It’s too steep a price to pay to get rid of Trump, even for me. Much too steep.

Increasing chatter about a Biden-Warren ticket. No one will be that happy with the compromise, but I could see it help voter turnout.

I consider myself fairly up to date on American politics but I had to google who Hillary's running mate was. Don't think it makes much of a difference either way. It will take some doing to do worse than the republicans anyway. Palin, Ryan and Pence is quite the streak.

Jens wrote:

I consider myself fairly up to date on American politics but I had to google who Hillary's running mate was. Don't think it makes much of a difference either way. It will take some doing to do worse than the republicans anyway. Palin, Ryan and Pence is quite the streak.

I've done this several times. I always forget. I've forgotten again now. I do think Pence helped Trump bring in the Evangelicals though, it was a sign he wouldn't betray them. I'm not sure anyone can do something similar for Biden.

Qwiss! wrote:

Claudius wrote:

For the Medicare for all issue, Biden rightly pointed out that Italy and other European states are devastated. So having state care won’t prevent a virus.

What a moronic thing to say. How can anyone take that sort of thing seriously? All the people who'd agree with him on that now would be calling it idiotic if Trump said it.

The situation as it is right now is much more a failure of public health than it is an issue of there being no state-based health insurance system. If the USA had its public health act together, it would be in a much better place than it is regardless of its its insurance system.

It’s important to differentiate root causes of issues. I think most of us are I agreement that ethically it is better to have a state based insurance system. And if the government is an efficient operator, you should be able to save a lot of money relative to the status quo while also achieving the universal coverage that a commercial system desperately lacks. Education and health are government responsibilities.

What the heck is state-based insurance?

Personally I think it's pretty obvious that it's the capitalistic aspect of American healthcare in general that is probably about to turn the US into the worst example of corona spread in the world: people initially not getting tested because they can't afford the bill; people not being guaranteed paid sick leave by the government so they can't afford to stay home if they have a fever; people not seeking treatment as the symptoms worsen for the same reason that they don't get tested. The nuts and bolts of the whole society makes social distancing and self-isolation untenable for people who don't have a lot of money.

Some of these policies have been temporarily updated through the passing of recent laws, but like in the case with the paid sick leave they're still so inadequate (companies with less than 50 and more than 500 employees don't get any money for sick leave, because corporate interests lobbied the assholes in Washington) that 85 percent of the population aren't eligible for the benefits. The Democrats should be ashamed of themselves for that shit compromise they pushed through.

Yeah. Systematically, the USA needs to get a lot of things right. It’s not just Medicare. It’s public health. It’s also issues like time off work/ sick leave as you rightly point out. Of all the countries I’ve worked in, USA had by far the worst time off policies, including for maternity/paternity.

But I think it’s easier to do these things in certain environments. I’m a big advocate of m4a in South Africa where the ANC has not delivered promised socioeconomic gains post independence. The politics and economic structure should make it very easy. Political will is just lacking.

In America though where the healthcare industry is 1/5 of the country’s GDP and capitalism/ individualism are woven into the fabric of the country, building a socialist healthcare system will be much harder to execute. Changing the mindset and disentangling the economic linkages of the existing medical system will require real effort. It’s why I don’t foresee America implementing an m4a system anytime soon.

Klaus wrote:

Some of these policies have been temporarily updated through the passing of recent laws, but like in the case with the paid sick leave they're still so inadequate (companies with less than 50 and more than 500 employees don't get any money for sick leave, because corporate interests lobbied the assholes in Washington) that 85 percent of the population aren't eligible for the benefits. The Democrats should be ashamed of themselves for that shit compromise they pushed through.

The democrats have been shown for what they truly are in this crisis. Even ghouls like Mitt Romney are trying to do more for working people than the most powerful and influential democrats are.

Claudius wrote:

Yeah. Systematically, the USA needs to get a lot of things right. It’s not just Medicare. It’s public health. It’s also issues like time off work/ sick leave as you rightly point out. Of all the countries I’ve worked in, USA had by far the worst time off policies, including for maternity/paternity.

But I think it’s easier to do these things in certain environments. I’m a big advocate of m4a in South Africa where the ANC has not delivered promised socioeconomic gains post independence. The politics and economic structure should make it very easy. Political will is just lacking.

In America though where the healthcare industry is 1/5 of the country’s GDP and capitalism/ individualism are woven into the fabric of the country, building a socialist healthcare system will be much harder to execute. Changing the mindset and disentangling the economic linkages of the existing medical system will require real effort. It’s why I don’t foresee America implementing an m4a system anytime soon.

I think you have it the wrong way around, you're giving the US an easy pass. Politically (as in with regards to organisation) and in terms of economic infrastructure it's not even remotely comparable trying to implement national health insurance in the richest country of the world as compared to a country that's coming out of a century of apartheid. Just because the US are making a mess of it or are too obstinate to do it doesn't mean it's harder there than in South Africa ffs.

Qwiss! wrote:

Klaus wrote:

Some of these policies have been temporarily updated through the passing of recent laws, but like in the case with the paid sick leave they're still so inadequate (companies with less than 50 and more than 500 employees don't get any money for sick leave, because corporate interests lobbied the assholes in Washington) that 85 percent of the population aren't eligible for the benefits. The Democrats should be ashamed of themselves for that shit compromise they pushed through.

The democrats have been shown for what they truly are in this crisis. Even ghouls like Mitt Romney are trying to do more for working people than the most powerful and influential democrats are.

Which is why you get results like this:

It takes some serious effort to be so lousy at your job that you end up bumping the approval ratings of a president who has systematically demantled and defunded the healthcare and welfare systems during a literal pandemic, but the Democrats managed to find a way.

They've spent billions and leaned on every corporate media contact they have over the past year in a concerted effort to bury the one candidate among their own ranks who's running on a healthcare reform and empowering workers' rights platform. People see them for what they are, which is just a shit GOP with less conviction.

So now that Russian asset Tulsi has endorsed Biden should we assume Putin favours Biden?

No shame.

You do realise that a super pac is an independent body. I believe this one hasn’t even filed its membership at the time that they were going into elections. This is different from, say, Buttigieg meeting rich donors in wine caves.

I do know, and it's not different at all. She said she wouldn't take money from super pacs for that very reason. Like most other things with Warren it was just a convenient lie at the time, and she used it to criticise Bernie and implied he took money from billionaires because he had the open support of a nurses union. Then she went back on her word when she ran out of cash. She knew exactly where that money came from. Fraudulent and self-serving, as always.

Warrens complete lack of character and authenticity got exposed in the last few months. She repeatedly doubled down the centrist talking points about bernie being backed by superpacs and bernie bros being the worst group of supporters on the planet, despite both of those statements being demonstrably false. The superpac smear was particularly egregious in light of the fact she eventually took money from an actual superpac. Glad voters shat on this fraud

Qwiss! wrote:

So now that Russian asset Tulsi has endorsed Biden should we assume Putin favours Biden?

Hillary McCarthy and the DNC in being full of shit shocker. Not a fucking peep will be made about this

Are there any American politicians left that aren't Russian assets?

It's not really clear what Warren's motivations were, but empirically her campaign definitely did everything possible to hurt Sanders, splitting the progressive vote and then refusing any endorsement. It's bitterly disappointing.

I'm wondering how November will unfold now. Short of being in an existential war it's hard to imagine better grounds than this pandemic for Trump to try to do something outside the rules. I don't really expect that will happen but it seems more possible now.

"Happy hour with Joe Biden"

This is how you handle republicans by the way. Fuck the lot of them, and fuck the democrats who enable them too. Only way to get them to listen is to threaten to tank the stock market.

Sanders got his way. The scum caved.

I saw this in the comments.

This is going to set the tone for the election …

That's a lot of voters.

Bernie Sanders dropped out. Genuinely sad about that.

Really shows how loathed Clinton was in 2016.

Bernie calls it a day
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/08/us/politics/bernie-sanders-drops-out.html

Biden vs Trump - whoever manages to complete a full sentence has my vote.

Sexist socialist smear campaign complete. America missed a huge opportunity, twice.

Biden will be fine. He may not be as inspiring as the candidates on the left but there is absolutely no comparison between Biden and Trump.
This week alone Trump pulled funding from WHO, fired two inspector generals, appointed a crazy birther as his press secretary, claimed Ivanka created 15m jobs (that’s 10% of US jobs basically). And that’s the stuff I have top of mind.

Really hope the Democratic party crashes and burns. American politics are in dire need of an exorcism.

Just saw a report saying one third of tenants in the US won't make April rent.

Good. Landlords getting breaks on mortgages and still charging full price. Despicable.

Rent is theft.

Fascinating to watch the democratic machine scramble to keep bidens skeletons in the closet

I don't know what to expect at this point. The coronavirus outbreak has thrown a huge curve ball into the campaign. November will end up being a referendum on how trump handled a national crisis. To any sane person he's been awful throughout this outbreak, and only a crazy person would vote for another 4 years of that. But this is america

Even unpopular incumbents are currently getting popularity boosts from their "handling" (however incompetent) of the crisis, I'm not really sure it's possible for this to hurt Trump unless something truly extraordinary happens, despite him being pretty inexpert at exploiting it for his own popularity.

Trump is still in a vulnerable position. If you look at approval ratings for western leaders at national and state level, most were polling in the 70s in the past few weeks as they stepped up to lead on Coronavirus. This is an easy way to appear presidential. Cuomo is the perfect example of an average governor who suddenly has Americans predictably throwing words like ‘presidential’ around. Trump rose to early 50s and is this week back to late 40s on approval, and approval on handling of crisis isn’t much better. This is an epic failure.

The problem for Trump is he is going to struggle to reclaim lost jobs in coming months. And despite his efforts, deaths will keep piling up. Even if US ends below original forecast I’m not sure he will be able to reassure Americans that he had a hand in that. It will all look like the work of proactive governors.

Biden’s big issue now is neither he nor his surrogates know how to organize online. This is actually the time to be a Twitter and Youtube candidate you make up for reduced tour time. But he’s disappeared.