Vidal
Vidal's JournalWhat's More Important: Fighting for Medicare for All, or Protecting and Improving Obamacare?
Recently CNN published an article saying more Democrats are in favor of protecting and improving the Affordable Care Act than are in favor of Medicare for All.
Link: https://www.cnn.com/2019/04/27/politics/poll-of-the-week-health-care/index.html
The implication is that many Dem. 2020 candidates are out of step with most Democratic primary voters.
Also, there was a recent poll from Kaiser saying Obamacare is "wildly popular" among Democrats.
Link: https://www.kff.org/interactive/kff-health-tracking-poll-the-publics-views-on-the-aca/#?response=Favorable--Unfavorable&group=Party%2520ID:
emocrat&aRange=twoYear
So I'm taking a poll:
What's More Important to YOU: Fighting for Medicare for All, or Protecting and Improving Obamacare?
Republicans pray for Bernie as Democratic nominee
"Republicans like their chances of keeping the Senate in 2020. But there’s one thing they think would all but seal the deal: Bernie Sanders as the Democratic presidential nominee. Some GOP incumbents are practically cheering him on, confident there’s no way a self-described democratic socialist could win a general election against President Donald Trump and that he’d drag other Democrats on the ballot with him.
“It would be good for us to have a nominee like that,” said Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa), who is up for reelection next year and sounded downright giddy about the prospect of Sanders representing Democrats at the top of the ticket.
Trump and the Senate GOP have explicitly designed their 2020 strategy around Sanders, beating the anti-socialism drum incessantly and attempting to tether every Democrat on the ballot to what they call a creep away from capitalism and toward collectivism. And though he’s consistently trailing former Vice President Joe Biden at this early stage, some top Republicans said they sincerely believe Sanders has a legitimate shot at winning.
"The strategy shows Republicans are much more comfortable talking about Sanders and tying other Democrats to his brand of socialism than they are in defending this year's meager legislative agenda. But Republicans could be making the same mistake Democrats made four years ago, when Trump launched his presidential campaign and they began salivating over the prospect of a Senate sweep."
READ MORE: https://www.politico.com/story/2019/05/07/bernie-sanders-republican-senate-1307296
Joe Biden suddenly has a problem - and it's not what you think
"The last four major national polls show that Joe Biden is pulling ahead in the 2020 Democratic primary race by a huge margin. Biden isn’t just in first place in every poll; he’s about three times as popular as any other candidate. It’s a long race, there are a lot of strong candidates, and a lot of things will change. But at the moment, Biden is the overwhelming frontrunner – and that’s not a place you necessarily want to be this early on. All you have to do is look back at the 2016 race to understand why. Here are the indisputable facts about the 2016 Democratic primary race, whether anyone wants them to be true or not: Hillary Clinton was ahead by fifteen to twenty points nationally the entire time. It was a blowout. If you were under some other impression, you can go look up the numbers yourself. At no point was it a remotely close or competitive primary race. But this kind of blowout made for terrible ratings, so the mainstream media – particularly cable news – did what they always do in these situations.
The media largely only quoted isolated state polls where Clinton was doing the worst, while ignoring the national polls that showed the race was a blowout in her favor. The media never acknowledged that Clinton was the dominant frontrunner. Half the time, the media pretended that Bernie Sanders was ahead in the race, when he was getting blown out the entire time. They never once acknowledged that Clinton had pulled ahead by millions of votes, and instead spent the entire time pretending that Clinton was only ahead due to superdelegates, even though superdelegates played literally zero mathematical role in determining the nominee.
It got worse. The media massively overstated Clinton’s scandals, making her look like she was finished, and at times creating the false appearance that she might even be indicted for imaginary crimes. The media got the ratings it needed by pretending the 2016 primary was a close race, and by falsely scandalizing the dominant frontrunner. In the process, the media created such a stench of fiction around the primary race, no wonder Sanders supporters were surprised and confused when he ended up losing – even though he lost by a popular vote blowout margin that anyone could have predicted if they’d been looking at the actual numbers, instead of the numbers on their television.
With so many Democratic candidates in the 2020 race, there was supposed to be so much legitimate competition, and thus so many ratings-friendly narratives to grab onto, the media wouldn’t need to resort to fictional reporting in order to manufacture ratings this time around. That level of close competition may yet still happen. It’s very early, and a number of these candidates have an opportunity to significantly climb in the polls as they pound the pavement and gradually raise their national profiles.
But if Joe Biden keeps climbing in the polls in the coming weeks, and he becomes too dominant of a frontrunner, you can bet your last dollar that the media will to do Biden during the 2020 Democratic primary what it did to Hillary Clinton during the 2016 Democratic primary. The widespread fictional coverage of the 2016 primary ended up having a negative impact on everyone involved, and it’s the unspoken main reason that Donald Trump is in the White House. If the media pulls the same crap against Biden that it pulled against Hillary, the entire Democratic Party will be in trouble in 2020."
Read More: https://www.palmerreport.com/analysis/joe-biden-problem-not-think/17807/
Liberals attack Biden, seeking to blunt his momentum
"Progressives are taking shots at Joe Biden, seeking to blunt the former vice president’s rise in polls by arguing he is too conservative to be the party's presidential nominee.
The criticism has come from rivals to Biden on the campaign trail as well as liberal groups seeking to put a dent into his poll numbers.
They are casting Biden as an establishment figure out of touch with the grass roots of his party, highlighting his work on a Clinton-era crime bill and the Iraq War, among other issues.
The criticism suggests some angst on the part of progressives, who fear Biden might beat out candidates such as Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), who have more liberal voting records than the former vice president."
Read More: https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/442378-liberals-attack-biden-seeking-to-blunt-his-momentum
The Conspiracy Against Bernie Sanders
First, let me say I have many friends who are Bernie supporters here in Florida.
Lately, they have been getting mad at me when I put on Facebook news reports about how much Biden is ahead of Sanders in various opinion polls.
In short, they have said (a) the polls are biased (b) the polls were done incorrectly (c) it is all fake news (d) it is all propaganda, and (e) there is a conspiracy against Sanders on the part of Democrats who are trying to defeat him.
Most of these people are carrying over their frustrations from 2016 and they still believe Bernie was cheated out of the nomination by the Evil Democratic Party. (which by the way is demonstrably false)
I have analyzed over 10 different national and state polls showing Biden with huge leads (all at least 20% or more) and come up with a conclusion.
If there is a conspiracy against Bernie Sanders on the part of Democrats, it is because Democrats in general don't like Bernie Sanders very much.
And this conclusion is reflected in the poll results. The carryover from 2016 is that your average Democratic primary voter is still very unhappy with the campaign that Bernie ran against Hillary.
Bernie is not even a Democrat, and Democrats know this, and the vast majority of them are not comfortable enough with him to turn over leadership of the party to him.
Democrats in general are not socialists. And many of my friends who like Bernie are not really Democrats either.
So I would suggest Bernie supporters look at the truth as it is today: It's not a real conspiracy, it's just a general agreement among Democratic voters to look for "anybody but Bernie."
This could change over the next year or so, but for now I wish my Bernie-supporting friends would just stop their damn whining and see what is really going on. Bernie has a LOT of work to do to win a Democratic Party nomination for president.
And the more he attacks Democrats the less of a chance he has.
Why Biden can be attacked more than any other candidate, but should not be
Joe Biden has done more than all the other Dem. candidates combined.
Biden represented Delaware in the U.S. Senate from 1973 to 2009, and was Vice President of the U.S. for eight years.
Because he has done so much, he has a very long record for people to attack.
If you do things, you can be criticized for what you do.
Few of the other Dem. candidates have done anything of note.
The smart ones are not attacking Biden, however. They know the truth, which is that he has accomplished a lot and taken a lot of positions through the years. If he had not done anything he could not be attacked.
Bernie has praised Trump and criticized Biden
So Bernie Sanders was on ABC's "This Week" saying that Trump's face-to-face meeting with North Korea's Kim Jong Un "is the right thing to do."
He also has been criticizing Joe Biden for voting for the Iraq War, like a hundred years ago.
The Washington Post said Sanders was starting to resort to his 2016 playbook where he gained ground in the primaries by attacking Hillary Clinton for (among other things) voting for the Iraq War.
Since Biden's poll leads are so great, Bernie may get desperate and attack Biden more, according to the Post.
I sincerely hope that doesn't happen. Sanders can't win Democratic primaries by attacking Democrats.
Biden, at least, is mainly attacking Trump, and that's what Sanders should do also.
Link to Post article: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/joe-bidens-strong-debut-puts-pressure-on-other-candidates-vying-to-challenge-trump/2019/05/04/f20a40c6-6d08-11e9-be3a-33217240a539_story.html
Here's my view on President Joe Biden and healthcare
If he is president he will sign whatever healthcare bill is passed by Congress.
Same is true for prison reform, environmental legislation, minimum wage, or any other progressive platform idea.
The problem is not getting a Democratic president to sign legislation.
The problem is getting progressive legislation passed by both the House and the Senate.
That's what we should focus our energies on.
Watergate's Bob Woodward: Trump is too stupid to have organized a conspiracy with Russia
"On Friday, Axios reported that legendary Watergate reporter Bob Woodward is considering writing a second book on President Donald Trump — and that he was driven to do so, in part, because he is disturbed by how disorganized and out of his depth the president is as leader of the free world.
Woodward even went so far as to imply that special counsel Robert Mueller was probably right not to implicate Trump criminally — because he is too incompetent to have intentionally masterminded a scheme with Russia."
"“It’s a governing crisis. He doesn’t know how to govern,” Woodward told Axios. “People who work with Trump say: You can’t even organize your own government. How could you possibly organize a conspiracy with Russia? … He doesn’t even have a to-do list, as best I can tell.”
Read More: https://www.rawstory.com/2019/04/watergates-bob-woodward-trump-stupid-organized-conspiracy-russia/?utm_source=push_notifications
Economists throw cold water on Trump's boast about economic growth
"On Friday, the newest data from the Department of Commerce found that the U.S. economy topped 3.2 percent annualized growth in the first quarter of 2019 — a rate well beyond what experts were expecting."
"President Donald Trump took a victory lap, trumpeting his skill as an economic steward to CNN reporters before an NRA event in Indianapolis. “I’m not allowed to comment,” on GDP for 10 to 15 minutes, he said, but “we’re knocking it out of the park.”
"But several economists pointed out that the report conceals some bad news — it turns out that a huge amount of that growth came from one-off events that boosted trade and inventory. Underneath the total number, growth in consumer spending and business investment was much smaller — meaning that the long-term outlook is weaker."
Read More: https://www.rawstory.com/2019/04/economists-throw-cold-water-trumps-boast-economic-growth/?utm_source=push_notifications
