It amazes me how slowly the tales of his centrism are spreading through the progressive rank and file. We're narrowly avoiding another Obama situation here. Obama is probably to his left actually.

Of course, the real difficulty to avoid would seem to be a Biden candidacy. Simply by being the former VP he has stolen all the air in the room of the centrist wing, suffocating the Hickenloopers, Delaneys, and Ryans of the world and taking all of the centrist vote while the progressives fight for Bernie's scraps and prevent him or any of them from standing a chance against Biden.

Thanks for that link, was pretty helpful.

And seriously, charter schools closing in the middle of the school year? Couldn't the state take over running that school at least until the rest of the school year?

Also, schools without classrooms? Seriously what is the board of education doing? Shouldn't they inspect the buildings first before even being allowed to operate?

While I'm certainly no friend of that charter school system, It seems to me like mishandlings at higher levels seem to be the much bigger issue in my opinion. Get more regulation into that system and that would alleviate at least some of the problems, not just at charter schools, but in all schools in general throughout the country.

Yeah, with Buttigeig and Yang as the 2 spanners, since both seem to rise in the polls. Buttigieg in the national ones while Yang is starting to make good impressions in some states.

Indeed, our whole education system has myriad problems, and a lot of it starts from the top. However a lot also starts from other areas, like lack of funding, misappropriation of funding, unequal funding to certain school districts over others, poor pay for teachers failing to attract good teaching talent, and other problems, some very complex and systemic (a school in a poor area may have more dropouts, poorer student performance if students are trying to work to help their families, which isn't the school's fault per se, for instance). Charter schools, when they seem to work well, often only work well because a ton of money is thrown at them and they often select only the students most likely to succeed (some are by lottery, sure, but don't believe anyone who says they all are), sidestepping some of the problems other schools face. For example, with all that extra money, they often get the best teachers because they're willing to pay for talent. If the entire school system were willing to pay for talent, you wouldn't have all the best teachers at one school. The charter school didn't solve the problem, it merely sidestepped it. It's not something you could solve with more charter schools. As John Oliver notes, while the schools can call themselves not-for-profits, often they're connected to a for profit business that siphons a bunch of taxpayer money from the school and makes education more expensive than it needs to be. They get more public funding because of their better track record, which just goes into the pockets of the profiteers at the top, while the rest of the school system suffers. Education should not under any circumstances be a for profit business. It should be an entirely non-profit societal institution.

As for Yang and Buttigieg, I don't see them as straddling the two wings, really. Following the polls, it seems they rise as Bernie is slowly chipped away from, and as a Bernie fan, they're in my top 5 after Bernie and Warren, so there's definitely a lot of appeal to Bernie fans. Most of their poll rises seem to come from Bernie's numbers falling slightly, as well as undecideds coming to them, and in Yang's case, former Trump fans even, particularly the younger former Trump fans. Biden hasn't suffered much, though he seems to have a bit of a ceiling in the mid-30s thus far, as he drains what little is left of the centrist wing from the other hapless centrist contenders.

I didn't know the circus was in town. Can't wait to watch!!!

warned -pi-guy

In Luxembourg we have both private and public schools. However, both have the exact same programm, are under the exact same regulations, have the exact same requirements for teachers, buildings, equipment, funds... The main differences are extra private teaching is a possibility in the private schools, as is staying in a dorm (due to the relatively small distances in Luxembourg, public schools (apart from the university) don't need dorms, everyone just goes home after school. This is mostly used when the parents are traveling for work and can't take care of their kids due to that).

As such, they work in the same manner as private healthcare here: The public system gives a high baseline, and private entities can thrive if they add meaningful stuff on top of it.

That seems pretty reasonable. Private healthcare has done the same thing as private education here, allow certain people access to incredible luxury while denying others what should be basic rights.

Yeah, and I know none of you is a politician (well, I think), but this would be an idea at how to not alienate those who also want private schools/healthcare/whatever to thrive beside public institutions or at least as an option:

Set a high baseline of standards for everyone and tell the companies that if they want to stay in market, you need to one-up these standards.

And I think that should work with pretty much everything, even when something gets privatized. Privatizing the water supply for instance wouldn't have been so disastrous if they had set high standards that had needed to be followed else the contract would be automatically terminated. Of course, those might have shooed out the buyers as then there wouldn't have been much of a way to profit from it anymore...

It should be that way especially when something is privatized. With health insurance however, I'd prefer that with a national universal program like Medicare that all other comparable products be outlawed. The reason being that the strength of such a system comes from creating a monopsony, all the American people buying healthcare as one, thus giving maximum bargaining power to the people. In general, I'm skeptical of the very concept of health insurance. Health care is a real service, its supplies are real products. For-profit health insurance is not a service, it is rent seeking. A gatekeeper on services, nothing more than a worthless, unnecessary middleman, a burden on the system. To allow such a parasite to gatekeep a basic human right like healthcare is immoral. If there are luxury services beyond what a comprehensive healthcare program would provide to all, and a significant enough group of people have the means to buy those services so as to support a market outside of the basic services guaranteed by the government, but was not so affordable that insurance wasn't required, then and only then would I allow for private health insurance. With education and other public goods I can see the system you suggest here working, and indeed even with healthcare such a system might work (see the UK's system) but with health insurance, I have stronger opinions. Private health insurance may sometimes be feasible and affordable when done correctly, but I nonetheless consider it fundamentally wrong, and only tolerated by society because it has become normalized.

I see where you're coming from with that.

I should have explained that all medicine is still bought by the healthcare administration and that the private healthcare insurers don't have any say there. They really can only give add-ons, like private rooms instead of shared ones or an extended maternity leave, and cover things the national healthcare doesn't cover or not fully cover (for instance, dental and eye prescriptions are only partially covered here. The glasses are covered, but not the frame, and in case of a denture costs are only covered up to 80% dependent on if you visited your dentists on regular occasions). As such, they're really mostly just a luxury for those who want to be pampered, but not anywhere near a real necessity.

Just wanted to add the wikipedia page with the official positions of each candidate in the race (plus Biden), which is pretty interesting to see where each one stands for.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_positions_of_the_2020_Democratic_Party_presidential_primary_candidates

While I expected that Bernie would be my best fit, I didn't expect Gravel coming in second before Tulsi (though both Tulsi and Gravel are almost the same at each issue)

Also, Yang and especially Buttgeig are out for me. Yang because he's against an assault weapon ban, Buttigeig because he's against Tuition-free colleges and single-payer healthcare.