2792

I think it might be a case where he’s saying one thing to impress the low-info voters, but he believes another. I don’t think Biden is as dumb as people make him out to be.

That said, the chance I could be wrong is why I won’t be voting for him at all in the primary, plus I want a few dozen pounds of evangelical flesh.

2793

Yeah, with Biden I think you have to be aware that he’s not running to please the social media left – just to remain an icky, but palatable alternative should he win the nomination. And so far, that’s working for him very well.

Remember how we kept hearing about how horrible his campaign is? It’s probably true, too! But…for as horrible as it was, apparently, he dropped just 3 points in the DMR poll from March. To be within the MOE from then when you’re the presumptive front-runner with other candidates revving up attacks on you is worth noting.

2794

Apparently Hannity and friends have already started the low energy and no stamina bullshit vs. Biden that they employed against Clinton. A strategy which somehow worked despite Trump being one of the unhealthiest and low energy Presidents I think we’ve ever seen.

2795

For more important than these campaign approaches, policy decisions, and whether to speak with Republicans or not …

Yang came out on stage to Return of the Mack

2796

I was guilty of an overly broad generalization. Not all Republican groups or individuals are focused on exactly this point.

However, over the past two thousand plus years, representational government systems have had a very strong tendency to breed a political force devoted to preventing the majority from using their majority power to distribute the benefits of society anything like equally. Wealth is the obvious benefit to be hoarded, but, in truth, power is probably even more the point. However, since extreme wealth can almost always be transformed into power, it’s not that important to distinguish.

This protect-the-elite force has been the power behind the Republican Party for time out of mind, and their central goal has never really changed.

They have made tactical adjustments. When most of the markets were internal, they were a little more willing to compromise on monetary matters, as long as power arrangements remained secure. When the standard of living exploded upward under New Deal conditions, the successful wing of the party (not Taft or Goldwater) realized that New Deal arrangments could not be fought in a direct, head-on manner. When a propaganda war with international Communists threatened, they saw value in lending significant (but covert) aid to the various rights movements.

But international Communism is not longer a threat, internal markets are no longer all that essential, and very few voters feel the New Deal (or Great Society) connection to vastly improved lives, so this has changed the calculations of that central power group of the GOP.

Add to that the fact that their campaigns to divide the have-nots have been very successful at motivating have-nots to come into their tent under the claims that other have-nots are getting a better shake than they are.

So… in truth, their goal is neither to make everyone’s standard of living go up, nor to make everyone’s standard of living go down. Their goal is their own wealth and, especially, their own power.

But they certainly consider it abhorrent that government is supposed to be looking after people. Whether it’s a hurricane or old age expensive health needs or an economic downturn, as a matter of core principle, they feel that people are responsible for themselves, and that things like social security or occupational safety laws or guaranteed health care are anathema. Because that boils down to power, the idea that there are limits to what those at the very top can horde for themselves.

2797

Huh. Two by the Clash. I wonder if they ever imagined their songs could be used for this purpose.

2798

I somehow imagine not, lol

2799

I mean, this is as close to wanting to vote for him as I’ve ever been.

2800

It’s easiest to think of the GOP as the modern-day version of the confederacy. They’re the plantation owners. They need the slaves, so they don’t want the slaves to die. On the other hand, they’re afraid of what happens if the slaves grow confident and powerful, so they don’t want the slaves to flourish, either. What they want is subsistence. They want the slaves to be just barely able to do the work, but not any stronger or abler or richer than that.

2801

It’s interesting because Buttigieg draws and distinction between conservatives and Republicans. The idea being that the Republican Party has crossed the rubicon of crazy and won’t be brought back. But, at the same time, it’s important to reach out to conservative voters and make them feel like they have a place and a purpose because when people feel alienated and abandoned and hopeless, that’s when they turn to radicalism. That’s what makes people want to burn the house down.

So, he wants to pull those natural conservatives away from the Republican Party which has become radicalized and anti-conservative.

2802
2803

I like Swalwell. Field is just too crowded.

2804

I was singularly unimpressed with him,when he was interviewed on the Newshour. I think he is marginally competent to serve as a state legislator in Alabama. Anybody who list mass shooting as his top issue deserves to be mocked.

Bill Gates tweeted this today, if you look really hard you can find homicide (all homicides not just gun homicide), in the time it would take you to read this thread more people will have died of other causes in the US then were killed by all the mass shooting this last decade.

2805

We can’t vote to make cancer illegal.

2806

Yes the fact that there are other problems too is hardly a reason to do nothing on guns, as the rest of the world noticed a long time ago.

As for Swalwell, I saw him I think on Bill Maher and he seemed a lot more than marginally competent. However, gun violence is not our biggest issue. That is climate change, which only a couple of candidates dare admit.

2807

But we can spend a fraction of the time and energy we devote to debating gun laws, in order to I guess try and save few hundred lives or even few thousands on say discussing ways to reduce heart disease, or hell just educating people about it. I honestly know nothing about heart disease, how to recognize sign I may have it, what tests I should ask doctors to test for. I assume that diet and exercise and not smoking is good way to prevent it but I really don’t know . And yet it kills more than 600,000 (yes I had to google that.). per year, that 50 years of gun homicides.

I actually learned a far amount about cancer from the threads about Tom’s cancer. We’ve had one thread on QT3 back in 2009 on heart disease with 35 whole posts, it would be amazing if a politician actually lead on the subject, or cancer, or fall and accident prevention,

2808

Also, people view heart disease as a late in life ailment that gets you. Ordinary people don’t worry about dying at 30 from heart disease. I would bet very few people know someone who died young of heart disease. Most people probably do know someone who died young of cancer, for example.

We know we’re going to die. We associate heart disease with grandpa dying at 75 years old after having had a couple of heart attacks in his 60s and 70s. It’s not as terrifying to us, because it does not seem to cause premature deaths - instead, it is something old people die of, and you have to die of something. I’m not saying it is 100% rational, but I also understand why people are more frightened of something that might get them in their 30s, and something that might just flash out of nowhere (like gun violence).

Gates’s post is semi-autistic, in that he does not understand the emotional reasons behind what people are concerned about and why. It’s not unreasonable to be more frightened by something that seems to cause premature deaths that is uncontrollable and utterly unexpected, than something you develop slowly over time that most people think of as a natural end of life disease.

As someone who lost a 29 year old brother to a car accident, I can tell you it was a hell of a lot more traumatizing than losing grandpa to heart disease.

2809

I think it is important to differentiate between people and leaders (aka politicians). I can sort of understand why people are preoccupied with dying from gruesome but very low probability even (although frankly a bullet or even knifed to death seems so much better than host of diseases I can think of ) . But the job of leaders is to calm peoples fears not aggravated them. Politician who do that are called demagogues and the SOB in the White House is the perfect example.

I’m looking for an FDR "So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance. " Or a Barbara Bush holding an AIDS baby, or Bush 43 visiting a mosque after 9/11 and explaining the Islam is religion of peace, or Obama explaining to blacks that cops aren’t your enemy, and to whites that most young black men aren’t criminals. It is telling people that your opponent is good family and not Muslim

So making people even more irrationally afraid that they are kids are going to killed, by some mass shooter, and proposing feel good but completely useless laws like Swalwell is the opposite of leadership.

BTW, not to high jack the thread, but heart disease isn’t just for old people, 200,000 people under the age of 40 had heart attacks last year, and 30% of woman with heart disease (it kills more woman then men) were between the ages of 35-54.

2811

We stopped electing leaders a while ago.
Now we mostly elect people who stoke whatever fears we have and demonize the Enemy.

2812

I have two questions.

First, which politicians (besides Swalwell) in your view stoke unreasonable fear about mass shootings or guns? Give some examples, please.

Second, do you know how much money politicians vote to spend on heart disease research and prevention every year? And that they spend not one dime on research to prevent gun control and gun deaths?