The Virginia Society for the Preservation and Appreciation of High-Quality Posts

[bagelman]

Ah yes, because I don’t support the first universal healthcare bill that took 12 minutes to write, it immediately means that I support the current system.

Sorry about your dad, by the way. It must be hard to lose a family member so young. I have quite a lot of friends who are struggling to get healthcare, and I would share their stories, but I wouldn’t like to use them as political props.....

That’s just low, deranged, and twisted on so many levels. You oughta be ashamed for using him as a prop.

I could address many of the silly points made in this thread (especially the "rationing!!!" one which ehh happens in literally every model of healthcare to some extent no matter the structure: only that the American model where it is based on ones ability to pay is by far the worst) but this one strikes me as being the worst: the idea that you can't use your own personal experiences with a broken and terrible system to argue for change because "you're politicising them!!!" or whatever is a terrible idea.  Unless you're wiling to argue the same about people who used similar experiences to argue for a whole array of very important regulations that everyone generally agrees are good today - things like mandating basic safety features like airbags and seat belts in cars, and other similar safety related things that benefit everyone in our day to day life.

I think also this thread shows a significant misunderstanding of the point of private members bills (of which this really is an American equivalent of, in that its not introduced by the majority and will not go very far through the legislative process) and why people introduce legislation that has an incredibly low if not zero chance of passing.  Its not about presenting an entirely perfect bill and seriously trying to pass the thing: its about keeping an issue or cause that you believe in alive and actively debated rather than letting it die - this is precisely why the Republicans voted to repeal Obamacare 629 times when Obama was President: they never actually expected the thing to become law but wanted the issue to remain in the news and not allow it to become settled which seemed to work.  The problem with this approach is that when you do get in a position to pass whatever you want you actually need to put something workable together and that can prove problematic - to carry on my earlier analogy, look at the issues that the Republicans had passing anything on healthcare when they had the ability to pass practically anything they wanted.  The difference between those advocating for a better, single-payer (or multi-payer as well: both models seem to be considered as the same thing in America at the moment) system have at least a vague idea of the sort of system that they want: while Republicans apparently put little to no thought in the system that they wanted to introduce after repealing the ACA.  In that respect Sanders has done exactly what he intended to do with this thing - indeed, this thread is proof of that!

In terms of the article itself: its primary points (other than ageist insults and electoral concerns) seem to be based on one main point - that single-payer proposals did not pass at the state level.  However there are plenty of reasons why single-payer systems would be untenable at state level - especially in smaller states like Vermont and Colorado where they got the most consideration - and that's because its only a model that sensibly works at a national level.  Universal coverage requires costs to fall (American healthcare spending being significantly higher than any other country in the world is untenable: especially since performance in the US under the current system continue to be amongst the worst in a group of similar nations - incidentally the highest performing country overall is the UK and its Beveridge-based state-managed system, although Australia's single payer insurance system is second and the Netherlands multi-payer private system is third which would suggest to me that there's no single perfect model) and that requires nation-wide organisation since healthcare, like everything, is an economy of scale and a single federal system would be able to negotiate significantly lower costs than, say, Vermont would by itself.  The author of that article does not even consider that fact: nor is the fact that although taxation would need to rise in order to fund a single-payer system, this would be balanced by individuals needing to pay significantly lower if any premiums in order to get healthcare coverage: which would likely balance out for a significant number of people.  The other concern of the article seems to be "we need to be talking about other issues!!" which isn't really worth taking that seriously: a party can and needs to talk about a large range of issues.

[bagelman]

Sanders is not winning Ohio or Florida. I am smarter and more insightful then people who actually live in Ohio or Florida. I believe my interpretation of political trends is objectively correct.

You have never been to Ohio and you're just dumping subjective opinions you agree with right into the good posts gallery.

[bagelman]

Sanders is not winning Ohio or Florida. I am smarter and more insightful then people who actually live in Ohio or Florida. I believe my interpretation of political trends is objectively correct.

You have never been to Ohio and you're just dumping subjective opinions you agree with right into the good posts gallery.

You are not your state.

My opinion is not objectively correct, however that in itself does not prove the opposing view correct. Nor does it prove that the preceding post is quite good enough to belong here.

[bagelman]

The city hasn’t “abandoned” all other projects, just because it’s also focused on police reform, which is a serious issue that needs attention.

Go do a poll of Magnolia and ask them if they feel abandoned by the city.  They've been begging the city to fix the crumbling Magnolia Bridge for years and the city's current position is "lol they don't need that bridge anyway."  Meanwhile the council last year handed activists a victory in their fight to turn a section of Discovery Park into a homeless shelter, not for any logical reason (it's a terrible location for a shelter) but just to stick it to the rich people who live there.

As possibly Atlas's only resident Magnolian, I have to jump in here, and I tend to agree with MacArthur here in general, but I don't necessarily draw links between that sense of abandonment with issues like police reform. Magnolia is covered in BLM signs right now, and from the conversations I've had with my neighbors, I don't think anyone really ties calls for police reform to a lack of commitment to fix the Magnolia bridge or figure out what to do with the homeless population in the area. If anything, the issue that seems to come up in tandem with the Magnolia Bridge is the West Seattle Bridge and a sense of West Seattle's bridge of death being given top priority over us, since that's much more of a one-to-one comparison than with other things that might require funding.

My immediate neighbors are mostly middle-aged, with some borderline Karens and even some former Republicans. Absolutely none of them are considering moving away from the Democratic party as a result of the protests. If anything, they attribute the deaths at the CHOP and the rise of Sawantism more generally to the same "populist" tide that brought up Trump. I've also heard lines like "it's terrible that Sawant has tried to make the George Floyd protests all about her." It's pretty common to hear "both sides" sentiments from this crowd, saying that the Anarchists and the Trumpees just need to fight it out somewhere else. But again, absolutely none of them are willing to give the Republicans the time of day because, while they do not see most Democrats as being in league with Sawant and the anarchists, they absolutely do see random local average Republicans (i.e. Jason Rantz and John Curley) as being in 100% lock step with Trump.

But just to close because we're talking about Magnolia and you hit on one of my key local issues, Magnolia is absolutely fed up with the city council in a completely non-partisan way for deciding that all of Magnolia is just Magnolia Boulevard and that we can somehow therefore fix all of our own problems or something. I mean, for pete's sake, look at the regional transit map - we're literally not even on the map:



And this is after McGinn launched his "road diet" on Nickerson, we lost access to Highway 99 via Western Ave when they tore down the viaduct, and they shut down the 15th Ave monorail back in 2006 only to decide we were getting Link after all, but it would take until 2030+ to actually be up-and-running. Next we'll lose the Magnolia Bridge after some minor earthquake, and there'll literally be two roads into and out of a neighborhood of over 20,000 people. There's absolutely no way this will end well, and I see pretty much nobody on either side of the Democrat-leftist divide really caring about it except for the very local politicians with no power to actually enact anything.

It's all part of this grand scheme to try to get people to commute by bike, I'm sure. Of course, nobody realizes that Magnolia is surrounded by incredibly steep hills on every side and nobody is going to want their commute home to end with a strenuous workout.

Thank you for attending my Ted Talk.

[bagelman]

Long story short, taking the left and the working-class for granted, an embrace of wokism, and an inability to move past the Clinton/Obama/Pelosi era.

* Deciding to put the left in a corner. Like it or not, Biden could have (and should have) brought on Chuck Rocha. Cubans were probably gone anyway (and I'm not going to tell you they're not), but I do think Bernie would have made Texas competitive and sealed up Arizona. If we're going on merit, he was the clear choice. Instead, he continued to pick Ana Navarro in their quest to simp over Reagan Republicans.

You can look towards the DNC vis-a-vis the RNC as an example. The RNC was a play to the base. The DNC was almost entirely a play to the swing voters. As I've said, there's an expectation among the Democratic establishment that the left doesn't need to be catered to. That they can just keep moving towards the center in the hopes of expanding the tent, while the left will just follow along and vote blue like good little boys and girls, because the alternative is Trump or Bush or whoever the next bogeyman will be.

There was a Congressional candidate recently in California who got into hot water because he got caught pandering to a white supremacist group. While he reposted his apology video, his consultants got caught on camera telling him not to worry about the backlash, because "Democrats will still vote blue," and they have to choose between him or Darrell Issa. 2018 Ammar Campa-Najjar would have won. He wasn't overly "woke" like AOC, but he was unabashedly to the left economically. The Ammar Campa-Najjar of 2020 tried to be everything to everyone at the same time, forgot about the people that got him there, and CA-50 is in jeopardy because of it.

* The suburban strategy is completely unsustainable on the "macro" level. There simply isn't enough college-educated voters to make up for the bleeding of the working class, and my state has proven that ticket-splitting is aliv and well.

You can look towards my state. While everyone was clapping over expanding their presidential margins and holding NH-1, they lost all of their downballot majorities. The same Republicans the Biden campaign aggressively courted didn't translate their support to state government. They lost the Executive Council 4-1, they've lost 4 Senate seats so far (including to an avowed QAnon supporter), and they lost the House. The WWC voters in the northern reaches of the state supported Republican majorities as well. I expected to lose NH-Gov, but I didn't expect Sununu to win in places like Concord and Keene.

Democrats were counting on a suburban revolt. Not only did it not happen here, but they regressed to 2016 levels. Now, Democrats' incompetence has given Republicans the pen to gerrymander my state legislature with for another ten years.

* I think there's some truth to "wokism" hurting the party. When people think of the excesses of the Democratic Party, they don't think primarily of Bernie Sanders uplifting the system. They think of Beto O'Rourke marching in to take your guns away. They think of the calls to "defund the police", which everyone except the people who use "defund the police" and "ACAB" takes the wrong way.

Democrats are losing the cultural war. I think a lot of more pro-cop people don't see things like George Floyd or Breonna Taylor happening in their town. When they think of cops (especially in rural America), they don't think of Brett Hankison or Derek Chauvin. They think of the cop in their town that gave them a break or the guy standing by protecting their schools. They don't see how corrupt the institution is, and they don't see how militarized cops are. Most people want to see corrupt cops out of a job, and they don't want cops to have access to military-style tactics and weapons. At the same time, most people like their cops.

* Biden's entire campaign apparatus failed upward. If I went into work and did as poorly as Jen O'Malley Dillon did for Beto, I would be fired. Instead, she ran arguably the most incompetent, milquetoast campaign of the cycle, and was rewarded for it with a promotion to leading the entire ****ing general election campaign. The only other candidate who came close to blowing it as hard as Beto did was nominated to the Vice Presidency.

Now we know why Abrams was pushing for her to be Vice President - she was indubitably the best candidate for the job, she defied expectations and lost to GOP f**kery, and she stood for something. With full hindsight (read: me seeing Pressley jump on the "defund" s***wagon), she was the clear choice.

* The Democratic Party is permanently in a state of reliving nostalgia. I think the "brunch Democrat" stereotype is true to some extent. There's a subsection of the party who just wants things to go back to normal. They saw Biden as the most "electable" because he was the third term of Obama. They saw Hillary as a way to go back to the 90s, when everything was fine and good and civil and Democrats and Republicans could live together in perfect harmony.

If the last twelve years haven't told you that, there's a new normal. You're up against a cold, calculating son of a bitch who will do anything and everything to push his and his party's agenda. We don't need Dianne Feinsteins. We need people like me and MacArthur. The brunch Democrats need to recognize we're in the trenches now. And if we don't fight back, we die.

[bagelman]

Hey guys, can we not start the 2024 primary yet? How about we acknowledge that there are definite disagreements within the Democratic Party (and we should discuss them without eating each other alive), but that moderates and progressives need to have each other’s backs to have any chance of winning elections?

I agree that we all need to get better at messaging, and it’s fine to criticize AOC’s messaging. Calling one another “enemies” doesn’t help anyone.

This is not the type of type of post that belongs here. It's clearly correct but this is for long, effort posts.

[bagelman]

1) As folks such as Adam Jentleson have pointed out, we’re still in Act 1 of this fight and we won’t find out how Manchin and Sinema will on this when push comes to shove until Act 3.  There’s still every reason to think that their current position is politically untenable and that nothing is set in stone until the climax of the real fight over nuking/heavily neutering the filibuster (the latter seems far more likely).  

2) Biden hasn’t gotten involved yet, much less gone to the mat for neutering/nuking the filibuster.  When he does, that’s going to be a signal that we’ve entered a new phase of the fight.  By not doing so, he’s essentially telling Manchin and Sinema (along with folks like Jon Tester, Angus King, Chris Coons, Michael Bennet, etc who have signaled that while they don’t like the idea of nuking the filibuster, we’ll have their votes when the time comes).  

3) The Senate Democratic Caucus has been rapidly moving toward nuking/neutering the filibuster.  This year alone, we’ve already seen folks move from being a hard “no” to some version of “I don’t like it, but you’ll have my vote if push comes to shove” (Angus King, Chris Coons, Jon Tester, Michael Bennet, etc) or even from “no” to “yes, it’s time to nuke the filibuster” (Bob Casey, Amy Klobuchar, Dick Durbin, etc).  We’ve been moving in the right direction at a pretty rapid clip.

4) A 50-50 Senate means everyone has leverage and it does make it harder than it would be in, say, a 52-48 Senate to exert pressure on an individual member, lest they switch parties or even just start being as big a pain in the a** as possible out of spite.  

5) Schumer has been keeping his caucus in line.  We’re about to pass a major piece of legislation less than two months after Democrats truly took control of the Senate.  When Manchin tried to wag the dog by lobbying everyone to waste months negotiating a heavily watered down version of the COVID-19 bill, Schumer basically told him to go piss up a rope and made in clear to the WH that a watered-down version was a non-starter (Schumer and Ron Klain have been critical in keeping Biden’s #ModerateHero tendencies in check thus far).  In the end, Manchin fell in line and we got screwed by the parliamentarian rather than by Democratic defections.  

6) It’s a lot easier to put up a united front when you’re in the opposition.  Moreover, the Democrats are a big tent party whereas the GQP, as Yankee once put it, burns its heretics at the stake.  As a result, McConnell has a much easier job than Schumer.  

7) For all the nonsense about the filibuster promoting bipartisanship, it is actually one of the chief obstacles to bipartisan legislation of any sort.  If a Senator knows a bill won’t pass b/c of the filibuster, regardless of what they do, then s/he has no incentive to piss off their party’s base/congressional leadership by crossing party lines to support a bill backed by the other party in exchange for it incorporating some of his or her ideas.  

I mean, if most legislation won’t come to a vote regardless of what any particular Senator does b/c of the filibuster, then compromise of any sort really becomes a high-risk, zero-reward move, regardless of the legislation.  As such, the filibuster is among the most effective tools a Senate Minority Leader has at their disposal for ensuring their members don’t go off the reservation by negotiating with the other side in good-faith or crossing party lines on an important vote in exchange for policy concessions.  Paradoxically, one of the best ways to increase the level of bipartisanship would actually be to nuke the legislative filibuster.  

Reposting this due to end page syndrome.