American progressives hate establishment democrats, thinking they are too market oriented and not sufficiently socialist. They don’t really accept the legitimacy of the democratic primary process when their preferred candidate, Bernie Sanders, is unable to secure the nomination. They believe that his inability to pass legislation, or persuade voters to support him, is a mark of his authenticity. This is highly sarcastic but true.
Hey, let's ignore this one issue that has majority acceptance across political lines and upwards of 70% Democrat approval because I've got a grudge against it.
You can do what you want, throwaway account. When you get Matt Gaetz in 2024 let me know how it feels. 4 years of more means testing will get you there real quick.
I agree that M4A should be adopted, but disagree that not adopting it is hurting Biden. He's doing spectacularly in both state polls and national polls. Back in Spring this could have been ignored, but the election is less than 3 months away now and he has managed to not just retain his lead, but increase it. There's no reason to rock that boat now with major policy adoptions, in my opinion.
For what it's worth, if Dems manage to gain control of the Senate, then I think President Biden will sign anything that is put in front of him, including an M4A bill. Not doing that would actually cost him the 2024 election.
> Not doing that would actually cost him the 2024 election.
The man has stated he has no interest in running again afterwards. If we're, for whatever reason, taking what he says as truth, then he doesn't need that.
Furthermore, and this is the real important part, the man doesn't base his power upon accountability to the electorate. His base of power showed it's strengrh prior to Super Tuesday. He's riding on the democratic base and whatever reaction there is to Trump, but he's in no way accountable to the electorate.
I don't recall Biden ever making a promise to not seek re-election. I remember him expressing the idea, but mostly within the context of addressing criticisms that he's pretty old. He never committed to it, however.
I cannot think of a single President in recent history who actually refused to run for re-election. Can you?
Regardless of whether he seeks a second term, I don't think he would sabotage the Democratic Party by refusing to sign an M4A bill, if one is put in front of him.
Pretty much everyone knows Biden is senile and that his VP is going to be the real president. So it's a mystery to me why we still don't know who that is mere months before we are supposed to vote.
I’ll reply to this since I cannot reply to the sibling comment - but Medicare for all is not an actually popular or feasible idea. The polls that show support for Medicare for all have wording you the effect of “would you like free healthcare?”. Support quickly drops once polls start asking about the real trade offs that would have to be made in order to actually afford this change in healthcare, and the tax hikes needed to make it work.
Trying to pass off m4a as a feasible plan isn’t real, so it’s supporters all cling to support that a magical free plan would garner. They don’t actually have a plan to make it feasible, nor do they take the time to explain that part to their followers.
Crazy how when you word polls to indicate that taxes would be "hiked," that people get spooked. Never mind how we'd save money overall.
> Trying to pass off m4a as a feasible plan isn’t real
This is the real tragedy of the Bernie campaign. It wasn't feasible because it'd be spiked by Democrats in addition to Republicans. It's really heart-rending. You've got an entire voting base who simply can't imagine a better future where you're not squeezed for every cent, where you're not represented by people who are more focused on representing Pfizer, and where you don't have to be constantly in fear of accidentally getting cancer and, whoops, kids can't go to college now. Or say you catch a stray bullet, take an ambulance, and you're not covered--youre double fucked then.
See I guess that’s the exact reason I’m not a sanders supporter. I care about outcomes and couldn’t care less about the strategies used to get there. I see a public option as feasible, cost effective, minimally disruptive, and effective. I don’t fantasize about a 40 trillion dollar plan that would upend the largest American industry with uncertain effects. I’m especially not fantasizing about this effort being led by a man who spent his entire career in politics yet couldn’t manage to get a single large piece of legislation passed, and who actively burned his ties to the party he emigrated to because their politics weren’t radical enough.
Sanders actually played fast & dumb about the m4a numbers, then attacked warren when she tried putting actual numbers to the plan and tried to make it feasible. And the plan would actually cost around 40 trillion over a decade to implement, sorry if you were misled.
And didn’t sanders lose this primary worse than his first? Don’t blame us for whatever conservative you want to slot into the president slot next, blame sanders for campaigning for the past four years only to bank on Biden and Kamala splitting the black southern vote as his path to victory, then getting destroyed when that didn’t happen. There was no reason for him to antagonize those voters and tell them they don’t share his politics - at some point you’re just going to have to admit that sanders is a poor politician, as the rest of Washington has long realized.
If the last election was a referendum on establishment versus anti-establishment candidates, and if that same sentiment extends to this next election, then it seems like running an establishment candidate is a dangerous thing.
To be clear, I -personally- think Trump is very much part of the "esablishment" (whatever that might mean), and I am also open to either of those premises being false...
but I can certainly how they may be true.
And that's not getting into the questions that a lot of folks have about Biden's actual mental condition.
6 out of the last 7 people to be elected US president ran under the "outsider" banner, usually (wasn't alive for the earliest ones, so not entirely clear on the messaging) against someone they could coherently paint as an "insider".
It's not just the last election, is what I'm saying.
