And They're Off! The Democratic Candidates for 2020

[JBS]

Bernie's plan: nobody pays more than $200 / years for drugs.
Biden's plan: nobody pays more than $199 / years for drugs? Sorry I don't believe.

Biden would reform the patent and regulatory process so Big Pharma would not be able monopolize and charge high prices.
Bernie wouldn't, meaning Big Pharma would retain its profits.

And I've told you before, Bernie's promises about no charge doctor visits, no premiums or deductibles, low cap on drug payments are a fantasy. Stop believing them. If something like Berniecare ever became law, it would have none of that. That's the political reality called the US Congress.

[71 dB]

Biden would reform the patent and regulatory process so Big Pharma would not be able monopolize and charge high prices.
Bernie wouldn't, meaning Big Pharma would retain its profits.

And I've told you before, Bernie's promises about no charge doctor visits, no premiums or deductibles, low cap on drug payments are a fantasy. Stop believing them. If something like Berniecare ever became law, it would have none of that. That's the political reality called the US Congress.

It is becoming irrelevant what Bernie promises as he is losing the primary. If Biden really can reduce drug prices I give credit to him, but not before he actually does it.

https://www.politico.com/newsletters/prescription-pulse/2020/03/10/biden-and-sanders-far-apart-on-drug-pricing-488528

"While Sanders has been one of the most prominent voices in Congress on drug prices, leading key investigations, Biden notably punted on addressing drug pricing in his last signature health project as vice president — his cancer moon shot program. The initial head of the moon shot was an ex-Pfizer employee. Biden also had a record of fighting countries that attempted to break U.S. patents on expensive drugs while he was VP."

[Karl Henning]

How is this rubbish? Kyle Kulinski is a lefty, a progressive. Joe Biden is not. We know this from his campaign rethoric and political history. There's nothing lefty or progressive about it. So, of course Kyle Kulinski wants some assurance of AT LEAST some progressiveness of his presidency and picking a progressive VP would be that. So, this is not rubbish. It is EXTREMELY logical!

Tell me how are lefties suppose to express their democratic will if voting third parties means wasting your vote and the other option is to vote for a corporate centrist because if you don't, Trump/Republicans win? The system is so sick and rigged the lefties have no fucking choice!!

The establishment destroyed the progressives again. It means WAR! A large part of the population has had it. It's WAR!

Thanks for conceding that defeating Trump is not the rabid Bernsters' top priority.

[Madiel]

Rubbish. Don't project your views on other people. Kyle Kulinski has got over 800.000 subscribers on Youtube. Even if only 10 % of these cared about these outcomes it's 80.000+ people and if you care to subscribe to a Youtube channel you are likely to take seriously the content of the said channel.

Hopefully you allow a discount for all his non-American subscribers, whose voting intentions are irrelevant.

[71 dB]

Thanks for conceding that defeating Trump is not the rabid Bernsters' top priority.

Defeating Trump is very important, but if you replace Trump with someone almost as bad you don't gain much, do you? Perhaps to you it's important that the president is "presidential" and doesn't do mean tweets. For someone like Kyle Kulinski mean tweets mean nothing. They are just mean tweets. Medicare for all is important because people are DYING for the lack of it) and Biden said he'd VETO medicare for all! So, Biden and Trump are the same in regards of healthcare. Biden might be marginally better, but the gain replacing Trump with Biden is small for the left and voting for Biden means voting for someone who fights zero things important for the left. In 2016 Kyle Kulinski voted for Jill Stein in safe state, but otherwise he would have voted for Hillary. Making demands to Biden restores political power to the left. It can't be so that you earn votes just being a little better than one of the worst presidents ever.

[71 dB]

Hopefully you allow a discount for all his non-American subscribers, whose voting intentions are irrelevant.

Huh?

This is one of the weirdest sentences I have read in my life. Youtube subscribtions are free so there's not much discount to give and even if there was, it's not me who allows them, because I'm not Kyle Kulinski's secretary or accountant.  Anyone can donate money, say $5/month to him on Patrion to support lefty independent media, but that has nothing to do one's voting intentions. irrelevant or not... ...so sorry if your post made my head spin.

[Madiel]

Sigh.

A. Discount. On. The. Number. Of. Subscribers!!

Okay? Seriously, it shouldn't be hard to understand. You're one of those subscribers. How you would vote is fucking irrelevant. 800,000 subscribers does not translate to 800,000 prospective voters. Only the subscribers who are registered American votes are relevant. And you, the person who is making a song and dance about how this VP pick would work, aren't even one of them.

[71 dB]

Sigh.

A. Discount. On. The. Number. Of. Subscribers!!

Okay? Seriously, it shouldn't be hard to understand. You're one of those subscribers. How you would vote is fucking irrelevant. 800,000 subscribers does not translate to 800,000 prospective voters. Only the subscribers who are registered American votes are relevant. And you, the person who is making a song and dance about how this VP pick would work, aren't even one of them.

Ok, thanks for clearing this up.

Shocker: I am NOT a subscriber of Kyle Kulinski! 
I don't know for sure, but I think most of the 800.000 are Americans and not everyone who watches his videos subscribe. His viewership is about the same size as MSNBC.

[JBS]

Defeating Trump is very important, but if you replace Trump with someone almost as bad you don't gain much, do you? Perhaps to you it's important that the president is "presidential" and doesn't do mean tweets. For someone like Kyle Kulinski mean tweets mean nothing. They are just mean tweets. Medicare for all is important because people are DYING for the lack of it) and Biden said he'd VETO medicare for all! So, Biden and Trump are the same in regards of healthcare. Biden might be marginally better, but the gain replacing Trump with Biden is small for the left and voting for Biden means voting for someone who fights zero things important for the left. In 2016 Kyle Kulinski voted for Jill Stein in safe state, but otherwise he would have voted for Hillary. Making demands to Biden restores political power to the left. It can't be so that you earn votes just being a little better than one of the worst presidents ever.

People die because of lack of health care. MfA is not the only way to solve that problem. It is, however, perhaps the worst, by degrading everyone else's health care.

If Kulinski really thinks there are only superficial differences between Trump and Biden, then Kulinski is an idiot.  Have you read Biden's platform?

[Karl Henning]

Ok, thanks for clearing this up.

Shocker: I am NOT a subscriber of Kyle Kulinski! 
I don't know for sure, but I think most of the 800.000 are Americans

And you base thus speculation upon what?

[71 dB]

And you base thus speculation upon what?

It's a guess. So is Madiel's "The number of people who will care about either of these outcomes is approximately 3."

[71 dB]

If Kulinski really thinks there are only superficial differences between Trump and Biden, then Kulinski is an idiot.  Have you read Biden's platform?

You are naive yourself if you think Biden is more than superficially better than Trump. I have not read Biden's platform, because Biden's history, campaign rethoric and where he got the money tells me enough what kind of politician he is: A centrist corporate. He is interested of serving the 1 %. He is not interested of serving the regular people. He said to his donors "Don't worry, nothing will fundamentally change." to give the peace of mind. Biden's plans to improve the healthcare system leaves 10 million people uninsured. Sure, that is an improvement upon the system as it is, but 10 million people is a lot. People are sick an tired of incrementalism. The US should finally join the rest of the World and quarantee healthcare to everyone. A lot of people voted for him because they want rid of Trump and the corporate media keeps saying he is the most electable (not true). Also, people aren't aware well of Biden's questionable record because the corporate media keeps silent about negative things. People have a rosy mental picture of Biden, the VP of Obama. Whatever positive there is on Biden's platform, it's clear most of it is lies and Biden won't keep those promises.

Had Biden won the primary fair and square, the progressives would have it easier to support him in the general as a part of democratic process, but the way the nomination was again stolen from Bernie makes all of this undemocratic and progressives who are interested of REAL democracy have a hard time to vote for Biden.

[Karl Henning]

yada yada

Not going even to try unpacking that deep pile of manure, as you are irredeemably blinkered, and insist on making yourself ridiculous by posing as a Finnish "expert" supposedly laying the truth on us American voters.

Hey, if that's your idea of a large Sunday, knock your pretentious little self out!

[JBS]

You are naive yourself if you think Biden is more than superficially better than Trump. I have not read Biden's platform, because Biden's history, campaign rethoric and where he got the money tells me enough what kind of politician he is: A centrist corporate. He is interested of serving the 1 %. He is not interested of serving the regular people. He said to his donors "Don't worry, nothing will fundamentally change." to give the peace of mind. Biden's plans to improve the healthcare system leaves 10 million people uninsured. Sure, that is an improvement upon the system as it is, but 10 million people is a lot. People are sick an tired of incrementalism. The US should finally join the rest of the World and quarantee healthcare to everyone. A lot of people voted for him because they want rid of Trump and the corporate media keeps saying he is the most electable (not true). Also, people aren't aware well of Biden's questionable record because the corporate media keeps silent about negative things. People have a rosy mental picture of Biden, the VP of Obama. Whatever positive there is on Biden's platform, it's clear most of it is lies and Biden won't keep those promises.

Had Biden won the primary fair and square, the progressives would have it easier to support him in the general as a part of democratic process, but the way the nomination was again stolen from Bernie makes all of this undemocratic and progressives who are interested of REAL democracy have a hard time to vote for Biden.

More people voted for Biden than Bernie, and they did so because his ideas are what most Americans think of as sensible, unlike Bernie. So he is inherently more electable.

Also, Biden doesn't have a habit of saying nice things about Communist dictators. Bernie does, and doesn't have enough brains to realize that's not a good thing in the eyes of most Americans.

So stop saying Bernie had the nomination stolen from him. About half the Democrats who voted thought Biden was better, and over a third if the rest thought someone else was better thsn Bernie.

Pretty much everything you think you know about Biden is wrong. Stop thinking you are getting facts from Kulinski. What you are getting from him is propaganda dedicated to promoting an agenda less than 1 in 5 Americans support.  Come to terms with that, and you will be much better off.

As it is, COVID19 will decide this election, not any political agenda. If Trump's administration does a lousy job of handling it, and the economy is not recovering, Trump will lose. If his administration does at least a mediocre job handling the virus, and the economy is recovering, Trump will be re-elected.

[71 dB]

More people voted for Biden than Bernie, and they did so because his ideas are what most Americans think of as sensible, unlike Bernie. So he is inherently more electable.

Are you sure? Why did Biden do so poorly in the early States? Why was Buttigieg so "electable" in the beginning? Is it pure coinsidence the States where the primaries/caucuses where held before "bloody Monday" happenened to be anti-Biden? No, it's about how a lot of people vote: The narratives of corporate media has it's influence and Biden's big success (+Buttigieg's failure +plus the fact that Bernie was winning in the multi-candidate race) in South Carolina made the establishment make the move of removing other corporate candidates of the race and go behind Biden. That was poison to Bernie, because a lot of supporters of these candidates went to support Biden. Not because they agree with Biden's policies more, but because the corporate media has touted for a year how Biden is the most electable. The establishment had the problem of knowing which corporate candidate can stop Bernie so they kept them in the race until "bloody Monday", but they had to do something because Bernie was in a trajectory to run away and have at least the majority of delegates (at that time the discussion in the media was if Bernie can be granted the nomination with only the majority but not plurality of delegates. I think the establishment was scared the people will get on the streets in rage if they do that so they needed to stop Bernie from getting even the majority of votes and the answer was having only one corporate candidate against Bernie. It works and now Bernie is about 300 delegates behind Biden needing a miracle to win). This was never about stopping Trump for being re-elected. This was about stopping Bernie. The top 1 % is just fine with Trump. All they have to do is to tolerate his mean Tweets and the fact that Trump makes the US a laughing stock internationally. Bernie on the other hand is a treat to them because Bernie would undo the oligarchy so that the top 1 % doesn't have all the power and almost all the money in the society. That's why for the establishment stopping Bernie is much more important than preventing Trump's re-election. Otherwise they wouldn't want to sent Biden who clearly suffers from cognitive decline against Trump. Doesn't matter, as long as Bernie doesn't get to the White House to serve the 99 %.

Also, Biden doesn't have a habit of saying nice things about Communist dictators. Bernie does, and doesn't have enough brains to realize that's not a good thing in the eyes of most Americans.

Biden says other things, but the corporate media keeps silent about them. Bernie didn't say anything different than Obama did about Cuba, but the corporate media want to make it look bad for Bernie. All Bernie said is the truth. Cuba DOES HAVE very good healthcare system and they have very high literacy. Those are facts, not praise of communist dictators. Dictators tend to do also good things when possible to stay in power, but that of course doesn't mean they aren't dictators doing also horrible things. The left agrees with you in that Bernie should be more careful of what he says, because many Americans are so simple-minded politically, but Bernie is a very honest man and says how it is. That's one of the reasons he deserves to be the president.

So stop saying Bernie had the nomination stolen from him. About half the Democrats who voted thought Biden was better, and over a third if the rest thought someone else was better thsn Bernie.

It is "stolen" because:

- there are weird things happening with the vote counts starting from Iowa.
- possible voter suppression to harm Bernie
- the utterly biased corporate media against Bernie

Even with all the negativity, lies and smears in the corporate media and vote counting weirdness Bernie was winning in the beginning. Then the establishment came up with the masterplan to stop Benie and it works. Just imagine if the coverage of Bernie in the corporate media was fair. Bernie would won the nomination with a landslide.

I won't stop saying these things because this is the truth whether you understand it or not.

Pretty much everything you think you know about Biden is wrong. Stop thinking you are getting facts from Kulinski. What you are getting from him is propaganda dedicated to promoting an agenda less than 1 in 5 Americans support.  Come to terms with that, and you will be much better off.

Bernie's agenda is supported by the majority of Americans and that's with the biased corporate media. That's not surprising, because Bernie's agenda benefits about 99 % the population. In a real democracy a candidate like Bernie would win elections in a landslide, but then again in a democracy there would be less need for a candidate like Bernie, because people already had universal healthcare and other "nice" things.

As it is, COVID19 will decide this election, not any political agenda. If Trump's administration does a lousy job of handling it, and the economy is not recovering, Trump will lose. If his administration does at least a mediocre job handling the virus, and the economy is recovering, Trump will be re-elected.

Have you compared Biden and Bernie in regards of what they are doing for the crises? Bernie is doing daily streams while Biden is "hiding" telling excuses like "my house doesn't have proper lighting".

[71 dB]

Not going even to try unpacking that deep pile of manure, as you are irredeemably blinkered, and insist on making yourself ridiculous by posing as a Finnish "expert" supposedly laying the truth on us American voters.

Hey, if that's your idea of a large Sunday, knock your pretentious little self out!

You are making it really difficult for me to respect you Karl. Do you think it's respectful to quote someone with "yada yada..."? I was hoping things get better between you and me when you kindly apologized me recently, but this doesn't look like things are improving. I'm not changing my opinions without a good reason, but I can drop out being disrespectful and if you read my recent posts with a neutral mind I'm sure you see I am trying.

Sorry, but you sound more and more like Todd each day. You are apparently joining his "people of other countries know nothing" club. What I say doesn't take an "expert"*. It takes the realization of how the US is a democracy on paper, but an oligarchy in practice and the corporate media is there to maintain the status quo that benefits the top 1 %. As an "outsider" it didn't take long for me to see this when I started to follow US politics more closely and got information from "all sides" to form the big picture. I haven't been "brainwashed" by MSNBC, CNN, FOX NEWS all my life. As someone living in a social democratic Nordic country I know how silly the claims of corporate media are. I also see how screwed Americans are. These are the benefits of being an "outsider." On MSNBC, the so called "lefty" channel you can hear people saying "Bernie makes my skin crawl". In Finland that would be a huge scandal. That's not to say media in Finland isn't biased, of course it is, but not even close to the level of what it's in the US. For me the black and white nature of the US politics is pretty easy to follow when I have followed the shades of gray of Finnish politics for decades, about 35 years.

*However if you want an American expert, how about Noam Chomsky? What he says doesn't differ much from what I say.

[JBS]

You are making it really difficult for me to respect you Karl. Do you think it's respectful to quote someone with "yada yada..."? I was hoping things get better between you and me when you kindly apologized me recently, but this doesn't look like things are improving. I'm not changing my opinions without a good reason, but I can drop out being disrespectful and if you read my recent posts with a neutral mind I'm sure you see I am trying.

Sorry, but you sound more and more like Todd each day. You are apparently joining his "people of other countries know nothing" club. What I say doesn't take an "expert"*. It takes the realization of how the US is a democracy on paper, but an oligarchy in practice and the corporate media is there to maintain the status quo that benefits the top 1 %. As an "outsider" it didn't take long for me to see this when I started to follow US politics more closely and got information from "all sides" to form the big picture. I haven't been "brainwashed" by MSNBC, CNN, FOX NEWS all my life. As someone living in a social democratic Nordic country I know how silly the claims of corporate media are. I also see how screwed Americans are. These are the benefits of being an "outsider." On MSNBC, the so called "lefty" channel you can hear people saying "Bernie makes my skin crawl". In Finland that would be a huge scandal. That's not to say media in Finland isn't biased, of course it is, but not even close to the level of what it's in the US. For me the black and white nature of the US politics is pretty easy to follow when I have followed the shades of gray of Finnish politics for decades, about 35 years.

*However if you want an American expert, how about Noam Chomsky? What he says doesn't differ much from what I say.

This, and your answer to me, deserve the term "yada yada."
Your analysis of American politics is almost totally incorrect. Your leftist views have warped your understanding of the US in ways that render it useless. They also keep you from understanding that Bernie's ideas are not the only possible solution to our problems, that often they are not the best solution,   and sometimes end up making things worse.
If you went and looked, there's an elite in Finland that controls things, meaning Finland is just as oligarchic as we are.

The idea that Noam Chomsky is an expert on anything other than linguistics is laughable. (And, given the progress of linguistics since he published anything notable in that field, he probably doesn't rate as an expert in that anymore.) He's just another quasiMarxist loudmouth.

[JBS]

Have you compared Biden and Bernie in regards of what they are doing for the crises? Bernie is doing daily streams while Biden is "hiding" telling excuses like "my house doesn't have proper lighting".

Because of COVID19, no one is paying attention to the Democratic race. Bernie is wasting his time and resources.  Biden is not, which shows he's smarter than Bernie.

[71 dB]

Bernie Sanders wins Democrats Abroad Primary:

Sanders 57.9 % = 9 delegates
Biden 22.7 % = 4 delegates

This doesn't change the race of course, but it's nice nevertheless... 

[Karl Henning]

Could Biden's Weakness With Young Voters Hurt Him In The General Election?