February 23, 2020

Let's do something different here. List your top four candidates in order of who you'd support

We all wear our candidate support tags at the feet of our posts in this forum. But the reality is 3 weeks from now at least half of the current contenders will have bowed out.

After Super Tuesday this will probably be a three (maybe four) candidate race. Personally I hope it's a two-person race, because that will give us clarity going into the convention.

So share with us who is your plan B, or your plan C. And if you've got it in you, even your plan D.

I'll start down in the thread discos. And let's keep this one positive.

February 22, 2020

Hard evidence shows a centrist candidate not as strong as a progressive

https://www.salon.com/2019/06/02/there-is-hard-data-that-shows-that-a-centrist-democrat-would-be-a-losing-candidate/

The traditional argument that a Sanders or a Warren candidacy would be more vulnerable to a Trump victory is based on the idea that 100% of the people are voting, and they vote along a one-dimensional spectrum of left to right.

That is, the further to the left a candidate's policies are, the more voters you lose in the middle. And if the body of voters in the United States were one-dimensional in their thinking, then that is thinking understanding of how election work would be right.

Here's the thing: that analysis is a shallow smear of horse pucky.

Thomas Piketty, a French political economist, in 2013 wrote "Brahmin Left vs. Merchant Right: Rising Inequality & the Changing Structure of Political Conflict" in the journal "Capital in the Twenty-First Century." He analyzes around 70 years of post-election surveys from Britain, the United States and France and concludes that people are voting for (wait for it) the candidates who speak to their concerns, not based on simple Left Right polarities.

First, the sheer amount of data analyzed in Piketty's paper is stunning. He and his researchers analyze voters in those three countries by income (broken into deciles), education, party, gender, religion and income disparity. The final 106 pages of the paper consist of graphs and charts. This is a seriously detailed data analysis that took years of work, and any intelligent political party operative should take it very seriously.

Now, for the findings. Piketty's basic thesis is that poorer and less educated voters were historically the kind of voters who voted for left and left-liberal parties. These voters understood that their class interests did not align with the right-wing parties of the rich; thus, historically, the "high-income, high education" voters picked the right-wing parties.

This shifted in the past 70 years: "high-education elites now vote for the 'left', while high- income/high-wealth elites still vote for the 'right' (though less and less so)," Piketty notes. Note the scare quotes around "left": part of Piketty's point is that the so-called left parties, like the Democratic Party in the U.S., the Socialists in France and Labour in the U.K., have in the past two decades not really been that left, at least on economic issues. With the exception of Jeremy Corbyn's contemporary Labour Party, the aforementioned are aligned with the same kind of neoliberal economic policies that rich elites favor.

In other words, people respond to Trump's attacks on elites because they don't like elites. They think liberals are snobs. They don't tend to think Bernie is a snob. That's what he's doing right and most of field is doing wrong.

Remember that the next time you're making fun of wypipo for voting against their own economic interests. They're falling for the charms of a malicious con artist because we quit speaking to them. As Sanders shows every time he gets on Fox News, he does speak to the concerns of the forgotten working class.

February 21, 2020

Oops, turns out women DON'T get paid equal to men at Bloomberg's company

I mean, according to Bloomberg:

https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_5e4ebee4c5b6df1e8be4199c

Bloomberg Says Women ‘Get Paid Exactly The Same As Men’ At His Company. They Don’t.

The company that made Michael Bloomberg his billions has told government watchdogs it hires fewer women and pays them less than men.

In the United Kingdom, where Bloomberg LP employs several thousand workers, women earn 21.9% less than men in terms of their median hourly wage. Women occupy only 1 in 5 of the top quarter of the highest-paying jobs; the representation of women is largest in the bottom quarter of jobs.

And although an equal share of men and women earn bonuses, the median women’s bonus is one-third lower than the median men’s bonus.

Those figures come from a mandatory gender pay gap report that Bloomberg LP filed in the United Kingdom in April 2018. The reports, which are meant to spur change to reduce pay inequity, are not perfect. Companies prepare their own data — reporters have caught some companies submitting impossible figures — and corporate leaders have argued that pay equity reports fail to capture particular reasons why some workplaces have a gender gap.

February 20, 2020

Dammit!! Democrats just lost a key endorsement, which could affect 2020's outcome

And here I was hoping the Democrats would get the coveted Russian endorsement this time around.

No such luck, Chuck

Russia Backs Trump’s Re-election, and He Fears Democrats Will Exploit Its Support
A classified briefing to lawmakers angered the president, who complained that Democrats would “weaponize” the disclosure.

Feb. 20, 2020, 4:55 p.m. ET

WASHINGTON — Intelligence officials warned House lawmakers last week that Russia was interfering in the 2020 campaign to try to get President Trump re-elected, five people familiar with the matter said, in a disclosure that angered Mr. Trump, who complained that Democrats would use it against him.

The day after the Feb. 13 briefing to lawmakers, Mr. Trump berated Joseph Maguire, the outgoing acting director of national intelligence, for allowing it to take place, people familiar with the exchange said. Mr. Trump cited the presence in the briefing of Representative Adam B. Schiff, the California Democrat who led the impeachment proceedings against him, as a particular irritant.

During the briefing to the House Intelligence Committee, Mr. Trump’s allies challenged the conclusions, arguing that Mr. Trump has been tough on Russia and strengthened European security. Some intelligence officials viewed the briefing as a tactical error, saying that had the official who delivered the conclusion spoken less pointedly or left it out, they would have avoided angering the Republicans.

February 19, 2020

Moses on immigration

Deuteronomy 10

17 For the Lord your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great, the mighty, and the awesome God, who is not partial and takes no bribe.

18 He executes justice for the fatherless and the widow, and loves the sojourner, giving him food and clothing.

19 Love the sojourner, therefore, for you were sojourners in the land of Egypt.

February 19, 2020

Why, if I had half a lick o' sense, I'd give you the bum's rush, mister, but good!

So keep up your yammerin' like that, and you'll get what's comin', see. You'll get what for!
Folks round here don't cotton to that fancy talk of yours, see. So you put the ki-bosh to yer gum bumpin', see, or I'm gettin' Johnny Law on the blower and see you rid outta town on a rail, you kapeesh?

February 18, 2020

Potable water... Is it "POE-tabul" or "POT-abul" ?

And if you say "po-tah-blay" just move along to the next thread.

February 15, 2020

Can you see emojis like 🖤💜😅👝🎶🤔🐯🎄🎈🎯🎱📢🔕💰 and 📎

When they're posted in a DU subject line?

Describe the ones you can't see. Be creative.

Then convince me emojis aren't leading us back toward hieroglyphics

February 15, 2020

Bernie worries me. Bloomberg worries me. Buttigieg worries me. Klobuchar...

... worries me. Biden worries me. I have concerns about all the candidates I'm not supporting currently. Of course the concerns I have about Bernie getting nominated will be a lot more concerning once I see him getting more than 30% of the vote. That hasn't happened yet, so I think it makes a lot more sense for supporters of other candidates to be more positive and more assertive about their own top choice instead of tearing down somebody else's.

Similarly, Mike Bloomberg's million dollar a day campaign will concern me a lot more once I see him getting more than 5% of the vote.

Also, Warren's vulnerabilities worry me. But once I decided to support her, I sacrificed those worries to the greater good of trying to help the candidate I thought was best qualified. To be honest, I'm kind of stealing that line from Benjamin Franklin at the Constitutional Convention.

Thus I consent, Sir, to this Constitution because I expect no better, and because I am not sure, that it is not the best. The opinions I have had of its errors, I sacrifice to the public good. I have never whispered a syllable of them abroad. Within these walls they were born, and here they shall die.

Once we have a nominee, I expect to sacrifice my concerns about them to the public cause of stopping the deranged fascist baboon from ripping up that Constitution. Right now I think we're all suffering from the traumas of losing despite winning in 2016 and seeing millions of seemingly normal people fall for the mawkish shenanigans of a malicious con artist.

I mean, how do you believe in democracy when you can read about a 49% approval rating for such a monster?

I actually have a diagnosis for that disease, but I don't wanna get into it right now. Accept and let me leave you with the thought that all successful politics depend on compromise and enthusiasm. I don't know what the solution is to 2020, but I'm going to hang on to my faith that we will come up with someone by the end of the summer to lead my party who I can and will support. And I won't be alone, because in a democracy you're never alone.

We can pull this out and we might as well have hope, because having despair never fixed a problem anyway.

February 13, 2020

Sylvester Turner endorses Bloomberg

Oy

Turner Launches "Mike for Black America" website/organization

Perhaps the term "African-Americans" is too radical for Bloomy. Maybe they're thinking "Mike for Blacks" instead of "Blacks for Mike" makes it sound like he's really really behind them now, but not in a stop-and-frisk kind of way. He promises he feels really awkward about that now