***Official Political Discussion Thread***

Pete got off light tonight
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And we have another 100-person stage debate in December
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My thoughts from tonight's debate


- yes, osh kosh bosh osh kosh bosh is absolutely correct, the best route that Kamala should have taken and stuck to is, "yep, I'm a barely left of center cop who will destroy Trump and make your health insurance more affordable"


- Amy Klobuchar is absolutely soul crushing. Hillary Clinton said that things will get better but be patient. Klobuchar says that thinks cannot ever really get better. Plus, three months of maternity leave. It's better than nothing but still pathetic.


- Warren is wrong. The housing crisis is caused by a demand problem, chiefly, the artificial demand caused by the finance sector which is able to use cheap money to outbid actual people in any particular metro area. The monetary policy makers were mostly correct but in the face of confederate fiscal policy makers and thus austerity, in congress, the money has flowed past public equities (the stock market), past bonds, past small business loans and into real estate speculation.


- At the viewing party that I attended, the most talked about moment was the questions that Buttigieg answered about his being mayor and his relationship with black folks in South Bend.

I said that his most honest answer was "as mayor, we don't care about the long-time residents of our town. All we care about is the tax base and having a cool, new shop to pose in front of as the cornerstone of the reelection campaign. As a result, long-time, working class residents were anathema to my goals. As mayor, we have no control over the whims of macro economic policy. All we can do is to attract capital and low income black people, without much formal education are counter to that goal. That is why I bulldozed working class black neighborhoods in hopes of making my town slightly more attractive to capital, especially to tech jobs. For every five low incomes blacks that I displace, I might get a guy making 200k working for a subsidiary of a company, that contracts with Amazon. Ultimately, I will be able to build a small plate, farm-to-table eatery and get a Whole Foods in my town. I can run on that and attract yet more tech capital."

Of Course, he can't say that so he went with the "eh, I'm gay, that's exactly the same as being black."


- Bernie, ya ain't Mexican. It's technically true that your father is an immigrant and his story and your story work well in other contexts but for the general audience, you're try to say that your experience is the same as undocumented Latinos. It is not.

- Tom Steyer. He is interesting because he reminds me of countless rich California guys whom I have met at fundraisers or weddings or other occasions where I have to interact with strangers. I'm always half drunk on mediocre wine and get introduced to guys like that. We'll chat a bit and politics comes up. I don't know them well enough to say that I am anarcho-communist so I'll say that I kinda like Bernie. They will proceed to say all the right things about climate and housing and California. It sounds good but you know that they do not want to have actual workers involved in resolving these crises of capitalism. For the sake of manners, I'll maintain an air of inquisitiveness but I know damn well that that person is a Burkian conservative, at best.

If you knew about politics but didn't know about the 2020 election and saw the debate, you would conclude that Steyer was the most left candidate in the race. He had good things to say but I'd still be very careful when considering him as your candidate.


- Tulsi is a joke and Kamala is a joke but there exchange reminded me of a long simmering question. With whom is it okay for the Dem coalition to speak?

I understand if you never want to engage with anyone who voted for Trump. I can totally see an argument for engaging with Clinton 2016 voters and non voters and building a winning coalition and never even speaking with Trump voters. Fair enough. The problem comes when centrists Dems' eyes get wide over the prospect of winning the votes of " well-educated moderates in the suburbs." At which point I have to ask, If a 45 year old women, who voted for Trump in 2016 and who lives in a household making 150k a year, is worth courting why not court the 21 year old guy, who works in a warehouse and makes 30k a year and who voted Trump in 2016? Why not talk to both? If if the former is a legitimate crossover vote to pursue but not the latter, why is the latter illegitimate?

Do we only speak to our existing coalition and try to evangelize non voters (which is a probably a winning strategy) or no we engage with and try to pick off parts of Trump's coalition? Let's pick something and stick with it. As long as libs try to cut a separate peace with rich housewives, leftists will try to convert misguided reddit boys.
 
- Warren is wrong. The housing crisis is caused by a demand problem, chiefly, the artificial demand caused by the finance sector which is able to use cheap money to outbid actual people in any particular metro area. The monetary policy makers were mostly correct but in the face of confederate fiscal policy makers and thus austerity, in congress, the money has flowed past public equities (the stock market), past bonds, past small business loans and into real estate speculation.

You're my guy Rex but this is wild wrong. It's def a supply problem. The Big cities that have artificially restricted supply have the most insane housing prices.

No amount of financial sector speculation is going to hold a candle San Francisco basically making it illegal to build appartment buildings or Washington DC dumb *** height of building act ect ect.

You can't look at these big as cities with booming economies and tell me they are building enough housing.


It's def a supply problem.
 
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