Someone Has To Do It: US Elections 2020

[ursus arctos]

SuperTuesday is all primaries, no caucuses.

Any attempt to introduce Medicare for All would also be subject to an avalanche of lawsuits whose outcome is not certain.

[ad hoc]

Europeans preaching about the possibility of it is well and good, but their systems were set up in a very different world from the one we live in over here.

I don't think most of us are "preaching" anything, merely expressing incredulity that an advanced country can be so fucked up on this issue* and utterly bemused when we see stuffccoming from the Fox News end of the US that argues that universal healthcare is failing and killing people.

(*see also: guns)

[ursus arctos]

American Exceptionalism, innit.

And I trust that the "preaching" comment was not directed at a large number of posters at all.

[ursus arctos]

A timely piece from the San Francisco Chronicle

Since Democrats flipped control of the House in the 2018 elections, McConnell’s desk has become a legislative graveyard for more than 275 bills passed by Pelosi’s Democrats. He has sidelined major bills designed to expand background checks on gun sales, lower prescription drug costs and create a path for legal status for undocumented farmworkers.
The blockade is likely to resume this week as Congress returns from a one-week recess. And no end appears in sight. If McConnell doesn’t budge, the legislation dies this year, and Democrats would have to start over in 2021.
McConnell, R-Ky., actually gave himself the “Grim Reaper” nickname,saying last year that he would block many progressives’ bills from going to the Senate floor. He called himself “the guy who is going to make sure that socialism doesn’t land on the president’s desk.”

https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics...d29760d10e2809

[DCI Harry Batt]

. The average person gets statistically more right-wing as they get older

Do we have some good evidence for that?

[anton pulisov]

Almost every single exit poll ever broken down by age?

[DCI Harry Batt]

That tells us that at the moment people who are older now are more right wing than people who are younger now, but that's not at all the same thing.

[anton pulisov]

I'm curious of any evidence to the contrary: any period when the young were relatively more right-wing than the old.

[WOM]

That tells us that at the moment people who are older now are more right wing than people who are younger now, but that's not at all the same thing.

True. But older people vote in significantly higher numbers. If younger people bothered to vote, they'd rule the world.

[WOM]

I'm curious of any evidence to the contrary: any period when the young were relatively more right-wing than the old.

Hmm. So when faced with proof that cats kill the most birds, you're wondering about proof that birds kill the most cats?

[Flynnie]

2000 is the only US Presidential election in recent memory where the Democrat was more popular among old people than young people. I think Bush's Social Security plans scared a lot of retirees towards the Democrats.

[Bruno]

And I trust that the "preaching" comment was not directed at a large number of posters at all.

Correct.

[Bruno]

I don't think most of us are "preaching" anything, merely expressing incredulity that an advanced country can be so fucked up on this issue* and utterly bemused when we see stuffccoming from the Fox News end of the US that argues that universal healthcare is failing and killing people.

(*see also: guns)

It's fucked up but I don't think it's mystifying. It was capitalism in action where companies competed with each other by offering health benefits and the government stayed out of it until the 1960s. I suppose Johnson had the best chance to pass universal coverage and we got Medicare and Medicaid, i.e. employer insurance probably looked impossible to undo even then.

[ad hoc]

Sorry, I wasn't clear, I understand how it came to be this way, but baffled as to why so many people (not just those that benefit from it) think it's clearly the right way to do things

[E10 Rifle]

There was an extraordinary statistic about the number of voters in the youngest age bracket who voted Tory in 1983. Absolutely loads of them did, more than a lot of the older groups. People are products of their time, not just the age they happen to be at that time. And Toryism in the 80s was youthful and geezerish and full of possibility from those perspectives (which I don't and never did share). Toryism now is about a lot of those people (now in their 50s and above) defending those gains - if you've still got them - and a nostalgia for that time, and before. The Left could do worse now, I think, than to ditch nostalgia - including for 1945 - and project itself as the party of future possibilities and of solving current and future problems.

[Bruno]

Sorry, I wasn't clear, I understand how it came to be this way, but baffled as to why so many people (not just those that benefit from it) think it's clearly the right way to do things

I'm baffled by some people's ability not to care, yeah. I would just say that the long-term right-wing strategy of "starving the beast" by lowering taxes has unquestionably worked to the extent that enough ordinary people are now afraid of seeing their taxes go up to pay for it. Not simply because they're greedy but because they've organized their lives around a different model. As I'm sure you also know, the top marginal tax rate used to be drastically higher here, but also the collective understanding here is that "in France and Denmark taxes are 50%" and I gather that too many people are too simplistic to understand that higher taxes are probably actually worth it for not getting fucked with medical expenses. But there it is. Raising taxes is a sure-fire political loser.

[Satchmo Distel]

I saw a Bloomberg 2020 bumper sticker in my part of Florida yesterday, but based on the revelations above, wouldn't be surprised if Bloomberg was paying people to stick them on their cars for a day or two.

Obviously there is no visible love for Bernie in my neighbourhood, but he might not need Florida anyway (and he might be best advised to focus his campaign elsewhere they way Florida has been going since 2012).

[Nefertiti2]

It's fucked up but I don't think it's mystifying. It was capitalism in action where companies competed with each other by offering health benefits and the government stayed out of it until the 1960s. I suppose Johnson had the best chance to pass universal coverage and we got Medicare and Medicaid, i.e. employer insurance probably looked impossible to undo even then.

It was competition. When there was an actually existing system of government that claimed to be in opposition to capitalism then capitalism had to make a gesture towards mitigation of its worst aspects. Now monopoly capitalism has a monopoly.

[Bruno]

And "capitalism" is still way more popular than "socialism" among the voters that Bernie needs to persuade, unless he brings out a lot of first-time voters.

[anton pulisov]

Hmm. So when faced with proof that cats kill the most birds, you're wondering about proof that birds kill the most cats?

It's called the null hypothesis.

[delicatemoth]

Is it OK to drop in some light relief?

https://twitter.com/DailyGael/status/1232252464004583424

[WOM]

Sorry, I wasn't clear, I understand how it came to be this way, but baffled as to why so many people (not just those that benefit from it) think it's clearly the right way to do things

I don't think it needs a lot of hard thinking. For my entire life, I've heard the US telling itself that it is the greatest country / the best country, over and over and over. So whatever they're doing must be right or the best or the only option. Any proposed change, therefor, must seem wrong on some level. Or an acknowledgement that maybe they aren't the most / the best / the only, which would upset a lot of belief systems. And in the face of overwhelming evidence about so many things - criminal justice, life expectancy, health, happiness, wealth, etc - most continue to believe the untrue.

[Flynnie]

Tony's definitely on to something. Is age a class? is a pretty heated debate on the contemporary left, and I tend to lean towards yes. I'm 34 years old, I know like five people who have bought a house. I know a fair number of people who are still living at home, and aren't losers in any way: degrees, decent careers.

I guarantee every Boomer at 34 know 30 people who had bought a house, and several who had bought them in cities where home ownership is utterly unaffordable these days. At my age, my parents had bought a home in San Francisco, and that's without having graduated from college and with a fair amount of bumming around following the Dead.

[anton pulisov]

Yeah but those boomers worked hard

[Bruno]

I don't think it needs a lot of hard thinking. For my entire life, I've heard the US telling itself that it is the greatest country / the best country, over and over and over. So whatever they're doing must be right or the best or the only option. Any proposed change, therefor, must seem wrong on some level. Or an acknowledgement that maybe they aren't the most / the best / the only, which would upset a lot of belief systems. And in the face of overwhelming evidence about so many things - criminal justice, life expectancy, health, happiness, wealth, etc - most continue to believe the untrue.

Nobody can kick our ass.