I think the problem is that if some Dem candidates start using them they are no longer perceived as GOP talking points and come to be seen as conventional bi-partisan wisdom that only “crazies” like Warren and Bernie support.
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Imo pretty fair, but as a Warren supporter but not an M4A hill-dier, I wasn’t offended in the least by Pete’s attack. It’s a campaign, he wants her voters, their base of support is pretty similar and he wants to win Iowa. Hard for me to castigate a politician running to win as being self-serving, how is any politician not self-serving when they are trying to score points against a front runner?
Yeah, that’s fair. I can’t speak for others, but I think my disappointment (I’m not offended) is because I was hoping more for “that’s great, but I like my plan better because…” rather than “your plan sucks and would never work… say taaaaaaxes.” You expect it from the grifters coughTulsicough coughWilliamsoncough but hope for better from the serious contenders.
I also think starting from the position of compromise is terrible because the GOP will yank that football away all day. If Pete said he would pursue a public option because he thought it was doable and also thought it was all-or nothing so he’d rather get a small victory than a complete loss, I would disagree but accept that. But Pete’s framing sabotages the larger cause by giving succor to the dishonest framing by Rs.
The first time I saw her do it was a post-debate interview after the first debate, when she was in third place. I’m not really considering that front-runner. Chris Matthews kept asking over and over “but will taxes go up for the middle class… will taxes go up… will taxes go up…?” I’ve sat through dozens of interviews with Lewendowski and KellyAnne who sat there and told the most ridiculous lies with a shit-eating cant-catch-me smirk on their faces, and people like Matthews ate it up. But now he wants to be a hard-hitting journalist because someone doesn’t accept his premise that focusing on the tax increase is what’s important? If you can put a quarter into a machine and get back a dollar every time, it’s dishonest to keep saying “but you’re going to charge people a quarter.” (I think that’s a good analogy: Lizzo, feel free to use that.)
I don’t pretend to be a political strategist, but I think the difference is “raise taxes on the middle class.” I guess she feels–right or wrong–that saying she wants to raise taxes on the middle class will be so twisted and be such a hot-button issue that she’ll waste way too much time trying–and failing–to clarify, that she’s just not going to play that game, and insists on focusing on total cost.
I think this is a very good point, and Warren needs to distill an answer into a 5-word soundbite or this is going to be a problem for her. But she’ll have plenty of practice answering the question from journalists who are JAQing. Pete isn’t helping her hone her message; he either believes it or he’s just trying to score points.
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I really don’t think the bolded is true. What he did at the fourth debate was a pretty massive shift, and in my opinion the sole reason so many here (myself included) have soured on him in a big way recently.
I’m sure you saw Pete’s 2018 tweet supporting M4A. In one of the early debates, he was proposing “Medicare for all who want it”. I don’t agree with that as the best way to get M4A done, but I can at least understand the argument that more people might be accepting politically.
In the fourth debate, he attacked Warren with a “how will you pay for this?” line. Here is the million dollar question for you: Why did he say that?
I can think of several reasons, and none of them are good.
And here you are unfortunately doing the same thing.
Here is a second question for you: How will Pete pay for HIS plan?
From his website: “Through Pete’s Medicare for All Who Want It plan, everyone will be able to opt in to an affordable, comprehensive public alternative.”
Okay, let’s say that only half the country wants in (the rest keeping their private insurance). Presumably this isn’t free either, right? If my math is correct, that will only require a magical 15 trillion dollar money tree.
Those two questions that I’ve bolded are the keys to understanding why I and others here are so disappointed with Pete over the past couple weeks.
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It was her failure to denounce the Russian State media support of her, her non answer was suspect, imo.
Anyone taking insurance industry contributions is not getting my vote or my support, sorry not sorry.
This is for the primary, of course, if an insurance industry executive happened to win the primary, I’d vote for them over what we have now.
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I’m no Gabbard fan, but I don’t really know what this means. She’s said she can’t control what they say, which is presumably true. And it’s not as though undecideds/LIVs are exactly glued to Russia Today.
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Well, when our current system is going to cost us 35 trillion over 10 years, I’d say we use the same money tree that we’ve already been using. Universal health care will save money over the long run, we spend twice as much per capita on healthcare as a country than the nations that provide care as a basic human right. Reports have actually been written, with the most prominent being the one produced by Charles Blahous at the right-wing Mercatus Center, that found that M4A would reduce national health expenditures by $2 trillion in its first decade. Most notably, the administrative expenses of hospitals and private practices will go down. Hospitals in the US spend 25 percent of their revenue on provider-side administration. In single-payer nations like Canada and Scotland, that same figure is only 12 percent. Medicare for some doesn’t eliminate those costs and makes the plan more unwieldy while catering to for profit insurance industry executives and lobbyists.
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She can’t control what they say, but she can still come out vocally against the same apparatus that supports tRUmp and meddled in our elections in 2016.
IDK man we’re inches away from like, loyalty oaths and stuff at that point. I don’t see “denouncing foreign media” as a big vote-getter anyway, so even if it were the right thing to do, I don’t struggle to explain Gabbard’s failure to do it. I’m never sure quite what these clear no-hopers are doing; the days when you could confidently say they’re earnestly trying to become POTUS or get a Cabinet gig or whatever are gone, though “it’s clear this primary is between lolyou and lolme” do hint at the former, however delusional it may seem.
So assuming she’s not some literal Kremlin catspaw, the suggestion that she might be is something that will concern her and her campaign, right? I wouldn’t blame them for taking a reject-the-premise line, seeing attacking RT as feeding into the hands of the overall narrative. Hasn’t exactly gone great for them, I don’t think, but that’s life.
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She grew up in a cult that she still is associated with, that alone should raise enough red flags to preclude her from public office, not just the presidency.
Yeah, that I get, that ad is crazy.
I don’t get your loyalty oath statement. I mean, not only does she not denounce Russian State media support, she just happens to continuously parrot RT talking points.
It‘s quite a coincidence that this change of heart came after he became the largest recipient of donations from that particular industry.
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Sure, that’s just a coincidence most over exaggerated eye roll in the history of mankind
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I am glad skydiver posts here. The place would be poorer without her. I actually wish we had posters who feel so strongly about Biden, Booker, Klobuchar, Castro etc. Posters who portray their favorite candidates in the best possible light. Let us hear what we might be missing about them.
That does not mean we have to uncritically accept whatever is posted. As politics is a high stakes game things can get heated.
Hopefully she doesn’t take it personally.
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I still don’t really know exactly what it means to “denounce their support”, but it’s basically to say that it’s bad and she doesn’t want it, right? With the implication that meaningful conclusions can be drawn from her failure to say that a foreign news station watched by ~zero potential Gabbard voters is bad and should stop saying nice things about her.
So let’s say some other candidate latches onto this. Beto seems dumb enough to try - let’s say Beto publishes an open letter in WaPo, vowing not simply not to accept, but to actively oppose and combat any support he or his campaign might receive, directly or indirectly etc, from Russia AND WHAT OF TULSI GABBARD WE MAY WELL ASK.
This is where the logic leads. It’s different from eg disavowing a David Duke endorsement, because at the end of the day, Russia Today is a media outlet. They’re allowed to run news and opinion pieces. Making those opinion pieces a central feature of American national electoral politics seems unwise. Certainly (bearing in mind that I don’t at all dispute that RT functions to some degree as an arm of Putin’s foreign policy), I think doing so ends up giving them the influence it’s aimed at curbing - whose week will they ruin by endorsing next?
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Russia Today is a Kremlin-financed propaganda operation masquerading as a media outlet.
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