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2020 U.S. Presidential Race


Tyger Songbird

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18 hours ago, Back to Avalon said:

Aaaagh! The last thing we need is another businessperson with no military, political, or international experience who thinks that having money and running a company qualify him to command the military, work with Congress, negotiate with (and sometimes stand up to) world leaders, and everything else that the president does. Yang at least has a law degree, but I think it takes much more than that to be president.

Yang would make an excellent Treasury Sec, IMO. His policies are kinda hit and miss, but where they hit, they hit bull's eye (*cough*UBI*cough*)...

 

Still, I agree... the office of President is far too important to give it to someone with no experience in politics. It's high time to bring back professional politicians.

 

(I'd also very happily see changes get written into law after this mess... "35 years old, natural born citizen, and 14 years resident" simply does not cut it, the legal hurdles for eligibility need to be made higher. "Everyone can become President" has turned out to be the American nightmare.)

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Back to Avalon
4 hours ago, Mysticus Insanus said:

(I'd also very happily see changes get written into law after this mess... "35 years old, natural born citizen, and 14 years resident" simply does not cut it, the legal hurdles for eligibility need to be made higher. "Everyone can become President" has turned out to be the American nightmare.)

Candidates should have to pass a background check and security clearance, the way employees of the FBI, CIA, and other government agencies do, especially those who handle top-secret information. The president deals with highly classified information, but the person who gets elected to the office is just automatically trusted, no security check. We have a president who may have colluded with a foreign adversary, and even if he didn't, there was enough credible evidence to warrant an investigation. WTF? This is the kind of crazy shit that happened on shows like 24, the kind of outlandish plot that you would think could never happen in real life but made for good TV.

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3 hours ago, Back to Avalon said:

Candidates should have to pass a background check and security clearance, the way employees of the FBI, CIA, and other government agencies do, especially those who handle top-secret information. The president deals with highly classified information, but the person who gets elected to the office is just automatically trusted, no security check. We have a president who may have colluded with a foreign adversary, and even if he didn't, there was enough credible evidence to warrant an investigation. WTF? This is the kind of crazy shit that happened on shows like 24, the kind of outlandish plot that you would think could never happen in real life but made for good TV.

Tempting, but do you want to give the US security apparatus the ability to block a candidate?  Do you trust them that much? 

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Back to Avalon
2 hours ago, uhtred said:

Tempting, but do you want to give the US security apparatus the ability to block a candidate?  Do you trust them that much? 

I don't know, and it would feed into Trump's "rigged system" delusion.

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also, russia is not an adversary. not friends, no, but not enemies. lingering cold war mentalities should be reminded who won the cold war (it wasn't us or ussr)

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1 hour ago, gisiebob said:

also, russia is not an adversary. not friends, no, but not enemies. lingering cold war mentalities should be reminded who won the cold war (it wasn't us or ussr)

It wasn't for a while, but I think it is now.  There is quite a bit of evidence that they tried to influence US elections and have been trying to sow dissent through social media. The were caught supporting both sides in some politically sensitive protests.

 

We are not at war, I'm not suggesting we attack them, but they are at least very unfriendly 

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4 hours ago, uhtred said:

It wasn't for a while, but I think it is now.  There is quite a bit of evidence that they tried to influence US elections and have been trying to sow dissent through social media. The were caught supporting both sides in some politically sensitive protests.

 

We are not at war, I'm not suggesting we attack them, but they are at least very unfriendly 

I did say not friends, ya? and I mean giving up the 'glory' of the cold war rests on their shoulders too, it's just that our shoulders are our own shoulders.

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Dreamer23

Is Joe Exotic running again?

His 2016 bid for president at least seemed less absurd than what's currently going on in politics, so he might be a good choice...

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18 hours ago, gisiebob said:

I did say not friends, ya? and I mean giving up the 'glory' of the cold war rests on their shoulders too, it's just that our shoulders are our own shoulders.

There's no thought or discussion of the cold war now.  Current-day Russia is an entirely different animal from the USSR; there's no comparison and everyone (certainly the Republicans) knows that.  The problem is that they did, absolutely, interfere with the 2016 elections, and they are doing so now.  The Internet/social media did not exist 50 years ago.  

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The Terrible Travis

Bernie Sanders. He has a strong track record of fighting for progressive policies his entire career, and it would be great to have a unabashed left-winger in the Oval Office. 

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How about we get on that AI program that can run everything for us? I even have a fancy name for it: SKYNET! Wouldn't that be awesome? All problems solved. FOREVER!

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Back to Avalon

I'm surprised you liked the video I posted about Andrew Yang, @-1=e^ipi. Yang has been getting attention from comedians, and it's not always flattering.

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4 hours ago, Back to Avalon said:

I'm surprised you liked the video I posted about Andrew Yang, @-1=e^ipi. Yang has been getting attention from comedians, and it's not always flattering.

The more comments/videos on Yang, the better.

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RoseGoesToYale

Reading Pete Buttigieg's platform. First thing I see is "Medicare for All Who Want It". All who want it. I'd never thought of that, and I haven't heard any other dem propose it that way. Why force people to pay taxes and buy into a service they don't want? People who don't want to pay taxes would never have to touch it, they could still use their old insurance system. Any American who wants universal health care can buy in and spread the wealth, as it were. I could assure my own coverage and that of my fellow human. If a president can pull it off with a large enough chunk of Americans who want it, I think it could even sway some detractors to buy in.

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1 hour ago, RoseGoesToYale said:

Reading Pete Buttigieg's platform. First thing I see is "Medicare for All Who Want It". All who want it. I'd never thought of that, and I haven't heard any other dem propose it that way. Why force people to pay taxes and buy into a service they don't want? People who don't want to pay taxes would never have to touch it, they could still use their old insurance system. Any American who wants universal health care can buy in and spread the wealth, as it were. I could assure my own coverage and that of my fellow human. If a president can pull it off with a large enough chunk of Americans who want it, I think it could even sway some detractors to buy in.

That wouldn't work.  Medicare works because everyone over the age of 65 is on it -- they may have additional insurance, but Medicare is their main insurance.  Thus the government (and it is a government system) knows who's in the pool and can estimate what funding is needed.  Medicare is paid for by taxes during your work life, not when you're using it.   I'm amazed that Buttigieg's campaign people haven't explained it to him.    

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RoseGoesToYale
8 hours ago, Sally said:

That wouldn't work.  Medicare works because everyone over the age of 65 is on it -- they may have additional insurance, but Medicare is their main insurance.  Thus the government (and it is a government system) knows who's in the pool and can estimate what funding is needed.  Medicare is paid for by taxes during your work life, not when you're using it.   I'm amazed that Buttigieg's campaign people haven't explained it to him.    

By "medicare" he's referring to a universal health care system with a teething period for economic adjustment, not medical insurance for retirees. He goes on to explain that enrollment would at first be optional in the face of already existing health insurances. He probably shouldn't have used the word "medicare" specifically though...

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Prufrock, but like, worse
11 hours ago, RoseGoesToYale said:

Why force people to pay taxes and buy into a service they don't want? People who don't want to pay taxes would never have to touch it, they could still use their old insurance system. Any American who wants universal health care can buy in and spread the wealth, as it were.

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Alawyn-Aebt

The problem with Buttigieg's idea for healthcare is insurance usually needs everyone, or all of one group of people, to participate, otherwise the unhealthy are incentivized to get it while the healthy are disincentivized. If you allow people to switch only if they want to you run the risk of the unhealthy switching in droves while the healthy shop around for a cheaper price. By dividing people up like that you end up with the government-healthcare stuck with more unhealthy than healthy people, leading to higher costs, and the private-healthcare stuck with more healthy people than unhealthy, (Still thinking through the economic consequences of this side of the equation, it is probably not as bad as the issues on the government-insurance side, but there are some major problems that interconnect). I think a way to solve it while keeping the you-can-switch-if-you-want-to tagline would be to dump the idea of the self-paying nature of insurance (as Medicare is usually explained) in favor of MMT economic theory, but then the debt-o-phobes would be upset by that.

 

MMT then runs into other issues, such as if it is taken to an overextended conclusion MMT would fail to work since the US dollar would cease to be the world's reserve currency, something MMT needs in order to fully work.

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^^ This.   Insurance is a pool of participants, not just those who choose to participate for any particular period of time and then decide to opt out.  

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MoraDollie

I expect at least half of the democratic candidates to drop out by January 2020 because the pool is seriously oversaturated at this point. I took the quiz on istandwith and it tells me these are my top candidates based on my own values: Julian Castro, Tulsi Gabbard, Kamala Harris, Kirsten Gillibrand, Elizabeth Warren, Bete O' Rourke, and Bernie Sanders. In regards to parties, it states the ones that most align with my own values are: socialist, democrat, peace and greedom, and green. Personally I always saw myself as a green social democrat so it fits pretty well, at least for the parties.

 

I'm not really paying too close attention to the numerous candidates until January 2020 or so, because like I said, it's very likely we're going to see at least half drop out by then. 

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I don't know when the first debate is/will be scheduled, but unless candidates raise a certain amount of money by a certain date, they won't be included on the debate stage.  That will cull the herd considerably.   

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Gentle Giant

I like many of the Democratic candidates and will vote for whoever gets the nomination. Who I like the most right now is Pete Buttigieg.

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A question from non-American so bear with my ignorance :) Does not getting into debates mean that a candidate is automatically eliminated (a primary of sorts), or is it up to them to decide? 

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2 hours ago, Piotrek said:

A question from non-American so bear with my ignorance :) Does not getting into debates mean that a candidate is automatically eliminated (a primary of sorts), or is it up to them to decide? 

No -- not getting into debates simply means that a candidate couldn't raise a certain level of financial support.  Not being on a debate stage is a disadvantage for a candidate because they don't get the publicity of being "important"  enough to be in the debates.  It doesn't mean that they can't go on being a candidate.   The level of financial support required for debates means that only candidates who are (halfway) serious will be on the stage.  

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