I’m going to vote for a candidate with this plan:
The first step in addressing this crisis is to deal head-on with the outstanding debt that is weighing down millions of families and should never have been required in the first place. That’s why I’m calling for something truly transformational — the cancellation of up to $50,000 in student loan debt for 42 million Americans.
My plan for broad student debt cancellation will:
- Cancel debt for more than 95% of the nearly 45 million Americans with student loan debt;
- Wipe out student loan debt entirely for more than 75% of the Americans with that debt;
- Substantially increase wealth for Black and Latinx families and reduce both the Black-White and Latinx-White wealth gaps; and
- Provide an enormous middle-class stimulus that will boost economic growth, increase home purchases, and fuel a new wave of small business formation.
Once we’ve cleared out the debt that’s holding down an entire generation of Americans, we must ensure that we never have another student debt crisis again. We can do that by recognizing that a public college education is like a public K-12 education — a basic public good that should be available to everyone with free tuition and zero debt at graduation. My plan for universal free college will:
- Give every American the opportunity to attend a two-year or four-year public college without paying a dime in tuition or fees;
- Make free college truly universal — not just in theory, but in practice — by making higher education of all kinds more inclusive and available to every single American, especially lower-income, Black, and Latinx students, without the need to take on debt to cover costs.
Some people will say we can’t afford this plan. That’s nonsense. The entire cost of my broad debt cancellation plan and universal free college is more than covered by my Ultra-Millionaire Tax — a 2% annual tax on the 75,000 families with $50 million or more in wealth. For decades, we’ve allowed the wealthy to pay less while burying tens of millions of working Americans in education debt. It’s time to make different choices.
Right now that candidate is Elizabeth Warren, but I’m open to others adopting this idea. In fact, I think it ought to be on the Democratic party platform, and that any candidate who wants to represent the will of the American people ought to be promoting it.
Note: I have no student loan debt — I only had a small debt to begin with, and paid it off years ago — I’m not planning to attend college in the future, and my kids have all completed undergraduate education, and I’m not really going to acquire any personal gain from this (although I sure wish somebody’d put this in place round about 2000, before my trio of offspring started marching off to university and broke us). So I’m not really being “bought”. This is a change that would be good for the country. Let’s build up our human infrastructure!
Also note that her plan specifically covers 2-year public colleges, which is just as important as our ivory tower institutions, and that she has specific plans for HBCUs and MSIs. Warren knows her stuff.
Why isn’t every candidate immediately recognizing a good idea and jumping on the bandwagon? Even the Republicans should be able to see the virtues.
Oh. Because Republican policy centers on hurting people, rather than helping them.
Problem is they can say all that stuff and do something else and not get fired for it. I voted for Obama because “out of Afghanistan” and “close gitmo” – it’s amazing how the US government has no concern at all for what the voters want.
Making tuition affordable again would be enough for me, rather than making university education tuition-free. Call me old-fashioned, but I still remember those who took out loans and just fucked around because they had no business being in college in the first place. Because K-12 is mandatory it’s right to have taxpayers pay for it. I’m not so sold on making taxpayers, even the wealthy ones, pay for free college for all if it wastes a lot of money on those more interested in partying than studying. Having students put some of their own skin in the game is necessary, IMO.
Warren has been making huge gaff after huge gaff. She’s been releasing actual policies while neglecting the important stuff like making people feel like they’d like to have a beer with her. Forget the embarrassing nerd stuff and come up with a fun chant, Liz!
Thems commie talk .
I would also like to see her say something about increasing funding for education. They keep slashing the budget. We need to funnel more dollars into paying teachers and professors so that they can hire appropriately to educate all the students.
Warren seems to have added this very recently. Is education one of her planks or an afterthought?
https://elizabethwarren.com/issues/
She seems to be playing catch up with Bernie:
https://feelthebern.org/bernie-sanders-on-education/
and Tulsi:
https://www.tulsigabbard.org/tulsi-gabbard-on-education-policy
But they are both even less favored by the MSM bubble.
Oooo boy, I can hear the right-wingers (especially my father) rant and rave about “SOCIALISM,” “VENEZUELA,” “LAZY MILLENIALS WANT FREE STUFF” and of course, “POCAHONTAS!!!” I’m going to need a lot more booze and a new liver to get through the next few years.
I can’t take any politician seriously until they talk about dramatic reductions to “defense” spending. The unclassified DoD budget is around $700bn and they’re arguing about table scraps.
Marcus, #2
Wouldn’t there need to be a strong incentive for them to care?
I like the idea. At present, a medical doctor starting their practice is $200,000 in debt, mostly medical school costs. In France, the same debt is essentially zero. An American doctor compares the costs to the new doctor. Makes sense for new graduates not be laden down with debt.
#9,
Regardless of your position on Warren’s proposal, and on defense spending, it is wrong to characterize this proposal as table scraps, if that’s what you were doing. Total student debt is about $1.2 trillion. And I assume when she says “wipe it out” she actually means “pay it off with tax dollars.”
Many things, like funding for the arts, services for immigrants, and even science are indeed budget dust. Student debt is not.
Marcus Ranum @#2
It’s not amazing, after all, why should they care? Politicians know very well that even if they fail to fulfil their promises after getting elected, there’s no harm done—in a country with a two party system voters will be forced to reelect them in 4 years only because there won’t be any other alternative. Note: in a country with several dozen political parties, politicians don’t have to care about fulfilling their promises for a different reason—voters will be pissed off with their leaders anyway, thus four years later some entirely new political party will get elected instead. Here very few political parties expect to be reelected for the second term.
starfleetdude @#3
You know, in decent universities only students with reasonably good grades get a diploma. Everybody who is more interested in partying than studying should be just kicked out of the university. Alternatively, I don’t mind students partying a lot if they compensate for it by studying super hard the week before the final exam. As a European, I had the privilege to get free university education. Personally, I kept my grades very high, because I wanted to apply for grants. But even my classmates who knew that there will be no grants for them had pretty good grades and they didn’t just spend their time partying. If your goal is to make sure that only students who want education apply to a university, then making them pay isn’t the best way. In my country, students who wanted education went to state owned universities where they could study for free. Those who wanted to party and get a paper went to quasi diploma mills where they had to pay for whatever little education the institution provided.
Incidentally, it’s possible to argue that the society as a whole benefits from as many people as possible getting a good education. At the very least, well educated people are less likely to elect awful politicians.
Her plan would incentivize states to raise tuition even more since the federal government would now be subsidizing it.
Ever notice that social programs to help the poor and marginalized are dubbed “buying votes” but tax cuts and rebates to the upper and middle classes aren’t?
I live on the other side of the Atlantic and barely follow the US election circus (we have our own here, thank you very much), but as soon as I started reading the quoted paragraph I thought it was Warren.
She seems competent and she’s pointing at the right direction.
From my Twitter feeds (and I don’t follow many USians), she’s hands down the most visible candidate, but the story goes that MSM don’t give her much voice.
How true is this?
I tend to be skeptical of “free college” policies, because often it’s made out as if the only disadvantage of such a policy is the cost, whereas my biggest concern is that all the extra money will go to the owners of student debt, or to college administrators, rather than students. I also worry that the real burden on students, is not tuition, but the fact that it’s so hard to find jobs after graduation. I wish there were more frank discussion of these issues so I could better understand to what extent they are problems, or if the policies are specifically designed to counteract such problems.
Tentatively, I like the idea of debt cancellation. Lowered tuition doesn’t really help people my age who have already gone through college, and already paid the tuition.
drew @7:
This 2015 Slate article says student loan reform has been a personal cause for her since she arrived in Washington, which would mean since 2013 or earlier. So, hardly an afterthought.
#3: I don’t understand your argument. Right now students have to have “skin in the game” — a lot of skin — and there are still party schools and slackers. Why imagine that reducing tuition will make it worse? I think it will liberate faculty to be more demanding, because they won’t have parents and kids whining about how they paid for their diploma.
I also have a positive attitude about the poor who couldn’t afford college getting the opportunity. I would enjoy teaching students who appreciate the chance they’ve been given.
#19: I was imagining that Warren’s proposal amounted to eliminating tuition, not lowering it, thus the point about how slackers more interested in parties than studying could attend at no cost to themselves. I think the version of Free College For All that means “graduating with no debt” isn’t the same thing as tuition-free college. At this point in the political campaign there’s naturally going to be a lot of shaking out that will happen by this time next year, and some candidates will run with one and some another proposal. There could be a proposal to eliminate interest on all existing college debt, or whatever, as a way to give a break to those who were unlucky enough to graduate right before the great recession.
As for the poor, I think some of the candidates (Booker, for one) do have proposals to give financial assistance to poor prospective students, starting as early as their birth even. My chief point is that college shouldn’t cost that much to begin with, but I know that’s not something that can be easily fixed, otherwise it would have been by now, after two decades of ridiculous hikes in tuition and fees at public universities.
Warren has been throwing out some pretty appealing economic policy proposals, and combined with her publicly pushing for impeachment, I’m liking her more and more.
It’s just disappointing the pushback I’ve seen in other internet forums, where commenters are just mad because they’ve already paid off their student loans. Assuming she wins the presidency, and can enact this policy, I will have likely either paid off my student loans, or very nearly so. I was luckier than some, in that I had a fair amount of scholarship grants, and the G.I. Bill to help with my educational expenses. Even so, it will have taken me more then a quarter century, and was still a lot of stress, and it’s not something I want anyone else to have to experience if there is a way to avoid it.
@#15
Tax cuts to the wealthy buy only a few votes, after all, rich people are a small percentage of the entire population. The real purpose of tax cuts for the wealthy isn’t “buying votes,” instead it is “buying campaign donations.”
I am greatly appreciating the stances that Warren is taking and the policies that she is pushing right now. The fact that I like what she is doing, however, leaves me concerned. This early in a Presidential run, the candidate I prefer usually has no chance at this point. What I get excited about (firm, clear, and concise policy statements) ends up being a liability in a political race.
I keep thinking back to when I was in my twenties and a local bar sponsored a Thurs night jazz series with no cover charge (I had little to no expendable income partly because of student loans). It was great, every Thurs I would go listen to jazz and usually be one of only 5 folks in the room. It felt my like my own personal concert and I knew it was doomed. I don’t spend enough to support a personal concert series. Similarly, for Warren, I can only vote once and don’t donate enough to support my own Presidential candidate. Too many Dems are looking at ‘electability’ over all else and Warren won’t win that competition. She is not getting the news coverage or sound bites of other candidates. Even though the Dem electorate states that they want progressive policy statements and want a candidate to make a stand. It almost always backfires.
Warren does not need to be President to have ideas. Presidents sign bills passed in the House and the Senate. Warren is already a Senator. She could introduce this today. Would it pass?
No — because the Republicans control the Senate. There’s not a single candidate for President on the Democratic side who would not sign the most progressive bills to be passed out of Congress. People need to learn how are government works before they start rating candidates on policy. I don’t want to hear another person comparing Presidential candidates’ policy positions until they also give a step-by-step plan of how they will elect a progressive majority in the US Senate. The math that small states have more power in the Senate was equally accessible to Democrats, but only Republicans took advantage of it. 40 years ago, it could have gone either way and many Western, low-population states had Democratic Senators. It may take a generation to undo the damage decades of propaganda the Right has targeted at these voters has done — if we start now.
I chose my ancestors wisely and got through college with no debt. This is totally unfair to people like me; those slackers with debt should just have come out of the womb with a silver spoon in their mouths.
Oh wait.
I was in the streets for the student protests of 2012 in Quebec. I don’t want to be in a society where learning is just for making money.
Republicans hate universities because, generally speaking, an educated population is a questioning population. They also believe that only the very rich should have a university education, because universities are just there to make contacts for business and politics in later life. If you can’t afford to go then you shouldn’t be there. Once upon a time in England the same argument was applied to high schools and even primary schools. The poor needed to be able to sign their name and that was all.
Joel @#14:
How do you reconcile that with “The federal government will partner with states to split the costs of tuition and fees and ensure that states maintain their current levels of funding on need-based financial aid and academic instruction.”?
drew @7, Rob Grigjanis @#18:
Rather. Consider the Bank on Students Loan Fairness Act (S.897) (Introduced 05/08/2013) by Sen. Warren, Elizabeth [D-MA]
Bill Buckner–
Warren has costed her own proposal at $640 billion (because she’s not planning to cancel 100% of the debt). Trump’s budget for 2020 plans to spend $4.7 trillion. So you’re right that perhaps “table scraps” is not the right term, but it’s certainly not a lot to pay to rectify a huge flaw in the American education system that has been exploited by the most awful people.
So let’s start by pointing out that spending 14% of one year’s income to rectify a major inequity is not all that bad. I’ve spent much more than that percentage of my family’s annual income to support my two children’s education in several given years. I would have been delighted if I could have paid that as a one-off cost for all future education for my kids. true, I wouldn’t have called it “table scraps” but I certainly would have called it a damn good deal. And I live in Australia, where the problem is a great deal less severe than the US (although naturally we have a large contingent of conservative politicians who are pushing their hardest towards the American model).
Then remember that only reason the total debt is so high is because the Republicans have allowed parasitic colleges and financial corporations to drive the debt up — these are the same Republicans who laugh with Trump when he says how clever he was for declaring companies bankrupt (thereby stiffing all his investors and contractors), but then passed laws specifically excluding student debt from bankruptcy so that poor people would never be able to extinguish the debt. Frankly, I would have been quite happy if Warren had opted to clear the debt by simply declaring it null and void rather than paying any of it back. This would save the US hundreds of billions and screw the parasitic scum who hold that debt (and I would give very good odds that if this did happen, those same debt holders who have kept people in inescapable poverty would themselves declare bankruptcy at the earliest opportunity).
Oops. That should have read “14% of one’s annual spending”, not income.
But PZ, if they could see virtue, would they remain Republicans?
Meanwhile, the Democrat leading in polls as of the last ones I’ve seen is Joe Biden, who, in Congress, sponsored a bill (which passed) to prevent student loan debt from being discharged in bankruptcy. (He’s backed by the same people, by and large, who supported Hillary Clinton. Historically, he’s pro-War-On-Drugs and anti-marijuana-legalization, anti-abortion, pro-banks — particularly credit card banks — and pro-Wall-Street, and pro-war for every war we’ve had since about 1980.)
I remember there was an article which had a Warren Super Rich Tax calculator, allowing one to put percentage taxes on various million-to-billion income/wealth brackets. It didn’t work properly at all, since it only allowed tax rates up to 5%.
#32 I was a strong Hillary supporter and I know many others like me and I would never vote for Biden in the primary. That man has so much awful baggage he makes Bernie’s environmental racism attempt against south Texans look kind and Berne’s refusal to release his taxes for so long, like Trump, look decent! Both of those men will have a very hard time with primary voters like me. There are things they could do to win my support but it would be an honest day from Trump before that ever happens. But No matter what, I vote blue against Trump in the general, unlike over 20% of Bernie’s supporters who say they will vote for Trump if he is not the nominee. 5% say they will vote for Trump even if he is! Someone tell me again how such a large contingent of Bernie’s base who will vote for a racist, sexist, immigrant and LGBTQ hating leader instead of say a woman like Warren with actual radically progressive detailed policies is somehow going to hold his “progressive” feet to the fire of accountability, not soak them in conservative status quo pressure, should Bernie win. Same old 2016 poison and it is disgusting. I sent EW a donation. Still deciding on who to support in the primary. Sent donations earlier to her and 4 others I want to see on the debate stage.
Chris Lawson #29,
I agree with everything you posted.
What? You’re saying 5% of “Bernie supporters” will not support him if he is the (Dem) nominee, because they will support the (presumptive) candidate from the opposing party. You’re describing a type of “Trump supporter” here, one who doesn’t actually support Sanders, one who does support Trump with or without Sanders. And you’re saying this about a fairly substantial fraction of what you take to be the people supporting Sanders, which isn’t a good sign that you know them well enough to say what makes them so different from you.
Vicar:
I don’t know if there’s a specific poll you have in mind, and I certainly don’t pay attention to them all … but I’ve gotten a very different impression from reading fivethirtyeight. They paint a more complicated picture, since they’re also tracking fundraising, endorsements, news coverage and so forth; but apparently the leading contenders right now are (in no particular order) Warren, Sanders, Harris, Booker, and Klobuchar.
A lot of people have turned away from Biden recently, for obvious reasons. I suppose the moderates who found him most appealing can turn to somebody like Gabbard, although she’s also an unlikely choice at this point.
I think the other idea that needs to enter the Democratic platform is voting rights for everyone. Bernie has the idea of giving voting rights to every adult American citizen, including those who are convicted and who are serving prison terms. Apparently, the idea is controversial but frankly, I think it should even go beyond that and it should also cover everyone with a legal residence status, specially if they are paying taxes.
36 That result was just reported from latest poll, Emerson Poll, I believe. Yes, those 5% appear to be trump supporters strategizing their primary vote to, in their mind, help him. But the shocking number is over 20% of Bernie supporters said they would vote for Trump if Warren or Buttigieg got the nomination. Lower numbers, but still high over double digits, such as 17% if others got the nomination. Interestingly there was no such willingness to vote for a clearly racist/sexist/anti-immigrant/anti LGBTQ leader and party as Trump and republicans have shown themselves to be when Warren supporters were asked or really any other candidate’s supporters were asked. Only Bernie had that type of large contingent in his base. Sickening.
36.https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2019/04/20-sanders-supporters-say-theyll-vote-trump-buttigieg-warren-win/?fbclid=IwAR3f6HZDF0x_gsmL7hFtZ8AJFlv3I8GZ8Ixa2jhCAGcsA_JvQqMCq_YFpik
It’s no surprise to me that 5% of Sanders’ supporters would vote for Trump even if it came down to Trump vs. Sanders, because both candidates play to aggrieved working-class white voters. Sanders, like Trump, is also protectionist, although unlike Trump Sanders is sincere about it. One of the things certainly working in favor of Sanders’ nomination in 2020 is the implicit threat that if he doesn’t get the nomination a large number of his supporters will bolt in the general election. The fight Sanders picked with the Center for American Progress a few weeks ago was definitely a shot across that bow.
@#34, feministhomemaker
And, although you would probably disagree, this is why people complain about “identity politics”. Historically, if you examine what policies they have voted for and supported, which is a far better indicator of performance than campaign promises or claims to have “evolved”, Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden are very similar — the only difference is Hillary Clinton’s weak support for abortion (mitigated by choosing the “personally anti-abortion” Kaine as VP) where Biden is explicitly anti. They’re both pro-war, pro-1%, pro-War-on-Drugs (remember in 2008 when Hillary Clinton — and, admittedly, Obama too) laughed out loud on stage when somebody asked about it? Of course, Obama continued to prosecute drug arrests under federal law despite state laws making things legal, so that was a valid indicator of his direction), pro-TPP, anti-serious-action-on-climate-change, have long histories of saying and doing really terrible things re:homophobia and racism but swear they’ve “evolved”, etc. etc. etc. You supported Hillary Clinton despite all of that but you hate Biden for it. Now maybe you’re just fanatically pro-choice and base your votes on that, but otherwise: the only real difference in their histories in terms of policy, as opposed to rhetoric, is that Hillary Clinton is a woman, and Biden is not. It is at least a reasonable guess that people like you are basing your preferences on demographic identity, rather than on policy or history.
I am emphatically not “Blue no matter who”. I won’t vote for Biden in the general — if the Democratic Party chooses him (which makes me shudder) they will simply have lost my vote. I probably wouldn’t vote for Beto. (The fact that he was lying about corporate donations and just quietly removed that from his campaign materials when detected, without any sort of apology or explanation, signals that he’s another cynical corporatist like the DLC crowd.) Most of the other choices seem okay to me, so far (although of course there may be nasty surprises we just don’t know about, and some of them are worse than others).
I can’t imagine why anybody who actually supports Sanders would under any circumstances vote for Trump. Not voting, or writing somebody in, is one thing — if you don’t want to support any of the people who are running, then why should you? — but the reason to dislike the DLC “Clintonian” crowd is because (rhetoric and tone aside) they are basically Reagan Republicans, so I don’t understand saying “this candidate is too much like a Republican for me, so I’m going to support a Republican instead”. And why would anybody support Sanders on any grounds other than policy (in which he’s very similar to Warren)? It boggles the mind.
What this means is that poll results like this can give a misleading impression, because some people are just trolling it (and perhaps the primaries) with the hope of making things easier for the candidate they do support, namely Trump.
So, we shouldn’t confuse ourselves with trolls. Take the numbers who ostensibly support Sanders and remove that inappropriate 5%. I don’t know how this could matter, if your argument isn’t that Sanders is less popular than somebody had previously thought.
20% of those polled, in that one poll, which doesn’t say as much as you might think.
But like starfleetdude, I’m not shocked or surprised that some number of people (probably a lot of white working-class men) like both Sanders and Trump, more than they do Warren or Buttigieg. Which party a person belongs to, or in Sanders’ case which he’s most aligned with, is not the most critical piece of information for many. If they think they stand to gain something from it, that is pretty much all that needs to be said, as far they’re concerned. This is very low information, but it’s not nothing…. Some do seem to think that, with Trump (and/or God), all things are possible, no matter what he actually says or does. So that would do it, if there’s anything to convince them that it’s their most selfish choice. My thought process, and I assume yours, is very different, but it’s worth understanding that.
I’m also sure some would have trouble even spelling or pronouncing Buttigieg’s name, much less be capable of explaining to themselves why they should vote for an obscure, young and inexperienced Mayor Pete from Indiana. I think that one is even less surprising.
Why? Because we don’t have an option in which none of the people gets the job, on the grounds that you’re not entirely satisfied with any of them. We have the option of giving the job to a better candidate or to any number of worse candidates, and not to a fictional candidate who lives in your dream world.
When a worse candidate wins, it is your fault that you did not do what you could to prevent that, because voting is your responsibility as a citizen. It’s very convenient for you to try to pin it on others, but unless they’ve lied to you or coerced you somehow, these are your actions we’re talking about, so you are responsible for them.
#43-https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/pollster-ratings/
Emerson (I am assuming Emerson College is this same poll) has rating of B+ among pollsters and nearly absent of noticeable political bias according to 538. Yes, it is one poll. But the point you missed and that impressed me is the fact that unlike all the other candidates, Bernie’s supporters contain a large contingent that are supportive of a flamingly sexist/racist/anti-imingrant/anti-LGBTQ party and president. Tellingly, it was 21% of them who favored Trump over Buttigieg and 26% who favored him over Warren–a woman who has such similar positions as Bernie and is younger! And Warren’s supporters do not have this contingent in her base, nor do any of the others candidates, really. Only Bernie. So if he is elected, he will be subject to a very strong anti-progressive push from his base. This has been ignored. And it reminds us of the 2016 poison where he flirted with this same “anti-any-democrat nominee”, being so slow to tamp it down, never disowning it until done mildly at a time that was way too late to really protect against it. And now, he makes the same argument Hillary made when he is found out to have made millions from his work in a capitalist system, an argument he vehemently rejected when she made it–“it did not change my policy positions”. And he tried to hide his financial profile as long as he could, doing what Trump did, giving Trump cover really, by not releasing his taxes when she had all her financial profile open to scrutiny and tried to hide nothing. As I said on another thread here, it will be a truthful day by Trump before Bernie ever sincerely acknowledges his error in 2016 and honestly courts voters like me. And just a FYI as to #36–when I have read a person’s comment poorly and made an assumption that proves to be wrong, I acknowledge it before speaking again. You assumed I had no evidence backing up a clearly specific assertion you attributed to just my belief. When faced with that specific of an argument I would have known to ask–Where did you see those stats? I wouldn’t assume you just made the numbers up in your head out of what you know about such a large unnamed group of people that forms the base of a major candidate.
A lot of people raised various points similar to this and to me it is all non-sense. For example I am sure there are a lot of criminals and very nasty people who have voted for Obama, Clinton, or any politician that you pick. So what? As long as people vote for you for a valid reason, you don’t want to reject their vote or be shamed because of it. It is possible “sexists” or “homophobes” are voting for Bernie Sanders because they think he will help the economy. How is that bad? The problem exists if they vote for him because they believe he will try to implement sexist or homophobic policies and Bernie Sanders supports such policies. Short of that, this is just non-issue.
I think you are living in an alternate reality.
You are comparing apples and oranges. Hillary Clinton claimed that getting paid by wealthy corporations did not change her voting records or her stance. Bernie Sanders claimed that earning roughly a million dollars from writing a book did not change his position on taxation policies. If you think those two are similar, then you are once again deluded. One is about getting paid a hefty sum by a specific wealthy class of people for an hour of “work” and the other is getting money for a well-earned endeavor. In the first instance, you know the faces of the people who are paying you and thus you are being courted to be “nicer” to them. In the second case, a large group of people, anonymous people, are buying your books and you don’t feel you “owe” anything to any particular individual. The two things are as different as they can get, apart from both “earning them some money”.
I’m not sure why he did not release his taxes sooner but again, it’s not comparable at all to Trump who has business interests in multiple states, countries and he has huge conflicts of interests tied to the policies of US government.
feministhomemaker, #45:
I was not disputing the figures in #36. I trusted you enough to assume that you had gotten the evidence from a reputable source and were not just making it up.
My issue was with your interpretation, the fact that you called that 5% of respondents “Bernie’s supporters.” Like I said, that’s not an appropriate way to describe people who say they will vote against Sanders (and for Trump) if they have the opportunity to do so in the general election. You were saying they’ll vote for Trump, no matter who wins the Democratic primary. Those are “Trump supporters,” plain and simple, and there’s no good reason to suggest otherwise.
By estimation, about 20% of the total US population voted for Trump. (Note, this is not a fraction of those who voted in 2016, nor a fraction of eligible voters, but I think it helps to put some things into perspective). However, I’m sure there are more anti-progressives than that in this country, among Democrats, Republicans, or any other political affiliation you care to name. The point is that they are being dramatically under-represented, if we use the measure of voting for Trump or not voting for him. They’re all over the fucking place. That’s just what our country is like, unfortunately.
Trump is also such a detestable candidate, in basically every way imaginable, that you should not be worried when you find (as I’m sure you would) that a lot of people who will vote for Warren need to hold their noses, because they find some of her more progressive proposals abhorrent but not nearly enough to sway them to vote for Trump. The same could be said for any of the other Democratic candidates, but I’ll say it about Warren since we both like her. Unless you’re prepared to play the guilt-by-association game with her too, it’s only fair to treat any other candidate the same way. (But we could start doing it with Warren, with no polling data whatsoever: we already know she’s in the very same political party as a bunch of conservative hacks who call themselves “Democrats.” How much does that really indicate about her? Not all that much, I think.)
I just don’t have a reason to hate Sanders, like you seem to, and I honestly don’t get where any that comes from. If he won the primary, I would not be terribly disappointed. I was pretty disappointed when Clinton won the 2016 primary, since I preferred Sanders. I think he was a significantly better candidate.
Now, the field is really large and messy again, and it’s a long time before the primaries, so I’m just not sure what to say … Warren is probably my first choice, I guess? But it seems counterproductive to go on the attack against other progressive candidates. The most I’ll say is that some like Buttigieg need to lay out some clear, definite, substantive policy proposals (like Warren and Sanders have), or else I have basically no reason to support them over the others. They’re all better than Trump, so they need to distinguish themselves with more than just that.
Sorry…. “By [my] estimation”
This is just taking Trump’s popular vote and dividing it by the current population estimate.