US presidential election 2020:Winner?

[vaud]

Many of my US colleagues think that The Economist is a socialist journal.

As an aside, for a country based on free enterprise, fire at will, etc I often find it surprising:

• How much is actually owned by the government
• How powerful the unions are in some domains (e.g. teamsters)

[Fittster]

rxe said:

Fittster said:

Public healthcare = communism??

I really don't think a lot of people understand various political ideologies.

To many people in the US, socialised heathcare is pretty much communism. Their Left/Right divide is like arguing between Tony Blair and Margaret Thatcher.

I think if you are going to throw around terms like communist or socialist you should have some idea of what they mean. I don't think that is always the case on this forum.

Does anyone posting on this thread really think Bernie Sanders is a communist? To my mind he should be classed as a Social Democrat but that doesn't make such inflamed rhetoric.

[anonymous-user]

Fittster said:

rxe said:

Fittster said:

Public healthcare = communism??

I really don't think a lot of people understand various political ideologies.

To many people in the US, socialised heathcare is pretty much communism. Their Left/Right divide is like arguing between Tony Blair and Margaret Thatcher.

I think if you are going to throw around terms like communist or socialist you should have some idea of what they mean. I don't think that is always the case on this forum.

Does anyone posting on this thread really think Bernie Sanders is a communist? To my mind he should be classed as a Social Democrat but that doesn't make such inflamed rhetoric.

You're missing the point, it is irrelevant in terms of the actual political definition, by the very nature of his policies the right leaning / Republican Americans class him as a "commie" and "commie's" are bad.

[vaud]

Fittster said:

Does anyone posting on this thread really think Bernie Sanders is a communist? To my mind he should be classed as a Social Democrat but that doesn't make such inflamed rhetoric.

It's not what we perceive and where we put him on the political spectrum. Personally I don't see him as a hard socialist, a social democrat maybe.

I think the point is more about the rhetoric inside the US and their lens of what constitutes socialism
(and even communism) where he is often positioned as a more extreme socialist vs the current mainstream politics or even the historical position of the democratic party?

[WCZ]

easy win for trump, if it was possible I think he could keep being relected for the next decade

[vaud]

WCZ said:

easy win for trump, if it was possible I think he could keep being relected for the next decade

Solution: Trump Jnr.

[vonuber]

Sadly i think Trump, then it'll be Ivanka's turn.

[rxe]

Fittster said:

I think if you are going to throw around terms like communist or socialist you should have some idea of what they mean. I don't think that is always the case on this forum.

Does anyone posting on this thread really think Bernie Sanders is a communist? To my mind he should be classed as a Social Democrat but that doesn't make such inflamed rhetoric.

I’m not sure if you are being deliberately obtuse.

For clarity:

I don’t see Bernie as a commie. He’s a mild left politician, probably in about the same space as Gordon Brown.

A lot of Americans see him as a hard core socialist , and another large group of them would see him as an outright communist. To them, socialised health care is pretty much communism. Why the hell would they pay for someone else’s health care, when they can barely afford their own?

[paulguitar]

ZeroGroundZero said:

I expect the Dems to lose quite spectacularly in the next US election, given that they failed to produce a clear cut case to remove Trump, and admitting that their motives for doing so was to remove him from a future ballot.

Source, please?

[Beati Dogu]

The DNC establishment and their mainstream media lackies don't want Bernie. A loony lefty like him will scare off the big corporate donors and they're skint enough as it is. The screwed him over in 2016 and they'll try it again this time.

Biden is the establishment candidate. Nice and corrupt like Hillary, just the way they like them. But with the Ukrainian pay offs out in open and his gaffe prone, creepy nature he's just not selling with the voters. That's despite having a free run in Iowa while the likes of Sanders, Warren & Klobuchar were kept in Washington by Pelosi's month long delay to the sham impeachment circus.

Biden's team are said to be considering a challenge to the result with a court injunction, so they obviously feel they've done badly.

alangla said:

I'm going to say Trump. I'd previously thought (and bet) that Bloomberg would get the nomination and potentially win, but I now think he'll keep his powder dry for a run in 2024.

He's 77 now. I'd say it's this year or never.

[Carl_Manchester]

early Iowa caucus results (62%) counted indicate the following :

Buttigieg - 26.9%
Sanders - 25.1%
Warren - 18.3%
Biden - 15.6% (!).

blimey, didn’t see that coming, Bidens showing is really poor against expectations.

I don’t usually watch CNN but they said live on air that Iowa was too white for Biden to win.

[Sn1ckers]

Seems Mayor Pete is doing well in Iowa and Biden is falling away. I like Mayor Pete but sadly can’t see the US electing a gay man. If he was selected I think he’d do well debating Trump.

I think the debate issue is important because I suspect many possible swing voters will decide purely on what they see on debate nights. It seems to me 90% of voters are already decided whether they’ll vote Trump of the Dem candidate.

[Vanden Saab]

Carl_Manchester said:

early Iowa caucus results (62%) counted indicate the following :

Buttigieg - 26.9%
Sanders - 25.1%
Warren - 18.3%
Biden - 15.6% (!).

blimey, didn’t see that coming, Bidens showing is really poor against expectations.

I don’t usually watch CNN but they said live on air that Iowa was too white for Biden to win.

Obama won Iowa ...too white...

[paulguitar]

Mayor Pete debating trump would be a treat, not only is he on a completely different level intellectually, he appears to be (so far at least) the very model of decorum, decency and politeness. I doubt trump’s schoolyard taunts would get to him at all, he would likely rise above it and let trump dig himself his own hole.

Whether or not America is ready for a gay president is an interesting one. I’d like to believe that most voters who would not consider him on that basis would already be part of trump’s base, in which case they would not have considered voting for him anyway, in which case those are not really votes ‘lost’.

It’s still very early days, but it’s an interesting thought to even consider the sheer scale of a change from trump to Buttigieg, if it were ever to happen. ‘Old, multiple draft-dodging, woman molesting, barely educated, serial cheating, pompous bully’, to ‘ honourably served in the military, intelligent, gay (and married), multiple language speaking, articulate 30-something’.

I thought ‘W' to Obama was a big change!

[Davos123]

rxe said:

I think America is about to enter it's very own Corbyn moment.

Bernie has the equivalent of Momentum - loads of energised youngsters who are doing to upset the dynamics of electoral process. You don't need as much money when you've got 100,000 very loud and active supporters to get your message out.

Bernie may well win the Democratic nomination. Bernie is unelectable in wider America - from our point of view, he is a bit of a lefty, but in the US he's a 'goddam commie'.

So we'll have an inept president up against an incompetent opposition. We've been there....

I think it'll be the complete opposite. It is clear the American people want something different from the same old neo-liberal st they've been putting up with post-Reagan, it's why they voted in Trump over Hilary and it's why Bernie has such huge support.

The Dems will conspire to deny Bernie the nomination, have Biden as the nominee, who'll have exactly the same issues Hilary had and Trump will win.

[ChocolateFrog]

Depends on your definition of landslide, but it'll be a landslide.

[bloomen]

TrumpTrumpTrump

I can't believe they'd go for another establishment zombie like Biden but maybe they will. Buttigieg is the only one who feels opposite enough and fresh enough but perhaps he's too fresh for most.

[anonymous-user]

Trump will pretty much walk it. Dems have been so fragmented it is, like suggested, they just copied Labour’s playbook over the last four years. Pelossi has been embarrassing, there has been no figurehead leading the opposition for years, the impeachment trial is/was a farce...

[paulguitar]

pablo said:

the impeachment trial is/was a farce...

Only a farce because of the framework within which it exists, which is effectively a ‘trial by selected best mates’. trump is quite plainly guilty, but there seems to be not a single republican with a spine between the lot of them. It’s pitiful really.

[FiF]

Democrats, really are a shambles, not even good enough to qualify as a sh*t show. After weeks of campaigning, four years of warning and complaining about electoral integrity, and they can't even manage to count their own votes.