Jaicee said:
Jumpin said:
Not a bad lineup to be honest. While Biden is a bit of a conservative/moderate, he is still a left leaning one.
Now, I don't mean to rant, but:
I get a little surprised when I see Andrew Yang criticized as being a right-winger. This is clearly not the case as he is pushing for the most massive boost to low-income/no-income earners of anyone in US history. He's one of my favourites, probably 4th or 5th... I'll say tied for 4th with Castro.
I am a big supporter of Elizabeth Warren's no-more-corporate-bullshit approach - breaking up big tech would be healthy for the Western economy, and if Warren brings in the US Wealth-Tax then I can see EU countries following very shortly after. The big issue with wealth taxation in the past is that it is done in some countries but not others, and wealthy people can simply move their assets or accounts. I think an agreement across developed nations for a 2% Wealth tax would work wonders for public funding.
Bernie Sanders is my #2 pick, his policy positions are almost as good as Elizabeth Warren. What puts him behind her, for me, is that he tends to be very vague in what he is talking about, he lacks the precision of Elizabeth Warren. He's no more a socialist than Ron Paul is a libertarian. Bernie Sanders is a social democrat, just like Elizabeth Warren, which is a capitalist (and Ron Paul is/was a neoliberal). Normally, this wouldn't bother me at all, but people in this forum have actually tried to argue that he is a "market socialist" and have linked the wikipedia article - three problems with calling Bernie Sanders a market socialist: 1. Bernie Sanders has never called himself a market socialist, he has called himself a democratic socialist; 2. The core mechanic of market socialism still abolishes the capitalist stock market, which Bernie Sanders doesn't advocate; 3. Bernie Sanders favours big FDR-style social democratic government programs, which Market Socialism is against.
My third favourite is probably Cory Booker, he put a lot of people off recently with his support of nuclear power; but he was describing Thorium reactor technology (though he didn't use the word Thorium). Fusion reactors are also a potential for the future. But he is the healthiest seeming of all of the candidates, and so I trust his healthcare stance - he advocates local level healthcare improvements (which seems to be something the US is anemic on); healthy food, encouragement for exercise, pedestrian activities, etc... Since people have worried that donors giving to progressives will change their stances, Booker has proven otherwise in how he has voted against the interests of pharmaceutical corporations while also receiving donations from them. I don't think anyone is going to be corrupted by corporate donations, the problem with corporate donations is that they tend to heavily favour pro-corporate politicians, and that is why they should be banned: but playing the game (as Booker has done) and taking their money to work against them is something I support a lot more than the "refusal on principle" approach of Warren and Sanders (which I think is plain foolish).
I'll end my rant here.
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tsogud said:
What? How could you call him a social democrat and then say that one of the reasons he's not a market socialist is because he's never called himself a market socialist but a democratic socialist? If we're going by what he's called himself then he's a democratic socialist not a social democrat. If we're not going by what he's called himself then I guess some people could call him a market socialist because reasons just as you did when you stated he's a social democrat. I just find that very inconsistent on your part. Nevertheless, for me, I'll just go by what he self-identifies as, which is a democratic socialist.
How is Sanders more vague compared to Warren? I've followed both of them and have looked at both of their policy proposals and they both seem to have about the same amount of detail to me. Could you give me examples because I'm honestly not sure what you mean by that and would like to understand? Here's Sanders' issues page on his website and here's Warren's for quick reference.
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I think Jumpin is referring to the different ways that Sanders and Warren tend to talk about the issues and their ideas. At this point, both Warren and Sanders have a wide range of fairly clear policy prescriptions that they're running on (although one of those candidates has led the way in that regard).
Also, let's just settle this matter: no one running for president (at least on a major party ticket anyway), and for that matter no one in the U.S. Congress either, is actually a socialist. There is no candidate running (again, on a major party ticket anyway) who believes that the means of production should be social property in any way, shape, or form. The closest we come to this is support for increased unionization and Elizabeth Warren's proposal for some degree of worker co-ownership of major businesses in the style of how things currently work in Germany (which no one would rationally consider a socialist country).
People like AOC and Bernie Sanders can get away with branding themselves "socialists" and "revolutionaries" today only owing to how far to the right the center of political gravity has become on economic issues since the Reagan era. They are substantively just New Deal type economic reformers, NOT actual revolutionaries who aspire to abolish the profit system and replace production for exchange with production for use like I do. So let's just be clear that what characters like these are doing is called posturing. If they embraced real socialism, they'd be politically marginal (also like me) because the public writ large remains to be convinced of the merits thereof. These are all compromise candidates for me. Warren simply has the audacity to be intellectually honest.
Anyway, I find the progressives (Warren and Sanders) and Yang (who I regard as a kind of Democratic Party libertarian in the spirit of 2008 candidate Mike Gravel) to be easily the most human and least facile characters in this whole campaign. Everyone else is bought and paid for to one extent or another.
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