Since the other topic on this mysteriously disappeared I though I would make another one.

Because there were so many Democrats throwing their hate in for the Democrat nomination, the debates were broken down into two groups of 10 over 2 nights. The first one was relatively mild compared to the 2nd one, with a lot of arguments breaking out, Joe Biden being constantly attacked by the others (who led in the polls), and some very weird questions asked with some equally weird answers given.

Gun control, foreign policy, health care, immigration, all seemed to range from the extreme (and stupid) to a more moderate approach, but all seemed to rebuke Trump's current policies on all these issues in some way.

Some of the candidates did better than others - though, it differs from my views. On the first night, Warren did good, focusing on medicare for all, and immigration issues, pandering to progressive causes. Castro also did well. On the second night, Harris led the pack, but came off as a stereotypical angry black woman, who constantly hammered at Bidden for his racial comments on segregation and working with those on the other side of it. Sanders stumbled, along with Biden, and both saw their poll numbers drop, while Harris saw her rise.

The next Democrat debate cutoff will more stricter, with only 14 candidates to win a spot for it in July. And following, the September debate will be even more stricter, with only those that have the highest poll numbers, and campaign donations, being allowed to enter it.

I dislike all the candidates(No surprise), however, I am cheering for the underdog Marianne Williamson to win the primary for the democrats. While like most of the candidates I disagree with her policies, Id rather have someone without major political baggage or a extreme progressive/socialist agenda win if anyone were to. I wish she was given more time to speak. It seems kind of unfair as well that lesser known candidates arent given much of a opportunity as the well known candidates. Almost feels rigged in some regards.

Marianne Williamson is Progressive but she's just as delusional too which is amazing I plan on giving her $20 for her campaign so she can make the next round of debates just so she shits it up even more than these debates already are. But hey most of these candidates are progressive and none of them are going to get the nomination all they're going to do is move moderates to the right due to the farther Left a "F" you Bernie supporters and the moderates did it in 2016 and they'll probably do it again.

I always love good conspiracy theories.

But it won't change the fact that the same people who are complaining about the mandate are already probably being forced to pay for car insurance, and have this view about how unfair things are now that they might have to pay for health insurance even though they would become a tax burden on others tax payers simply by getting sick,or injured, and having to use the emergency room to take care of it, if they didn't have health insurance.

And speaking of taxpayer waste, Trump just wasted millions of taxpayers dollars to celebrate himself, and to fund-raise off of, with his 4th of July event.

You can try, like a lot of other Pro-trump supporters, who are hoping it will fuck up the Democrat debates, but all that will do is make the others look more sane.

lol I doubt it you just have to look at their campaign promises and and they're economic policies they're proposing, it make a high school freshman who took a economics course look more sane and educated. like really how are you they going to fund Mudicare Fur Awl and slave reparations and Green New Deal without entirely tanking the economy with hundreds of billions if not trillions of dollars that will be a slow moving economic motivator or benefits a small percentage of people?

That's not saying much, when Trump has said even crazier shit. I mean, who could forget his promises of saving coal, when it's now in the shitter. His promises of making Mexico pay for the wall, only for him to try and divert funds form Defense spending. His promises to put Muslims in concentration camps. His argument that China would pay for the Tariffs, when the public is paying more on products because of it. His promises on healthcare, when people are now paying more for it. His promises to get rid of the nationalist debt, when all he has done is increased it by increasing government spending and the size of goverment. His promises to clean up Washington, drain the swamp, only to increase it and place swamp monster in it. Trump is hard to beat when it comes to over-promising on things that most people with half a grey cell would know he can't deliver on and is just pure crazy non nonsense to excite his base.

And while I will agree that some of the more progressive Democrats are offering unrealistic shit, from medicare for all, green new deal, slave reparations, and some other crazy shit, that they know won't pass congress, not all of the Democrats, especially the more centrist/moderates, are fully embracing them, only parts of them. And with any luck, the more moderate ones will win out - and I really hope that Harris loses, as she is almost as bad as Trump is with identity polics.

There's been a campaign where conservatives will donate $1 to Williamson's campaign to keep her on the stage. It worked--she's made the second debate. I wonder if she will put her healing crystals on the campaign?

Tony brings up a good point: regardless of whoever wins the nomination (I am thinking Biden, Warren, or Harris), whoever it is will have to walk back some of the more far-left statements/promises to try to win back moderates, independents, or those who reluctantly voted for Trump/voted third party. Problem is, once that bell's been rung, it can't be un-rung. That, and the Democratic candidates have basically been writing the GOP/Trump campaign's attack ads for them. All they have to do is run some of the clips from the debate (or any future ones) on TV over and over. Here in PA, Joe Sestak used a similar strategy to unseat then-Senator Arlen Specter in the primary, so it works.

As for me, the only candidates I would consider are Andrew Yang and Tulsi Gabbard (I have always liked her), but they're not insane enough to win the nomination. It's also telling that Gabbard had to go on Tucker Carlson's show just to get an interview because literally no other media personality would interview her.

Oh my God yes! Or a sweat lodge to purify themselves of negative energy.

Biden or Harris Warren doesn't have it and I doubt the dem nominee will win regardless even if they have to backtrack on all the progressive stuff and take heat from the far left like Bernie supporters and those idiots on the Young Turks what's more important is retaining the liberals, centrists and more moderate Democrats and any possible right of center defectors.

Even then that seems difficult because the economy is in a good place the stock market is strong the unemployment rate is at 3.8% as of March and hasn't really previous to that and this is happening in middle of a trade war we started, people would want to keep that trend going and if he gets reelected and ends and does more deregulation the economy could be in a good place until 2024, And people like to keep trends going and vote what's best for them economically.

At 7/6/19 06:11 PM, Tony-DarkGrave wrote:

You know there is quite a disconnect from WallStreet and the average person, right? Jobs may have risen, but they are mostly low paying ones, more than anything else. The average wage growth are still stagnant, despite all the tax regulations and deregulation, which seemed to have benefited the wealthy and corporations the most - corporate profits are one thing, but raising wages fucks up corporate earnings,product prices, and can easily lead to the rise in inflationary rates and kills off the rise in stock prices. And while I'm sure people may crow about the economy, based on job growth, and WallStreet, it doesn't change the fact hat the average person is paying more for health costs, gas, and even on products they buy, which negates whatever tax saving (for those that got it), or wage increase (for those that got it), the average person got.

Nor has Trump seemed to help out retailers, which seemed to have only accelerated in closing under his economy. with a lot more feeling that another recession is coming. Trump's tariffs have already led to a shaky economy, with many industries impacted by it, especially consumers. Some companies are still planning to outsource their manufacturing to other countries, to cut down on cost of labor and materials. And there are 5 companies that practically are the market, because they have grown so big they have ether bought out their competitors or ran them out of business, which is not exactly a good thing for competition, or job growth, or even freedoms.

So, you may be feeling good about the economy under Trump, but a lot aren't.

Is that why is poll numbers suck, even by his own pollsters? And what does regulations actually means to you, outside of a general dislike of them. All I have seen is deregulation for certain corporations, and certain groups, while increasing regulations on other industries and on certain groups. Here's an article about it.

No, Trump a has alienated too many groups, to appease a few. His economy is a mix bag, full of uncertainty, along with his deregulation and tax cuts.

The way I see it, all of the Democratic nominations have some serious flaws in terms of their policies, and just because they oppose Trump in just about everything isn’t going to win people over, and in some cases might do more harm than good in the swing states.

The way I see it, there are 6 “legit” choices that could represent the DNC in the election, 5 that stand little chance and are only there just to make the debates bigger, and 3 wild cards that probably won’t win, but actually have some creative (if naive) ideas, or at least try to get the more inane prattle of the progressive talking points out, however unlikely.

Legit candidates: Warren, Biden, Sanders, Harris, Gabbard and Booker.

Wild card: Yang, Williamson, Klobuchar.

Little chance candidates: O’Rourke, Buttigieg, Gillibrand, Castro and Inslee.

Having said that, I’ll keep my door open for the lower rung candidates for them to step up come the debates and the primaries if they get that far, with O’Rourke being the most obvious I think of. Likewise, a legit candidate can easily fall off the map into irrelevance, such as Harris or Booker.

Okay now see, this is just messed up. You call yourself a progressive (or do you?) yet you advocate the very poorest of the poor who are so poor they can't afford any health insurance be charged some penalty for not having it. When you instead should be advocating for some form of government-funded universal healthcare if you were actually progressive. Heaven forbid you, a well-to-do individual, have some minor tax burden to offset those who couldn't afford it, without such a system in place. Do you know how selfish that makes you look? It's amazing you assume the very poorest even have cars, as well. Does everyone own a car in your world?

As far as the candidates go, Elizabeth Warren, Andrew Yang, and Bernie Sanders all seem good, and in that order for 1st, 2nd, and 3rd picks.

Hell no on Joe Biden because I'm not going to vote to further tax the poorest. Although if it ends up Joe Biden vs. Donald Trump I might have to reluctantly go with Biden. Or maybe I'll vote 3rd party again. We'll see.

I am a moderate. I don't follow any political ideology. I'm just in the middle on most things.

You also assume that the law didn't take this shit into consideration. There were various state/government subsidies that helped to fray the cost of health insurance for the poor, including for the middle class - though this varied from state to state. There was also a big segment in the law that greatly expanded Medicaid, eventually covering 17 million more poor (with Trump, and Republicans, threatening to get rid of it, by cutting it), but that was only for states that participated in it (most red states didn't). So, if you were poor, lived in a deep red state, controlled by Republicans, you could argue that this was a tax on the poor.

I initially thought Buttigieg had a shot at being one of the top four for the nomination, but the South Bend town hall appears to have torpedoed his campaign (as has a lot of stuff that's been going on there, from what I have read). It's almost like basing your entire campaign around the fact that you're gay doesn't cover up your shortcomings.

I'd say it's going to come down to Harris, Warren, Biden, and maybe Sanders, but a lot of people are getting sick of Sanders, so he might not have the staying power this time. It's too soon to tell though; and there are still several more debates.

Sometimes they have to because public transportation is shit. Not every city has a subway or a working bus service. Hell, some poor people even live in their cars.

At 7/7/19 12:36 PM, EdyKel wrote:

So, if you were poor, lived in a deep red state, controlled by Republicans, you could argue that this was a tax on the poor.

But this is exactly, precisely, 100% what the problem is. So if you already know this then why would you vote to make things worse for huge swaths of the American people who are already the poorest and with little opportunity to improve that situation? How is this different from blaming the poor for being poor when in reality the vast majority of poor never had much to begin with, including opportunities to get out of poverty?

If you will respond with "well maybe they should have voted Democrat", they do tend to, if they can get to the polling places. See voter suppression tactics. They tend to overwhelmingly be targeted at the poor. This ensures things have little chance for improvement.

And if your answer is "they should move", you've obviously never been poor. Moving is expensive, and the blue states tend to be located quite a ways from most red states. And most people don't want to be separated from their families, including extended families, which odds are they can't all just up and move to a more favorable state. People are born into poverty, consistently kept down, prevented opportunities, generally disenfranchised, and with little or no mobility. And this describes the vast majority of poor in America. You would essentially penalize someone because they were born.

Even in the places without those things or without good service, there are still many poor who don't have cars because they can't afford them, and the priority is keeping a roof over their head and it's hard to even do that. It's very telling to assume even the poorest "must" own cars in America. It tells quite a lot about the person who would make such an assumption. Namely they've never experienced such poverty themselves, they've never lived in or been to areas where such poverty exists, and they don't personally know anyone who has been in such a situation.

Many who don't own cars must rely on others for transportation, or they may not have reliable transportation at all. It's not unusual for one person out of many to be the one who owns a car and has to shuttle the others around or run their errands for them, such as getting groceries. This is partly why they are not able to make it to the polling places come election time, since if the polling place is not within walking distance of where they live, they may not have a way to get there. Even if it is within walking distance they may be disabled. For example, how would a poor man in a wheelchair, with no reliable transportation, be able to get to such a polling place, if he couldn't get anyone to take him? Maybe the one person who runs errands is busy that day or helping someone else that day.

Bernie lost me with his extension of voting rights to prisoners of all severities, the logistics of such a claim are insanity. I'm really big on Yang, his willingness to engage with neuroscientists and AI engineers gives me some indication that he's thinking about long term economics and poverty conditions beyond a 20th century model. Warren is just establishment demagoguery to me, I'm not sure what you see in her.

At the end of the day I don't see any candidate capable of beating Trump, which is unfortunate.

No. To understand this fully, you would have to go back to the 90's, where you had Republicans designing the foundation that would be known as the Affordable Care Act (also known as Obamacare). At that point of time, health care costs were spiraling out of control, putting pressure on Republicans to find a solution. They eventually scrapped doing anything about it, while costs continue to spiral out of control - and after 9-11 they could just ignore the problem for a while. But the public was getting angry over the constantly out of control cost of health in thios country - not to mention tired of the wars.

By the time Democrats retook both chambers of congress, and controlled the White House, there were hundreds of thousand of people filing for bankruptcy every year due to medical costs, easily reaching near or over a hundred thousand dollars. Part of the problem was that people were being dropped by their health insurance, or weren't able to get it. Universal health care, which was floated by some Democrats, didn't take off, because no one knew how to pay for it (just like medicare for for all) which didn't lead to hire taxes for everyone. So they turned to a system that was implemented by a Republican Governor in his state, Mitt Romney of Massachusetts, which based on the original ideas of the Republican health plan of the 90's.

But from the get go, Republican were opposed to it, even though they added ideas to the Democrat health plan, and instead platformed on fear mongering that this plan would bankrupt the country, people would die from it because of supposed death panels because of government control over health care, and it would lead to more taxes, and that is what led to the rise of the tea party. The idea of the ACA was to expand medicare to more people, and to stabilize the rise in insurance premiums and to keep people from being dropped by their insures and being denied coverage due to a preexisting condition.

To placate the Insurance companies to accept people with preexisting conditions, and not to drop those who developed expensive medical conditions, Democrats introduced the mandate, with the idea that the more healthy people in the pool (which might also lead to preventative measures to avoid more serious condition and expense for them) will offset the loss for those with more serious and expensive conditions, while also stabilizing insurance premiums. And I already mentioned the subsidies, and medicaid expansion, to help those who could afford insurance.

While the ACA did stabilize the insurance price, and helped a lot people, it was far from a perfect plan, but it was the only plan that had a chance. Republicans, went out of their way to make it worse, while not offering anything that would be practical, or better, to deal with the issues that the ACA tried to address. When they got full control of the government, with a Republican president, they got rid of the mandate, and tried to repeal the ACA. Though, before Trump got into office, they had no plan to replace it, after voting to repeal it several time with token votes. And by the time they did come up with their own plan to replace it (a plan designed in the backroom by a handful of prominent Republicans, without floor debate on it), it was worse, offering everything from vouchers, to small tax rebates, and kicking millions of poor off medicare, which led it to and it failed to pass - it was terrible and mean.

So, having all this in mind, I don't get your argument at all. You either are ignorant of past and current events and problems in our health system, or you are being one of those ideological political loyalists who blindly accepts whatever the loudest voice says from it and are and just using the poor to pad your argument with sympathy (while quietly laughing, and hoping someone accepts your silly argument). I mean, blaming a mandate, when there were government subsidies that helped the poor, and even middle class, and plans that allowed more poor to sign up for the government/State funded medicaid, while excusing State Republicans who denied some of this stuff that would have addressed your concerns over the poor, so you can argue how unfair paying $180 fine for those who didn't sign up for health insurance, even though they would be a huge leach on taxpayers when they got injured or sick by doing something they could have avoided, or voted for a politicians who would have opened those options for them rather than blinding voting for politicians who denied them that.

I don't care who they vote for, as long as they are informed, and that the dominate state party doesn't try to disfranchise voters in some way to give their part a better chance at winning seats, or retaining them. I also respect people who have a reason for voting for something, evenifit'sselfish, as long as it not based on superficial and stereotypical reasons, or misinformation, even I if detest the candidate they are voting for - or if they are strictly voting for them out of blind party (or political ideological) loyalty.

Never crossed my mind.

shuuut up dude no one likes trump or canada

Simply put, it reeks of desperation for anyone to extend the vote to currently convicted felons, (it’s a different story for those who did their time) in order to gain an edge, especially when they probably aren’t going to be well informed on political matters in the first place.

Even without that, the only reason that Sanders is still relevant right now is because of his built in supporters from 2016, which outside college campuses and the coasts, they are patchy at best, not to mention their history of being wishy-washy when it comes to voting.

Yang is a big wild card, but I would imagine that voters are going to be a little more gun shy on another outsider candidate that isn’t Trump. While Yang does come with a clear plan that sounds good to people’s ears, I’m skeptical how much of it is going to stick once it goes through Congress. It’s easy to make grandiose claims on the campaign trail, it’s quite another to enact on them when you have to take Congress and even the courts in play, as Trump has found out.

Her problems are twofold. The first one is that she constantly punches down towards her opponents, making her look weak and petty, (see the whole Native American ancestry kerfluffle) and the second is catering to the overreacting revisionist SJWs with policies that nobody asked for, and is not worth bothering.

Actually, there are plenty of candidates that can beat Trump. The problem is that they need to win over the white males (who hold the keys to societal change) in flyover country that may had voted Democrat in the past, but voted for Trump and Republicans in 2016 because they spoke what they wanted to hear, regardless of validity. (See Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin as examples.)

We have our first drop out(from the debates). Eric Swalwell. Any predictions for whos next?

And he wants his Congressional seat back, of course. Anything to stay on the public dole.

I'm guessing John Delaney.

Yeah I'm not a fan of the voting rights for prisoners bit. But you don't necessarily need to like every single position of a candidate, if the overall outlook is more-or-less favorable.

As for Elizabeth Warren, she seems like she has a pretty good chance to win. She's in favor of net neutrality and spoke against Ajit Pai. She seems to be supportive of Native Americans and Native American issues. While she's present-day wealthy, she wasn't born into wealth and her parents were on minimum wage, at least for a time. She seems to want to focus on improving conditions for the working class. She actually tends to go against abusive corporate practices such as anticompetitive behavior and aggregating data collection (data mining) of users/customers between companies. She supports LGBT rights. Tax the ultrarich. Medicare for all.

I'm not saying there aren't also other good candidates, but yeah those would be pretty good reasons. I don't really see anything about her I don't like.

Also, and this isn't a good reason to vote for a candidate, but if we're to have a first female President, it's best if she's a good one. And yes I know there are people who will vote for someone just because they're a woman or just because this or that. That's not why I'd vote for someone, but in her case it's at least an added bonus I guess?

It's going to come down to who it is versus Trump. And while many of the candidates are at least acceptable, some aren't. You don't want another Hillary Clinton versus Donald Trump. Someone who is completely unlikable by large segments of the population isn't a good choice of candidate; which was interesting because both Clinton and Trump are unlikable, but someone had to win.

And there's always a question of who pays for it? And too often that answer is the American people. But if the 1%ers have majority of the wealth and keep hoarding it, may as well make them be the ones who pay for it. In Roman times it was considered an honor for a wealthy man to use his money to fund community projects, and if you were such a wealthy individual and selected for it (and the selection process was essentially random), you were more-or-less obligated to do so or risk the community thinking badly of you, and the ills that might bring your way.

Tax the hell out of those 1%ers and use the funding to raise the standard of living for everybody.

In the past I was a Bernie Sanders supporter. He's too radical and hypocritical. Biden and Warren are the best shots for this country. However before when we had the ass kicking Biden that took down Paul Ryan in a VP debate, we are now back to the Biden that couldn't hold his own against Sarah Palin in a VP debate.

Harris and Booker are not substantial at all. They're on a soapbox right now that they set up during the Kavanaugh hearings and have been riding that to get into the public eye. I don't see them beating Warren.

Warren is incredibly intelligent, she's not loud enough though. If she goes against Trump she will be just another Jeb Bush in his eyes. Someone weak that he can easily demolish.

Honestly I think Trump wants it to be Bernie. Two reasons. One he wanted it to be Bernie back in 2016 and felt he was screwed by the establishment. Two, it would be awesome to see these two debate. However for those who are on the Democratic hopefuls, chances are the Democratic party already has their choice in mind and are just watching how this plays out.

The Republican party did the same thing back in 2012 when they wanted Mitt Romney. I personally voted for Newt Gingrich in the 2012 primaries because of his work as Speaker of the House and I wanted to see him debate Obama. It would have been great.

Can't always get what you want though.

Don't mind me though, I'm just a Republican watching the dumpster fire.

I'm surprised anyone cares. After the DNC were exposed as the MI6 operation they truly are, since their last campaign ... They're more fucked than the UK conservative party.

Is the general consensus that Biden is your best bet?

Excuse me one moment.

ahaahhahahhahhahahhahahahhahahhhhahahahhahahhahahahhah hahahhahahhahahhahahhahahhaa ahahhahahahahhahhahahahahhahahahahhahahahhahhahhahhahahhahahhaha hahhahahahahahha

President Creepy Joe. I can see it now.

Yeah, good luck.

Bernie Sanders’s staff doesn’t make the $15 minimum wage he’s campaigning on.

**GASPS**

and people actually think Bernyomics actually work. but that doesn't mater muh Green Nu Deal muh fREEE healthcare, and those darn people who have more than me will be forced and involuntarily taxed because I don't!

I am hoping Yang will be seen by more people and rise in popularity and be able to defeat trump. I think out of anyone, if he was to become more popular he would really pull in a lot of ex trump voters and maybe current ones, although I agree he isn't insane enough to be a politician who wins the presidency, hopefully thats not everything. He is already getting support from people who voted trump in 2016, independents, republicans and conservatives so it seems like he has the best sale pitch for the best blend to pull in the votes that could beat trump.... but at the same time if the election is rigged any candidate who wins would have to be able to play just as dirty which is a paradox for democrats it seems

Which isn't surprising from a politician that doesn't know basic economics much less basic math.

Some people have the audacity to look at other countries.

oh please their country in terms of population size is small enough to manipulate their economy and solve their problems Norway only has 5 million people compared to the US 350M, add that we play world police and chief patron to international affairs and commitments and allow our states and people for the most part autonomy and individuality.

its the classic example of it works on small scale but anything bigger than that it turns to shit.

You'll find any old excuse not to try, will you?