Exciting Democratic debate...

[William Thornton]

...and I watched the first half, sort of like I do a night game during football season.

Bloomberg: Missed his train wreck last debate. Thought he was stiff but did well. The guy is left handed, so he's got that going for him. Obviously, Warren is worried about him, since she prattled on about him relentlessly...

Warren: Let's see. She says he's lying about women in his company. She lies about her native American past and the Medicare for All proposal. Bit of hypocrisy here. It is odd that NDAs are an issue on many fronts in our time. I've never liked them when they have been employed in SBC life.

Buttegieg: Guy is sharp. Will be around on the national scene for a while, I suppose.

Klobuchar: Always have liked her and she's the only dem I'd event think about voting for. She had a couple of good lines. Looks far too sensible to make it as either the Prez or VP nominee. I mean, she welcomed pro-life Dems to her campaign. Anathema to the left winger Dems who control the party these days.

Biden: Needs a new act. Shameless pandering to SC African-American voting block. The guy just wears thin on me.

Steyer: Owned some jails did he? Has quit that after being rehabilitated? No chance. Why is he spending all this money?

Sanders: Poor Bernie. Finally captured by his record of incessant verbal hemorrhaging. Fidel is dead yet speaketh through Bernie. That's not a winner in Florida I don't think. Bern and his fantasy rape stuff? Why? Finally got figgurs for MFA and uses the Lancet wild conjectures of savings to pay. No word on making private insurance illegal? Rationing of services?

But...the pundits say it's Bern's to lose. If he fails in losing it, only a disastrous 250 days leading up to the election in November can put him in. Trump is capable of disasters but, not looking good for Dems if Bern is the guy.

We get to vote in 250 days. I'm steeled (Stalinized?) for the outcome if Bernie wins. Just hope he doesn't copy the Generalissimo and his several hour long rants as Cuba's dictator. Imagine Bern's State of the Union Speech...nah, I'd rather not.

Gonna be an interesting year.

[Haruo]

Doesn't look like you're planning on answering my MFA questions anytime soon. And you'd rather have health care unavailable for the poor and bankrupting to the non-elderly working people than rationally (note the etymon "ration-) managed? Sorry, I know that's off-topic.

[Sandy]

[William Thornton]

[Haruo]

[Sandy]

Given that Trump is besties with the likes of Vladimir Putin, Kim Jong Un and now Narenda Modi, who has moved India from 24th to 10th on the list of most dangerous countries for Christian persecution, between Syria and Iran (Open Doors Watch List) a Republican making a comment about a couple of sentences by Bernie Sanders, out of a whole paragraph of condemnation for authoritarian regimes, is laughable. If Castro were still around, Trump would have been asking him for help to win the election. It's a pattern.

[Tim Bonney]

I'll vote for whomever the Dems put up this time because what is the alternative? I've not been a huge fan of Bernie. I like Warren and Mayor Pete better. But if the Democratic convention were to choose Bernie as their candidate I'll, as one of my favorite cousins put it, "crawl across a football field of broken glass if necessary" to vote for Bernie over Trump.

[Sandy]

[Tim Bonney]

I hope you are right Sandy. Otherwise I fear a slide into authoritarianism and worse if we get 4 more years of the same.

[William Thornton]

Haruo asked earlier: "William, William, what is it that you see as a reason to believe that Medicare for All (I don't care if you use the Bernie version or Warren's as a benchmark) will bankrupt the nation and/or cost the average taxpayer more than the current system's hodgepodge of payment schemes? Assume that you are addressing real live Christian brethren, human beings, literate and capable of basic arithmetic. I for one will look seriously at whatever arguments you adduce, and while I don't promise to agree with your reasoning, I will assume that you too are a real live Christian brother, human, literate, and numerate, and that the arguments you put forth are ones that you, at least, find compelling."

And said above in this thread: "Obamacare was not MFA, not single payer, not designed with all Americans' well-being as the primary target. It's a hodge-podge, designed with the profitability of the insurance companies at least as high in the priorities as health care for all Americans. It might be a bit better than what Hillary would have preferred, but that's not saying much. Here are my questions again."

The presumption is that gummit should pay for all health care. I reject that. Maybe gummit should pay for all housing costs, or food costs, or clothing costs, since those are necessities. The republic and its citizenry (and some illegals) manage to get health care without gummit paying all the bills and have done so for over two centuries. If gummit pays all the bills, they own the system and employ all who work in it. Obamacare is available to all, right? What's the problem there? The reflexive slaps at huge insurance profits are just demagoguery.

I think the burden is on you and others to convince me that the system we have is not adequate, if imperfect. Maybe the issue of the insurance industry could be addressed. Are insurers to be eliminated? Will providers be require to accept MFA patients? Will there be any private health care allowed? My physician now works for a huge hospital group. Is it a small jump from that to working for CMS?

We could go full socialist in medicine. Don't know that would improve anything.

[Rvaughn]

Watched a Democratic debate for the first time this year. Slow night; looking for entertainment.

I did not like the format. Made the candidates look like a bunch of overzealous high schoolers waving their hands to be the first to answer. I often did not hear from one I would have liked to. Seems like giving each time to respond would be better, even if less entertaining. Needed better time management as well.

To me, Pete Buttigieg has the best on camera presence. Maybe Klobuchar next. Or Bernie. He is old and energetic. Biden looked old and tired. Bloomberg seemed old and blah.

I am tickled at all y'all ready to vote for the Democratic candidate regardless. Isn't this the same mentality that you condemn in Republicans voting for Trump regardless? Isn't this the mentality that gave us Trump? Why don't we require better? I don't see we will ever get better as long as we play along with our broken two-part system.

[Haruo]

Many aspects of our lives might benefit from more information and less entertainment. But this is capitalism: sales-driven, and run by news media looking for profit in the risky terrain of preempting regular programming.

[Sandy]

[Rvaughn]

Fact check on a debate claim:

[Rvaughn]

[Tim Bonney]

[Sandy]

[Tim Bonney]

I think it all depends on how the convetion plays out. I know some Bernie supporters who will not vote for anyone else. They will stay home if it is not Bernie. I think that is a huge msitake. But those folks exist. And I think that is particularly true if they feel the party manuvered Bernie in such a way that the nomination looks like it is stolen from him.

[Haruo]

[Sandy]

Depends on whose drawing the map and what data they are using. This map has Florida fairly deep in the Trump column, but I haven't actually seen a poll that has it anywhere but within tossup range. The only other polling data I've seen, Morning Consult and 538, don't have the head to head matchups by state. Morning Consult, which is raw data without the "adjusted" factors, shows Bernie with the best numbers against Trump.
https://morningconsult.com/2020-democratic-primary/

I tend to be optimistic here. But it's a shared optimism.

https://nuntiatum.home.blog/2020/02/28/ ... -just-yet/

[Haruo]

As I said, I have no idea how reliable their data base is, but the notion that you need to look at the states (and in two cases, the congressional districts) is critical. You could win the blue states 80-20, split the yellow states, give Wisconsin to Bernie (or any other Democrat) and Pennsylvania to Trump, and have Trump take the red states by ten lonely voters per state, and the election would go to Trump.