5751

I also think that we are vastly over estimating the impact that policy makes in general. I think that will be especially true in this election, which will be a referendum on Trump. I think personality is lot more important than policies.

I’d be interested @triggercut thoughts on this. I think a lot of times when people say they won’t vote for X because of policy stand, they aren’t be completely honest. My sister, far more liberal than myself, doesn’t like Warren because she comes across as condescending. I think Warren comes across as the coolest aunt, or grandmother.

Conventional wisdom, is Americans elect a president who is the exact opposite of the traits they don’t like in the current president.

Example:
Clinton flaw; slick taking Lawyer
Bush 43: Plain spoken businessman.

Bush 43 flaw, inarticulate, shoot from the hip
Obama eloquent, deliberative

Obama Flaw: weak, cold (unemotional)
Trump: Strong, passionate

Now there so many flaws with Trump it is hard to know where to start but I think his top 3 are lying, narcissist, and a bully.

To me Biden is a protector type, but isn’t very humble, and I don’t think he comes across as particularly truthful
Warren is a bit of bully, she comes across as caring and not at all narcissist, and I think comes across as being honest, although very evasive on how to pay for Medicare for all.

To me Mayor Pete personality is the antithesis of Trump, which is a big part of his appeal.

Any other candidate that people think match up well vs Trumps flaws?

5752

Yep, also someone else pretty unsavory, forget who it was though.

5753

Did I ever say either Teddy or Warren weren’t liberals? They are New Deal liberals from a long tradition in American politics. What they are not are the weird, from-outer-space, radical bombthrowers with no roots in American discourse that the right likes to pretend they are.

On economic issues? It clearly has.

The Republican party has lurched to the far right. Republicans today would lump Eisenhower and Nixon in with Warren as socialists, and look at Reagan with extreme skepticism as a RINO (my god, he openly favored immigration! he willingly raised taxes to pay for Social Security!)

After taking a step to the right with Bill Clinton, the Dems are back to about where they were with Mondale.

So, on net, a move to the right.

5754

This is certainly true, but both parties are more polarized than they were. That’s a big reason why party affiliation with both parties are at historical lows.
The majority of people in America feel like they are left of Republicans, and right of Democrats.

5755

That’s true. But it is also true that Republican party (Pre-Trump) wasn’t neo-Nazi. However, it is been a feature of American politics that other party and their nominee is always characterized by the policies of its most radical members. Basically both sides have cried wolf.

What’s unusual if not unique in American politics is that when the Democrats claim that Trump is racist, xenophobic, and Fascist, that will be telling the truth. But since Republicans have been hearing their nominee, is a warmongering, racist, Fascist since the days of Berry Goldwater. It is not surprising they’ll be tuning the message out. Just like Democrats tune out the Republican declaration that Democratic nominee is a commie, pinko.

5756

If only the Democrats would start nominating Serious Men like noted centrist John Kasich, they could finally start winning some elections!

If the majority of Americans think they’re to the right of mainstream Democrats (which, yes, includes Senator Warren who is as capitalist as the rest of them, don’t get it twisted), it’s because they don’t actually know what mainstream Democratic policies are.

There’s research and shit on this.

5757

To be fair, Goldwater, Nixon, Reagan, and both Bushes are pretty much warmongering racists, may they all rot alone for eternity. Fascist might only apply to Nixon, I’ll give you that.

5758

What party platform? Does that mean I have to read something?

5759

I’d say the number of American who agree with you is <30%. I think there is correlation between that number and the current political power of the parties.

5760

Do you think this tweet is going up on Jill’s website?. Anybody know if she is running again?

5761

There’s no if about it. They do. Barely a quarter of voters identify as Democrats.

You can bitch and moan about how that’s not fair all you want, but it’s reality.

You can say it’s due to a failure in your messaging, and maybe that’s true…

Although, really, i can’t see how the awesome messaging we’re seeing in this thread now, about how they’re all idiots and terrible people, isn’t winning them over. Not sure how such tactical brilliance can be failing to win the day.

5762

Warning: Statistic rectally obtained.

Conservatives arguing why they prefer the most conservative Democratic candidates is dull stuff. Who did they think they would prefer, after all?

5763

Since the party I belong too hasn’t yet elected a Russian Stooge that is an insane narcissist who is out to only make himself rich at the cost of everyone else, I say the Democrats can nominate anyone they damn well like, and anyone that doesn’t want this country/planet to go down the shitter can hold their noses and vote for whomever is selected.

Sometimes, you get what you get, and don’t get upset. Because the alternative is Trump.

5764

Not particularly. Obviously there are some subjects that are extremely competitive (e.g. medicine), but e.g. back in my student days the bar for getting into Computer Science seemed to be set basically set at having a pulse.

6% of the US population attends college vs 3.5% for Sweden,

Those numbers look absurd, what’s the source? E.g. the OECD statistics show 47.5% of 25-34 old Swedes having completed tertiary education, vs. 49.4% for the US. Note that that’s completing a degree, not just attending.

(Obviously the numbers are lower for older people, but absolutely not so slow that you’d get numbers like 3.5% attending college.)

5765

Donald Trump using the words “respected environmentalist” as a form of praise caused my irony meter to explode

5766

I don’t know if this is the case or not, but if it is I suspect a lot of people are more left wing than they are willing to admit to. This is why I posted all those opinion polls for Warren’s key proposals - they all have majority support in the general population. And as you say, Warren is very much to the left of the Democratic field. Therefore: people are more left wing than you may realise. (That they then identify with one party or another is a separate and more complex cultural matter.)

My suspicion is that if you compared the views of the general population to those of the set of politicians elected, the politicians would overall be more right wing. (I’m not an American, and as an outsider US politics does seem significantly more right wing than in other developed nations. Which is exactly what you might expect for any country that decided money is speech, corporations are people, and election spending should be unbounded.)

And it would be easy to forget (or dismiss) the corrupting influence of money in politics and assume that democracy is working to perfectly reflect the views of the populace in its government, and that therefore most people are somewhere inbetween the GOP and Democrats in their policy preferences. Which is the mistake I thought you might be making earlier, when you said that Warren was likely to the left of most people in the country.

5767

Yes, that’s why I’m a Democrat now.

5768

It is an odd attribute of Americans that they simultaneously like left / liberal policies while decrying the word ‘liberal’. It’s an artifact of the effort by Reagan and his successor to make ‘liberal’ a bad word. But the idea that Americans will vote reflexively against ‘liberals’ without regard to their proposals can be debunked with only one word: Obama. Whatever he turned out to be, he was widely viewed as the most liberal candidate for the Presidency in a generation, and won in a romp.

5769

But like i pointed out, those polls need to be taken with a grain of salt, when you look at the actual methodology and compare to the results of other polls. Trigger knows way now about polls than me, can and can potentially offer some good insight, but some of those results in the headlines either weren’t reflected in the body, had issues with the way the question was asked, or conflictted with other polling results.

5770



Divide by respective populations.

Remember you are going be only attending college for 4 -7 years out of 80 odd year life expectancy and most people don’t graduate. US has a lot more drop outs and modestly higher percentage of degrees…