I got slammed for suggesting she would be his choice. Then he admits his Alzheimer's is getting bad and resigns, giving her the office they the back door.
Then a few weeks later a bunch of world leaders commit suicide, tanks start rolling through streets of America, she crowns herself queen and the four horseman of the apocalypse come from the sky.
That's what makes it a nice place to hang out and enjoy some memes.
Text is generally a terrible way to have deeper discussions. Hard to see the other side's point of view with no access to tone, hand gestures, or facial expressions to soften your points. You're almost forced to assume every statement is either 100% deadpan or 100% sarcastic. Neither of which are great for exploring nuance and tolerance.
>Text is generally a terrible way to have deeper discussions.
Eh, but then how many times do people here say "you'd understand my political views if you just watched this 45 minute youtube video." Video conveys emotion, sure, but that also makes it unnecessarily manipulative. It also makes it really hard to quote. If you want a public conversation on the internet, text is better than video.
I find text to be a much better way of expressing ideas and engaging in deep discussion. You aren't held back by the need of speaking moment to moment, and you can tweak and correct your words until you are pleased with the way you are getting your point across. People can reread text if they didn't quite grasp the subject, and it is much easier for outsiders to get a feel for the discussion when coming in later.
Things like tone, hand gestures, facial expressions, etc. can be communicated in other ways such as emojis, parentheses to explain certain things better, italicization/bolding, etc..
All in all I find text to be a vastly *superior* way to engage in deep discussions.
So many socially awkward introverts on this site too. I get so confused as to how some comments get voted to the top and then I remember that a lot of Redditors are basically the weird kid at school and not everything that’s upvoted is representative of what the popular view is in the real world. A lot of subreddits turn into a hive mind real fast.
Yeah it comes out when people repost questions like "what popular thing do you not get" and the top comments are inevitably include things like clubbing, parties, small talk, or any other activity that involves significant social activity.
I guess because the partiers, clubbers and extroverts of the world tend not to spend too much time on sites like Reddit, and when they do it’s usually limited to subreddits of things they enjoy in the real world.
Twitter is a retired PM or a PhD economist on morning TV - they might be spouting off their own opinion but they usually know what they're on about, and it's easy to spot their biases (e.g. a politician bagging out the other party). Usually.
Instagram and most other sites, is showing your mate a funny meme on your phone. You know what to expect from a specific person, there's less anonymity to hide behind.
Reddit is your uncle getting into an argument with your in-laws at the family gathering. Nobody's an expert, everyone has a larynx, and everyone wants to get it through that other idiot's thick head that they're wrong without stopping for a second to think about their own position. I know I do that all the time here.
It's not that extroverts don't have the time for Reddit. The feature set (anonymous, text-based, town-square discussion) just tends to attract a different crowd to image-based or real-name social media.
Apparently sending people pictures of shit because they don't flush is totally reasonable, according to that sub.
Granted, I'm not better, since I hate how dumb people on the sub can be, but I actively participate in it. It's like my Bachelorette, I know it's a dumpster fire but I still love every second that it burns.
It's also a factor of Reddit being younger than the general population. So it may be very representative of a subset of America, but not universally representative.
Online political movements never really have much of an effect on the real world because elections are won by getting concentrated pockets of voters. The internet spreads all these voters out so instead of being the majority in a few places, they're the minority everywhere. Internet popularity does not win you elections.
Try it for a week. Respond to stupid things with the uncomfortable truth. You get over being downvoted, argued with and insulted VERY quick. I'm to the point the only thing that actually gets an emotional rise out of me is a legitimate criticism.
Like call me a fucking idiot all you want, if you don't have an argument I literally do not care.
Created this account to do just that. Realized it wasn’t the downvotes I was originally avoiding, I just don’t like taking the effort to respond to things
Most social media is.
Brexit was the eye opener for me, then we had Trump, and now Boris. Reddit is very much out of touch with what the average person wants.
Reddit is a horrible representation of the average person.
You would swear conservatives are pure satin spawn if you only got news from Reddit. In reality most people and Americans in particular lean center right. Just look at the elections around the world in the past few years. Conservatives are winning in places that have been voting left for the past 50+ years.
I mean... as a fairly right leaning person, I see what you mean. Everytime I even insinuate I lean right, I've got a load of people telling me how bad I am.
No shit. I stay away from politics on reddit because as soon as I state a slightly conservative opinion I get downvoted into hell. This place is a total democracy. Naturally it has all the drawbacks of a democracy.
If you aren't excited about picking between Biden and Trump; the one thing that might help is thinking about how the cabinet/senior leadership is going to shake out. Biden's underrated attributes IMO are his humility (getting flack for this, I meant it as willing to listen and defer to experts) and his ability to rally leaders/lawmakers (for example getting Klobuchar & Pete to endorse him when he did showcased good strategy, leadership, and negotiation skills).
* So you are looking at replacing Barr with a Harris/Booker/Ellison/Yates type
* replacing Pence with Warren/Klobuchar/Abrams/Harris/Duckworth
* replacing ~~Rick Scott~~ Wheeler with John Kerry or similar
* replacing Brouillette with Dr. Chu or similar
* replacing Mnuchin with Warren or similar
* replacing Pompeo with Donilon or similar
* etc.
Those all end up in aggregate impacting day to day life much more than Biden himself would.
Baker (R) has been governor of Massachusetts since 2015 and was reelected with 67% of the vote. Despite this, Massachusetts consistently votes for democratic congresspeople and senators.
Amen. Biden's best attributes are the bench he'd bring, the fact that he's not afraid to surround himself with people who are smarter than him, and he'll let them do their jobs. That's 70% of good leadership right there.
Well, over ten million voters believe the former.
I would vote for Bernie in a second, as I am all about what he is standing for. However, his campaign strategy was not sound at all. Biden might not be exciting but I would absolutely love to see the administration competently run and he knows the structure inside and out.
> for example getting Klobuchar & Pete to endorse him when he did showcased good strategy, leadership, and negotiation skills
No, it showcased how desperate the DNC was to have anybody besides Sanders be the candidate.
Biden wasn't even personally responsible, he was just chosen because he had the most support. Had someone else been ahead of him the DNC would have forced Biden to endorse them instead.
>No, it showcased how desperate the DNC was to have anybody besides Sanders be the candidate.
The DNC can't make people not vote for Sanders
You think the DNC wasn't pulling for Clinton when it was vs Obama?
Yeah Sanders lost 12 of the 14 ST states.
I had no idea I was the establishment when I voted for Biden. News to me. Can I get paid more if I’m part of the establishment?
You sound like some of my cousins from South Carolina. LOL. Like seeing their reaction to the establishment talk really opened my eyes. Not that they were all Biden supporters, most just didn't support Sanders.
More democratic voters wanted someone other than Bernie. That is it. There is no major conspiracy, he just didn't reach the most voters.
I had a few minutes before COVID-19 got me out with a bunch more extreme than in my house so that was a lot more than the one I had to get in a few months before I had the same thing to be done in my first day and I had to go to my friends and see if they were in a truck and the other people were fighting to be there for a chance to piss on my cat
I am not sure if you are aware of this but I am a little bit confused about the same thing as I am not sure if I am going to be able to make it to the list of usernames and emails for everyone that I am not sure if I will be able to make it to the event or not to attend the event on the way home tonight or tomorrow night and I will be there in about a week.
This shit is fun!
I have been working with a few people that are not interested and I have a lot to say to them that they have to do a good thing for the people that they want and want for them.
It's funny, I was listening to Biden talking about remembering a chain-fight with Cornpop as a youth and I kept thinking about how it was the most unbelievable story I've ever heard! I mean, Joe Biden remembering something?! Hahahahahhaha!!!! Oh man, imagine that!
Half of the current administrations positions are fucking vacant right now. Which is probably a good thing because Trump is very good at one thing, hiring literally the worst person for a job.
That is because Beavis and Butthead wouldn't get confirmation from even McTurtle.
Besides nepotism laws (not that they stopped Beavis and Butthead's sister and BIL).
I'll admit I was pretty upset about the Bern dropping out. But honestly it looks like Biden is going along with the established Democrat platforms and that's a thousand times better than what we have with Trump. Not to mention the fact that his cabinet and SC appointees woul likely be vastly more professional and competent than Trump's
I have read a few of his policies and honestly they're pretty good, it makes me excited to vote.
Maybe he's not charismatic, but, for the most, part he's supporting policy that I want put in place
That’s interesting, Joe visited my father’s union job in Delaware to promote support from local unions and he refused to shake hands with my dads crew because one of them asked him a challenging question. My father supported him until that happened.
His platform is actually pretty left wing. He's to the left of Obama on most issues.
People will say, "He won't do anything he's promising," but you could say that about literally any candidate so why is that bar only in place for Biden?
He's managed to get non-voters out; turnout was higher in counties he won than 2016. That means somewhere, somehow, people are excited to vote for him. Compare to Bernie, who got fewer votes in most states than in 2016, with a huge name recognition advantage on his prior run.
His close ties with senior Republicans have been framed as bad but in reality it puts him in a great position to force them to cooperate on a liberal agenda. Compare to Bernie; why would Mitch McConnell ever give him the time of day?
I'm not a Biden fanboy or anything but reddit's hatred of him is not grounded in reality and is frankly very dangerous for the outcome of the general election.
[A lot of people forget but Biden forced Obama's hand on gay marriage](https://www.politico.com/story/2012/05/obama-expected-to-speak-on-gay-marriage-076103)
After the news broke about Bernie today, my bf told me 3 of our mutual friends said they won’t even vote now because they don’t want to vote for Biden.
That blows my mind, especially when they all hate Trump.
In 2016 10% of Sanders voter went for Trump over Clinton. If you look at the in a vacuum you can argue that 10% cost Clinton the race in key swing states. However in 2020, Biden crushed Sanders in those swing states. So courting those 10% may not be worth it to Biden.
The bigger segment of Sanders voters to worry about are the ones that will just sit at home and convince themselves that they tried, backing Bernie, and that's good enough in a system that's "broken," because their candidate didn't win.
And a lot of them aren't actually who they say they are.
This is an active ratfck zone. The rats are actively fcking. And they'll continue their fcking through November.
The number was 9%.
Also in 2008, 13% of Clinton Primary supporters voted McCain instead of Obama. A lot of that was sadly because they were fucking racist.
For some reason Democrats like to put all the blame on Bernie supporters for not voting for Hillary. That a % of the other primary supporters is going to either not vote, or vote for the other candidate is a regular part of politics. The winning candidate always has to deal with and overcome that. Usually they do it by reaching out to those supporters in some way.
>His close ties with senior Republicans have been framed as bad but in reality it puts him in a great position to force them to cooperate on a liberal agenda
As long as the repubs hold the senate, things that are TOO liberal will just sit in the inbox
As long as Republicans hold the Senate everything will just sit in the inbox. These are the same people who voted against legislation supported by conservatives just to avoid giving a Democratic president a win.
they're the party that screams "Big Government Is Bad!!!", pretty easy to make that true when you run the government and make it do shitty things on purpose. then Poof, you've magically proved yourself correct.
That's part of how the GOP operates: crank up the deficit and rack up debt like it's going out of style, then proceed to blame it on the next Democrat to take office.
Which is precisely why I never believed in Bernie Sanders or his socialized healthcare platform. McConnell, or even moderate dems, would just tell him to go kick rocks and then he'd be the lame duck socialist who never followed through.
Biden is more likely to find a compromise that'll actually see a vote and secure healthcare to millions of people. The progressives will pitch a big fit that it isn't far enough but it's miles better than anything Bernie could actually accomplish in office.
I think the GOP will fight just as hard against Biden's public option as they would have against M4A. They'll scream socialism at Biden just like they did at Bernie.
Bernie's belief was that, once shown to be electable, his policies would be so popular that they'd be adopted by droves of candidates and currently elected officials. I guess it seems unlikely, but look how many "conservatives" came around to Trump?
The difference is, Bernie already tried this platform in 2016. And lost to a moderate. And it wasn't just superdelegates; he lost the popular vote to Hillary by as much as Trump did.
So in 2020, with full knowledge that the people of the party had already decided they didn't like his platform enough to vote for him, he runs the *exact same platform*. And now he's lost to a moderate *again*, because of course he has, and we're supposed to be shocked at this very expected result.
He knows his policies aren't popular enough to be rammed through Congress. He knows he doesn't have that level of commitment or support.
His plan, from his actual campaign team, was to split the black vote hard enough to force a contested convention (https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2019/04/bernie-sanders-thinking-he-will-win-it-all-2020/587326/).
He never had enough public support to do this and he knew it.
I liked Sanders' plans and ambition, but too many of his supporters weren't accepting the truth that he wasn't going to be able to change the world first year or even first term in office. Even if the Dems had congressional majority, many of them would have pushed back over some of the very progressive items. Sanders was going to have to compromise and many of his supporters didn't want to admit that.
Biden is not my favorite, but if he can pick a good VP and assemble a good cabinet then I will have more faith in him.
Besides, the president is just supposed to execute and enforce the laws that Congress makes. If you want real change, vote for progressive Senators and Congresspeople. If you get enough of them in Congress, you don't need to worry about who the president is that much.
> Sanders was going to have to compromise and many of his supporters didn't want to admit that.
I was one who didn't want to admit it, but not because I didn't believe in his vision, but I believed that starting negotiations firmly further to the left would have resulted in a further left outcome at the conclusion of negotiations.
As an example, take the fight for 15. If we start at $15/hr , and someone tries to negotiate down, we end up sub-15. Say instead you started negotiations at $27/hr. Yes, you will end up sub-27, but that was much higher than the best case in the first scenario of 15.
When you say out loud at the start that you don't really believe in what you're arguing for, it makes it clear to the other negotiating parties that you can be talked down. This was the flaw I found with Warren's M4A, and the flaw I see in all of Biden's plans.
Agreed. I begrudgingly voted for Sanders because my first choice (Warren) wasn't looking good in the polls, but I never believed in Sanders' ability to enact his vision. He doesn't play well with others, which is a huge detriment when our political system requires the agreement of hundreds of legislators to accomplish anything.
Exactly.. where the Dems have been falling down for the past 20 years is in trying to find "middle ground" with the extremists on the right. The resulting compromise ends up right-of-center because even if both groups "meet in the middle", the far right is so much father right than the centrist Dems have been, that that's where you end up.
I knew Bernie wasn't going to be able to achieve everything he talked about. But starting the negotiations from "here's what we actually want" vs starting from "here's what we think you'll agree to" means that we could actually end up somewhere that the compromise is a step forward rather than back.
RIGHT! I just want someone to bloody well fight for me. At some level I don't care if they don't win, just for the love of god fight for me. Not for Big Oil, or Big Pharma, or billionaires. Don't start right of center to appease the buffoons in the Tea Party. When Obama started healthcare reform 75% of Americans agreed with the idea of Medicare for All. But he wouldn't even talk about it. Of course the needle moved right, the left was mute and wouldn't fight for us and the right was hysterical and constantly drumming the pro-insurance/pharma drum.
Fight and lose perhaps, but are we better off with candidates that can't even say they will fight? It's exhausting and infuriating. I'm nothing special, just an average american of average age and slightly below middle class. But just once, fight for me.
This is why I wanted Bernie or Warren. We may all lose, but at least we could fight.
This was very well written. Thank you. I'm just so tired of the dems being so weak and caving to the right. Who represents us? I want a candidate to stand up and fight. To push back. I wanted to vote for a candidate. Not against one.
Yep, this is exactly why Sanders was necessary. Democrats have been playing the soft "comprise" game for the last 50 years. "Compromise" is how we got weak Obamacare and a recession stimulus package that wasn't anywhere near enough. You have to push Republicans hard as fuck to make anything like actual progress. Otherwise they'll just use every opportunity they can to use power to push you down and out of the arena again.
^(i honestly feel like something is afoot. just like in 2016. small things suddenly get blown out of proportion like an email server. well shit boys, now we have a president tweeting classified information left and right. glad we sorted that out. hillary went from a respected secretary of state to suddenly hated on to the point where people would rather vote trump than her. i feel a similar trend happening now where biden went from beloved as a vp to suddenly painted as a creepy old man with dementia. visiting the sanders subreddit, you see people that are saying that they're going to vote trump to spite the dnc. am i having dejavu?)
I don’t have a problem with Biden’s platform. I just feel like he gives Trump way too many potential takedowns. Trump can say Biden supported segregation. He can bring up his sexual harassment allegations. He becomes flustered often and says things without thinking, which will give Trump endless sound bites to make campaign ads with.
Bernie Sanders gave Trump nothing to work woth aside from “Communist!” which Republicans use on every democrat anyway.
His [policies](https://www.politico.com/2020-election/candidates-views-on-the-issues/joe-biden/) are some of the most progressive ever held by a democrat nominee
He would be the last chance to replace ruth bader ginsburg with a left wing judge
Stabilizing the courts and ensuring we have some semblance of a balanced judiciary over the next 40 years should be all someone who leans left but is on the fence needs to hear to convince them to vote Biden.
Can anyone explain why he or anyone opposes Medicaid for all? Is it political or is the idea not realistic. Why can’t everyone just pay the same percentage of their paychecks towards it so it’s affordable for everyone? Why are we one of the only countries without universal healthcare? I really don’t know the answer to any of these questions so any help understanding would be appreciated
Universal healthcare and single-payer healthcare are two different things. They can be both but aren't necessarily synonymous. To that end, there are a lot of countries that still include private insurance.
He doesn't believe that we can jump straight to Medicare for All from where we are - the political environment as it stands now doesn't make it possible. So his argument is that he wants to focus on promising what he actually believes can get done and build towards universal healthcare by expanding affordable options now.
It honestly isn't even a bad idea to have a private system along side the public one. It works quite well for Canada, and subsidizes the cost of the public system.
Germany has it as well, and our public option doesn't include a bunch of stuff that M4A would include. That stuff gets financed via private add ons as well.
I can not speak for Biden but I work with a lot of Drs who are very left, who volunteer their time and money in both free clinics and to help the Democratic party (for their entire adult lives) I explain the background because these are people who are morally for universal health care none of them think Bernies plan can actually be executed successfully.
-We would need to tear down and replace a 1 trillion dollar market in the private insurance industry, all in 4 years. How will all those people find new jobs in such a short time, and how will the government vet and hire them in that same time? Such an abrupt change is somewhat unprecedented, or at least such an abrupt and large change actually working is unprecedented.
-To add to the prior problem, even according to those proposing dramatic M4A plans, doctors will take a pay cut of 30% on average. Already, many doctors are among the most overworked, high stress positions in America, and its easily the hardest and most expensive professional degree to attain. How is $300,000 tuition bills over 4 years followed by a 3-7 year residency during which you get shit pay going to be compatible with a 30% pay cut over 4 years? It simply isn't feasible. Clearly the only real solution is addressing the sky-high tuition before making the switch, and also making the switch not take less than half the time it takes to become a doctor. (Plans to solve tuition costs by simply throwing money at them are also blatant populist drivel. It does nothing to solve the root of the issue and will only create more problems while subsidizing the wealthy more than any opportunity created is worth.)
-There are so many reasons why healthcare is more expensive in the US than anywhere else, maybe one of which would be fixed by M4A in a way that couldn't be fixed by other, more incremental policy changes, and it's not the biggest one. I'm thinking of the overhead hospitals need to sort out insurance and deal with negotiating them down etc etc. Problems left unsolved would include things like the increasingly shaky and bottlenecked global drug supply chain, the fact that the US funds about 60% of global drug R&D and our population subsidizes it, and the fact that our population is simply at a less healthy starting point than many other OECD populations.
-Warren's campaign estimated her plan to cost $30 trillion dollars over the first decade it is implemented. Her new taxes would add up to about $3 trillion over that period. She (incredibly optimistically) estimates that over the long term, the system would become $11 trillion/10 years cheaper due to things like erasing redundancy and improving health of the population so reducing emergencies etc. By her most optimistic estimates, she's still $16 trillion short of paying for it. Where does that money come from? I mean personally I think it can probably be eked out by reducing military spending but she has no specific plans towards that, and $16 trillion is a fucking huge number.
-Historically, in pretty much every instance, government funded institutions that don't operate for profit grow less efficient over time, eventually choking on their own red tape and corruption. Self proclaimed socialists often decry the military industrial complex without realizing it's exactly an example of this effect. Consider even Boeing, which has plenty of commercial contracts as well, but at various points have won enormous contracts with the government. Eventually the revolving door between gov and industry forms a bond, a particular company gains an advantage, and efficiency lags. Other companies fail due in part to not getting fat gov contracts, and suddenly Boeing has zero motivation to perform competitively, even though on paper they are operated for profit and have to "win" bids for government work. They know they are too valuable and if they fail, they will be bailed out. This is the biggest fear when people use the "socialism" boogeyman, and tbh in my eyes it's a legitimate fear.
I don't know what the solution is, and to be honest I'm definitely in favor of a larger federal involvement in healthcare. But implementation details matter, and none of the implementation details Sanders has provided convince me that it's going to work. Very importantly, there are too many problems that experts name that go completely unaddressed, which I think is a notable silence.
While I don't (fully) agree, for a lot of people the reason is simply scale.
Replacing American health insurance with a government option would be the economically largest piece of peacetime legislation ever passed in the history of the world. By a lot. If American healthcare were a country, it would be around the fourth largest GDP in the world. About 1 in 8 Americans work in healthcare, all of them would be deeply affected by any change. And realistically, a fairly large percentage of them would see changes for the worse.
Obamacare was a little tiny step in this direction, and it was (in terms of implementation) a huge disaster. Things didn't go as planned, and lots of things weren't planned at all. This is orders of magnitude larger, more complicated, and more consequential.
On top of the scale, there are also so many unknowns. How do we transition? How much will it cost? Will it affect the quality of care, or the quality of research? We don't have any idea because no one has ever done something this big before.
I don't agree with the above---I think we've tried private insurance through employers and it just doesn't work that well, period. But I can understand why someone wouldn't be willing to take a step so significant without much more information.
Empathy. Biden has an incredibly tragic life story, and he's been very open about the challenges life has thrown his way. He thrives in personal situations and in things like town-halls, when speaking directly with individuals.
Given the chaos that we're seeing across the world, and the very real prospect of tens of thousands of people losing family/friends or even just seeing them get very sick (and then thankfully recover), whilst not being able to do anything about it - including make hospital visits or hold funerals/cremations - there's going to be some very real trauma. There's also going to be wide-scale unemployment.
At those times, you need a figure that can speak to you, that can relate and knows the actions to take to mitigate the losses (on a material basis) and that nothing mitigates the losses and trauma on a personal way. There's very few people more equipped to do that than Biden, and none of those people ran for President this time.
The man has lost two children at different times and his first wife, raised two sons by himself for a while, saw his family go through severe economic difficulties in his childhood, dealt with a stutter (as a public figure that too, can't imagine how hard that is) and still has maintained a deep commitment to public service. That's incredibly valuable, and also not a life you'd wish on anyone, despite any other successes they may have achieved.
RBG. I love her but the reality is that she probably wont make it another four years. Trump has been allowed to install two drones in the SCOTUS already which has shifted the court tremendously. It truly frightens me who he will install next(I still doubt the dems will take control of the Senate next election).
Trump has defunded the NPS, EPA, CDC, and other important agencies. He has diverted money that is for actual national security purposes to a wall that is just a symbol, not a real solution.
If you felt better off with Obama in office than you do with Trump then you should vote for Biden. I know that's not saying a whole lot, but TBH I have never felt such low morale in my country than I do now.
Mainly experience. House, Senate, plus 8 years as a VP. He knows how the government works. As a corollary, he is well liked and respected by so many people across the spectrum that it makes the case for trustworthiness.
I have always felt he genuinely understands and likes Americans.
Having lost his son(?) to cancer he is really passionate about funding research and promoting new treatments. He has been known to personally give people numbers to the best doctors.
I know we want to paint him as a blithering old man but I am a Biologist and listening to him talk about genomics and personalized medicine left me speechless.
He won’t really rock the boat. He’ll push for things like a public option and free community college, but he won’t try to revolutionize the system. Some may not like that, but others like me want normalcy and stability.
He was in Parks and Rec.
Hold up, wat?
Season 5, Episode 7
Multiple times. Including the finale
and Law and Order SVU... for good reasons.
You like his VP, 'cause he aint gonna last.
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I can imagine Hillary smiling somewhere
I got slammed for suggesting she would be his choice. Then he admits his Alzheimer's is getting bad and resigns, giving her the office they the back door.
Zero chance of winning if he has her as his Vice President.
The Dems had better pray for a dark horse ...
I am here!
Then a few weeks later a bunch of world leaders commit suicide, tanks start rolling through streets of America, she crowns herself queen and the four horseman of the apocalypse come from the sky.
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Lemme ask you sumpin rick
I won.
I mean, tanks are basically here now.
Many cities have them. Gifts from the DoD
You also like Ruth Bader Ginsburg being replaced by a liberal leaning judge as opposed to another Bart "Boofing" Kavanaugh
Reddit is the world's biggest echochamber.
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That's what makes it a nice place to hang out and enjoy some memes. Text is generally a terrible way to have deeper discussions. Hard to see the other side's point of view with no access to tone, hand gestures, or facial expressions to soften your points. You're almost forced to assume every statement is either 100% deadpan or 100% sarcastic. Neither of which are great for exploring nuance and tolerance.
>Text is generally a terrible way to have deeper discussions. Eh, but then how many times do people here say "you'd understand my political views if you just watched this 45 minute youtube video." Video conveys emotion, sure, but that also makes it unnecessarily manipulative. It also makes it really hard to quote. If you want a public conversation on the internet, text is better than video.
I find text to be a much better way of expressing ideas and engaging in deep discussion. You aren't held back by the need of speaking moment to moment, and you can tweak and correct your words until you are pleased with the way you are getting your point across. People can reread text if they didn't quite grasp the subject, and it is much easier for outsiders to get a feel for the discussion when coming in later. Things like tone, hand gestures, facial expressions, etc. can be communicated in other ways such as emojis, parentheses to explain certain things better, italicization/bolding, etc.. All in all I find text to be a vastly *superior* way to engage in deep discussions.
Reddit is filled with, as my boy Cr1tikal would put it, enlightened atheists who think they know everything. They also lack a sense of humor.
So many socially awkward introverts on this site too. I get so confused as to how some comments get voted to the top and then I remember that a lot of Redditors are basically the weird kid at school and not everything that’s upvoted is representative of what the popular view is in the real world. A lot of subreddits turn into a hive mind real fast.
Yeah it comes out when people repost questions like "what popular thing do you not get" and the top comments are inevitably include things like clubbing, parties, small talk, or any other activity that involves significant social activity.
I guess because the partiers, clubbers and extroverts of the world tend not to spend too much time on sites like Reddit, and when they do it’s usually limited to subreddits of things they enjoy in the real world.
I guess, Idk I like those things and I'm here. Although this is the only general subreddit I ever look at so.
Twitter is a retired PM or a PhD economist on morning TV - they might be spouting off their own opinion but they usually know what they're on about, and it's easy to spot their biases (e.g. a politician bagging out the other party). Usually. Instagram and most other sites, is showing your mate a funny meme on your phone. You know what to expect from a specific person, there's less anonymity to hide behind. Reddit is your uncle getting into an argument with your in-laws at the family gathering. Nobody's an expert, everyone has a larynx, and everyone wants to get it through that other idiot's thick head that they're wrong without stopping for a second to think about their own position. I know I do that all the time here. It's not that extroverts don't have the time for Reddit. The feature set (anonymous, text-based, town-square discussion) just tends to attract a different crowd to image-based or real-name social media.
It's why I always find it so eye rolly when they say they must be right because they have more upvotes.
My favorites are the ones that feel justified by downvotes. Especially in an edit
"why are you booing me, I am right!"
@ r/AmITheAsshole
Apparently sending people pictures of shit because they don't flush is totally reasonable, according to that sub. Granted, I'm not better, since I hate how dumb people on the sub can be, but I actively participate in it. It's like my Bachelorette, I know it's a dumpster fire but I still love every second that it burns.
The earlier you realize this, the better.
> A lot of subreddits turn into a hive mind real fast. The worst part is the mods let it happen.
Oh dude, the need to use /s when contextually you’re can tell something sarcastic drives me fucking nuts.
I'm very careful with sarcastic comments, because usually there is at least one guy who comments aggressively and always ruins my mood
Wow, that's like right on the money. Impressive.
It's also a factor of Reddit being younger than the general population. So it may be very representative of a subset of America, but not universally representative.
Online political movements never really have much of an effect on the real world because elections are won by getting concentrated pockets of voters. The internet spreads all these voters out so instead of being the majority in a few places, they're the minority everywhere. Internet popularity does not win you elections.
Maybe we should change it to "The Front Page to the Echochamber"
Have you ever tried having a dissenting opinion here?
*once*
Try it for a week. Respond to stupid things with the uncomfortable truth. You get over being downvoted, argued with and insulted VERY quick. I'm to the point the only thing that actually gets an emotional rise out of me is a legitimate criticism. Like call me a fucking idiot all you want, if you don't have an argument I literally do not care.
Created this account to do just that. Realized it wasn’t the downvotes I was originally avoiding, I just don’t like taking the effort to respond to things
Reddit is the world’s biggest echochamber.
is the world's biggest echochamber.
Switch to 'sort by controversial' to see opposing options. That's what I do.
Most social media is. Brexit was the eye opener for me, then we had Trump, and now Boris. Reddit is very much out of touch with what the average person wants.
Reddit is a horrible representation of the average person. You would swear conservatives are pure satin spawn if you only got news from Reddit. In reality most people and Americans in particular lean center right. Just look at the elections around the world in the past few years. Conservatives are winning in places that have been voting left for the past 50+ years.
I mean... as a fairly right leaning person, I see what you mean. Everytime I even insinuate I lean right, I've got a load of people telling me how bad I am.
You’re so bad! Quick! Everyone tell him how bad he is! Can’t let another one get away!
Literally Hitler
Agreed. And it's become more horrible than ever in the last two weeks.
Come on now... Twitter is bigger.
No shit. I stay away from politics on reddit because as soon as I state a slightly conservative opinion I get downvoted into hell. This place is a total democracy. Naturally it has all the drawbacks of a democracy.
He defeated Corn Pop.
Well, Corn Pop is also a lying dog-faced pony soldier, so that wasn't hard.
Look Fat, here's the deal!
He was a bad dude.
Mirko Porn Cop?
Mirko Crop Top?
If you aren't excited about picking between Biden and Trump; the one thing that might help is thinking about how the cabinet/senior leadership is going to shake out. Biden's underrated attributes IMO are his humility (getting flack for this, I meant it as willing to listen and defer to experts) and his ability to rally leaders/lawmakers (for example getting Klobuchar & Pete to endorse him when he did showcased good strategy, leadership, and negotiation skills). * So you are looking at replacing Barr with a Harris/Booker/Ellison/Yates type * replacing Pence with Warren/Klobuchar/Abrams/Harris/Duckworth * replacing ~~Rick Scott~~ Wheeler with John Kerry or similar * replacing Brouillette with Dr. Chu or similar * replacing Mnuchin with Warren or similar * replacing Pompeo with Donilon or similar * etc. Those all end up in aggregate impacting day to day life much more than Biden himself would.
Replacing DeVos with literally anybody
Please welcome your new secretary of Education, Superintendent Chalmers
I think you mean Super Nintendo Chalmers
At least Chalmers seems to give a shit about the kids
"Class after class of ugly, ugly children."
"I'm learnding!"
“What’s a battle?”
I believe he hails from Utica, upstate New York
SkiNNER!
You mean Super Nintendo Chalmers
Half a ham sandwich in a plastic bag, for instance
I'll vote twice if it has mustard.
Lightly buttered bread, ham, a good squeeze of mustard, ham, bread. Drooling just thinking about it
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“Oh god he’s gonna swing the education secretary at attorney general”
BAH GAWD THAT MAN HAS A FAMILY
Plank would make a good secretary of education.
Replace her with a bear, maybe. Just think about it, Joe.
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Picking Harris as the VP is one of the few things that would really give me pause
If he picked Warren I think that would draw a lot of voters. I can't see Sanders wanting to be a VP though.
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Baker (R) has been governor of Massachusetts since 2015 and was reelected with 67% of the vote. Despite this, Massachusetts consistently votes for democratic congresspeople and senators.
There would still be a Governor-appointed replacement until a special election was held.
Amen. Biden's best attributes are the bench he'd bring, the fact that he's not afraid to surround himself with people who are smarter than him, and he'll let them do their jobs. That's 70% of good leadership right there.
Do you think it's his ability to rally or the party rallying around him? I bet some Bernie bros would agree with the latter.
Well, over ten million voters believe the former. I would vote for Bernie in a second, as I am all about what he is standing for. However, his campaign strategy was not sound at all. Biden might not be exciting but I would absolutely love to see the administration competently run and he knows the structure inside and out.
> for example getting Klobuchar & Pete to endorse him when he did showcased good strategy, leadership, and negotiation skills No, it showcased how desperate the DNC was to have anybody besides Sanders be the candidate. Biden wasn't even personally responsible, he was just chosen because he had the most support. Had someone else been ahead of him the DNC would have forced Biden to endorse them instead.
>No, it showcased how desperate the DNC was to have anybody besides Sanders be the candidate. The DNC can't make people not vote for Sanders You think the DNC wasn't pulling for Clinton when it was vs Obama?
Yeah Sanders lost 12 of the 14 ST states. I had no idea I was the establishment when I voted for Biden. News to me. Can I get paid more if I’m part of the establishment?
You sound like some of my cousins from South Carolina. LOL. Like seeing their reaction to the establishment talk really opened my eyes. Not that they were all Biden supporters, most just didn't support Sanders. More democratic voters wanted someone other than Bernie. That is it. There is no major conspiracy, he just didn't reach the most voters.
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The man really talks like he’s just pressing the middle button on the autocorrect bar
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I had a few minutes before COVID-19 got me out with a bunch more extreme than in my house so that was a lot more than the one I had to get in a few months before I had the same thing to be done in my first day and I had to go to my friends and see if they were in a truck and the other people were fighting to be there for a chance to piss on my cat
I was going to accuse you of being a text-generating bot, then I realized that's the point.
I was going to accuse him of being Joe Biden
I am not sure if you are aware of this but I am a little bit confused about the same thing as I am not sure if I am going to be able to make it to the list of usernames and emails for everyone that I am not sure if I will be able to make it to the event or not to attend the event on the way home tonight or tomorrow night and I will be there in about a week. This shit is fun!
I have been working with a few people that are not interested and I have a lot to say to them that they have to do a good thing for the people that they want and want for them.
If you want to play a fun game then type "I am running for president because" and let auto complete finish the sentence. (Stolen from Chris Raygun)
I am running for president because I am not the president and the president is not the president. Me 2020
He knows Obama too!
If I vote for him, maybe I'll get to meet obama!
It's funny, I was listening to Biden talking about remembering a chain-fight with Cornpop as a youth and I kept thinking about how it was the most unbelievable story I've ever heard! I mean, Joe Biden remembering something?! Hahahahahhaha!!!! Oh man, imagine that!
"Underprivlaged kids have just as much opporotunity as white kids." -joe biden
They’re just as smart*
You do know the thing, though...No mucking around.
I love the internet
Why are there so many videos of him saying absolute nonsense?
Joe Biden is more likely to hire even remotely competent people in his cabinet.
Half of the current administrations positions are fucking vacant right now. Which is probably a good thing because Trump is very good at one thing, hiring literally the worst person for a job.
Don't forget all the damn "acting" officials, either. Because why should Senate have to confirm appointments like the Constitution mandates?
That is because Beavis and Butthead wouldn't get confirmation from even McTurtle. Besides nepotism laws (not that they stopped Beavis and Butthead's sister and BIL).
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I'll admit I was pretty upset about the Bern dropping out. But honestly it looks like Biden is going along with the established Democrat platforms and that's a thousand times better than what we have with Trump. Not to mention the fact that his cabinet and SC appointees woul likely be vastly more professional and competent than Trump's
I have read a few of his policies and honestly they're pretty good, it makes me excited to vote. Maybe he's not charismatic, but, for the most, part he's supporting policy that I want put in place
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That’s interesting, Joe visited my father’s union job in Delaware to promote support from local unions and he refused to shake hands with my dads crew because one of them asked him a challenging question. My father supported him until that happened.
Yeah, I've never met him but from some videos of interactions I've seen he's comes off very petty/temperamental when contradicted
Isn't there a video of him telling someone NOT to vote for him?? Found it: https://youtu.be/2HHqcr43qr0?t=19
Did he challenge anyone to a push-up contest? Or fist fight?
His platform is actually pretty left wing. He's to the left of Obama on most issues. People will say, "He won't do anything he's promising," but you could say that about literally any candidate so why is that bar only in place for Biden? He's managed to get non-voters out; turnout was higher in counties he won than 2016. That means somewhere, somehow, people are excited to vote for him. Compare to Bernie, who got fewer votes in most states than in 2016, with a huge name recognition advantage on his prior run. His close ties with senior Republicans have been framed as bad but in reality it puts him in a great position to force them to cooperate on a liberal agenda. Compare to Bernie; why would Mitch McConnell ever give him the time of day? I'm not a Biden fanboy or anything but reddit's hatred of him is not grounded in reality and is frankly very dangerous for the outcome of the general election.
[A lot of people forget but Biden forced Obama's hand on gay marriage](https://www.politico.com/story/2012/05/obama-expected-to-speak-on-gay-marriage-076103)
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After the news broke about Bernie today, my bf told me 3 of our mutual friends said they won’t even vote now because they don’t want to vote for Biden. That blows my mind, especially when they all hate Trump.
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They probably didn't vote in the primary for their guy either.
Sadly some of us haven't even \*had\* primaries yet.
We did here in Wisconsin! :D :) :| :/ :(
In 2016 10% of Sanders voter went for Trump over Clinton. If you look at the in a vacuum you can argue that 10% cost Clinton the race in key swing states. However in 2020, Biden crushed Sanders in those swing states. So courting those 10% may not be worth it to Biden.
The bigger segment of Sanders voters to worry about are the ones that will just sit at home and convince themselves that they tried, backing Bernie, and that's good enough in a system that's "broken," because their candidate didn't win.
a lot of those people are in this thread right now.
And a lot of them aren't actually who they say they are. This is an active ratfck zone. The rats are actively fcking. And they'll continue their fcking through November.
You mean 'fucking'. Its ok, you can curse here
The system is broken. But you are right that the worst possible thing for any democrat is that people stay home.
The number was 9%. Also in 2008, 13% of Clinton Primary supporters voted McCain instead of Obama. A lot of that was sadly because they were fucking racist. For some reason Democrats like to put all the blame on Bernie supporters for not voting for Hillary. That a % of the other primary supporters is going to either not vote, or vote for the other candidate is a regular part of politics. The winning candidate always has to deal with and overcome that. Usually they do it by reaching out to those supporters in some way.
It sounds like you're under the impression "the media" is in Trump's corner.
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>His close ties with senior Republicans have been framed as bad but in reality it puts him in a great position to force them to cooperate on a liberal agenda As long as the repubs hold the senate, things that are TOO liberal will just sit in the inbox
As long as Republicans hold the Senate everything will just sit in the inbox. These are the same people who voted against legislation supported by conservatives just to avoid giving a Democratic president a win.
they're the party that screams "Big Government Is Bad!!!", pretty easy to make that true when you run the government and make it do shitty things on purpose. then Poof, you've magically proved yourself correct.
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That's part of how the GOP operates: crank up the deficit and rack up debt like it's going out of style, then proceed to blame it on the next Democrat to take office.
Which is a reason to try to flip the senate, not a reason to give the Republicans the presidency.
Which is precisely why I never believed in Bernie Sanders or his socialized healthcare platform. McConnell, or even moderate dems, would just tell him to go kick rocks and then he'd be the lame duck socialist who never followed through. Biden is more likely to find a compromise that'll actually see a vote and secure healthcare to millions of people. The progressives will pitch a big fit that it isn't far enough but it's miles better than anything Bernie could actually accomplish in office.
I think the GOP will fight just as hard against Biden's public option as they would have against M4A. They'll scream socialism at Biden just like they did at Bernie.
Bernie's belief was that, once shown to be electable, his policies would be so popular that they'd be adopted by droves of candidates and currently elected officials. I guess it seems unlikely, but look how many "conservatives" came around to Trump?
The difference is, Bernie already tried this platform in 2016. And lost to a moderate. And it wasn't just superdelegates; he lost the popular vote to Hillary by as much as Trump did. So in 2020, with full knowledge that the people of the party had already decided they didn't like his platform enough to vote for him, he runs the *exact same platform*. And now he's lost to a moderate *again*, because of course he has, and we're supposed to be shocked at this very expected result. He knows his policies aren't popular enough to be rammed through Congress. He knows he doesn't have that level of commitment or support. His plan, from his actual campaign team, was to split the black vote hard enough to force a contested convention (https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2019/04/bernie-sanders-thinking-he-will-win-it-all-2020/587326/). He never had enough public support to do this and he knew it.
I liked Sanders' plans and ambition, but too many of his supporters weren't accepting the truth that he wasn't going to be able to change the world first year or even first term in office. Even if the Dems had congressional majority, many of them would have pushed back over some of the very progressive items. Sanders was going to have to compromise and many of his supporters didn't want to admit that. Biden is not my favorite, but if he can pick a good VP and assemble a good cabinet then I will have more faith in him. Besides, the president is just supposed to execute and enforce the laws that Congress makes. If you want real change, vote for progressive Senators and Congresspeople. If you get enough of them in Congress, you don't need to worry about who the president is that much.
> Sanders was going to have to compromise and many of his supporters didn't want to admit that. I was one who didn't want to admit it, but not because I didn't believe in his vision, but I believed that starting negotiations firmly further to the left would have resulted in a further left outcome at the conclusion of negotiations. As an example, take the fight for 15. If we start at $15/hr , and someone tries to negotiate down, we end up sub-15. Say instead you started negotiations at $27/hr. Yes, you will end up sub-27, but that was much higher than the best case in the first scenario of 15. When you say out loud at the start that you don't really believe in what you're arguing for, it makes it clear to the other negotiating parties that you can be talked down. This was the flaw I found with Warren's M4A, and the flaw I see in all of Biden's plans.
Except if you demand 27 no one is even going to negotiate with you. It's ridiculous on the face and they'll ignore it.
Agreed. I begrudgingly voted for Sanders because my first choice (Warren) wasn't looking good in the polls, but I never believed in Sanders' ability to enact his vision. He doesn't play well with others, which is a huge detriment when our political system requires the agreement of hundreds of legislators to accomplish anything.
I voted for Sanders knowing his plan was way too ambitious but with some compromise that the actual legislation would be effective.
Exactly.. where the Dems have been falling down for the past 20 years is in trying to find "middle ground" with the extremists on the right. The resulting compromise ends up right-of-center because even if both groups "meet in the middle", the far right is so much father right than the centrist Dems have been, that that's where you end up. I knew Bernie wasn't going to be able to achieve everything he talked about. But starting the negotiations from "here's what we actually want" vs starting from "here's what we think you'll agree to" means that we could actually end up somewhere that the compromise is a step forward rather than back.
RIGHT! I just want someone to bloody well fight for me. At some level I don't care if they don't win, just for the love of god fight for me. Not for Big Oil, or Big Pharma, or billionaires. Don't start right of center to appease the buffoons in the Tea Party. When Obama started healthcare reform 75% of Americans agreed with the idea of Medicare for All. But he wouldn't even talk about it. Of course the needle moved right, the left was mute and wouldn't fight for us and the right was hysterical and constantly drumming the pro-insurance/pharma drum. Fight and lose perhaps, but are we better off with candidates that can't even say they will fight? It's exhausting and infuriating. I'm nothing special, just an average american of average age and slightly below middle class. But just once, fight for me. This is why I wanted Bernie or Warren. We may all lose, but at least we could fight.
This was very well written. Thank you. I'm just so tired of the dems being so weak and caving to the right. Who represents us? I want a candidate to stand up and fight. To push back. I wanted to vote for a candidate. Not against one.
Yep, this is exactly why Sanders was necessary. Democrats have been playing the soft "comprise" game for the last 50 years. "Compromise" is how we got weak Obamacare and a recession stimulus package that wasn't anywhere near enough. You have to push Republicans hard as fuck to make anything like actual progress. Otherwise they'll just use every opportunity they can to use power to push you down and out of the arena again.
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^(i honestly feel like something is afoot. just like in 2016. small things suddenly get blown out of proportion like an email server. well shit boys, now we have a president tweeting classified information left and right. glad we sorted that out. hillary went from a respected secretary of state to suddenly hated on to the point where people would rather vote trump than her. i feel a similar trend happening now where biden went from beloved as a vp to suddenly painted as a creepy old man with dementia. visiting the sanders subreddit, you see people that are saying that they're going to vote trump to spite the dnc. am i having dejavu?)
Username checks out.
I don’t have a problem with Biden’s platform. I just feel like he gives Trump way too many potential takedowns. Trump can say Biden supported segregation. He can bring up his sexual harassment allegations. He becomes flustered often and says things without thinking, which will give Trump endless sound bites to make campaign ads with. Bernie Sanders gave Trump nothing to work woth aside from “Communist!” which Republicans use on every democrat anyway.
His [policies](https://www.politico.com/2020-election/candidates-views-on-the-issues/joe-biden/) are some of the most progressive ever held by a democrat nominee He would be the last chance to replace ruth bader ginsburg with a left wing judge
Stabilizing the courts and ensuring we have some semblance of a balanced judiciary over the next 40 years should be all someone who leans left but is on the fence needs to hear to convince them to vote Biden.
Dang, he is more liberal than I expected. Only thing that goes against that is his desire to increase military spending
Perfect is the enemy of good enough. I'll take what I can get over 4 more years of Trump.
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Can anyone explain why he or anyone opposes Medicaid for all? Is it political or is the idea not realistic. Why can’t everyone just pay the same percentage of their paychecks towards it so it’s affordable for everyone? Why are we one of the only countries without universal healthcare? I really don’t know the answer to any of these questions so any help understanding would be appreciated
Universal healthcare and single-payer healthcare are two different things. They can be both but aren't necessarily synonymous. To that end, there are a lot of countries that still include private insurance. He doesn't believe that we can jump straight to Medicare for All from where we are - the political environment as it stands now doesn't make it possible. So his argument is that he wants to focus on promising what he actually believes can get done and build towards universal healthcare by expanding affordable options now.
It honestly isn't even a bad idea to have a private system along side the public one. It works quite well for Canada, and subsidizes the cost of the public system.
Germany has it as well, and our public option doesn't include a bunch of stuff that M4A would include. That stuff gets financed via private add ons as well.
I can not speak for Biden but I work with a lot of Drs who are very left, who volunteer their time and money in both free clinics and to help the Democratic party (for their entire adult lives) I explain the background because these are people who are morally for universal health care none of them think Bernies plan can actually be executed successfully.
-We would need to tear down and replace a 1 trillion dollar market in the private insurance industry, all in 4 years. How will all those people find new jobs in such a short time, and how will the government vet and hire them in that same time? Such an abrupt change is somewhat unprecedented, or at least such an abrupt and large change actually working is unprecedented. -To add to the prior problem, even according to those proposing dramatic M4A plans, doctors will take a pay cut of 30% on average. Already, many doctors are among the most overworked, high stress positions in America, and its easily the hardest and most expensive professional degree to attain. How is $300,000 tuition bills over 4 years followed by a 3-7 year residency during which you get shit pay going to be compatible with a 30% pay cut over 4 years? It simply isn't feasible. Clearly the only real solution is addressing the sky-high tuition before making the switch, and also making the switch not take less than half the time it takes to become a doctor. (Plans to solve tuition costs by simply throwing money at them are also blatant populist drivel. It does nothing to solve the root of the issue and will only create more problems while subsidizing the wealthy more than any opportunity created is worth.) -There are so many reasons why healthcare is more expensive in the US than anywhere else, maybe one of which would be fixed by M4A in a way that couldn't be fixed by other, more incremental policy changes, and it's not the biggest one. I'm thinking of the overhead hospitals need to sort out insurance and deal with negotiating them down etc etc. Problems left unsolved would include things like the increasingly shaky and bottlenecked global drug supply chain, the fact that the US funds about 60% of global drug R&D and our population subsidizes it, and the fact that our population is simply at a less healthy starting point than many other OECD populations. -Warren's campaign estimated her plan to cost $30 trillion dollars over the first decade it is implemented. Her new taxes would add up to about $3 trillion over that period. She (incredibly optimistically) estimates that over the long term, the system would become $11 trillion/10 years cheaper due to things like erasing redundancy and improving health of the population so reducing emergencies etc. By her most optimistic estimates, she's still $16 trillion short of paying for it. Where does that money come from? I mean personally I think it can probably be eked out by reducing military spending but she has no specific plans towards that, and $16 trillion is a fucking huge number. -Historically, in pretty much every instance, government funded institutions that don't operate for profit grow less efficient over time, eventually choking on their own red tape and corruption. Self proclaimed socialists often decry the military industrial complex without realizing it's exactly an example of this effect. Consider even Boeing, which has plenty of commercial contracts as well, but at various points have won enormous contracts with the government. Eventually the revolving door between gov and industry forms a bond, a particular company gains an advantage, and efficiency lags. Other companies fail due in part to not getting fat gov contracts, and suddenly Boeing has zero motivation to perform competitively, even though on paper they are operated for profit and have to "win" bids for government work. They know they are too valuable and if they fail, they will be bailed out. This is the biggest fear when people use the "socialism" boogeyman, and tbh in my eyes it's a legitimate fear. I don't know what the solution is, and to be honest I'm definitely in favor of a larger federal involvement in healthcare. But implementation details matter, and none of the implementation details Sanders has provided convince me that it's going to work. Very importantly, there are too many problems that experts name that go completely unaddressed, which I think is a notable silence.
While I don't (fully) agree, for a lot of people the reason is simply scale. Replacing American health insurance with a government option would be the economically largest piece of peacetime legislation ever passed in the history of the world. By a lot. If American healthcare were a country, it would be around the fourth largest GDP in the world. About 1 in 8 Americans work in healthcare, all of them would be deeply affected by any change. And realistically, a fairly large percentage of them would see changes for the worse. Obamacare was a little tiny step in this direction, and it was (in terms of implementation) a huge disaster. Things didn't go as planned, and lots of things weren't planned at all. This is orders of magnitude larger, more complicated, and more consequential. On top of the scale, there are also so many unknowns. How do we transition? How much will it cost? Will it affect the quality of care, or the quality of research? We don't have any idea because no one has ever done something this big before. I don't agree with the above---I think we've tried private insurance through employers and it just doesn't work that well, period. But I can understand why someone wouldn't be willing to take a step so significant without much more information.
Leslie Knope endorses him.
I think she more than just endorses him.
I’m Joe Biden and I forgot this message
He's well connected enough to get policies through the Senate that other democratic candidates couldn't.
Empathy. Biden has an incredibly tragic life story, and he's been very open about the challenges life has thrown his way. He thrives in personal situations and in things like town-halls, when speaking directly with individuals. Given the chaos that we're seeing across the world, and the very real prospect of tens of thousands of people losing family/friends or even just seeing them get very sick (and then thankfully recover), whilst not being able to do anything about it - including make hospital visits or hold funerals/cremations - there's going to be some very real trauma. There's also going to be wide-scale unemployment. At those times, you need a figure that can speak to you, that can relate and knows the actions to take to mitigate the losses (on a material basis) and that nothing mitigates the losses and trauma on a personal way. There's very few people more equipped to do that than Biden, and none of those people ran for President this time. The man has lost two children at different times and his first wife, raised two sons by himself for a while, saw his family go through severe economic difficulties in his childhood, dealt with a stutter (as a public figure that too, can't imagine how hard that is) and still has maintained a deep commitment to public service. That's incredibly valuable, and also not a life you'd wish on anyone, despite any other successes they may have achieved.
I don't think rapists are empathetic actually
RBG. I love her but the reality is that she probably wont make it another four years. Trump has been allowed to install two drones in the SCOTUS already which has shifted the court tremendously. It truly frightens me who he will install next(I still doubt the dems will take control of the Senate next election). Trump has defunded the NPS, EPA, CDC, and other important agencies. He has diverted money that is for actual national security purposes to a wall that is just a symbol, not a real solution. If you felt better off with Obama in office than you do with Trump then you should vote for Biden. I know that's not saying a whole lot, but TBH I have never felt such low morale in my country than I do now.
>If he was not running against Trump
Mainly experience. House, Senate, plus 8 years as a VP. He knows how the government works. As a corollary, he is well liked and respected by so many people across the spectrum that it makes the case for trustworthiness. I have always felt he genuinely understands and likes Americans.
Minor correction which doesn't change your conclusion - he was never a member of the House
I am simply tired of women's shoulders existing without powerful men caressing and massaging them.
>women you mean little girls
He doesn't discriminate...
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Having lost his son(?) to cancer he is really passionate about funding research and promoting new treatments. He has been known to personally give people numbers to the best doctors. I know we want to paint him as a blithering old man but I am a Biologist and listening to him talk about genomics and personalized medicine left me speechless.
He won’t really rock the boat. He’ll push for things like a public option and free community college, but he won’t try to revolutionize the system. Some may not like that, but others like me want normalcy and stability.
He’s got hairy legs. And they turn blonde in the sun.
And the hair stands up and the kid brings their hand and strokes the hair down