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2020 Democratic Nominee


used2b

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This is a fantastic article about why the left was so pissed off about the WFP endorsement of Warren.

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One of the pleasures of radicalism is a diminished necessity for nuance. I’m not being facetious; part of what it means to be radical is to perceive the dominant common sense for what is: an elaborate authorization for the maintenance of the status quo. There is little nuance in a strike, for example — the narratives it conjures are blunt and dualistic: bosses vs. workers, capital vs. labor — and there shouldn’t be. “No justice, no peace,” has no nuance at all. For radicals, nuance isn’t as vital as vitriol.

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My preference would be for left movement groups to remain neutral, or better yet, stake out an explicit provisional endorsement for “Bernie or Warren” — at least until a primary or two clarifies the conditions and stakes. In Splinter, Hamilton Nolan even offered some pithy branding for this position: “Eat the rich in 2020. Don’t worry too much about which fork you use.”

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I don’t think we all need to get along; I don’t think it’s even clear who “we” are. (Many DSA members I’ve talked to in the past few days, for example, don’t really consider the WFP an ally or a peer.) Politically minded people — which is to say, activists, organizers, and the Very Online — tend to make political judgments early and stick to them. Bernie diehards, especially committed democratic socialists, are not suddenly going to become sympathetic to Elizabeth “Capitalist to My Bones” Warren. Disagreement, even uncivil disagreement, is not a sign of political peril. I don’t expect the tweet threads and Facebook rants to disappear or suddenly become uniformly cordial. There’s no kumbaya, my lord in the offing, and I wouldn’t push it if there was.

What everyone should do, however, is be clear-eyed about stakes and political realities. There will come a moment, god willing, in which Warren and Bernie supporters — from the WFP and the DSA — will have to throw down extremely hard for one candidate. For the sake of our mental health, and the effectiveness (if not the fraternity) of our future collaboration, we might try not to consistently impute only bad faith and nefarious motive to our political others.

 

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1 hour ago, Hank Kingsley said:

Obviously it's not "outrageous", but it's apparent that a lot of people want Warren to go unchallenged for the rest of this primary.

 

This is becoming increasing more accurate. A lot of hand waving at her record and past statements. She’s not being challenged enough 

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5 hours ago, Hugo Stiglitz said:

 

He came in a distant 4th in his home state on Thursday's poll.  Writing is on the wall.  I actually think he did well for himself.  Critics will point to him languishing in the polls but I think he did well in most of the debates and most of his media stops.  His ground game sucks and he never had a "signature" moment which could capture momentum.  Realistically, unless he was lucky, he was running for next cycle.  Yang, Klobacher, and (gulp) Beto probably have to be thinking the same.

 

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3 minutes ago, Hank Kingsley said:

And running to Fox to complain about the DNC's "lack of transparency". 

Notice she she didn't complain about transparency of debate requirements when they were originally set. Every candidate had to play by the same rules. 

 

She can get fucked

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2 hours ago, Patrick Bateman said:

Now that is strong..... and that's the buzz word she should use.  Costs.

Agreed.  She needs to lay out that Canadians pay an average of $6,839 per person (which is on the high end for countries with socialized medicine) in taxes for full coverage healthcare, while in the US we pay $10,739 per person in taxes, premiums, and out of pocket expenses.  So Canada is able to spend about 40% less than us to cover everybody, and no one is at risk of going bankrupt because of a medical issue.

IMO, that's a compelling argument.  

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Surprise, Andrew Yang is a piece of shit!

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Then, Andrew Yang became president of the company. He had taught a couple of classes over the years, so I knew him already, but he was not at all involved in the company's operations before then. He promoted me to Senior Director just after he started, and again, I hit all of my growth targets.

Imagine my surprise, then, that on the third day that I was back to work after my honeymoon in 2007, Andrew Yang fired me. Our private discussion, in his office with the door closed, began with Andrew's remarks that because I was married, I wouldn't want to continue working as hard as I had been. That as a wife, I'd be focused on my new life.

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Andrew must have calculated that I would work less, travel less, put in fewer hours as a married woman, yet still earn my six-figure bonuses. He had seen how seamlessly my staff had performed while I was on my honeymoon. He probably thought that they would do the work cheaper. With my compensation package off the books, several college grads could be brought in to spread the work around. And just like that, my wedding and honeymoon had rendered me obsolete from the company that I had helped to build.

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Since the termination was couched for me, as a "freedom to move on" narrative, the deal Andrew Yang offered me was commensurate with what he believed I deserved, a monthly payment for no longer working. For two years. I agreed in the end (part of a much longer story) to go away, to take the monthly payoff, which paved the way for the company to develop more sophisticated money-making initiatives at cheaper costs.

Sounds a lot like Yang’s "freedom dividend" platform doesn't it? Yang is basically telling the American public that the government will pay them off each month. Rather than governing our way into a sustainable economy, Yang's plan absolves the government from overseeing companies that could render countless workers obsolete. With a monthly payment, the under-educated, aging, perhaps newly married - the obsolete employees - recede into the background as trillion-dollar companies continue to grow unfettered and ungoverned as they have for decades.

Libertarian numbers nerds are fundamentally more evil than evangelical hucksters. The apocalypse isn't coming from the megachurch, it's coming from Silicon Valley robots.

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22 minutes ago, bad_teammate said:

Surprise, Andrew Yang is a piece of shit!

Libertarian numbers nerds are fundamentally more evil than evangelical hucksters. The apocalypse isn't coming from the megachurch, it's coming from Silicon Valley robots.

I see why Trump supporters prefer Yang. That’s gross. The Democrat party SHOULD be better than inherent racism and sexism but.... they’ve marginalized the presidential candidates of color, Biden is leading the polls and Yang keeps making the debates and making Asian jokes. 

Democrats: come for our good policies, stay for the same -isms as the Republicans! 

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7 minutes ago, Hank Kingsley said:

Good news with Warren over Biden. Surprised the numbers overall are pretty low. “Not sure” at 14%. 

Iowans are keeping their options open.

Something like only 12% of Warren supporters are “committed.” 

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"The Massachusetts senator appears to be gaining ground primarily at the expense of Sanders. She holds the support of 32% of those who say they caucused for Sanders in 2016 (Sanders himself stands at 25% among that group), stands at 48% among those who consider themselves "very liberal," and for the first time in CNN/DMR polling on the race, has edged ahead of Sanders among those under age 35 (27% back Warren, 22% Sanders)."

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Pollsters say they're honest, but they suspect each other of unethical practice.

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John Anzalone, of Anzalone Liszt Grove Research, drew a distinction between revising numbers to match others’ and rejecting polling results that don’t pass the smell test. He pointed out that even an optimal poll will get poor results — off by more than the margin of error — one out of 20 times. “That is just statistics,” Anzalone said. When his firm suspects that’s happened, sometimes “we will go back into the field at our own cost to check.” Conducting a brand-new poll is not at all the same as changing a poll’s findings.

One respondent wasn’t convinced we’d get meaningful results from the question, even though we granted anonymity. “Um, you think anyone is going to answer this honestly?” said the pollster, who didn’t want to be named.

When we asked the same question about other pollsters, our respondents were more inclined to suspect copying. Of the 14 who answered, eight thought some pollsters adjusted their numbers to match published polls’ results. Two people cited Enten’s article as the reason for their belief. Another said, “I’ve just noticed over the years that certain organizations have wild fluctuations in their numbers that often follow the release of a poll with numbers that run counter to what they had recently published.”

8 out of 14 pollsters thought that other pollsters were changing their numbers to match expectations.

Something to keep in mind while watching polls is that it's a business where no one wants to be (1) too far from everyone else or (2) too far outside the media narrative.

Monmouth recently apologized for poll results that showed Biden in 3rd place.

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