Which Democratic presidential candidate's tech, science, and business proposals do you agree with the most?
Displaying poll results.10525 total votes.
Disraeli was pretty close: actually, there are Lies, Damn lies, Statistics, Benchmarks, and Delivery dates.
Might as well get used to it (Score:5, Funny)
I'm sure this is going to a civil, properly moderated debate. Might as well get used to it, it's going to be civil war for the next year.
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Well, at the moment the Democrat party candidates more or less look like they came out of a clown car.
But for the sake of it I selected Yang just because he's outside the core of the party.
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Polls say any of them could beat Trump, which is what really matters. After all it's no good being a great candidate if you don't win.
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That's such a low bar. Yes we'd all rather have a potato with stick on jiggly eyes in office than the current coward but it's ok to have aspirations for someone that could do some good. Some of these candidates are really quite awful in their own right. Let's try to get it right this time.
Measure (Score:5, Informative)
Didn't the last set of polls before the election show Clinton crushing Trump?
I remember a lone reporter saying that, after attending several Clinton and Trump rallys, he was convinced that Trump had a good shot. Even though Clinton was polling well, her rallies were relatively poorly attended and not very energetic. She was having problems filling arenas in democrat strongholds, while Trump was filling stadiums in the middle of nowhere.
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As I recall they said it was too close to call.
First derivative of the polls? (Score:4, Interesting)
Actually, the polls are telling several stories. In the particular case of the election of 2016, the first derivative of the results showed a clear movement in Trump's direction after Comey's one-sided intervention. Therefore it became crucial when the election took place. Whatever the polls say about public opinion, it is only the opinions of the actual voters on election day that ultimately matter. (And yes, that is significantly oversimplified. There are also the opinions of the voters who cast ballots before election day and the opinions of the potential voters who decide not to bother.)
In the form of a joke, you never needed to fool all of the people all of the time. When democracy is working well, you only need to fool most of the voters some of the time, specifically 51% of the voters on election day. As it works now, considering the effects of scientific gerrymandering and targeted disenfranchisement, you don't even need most of the voters. You just need some of the voters with sufficiently rigged elections. Especially hilarious when the House of Representatives was controlled by a clear minority of the voters (and even now the Democratic margin of control is far less than the margin expressed by the voters). The Senate is always hilariously dominated by a minority of the voters, but at least that's sort of in keeping with the deliberate wording of the Constitution.
It's actually quite easy to design and administer a poll that produces the results someone wants to pay for and quite difficult to get poll results that discover the real truth. In between, most polls produce garbage. I'd like to see a retrospective study of polls that address resolvable questions to see how many of the polls were accurate. I'd be surprised if reality turned out to be within the margin of error as much as 20% of the time.
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It's made worse by the electoral college, since polls don't seem structured around the electoral college outcome.
I don't know how you combine polling *and* the electoral college, unless you poll states individually and then do some kind of analysis that shows how close the electoral college race is. I think a lot of polls are either national or done by different polling outfits on a state-by-state basis, which obviously confounds the ability to combine polling + electoral college results in a way that does
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Sounds like you're unfamiliar with this website: https://fivethirtyeight.com/ [fivethirtyeight.com]
The analysis before the election was all about the paths to winning the Electoral College.
As regards subverting and effectively eliminating the EC, this approach is close to doing so: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Basically only a few more of the anti-democratic states need to flip to make it happen. I want to be optimistic and hope that it will be harder and harder to resist as it becomes more and more clear how anti-democratic
Re:First derivative of the polls? (Score:5, Informative)
As regards subverting and effectively eliminating the EC, this approach is close to doing so: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
I assume you are not familiar with the phrase Tyranny of the majority [wikipedia.org]
The EC was specifically meant to prevent such a problem. Another thing that most people don't understand is the USA is actually a collection of small countries that have agreed to a federal standard of laws. The laws not specifically described by the federal standards are left to the states.
This leads to the leader of each state is being selected by the people who inhabit it (usually called the governor), and the leader of the collection of countries is elected by the states (in the USA's case the president).
If the popular vote was allowed to selected the president, the most populaces states would forever dictate who was the president, and the remainder of the country would be forever under their rule. Which is what they were trying to prevent when designing the EC.
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Quite familiar with the phrase, but that was not how they worded the topic during the debates that created the Electoral College. The founders were quite concerned about preventing an incompetent populist from becoming president. I'm not sure if that part of my comments is included anywhere in this branch of the discussion.
It's possible I missed some reference to the phrase in my extensive reading on the topic. Do you have a more meaningful or relevant citation than Wikipedia? I don't feel like searching fo
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I didn't mean to suggest that the libertarians you were talking to weren't reputable enough. I think there are versions of libertarianism that are more reasonable than others, and in my experience this is not really corellated to fame.
I'm really not trying to bait you or win an argument.
I've identified as a libertarian since I was 18. I was also part of the whole Ron Paul thing, although I have not been so enthusiastic about Rand. I currently still identify as a libertarian, but my views have evolved a lo
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I like yang. I like UBI. I think UBI is also a good libertarian solution to the problem of welfare. It doesn't create specific subsidies chosen by the government which are vulnerable to corruption (e.g. granting government contracts to well connected people, overcharging, etc) and inefficiencies. Just giving people money allows them to still choose which things they want and preserves markets that allow the best producers to succeed and the worst to fail. It is also good in that it can reduce waste by
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Honestly, I've just lost interest in decoding your signature. Sorry.
I don't see the part about not letting people starve as a sort of UBI. I see what we have (e.g. foot stamps, free/low income housing, emergency rooms/forcing insurance companies to cover people with pre-existing conditions, etc) as a sort of social welfare in general, that is specifically not UBI in that it gives you specific things for free or at a discount, not money.
The point of Yang's UBI is not just to prevent starving. Our current
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I like the libertarian philosophy, but I've always been bothered by the fact that Libertarians (big L) in the US make their top priority to end (of all the government agencies) the EPA. The libertarian approach is supposed to be 'my rights end where yours begin' but without a Federal level EPA, there's nothing stopping one state from polluting a river at their border and forcing the states downstream to have to clean it up.
Re:First derivative of the polls? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes the electoral college gives some more power to smaller states through weighting the electoral votes each state gets. But the bigger effect that it has is adding randomness with winner take all nature of states.
If you kept the weighting the same, but awarded electors from every state proportionally, Hillary Clinton would have won in 2016.
I'm predicting Republicans will be the ones calling for abolishing the electoral college when all 38 of Texas' electors go to democrats once that state from 51% Republican to 51% Democrat.
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Yes the way states award electors is a state decision, and in that respect is not specifically a problem of the electoral college, but rather the state-based nature of our election system in general. Yes there are some states that award electors proportionally, but there is actually very little incentive for an individual state to do this. Whichever party holds majority power in a state has a strong incentive to keep/make that state winner-take-all.
Changing this in a blue state will hurt democrats and cha
Re:First derivative of the polls? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Measure (Score:5, Insightful)
I believe our republic more closely resembles competitive elites scheming to secure power, rather than mob democracy. Clinton's loss was a case of the Democrat elites selecting a poor politician (and nonrepresentative candidate) that depended on mainstream media to propagandize to everyone that she was "a popular" candidate. In reality, she was politically damaged goods, a poor politician in a very lackluster field of Democrat contenders, and she managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
Of course she had problems attracting large rallies, but she was such an inferior candidate, it turned out to be a less than fatal flaw. Picking a neophyte campaign manager so she could dominate decision making, believing her own propaganda, not realizing the power of social media to microtarget campaign messages, and skipping out on Democrat "strongholds", she helped create her epic failure. Since the 1% gets to pick the Republican candidate as well as the Democrat candidate, they're never really stuck with a PotUS they "can't" live with or leverage.
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I'd have to agree- Trump's voting totals in a lot of key states pretty much matched Romney's but Clinton's were a lower than Obama's. That suggests people weren't enthusiastic about Clinton and stayed home.
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Didn't the last set of polls before the election show Clinton crushing Trump?
Yes, up until the last few days before the election she was always ahead by double digits. Polls also showed her without any serious challengers until Bernie came along; it took a lot of help from the DNC and super-delegates to defeat him.
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Didn't the last set of polls before the election show Clinton crushing Trump?
No. The latest set of polls right before the 2016 election showed it was basically a coin flip. Five thirty eight had trump's chances at 30%. News outlets that don;t know the difference between probabilities and vote percentages were all claiming Hillary was winning in a landslide, but anyone looking at the data knew it was going to be a very close election. For
I remember a lone reporter saying that, after attending several Clinton and Trump rallys, he was convinced that Trump had a good shot. Even though Clinton was polling well, her rallies were relatively poorly attended and not very energetic. She was having problems filling arenas in democrat strongholds, while Trump was filling stadiums in the middle of nowhere.
Both candidates had their enthusiastic supporters. Maybe Trump had more enthusiastic supporters, but people only get 1 vote regardless of how
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Which polls? The ones by Vox or CNN? Aren't these same one that said Clinton would win in a landslide? Sorry, the only poll that matters takes place in Nov. 2020.
Might as well get ready for another 4 more years of Trump. None of these clowns have a chance.
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In the United States the people do not elect the President, the States do. But I'm sure you know this. It was specifically designed to prevent what might have happened in 2016. A unfit president being elected strictly by the population of a handful states.
The general vote is nothing more than a way of the population to let their choices be known. There is actually no provisions in the Constitution for a popular vote for president. The whole notion of one could be done away with with out causing an
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It was specifically designed to prevent what might have happened in 2016. A unfit president being elected strictly by the population of a handful states.
But Trump DID win, so it clearly failed to prevent that. The guy the did elect is probably going to get impeached. Besides which the colleges always vote the way they are "supposed" to, they did nothing deliberate to prevent either candidate from taking office.
Obviously the bigger issue was that you had two bad candidates, but that doesn't change the fact that the loser ended up winning because it's not a popular vote.
Re:Might as well get used to it (Score:4)
Well that is your option on Trump being unfit. But with you being a EU citizen and not a US citizen, your option doesn't matter. You just get to sit back and accept US election results. Just as my option of EU election process doesn't matter. If you choose to be run by un-elected bureaucrats, it is simply none of my business.
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Uh, yeah... So you just capitulated. Your only response to this argument is "your opinion doesn't matter". Honestly would be better not to say anything next time.
Re:Might as well get used to it (Score:4, Insightful)
Honestly would be better not to say anything next time.
Then we are in agreement. The next time US politics are brought up it would be best for you not to say anything.
See, that wasn't to hard.
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Re:Might as well get used to it (Score:5, Informative)
There were not millions of illegal votes in California and New York in 2016. Anyone making that claim is, to put it simply, crazy.
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We were discussing the accuracy of polling. I suggested that polls suggesting Clinton would get a narrow victory (within the margin of error) were less inaccurate than was being claimed, because as well as the caveats they come with she did actually win the popular vote by a significant margin.
No need to throw your toys out the pram, just read the thread for context next time.
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, if Trump doesn't get impeached
Speaking about the stupidity of homo sapiens, Trump can get impeached and will still remain PotUS, because I do not believe Republican senators have an iota of integrity. I really only want the impeachment to put the senator votes into the historical record, and to at least convey to future generations that there should be a criteria standard for impeachment, even if its unsuccessful.
Re: Might as well get used to it (Score:2)
Trump could be impeached and run out of office, and STILL be re-elected.
Regarding the current (any Democrat) vs Trump polls, it's one thing to tell a pollster you'll vote for (any democrat) not trump, it's another to bounce from supporting Bernie, to Biden, to Warren, to Whomever and remember to actually show up and vote for whomever.
As Democrats bounce from candidate to candidate as the democrat field dwindles to one, voters will start to lose interest... and when HRC finally steps in, anything could happe
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I think you've confused a joke with an anecdote:
https://www.newyorker.com/cult... [newyorker.com]
The original joke concept is that she's political and ambitious, and would have helped her hypothetical husband become president regardless of his original station.
In your serious version, she's essentially a prostitute looking for a powerful man to hitch her wagon to.
I think you should spend a little time thinking about your feelings about women in general, and powerful women in particular. Find worth in yourself. You're intel
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I picked Yang because he's good on science/tech issues.
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Pretty sure you two haven't actually studied any of Yang's policies. I think your reactions are just knee jerks.
But I also think it would be pointless to respond in your context, so I'll post a more general summary of my position regarding Yang's positions as a fresh comment on the poll.
Re: Might as well get used to it (Score:2)
He wants to hand everyone $1000/month, that alone disqualifies him for the 50% that actually PAY income taxes, not just file and collect more than they paid in.
Can opener for closed minds? (Score:2)
Do you understand that wanting, justifying, paying for, and implementing are four different things. Among many.
I don't think so. I think you are a typically narrow-minded... What noun? Something neutral would obviously be best, but seems hard to find within the context. Perhaps some sort of archetype? Not enough substance there to justify, though it's typical reaction.
Then again, I think some of Yang's supporters are equally narrow-minded, but looking from a different angle. Seems unlikely, but if Trump las
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I also have to go with promises are not policy. So what policies have they actually worked on whilst in office. What legislation have they promoted, what have they voted for. When they have a track record, not one fuck should be given about their politicians vague promises, that good old public face versus the private face shown to major campaign donors.
If you are taking major corporate campaign donations, then the only promises that count are the ones you make them, I am not fucking stupid, any promises yo
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Mixed feelings... On the one hand, I'm quite interesting in how people from other countries perceive the international problems created by America's internal politics, and especially interested in how informed they are compared to Americans. On the other hand, I also feel like it's not really your business to express preferences and even less for you to try try to persuade Americans how they should feel about "our" problems.
Example of applying my principles in practice. Sometimes I read stuff about British
How vilification works (Score:2)
If political experience in office with a real track record was a "soft requirement" for POTUS, then Obama wouldn't have stood a chance in 2008. He talked a lot but had such a minimal record he might as well have had none. Tulsi has a more serious record so let's not bounce her based on that.
I'm not following your argument against Obama, but it sure smells funny. Or maybe you didn't mean it that way.
My take on 2008 was that Hillary was already damaged goods. In fact, she might be the poster child for why solid political experience with a "real track record" has become a liability in today's campaigns. Each candidate's record is just fodder for oppo, and if that doesn't yield anything juicy, then they just use the record as the base for making up BS and spreading it deep. The vilification and de
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No. Read my longer comment. Waste of your time, but there is more to it than that.
Let's try a different angle.
How do you feel about change? Do you think it happens? Do you think it can be ignored? How much is for the better?
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Narrow Minded Libertarian Response: Nice avoiding true concerns, and go straight to name calling dismissal.
What happens when UBI doesn't have the results you expect? It has NEVER been done before, and has NEVER been tested. Therefore you have NO idea what the results are going to be, only ROSE TINTED viewpoints of unicorns and rainbows.
How the FUCK do you unwind the problem when the shitstorm inevitably happens because you haven't accounted for human nature (proven). Progressive nonsense. You have no idea w
Just like a real election (Score:4, Informative)
There's no "none of the above" option.
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Since it's obvious you don't know anything about any of the candidates other than what Fox screams at you, why do you bother posting shit like this? Do you assume that everyone doesn't realize how utterly ignorant you are?
I'm really curious what you get out of your public displays of rabid hatred and ignorance. What is it about this way of engagement that you find so much more validating than educating yourself enough to have a real conversation about the facts of the matter?
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How is socialism anti-science or anti-business? I can see a few businesses like healthcare that might be run by the government, but for the most part it would just be better for workers and people that want to start their own businesses - oh that's probably why conservatives are against it.
If you're worried about anti-science, look no further than the "climate change is a Chinese hoax" Republican party.
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There's no "none of the above" option.
That's because in a real election you have to choose among those that want the job. Just like any other job, whether that be the person that sweeps the floors and takes out the trash, or the President of the United States of America, you can only choose among those that have applied for the position.
I guess that there are a few other options we can consider. We can consider doing away with the job. We can conscript someone for the job, someone that might not want the job but we feel would do it well. We
Warren makes the most sense, but can't win. (Score:2)
Not against the deceptive, "go with the gut, not the brain" opponent she has to face.
You can't beat "I know what I WANT/feel" by using "I know the truth".
Anyone smart enough to recognize the truth would already vote for you, BUT your argument is too hard for people that are average (or in some cases above average) intelligence to understand, let alone believe.
So you get the top 10% of intelligent people, and lose the bottom 50%. All the while getting yelled at for insulting the bottom 50% for being the bot
Re:Warren makes the most sense, but can't win. (Score:5, Interesting)
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I never said she can't win the Democrat Primary. That's easy to do, the Democrats believe far more in science rather than the gut.
But to win the General election you need to win the swing states:
Wisconsin, Michigan, Arizona, Florida and Pennsylvania.
Omaha, Nebraska would be nice as well. It is the only swing district in the non-winner take all states (Nebraska + Maine).
Those are the places that matter to the Democrats. If we win those states, we get the Presidency. All other states are either a lock fo
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"Believe in science", huh?
These candidates oppose GMOs, oppose nuclear power, oppose biological definitions, oppose vaccines, and even support homeopathy. They deny science in regards to the causes and effects of racism, the economic impact of their polices, the environment impact of their regulations, and even the effects of their refusal to enforce laws.
Oh, but some so-called conservative said climate change is a hoax, so the Democrats must be the party of science!
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These candidates oppose GMOs, oppose nuclear power, oppose biological definitions, oppose vaccines, and even support homeopathy
For the most part, the Democrat candidates are a Flintstones clown car, the kind you have to drive by pushing it with your feet. The exception is Andrew Yang. Finally, a Democrat who would address climate by going nuclear.
Even on the economic side, Yang's differs from the rest of the field, having run an actual tech business. Socialism and taxes, yes, but at the same time he wants to get rid of a lot of obsolete regulation and would even auto-sunset major laws - what Congress wants to keep, it would have t
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Citation needed, one of the fundamental parts of the scientific method is providing supporting evidence.
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Yes I think she can win swing states. I think she will have a harder time in the primary than the general election. The primary has more candidates and is more chaotic/random. If she succeeds in the primary, winning the general just means beating one opponent who has the lowest favorability of any presidential candidate since favorability tracking. Trump has his base of 30-40%, but you can't win a general election with 40% of the vote.
Yes Warren is on the more progressive side, but people really don't c
Re: Warren makes the most sense, but can't win. (Score:2)
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No, she's going to have to win NE as well, to break the notion of Biden's nonexistent "electability" factor. She may have to barely lose South Carolina as well.
I wish American voters had the common sense to realize the geriatric set can't select a candidate that's going to be in their 80's in their first term. That makes Sanders as unelectable as Biden. I believe Warren may have the ability to hit back at competitors, but not if they never show, because the geriatric contenders chooses not to challenge W
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Warren is only 6 years younger than Biden.
Re: Warren makes the most sense, but can't win. (Score:2, Informative)
Warren has a problem with the truth.
She lied about being an Indian, then lied about why she lied about being an Indian (she claimed she never benefitted from being the first female law professor of color at an Ivy League university... yeah right.)
She lied about how she left her teaching job - in 2019 she said she was fired for being visibly pregnant, but previously she said she left because she felt it wasn't right for her, and the minutes of the school board she worked at UNANIMOUSLY voted to extend her em
Re: Warren makes the most sense, but can't win. (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah I think she will win Iowa. Trumptards can only come up with 2 "lies" for Elizabeth Warren. The 1st is not a lie, she was just wrong. You didn't see her claiming DNA tests are fake news. The second one you have no fucking idea if Elizabeth Warren lied about. All you have are some bullshit right wing logic that any minor discrepancy is evidence of liberal deception.
But you know what, let's take the least charitable view possible. Lets just say for the sake of argument that both those 2 things you mentioned are lies. She lied about being native american and refused to take a DNA test that would expose her. She lied about being fired while being pregnant, despite this phenomenon being extremely common and unremarkable back in the 70s.
She will be up against the least popular presidential candidate in history and the one regarded as the most dishonest. Elizabeth Warren is at 2 lies and Trump is at like 12,000. So if "honesty" becomes the determining factor in the 2020 election, Warren's got a cushion of 11,998 more lies.
Does Trump have a good chance of winning? Sure. But it's because his supporters are idiots. Whether Warren lied 2 times or 1 time or 0 times doesn't make one bit of difference to them, just like it doesn't matter if Trump lies 100 times, or 1,000 times or 12,000 times.
And yes I think she will win Iowa. She's already leading in the polls in Iowa.
Everything I've said is coming from a person (me) who is a non-partisan and a non-democrat. I don't agree with a lot of Warren's policy proposals. I'm more of a free market libertarian. But the one thing I like about her is that she says what she thinks and she is passionate. And unlike Trump, she seems like a good person, someone will fight rather than participate in corruption, and someone who can act like an adult for the duration term.
A lot of pundits keep saying she can't win, because she's too progressive, or she's a woman or whatever. Well I'm not even a democrat and I like her. A bunch of my friends (many also not progressives or democrats) also decided to support her. She's very likable. And the "lies" you mention just highlight how squeaky clean she is if this is the best her opponents can come up with.
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Her main problem (and the problem of everyone in that list) is the demon that was once again unsealed.
If Hillary comes back (and seems like she is), she will cheat her way again into the candidacy, and will lose again to trump.
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Re: Warren makes the most sense, but can't win. (Score:2)
She will NEVER debate Trump.
Re: Warren makes the most sense, but can't win. (Score:2)
None? (Score:2)
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It doesn't matter (Score:2)
It doesn't matter. Trump 2020! KAGA! MASA! MAWA! And so forth.
Not in the list - Booker (Score:4, Interesting)
Unfortunately, Cory Booker isn't on the list. (Because, also unfortunately, he's not in the top eight in polling). I say unfortunately because from a tech and science perspective, he's better than the field. The comparison is probably most evident in nuclear. Booker is a strong nuclear power advocate. Strongest advocate in a generation, strong advocate of increased research in Gen IV reactors, knows what he's talking about with reprocessing, etc. The rest of the Dem field is solidly anti-nuke - no matter what. And most of the Republicans are too busy being "Roll Coal!" to be anything but tepid on high tech answers to problems. (High tech workers are a fickle voting bloc compared to the anti-vax anti-evolution trogs that the GOP has courted for a base). Booker is probably the strongest on either side in continued pharmaceutical progress, continued ag-science progress, etc.
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They could have had a combined option for the lesser candidates. Pretty sure 8 is a hard-coded limit, but six options for the top six, the lesser candidates in the seventh slot, and then Cowboy Neal (per the earlier comment).
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Actually my recollection is that Yang is open to some nuclear power options.
My own position is that nuclear power is a good idea done badly. Though the technology could be fixed, public opinion is broken beyond repair.
Therefore, no candidate running in a democratic election can treat nuclear power as a major issue unless the candidate is opposing it. If a candidate actually wants to support nuclear power, then he has to carefully downplay the issue. In other words, there is no major voting bloc for supporte
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Even Warren claims to be in favor of thorium, though she is antinuclear. She seems to think that thorium is something we set fire to.
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Actually the thorium approach is the same one that Yang supports, if I'm remembering correctly. Not sure what you mean by the last part, but Warren is not stupid and I'm confident she understands how nuclear power works.
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Re: Not in the list - Booker (Score:2)
Cory Booker has ZERO CHANCE of becoming the Democrat nominee.
There are too many stories and secrets from his NJ days to overcome. He's being left alone because he's never going to be a top tier candidate, let alone the nominee.
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How do you solve the basic thermodynamic efficiency issue with nuclear? You still generate more waste heat than electricity.
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Not 100%, just over 50%. Wind and solar pencil out there.
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Andrew Yang supports nuclear power.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
And most of the Republicans are too busy being "Roll Coal!" to be anything but tepid on high tech answers to problems.
You have no idea. It's only now with Trump as President and Perry as Secretary of Energy are we finally seeing next generation prototypes getting built. This was something that people in the industry have been begging to get licensed for decades.
Fourth generation nuclear power is not new, there were prototypes built and operated successfully in the 1950s. This technology was abandoned mostly out of politics. There were technical hurdle
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The last Administration put anti-nuclear activists to be in charge of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission - the organization in charge of approval all nuclear power construction and research. And it did it twice! Jaczko alone did more damage to US nuclear power than Three-Mile Island's accident or even Fukushima did.
None. (Score:2)
Donald J. Trump (Score:2, Insightful)
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what Obama did on his apology tour
Citation needed. Name one instance when Obama actually said the word "apologize" (or anything like it) on the so called apology tour.
He is calling the swamp rats out for what they are—rats.
Was that before or after he appointed the swamp to be his cabinet?
forget that you live in the best place, in the best time in the history of this planet.
Do you seriously think that about this grotesque plutocracy where nothing gets done because the politicians in both parties are bought and bossed by corporations and billionaires?
And now Cadet Bonespurs has really fucked up the Middle East again, by pulling out of northern Syria right after a phone call with Tur
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You're just feeding a troll. Perhaps a troll with some sort of immunity moderation?
Re: Donald J. Trump (Score:4, Insightful)
And now Cadet Bonespurs has really fucked up the Middle East again, by pulling out of northern Syria right after a phone call with Turkey.
1) Turkey is a NATO ally, the Kurds are not. Remember when Trump questioned backing any NATO nation, and the left exploded and said you MUST defend every NATO ally?
2) Trump pulled 50 special ops fighters, is that really all it takes to keep Turkey in-line?
Re: Donald J. Trump (Score:5, Insightful)
We attacked Iraq. Why did we care about Kuwait? We invaded Iraq later. Why? Bin laden wasn't in Iraq.
That is a very long story, but it could be summed up as: Sykes-Picot Agreement + military-industrial complex + systemic addiction to petroleum == our current predicament.
It's easy to blame "the left" for all this, but the fact is a majority of Dems in the House voted against the Iraq War AUMF, and before that a lot of folks on the left were against the invasion of Afghanistan too. The Taliban had offered to deliver Bin Laden to a neutral third country to stand trial, but Cheney and Rumsfeld wanted a war in Iraq, and they needed a war in Afghanistan to get the ball rolling.
At every step of the way, the neocons on the right made things worse. When Gen. Shinseki said we'd need 250k troops to occupy Iraq, Rumsfeld went ballistic and had him demoted. We went in with 80k instead, and ended up not having enough forces to keep the peace, resulting in the looting of everything in sight. Then, the "de-Baath-ification" left all government institutions in tatters, and resulted in a vast number of Sunnis with no jobs and plenty of time and guns on their hands... leading to a civil war that still smolders today. The "left" had nothing to do with any of that.
As for this current conflict in Syria, it is probably the least deadly to US forces of any military action in the last few decades. We have lost 8 soldiers in this conflict, whereas the Kurds have lost over ten thousand. They didn't fight "shoulder to shoulder" with us, they simply did most of the fighting while we provided intelligence, logistics, training and weapons. They did most of the "heavy lifting" in neutralizing ISIS on our behalf, and in return we have just left them in the lurch to be wiped out by Turkish forces. It will take generations to recover from this blow to our credibility and trustworthiness -- if that is even possible, ever.
I'm all in favor of avoiding entanglements in stupid foreign wars. But once we've engaged, and made promises to people, our reputation as a country is on the line. Pulling out is a laudable long-term goal, but doing so on a whim is the worst possible way to do it.
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So in a case where the US was wrong in regards to foreign policy, do you think the best course of actions is to apologize or just lie and say the wrong never happened?
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President Trump is finally putting American’s interests first. He has undone what Obama did on his apology tour. He is standing up to China.
"Not quite as horrible as we thought he might be" is hardly a ringing endorsement. Trump's biggest problem is compared to, say, Reagan, he has no coherent vision. He's just sort of all over the place. Look at his mismanagement of his best issue, curbing illegal immigration. That weird fixation on having Mexico fund border controls that we need, and making everything dependent on a physical wall, has left a lot of political capital rotting in the desert sun.
And if it turns out that he abandoned the Kurds to
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He's just sort of all over the place.
That pretty much describes all of the Democrat candidates, promising handouts to whatever demographic they're standing in front of at the moment.
if it turns out that he ...
So many times we have heard the Democrats' mantra "If true, this is a big deal", then it turns out to be yet another one of their deranged fantasies.
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We seem to need troops back on the ground in Syria, and only a Democratic President will put them there. Vote accordingly.
The case for an economic transition? A la Yang? (Score:2)
It seems that closest thing to agreement in America these days is that there are gigantic problems. Well, that and the agreement that the problems are caused by the other guys. Okay, third point of agreement. We "need" to hate "them".
As usual, I seem to fall outside. I'm not even sure that I agree that there are problems. It's the solutions that matter. If there is no better state to be reached, then it isn't a problem, but just part of reality to be lived with.
My favorite solution approach requires new ekr
Before we get to the election... (Score:2)
...we need to find out what this is about: https://docs.google.com/spread... [google.com] https://bad-boys.us/ [bad-boys.us] https://qmap.pub/cases [qmap.pub] pacer.gov https://i-uv.com/wp-content/up... [i-uv.com]
I have my suspicions that the list of candidates may change considerably by the time these sealed indictments play out.
I agree with the decisions of President Trump (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:I agree with the decisions of President Trump (Score:4, Insightful)
There isn't, they're just the ones with a meaningful election coming up soon.
Do try to be a little less sensitive.
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Many true republicans are spinning in their graves at the speed of light these days.
Missing choice (Score:3)
Pete Buttigieg? (Score:2)
Is that a real person? If so, he clearly can't be trusted with office if he didn't have the sense to change his name.
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If any poll ever needed a Cowboy Neal option, this one is it.
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I have to strongly agree with that and wish I had a mod point for you.
But at least this poll seems to be better than the previous long-running poofta poll. I'm still kind of offended that I was asked for a suggestion, spent some time drafting one, only to see it ignored for several more weeks of the poofta. (Or at least it seemed that long.) If the poll suggestion (something about work?) was bad, then at least that much feedback might have been nice.