I will keep doing, but not worth it! The 2016 Presidential Primary Voting Thread

I don't believe I suggested otherwise. This conversation appears to be about the feasibility and wisdom of the college idea, though...

universal not-shitty high school

yeah this would be nice. and the feds have more leverage here too iirc.

Not anymore thank you Arne Duncan.

Doesn't Sanders' plan necessitate speculation?

well, they have more leverage in terms of funding - the cost/tuition issue is obviously totally different for universities

xp

High school has to be one of the areas where the feds have the least control, right? It's all your local property tax dollars at work, no?

Re: health care and education - if Sanders were president and push was coming to shove and it looked like he was going to be able to pass one thing this term, then yeah, I say health care too, no contest. But given that it's a pie-in-the-sky candidacy meant to shift the Overton window etc. etc., does lobbying for one somehow damage lobbying for the other?

I'd actually argue the reverse: hawking a complete package of amazing socialist programs makes all of them more likely to become part of the conversation going forward from now - each benefits from the larger sense that this is not about pushing for this little tax credit or that little halfway program, but for a comprehensive shift in what we're looking to get out of our government, and what we think the economy and the income inequality chart should actually look like. A "new deal" of cards, if you will. If Sanders was a one-issue candidate just talking about health care, he'd probably still get some attention, but the "movement" such as it is would not be coalescing and nobody who actually gets elected would feel the slightest obligation to do anything about these other cases of institutionalized inequality and wealth extraction.

It's all your local property tax dollars at work, no?

my kids aren't in high school yet so all I know is that our k-9 school benefited hugely from injections of federal money - presumably more of that is always better. that's all I was saying. I didn't mean leverage as far as changing curriculums or whatever (which, tbh, I'm less interested). Dumping money into basic primary/hs education just seems like a better deal than this harebrained tuition scheme.

it looked like he was going to be able to pass one thing this term, then yeah, I say health care too, no contest.

argggh we already had one president do this and imo he should've picked climate change/energy legislation as the hill to die on, would suck to see Sanders make the same choice

Trump insulting the Pope is like something out of a ZAZ movie. You just can't make that up.

My bad, I thought the hypothetical choice milo z offered was only between those three!

a pie-in-the-sky candidacy meant to shift the Overton window etc.

But, I mean, he more or less tied the first caucus, handily won the first primary, and looks competitive for the third, right? Grassroots movement no one took seriously a year ago, anything could happen, etc., etc. Left-leaning governments that end up unexpectedly winning on pie-in-the-sky platforms can set their cause back.

(Tbc, I've been teaching at a US university since August so I'm trying to follow this seriously, not carping from another country.)

looks competitive for the third

*second

argggh we already had one president do this and imo he should've picked climate change/energy legislation as the hill to die on, would suck to see Sanders make the same choice

― Οὖτις,

Dude, really? As "small term" political gain and simple human decency, it made the best sense. People are alive thanks to the ACA.

I'd actually argue the reverse: hawking a complete package of amazing socialist programs makes all of them more likely to become part of the conversation going forward from now - each benefits from the larger sense that this is not about pushing for this little tax credit or that little halfway program, but for a comprehensive shift in what we're looking to get out of our government, and what we think the economy and the income inequality chart should actually look like

ehhhh I don't know. Do you live in a state with a GOP governor and a GOP supermajority? The only way in which I see these policies becoming part of the conversation is if student activism scares the shit out of lobbyists and legislators.

Rubio also going against the Pope's words; but Rubio, as far as I can tell, is only Catholic for show, since he also attends some evangelical church and was also a Mormon; also he's Cuban so it's not like he has any sense of what immigration is like for people from Mexico.

this Pope shit is temporary. Trump said what he needed to in a state where (a) the pope's already loathed by conservatives (b) evangelicals vote.

Hey, I got an idea! Let's give everyone free college and make Mexico pay for it

Dude, really? As "small term" political gain and simple human decency, it made the best sense. People are alive thanks to the ACA.

multiple millions of people are gonna die from climate change, and it's a time-sensitive issue - the longer we fuck around, the worse the death toll is gonna be. so yeah.

xxp

I mean just on the scale of people affected - ACA affects Americans, climate change affects the species

As a Florida resident, I'm not at all disagreeing with your premise. But people I know are alive now thanks to the Affordable Care Act.

depends how we define "the conversation" - i definitely don't imagine that GOP state legislators are about to start hyping up socialized medicine! i realize i've beaten this horse into the ground but for me this is all about what it becomes possible to say on TV, what it becomes possible to run on, what it becomes possible for someone to put in a bill and not have most of the country think it sounds un-american. i love the idea of millions of high school seniors casting their first vote, even if it's just in the primaries, for the socialist hawking universal health care, an end to college debt encumbrance, a battle on climate change, solutions for the criminal justice system *AND* breaking the political power of the .1%.

again i'm kind wacked out and crazy right now but y'all are kinda sounding like a republican cartoon mocking bernie for promising all his "free stuff" to greedy "takers" and slacker kids. another thing this is about shifting the paradigm so that the values that lay behind that caricature are exposed as defense mechanisms of the rich and powerful. i dunno. i should get back to writing this mess of a paper, sorry again for the bugged-out quality of my posts.

SCOTUS decision about coal plants notwithstanding, the Obama administration's been solid in lots of ways with executive orders and shifts of emphasis.

again i'm kind wacked out and crazy right now but y'all are kinda sounding like a republican cartoon mocking bernie for promising all his "free stuff" to greedy "takers" and slacker kids.

lol what

At its most basic "a bill that keeps insurance companies from denying you coverage because of your diabetes" vs "We're going to shut down coal plants, forbid offshore drilling, and invest billions into fuel that leaves no carbon imprint" is a political non-starter. Besides, why do we have to choose?

Left-leaning governments that end up unexpectedly winning on pie-in-the-sky platforms can set their cause back.

this sounds like syriza to me but i'm curious to hear some other examples of this phenomenon you may have in mind?

tbh I don't see a lot of Republicans spending any time mocking Bernie, none of them see him as a credible threat.

Besides, why do we have to choose?

I think in general there are few opportunities where a President really has the opportunity to make huge, sweeping legislation happen. It has to be in his 1st or 2nd year of his first term, and he has to have a cooperative Congress. If a President is going to tackle a fundamental issue during that window, then a lot of the President's political capital is going to get expended, capital that might not be available later on (after mid-term elections, for example). There is a limited amount of time and energy that can be expended to deal with these kinds of huge issues, and that's why it usually comes down to one thing. How long did it take to get ACA passed? It will go down in history as his biggest legislative accomplishment. And he only really got one. He picked healthcare cuz he accepted the argument about it being a fundamental drag on the economy - but I had arguments with people at the time that climate change was a more fundamental, urgent issue, and it's clear Obama didn't agree w me.

xp

xxpost ok i admit i have no idea now which specific posts made me think that

Trump thinking he can go head-to-head with the Holy Father is the most insane political calculation I expect to see in my lifetime. The Catholic vote isn't what it used to be, but burning that bridge is madness

― tremendous crime wave and killing wave (Joan Crawford Loves Chachi), Thursday, February 18, 2016 6:09 PM (1 hour ago)

trump has no long-term plan beyond shocking and insulting his way to the nomination. and the number of liberal catholic trump GOP primary voters is pretty tiny anyway. don't see how it hurts him in the short term

it won't hurt him at all in South Carolina

In the long term theyre already working on a smaller needleeye for him to not pass through

Like I said, evangelicals hate the pople.

the pope too

what about ron popeil

An eye for a needle leaves the pople aged and blind

ppl expect trump to be equal opportunity rude + hyperbolic and both those things are large part of his appeal. the more outrageous he is the more he's liked for it. the only bridges too far would be unimpeachable taboos - like mocking jesus or reagan

Ehhh... as far the "political capital" thing goes - - - I mean for one thing, Obama also got the stimulus through, right off the bat, which should count for something.

But I feel like the "one big thing that uses up political capital" thing is so specific to circumstances. I mean the extreme case is the New Deal where there was obviously a crisis (and the potential, eventually, for an actual "political revolution") and more importantly a massive landslide-induced Congressional majority, aka a "mandate" to do the things he ran on. Obviously, most presidents do not ever have that - and I am certainly not expecting Fantasy President Bernie to have that - but there is still a range between FDR/Johnson-like resources to pass legislation, the very shaky first-term Obama situation (majorities, but not filibuster-proof, and by no means unity within his own party on everything he campaigned on) and the utterly hopeless second-term Obama situation, facing an absolute wall of intransigent non-cooperation. It could be that something like those last couple is the new normal and we can't ever expect any president to be able to push more than one or two things ever again, but....

like mocking jesus or reagan

tbh we should start taking bets here

xp

this sounds like syriza to me but i'm curious to hear some other examples of this phenomenon you may have in mind?

Other than Syriza (and nowhere near as far left), I was thinking of Bob Rae's NDP (labour/social democratic) government in Ontario. I don't know how well that one works, tbh: I'm actually one of the few Ontarians who will defend that government, especially compared to subsequent ones. Still, they did admit they were unprepared for victory and, at the least, they could have probably handled the PR better.

hahah countdown til trump declares himself "bigger than jesus"

Obama also got the stimulus through, right off the bat, which should count for something.

this was already moving forward when he took office, and ARRA was great, but it didn't fundamentally re-configure a huge sector of the economy - if anything all it did was prop up/protect what already existed (and was being threatened). I don't consider it major legislation tbh.

xp

Don't forget: one of FDR's campaign promises was to cut the deficit.

Trump just used the p word in a derogatory manner about his Irish investment that's gonna hit him harder than Jesus I don't know of any voter claims to be quarter jesus

oh totally agreed about the content of the stimulus - my point was just that if we're going to talk about "political capital" that does play into how much else obama was able to get done. that and a once-in-two-generations economic collapse happening right before he showed up. i mean you have to figure that if he'd inherited the fiscal situation that W did in 2000 he might have gone to bat for more things than ACA. idk.

maybe i am crazy/naive but i feel like the political pressure on state governors to get their regents to take the money would be enormous. any sitting governor who doesn't take the deal, however they hem and haw about applications and keeping our schools independent, would be painting a target on themselves for the next election. i mean you could not be handed an easier issue to run on: governor bozo turned away thirty bajillion dollars that would have sent YOUR KIDS to college TUITION FREE. of course i can imagine situations where that doesn't win, and the kinds of arguments the governors would use, but it doesn't seem like an open and shut "nope" to me.

I dunno, there's a real life counter example, the Medicare expansion that dozens of governors turned down. You'd think the obvious ad would be "governor bozo turned away thirty bajillion dollars that would have prevented YOUR GRANDMA FROM DYING". But although some of them eventually bowed to pressure to accept the expansion (or perhaps they had a shred of humanity somewhere in their terrible soul), some of them continue to hold out

They turned Medicaid expansion down. It's a little different.

yeah, i was thinking of the medicaid expansion when i said that about "situations where that doesn't win." i was just saying, the idea that it's totally unthinkable that ANY state or board of regents would take such a deal, is maybe overstating things.

i'm not an education policy person so i really don't know, but i'm having trouble imagining other ways to really do something about the tuition problem from the federal direction. you need some kind of very powerful leverage; i feel like the carrot of families not paying tuition would trump the stick of whatever shock program (lol i guess now it sounds like austerity) would be necessary to get the tuition costs down low enough that berniebucks would be able to foot the bill. but i'm repeating myself.

i mean you have to figure that if he'd inherited the fiscal situation that W did in 2000 he might have gone to bat for more things than ACA. idk.
--shandemonium padawan (Doctor Casino)

Obama didn't seem to behave with much urgency when he had majorities in both houses.

right...... the fiscal situation though. i'm not an obamapologist by any means but the situation in 2009-2010 was dire, and from 2011 he had the boehner congress. this isn't to say he had a secret bag of amazing progressive legislation that never got to see the light of day, but just that we don't really know, and thus can't really generalize from this viz. the speculation about how you only ever get one big thing to put your political capital into.

man, Doctor, you've been non-stop today

i've had not only my customary half-strength morning cafe au lait, but also a very uncustomary late-afternoon 12-oz can of pepsi. biographers coming to terms with my generals-exam essays will recall this as my 'gonzo' phase.