Yes, I think it will be very interesting how the media and elites will react to such a proposal actually gaining momentum. As a general rule elites and the media like to keep the proletariat classes distracted and divided over culture war issues, and the last thing they want is proposed economic reform and wealth distribution that would actually unite the lower classes, so I anticipate they will do whatever it takes to make sure this doesn't happen.

Of course, the elites and media have no such qualms with reparation rhetoric, because this is something that would divide the proletariat class, so they are all for it.

+1 to that last bit. The most important reason why racism persists in America is because it benefits special interests. If the bottom 60% ever voted as a group in favor of their own interests one of the political parties would actually just 100% represent them.

It's super intentional too at least down south. Convince the blacks that the people holding them down are poor/middle class whites and convince the poor whites that the blacks are coming to take what they have (their scariness proven by the poor blacks, and the fact that they want to take what they have proven by blacks who have become more successful than them). Now that it's about race instead of class the whites vote GOP, the blacks vote Democrat, and nobody does anything at all for the bottom 60% of the population... because if wages aren't cheap (the reasoning goes) the south won't be competitive.

Regarding student loan debt, wealthy companies and individuals who have substantial resources can contribute to a prize linked savings account used to generate interest that wipes out random loans each month or quarter. Students make their payments each month to qualify for forgiveness. When the student wins, they also walk away with their own accumulated payments plus interest.

What you guys are talking about is why I like Bernie's chances. It is going to be very, very obvious very soon that the media/donor establishment wants ANYBODY but him similar to how the GOP establishment wanted anyone but Trump. And their entire apparatus is going to be working against him.

However, this is at a time when voters in both parties have all time low opinions of these institutions. I don't see how Bernie isn't going to look like the "man of the people" in every single debate or for this entire cycle.

Like Third Way thinking it is a going idea to come out and say they're warming up to Warren is so lol for her chances.

Even Trump, yeah the GOP didn't want him because obviously it sucked, but deep down they knew that when push comes to shove he is 1 of them and isn't ideologically opposed to anything they care about that much. Bernie can't be co-opted.

Neither can Warren. You'd be right about Bernie being a strong candidate if there were no other (frankly better) options... instead there are at least two.

I think you underestimate the Democratic machine. Unions and party leaders still have huge sway over how their membership votes, moreso than the GOP. My wife is a union member and she was bombarded with calls and mailings urging her to vote for Hillary last time. I expect a lot of the same this time around, likely for Uncle Joe.

Also I am not sure I agree with your "Bernie is a man of the people" perception. He's been in the Senate for a million years and is very well off. Warren is a better speaker and campaigner and stronger policy-wise (imo of course - people can disagree on that last part. But her surge in the polls shows that she is resonating with people).

I don't fancy Bernie's chances. Twenty-sixteen was his big opportunity, and he whipped up a lot of frenzied support, but now I think his momentum has faltered, and I would expect many of his former supporters to be a bit disenchanted with him and unwilling to donate and campaign on his behalf like they did when he shot to prominence in the last cycle. I agree with revots that it is definitely a headwind rather a tailwind to be at odds with the DNC if you want to win the Dem nomination. And I think much of his cache as the anti-establishment candidate has been eroded in the minds of his former supporters, as illustrated in the following meme:

Anyone know what causes big differences in prediction markets? Yang has a much better chance on predictit compared to predictwise for example

Creepy Joe>Pocahontas>Yangthemanyouknowwhocan>alsoranlose rs*

Come on Andy. I win 6 months wages if he's next pres and he's surging like a mofo.

*BTW lol at 2+2 banning the word loser.

Got to make it a safespace for donators, I suppose.

The word losers can't be censored, right?

edit: it must be that there was some spam URL with alsoranlosers in it or something.

edit deux: nope? No idea.

Losers isn't banned, I'm pretty sure it's just automatically breaking up a really long word (no spaces) so that it doesn't break any formatting.

Example: thisisasentencewithnospacestoshowthatthisisthereas onthatmicrodong'spostgotaspaceadded

Yang is polling at 1% nationally but is at 15 cents on predictit. Yang Gang just betting with their hearts over their heads. Probably easy money to take the No side at that price. Not a bad wager actually... if you lose, just double down on Trump in the general. If you lose again, hey you still get a thousand bucks a month so who cares.

Matthew Yglesias: Democrats are learning the wrong lesson from Donald Trump: He ran as a moderate, and it worked

The underlying point about moderates doing better in elections seems sound enough. The argument about Trump specifically is interesting. I'm not sure I entirely buy it.

I think he has a point but it seems like it might be more correct to say just that Trump never really had many coherent policy positions, and he said enough (incompatible) things to seem plausibly moderate? But his only really firm policy positions (on immigration) were not particularly moderate, I don't think.

But the polling data about perceptions of Trump as less conservative than Romney/Bush is interesting.

I'm still not voting for Biden though :P

lol at saying trump's a moderate because he only dogwhistled to racists and refused to say anything about a policy.

thats such a bad take, vox.

I think Trump almost transcended any categorization of moderate/conservative. He was his own unique TV character entity. He ran and won as a rich celebrity alpha male.

I am not convinced that the racist stuff is why he got elected (not that it didn't appeal to some voters I'm sure). He won because he stood on stage, larger physically than the other candidates, and smacked them down with insults and schoolyard bully nicknames. They were all smarter than Trump but had no idea how to counter it. It worked. Trump was a showman and he knew that the public wanted a show of alpha-dog dominance, not policy. When asked about calling women pigs, he answered "only Rosie O'Donnell", to huge laughter from his supporters. That line probably helped propel him to the presidency. What that says about the electorate, I'm not sure. It's pretty depressing though.

He also boiled his campaign down to a single white-nostalgia motto, which may have been the most genius bit of political sloganeering ever created. MAGA was all he needed. No policies required. Were his policies moderate? Who knows. Did anyone who voted for him go to his web site to check out his policy positions, or could they even articulate what his positions were? They knew he wanted a wall, he talked a lot about veterans and bringing back manufacturing jobs, and he was rich and famous.

What you wrote seems about right to me. The thing is, even if it's also taking the wrong lesson from Trump to see him as a "moderate", Yglesias is still right that there's plenty of evidence that people seen as more moderate do a little bit better electorally, I think. Or maybe more aptly that the bulk of even dedicated partisans are not quite as ideologically polarized as activists (and people likely to be talking about politics a year out from the election on internet forums) would like?

Although I'd also guess candidate qualities apart from ideology or policy views matter a lot, maybe even more. That's the lesson from Trump, inline with what you wrote.

trump is an alpha male like pick up artists are alpha males.. it's all fake, but people like trump as an alpha because that means that when they whine and complain and stamp their feet that they can pretend they are "strong like trump".

maga was an amazing slogan with the white olds and religious folks, definitely. my Mom who never votes republican still always says she wishes things were like they were in the past. republicans are always good at messaging.

was on display during the kavanaugh thing. all the trumpers somehow thought kavanaugh looked "strong" and was "fighting back", while he was whining and spitting and saying people weren't being nice to him.

Trump said he is going to deport 15m people and build a wall. Dunno if I'd call that moderate.

i've asked before but didn't really get answers.

it seems to me there have been some massive arbs possible between predictit.com and normal offshore betting sites on democratic presidential candidate race.

and it seems like predictit.com has serious money bet on it, so it's not a matter of a huge arb that you can invest $500 ($50?) max on.

shorting yang on predictit.com was/is "free money" IF you can hold onto the position for an extended period....... not idea how margin req's work there. and i haven't though through that if you are shorting 14% yang you probably have to put up 100% of positive payoff.

most of my calls so far on the democratic race have been spot-on so far.. but i'm not that confident in any direction for biden and harris. can see both as strong winners, but both have some huge issues to deal with - biden justifying his path, harris = strong talk, but then wavers like crazy on specifics...

i also thinking shorting bernie is very +EV, but nothing like the "free money" of shorting.

one question about yang's policy: if every american can make $1000/month for doing nothing, how will be 50% of the economy get workers?

great comment, very interesting

do you think blacks think poor whites are holding them down? never really thought of that before. i'm thinking i have some mental block on this though.

a couple of americans i know who run lower-end medium-sized businesses say that their white/hispanic employees think the government panders to poor blacks but does nothing for them - poor whites and hispanics......... so i agree with the second part and the rest of your comment

The phenomenon is not unique to the USA and is actually even more distinctive in otherwise very homogenous (by American standards) societies.

There are a lot of explanations for it. I think an obvious one is nobody wants to believe he/she is at the bottom of the social ladder. By identifying a “lower” rung of the ladder, at least by some definitions, people can few better about themselves.

I am sure you guys have see more micro versions of this at work where the unproductive workers would find the most meaningless things, like being good as using the binding machine, to put an otherwise much more productive worker down, like for struggling with those stupid binding machines.

Race, skin colors , religion, and even culture are convenient and often easily identifiable and difficult to just hide/blend (you can’t opt out of your skin color) so discrimination along those lines, once rooted, is hard to get rid of.

But if you look at what’s happening in rest of the world, the need to discriminate against a demonized class is pretty much universal, sometimes along shockingly trivial lines.

It's incredible how effective it is on a macro level to take one subgroup of a group of people and give them marginally better treatment than the other subgroup of that same population. It's been used repeatedly through history by lots of different groups.

You saw it under slavery in the south with a very clear caste system separating house slaves from field slaves. The descendants of those two groups are STILL having it out with each other. And above the slaves there were 'poor white trash' (most of our ancestors!) who lived an incredibly fraught hand to mouth existence who at least could tell themselves that they were free and not an n-word.

The best of these systems allow people to ascend from one class to another (field slaves if very compliant could become house slaves, house slaves/skilled slaves could buy their freedom, poor whites could become rich whites) if they demonstrate a sufficient level of talent. Without those talent sinks you get talented people who feel trapped, and those people tend to do things like lead the revolts that the ruling class always lays awake at night worrying about.

Without an escape valve to let off that pressure from random talented people power structures usually implode pretty quickly actually. As soon as things get a little bit difficult (historically any kind of famine would do the trick) there's a very real chance the currently powerful end up dead and replaced by the talented people they prevented from rising... who become the new ruling class.

Divide and conquer really works basically.

looking at oddschecker.com, which aggregates odds from many sites,

kamala harris, 30%
elizabeth warren 20%
joe biden 16%
sanders, buttigieg 10% each.

approximate numbers. and all candidates will add up to more than 100%

predictit.com has KH falling 4% to 22%......... not sure what would cause that.

i do think a good strategy is to figure out what will be quite periods and play the biden recovery through that time... and there's always the chance if things get bad enough that biden gets the obama(s) endorsement.

i do have a question. is it still possible to have a brokered candidate? from inside or outside the race... i.e can't decide and support is spread amongst 4 candidates at the convention. then they'd the major figures would try to agree on one person and sell it to the other candidates and their followers..

obvious person EW?... or maybe amy klobucher?

Its true that uninformed moderate democrats will cross the for someone who says all of the things they want to hear, but republicans do never vote for moderate democrats because they will never make it through the primary unless they are opposed to republican wedge issues.