The only way Sanders wins the nomination at this point is if Hillary withdraws for some reason. However Sanders has made a strong enough case that if she withdrew it would be very hard for somebody else to jump into the race and win it. If Biden jumped in after Hillary withdrew I still think Sanders would wind up with the nomination.
With the current amount of popular support around the US, I don't see a viable route for Sanders either, unless Hillary withdraws. Sanders did make his mark - among very young people [under 24 or so.] This is what's scaring the hell out of me; he lacks support from every age group except that single group. I am inclined to think that, Sanders' policy proposals reflect this too; much too idealistic, naive, without a sliver of sense in the realm of reality. [If you have looked into his economic proposals, you will see that not a single main stream economist endorses his plan at all, except these politics scholars taking a dip into the economics, like Robert Reich; that's not even considering that most of his proposals are based on faulty assumptions.]
Do you have any sources to show that it's up to 24 years old? I'm looking around and can't find any reliable demographic information for the primaries so far :/. I'd contend that the cutoff is higher than that. The only weakly comparable thing I could find were the exit polls on CNN, which had Sanders consistently dominating the 17-29 range, and doing well in the 30-44 range in many states as well. Personally, I don't know a single Democrat under the age of 35 who prefers Hilary over Clinton. Not a good representation, but worth noting.
Not off my head; I believe I read that around the Iowa caucus, from NY Times. What I vividly remember is the breakdown of the support; Sanders had 85% support from 17-24, then 35-40% from those older. Somewhat older analysis from last year is here - and now this analysis is cutting up the age group in bigger chunks, but paints the same picture. Sanders is getting most of the support from the young kids, and no one else. https://www.jacobinmag.com/2015/10/clinton-sanders-democratic-presidential-primary-caucuses/ P.S. And Sanders hit triple bogey when he went down south for campaign before Super Tuesday. No black/immigrant with sane mind will vote for Sanders. So - there you have it. Sanders is indeed pretty weak candidate at this particular moment. Black votes [~25%] and immigrant-related votes [10~15%] are strongly in favor of Clinton. If you were to call the white vote a push between these two, the other votes from blacks and immigrants will clearly prefer Clinton. [And immigrant votes were instrumental in last presidential election as well, as Mitt Romney did pitifully bad with the immigrant votes, scoring near 10% of the immigrant vote. That Sanders is not doing really well here does not bode well for anyone who wants to support Sanders.]
The thing to remember though is that a significant number of voters supporting Trump would vote for Sanders instead if they had the option. He does very well among lower middle-class white voters who would never vote for Hillary. The undercurrent in this election is how badly the elites have treated the white working class. That's why Trump is blowing away the GOP field in state after state. He's not drawing conservative Republicans as much as he's drawing people who feel disenfranchised by the two party system, with the GOP favoring the wealthy and corporations and the Dems favoring corporations and minorities. That's why Trump voters want to strengthen Social Security and Medicare and are not opposed to higher taxes on the wealthy. It's why they want US troops to come home instead of empire building overseas. It's why they want trade and immigration protection. Globalization has made the working class in emerging economies very happy but it has screwed the hell out of the working class in the West.
brad I know you are just commenting on the landscape and not so much adding your opinion on matters. But in my personal opinion with NAFTA, global trade, etc.. what's done is done. It may have damaged american manufacturing, it may have cost this country many jobs but at this point (2016) those jobs aren't going to come back anyway. That's my problem with Trump and Sanders - the stuff they are talking about would've been more relevant 15 years ago, not today. We need to move on and innovate. They should be talking about how to improve our economy in 2020+ not looking backward at mistakes and trying to undue them. Trump's attacks on China are especially unsettling to me. Yes- the trade game isn't "fair" with them but 50% of what they import to the U.S. is materials (chemicals, paints, supplies) not finished products. We run the risk of losing even more manufacturing jobs in this country at this point by attacking that. IMO. I appreciate your opinions. what do you think?
I think if America can't create a level playing field for the middle class that the guys who follow Trump and Sanders are going to make them look like quiet easy-going guys. Creating emerging middle-class communities all over the developing world was a great thing but we didn't do this with an even national sacrifice. We gave trillions of dollars more to the wealthy and we took it straight from the middle-class. Globalization plus tax cuts cut the middle-class both ways: it took their high paying jobs away and gave them very little in terms of tax cuts because the cuts were targeted mainly at high earners. It pushed the middle-class right down next to the working poor, where their share of the pie was going to look like welfare by the time everything settled.
I don't think I agree with this assessment at all. The labor productivity outpaced the increase in minimum wage since the days of Ronald Reagan. True - Jimmy Carter wasn't an Economics guru, and US economy wasn't faring all that well under his guidance. But Reagan takes it to the new height. Don't just take my words for it; this graph comes from the heritage foundation. Even THEY can't paint it any other way: What we see here is a sharp drop at the end of Carter's presidency, followed by monotonic, steady decline under Reagan's lead. [And also notice that the productivity during this period was in steady incline.] Bill Clinton stops the decline, then leaves the office in a small, steady incline, but the damage has already been done. [By the way - this means, the extra production went to the top earners. Simple logic. To be blunt - the area between two curves represent the wages that didn't go back to the worker class. Guess where that money went.] What did HE do? Take a fucking guess. Clue: It's not good for the middle class.
^ I tend to agree with Zach in general on politics, but here I think he missed Brad's point. First of all my problem with both Trump and Sanders on trade is they ignore three things. One is that merely pointing out who has lost from trade agreements in the past does not mean on the whole that the net effect for the country is negative. This means trade agreements are not all that different from other choices made in developing and pursing national policies. Second they completely ignore the strategic and national security aspects of these agreements. In short they are not merely agreements having economic effects. For example if we do not sign the TPP, it is likely China will benefit and may well rush into the vacuum. Third they may well have some things to say by way of criticism of past agreements, but do not really offer coherent plans for going forward. What is their alternative? But I think looking both backward and forward Brad makes a good point. The government should do more to equalize the costs and benefits of these trade agreements. If these agreements truly are for the national good, they should not amount to too much of a picking of winners and losers within our country. The particulars of such a response are not all that important here, but probably do include a higher tax on those who benefit and some programs designed to soften the blow for the adversely affected.
1. Probably. I feel like a blind prairie dog these days. [It's spring time after all.] 2. I didn't know we had anything to agree with! [That's a news to me. LOL] ========================================================== 3. Enough with the jokes: I still tend to think that, US gov't did more harm to the middle class through their internal policy than they did with trade pacts with foreign countries. I still maintain that, economic effects from these external factors are near zero. 4. By that what I mean to say is - yes. The fucking tax cuts. [And this is one of the major reasons why I cannot, in sane mind, vote for the Republican hacks of late. And I am a conservative for crying out loud.] I look at tax and gov't support system as the wealth redistribution system of a sort - so while cutting unnecessary tax can be good, I don't see how tax cuts in general makes any sense to anybody. [And Dubya audaciously cut the taxes while picking a fight in the middle east; that has got to be the first in the human history for all I can tell.] 5. If Brad means, by [Globalization], [relocating the main HQ out of US to avoid heavy tax] , then yes. I agree that globalization hurt US economy immensely.
Perhaps Brad's emphasis, meaning the degree to which he thinks trade pacts in and of themselves as opposed to the effect of global trade more generally, led to the degree of problems he refers to is something he should speak to. But yes, the tax cuts ended up being problematic to a great extent, and exacerbated the resulting income inequality.
A bit delayed in response sorry, but I agree that Sanders is struggling with voters outside a certain age (still a bit skeptical it's as low as 24, due to the exit polls). I disagree with the bolded though. I do think as they get more familiar with who Sanders is and what he has done for them in the past, he can easily win them over, especially in a general election where he'd be up against someone like Trump. I think if the states with a large black/immigrant population had voted later on, Sanders would have done better in those areas just based on general exposure. That's just my personal opinion though, and I don't have anything solid to back it up. In terms of economists, it's a weird thing since Freidman came out and supported Sanders' economic policies, which did have some serious assumptions in there and Freidman has since stated he'd be more than willing to adjust for based on feedback but still thinks it's viable. The thing is, he has also come out and said he is voting for Hilary based on non-economic policies that are more in line with his. There was also a long list of people in favour of Sanders' Wall St reforms, though skimming through it, it's a mixed bag of political commentators, lawyers, economists etc., so not purely economists. They're also mostly from research/educational institutes, so how that influences your weighting of their backing could be balanced by that. https://berniesanders.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/Wall-St-Letter-1.pdf On another note, what are your thoughts on the whole Arizona primary debacle? It sounds like that whole thing was a bit of a mess, and has a lot of people from the affected county pretty frustrated. http://azdailysun.com/news/local/fu...cle_968d4b62-13bd-516f-a500-cc7eb8bc507c.html
Bernie got hammered brutally on the Super Tuesday; and didn't fare that well during Nevada caucus, right before the Super Tuesday. The key here is, both instances featured heavy influence from the black voters. To round it up - Sanders was hammered hard in Florida. The vote differential was pretty much laughable, close to 70-30 margin in some cases [like South Carolina.] I don't see why they will change their stance. If at all, when Sanders had a chance to address the issue [of police brutality on colored people, and systematic racism present in the South, et al] Sanders failed in quite possibly the most spectacular manner; when asked of these, Sanders blamed the [white collar criminals in the Wall Street.] Like he always does with near god damned everything. If I were a black voter, I would surely vote for this tool. [NOT] Yes. That's the charlatan I am referring to. Gerald Friedman, of University of Massachusetts, Amherst. It's a rather common knowledge for anyone who studied Economics - it doesn't take a serious endeavour. Econ 101 level of knowledge would suffice. One of these key, common knowledge is that, cash injection from the government will induce temporary boost. Why temporary? That's because that boost is not sustainable, in that once the government cuts off the cash inflow, the said boost will also go away. [Less cash to flow around.] Friedman's bullshit lies on the assumption that, in case of Sanders' proposals, the government-induced cash injection will, in turn, induce a permanent economic effect. That's how Sanders could promise that gaudy 5% annual economic growth. What a steaming pile of dog shit. I am not the only one to call this bullshit - near god damn every mainstream economist [like Stieglitz, or Krugman for the laymen] laughs at this bullshit. There has already been a few, quite extensive analysis of Friedman's joke. [You should be able to find a few easily from Google.] I don't think I agree with this; much like I don't think it's a good idea to ask a Christian about anything related to evolution, to exaggerate a little bit. Biologists should be the one to give an opinion, not a laymen with interest in them. By the same token - I would listen to economists first and foremost. [And I have not heard good things about Sanders' proposals.] Looks like a hot mess to me - someone has got a lot of shit to square away. Like I said somewhere in this thread - I am a conservative. By that, what I mean to emphasize is, every rule must be enforced, to the spirit of it, and no one is above the rule.
I haven't heard anything of the cash infusion you speak of; do tell. I've heard of added benefits i.e. education and health insurance but not this cash infusion which is destined to be temporary. Source?
https://berniesanders.com/issues/creating-jobs-rebuilding-america/ P.S. Yes. INFUSION! That word kept escaping me while I was writing up that post. Blasphemy!
You just sent me a link that says that they want to work on America's infrastructure. Are you suggesting that it's a bad idea to fix America's highways, bridges and tunnels? Besides, creating jobs is different than a cash infusion. An additional cash refund is a one shot deal. The Gvt footing the bill for an overhaul of our infrastructure is creating jobs. It's not free money. Unless you meant to put in a different link...
I am not saying it's bad. It is indeed very necessary. The problem is that, Sanders' economic plans - of 5.3% economic growth, and 3.8% unemployment rate and all other bullshit stories - rest heavily on the government-led infrastructure rebuilding. This infrastructure-related spending is temporary [1], and the net effect of these effort will be near zero by year 3 to 5 [2]. US economy is almost as optimized as it is, and even with the rebuilding and whatnot, 5% economic growth is just not happening. Moreover, you can't possibly be rebuilding the infrastructure for the next 8 years under Sanders' guidance - or do you have any other idea? [I didn't know infrastructure rebuilding could go on forever.] I didn't see any other option in Sanders plan that would boost the economy. And I am not alone in this sentiment either; there are countless others who analyzed Sanders plan and laughed at it. Like this one: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opin...520e72-d67f-11e5-be55-2cc3c1e4b76b_story.html
shiiiit, have you ever worked with a contractor? If it takes 9 months to build a swimming pool, I have no doubt that a country's worth of bridges and tunnels will take 8 years (at least)!! Lol But I digress
