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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
Its A Distinction Without A Difference yes.
Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.Quick thoughts as a Hoosier: Pence is a sincerely vicious bigot who is more diplomatic about being vicious. He’d continue most if not all of Trump’s domestic policies and perhaps even escalate because he’d be smart enough to whisper the dogwhistles, not scream them.
Edited by wisewillow on Jul 21st 2019 at 8:49:47 AM
It is kind of a fantasy scenario.
"We can't defeat Skeletor because then that will bring back King Hiss."
Well you can't let Skeletor run amuck either.
You gotta beat both.
I hope that doesn't demean the sincerity of my opinion.
Edited by CharlesPhipps on Jul 21st 2019 at 10:03:26 AM
Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.It's more like defeating Skeletor will still leave Evil-Lynn in charge.
King Hiss was not one of Skeletor's subordinates, after all.
Your analogy would be more fitting if it was along the lines of "we can't impeach Trump because he's keeping Xi Jinping busy" or something.
I suppose this would also make Vladimir Putin Hordak.
Edited by M84 on Jul 22nd 2019 at 1:19:07 AM
Disgusted, but not surprisedRegarding the talk about getting rid of the filibuster from recent pages, I've come to belief that not only does it have to either get dropped or drastically scaled back and changed in its use, but we also need to curtail the powers of the party heads of the House and Senate. I say this because a majority leader the party in power can effectively block legislation before it even gets a chance to be debated. (We've seen this become McConnell's favorite tactic for not only blocking legislation from the Democratic House, but also preventing it from even reaching a stage of debate where the general public can even get clued into option and what the parties stand for.)
In essence we currently have three vetoes on legislation right now in a system where there is only supposed to be one, and it's not doing the process any favors. At all.
Interesting article I saw on another forum recently: despite similarities in policy, the demographic of Sanders and Warren voters are pretty different... and neither of them lists the other as their second choice
TLDR version: Primary voters who favor Sanders tend on average to be younger, less knowledgeable about politics, lower income, and more likely to be male. Warren voters tend to be better educated, older, to follow politics more closely, and be female. Ardent Sanders supporters list Biden as their second choice, (I'm going to be slightly generous and chalk that up to the less knowledgeable about politics part from above and thus go to the name they know as a second choice) while the biggest fans of Warren list Kamala Harris as their second choice.
But the fellow enemies of the 1 percent have surprisingly different bases of support.
In poll after poll, Sanders appeals to lower-income and less-educated people; Warren beats Sanders among those with postgraduate degrees. Sanders performs better with men, Warren with women. Younger people who vote less frequently are more often in Sanders’ camp; seniors who follow politics closely generally prefer Warren.
Sanders also has won over more African Americans than Warren: He earns a greater share of support from black voters than any candidate in the race except for Joe Biden, according to the latest Morning Consult surveys.
For progressive activists, who are gathering this week in Philadelphia at the annual Netroots Nation conference, it’s both promising and a source of concern that the two leading left-wingers in the primary attract such distinct fans. It demonstrates that a progressive economic message can excite different parts of the electorate, but it also means that Sanders and Warren likely need to expand their bases in order to win the Democratic nomination.
Put another way, if their voters could magically be aligned behind one or the other, it would vastly increase the odds of a Democratic nominee on the left wing of the ideological spectrum.
The fact that Warren and Sanders’ bases don’t perfectly overlap hasn't garnered much public attention, but it’s something very much on the minds of their aides and allies.
The big question here, of course, is does the divisions among Sanders and Warren primary voters mean they can form a much larger bloc of voters if put together, or does it leave an opening for a "moderate" like Biden to cruise by due to their own base of support?
For all the crappy things Biden has done for the middle class in this country, (see bankruptcy bills and policies favoring credit card companies and other debt collection agencies, as Delaware, the state Biden long represented as a Senator, is one of the biggest centers for such companies in the country) he does have a long history of supporting unions and connecting with blue collar workers. And he's been working that connection so far on the campaign trail, and I'm sure that's a reason why some people who love Bernie for talking about the working class also have a soft spot for Biden.
Warren, meanwhile, is aggressively working to win African American support. Her allies argue that her performance at events such as Al Sharpton's National Action Network convention and the She the People conference show that she has room to grow among black voters.
"If you were looking to buy a rising stock, you would look at future market share and indicators of strong fundamentals,” said Adam Green, co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, which backs Warren. “Elizabeth Warren has consistently connected on a gut level with black audiences ... getting standing ovations after connecting her inspiring plans to her personal story of struggle growing up poor in Oklahoma and being a single mom in Texas.”
Several Democratic operatives said they believe Warren has the ability to expand her base to include black women in particular.
And here are the numbers and demographic breakdowns from the article:
Roughly the same percentage of voters with bachelor's degrees — 16 percent and 15 percent, respectively — support Sanders and Warren. But among those with postgraduate degrees, 12 percent are for Sanders and 19 percent are for Warren.
There's a similar split based on age, gender and interest in politics. Sanders wins more than one-third of the 18- to 29-year-olds, while Warren gets 11 percent of them. Warren has the support of 13 percent of those aged 30 to 44, 12 percent of those aged 45 to 54, and 13 percent of those aged both 55 to 64 and 65 and up. Sanders' support goes down as the age of voters goes up: He is backed by 25 percent of 30- to 44-year-olds, 17 percent of 45- to 54-year-olds, 12 percent of 55- to 64-year-olds, and 8 percent of those 65 and older.
Twenty percent of men support Sanders and 11 percent support Warren; 18 percent of women are behind Sanders and 14 percent are behind Warren.
Warren also performs best among voters who are "extremely interested" in politics (winning 17 percent of them), while Sanders is strongest among those who are "not at all interested" (26 percent).
As for black voters, 19 percent are behind Sanders, while 9 percent support Warren.
No shit Sanders needs to court older voters in 2020. Younger voters don't reliably vote. If he had figured that out in 2016, maybe he wouldn't have lost by over a million votes to Hillary Clinton.
"Room to grow"...I guess that's a positive take on only having 9% support among black voters.
Also not surprised that more people without degrees support the candidate who has promised free college, while more people who have post-grad degrees and likely have crippling student loans to pay off support the candidate who has promised to forgive all student debt.
Now this bit is a tad intriguing. While the first part wasn't a surprise, the second part indicating that more women supports Sanders over Warren is interesting.
Edited by M84 on Jul 22nd 2019 at 5:22:54 PM
Disgusted, but not surprisedI wonder how many of Sander's black fanbase knows that he floated the idea that racial justice is less important than issues that affect "ordinary Americans".
Or the time he shaded the first black president of MLK Jr. Day.
Or that he apparently subscribes to the "black people are drug dealers" stereotype.
Oh yeah, I just remembered Sanders' base don't follow politics that much.
...you know, that kind of explains a lot.
i'm tired, my friendYou'd think someone would be smart enough to just offer both, but I'm guessing anyone who did so would be seen as bullshitter of the highest caliber.
Umm... about that. If you offer free college education, there wouldn't be any debts to pay off. Of course, that doesn't help people who already have said debts. It doesn't take a genius to realize that the latter might see everyone after them getting a free ride as an insult.
Personally, I see systematic, across the board consumer debt relief as a highly positive economic concept. Completely free higher education is laudable as a general goal, but there are lots of obstacles to making it happen, more than I can summarize in a quick Monday morning forum post before caffeine has kicked in.
Edited by Fighteer on Jul 22nd 2019 at 9:14:54 AM
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"Harris' star really rose when she laid into Biden during the first debate. She came out as the clear winner, while Warren nailed her half of the event.
Despite a lot of the flak that Harris is getting, I would have absolutely no problem with her getting the VP slot on a Warren ticket.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"I can't speak for the rest of the Harris and Warren fans, but I suspect being a charismatic, progressive female candidate who was shown to be competent on the debate stage is more than enough in common for their supporters.
I also suspect that a lot of Harris supporters are former ardent Hillary supporters who are still angry at Sanders.
I notice there's often a lot of surprise when women don't automatically back female candidates over male candidates. We have to remember a few things:
- Women aren't a single voting block: women will come from all walks of life and have all sorts of political beliefs. Female politicians are therefore not entitled to the female vote just because they're female. In a world with genuine equality, this point would not be a problematic one to make. Sadly, it is.
- Women, as a general rule, are far worse at criticising and dismissing other women than are men. I don't know why, but (speaking as a woman) this is a general rule in all aspects of life, not simply politics.
- Women are generally raised from birth in a patriarchal society and it's therefore common to see women holding pro-patriarchal attitudes towards other women. (As a side note: this isn't just harmful to women, it's harmful to men, too — but that's different discussion entirely.) Three examples:
- Feminists who dismissed Hilary Clinton as a candidate in the 2016 election because she had betrayed feminism by taking on too many 'male' traits over the years to succeed in a male-dominated society. (I remember linking the thread to the article at the time, but I'll have to try and find it again.)
- Trump-supporting women who were interviewed after the 2016 election, whose stated reasons for supporting Trump were exactly the same as the male supporters, including that women can't be trusted with power, that the presidency is a man's job, and that a woman seeking such office can't therefore be a good wife and mother.
- A little further back in history for this one: During the fight to give women and working-class men the vote, one common argument against giving women the vote was that women are too emotional to be capable of voting sensibly. It wasn't just men making that argument against a woman's right to vote — women were making that argument, too.
Edited by Wyldchyld on Jul 22nd 2019 at 2:45:01 PM
If my post doesn't mention a giant flying sperm whale with oversized teeth and lionfish fins for flippers, it just isn't worth reading.There's a lot of thinly-veiled misogyny among Sanders supporters, mixed in with the iconoclasm. It's weird that the latter would be directed at Warren, who is one of the strongest attackers of Big Money, so it must be the former.
Edited by Fighteer on Jul 22nd 2019 at 9:45:29 AM
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"One issue with Harris is that she's been kind of vague on what exactly she wants the future of USA health insurance to be.
Like in that last debate, she raised her hand along with Sanders when asked if she'd support eliminating private insurance in favor of a government run plan, only to walk it back later and claim that she "misunderstood" the question. It's similar to how she walked back her stance on busing.
Edited by M84 on Jul 22nd 2019 at 10:20:23 PM
Disgusted, but not surprisedIf/when Harris gets more traction in the standings, I'm going to spend more time looking into her policies. I'm more familiar with what Warren and Sanders have to offer because they've both been "campaigning" for years, to the point where their respective platforms are burned into my memory.
If I had a gun to my head, I couldn't tell you the specifics of how Biden, Buttigieg, Harris, etc. want to govern.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

And even Nixon would apparently go on drunken anti-Semitic rants.
Disgusted, but not surprised