Tag: Politics

  • Biden Is Winning, Now Walk the Walk People

    Okay… I have to admit it, and be honest about it; Joe Biden did it. He hasn’t clinched the nomination, but he did the things you need to do to win. Biden had the turn out, grew his supporters, and outperformed everyone’s expectations.

    I am a Bernie supporter, and I do believe that we need to make serious, major changes in this country. The only candidate I see who has the resolve to do that is Bernie. I know he’s not out of it, but all of us in the Sanders camp have to take a very hard look at the fact that the youth vote didn’t show up, which was a huge kick in the crotch. And though in roads were made with the Latino vote coming out, no other demographic voting block grew for Sanders, which makes it look like Bernie has hit a ceiling. It hurts to say that, but those are the facts.

    What I really took away from Biden doing so well is that the idea of beating Trump is more important to Democrats than changing the fundamental structure the country. Basically, when it comes to policy, Biden is saying that he will be a third Obama term with tweaks. I wish that weren’t true, but it’s what happened.

    Now, I will hold out hope for Bernie, but I am fully prepared to do what I had asked moderates to do is Bernie won; I will support Joe, and I will work towards his election.

  • As Goes Britain, So Goes America

    If you haven’t noticed, there was an election in the UK. The Conservatives won, and now Brexit will happen. Is that what is best for the UK is anyone’s guess, but what it does mean is that the structures that were put in place after WWII will soon come apart.

    And it means Trump will be re-elected.

    Yes, I said it, and I don’t like it, but it is what will happen.

    I point out that the first Brexit happened, which no one thought would happen. Then trump got elected, and no one, even Trump, thought that would happen.

    The wisdom going into the second Brexit vote was that it would fail, as no one had been able to get a majority to agree to make it happen. What no one counted on is that the English population has been worn out. Johnson clearly knew that as he slogan was “Get Brexit Done,” was easy to understand, and also the exasperated exclamation under everyone’s breath, usually followed with, “for fuck’s sake!”

    American Liberals heed this warning! The end is near, and no amount of health care or wealth tax will assuage the plague that is Trump. Everyone is tired of Trump and has been worn down. Trumps slogan will be along the lines of, “Let Me Finish the Job,” and Americans will say, “Fine, finish the job, and go away… for fuck’s sake.”

  • Another Billionaire Problem Solver?

    I have nothing personal against Howard Schultz. As far as I know, and I will give him the benefit of the doubt, is that he is a good husband and father and friend to all.

    But he is a businessman billionaire. And going into 2020, that is a huge albatross around his neck. Is he going to try and convince me that a billionaire businessman isn’t qualified to be president, so we should elect another billionaire businessman?

    That’s going to be a tough sell.

    He isn’t making his case any easier by going after Medicare for all. (The only point I will give him is that no one is addressing how to pay for it, and he is right to point that out.) But it is completely a false equivalency to compare national health care to the boarder wall.

    There is national healthcare in the world, it does work. And if he is really worried about the insurance industry going out of business, then he should look at Germany’s system of national and private healthcare.

    The boarder wall plays on some people’s hate and racism. That doesn’t work.

    But here is where he has already fumbled the ball; he is trying to defend health insurance companies over patients, because effectively, that is what he is saying. He isn’t even politically savvy enough to at least say that putting insurance companies out of business would unemployed so many people, and that isn’t fair. (That’s a good old solid Republican line…) If he is trying to run as a centrist, and trying to get middle America to vote for him, then he needs to understand that this part of the electorate is living paycheck to paycheck (government shut down just hammered that home) and their experiences with insurance companies is adversarial. People have an emotional response to insurance companies, and his first steps out of the gate shows that he doesn’t understand that.

    Don’t show up to the emotion fight with logic, because you will lose every time. You fight emotion with emotion, and logic with logic, and the best politicians know when each is called for in the argument.

  • Politics

    It does make me feel a little better that Dems, Progressives, and the Resistance all showed up at the polls on Tuesday. A small bright point in the past year of Trump darkness. (I have a feeling that I’m not so much preaching to the choir, but more like preaching to other preachers.) It was a good showing, and hopefully it will encourage the rest of the country to turn out in 2018.

    That to me is the thing. What will the turnout be in a year? Like I mentioned before, a college classmate of mine is running for the House as a Democrat in Texas. With the showing in Virginia, especially in the suburbs and ex-urbs in Northern Virginia, middle class college educated people came out to vote against Trump. The person I know who is running is smack dab in the middle of a suburb district, and if the same momentum can be gained then that classmate might have a chance of winning in deep red Texas.

    I do have to remind myself that living in New York City does put me in a bubble. People in small towns and rural areas do see the world differently from me. But when I hear a statement like that, and even after I just wrote that, there is part of me that wants to believe that there are a set of core values that we all hold to. Such as the bonds of the social contract that we all enter into with each other to have a civil society. That those are the core values we all agree on and must be appealed to.