The Onion! Or is it?

[mcar]

Link to tweet

?s=20

This is the Onion but his supporters have actually been making this argument!

Link to tweet

…

[SWBTATTReg]

1. I suspect any legislation proposed by anyone is always watered down or changed in some ...

fashion to get the majority of senators and house reps to go along and vote for the watered down or modified bill, and then get signed into law. Isn't this the way it always work?

[mcar]

3. It absolutely is

What you are missing is that for months, nay years, Sen. Sanders and his supporters have been vilifying anyone who had the temerity to say his M4A proposal would need to be watered down/compromised.

Look at what happened when Warren said it.

There have been posters on this very board who likened not supporting M4A in its entirety to supporting people dying.

It's the hypocrisy. Sen. Sanders is losing support of an influential union in Nevada. His supporters are doxxing, calling, threatening and even pretending to be members of the union.

Suddenly, one of Sanders' chief supporters is saying, "of course, we'll agree to a watered down version."

Isn't that what Biden, Harris, Klobuchar, etc, have been pushing? Let's shore up the ACA and work toward universal. Bernie's supporters screamed foul.

It's the hypocrisy.

[SWBTATTReg]

8. I understand and appreciate what you say about MFA, etc., to be honest with you, this hasn't been...

an issue with me (Universal care, MFA, etc.)...so I'm sorry and apologize, I haven't paid attention to what they say about Universal care, MFA, etc.. My bad. Thank you for filling me in. I didn't know that it was so negative (the discussions).

I was wanting to hear more about the economy and related issues, income inequality, living minimum wage, etc. (and then, when you have income equality, everything else follows). I am kind of a nerdy guy w/ economics (two degrees so I'm biased).

This is one of the most unfortunate things, that they are so many topics/so many things to be looked at, acted up, worked on, that it's hard to concentrate on just one (although very important to a lot of people) topic a campaign. There are literally, thousands of things.

I will now keep an interested eye on the health care issues ... I didn't know it was so ... I think your idea of fix/enhance the existing ACA at first, before doing something entirely different. Think of all of the untold $billions of dollars that would have to be created to handle the different (probably) paperwork, etc. for a whole new thing.

[mcar]

11. Thank you for this post

This is how we should be debating during this primary - with honesty and integrity instead of attacks.

[Midnightwalk]

5. Yes but there are also so many details

We get so hung up on so called policy differences that people forget what a huge and complex system healthcare is.

Arguably too complicated. I agree with that.

Changing the system is going to cause some pain because we won’t get it perfect at first. Even if the IT side works perfectly (and it won’t) you’ll have patients and doctors who don’t get the right forms filled out online or through paperwork either because they procrastinated or didn’t have some id thing or filled it out wrong.

There will be some clinics or hospitals that close because they aren’t competitive under the new reimbursement rates whatever those turn out to be.

There will be insurance companies that get out of healthcare as patients move to m4a.

One could say “they must have been obsolete so it’s ok if that happens”. Only if you ignore the pain that causes to the patients and communities impacted. The risk and pain have to be managed.

5 year break phase in still means around 50 million people a year.

We gave to get to universal coverage and stop the multiple levels of profiteering and gouging, but we have to be very careful as we do it. We have to prevent hiccups where care is delayed for months because of our changes.

That’s the complex part of healthcare reform. It’s like putting a more powerful and fuel efficient engine in your car while not slowing down, let alone stopping.

In my opinion that’s part of the reason that jo candidates plan will be exactly be what’s implemented. There are a lot more details than a candidates staff can work out.

[SWBTATTReg]

10. Good points too. I just popped out an response a few secs ago...take care!

[progressoid]

16. That's why so many of us don't want to start @ the middle & then compromise even more to the right.

[sheshe2]

2. Bwahahahahaha

[mcar]

4. Y'know, she, it is funny

But it makes me angry. What his staffers and supporters said and did to anyone who didn't wholeheartedly support M4A. Now, they're, Yeah, we'll take it watered down.

Um, isn't that the ACA?

[sheshe2]

6. Yes it is, mcar.

He is now flip flopping. I guess the Union in Nevada has given him pause.

[Wounded Bear]

15. The union base has a legitimate concern, as do small businesses...

It's fine to put out radical policy ideas, but when the rubber hits the road you have to figure out what "everybody goes on gov't healthcare" means. Unions fought hard for their benefits and wrangled them out with employers over years. Suggesting they scrap that for something that has yet to be created is a BIG step. Same with employers, most of whom would probably be fine with turning the whole mess over to the gov't to save them the annual hassle of redoing their plans.

I reall am for M4A, but realistically we're only on the initial stages of getting there. The system is broken, or as I like to say, it doesn't really exist. It's not a system, it's a health care and insurance industry. A for-profit, poorly regulated industry.

[scipan]

20. Evidence of Bernie flip flopping?

Aoc was asked about worst case.

[Cha]

7. Oh god!

[Laelth]

9. Oh, Bernie. I love you brother.

But if there's any truth to this, I am disappointed. I need Bernie to be my fire-brand liberal. I don't want him saying that nothing he ever proposes can possibly pass Congress (even if that's true).

-Laelth

[mcar]

12. Whatever happened to marching to McConnell's office

and that's how things would get done.

[Laelth]

13. The Sanders-predicted revolution hasn't materialized.

Part of me wishes that it had, but we are where we are, and it is what it is.

-Laelth

[mcar]

14. I agree completely

[Farmer-Rick]

17. Bernie and his supporters are Not the enemy...Trump is the enemy.

[scipan]

21. Thank you.

I don't understand all the vitriol re Bernie.

[Gothmog]

18. sanders does not have a magic wand

Link to tweet

[scipan]

19. Don't think Sanders would ever say this.

But as a supporter, I personally would be satisfied with a public option. I just think you should start out with what you really want and maybe the end product will be better than starting out with some compromise.

[Gothmog]

22. No, radical policies won't drive election-winning turnout

The concept of a magical voter revolution is debunked

Link to tweet

Sanders’s explanation of why this is not a problem is simple, and he has repeated it endlessly. When a member of the Los Angeles Times editorial board asked him whether “a candidate as far to the left as you” would “alienate swing voters and moderates and independents,” the senator replied: “The only way that you beat Trump is by having an unprecedented campaign, an unprecedentedly large voter turnout.” Faiz Shakir, Sanders’s campaign manager, adds: “Bernie Sanders has very unique appeal amongst [the younger] generation and can inspire, I think, a bunch of them to vote in percentages that they have never voted before.”

This has remarkably little empirical support. Take the 2018 midterm elections, in which the Democrats took back the House (a net 40-seat gain), carried the House popular vote by almost nine points and flipped seven Republican-held governorships. Turnout in that election was outstanding, topping 49 percent — the highest midterm turnout since 1914 and up 13 points over the previous midterm, in 2014 — and the demographic composition of the electorate came remarkably close to that of a presidential election year. (Typically, midterm voters tend to be much older and much whiter than those in presidential elections.) This was due both to fewer presidential “drop-off” voters (people who voted in 2016 but not 2018) and to more midterm “surge” voters (those who voted in 2018 but not 2016)…..

This analysis shreds an implicit assumption of Sanders and other members of the turnout-will-solve-everything crowd: that if they polarize the election by highlighting progressive issues, “their” nonvoters will show up at the polls, but none of the nonvoters from the other side will. That view is also contradicted by many political science studies. Stanford political scientists Andrew Hall and Daniel Thompson, for example, studied House races between 2006 and 2014 and found that highly ideological candidates who beat moderates for a party nomination indeed increased turnout in their own party in the general election — but they increased the opposition turnout even more. (The difference was between three and eight percentage points.) Apparently, their extreme political stances did more to turn out the other side to vote against them than to turn out their own side to vote for them.

The turnout equation does not necessarily return positive results for a candidate like Sanders. The reverse is more likely. It is truly magical thinking to believe that, in a highly polarized situation, only your side gets to increase turnout. And if the other side turns out in droves, you might not like the results — a warning Democrats would be wise to heed.