Obamacare does not have a public option and is not what I was talking about, while it may be better than what came before in some ways it's not by any means a good law it's just what Obama could get passed at the time.

Fwiw for me and my partner to have high tier private healthcare in Aus it's much cheaper for the two of us than the quoted amount from sigs just for him even pre Obamacare because with a public option people have the choice to cut the profiteering of big pharma out if they want a basic plan so the private companies have to offer decent value plans or no one would buy them.

And theres absolutely no reason to get private unless you need stuff like dental work glasses a chiropractor etc on a regular basis in Aus. The public option is so popular here that not even our fringe conservative parties campaign on repealing it because it's electoral suicide. Once it's implemented it be popular with the working and middle class at least so big pharma will fight it at all costs. Historically speaking I think Obama and Obamacare will be viewed as missed opportunities when it comes to healthcare and Lieberman will be viewed very unfavourably for nuking the public option.

Re Sanders backing Biden he did back Hillary as well fwiw and did campaign events for her

I think Sanders supporters are more bitter this time than last because it legitimately looked like he was going to win for a while this time that was never really the case in 2016 and that's why Biden can't take high turnout among leftists for granted if he doesn't pick a left leaning running mate he will definitely need to get some people admired on the left to act as campaign surrogates and if he doesn't that's a major mistake that drastically decreases his odds of turning out enough left leaning voters to get to the turnout number he needs to win

I think picking klobuchar for example over say warren or even Abrams or rice or Cortez masto or demings or someone who brings anything to the ticket will lower Biden's win percentage by at least 1 or 2 percent and possibly more. It'll be interesting to see how the line moves the day his VP pick is announced based on who it is

Re warren the issue is more the temporary loss of the senate if it's 50.50 until the special election can be called I wouldn't be concerned about a Republican winning ma unless Charlie Baker appoints himself to the senate and that's unlikely as the sitting governor, Martha Coakley ran a historically awful campaign in a Republican wave year in 2010. If the Dems just ran whoever doesn't win the primary out of Kennedy and markey they should win the senate seat pretty handily if warren becomes vp against any non Baker republican

Whew, that's, once again, a lot to digest Swoop.

Last election cycle, to what I could find out, 12% of Sanders supporters voted for Trump. According to a recent survey, 4% of Sanders supports say they intend to vote for Trump this time around.
This time around, some high level Sanders people have formed the so called "unity task forces" to support Biden but make sure their they get concessions from Biden. Make of it what you will, I think Biden will get more support than HC did. And, that should be the decisive factor, or at least a big factor, in Biden getting g elected or not.

Well, I'm going to try to stay out of the fray in the future because I'm not a politics expert and that would be the best way to avoid saying any false information.

And to close, no offence Swoop,(sorry) maybe you should also take a step back and think how you live in Australia and are maybe a little out of touch with American sentiments.

Well you convinced me. Clearly Biden should pick a man.

That's true, I spent a lot of time in America from 2009-2015 (mostly in Nevada and Florida which are purpleish states) but haven't since Trump was elected. That said, I do have a polsci degree and probably follow American politics more closely than 95-99% of Americans and regularly talk politics with American friends, and am an American citizen myself etc - but I openly admit I am somewhat in a bubble as both someone who has progressive leanings and mostly progressive-leaning friends (I do have a few American conservative friends but most are libertarian-right not MAGA Trump loving right) so my posts that are opinion based are going to be skewed by my personal opinions obviously. Some stuff like the public option working well and being in the economic interest of non rich people and being popular once enacted is just a demonstrable fact though, you can look at the data from dozens of other western countries.

I'm not going to bet based on personal opinions though, I very much know that the analysis says this could go either way (although Biden would be a favourite on polling if election day polling is the same as today) and i've said many times it will come down to turnout - whether Coronavirus can tank turnout or not is what will probably decide whether Trump is reelected (along with how well/badly the American economy is doing in November). I've said multiple times, sub 55% turnout and Trump is the favourite, 57%+ and Biden almost definitely wins. When I have a better idea about how engaged the electorate is in the latter stages of the campaign i'll be making some bets. I'd imagine in a vacuum turnout should be high due to Trump being polarising but corona scaring voters into staying home if it's still rampant in November and Biden being a poor candidate in some ways could both lead to that being incorrect obviously

Stuff like the Warren speculation is pure opinion but I would be shocked if she isn't the VP nominee 1 in 8 times; that's not based on any deep modelling it's just my personal opinion same as the dude who thinks Harris has no chance and so on.

The fight over absentee voting is going to play a decent role in deciding this election in swing states (as well as stuff like whether felons can vote easily in Florida, since they're disproportionately minorities and more likely to vote Dem etc) obviously allowing people to vote easily helps Democrats and making it harder to vote helps Republicans and the Republican voter suppression effort will be out in force. There's no reason to be loading up either side on to win the Presidency now especially until we have a better idea as to whether Corona will impact turnout or the pandemic will be completely behind us in November and it's highly unlikely that we won't be able to get -1xx on our preferred side much much closer to the election with much more certain information at that point.

having a polisci degree is irrelevant lol

smart people don't have polisci degrees nor would have applied for one..

you keep bringing it up like it somehow validates your points

you think travelling around the world talking to a few people 10 years ago makes you an expert on how the world views the US

wisdom is supposed to come with age yet we have you and neepeeme who are 50+ constantly posting stupid points

once again proving that white people are the only ones who lack national pride

you can't even get a citizenship in china as a white person nor buy a house yet we got boomers like you ruining the western world

Swoop, all points well taken. And maybe I didn't express myself correctly.
I didn't mean you don't have a right to an opinion on American politics and that you should not voice that opinion. And It seems you understood it.

It seems you are misunderstanding what the individual mandate under Obamacare is. The law was originally passed to make it mandatory for everyone to get insurance. This way, the healthy, or in other words, everyone would cary insurance, cutting the premium costs for everyone. But some states,(red states), decided not to enforce it. It forced insurance companies to raise the premium of the insured. I guess one can make an argument that they did this to purposely make premiums more expensive, which I think is the case, or they did it out of conservative principles. In any case, it's one of the reasons why premiums went so high. Let's not forget, the affordable care act was passed into law. So the law was not follo. Image, when I was growing up, car insurance was an option in this country. I distinctly remember once getting into an accident and the other person at fault didn't have insurance. Then what do you do? Not all, but a lot of Conservative principles are simply outdaed. Imagine we all live like the Amish. It wouldn't have taken Russia long to move in with their tanks while we tried to fend them off with our horse buggies! Oops, I'm getting political again

I don't think you're near as old as me, right? And being patriotic means loving your country. And loving your country means loving the people that live in it. Am I right? I'm very patriotic and I love this country very much. But it seems some people are irreversibly brainwashed and will never comprehend certain things, so why try?

I'm well aware my degree is worthless in the real world, and I obviously make a lot more money sports betting than I could using my degree in any fashion because yes, it's a pretty useless degree unless u want a 50-80k a year desk job which I worked out pretty quickly that I didn't.

FWIW I don't support Obamacare as a 'good' healthcare option by any means for what it's worth, any 'good' healthcare system needs to have a not for profit taxpayer subsidized public option to force private insurance providers to provide value to compete. You can make a case for a mixed system like in Australia (which I like) or for single payer but no fully private/for profit system leads to desirable outcomes for citizens. America's healthcare system is the envy of no one in the western world for a reason. There are a ton of things America does very well. The healthcare system is not one of them, not under Trump, not under Obama and not under any of the previous presidents who didn't implement a public option either.

@neepee i'm not sure what you mean by not understanding Obamacare, I know what Obamacare is, I know how the mandate to purchase private insurance works and it's not a well designed law, nobody should be forced to purchase private health insurance. It would have worked a lot better if Lieberman and co didn't strip out the public option that Obama initially intended for it to include. If private insurance has to compete with a not for profit public option, its plans have to be decent value or people will choose to go with the public option. That's the whole point of a public option, to make sure everyone has basic taxpayer funded insurance if they need it and to force private companies to offer plans that actually provide value to consumers in order for them to continue to gain their business - a mandate that people have to purchase private insurance with no other option is obviously stupid and leads to the ridiculous healthcare costs the American system has today through all of the price gouging etc where drugs that cost a dollar in India and ten dollars in Australia cost a thousand dollars in America and so on.

@lvr, no one cares what you have to say about anything because all of your posts are low content garbage and your attitude on 2p2 just makes you out to be this shitty bitter person who complains about everyone and everything and adding nothing of value to any discussion. You have made zero quality posts on this forum and your posts read like if what i'd imagine Thremp's posts would be if his IQ was 50 points lower and his bank account was seven figures lighter.

I also have no idea where anyone got the idea that i'm 50+ from when my account is linked to my real world identity through a pretty simple google search of my username and i've literally posted my age (currently 34 if it matters) many times on twoplustwo.

Make America Great Again?

Isn't it weird Trump's trying to make this 'Transition to Greatness' slogan happen when his original slogan was MAGA and re-election was supposed to be KAG

First off, transition? Implies the incumbent loses. Secondly, TO greatness implying he hasn't yet made america great again. Seems really off brand for him. As much as I dislike Trump, the man is excellent at branding, that's one of the only things he actually does do well normally and this one seems like a massive miss.

It won't matter in the slightest, nobody's going to vote for or against Trump because of his campaign slogan but I thought for sure he was going to go with 'Keep America Great'

Swoop, I concede, the American health care system is flawed. I wasn't arguing that it is perfect. I want to also say that what works in one country won't necessarily work in another. You also raise a good point about no one should be forced to pay for something they don't want. I lived in Germany and there , health insurance is tied to retirement. So I'm well aware of how things work in other countries. Anyways, that's all I'll say on this topic.

Have you been liberal your whole life?

it's fairly evident why he is doing this in corona time..

Bernie for VP at 100 to 1 let’s gooooooo

YOLO

Can't imagine Sanders being the VP in any universe when Biden basically spent the latter part of the primary running directly against him and has said he'll nominate a woman as VP and if he was going to go down the progressive route he has a better relationship with Warren who serves the same constituency as Sanders but is also a woman, Biden would look pretty ridiculous if he pledged to pick a female VP then didn't

Obv it's a mega long shot bet regardless, but just an FYI he's 350-1 on betfair for VP if you have access to the exchange

When Harris is hanging around as a clear fav for this long I have to wonder if the market knows something we don't; granted she's still in the +190 range

I'll try to answer this briefly because I as much as anyone here, if not more than anyone, I have mixed personal politics where they frankly don't belong.

I guess? I consider myself more a moderate liberal. But what does it matter?
It's all the same thing. At the end of the day we all want more or less the same things. A functional government and a prosperous country. We simply have different ideas of how to go about it.
Competition is good. It is no way possible and in no way preferable for all people to think alike.
Let's all keep in mind also, that where consecutive policies are appropriate in one state, aren't necessarily the best for another. Each state is unique And semi independent of each other. One of the unique differences of America from other countries.
And no, liberals aren't communists just like conservatives aren't Nazis.
I encourage anyone here who hasn't already, to watch the Netflix series "The Family" . It's an eye opener. And scary.

lol, I just wrote out a long reply to someone only to realise it was in response to a question from page 1 of the thread because my browser opened the wrong page.

Off topic but we have some real sport out of Australia starting today in just under 3 hours NRL is back if anyone misses various codes of full contact football.

Feels like regardless of the truth of the situation Klob took a hit today failing to prosecute cops who kill people on duty. There was an article about her failing to prosecute the guy from today but after further googling she may have already been in the Senate I haven't done the research but it's certainly not a positive for her

Klob would be the one of the worst VP picks imo

Are they? In 2016 he was supposed to have been robbed of the win by pledged superdelegates putting their thumbs on the scale and changing the narrative, whereas this time round isn't he perceived to have been beaten by Biden fair and square?

I'm just going by the hardcore Sanders supporters I know. One of my Berniebro friends has even bought into the Biden is definitely a rapist narrative and afaik hasn't backed down from it. It's clearly just a coincidence that she structured her story to not have specific dates or even ranges of dates so Biden could prove he was elsewhere and also she has weird shady ties to Russia and wrote weird stuff about how much she loves Putin, and also now she's lied under oath about her degree and all that

I can't say with any certainty that she's lying, but if you weight the probability she's far less credible than Carroll for example.

In 2016 he didn't like Clinton but clearly preferred her to Trump. This time he's in the 'burn it all down America is ****ed' crowd after Bernie lost. That said he's super fringe left, in that i'm fairly left leaning (i'm around where Warren/Yang are on most issues) and he thinks of me as a conservative

I do think most of Bernie's supporters will vote for Biden not because they like him but because they hate Trump, but some will stay home. That can still be said of few remaining Never Trump Republicans though, no one's ever a perfect candidate to turn out their whole party's base.

If Biden reaches out to the progressives without going crazy left on any issues he should still be fine to turn out most of the progressive left, but picking someone even more moderate than he is probably isn't the way to go, or if he does it needs to boost him elsewhere either winning a swing state or boosting black/hispanic turnout.

He lost 2016 even if you don't count superdelegates. Maybe seeing Clinton's lead in the media with superdelegates included discouraged some from voting, but it's very questionable that it would have swayed the primary. Donna Brazile leaking information to Clinton about debate questions was something Berniebros could have fulminated against, but I don't remember how big an issue that was.

But in 2020, I'd say Berniebros have even more reason to be disaffected with the DNC. The big issue this time is that Warren stayed in long enough to screw Bernie by splitting votes with him, and Buttjug and other moderate candidates who still had some equity withdrew early so that the lion's share of their delegates would go to Biden, whom they then endorsed. It does seem likely there was some shenanigans going on, and I can understand Bernierubes being pissed and refusing to vote.

Yeah, this is extremely bad timing for Klobuchar. https://theweek.com/speedreads/91692...uct-complaints
Makes Harris a lot more likely.

Cortez-Masto announces he doesn't want VP slot so she's out

Klob's odds took a huge hit, if i'd been fast coulda laid at 6.8 to back at 9.x today or w/e and make some free money but didn't bother it wasn't really liquid enough anyway on Betfair

I zoned out for a while and I still have a couple hundred locked up in biden winning NY, CT & KY primaries on predicit. It looks like I can sell for between $0.95 and $.98. Would you all sell my shares and move on at this point?

Depends on the utility of the money if you want to turn it over on other bets sure it if you think there's a chance any states cancel their primary but after the ny primary got cancelled then uncancelled after the lawsuit seems unlikely plus I guess there's a super slim risk Biden dies before the primaries or whatever I guess but that's under 1 percent

Basically it depends if you could make more Ev turning the money over in other spots or if it's literally going to sit around unused if the former take the win now if the latter just see it out

Klob keeps drifting she's done Biden can't take the hit from black voters by picking a vp linked to Minnesota non prosecutions of bad police officers

Big demings steam today she's 2nd fav now to Harris minor Abrams steam too seems like it'll be Harris a lot but if not that demings and warren are a clear second tier now by themselves

Also Biden's finally a fav over trump in h2h markets Betfair