CNN and the Russians have done a great job dividing Bernie and Warren supporters. Really effective work.
The troll farms are working overtime right now- I can see it in real time being up here all night, and CNN has no issue going along- Russian state media does great under Putin financially.
At this point I’m in despair- I don’t see a path to Bernie or Warren winning now. At least the next Dem primary AOC can clear the field and prevent this infighting hopefully. Millenials understand solidarity better than Boomers.
It really is a storm in a teacup. It’s actually been a very positive competition overall with very little negativity considering the number of people in the race. Warren and Sanders said multiple times tonight they’re friends and have nothing bad to say about the other. The optimist part of me (getting very small by now) hopes this will be forgotten in a week.
I read the NYT report on the debate, and there is one thing that really brings home American Exceptionalism: even the Democrats are arguing about the merit of universal health care, when almost everybody in Canada, Europe, UK, Australia and New Zealand, left or right, think universal health care is not up for discussion: its merit is clear as day and no discussion is needed.
Whenever I hear about medical issues in these forums I feel extra sad because I know in addition to the health issues, there is also a cost issue in US, that family members have to worry about the cost of treatment and/or dealing with insurance companies that are, at the end of the day, businesses trying to make a buck and will screw people over at the drop of the hat. The obvious solution, to Europeans et al, is to take life-saving healthcare away from private companies and make it a public service. Nobody wins an election in Europe or Canada or UK or Aus or NZ by promising to cut public healthcare funding. Nobody. There will be lies like “we will do more with less money”, and some voters will buy it, but eventually it will be founded out. Not when the right has been running this scam for 5-10 years.
And then what? How many years have Americans been living without universal healthcare? Not that half-hearted Obamacare, but the full blood universal healthcare paid for by the state taken for granted elsewhere. The mind boggles on why there hasn’t been a revolution already demanding universal healthcare.
Decades - strike that, a century - of propaganda has done its job:
Another turning point, Palmer says, was an exceptionally successful campaign by Clem Whitaker and Leone Baxter, the founders of Campaigns, Inc.—”the first political consulting firm in the history of the world,” as The New Yorker’s Jill Lepore described it (paywall). On behalf of the California Medical Association, the two opposed California governor Earl Warren’s 1944 plan to introduce compulsory health insurance in the state, paid for through Social Security. Lepore explains that their slogan, “political medicine is bad medicine,” was used to lobby newspapers (with which they had advertising relations) and the population against government intervention in matters of health. They reminded people that what they called “socialized medicine” was a German invention—it came from the same country American soldiers were fighting abroad.
According to Lepore, after successfully halting the reform in California, Campaigns, Inc. used a similar strategy—this time on behalf of the American Medical Association—to block president Truman’s 1949 proposal of a public health plan. Their campaign, which included riding anti-communist sentiment to terrorize people against the specter of “socialized medicine” and “convincing the people […] of the superior advantages of private medicine, as practiced in America, over the State-dominated medical systems of other countries” successfully turned popular support against Truman’s plan.
This rejection of universal health coverage as a form of “collectivization” or “bolshevization,” says Theodore Brown, professor of public health and policy at the University of Rochester, had begun several decades before. In the 1910s, right-wing politicians, medical professionals, and representatives of the medical industry opposed attempts to broaden national health coverage on the grounds that it was a Soviet-inspired concept—an objection that gained force after the Russian revolution.
MMT is not a policy, it is either the correct explanation of how fiat money or it isn’t, and it’s got a pretty good record so far at the things it actually says. You too, @Papageno, welcome to the fold, but you must study more, and that comes from someone who fails pretty often too.
As to the debate, I’ve only watched the last 30-60 minutes, it’s certainly different from what we have here - which is expected, if nothing else because elections are different.
The closing statements were odd to me, though. I found Biden’s closing to be preaching to the choir, saying nothing that americans considering democrat candidates don’t agree with, but also nothing that the other candidates won’t do. Pete said that if voters are tired of politics and bickering they should consider him, but the audience is people who care enough to watch a whole debate in the first place (with a lot of justified Trump bashing), I missed the point of it. Warren’s choice of “hope and courage” sounded less engaging than “hope and change”, which many feel didn’t change much while killing hope, although I liked the rest of the message. Everyone else got whatever differentiating point they had across fine, whatever that’s worth.
There is a lot of anti-Warren hate on Twitter/trending this morning, but I can’t parse what happened. Anyone have a general overview of what happened? Something with Bernie, I believe.
Because we don’t value life as much here as in Europe. It’s not as valuable to us. See: mass shootings, unnecessary wars, treating drug problems as a war rather than a health issue, and on and on.
I missed all but the exit interview, but CNN thought he had the best closing argument.
I guess it all depends on what people talk about. All I know is that only 2 people on that stage won am election against an incumbent in the last 30 years.
That sounds about right. Twitter always goes up if anyone looks wrong at Bernie.
Is it any wonder that a lot of people are already tired of the Bernie Crowd?
DEM DEBATE HOST: Senator Sanders, you state that you want to bring home the troops from overseas. Surely you can’t be willing to let ISIS take over?
SANDERS: ISIS won’t take over, and yes, I want to bring home not some, but all of our troops.
DEM DEBATE HOST: Thank you, that’s enough. Senator Biden, Senator Sanders just said that he wants to bring home all the troops and have them guard the gulags instead. How many innocents will die at home and abroad from his terrible plans?
It’s been a meme on Twitter for a few weeks, but something very similar literally happened to him during the debate with the question where Bernie said he didn’t tell that to Warren, then the next question to Warren was what happened when he said it.
It was utterly ridiculous and showed CNN had the hatchets out. While some on here were cackling with glee at it, it’s just alienating the Bernie supporters from the Dems at large, and opening the door to a bunch of bad ends.
That said, unlike Republicans, Dems will defend their turf and have a lot more intraparty diversity, so I don’t think Bernie can win by going scorched earth the way Trump did in the 2016 primary.
I’m getting very tired of these debates about healthcare where everyone focuses on the cost of their plan without ever mentioning the cost of the status quo. Who cares what Bernie’s plan will cost if it’s cheaper than staying the course? Is raising your taxes $6000/yr somehow bad if you save $12,000/yr on premiums, copays and deductibles? Framing the conversation this way is going to prevent us from making any progress no matter who is elected.
Yes, because Republicans and enemies of socialized healthcare want you to believe that there are magical years where your family never gets sick and needs no medical care at all, thus those taxes are paying for OTHER people’s care.
