Bernie Sanders 2020 campaign megathread v2 (pg 77 - declares victory in Iowa)

[John Dule]

Boy oh boy, I sure would like to live in a country with no billionaires!



Hmm... Somalia, the Congo, Sudan, Uzbekistan, Iran... so many choices!

[John Dule]

I hear everyone in Luxembourg is starving to death.

Yes, and as that map illustrates, Luxembourg is clearly the rule rather than the exception with regards to how billionaires per capita correlates with the human development index.

[John Dule]

[John Dule]

Before it gets tossed about further in this thread:

Communism is not merely the elimination of '"duh billionayhs", nor even of the bourgeoisie (a rather more specific thing) but is rather the abolition of Capital , a social relation perpetuated by the value form inherent in production for exchange (contra use); the class struggle is really a struggle against the logic of the capitalist mode of production, which reproduces the bourgeoisie almost as an afterthought (and who are non-essential to its function). Communis manifests as a movement of the working-class, completely outside of the bourgeois Democratic process.

A wealth tax which redistributes wealth perpetuates wealth, and would redistribute it simply to create a bunch of little embryonic capitalists. Accordingly, a wealth tax is a capitalist project. There is infinitely more of Huey Long than of Karl Marx in this, because there is no Marx in it at all. And there is more of Communism in a worker taking a five minute longer break than is permitted than in this policy.

Good. Huey Long did far more good for the American worker than Karl Marx.

... Which isn't saying much.

[John Dule]

Can a Bernie supporter please explain the federal jobs guarantee to me? It sounds like a genuinely awful proposal.

[John Dule]

Can a Bernie supporter please explain the federal jobs guarantee to me? It sounds like a genuinely awful proposal.

No job? Job sucks? You can get a job with the federal government for $15/hour with healthcare benefits. Not sure what other details you're looking for.

What will I be doing at this job? Is it a worthy investment of taxpayer dollars? What skills are required? Why would anyone continue to work for under $15 anywhere else if they can just work for the government and make that amount? Where will these jobs be located? What if I don't like my new government job?

[John Dule]

Can a Bernie supporter please explain the federal jobs guarantee to me? It sounds like a genuinely awful proposal.

No job? Job sucks? You can get a job with the federal government for $15/hour with healthcare benefits. Not sure what other details you're looking for.

What will I be doing at this job? Is it a worthy investment of taxpayer dollars? What skills are required? Why would anyone continue to work for under $15 anywhere else if they can just work for the government and make that amount? Where will these jobs be located? What if I don't like my new government job?

1. Who knows. There'll probably be lots of options, just as there are lots of types of federal jobs now.

2. Why wouldn't it be? It's people being employed, that's money being circulated back into the economy. Oh, wait you're one of those "supply-side" people aren't you?

3. Some people just hate gummint that much..

4. See 1. But I imagine wherever infrastructure needs serious upgrades would be a good start.

5. What, you can't just quit like any other job?

1) If we're mostly talking about infrastructure jobs, that doesn't do much for unemployed women, who are generally not very well-represented in the construction labor pool. I suppose there'd be a lot of clerical work opening up too. But a huge portion of mandatory spending in recent years has been on government pensions. Are we seriously going to add another enormous amount of debt to that expense just so we can say we have "full" employment?

2) Most current government jobs aren't a worthy investment of taxpayer dollars, and that's what things look like when the goal is to run the bureaucracy at least semi-efficiently. What happens when the goal suddenly becomes "Hire as many people as you can?" What's to stop the government from hiring four people (and paying their pensions) to do work that just one person could do on their own?

"The money will be circulated back" is meaningless. That has nothing to do with my question.

3) Really? So all the Mexican farm laborers working off-the-books down in the Central Valley will stay on the farms when they find out about this jobs guarantee, just because they "hate the government?" Yeah, that sounds plausible. What will actually happen is that every single undocumented immigrant working under the table will immediately apply for a job with the government.

4) See 1 again. But you also didn't answer my question of what kinds of skills will be required.

5) Okay, so you quit your guaranteed government job. Can you then re-apply for a different job? How much of a say do I have, as an applicant, in the type of job I'm going to get? Is it assigned to me or can I go around applying to different government jobs, do them poorly, get fired, and then re-apply for another one? Wait... can I even get fired if it's a guarantee?

[John Dule]

1. Firstly, then this could be a good start to start promoting women on that side of the pool...if that's what someone wants to do. Secondly, who says it's all infrastructure. It's like sjoyce said, there're so many places where there could be jobs, especially with The Green New Deal.

2. Except that it isn't, increased purchasing power from the lowest rungs is per se about as good an investment of taxpayer dollars you can get. You get a lot more trading going on when you have more people being able to spend, you get much more infrastructure built too, and finally...fewer bills pile up too.

3. Not so much them [though I'm sure there might be some more conservative ones thinking like that], so much as the coal miners of West Virginia, the timber workers of Eastern Oregon, the oil workers in West Texas or Montana, and most Big Business workers...these are the types trained to distrust government to the hilt. They won't go for it because the Carol Millers and Trumps and Jim Justices will play to their fears to keep them from trying.

4. Because there're so many options and places, which could mean many skills,....I mean who seriously imagined in their Roarin' 20's minds imagined The Tennessee Valley Authority or the work that made CA-1 so iconic from Big Sur to Santa Barbara?

5. sjoyce already covered this one, I see no point in re-litigating that one

1. Oh, so in this instance the Green New Deal will be implemented too? In its entirety? So these workers are going to be going around retrofitting every building in America for maximum energy efficiency?

2. No. Money circulates; value gets destroyed. If you raise taxes on a grocery store, then redistribute that money to a consumer, and that consumer buys food from that store, the money didn't just "circulate." Value was consumed. """Circulating""" money through the economy has this effect on every single good and service. It removes value from the system. Increased purchasing power is good, but it needs to be backed by real value creation (a productive, meaningful job that contributes something worthwhile to society). Otherwise it's just redistribution, and you can do that without bothering to promise people jobs.

Also, can you address the issue of pensions? Government employees cost more than ever relative to private sector workers these days. Some estimates say that it takes four private sector workers to pay the salary, benefits, and pensions of one government worker. How will Sanders account for this imbalance (and the effect it will have on the debt) if there's suddenly a massive influx of government employees on the payroll?

3. Please answer the question. If a few million undocumented immigrants apply for government jobs, is President Sanders going to put them all on the government welfare salary teat too?

4. Bruh, again, please respond to what I'm asking. Should I just go read up on his policy page instead of doing this? Because I don't want to wade through all those platitudes just to find that he hasn't thought it through either. I want to know the kinds of skills required and whether or not the government will be putting people into training programs to acquire the necessary skills if they don't have them. If a homeless person with zero prospects, zero education, and zero skills were to walk into a government job bureau, what sort of task would they assign him to?

5. If it's all the same to you, I'd rather hear it from you, because he's not taking this seriously.

[John Dule]

This is a dumb proposal, but let's please remember that a top tax bracket of 97.5% doesn't mean that those people will be paying 97.5% of what they earn in taxes.

[John Dule]

https://twitter.com/ndrew_lawrence/status/1184310135289798656

Haven't seen the context, but it sounds like he's referring to the fact that all three of those women represent urban districts, and Dems need rural appeal right now.

[John Dule]

https://twitter.com/ndrew_lawrence/status/1184310135289798656

Haven't seen the context, but it sounds like he's referring to the fact that all three of those women represent urban districts, and Dems need rural appeal right now.

Even if that's not what he meant, the skepticism towards his word choice here is somewhat justified because "urban" often subliminally suggests minority status.

I fully understand the connotations, but I think giving the benefit of the doubt is warranted here. I just watched the video and I stand by my earlier post. In fact, his comment was even tamer than I thought. He's referring to Democratic strategy and how they're relying too heavily on turnout in the cities.

[John Dule]

There's a certain Democratic poster from Georgia on this site named after a 1968 presidential candidate who tends to make obscenely uninformed posts. But I mean, I'm not naming any names here, so nobody should take offense, right?

[John Dule]

Bernie Sanders: "This nation's debt is too high! If we stacked every dollar of US debt on top of each other, they'd stretch all the way to the moon!"

Atlas: "CRAZY Bernie Sanders wants to get rid of the US debt by stacking his way to the MOON! Ha, what a loony idea from this nutball."

[John Dule]

Those Tweets sound like the type of things my gay roommate used to say. Stop whining.

[John Dule]

I was really hoping I wouldn't have to vote for an old white guy...

T____T

No one's holding a gun to your head.

[John Dule]

I for one am amazed that Sanders would dare to imply that Hillary Clinton is "corrupt." I mean yeah, you can easily Google her major donors and see that they're all financial institutions, and yeah, you can cherrypick a few hundred thousand dollars here and there that she received from speeches at Goldman Sachs. But that doesn't prove anything. Massive corporations give to politicians all the time without expecting anything in return whatsoever. I'm sure her speeches were so good that they were actually worth $750,000. I mean, have you ever heard a Hillary Clinton speech? Such a master of oratory should be able to demand whatever fees she wishes.

[John Dule]

I have no idea what the Democratic Party did to earn the unconditional loyalty of some people on this site. You can think it's the best of the two major parties in the US (as I do) without defending every single thing the establishment DNC does, you know. Parties aren't ideological. If 75% of this country endorsed National Socialism, then the Democrats would be tripping over each other to win the all-important Nazi vote. Stop treating this institution like it's your best friend, for God's sake. From the way people on here behave, they're either completely delusional or Hillary Clinton is holding their family in an undisclosed location somewhere.

[John Dule]

I have no idea what the Democratic Party did to earn the unconditional loyalty of some people on this site. You can think it's the best of the two major parties in the US (as I do) without defending every single thing the establishment DNC does, you know. Parties aren't ideological. If 75% of this country endorsed National Socialism, then the Democrats would be tripping over each other to win the all-important Nazi vote. Stop treating this institution like it's your best friend, for God's sake. From the way people on here behave, they're either completely delusional or Hillary Clinton is holding their family in an undisclosed location somewhere.

You would have no understanding of what makes the Democratic Party such a sacred institution in our books. As a proud Democrat let me tell you why we remain loyal to this political party no matter the obstacles.


Throughout this nation history this is the party that has fought for the rights of countless groups who have been disaffected in society. Civil rights for African Americans was a struggle when half of the party was controlled by the Dixiecrats in the South, that didn't diminish the achievements of President's Truman, Kennedy and Johnson for advancing the rights of this group. Woodrow Wilson was a vile man in many ways, what he did to support and sign the nineteenth amendment to the Constitution is admirable and courageous. President Obama was slow to progress on supporting gay marriage, just as many Democrats did, including Independent Saint Bernard, when he announce that he'll support their rights in 2012 the history books were written. New Deal and Great Society have uplifted more people out of poverty than any Milton Friedman mumble jumble right-wing polices have ever achieved of doing. At the end of the day the Democratic Party has stood by for many Americans no matter their disadvantaged in life.


I am a proud Democrat card carrying member for life.

Holy. S**t.

You CANNOT be serious.

[John Dule]

I have no idea what the Democratic Party did to earn the unconditional loyalty of some people on this site. You can think it's the best of the two major parties in the US (as I do) without defending every single thing the establishment DNC does, you know. Parties aren't ideological. If 75% of this country endorsed National Socialism, then the Democrats would be tripping over each other to win the all-important Nazi vote. Stop treating this institution like it's your best friend, for God's sake. From the way people on here behave, they're either completely delusional or Hillary Clinton is holding their family in an undisclosed location somewhere.

You are better describing the GOP than the Democratic Party. Trump has violated the law and GOP Senators practically admitted it, but are refusing to do anything about it.

I don't understand Libertarians, but I'm not going to drag you for your bizarre party. God Bless You.

Don't get me wrong, I feel the same way about the GOP and Trump.

[John Dule]

And the Bernie Sanders closing argument is to get a man who proudly voted for Jill Stein

Er, why do you say this as if it's a bad thing? The Democrats lose if they don't win over any 2016 third party voters...

If we want to sell out to woo a bunch of assholes to our side then we should nominate Ted Cruz.

Wait, are you saying that if Ted Cruz was the Democratic nominee you wouldn't vote for him? What kind of party loyalist are you? I swear, you Biden Bros are always trying to sow division.

[John Dule]

I am tired of Bernie's same 'ol same 'ol.

Yeah, I hate politicians who just keep repeating the same mantras and beliefs for 40+ years. I prefer candidates who change their opinions every news cycle, like Hillary Clinton.

[John Dule]

The ridiculousness and injustice of measuring victory by "State Delegate Equivalents"--who aren't real voters even in the limited sense that Presidential Electors are real voters--is sort of like the existence of a mind-independent physical world. It's either so obvious to you that it's difficult to wrap your head around the concept of people having their heads so far up their asses that they believe otherwise, or it isn't.

Yeah. Anyone who is complaining about Sanders declaring victory when he obviously received more votes, or anyone who is assmad about his use of satellite caucuses, is on a level of hackery I wouldn't have thought was possible.

[John Dule]

https://twitter.com/SueAnnRawlins/status/1226322414650503168?s=20

Um, excuse me, I was told this was just a small handful of assholes on the internet and had nothing do with the campaign?  Is that still the talking point?

You tell us to shut up on conspiracy theories, yet are directly posting a conspiracy theory.

This isn't a "conspiracy theory."  It's something that someone directly saw.  Watching members of the campaign lead chants is not open to interpretation.

You may think she's making it up, but this is something Sanders organizers also did in 2016.  Little has changed.

[John Dule]

Can you people PLEASE stop feeding the troll? Just put him on ignore. I assure you your Atlas experience will be much improved.

The ignore button is for the weak.

[John Dule]

Who?

George McGovern policy advisor.

Far be it from me to impugn the political acumen of a... (looks at notes) ... George McGovern policy advisor, but is this person's opinion at all relevant fifty years after he participated in the biggest losing campaign in modern American history?