U.S. Politics

[OutByEaster?]

Trump has sacked the man responsible for overseeing his 2 trillion dollar corporate bailout.

 

[villakram]

14 minutes ago, OutByEaster? said:

Trump has sacked the man responsible for overseeing his 2 trillion dollar corporate bailout.

 

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-usa-inspector-gene/trump-removes-inspector-general-overseeing-2-3-trillion-coronavirus-response-idUSKBN21P2OM?il=0

"Trump removed Glenn Fine, the acting inspector general for the Pentagon who was named last week to chair a committee acting as a sort of uber-watchdog over the historic economic stimulus plan, from his post on Monday. He has been replaced by the Environmental Protection Agency’s inspector general, according to Politico."

 

[OutByEaster?]

Just now, villakram said:

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-usa-inspector-gene/trump-removes-inspector-general-overseeing-2-3-trillion-coronavirus-response-idUSKBN21P2OM?il=0

"Trump removed Glenn Fine, the acting inspector general for the Pentagon who was named last week to chair a committee acting as a sort of uber-watchdog over the historic economic stimulus plan, from his post on Monday. He has been replaced by the Environmental Protection Agency’s inspector general, according to Politico."

That'll be the EPA that Trump gutted on day one of his Presidency, now a lapdog to the energy industry?

Trump now has free rein to distribute his corporate socialism on a friends and favours basis to his hearts content.

 

[villakram]

4 hours ago, OutByEaster? said:

That'll be the EPA that Trump gutted on day one of his Presidency, now a lapdog to the energy industry?

Trump now has free rein to distribute his corporate socialism on a friends and favours basis to his hearts content.

 

Yup... over to someone he knows vs a potentially uncertain pentagon appointment where there are a different set of paymasters with differing but certainly overlapping with the EPA crowd objectives!

$ >> people

[StefanAVFC]

[sne]

Bernie Sanders has dropped out of the race.

Drumpf vs Biden it is then

[LondonLax]

Biden’s been keeping a very low profile throughout this. No doubt he’d be in the risk group but it’s not going to be very inspiring if he only emerges from his bunker after it’s all over to tell everyone what he would have done differently.

[Xela]

Four years of Trump and Biden is best the Dems can come up with. Do they want to win the election or not?

[Tegis]

Biden is in a serious age related mental decline. How the flippin heck did the Dems think he is their best shot at winning it? The orange clearing in the woods will walk this

[LondonLax]

1 minute ago, Tegis said:

Biden is in a serious age related mental decline. How the flippin heck did the Dems think he is their best shot at winning it? The orange clearing in the woods will walk this

A month or two ago I would have agreed but now who knows, all bets are off with this virus.

[Keyblade]

The Democrats have made it abundantly clear that they're more concerned with spoiling any sort of left movement than even defeating Trump, as they simply can't be serious in putting forth Joe Biden against him, especially after the monumental c*ck up of 2016.

Hopefully this is a watershed moment along with this unfortunate pandemic, that opens people's eyes and kickstarts a workers' movement divorced from this diseased Republican-lite party.

[VILLAMARV]

What was hope? Anyone remember?

[LondonLax]

When people say ‘The Democrats’ do people mean the party machine or Democrat voters? 

There was a pretty huge field of primary challengers and Democrat voters have decided on Biden, and pretty conclusively. 

Americans might not want a significant ‘left movement’ in power? (The U.K. didn’t after all and the US is traditionally to the right of the U.K.) 

[Keyblade]

4 hours ago, LondonLax said:

When people say ‘The Democrats’ do people mean the party machine or Democrat voters? 

There was a pretty huge field of primary challengers and Democrat voters have decided on Biden, and pretty conclusively. 

Americans might not want a significant ‘left movement’ in power? (The U.K. didn’t after all and the US is traditionally to the right of the U.K.) 

I meant the party. The difference here is that in terms of enthusiasm and support for policies, a left movement seemed to be what the people wanted. But politics clearly isn't as simple as this.

The huge fractured field contributed to this discrepancy. All of the major candidates had significant voter bases, but none of them had close to enough to win in such a wide field. Bernie was the clear front-runner in that regard.

The minute one of them won a single state (Biden in South Carolina as it turned out), they all dropped out and endorsed him, sending most if not all of their voters his way. Biden was languishing in 4th place at best before that, being surpassed even by Bloomberg at one point. He was not the voters' choice, he was the party's, in an act of desperation.

They tried to anoint Buttigieg and then Bloomberg in vain before this. Couple that with the manufactured media talking point that Biden was more "electable", despite the polls clearly showing otherwise, and it's very clear this was nothing more than an effort to spoil Sanders, with the general election an afterthought. There's no way in hell they would think Biden is the best candidate to take on Trump, and if they do then they're bigger fools than I thought, and that's a very high bar to clear. 

[LondonLax]

3 minutes ago, Keyblade said:

I meant the party. The difference here is that in terms of enthusiasm and support for policies, a left movement seemed to be what the people wanted. But politics clearly isn't as simple as this.

The huge fractured field contributed to this discrepancy. All of the major candidates had significant voter bases, but none of them had close to enough to win in such a wide field. Bernie was the clear front-runner in that regard.

The minute one of them won a single state (Biden in South Carolina as it turned out), they all dropped out and endorsed him, sending most if not all of their voters his way. Biden was languishing in 4th place at best before that, being surpassed even by Bloomberg at one point. He was not the voters' choice, he was the party's, in an act of desperation.

They tried to anoint Buttigieg and then Bloomberg in vain before this. Couple that with the manufactured media talking point that Biden was more "electable", despite the polls clearly showing otherwise, and it's very clear this was nothing more than an effort to spoil Sanders, with the general election an afterthought. There's no way in hell they would think Biden is the best candidate to take on Trump, and if they do then they're bigger fools than I thought, and that's a very high bar to clear. 

But how did they get all the voters to vote for Biden instead of Sanders each time they went head to head?

I understand that progressive voters in places like Europe, Australia, Canada etc think Sanders is the obvious choice but it seems pretty conclusive, after a couple of presidential runs, that US voters don’t want him. 

[HanoiVillan]

I think people need to take seriously the 'lost the battle but partially won the war' analysis of Bernie's presidential runs. @LondonLax is right that it's clear that Democratic primary voters don't want Bernie Sanders, over a 'party establishment' alternative, because they keep voting for the alternative. But it's also true that Bernie has helped drag the political centre of gravity in the party significantly to the left. There is no issue on which Biden's platform is more moderate than Obama's, and the energy within the party - in terms of money, effort, new congressional candidates, whatever - is hugely disproportionately on the liberal/left side.

[VILLAMARV]

When people say US voters, do they mean actual people or the corporatocracy?

[ml1dch]

9 minutes ago, Keyblade said:

Couple that with the manufactured media talking point that Biden was more "electable", despite the polls clearly showing otherwise

They did? Even when Biden wasn't really getting anywhere in the primaries, he still seemed to be polling as the most likely to beat Trump and that hasn't changed since he's got closer to the nomination.

E.g.

https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2019/11/05/how-biden-warren-and-sanders-fare-vs-trump-in-2020-election-polls.html

 

Quote

Biden fares the best against Trump, as polls find a 10 percentage point advantage for him on average. Sanders holds the second-biggest lead against the president, trailed closely by Warren. Harris and Buttigieg have the most narrow edges over Trump among the five candidates tracked by RealClearPolitics

 

[LondonLax]

30 minutes ago, HanoiVillan said:

I think people need to take seriously the 'lost the battle but partially won the war' analysis of Bernie's presidential runs. @LondonLax is right that it's clear that Democratic primary voters don't want Bernie Sanders, over a 'party establishment' alternative, because they keep voting for the alternative. But it's also true that Bernie has helped drag the political centre of gravity in the party significantly to the left. There is no issue on which Biden's platform is more moderate than Obama's, and the energy within the party - in terms of money, effort, new congressional candidates, whatever - is hugely disproportionately on the liberal/left side.

Yep, agree with all of that. Sanders has brought things to the table that were previously not part of the discussion for a presidential candidate.

[Keyblade]

49 minutes ago, ml1dch said:

They did? Even when Biden wasn't really getting anywhere in the primaries, he still seemed to be polling as the most likely to beat Trump and that hasn't changed since he's got closer to the nomination.

E.g.

https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2019/11/05/how-biden-warren-and-sanders-fare-vs-trump-in-2020-election-polls.html

 

 

Most of the polls I've seen towards the end of 2019 and up until Super Tuesday showed it as a tossup between Biden and Trump (he was definitely doing the best of the rest of the candidates though) and Sanders up by 4-6 points on average. But I could be wrong on that. At the very least the constant media narrative that Sanders being unelectable was simply not true.

When it comes to the general election, Bidens' name recognition only goes so far. Trump already has the older vote that he relied on in the primaries sewn up, and with these new rape allegations and the ever-deteriorating state of his cognitive function, it'll become really hard to distinguish between the two for those who don't blindly ride for their respective parties.