker option that improves upon the ACA? That’s the crux here.
It’s not about the level of power a president has over negotiations, it’s about what the president will do when something passes. I hope you’re not asserting that Sanders/Warren would say, ‘it’s not M4A, veto’, and also hope you’re not asserting that Biden would say ‘it’s M4A, veto’.
I also hope you don’t think if there’s a massive appetite for M4A in the House to the point that the people will acquiesce under a Warren/Sanders presidency, that the same condition under a Biden presidency wouldn’t work. Don’t get it twisted, if Biden or Pete wins, it won’t be because of their policies on healthcare. If either of them think that was their mandate and reason for getting elected, they’re going down in flames.
Trump is an incompetent buffoon. Most presidents wield massive power to get their party to pass legislation on their signature issues. Just because Trump is a moron who couldn’t get the wall done doesn’t mean that presidents don’t have the political power to get Congress to vote on stuff.
Are any of the Dem candidates going to be presidents like Trump?
Because political parties routinely tell presidents from their own party who just won the highest office in the land to fuck off. Where do you get this shit???
Sanders/Warren will likely sign the best thing they can get passed, but if they win Medicare for All will get voted on. If Biden wins it will not. This is not complicated, dude. You’re better than this.
Okay, maybe you’re not better than this. Very simply:
If Warren/Sanders wins, their general election campaign will focus heavily on true Medicare for All, and if they win the presidency the country will have just handed them a political mandate on Medicare for All. It will get voted on by the Dem House, and they will have a chance to exert political pressure to get it through. If they fail, they’ll do a watered down version to get the votes they need. See: Obama, Barack - Affordable Care Act.
If Biden wins, the general election campaign will focus heavily on adding a public option to Obamacare, and if he wins, that’s what the mandate will be for. The centrist wing of the party will hold the power and Bernie, Warren, AOC, etc will be the left flank with virtually no power. There is a 0.0% chance single payer comes to the floor for a vote. See: Sense, Common.
Like you apparently haven’t figured it out yet, but all of the establishment Dems in the House (and Biden would be their king if he wins) are spineless, gutless cowards. There is NO way they’re fighting for true Medicare for All if he wins.
You’re being delusional, I guess because you don’t want to accept that if Biden wins, Medicare for All is dead until at least 2028.
Pete would likely make healthcare a huge part of his general election campaign. Biden would stumble around and talk about it a lot, but mostly brag about Obamacare and fixing it and making small changes.