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2020 Democratic Presidential Nominees

Quick response to something you said ph. Its not making the wealthy slightly less wealthy. Its just making them earn slightly less money this year.

As for paying student loans. Its not the loan of money for people to get an education its relief from predatory lending practices (huge interest rates). that just makes more rich people and corporations at the expense of people that were "trying to do the right thing (get an education) and become crippling over time. Not sure what the best answer is but certainly a tax deduction is a simple start.
 
Good points.

Another way to think of student loan relief is that it’s a way to make college more affordable from the back end. We all think college is too expensive, right? Here’s one way to address that.
 
Now that’s not good. Fine for a public event but not good for a political rally.
 
 
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Warren's plan is pretty deeply flawed, but the above tweet and this article do a good job describing why the way we talk about funding social programs is really messed up.

One underlying problem here is it is stupid governance to expect every single program to come with its own special pay-for. Every year, Congress authorizes a big slate of spending, the government collects a bunch of tax revenue, and then makes up the difference with borrowing. If we are to discuss tax revenue, it should be in the context of the entire budget, whether other programs (ahem) might be trimmed, how much it might cost to borrow money, and so on.

"But how will you pay for it?" is not ever a good-faith question about responsible budgeting. It is only asked about new social programs — virtually nobody ever asks how we are going to pay for a casual $80 billion increase in the military budget, and Republicans easily bat away questions about gigantic tax cuts for the rich with utterly preposterous assertions that they will pay for themselves. The Bush tax cuts did not, and neither did Trump's.

The point of this question, whether the journalists who ask it over and over and over realize it or not, is to make it harder to pass social programs that benefit the non-rich by holding them to a double standard that requires a lot of unpopular talk about taxation.

I wish we had a candidate that would essentially say the above straightforwardly. Seemed like for a few months early on the campaign trail that might have been Pete, who seemed to be able to see the flaws in the underlying system, but he's clearly gone the other way with it and wants to attack the left flank now. To that end:

Anyway, I am virtually certain Warren's policy team knows all this, and would not actually structure a plan this way if she was writing a bill. So why this goofy tax? Well, it allows her to dodge some of the landmines in the mainstream policy discourse, which generally holds that taxes are bad by definition, especially on anyone other than the rich. It also gives her a plan she can use to roll up and whack Pete Buttigieg on the nose with when he cynically pretends as though having a completed tax plan before the next Congress has even been elected is the most important thing a presidential candidate can do. I appreciate that Warren is sticking to her guns on Medicare-for-all. But Bernie Sanders' approach to financing is more productive and more honest. Instead of dancing around the issue, he puts it straight — saying essentially that we're going to have a great new benefit, all cost-sharing is going away, and you will have to chip in some new taxes, but almost everyone will come out ahead. It sounds less squirrelly — and does the important ideological work of advancing the idea that taxes are the way sensible countries pay for a decent society, not some kind of theft. What's more, it makes his tax proposals better on the policy merits.

Straightforward, breezy confidence is the way to defeat bonehead assumptions and bad-faith questions. The only way around duplicitous tax-baiters and their media enablers is through.
 
Attack of the Wall Street Snowflakes: Why can’t financial tycoons handle criticism?—Krugman.


Best read on site for embedded links, but I’ll reproduce below.



Given all the recent focus on health policy, you might think that the medical-industrial complex would be heavily involved in the Democratic primary race, going all-out to block Elizabeth Warren. And a coalition of drug companies, insurers and hospitals is indeed running ads attacking “Medicare for all.”

But the health industry’s political role has been relatively muted so far. Partly this may reflect realism: Even if Warren becomes president, the chances of getting Medicare for all through Congress are small. It may also reflect the surprising openness of doctors to reform. While the American Medical Association still officially opposes single-payer, at a recent meeting, 47 percent of the delegates voted to drop that opposition.

No, the really intense backlash against Warren and progressive Democrats in general is coming from Wall Street. And while that opposition partly reflects self-interest, Wall Street’s Warren hatred has a level of virulence, sometimes crossing into hysteria, that goes beyond normal political calculation.

What’s behind that virulence?

First, let’s talk about the rational reasons Wall Street is worried about Warren. She is, of course, calling for major tax increases on the very wealthy, those with wealth exceeding $50 million, and the financial industry is strongly represented in that elite club. And since raising taxes on the wealthy is highly popular, it’s an idea a progressive president might actually be able to turn into real policy.

Warren is also a big believer in stricter financial regulation; the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which was highly effective until the Trump administration set about gutting it, was her brainchild.

So if you are a Wall Street billionaire, rational self-interest might well induce you to oppose Warren. Rationality does not, however, explain why a money manager like Leon Cooperman — who just two years ago settled a suit over insider trading for $5 million, although without admitting wrongdoing — would circulate an embarrassing, self-pitying open letter denouncing Warren for her failure to appreciate all the wonderful things billionaires like him do for society.

Nor does it explain why Cliff Asness, another money manager, would fly into a rage at Warren adviser Gabriel Zucman for using the term “revenue maximizing” — a standard piece of economic jargon — describing it as “disgustingly immoral.”

The real tell here, I think, is that much of the Wall Street vitriol now being directed at Warren was previously directed at, of all people, President Barack Obama.

Objectively, Obama treated Wall Street with kid gloves. In the aftermath of a devastating financial crisis, his administration bailed out collapsing institutions on favorable terms. He and Democrats in Congress did impose some new regulations, but they were very mild compared with the regulations put in place after the banking crisis of the 1930s.

He did, however, refer on a few occasions to “fat cat” bankers and suggested that financial-industry excesses were responsible for the 2008 crisis because, well, they were. And the result, quite early in his administration, was that Wall Street became consumed with “Obama rage,” and the financial industry went all in for Mitt Romney in 2012.

I wonder, by the way, if this history helps explain an odd aspect of fund-raising in the current primary campaign. It’s not surprising that Warren is getting very little money from the financial sector. It is, however, surprising that the top recipient isn’t Joe Biden but Pete Buttigieg, who’s running a fairly distant fourth in the polls. Is Biden suffering from the lingering effects of that old-time Obama rage?

In any case, the point is that Wall Street billionaires, even more than billionaires in general, seem to be snowflakes, emotionally unable to handle criticism.

I’m not sure why that should be the case, but it may be that in their hearts they suspect that the critics have a point.

What, after all, does modern finance actually do for the economy? Unlike the robber barons of yore, today’s Wall Street tycoons don’t build anything tangible. They don’t even direct money to the people who actually are building the industries of the future. The vast expansion of credit in America after around 1980 basically involved a surge in consumer debt rather than new money for business investment.

Moreover, there is growing evidence that when the financial sector gets too big it actually acts as a drag on the economy — and America is well past that point.

Now, human nature being what it is, people who secretly wonder whether they really deserve their wealth get especially angry when others express these doubts publicly. So it’s not surprising that people who couldn’t handle Obama’s mild, polite criticism are completely losing it over Warren.

What this means is that you should beware of Wall Street claims that progressive policies would have dire effects. Such claims don’t reflect deep economic wisdom; to a large extent they’re coming from people with vast wealth but fragile egos, whose rants should be discounted appropriately.
 
National polls that show Biden, Warren, Bernie or Pete handily beating Trump are worse than useless. Believing them could doom Dems to losing.

The ONLY polls that matter are in battleground states. The rest are set in stone.

Who does well in PA,MI,MN, WI, AZ, NC, FL is what will decide the election. Iowa be in this list as could CO, GA.
 
Warren's plan is pretty deeply flawed, but the above tweet and this article do a good job describing why the way we talk about funding social programs is really messed up.



I wish we had a candidate that would essentially say the above straightforwardly. Seemed like for a few months early on the campaign trail that might have been Pete, who seemed to be able to see the flaws in the underlying system, but he's clearly gone the other way with it and wants to attack the left flank now. To that end:

Yeah I don't really get Pete. I forget if it was in one of the early debates or an interview but he basically admitted that the "will your taxes go up" question is a misleading gotcha question, and the only relevant metric is what happens to total nets costs to individuals for health care. Now he is embracing the bad faith gotcha. Disappointing.

I do agree with some of the second quotes paragraph, that some of what Warren's team came up with was a suboptimal design for the purpose of better politics. But I think it's a little bit too generous to Bernie. He is "more honest" by just not coming up with a way to pay at all. Maybe that is the right political play. But I don't think you can say his tax proposals are better when he doesn't really have fleshed out tax proposals.
 
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Good posts by tilt and Townie. I think one way to look at it is that Pete made a blatant political play and Warren countered with a blatant political play. None of this would actually matter if either of them were elected.
 
Well I think the worry is now that Pete has pivoted hard right (or if you prefer, towards the center) he's going to be beholden to all the money that's gotten him there. The change in message tracks pretty closely with the 3Q big dollar fundraising he did. I understand it from the messaging/political POV of trying to siphon Biden and Harris voters or undecideds, but Warren and Sanders will be less beholden to the traditional donor class come 2021 if they're in office than Pete will. I also think it's easy to believe Bernie would try to do the things he's saying he'll do because he's had a very long track record of it. Warren was a Republican, is now not, and is instead trying to wonk/plan her way to office, and maybe we should believe she'd change her track when it was about governing rather than being elected. Pete, there's not much book on him since he's a small town mayor. But to starkly change course in a single election cycle signals something, at least to me.

As others have pointed out, it won't matter which Dem is in office (if they beat Trump) if they can't win down ballot. I've been very impressed with the work Bernie has been doing on that front. He realizes in order to enact structural change you need an extreme grassroots movement. We're not just going to be able to magically work with Mitch McConnell and co if we're diplomatic and have good ideas.
 
National polls that show Biden, Warren, Bernie or Pete handily beating Trump are worse than useless. Believing them could doom Dems to losing.

The ONLY polls that matter are in battleground states. The rest are set in stone.

Who does well in PA,MI,MN, WI, AZ, NC, FL is what will decide the election. Iowa be in this list as could CO, GA.

This is true and what a dumb fucking system we have. Straight 'bage. Country deserves to go to shit.
 
Well I think the worry is now that Pete has pivoted hard right (or if you prefer, towards the center) he's going to be beholden to all the money that's gotten him there. The change in message tracks pretty closely with the 3Q big dollar fundraising he did. I understand it from the messaging/political POV of trying to siphon Biden and Harris voters or undecideds, but Warren and Sanders will be less beholden to the traditional donor class come 2021 if they're in office than Pete will. I also think it's easy to believe Bernie would try to do the things he's saying he'll do because he's had a very long track record of it. Warren was a Republican, is now not, and is instead trying to wonk/plan her way to office, and maybe we should believe she'd change her track when it was about governing rather than being elected. Pete, there's not much book on him since he's a small town mayor. But to starkly change course in a single election cycle signals something, at least to me.

As others have pointed out, it won't matter which Dem is in office (if they beat Trump) if they can't win down ballot. I've been very impressed with the work Bernie has been doing on that front. He realizes in order to enact structural change you need an extreme grassroots movement. We're not just going to be able to magically work with Mitch McConnell and co if we're diplomatic and have good ideas.

Meh. Bernie has a long history of trying to get things done and failing. Warren has a short track record of being effective. The "OMG she was a Republican!" stuff is just Bernie bro fearmongering. Pete is a blank slate, so yeah, people are going to think whatever they want and there won't be much to confirm or counter it.
 
If my preferred candidate was taking a bunch of industry money, I’d insist policy didn’t matter too.
 
Need update on effectiveness of Sen Warren. Sure, she's chewed out a few CEOs and helped form a detoothed bureaucracy to protect people from their own materialism, but tell me what real effect she's had besides getting other left wingers energized.
 
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