21st March 2020, 9:15 PM
The kind of money Trump's people are talking about -- a few thousand dollars per person total, yes? -- won't save many people if this disaster drags on like it is likely to. What people need are regular payments that keep coming in for as long as they aren't getting paid, so that they can pay their rent/mortgage, buy food, etc. Two $1200 payments would be nice, but again won't save people for long; this disaster, the likely thousands of dead to come, and the economic chaos that follows, will be a long-term issue. Trump has no plan to deal with that because he has no plans, and whatever he comes up with will be wildly inadaquate for lower or middle class Americans, because Trump doesn't care about them.
And nobody should be allowed to forget that this disaster is largely of Trump's making as he has ensured that over the next week or two things will get very bad here in a way they did not in any way need to -- compare South Korea to where we will be soon. We could have prepared, done the things needed to have a much better outcome, etc... but we didn't. Some governors did, thankfully, but the federal response has been the disastrous failure expected from this most horribly incompetent of "President"s.
I agree that the Democrats are not doing great on messaging right now though, that is true. I hope that they improve significantly, soon, both with details of a plan, and with criticism of Trump's corporate giveaways and such which are central to his plan. (No, the Republicans are not socialists now!) People certainly need money, I quite agree on that. A lot of people are suffering and badly need help all of a sudden. We (the Democrats, and the American people who are not the very rich) need to get the best deal we can, and I'm sure Pelosi will do a good job of that like usual.
As for Biden, he has said that he needs to come up with a way to communicate with America, and that he should have a tech solution for that soon. I hope he does, he needs to be providing leadership in this time when the "President" is a complete fool, a man unable to understand his job and only barely capable of pretending to be the president he is not, while causing chaos and mass suffering through his indifference and lies. What Trump did not realize in January and February was that lying about this virus won't make it go away, it will make the oncoming disaster worse. Oh, Biden's last few speeches have been quite good, he's sounding Presidential and hasn't had the gaffes he did earlier. We need more of that.
As for Bernie, post-mortems of his campaign really show how his "you're with me or against me" and "I hate the Democratic Party!" attitudes doomed him; you don't with by not trying to get people to support you and by treating everyone who doesn't just come to your side as your enemy. As you say, Bernie has some popular policies, but such a "my way or the highway" messenger, so unwilling to go put the work in to get support from people who aren't his natural supporters and so distrustful of the party he wants to represent, thankfully melted down before he became a disastrously bad nominee and not after.
Because seriously, "I will win by hoping that the rest of the party never unifies behind one person while not giving an inch on anything, 30% of the vote is all I need!" was never a very good electoral strategy.
(By the way, when Maine voted on Super Tuesday only a few weeks ago but what feels like a thousand years ago, I stuck with it and voted for Warren. I like Biden well enough and think he'll be the better general election candidate, but I decided to vote for the best candidate anyway, because it was the right thing to do. She got some delegates in this state, so I wasn't the only one.)
And nobody should be allowed to forget that this disaster is largely of Trump's making as he has ensured that over the next week or two things will get very bad here in a way they did not in any way need to -- compare South Korea to where we will be soon. We could have prepared, done the things needed to have a much better outcome, etc... but we didn't. Some governors did, thankfully, but the federal response has been the disastrous failure expected from this most horribly incompetent of "President"s.
I agree that the Democrats are not doing great on messaging right now though, that is true. I hope that they improve significantly, soon, both with details of a plan, and with criticism of Trump's corporate giveaways and such which are central to his plan. (No, the Republicans are not socialists now!) People certainly need money, I quite agree on that. A lot of people are suffering and badly need help all of a sudden. We (the Democrats, and the American people who are not the very rich) need to get the best deal we can, and I'm sure Pelosi will do a good job of that like usual.
As for Biden, he has said that he needs to come up with a way to communicate with America, and that he should have a tech solution for that soon. I hope he does, he needs to be providing leadership in this time when the "President" is a complete fool, a man unable to understand his job and only barely capable of pretending to be the president he is not, while causing chaos and mass suffering through his indifference and lies. What Trump did not realize in January and February was that lying about this virus won't make it go away, it will make the oncoming disaster worse. Oh, Biden's last few speeches have been quite good, he's sounding Presidential and hasn't had the gaffes he did earlier. We need more of that.
As for Bernie, post-mortems of his campaign really show how his "you're with me or against me" and "I hate the Democratic Party!" attitudes doomed him; you don't with by not trying to get people to support you and by treating everyone who doesn't just come to your side as your enemy. As you say, Bernie has some popular policies, but such a "my way or the highway" messenger, so unwilling to go put the work in to get support from people who aren't his natural supporters and so distrustful of the party he wants to represent, thankfully melted down before he became a disastrously bad nominee and not after.
Because seriously, "I will win by hoping that the rest of the party never unifies behind one person while not giving an inch on anything, 30% of the vote is all I need!" was never a very good electoral strategy.
(By the way, when Maine voted on Super Tuesday only a few weeks ago but what feels like a thousand years ago, I stuck with it and voted for Warren. I like Biden well enough and think he'll be the better general election candidate, but I decided to vote for the best candidate anyway, because it was the right thing to do. She got some delegates in this state, so I wasn't the only one.)