It’s just the smugness that galls me. Y’know, they whistled dixie while their party was devoured by a Tasmanian Devil (and that didn’t start with Trump by any stretch), and now they’re like, “health care and gun control like every other industrialized nation has? robust measures to keep the earth habitable? LET’S NOT GO NUTS PEOPLE!”
I get Timex’s angle that you can view their pleas from the standpoint of sheer hard nosed pragmatism. They’re still annoying as fuck.
Warren has the vibe of a 58 year old, not a 69 year old.
Not too shabby. I’d like to go around seeming like I was 33.
Sharpe
3579
If you look at remaining years of life expectancy, Warren is significantly younger (has many more years of life expectancy) than Biden or Bernie.
Let’s go to the Social Security Life Expectancy Calculator
Joe Biden, male, born 11/20/42, has 10.7 years of life expectancy.
Bernie Sanders, male, born born 9/8/41, 9.9 years of life expectancy.
Elizabeth Warren, female, born 9/22/49, 17.5 years of life expectancy.
So in terms of raw statistical life expectancy, Warren has a 7 to 8 year advantage.
State nerd note: I thought the differential would be larger as Warren has a 7 to 8 year advantage in raw age, and women have longer life expectancies. However, I forgot that merely living to an advanced age increases your statistical life expectancy (because that means you have avoided the chances of an early demise and put yourself into a longer-living statistical tranche). In this case, the female life expectancy bump basically cancels out the “already lived a long time” bump so Warren’s edge is equivalent to her edge in age, 7 to 8 years.
Menzo
3580
I feel like this will need to be accounted for. I don’t know the right answer. Is it a payroll tax? Forcing business to pay more? Republicans will shout that the free market will ensure that business pass on their savings to workers and/or consumers, but we know that isn’t true. They’ll use the newfound windfall for more stock buybacks, CEO incentives, etc.
I’m not a fan of Warren, but I agree that she seems much younger, early 60s not 70. On the other hand at 70 my brother-in-law was racing a canoe from Oahu to Molokai (40 mile 6-7 hours) at 75, he gets lost, loses words, and shuffles when he walks. Plus he was enjoying retirement in Hawaii, not being president.
Oh, it’s much less of an issue for Warren…which is why I separated her from Sanders/Biden, but mentioned it’s something she’ll need to keep an eye on.
It would probably come down to giving employers the choice of “raise wages immediately or face higher payroll taxes.”
Regarding taxpayer funding of health care, I keep bringing this back up, but Warren’s small proposed yearly wealth tax on large fortunes from the 50 millionth +1 dollar on up would raise positively oodles of money. It also has the advantage of applying to a total number of around 75,000 individuals, so not beyond the power of the federal government to enforce.
Menzo
3584
This is why I like the step of starting with M4A. You could keep Obamacare in place, and require workplaces to offer private healthcare, but they would have quite an incentive to convince their workers to switch to Medicare. My fantasy is that this means they’d offer salary increases for people who hop off the company health care plan and into M4A. The raw cost is high, but it’s also a major pain to manage those plans, so the fewer people they have to keep on the book the better.
The key for her is continuing to build support within the African American community. If she does, watch out!
Just do what Warren is proposing for the wealth tax, punish those who try to avoid it. In this case, raise corporate taxes on those who don’t invest in their workers, either by hiring more workers, or raising wages (or some other method of investing in workers).
The solution is simple, even if the process to get there will be difficult.
Still a huge Warren fan, but I would be happy if Harris ended up in the White House.
Bernie’s cooked in my eyes. I’m full on the Warren train now, with Harris as a 2nd choice (if Harris has a chance to beat Biden in NC, I’ll vote Harris in the primary to deny Biden delegates, I’m more anti-Biden than pro-Harris)
Buttigieg is my favorite, but I’ll gladly take any combination of of him, Harris, and Warren, in any order.
Pretty much. Any combo of those three and I’m good to go.
One of the biggest issues for Bernie right now is that most polls we’re seeing are also measuring name recognition, and when they’re polling likely Democratic Primary/Caucus voters, there are some expectations about that recognition. And Bernie is at 95+% name recognition…which doesn’t leave him a lot of room to grow.
He’s going to have to somehow establish himself as a better politician/campaigner than Warren especially, and I don’t think he is a better politician campaigner than she is. We’ll see.
ShivaX
3594
The reality is that most of America isn’t all that interested in Bernie.
He did his job. He pushed the Democrats towards his positions and now that the party has mostly adopted them, they really don’t have the need for an ancient dude with baggage on the ticket.
Currently Medicare is paid for (in part) out of a 1.45% payroll tax paid by both the employee and the employer. I would assume that a Medicare for all plan would include a hike on these taxes to include an employer contribution. Or, you know, we could hike corporate tax rates.
I think he’s getting horrible advice – or acting on his own horrible ideas, if this doesn’t come from advisers – but he’s got this whole “Democrats are part of the evil establishment” thing that sounded great and resonated against Hillary Clinton. But for an electorate that wants to vote Donald Trump out of office by any means necessary and has Elizabeth Warren and Kamala Harris and Pete Buttigieg among others to choose from…it’s just not the right message for this election.
