Thoughts on the second presidential debate

Okay, so we had two nights of presidential debates again, with the second being earlier tonight. I just wanted to give my thoughts on it.

Night 1

On night one, the dynamics were weird. I was expecting this Sanders-Warren showdown with most other candidates kinda being irrelevant, but instead we got everyone ganging up on Sanders and Warren with them largely taking similar positions and backing each other up. Some suggest CNN orchestrated this to shut down the progressive wing of the party. Have people like Delaney and Hickenlooper act as attack dogs against medicare for all. What ended up happening was the two candidates stuck together mostly and the centrists got thrashed. It was a beautiful thing to see.

It actually makes me kind of want a Sanders/Warren ticket if Yang fails to take off before the primaries start. To echo concerns from my previous article, I am genuinely concerned Sanders and Warren could split the progressive base allowing Biden to win. I would almost like to see the two campaigns join forces against the centrist candidates to lock out Biden and ensure one of them secures the nomination. I mean, I'm yang gang, but at the same time taking Yang out of the picture, a sanders/warren or warren/sanders ticket is literally my dream team at this point. Just saying. They work well together, and while I know some hardcore Sanders supporters think Warren is weak and a sell out, and Warren supporters are sometimes more moderate and see Sanders as divisive, progressives need to have each others' backs. We can criticize each other on the nuances of policy, but we ultimately need to defend each other against the onslaughts of the centrist establishment. Again, I'm Yang Gang. Andrew Yang is my preferred candidate. Hands down. But I'm perfectly willing to support Sanders or Warren if they get the nomination. I don't always agree with the nuances of their policies (the same can be said of Yang), but I'm willing to pull together for the big picture if I get most of what I want. Let's not be harsh to each other, even if we do critique each others' visions. It's better to get a progressive who may differ a bit in vision than to end up with a Hillary 2.0 like Biden.

Night 2

Tonight was a bit more like I expected on night 1. It was mostly Biden and Harris wrecking each other. Last month, Harris really slammed Biden good and hurt his polling numbers. Tonight, the opposite happened. Harris was nowhere near as charismatic. I felt she said a bunch of stuff, while saying nothing at all. She was boring, she was vapid. I think a lot of it comes down to the fact that she wasn't a real progressive and not a true believer on these issues. Biden is a centrist. He plays the pragmatist card, and he plays it well. He knows how to defend his ideas in debates. I hate Biden as a candidate but he's a good debater. Harris....last time she gave a lot of platitudes only to walk them back on medicare for all. Shortly before this debate she decided to back a specific plan intended to be more progressive than Biden's, but less so than Warren or Sanders. And everyone hated it. The progressives hate it for not being progressive enough and preserving the private industry, and Biden claims it destroys it and went after it like he would full blown medicare for all. And sadly Harris just couldn't defend it well. She's strattling ideals like FDR warned democrats about. And she just couldn't pull off a good defense like Warren or Sanders did on the night before. I expect her poll numbers to shrink.

Now, as for Yang. Yang did good. He got the last amount of time and was largely ignored again, but it's not his fault. CNN was stricter on the debate dynamics and controlled who spoke and when to a much larger degree. They gave tons of time to the spat between Harris and Biden but didn't give Yang much time. However, when he spoke, man he upped his game. He made very strong points on issues like the economy, healthcare, and immigration. His healthcare pitch was strangely pushing for progressive ideas with right wing framing, claiming that private health insurance inhibiting hiring of employees and the like. It was interesting to see. I will say he kind of had a habit of linking everything to basic income though and it kind of back fired. Like on climate change, he basically bypassed the green new deal and said basic income would help people move to higher ground. I mean...what?! Okay, I understand Yang's position here. He claims a green new deal won't do much to climate change because the US is only responsible for 15% of emissions and even if we curbed ours that doesn't mean China or India or Russia will curb theirs. Fair point. But his position came off as kind of tone deaf and made him sound like a single issue candidate. Again, I get it. As someone who strongly advocates for UBI and would consider myself an advocate for the concept, I understand how useful UBI is for society and how it helps so many people in so many situations. But he needs to be a little more dynamic and not turn everything into a UBI discussion. This coming from the guy who turns everything into a UBI discussion. Other than that though Yang was great and I expect to see a big boost. This might be his breakthrough moment.

Overall

 Overall I would say the last two nights were largely a win for progressives I favor and a loss for most centrists, minus Biden. Warren, Sanders, and Yang all performed well and I expect them to gain support. Biden defended his ideas from Harris, and Harris kind of imploded last night. Harris is the big loser of the major candidates this debate and I expect her to tank.

Next debate is going to have much stricter qualifications. You'll need to poll 2% in 4 polls and get so many donors to qualify. Major candidates will achieve this no problem. Yang is kind of on the border here and likely will qualify but still is in danger of not doing so (although after last night I think he will easily). I expect there to be around 6-8 candidates next time. We will almost definitely see Biden, Harris, Warren, Sanders, and Buttigieg. I also think Beto, Yang, and maybe Booker will likely qualify. Below that, who knows, I think most of the others are gonna get the axe. Most won't be missed. Except maybe Williamson and Inslee.

2020 Primary Update

So a few months ago I wrote a post based on data at the time suggesting that Bernie Sanders would win the nomination, Biden would implode, and Yang may have a breakout moment. Given the state of the race, I feel it would be good to revisit these predictions and update them to the current time based on what's happened since then.

The current polling averages:

Biden: 27.3%
Warren: 16.3%
Sanders: 14.8%
Harris: 14.3%
Buttigieg: 6.0%
O'Rourke: 2.5%
Yang: 1.8%
Booker: 1.8%
Gabbard: 1.5%
Klobuchar: 1.0%
Castro: 1.0%
Everyone else: <1.0%

A few things I want to comment on:

Biden is imploding, but still in the lead

Biden still maintains a decent lead but is losing support since the debate. I kind of expected this. It is unclear if he will lose frontrunner status soon as a lot of people are still supporting in despite his poor debate performance, but yikes, there are a lot of other candidates on his heels. Warren, Sanders, Harris. I suspect that if the progressives coalesce around a single candidate who gets most of the support of these three, they would wreck Biden and he will lose. However, Biden could still "Trump" it. Progressives could remain divided into camps, allowing Biden to eek out the nomination due to infighting kind of the way Trump did vs establishment conservatives in 2016. This is not to say voters should abandon their respective candidates in favor of "unity" as I believe there are significant ideological and policy differences between the second tier candidates and quite frankly it's way too early to unite. But I hope when the time comes we can at least get a progressive to beat Biden here. It would suck if Biden wins with 25% while Bernie, Harris, and Warren each have 15-20%.

I no longer feel confident in a Sanders victory

Let's face it. Sanders is not in the position he was in, in 2016. He's not an unknown. He's now very well known, and a lot of people don't like what they see. Some think he's divisive, some simply like another candidate more. And quite frankly, there's a lot to like. Yang supports basic income, Warren has been killing it with tons of detailed policies, and Harris has a lot of charisma and really let loose some zingers on Biden during the debates, attacking his record on things like busing in the 70s.

The numbers don't lie. Sanders is not doing well considering his position. He is no longer in a strong position to win. He still has a shot, but he's being overtaken by Warren and Harris is hot on his trail. I'm gonna be honest I'm surprised Sanders is doing so weakly, and Warren so strongly, but there's good reason for it. Sanders has a lot of good ideas but often does not articulate them well on debate stage, while Warren is very wonky and has been coming out with tons of detailed proposals. Warren is also attracting some mainstream democrats who are progressive but see Bernie as alienating. Harris also likes to play the part of a charismatic progressive on stage, which is attracting some support to her.

That said, Sanders has his work cut out for him. He not only needs to topple Biden, but he also needs to beat Warren who offers an alternative progressive vision to his, and Harris, who likes to say progressive things but not follow through.

Can Yang still have a breakout moment?

I'm gonna be honest, I thought when Yang got on the debate stage he would have a breakout moment, but he did very poorly at the debates. Part of this was MSNBC's fault, he claimed his microphone wasn't working and that he tried to butt in a few times, only to be unsuccessful. He got the least amount of talk time of any candidate on both nights, and when he did talk he talked fast and did not come off well. He seemed out of his depth. Regardless he will have future chances later this month, and he is on track to make the second round of debates, which puts him in the top 7 candidates. So he's not out of it. If anything despite poor coverage he still got a bump just for being there and getting people to google him.

I do have doubts he can win though. While I support the guy and he is currently my preferred candidate, I do not think his views are resonating in the party. The Bernie guys are moving toward a jobs guarantee, the Warren and Biden guys seem unwilling to consider such a radical idea without good reason, and while Harris has the "lift act", that's the closest thing to a UBI anyone has proposed who has a chance other than Yang.

It's a shame really. UBI is a good policy and most arguments against it come off as BS to me, but a lot of lefties are suddenly defending welfare and the like when Yang comes up, and he starts getting accused of being a right wing techno libertarian for his support of the idea. There's a lot of tribalism on the left right now and it's really killing the idea to some degree. The left is simply eating its own.

My own opinions on the candidates and who I want to win

As I said, I largely support Yang for his freedom dividend plan. While his implementation is flawed, I am hoping he corrects it if he wins the primary. And while he does not support the exact kinds of ideas I support on other major issues like healthcare and college, his views are still largely acceptable to me given his support for UBI.

Bernie is my second choice right now. I like his medicare for all and free college proposals, as well has his calls to abolish student debt. I'm not as big on the jobs guarantee nonsense and his outright opposition to UBI is a huge reason I've moved to Yang, but he's still clearly my second favorite choice. He's the OG progressive in recent years, the other candidates are largely attempting to copy him, and I see no reason to abandon him unless someone else supports an innovative idea  he doesn't like UBI.

Of the major candidates Warren is my third choice. She has a lot of good ideas, but she's more moderate and piecemeal with them a lot of the time. For example her student debt plan would only help people with under $50000 in debt and only if you meet certain income thresholds. She did endorse medicare for all in the debates but she previously dragged her feet with it. She just has a propensity for less radical solutions and band aids. While a huge improvement over Clinton I just think Sanders and Yang are much stronger candidates. I still like her though.

Harris is my fourth choice (ignoring weaker candidates like, say, Tulsi Gabbard). She sounds very progressive but as I said previously I dont trust her. She will say all these great things in debates but then she will change her mind or say she didn't mean it or misinterpreted the question or something. So she's mostly talk and little bite in my opinion.

Buttigieg has seriously lost favor with me since gaining popularity. He has moved a lot to the center and I just don't see the appeal of him any more. I dont dislike him like Biden or Delaney or Hickenlooper or something, but he just doesn't come off to me as a candidate I really would support over the above.

Beyond that the other choices are either polling too bad, or the candidates themselves are sufficiently lame in my opinion where I don't feel they're worth talking about. I don't like Biden, or Beto, or Booker, and don't think anyone else other than the ones above even have a shot.

Conclusion

A lot has changed in the last few months and while some previous predictions of mine, like Biden losing steam, seem to be coming true, other predictions seem off. Bernie seems to be stagnating, Yang has not had his breakout moment yet and might just fall flat given the current state of the party (although there's still hope), and Warren is overtaking Bernie in the polls with Harris just behind him. If I had to guess who would win right now, I would likely say Warren has a very good shot, or possibly Biden eeking it out simply from people failing to coalesce behind a single other candidate. Sanders is currently third or fourth in terms of likelihood to win, and is currently roughly tied with Harris. I don't know where things are going from here, but it's very competitive. I'd say 4 candidates have a very good shot at winning right now. Another 3-4 are maybes, but only if they can break out. And beyond that, I don't see much changing between now and when primaries start.

On the need for a new social left

So, despite hating wading into identity politics and constant drama on the left, I often feel like I'm forced to discuss these issues due to their extreme prevalence in our modern political system. However, rather than just complaining, I want to discuss how the left should focus on social issues, and what I think would be both a philosophically consistent and winning platform for the left. All in all, my views socially are more libertarian than anything, but at the same time I always thought that libertarians and liberals were not that much different on social issues anyway. I always understood, traditionally, these these ideologies were about liberty and doing what you want, rather than being forced to do what other people want you to do. However, it is quite clear this does not refer to the modern left, nor the right, consistently. That said...

How my ideas vary from other ideologies

 The key principles for how the left should act socially is to stay out of each others way, unless harm comes from such an arrangement. However, my vision for this is uniquely different than most other ideologies.

Conservatives like to get involved in peoples' lives on a moral level. They support traditionalism and believe in things like religious morality, defined gender roles, and the "life script" (marriage, kids, etc.). They believe that deviation from the way things are and have always been will bring a downfall to society. This made sense in ancient society. If you didn't have everyone blindly obedient to a moral code, where they all popped out kids and behaved in certain ways, society would fall apart. The thing is, today, these morals provide little guidance in peoples' lives and we no longer need to live this way. We have technology and scientific advancement and social systems that have radically transformed our society in ways where maybe it doesn't matter if people don't have tons of kids. If anything tons of kids in modern society leads to overpopulation and climate change, which is harmful. Maybe it doesn't matter if women are empowered. Maybe it doesn't matter if gay marriage and abortion are legal. To some of these guys, such things represent weakness to society but in a modern context they just lack the rational and evidential backing to justify the heavy handedness on the issues. In modern times, we can have a society where people can do what they want, without harming others. They just seem to want everyone to live like them.

Some conservatives, although not all, also have problematic racial views in their perspective. They fear their culture being displaced by minorities coming in from other countries and believe in a form of supremacy for white anglo saxon Christians. Once again, these guys seem to have views that are irrational. In my view, people should be able to do what they want. Someone wanting to celebrate their own culture or live their own lives should be able to do so. That said, I see the conservative right as a threat to individual freedom, and any restrictions on human behavior should be justified by demonstrating harm that comes to society or others that outweigh the inherent benefits of the freedom to commit such actions.

Libertarians don't represent my views either though. They tend to understand the whole "everyone should leave me alone unless they harm others thing", but they tend to take it way too far. Libertarian freedom is the freedom of that annoying kid who sticks their finger 2 inches from your face and says "I'm not touching you". Technically they're right, but they're still doing something that is violating your personal space and making you uncomfortable. It might not be a direct violation to your freedom, but the fact that you have that freedom is disruptive to others and harmful to them.

Libertarians might be more laid back on certain issues, like drugs, prostitution, gay marriage, etc., but their views are...naive. Libertarian views don't really lead to true freedom. Because to them, they have the freedom to pollute the earth, and everyone just has to live with the consequences. They have the freedom to pay workers $1 an hour, and they better be grateful for it or they starve. They have the right to do what they want with their land despite it causing possible issues that zoning laws try to solve. They believe in a right to association that involves discriminating against racial minorities, depriving them of things they need to live. Their views of freedom are very childish and lack foresight. Clearly, we need to ensure that others are treated fairly and equally. I don't want to get too much into economics, but I believe people cannot be free unless they have enough economic security to participate in the system in truly voluntary ways. And people do have rights, ie, social constructs that guarantee them certain kinds of treatment in society. Libertarians don't understand that while an action may not cause immediate harm to people in a direct way, when approached from a big picture, systemic way, they are quite harmful and lead to structural/systemic violence against certain groups. The rights of all groups should be protected in society.

This brings me to the modern left. On many social issues, the left is kind of dead on on a lot of topics. It allows freedom of choice on many social issues. It also balances this freedom against harm caused to society and marginalized groups. However, the left is kind of going off the rails too, despite being right in principle most of the time. Modern identity politics are extreme divisive and dare I say it, authoritarian. It's not enough to be for freedom of individuals and wanting to protect marginalized groups any more. Everyone must constantly obsess over these topics and sacrifice other priorities on the altar of white liberal guilt. It's not enough to be okay with immigration, or diversity in culture, we have to actively celebrate it. People have to actively "signal" these "virtues" and express a positive reinforcement of them in an almost circlejerky way. Moreover, and this is the big issue, people who are not affected by these politics are seemingly pressured into betraying their own interests in the advancement of these politics, being told to "check their privilege" if they dare assert their own interests over them. While the issues definitely deserve some concern, the lack of attention given to other, in my opinion, more pressing issues that are more universal in scale, are what is really problematic. We have seen this a lot with Bernie in 2016 in which people who advocated for economic interests over social ones were called "Bernie bros", and more recently, we've seen this to an extent with the Andrew Yang movement, where people are expected to abandon support of Yang and UBI simply because some bad egg white supremacists are latching onto the movement. You should not be pressured into betraying core principles or concerns or speaking out about what's in your best interest simply because others have it worse. This isn't to say that there are not valid points on the left. Issues involving minority groups, privilege, etc. are structural and sociological, and should be treated as real issues that we try to solve like anything else. My problem is that the modern left goes far beyond that, devolving the issue into this circlejerky guilt fest in which we all talk about how our interests don't matter because someone else has it worse and we should just get on social media and talk about those issues in a cult like manner while pushing out everything else. This is toxic and should be stopped. If you want to know what I really think the left should be doing, look at Andrew Yang. He talked about issues white people face on Joe Rogan, which is something rare on the left these days, and as such, is winning over some Trump voters. On the flip side, on another podcast he talked about African American issues and how his policies would help them too. We need to tone down the BS rhetoric and focus on defining problems and advocating for actual solutions to them, not just circlejerking about how much we care without doing anything productively about it.

Another problem with the modern left is how some of them tend to lose respect for the rule of law and civil society. I hate to sound conservative, but this is where it fits. Many of our rules and laws exist for good reason. We have freedom of speech, for example, as we do, because we understand that if you censor unpopular speech, it will undermine that liberty, and that one day someone else might decide your views are too dangerous to hold and ban them. Yet the modern left often seems to be opposed to freedom of speech for people like, say, racists. While censorship is a way to suppress racism, it's also a way to censor any idea, and perhaps we as a society should, as I indicated, oppose censorship in principle. Racism sucks, I can't say I don't understand where the left is coming from here, but does it suck enough we're gonna chip away at our liberties to suppress it? And if we ban racism, why not other talk? What about the second amendment people and their talk about revolution against the government? What about Marxists who criticize capitalism and the state? Heck, if anything, how the left has historically been treated in this country insofar as censorship goes should be a huge red flag for why censorship is a terrible idea. The same goes with punching Nazis. Okay, who doesn't actually wanna punch a Nazi? But at the same time, if we just allow people to punch Nazis, what's to stop the Nazis from punching back? What's to stop them from retaliating and assaulting leftists for demonstrating their views? Nothing, that's what. The left does need to develop an appreciation for our civil liberties and rule of law, why they exist, and stop acting like an angry mob and advocating for things that violate just laws and legal concepts. While there is nothing wrong with disobeying unjust laws, when you disobey and advocate disobedience and repeal of just ones whose disobedience has real and dangerous real world consequences as I demonstrated, the entire fabric our society is built on begins to fall apart, for real, and that is extremely dangerous. That's how you start heading toward an actual civil war with actual violence and actual people dying, or alternatively, an actual authoritarian state.

Wrapping it up

I spent much of this article defining my values in opposition to the shortcomings of other moral systems. I felt this was necessary, because my dissatisfaction with these varying ideologies is why, in my opinion, we need a new left libertarian ideology.

My ideology is in opposition to conservatism, because conservatism is based on tradition and well, conserving things for the sake of conserving things. They fear change, and fear their culture being threatened, and on the whole I just don't value these things much. My ideas about culture is that if it's valuable, it should be preserved, but if it's not it should be abandoned, and all culture and right wing sentiment should be treated with skepticism. This skepticism, in my opinion, should provide a filter between good and bad ideas. Good ideas, like the need for civil society and freedom of speech, should be preserved, while irrational ideas like "gay people should be put to death" should be abandoned. People should be allowed to behave as they want, as long as they don't harm others, and any harm allowed by certain actions should be demonstrated in justification for any rule against ideas.

My ideology is in opposition to libertarianism because libertarians are very dogmatic and narrow minded and often ignore how their ideas do real harm. Just because someone isn't picking up a blunt object and beating someone else outright does not mean that harm is not being done. It's possible for individual actions to harm people in an indirect way. A company polluting the earth does not directly hurt someone, but it does do so indirectly, by changing the environment, which then harms people.Paying people sub par wages may not be directly hurting them, but it does lead to a systemic form of resource denial that is arguably quite unfair and coercive. Denying people services on freedom of association might not be directly harming that person, but once again, the effects of such actions do indirect harm. We need to take into account both active, direct harm, but also passive, indirect harm done to individuals, and correct these actions in the most effective but freedom loving ways possible.

My ideology is in opposition to modern liberalism, because while liberals do bring light to issues that right wing ideologies do not discuss, and this should be applauded, they often do so in a way that's toxic, that forces participation in discussing these issues in unproductive ways and undermines other issues from being discussed, and often does not respect just concepts of law. We need a form of liberalism that discusses all issues, of all people, both privileged, and nonprivileged, but does so in a way that is not particularly circlejerky or shames people for not being oppressed enough. We need to focus instead on defining problems and actually solving them in a non toxic way. And maybe liberalism has a little to learn from conservatism too. Maybe liberals need to learn that sometimes they need to better respect the rule of law, and understand that sometimes rules exist for good reason and undoing them to solve a problem in the short term is fundamentally dangerous for the long term.

That said, to sum it up, we need a form of left wing social ideology that:

1) Is skeptical toward tradition, and evaluates everything through a lens of reason and evidence.

2) Is receptive and understanding of both direct, active forms of harm, as well as big picture indirect/passive forms of harm that come from destructive individual actions or social structures.

3) Is non toxic, open to discussing issues of all people, without judging them or playing games regarding who has it worse and who has to shut up and listen to whom.

4) Is respectful of just and valid legal concepts and social structures, understanding that solving a problem short term could lead to larger long term consequences.

This does not seem to really exist in our modern spectrum. Conservatives are gung ho about tradition, the right in general tends to ignore big picture sociological analyses of society and how seemingly innocent actions do have harmful consequences, and liberals tend to see the sociological issues but tend to have heavy handed solutions and a toxic mindset toward approaching them. My views are, as you can tell, closest to the left, but also a lot more "libertarian" in nature than the left currently is, in that it supports a more laid back live and let live philosophy, rather than a more authoritarian ideology in which everyone has to participate in their toxic culture while accomplishing little. I believe my ideas take the best of all of the ideologies out there while rejecting the bad. If I had to sum up my views in a sentence, it would be very similar to that.

Basic income or socialism....why not both?

It seems already there is a growing rift in the Bernie Sanders camp and the burgeoning Andrew Yang camp. This kind of makes me feel frustrated and conflicted. Both candidates are excellent and have good policies that would help people, but the two groups seem to be taking jabs at one another over policy and ideology, with some of them demonizing the other to an extreme extent.

The Bernie Sanders crowd seems to be a bit more malicious over it. I know the Bernie crowd has high standards and skepticism of a lot of candidates, and with good reason, but it frustrates me to see them bash Andrew Yang and refer to him as a "trap." They act like he's some closet libertarian who wants to destroy the government and make people worse off by taking welfare away from them. Yang himself stated he's not interested in taking welfare away from people, merely giving people more options. While there are some legitimate complaints from the Sanders crowd I already covered on here including a handful of his policies, he seems to have good intentions, and is not seemingly malevolent like I would suspect other candidates of being, he's not bought out.

The big complaint seems to come, though, from the fact that Yang isn't a "socialist." He does not want to seize the means of production, and rather, provide a more humane form of capitalism, and to many of these people that's a deal breaker, for them, it has to be socialism, and they often attribute a lot of Sanders' policies as forms of socialism....when they don't appear to be.

The Yang camp seems a bit more open to the Bernie people, but at the same time I'm also detecting some hostility there on policy. Once again, the big problem seems to come from the idea that Bernie is a "socialist". I know Yang appeals to a very diverse crowd, including people ranging from "Bernie bros" like me to literal alt right 4channers and everything in between, so it's no surprise some are turned off from left wing policy other than UBI, but honestly, I feel like we're eating our own over labels. Bernie, at least on the campaign trail, isn't so much a socialist, but a social democrat, and the way I see it, if you like Bernie, you should at least somewhat like Yang, and vice versa. Yes, their visions are different, but only in the details, the two candidates both support a transformative vision of the economy and will bring about change that will help millions of people in significant ways. I'm not trying to underscore the policy and ideology differences here, but I would think most Bernie supporters should at least like Yang somewhat, and Yang supporters should at least like Bernie somewhat. We might have our preferred vision at the end of the day, but I don't see openness toward each other as a zero sum game. People seem to have this weird all or nothing mentality toward each other, and seem turned off and alienated by the other side over ideological differences. I can understand this given my pickiness in 2016. Sometimes the differences are just too big to reconcile and you have to draw the line somewhere. For me, HRC was on the other side of that line. Sanders and Yang? I'm cool with both. Sure, I like Yang better ideologically but I'm not exactly gonna say no to Bernie.

What is the source over this major disagreement? Well, it seems to be over the "S" word, dreaded "socialism." A lot of the Sanders crowd I discuss politics with seem to be socialists. Full fledged socialists. They see capitalism in and of itself as fundamentally broken and needs to be changed, and some of these guys seem to be calling for "decommodification" of basic needs and nationalization of many industries...which I personally find to be a turnoff. Then you have the capitalist Yang supporters who think that Sanders represents nationalization of industries and 20th century luddite solutions (I can't say I disagree with the second assessment to some degree) and that his views are bad. Both of these perspectives seem to miss the mark and grossly misinterpret what Sanders is about.

Bernie Sanders, despite calling himself a "democratic socialist", is basically channeling FDR, the new deal, and Nordic social democracy in his platform. Yes, he speaks fiery rhetoric about the corporations, the 1%, etc. But ultimately, medicare for all exists in Canada, free college exists in Europe, high minimum wages exist in much of the industrialized world, and the "green new deal" is just a modified version of FDR's new deal from the 1930s. Heck, this is exactly what Sanders invoked when asked what "socialism" means. He explicitly rejected the government owning the means of production, which is a smart move. This means that he supports....*gasp*, a form of what Andrew Yang would consider "human centered capitalism"! They're not much different. Both are supporting variations of social democracy! They just have different ways of getting there. Both sides need to stop acting like Sanders is gonna be inaugurated while waving red flags and singing the Soviet national anthem, both the people who want that and don't want that need to chill. Bernie isn't going to herald in an age of "socialism" for better or for worse. The dude is basically FDR.

So what do I mean by basic income or socialism? Well, there is a form of socialism I'm okay with, and that's the worker cooperative model for businesses, which Sanders also supports. Such a model would maintain the market system, but also change who owns the means of production in a decentralized manner. This maintains all of the good aspects of capitalism like competition, freedom, markets, while eliminating the fact that businesses are like mini dictatorships in which ownership of wealth becomes concentrated at the top. Yang does not explicitly support this, but Sanders does, so I guess Sanders is "socialist" in this sense, but this does not seem to be what his advocates seem to want in entirety given the rhetoric of nationalization of businesses. I don't think that this "socialism" is an end all though. As I discussed a few years back, socialism of this kind does not fix issues with the market, it does not fix work culture, it does not eliminate the need for labor laws or safety nets or even basic income. I personally believe we should have both. Basic income on the other hand, does not fix who owns property and the means to create more wealth. This will lead to inherent long term issues involving wealth being concentrated at the top, despite concerted efforts to avoid it. This is one aspect in which the "socialists" are right.

Honestly, we need both. Basic income provides a safety net that would make millions of peoples' lives better, and I prefer it over a rehash of 20th century ideas like Sanders supports. Not that I have a particular dislike of Sanders' ideas, I like that the dude wants to make peoples' lives better, even if I disagree with how. Socialism, in terms of a decentralized worker cooperative model for businesses, would likely solve the core issue with "capitalism" that socialists complain about, while maintaining virtually all benefits of capitalism itself. Honestly, it's hard to say if I'm even a capitalist or a socialist. This ideology makes me too moderate for most socialists, but also more extreme than most capitalists. Either way, can we all just agree that all of these solutions are better than the crap Clinton offered in 2016, and the republican solutions of the past 40 years? Please? I believe the two camps have way more in common than what separates them.

Discussing the 2020 primaries

I know it's a bit early to discuss the 2020 primaries as they're almost a year away and anything can happen, so take everything I'm about to say with a grain of salt. This discussion is going to be personal speculation, inspired by a recent discussion on the David Pakman show about Yang's 2020 chances in which it's discussed how he could, in theory win. I think it's relatively unlikely, but possible. However, I think that given the sheer number of candidates anything is possible and we will need to wait and see. That said, let's look at the field.

So far the following candidates have declared:

Cory Booker
Pete Buttigieg
Julian Castro
John Delaney
Tulsi Gabbard
Kirsten Gillibrand
Kamala Harris
John Hickenlooper
Jay Inslee
Amy Klobuchar
Bernie Sanders
Elizabeth Warren
Marianne Williamson
Andrew Yang

I would also expect Joe Biden, Sherrod Brown, and maybe Beto O'Rourke and Michael Bloomberg to declare. That gives us 18 candidates, and this might not be an exhaustive list. There are also a lot of lesser known candidates I may not be aware of.

Looking at the polls, while RCP's polls don't cover every candidate, they do give a good idea of what the race is looking so far, especially among the front runners. Their polling data indicates, in aggregate, these results:

Joe Biden - 29%
Bernie Sanders - 20%
Kamala Harris - 12%
Elizabeth Warren - 7%
Cory Booker - 6%
Beto O"Rourke - 6%
Amy Klobuchar - 3.3%
Michael Bloomberg - 3%
Sherrod Brown - 2%
Tulsi Gabbard - 1%
Julian Castro - <1%
Kirsten Gillibrand - <1%

That said, Joe Biden is the front runner, without having declared yet. Bernie is leading among the declared candidates, and I think Kamala Harris is also a formidable candidate I could consider to be in the top tier of contenders. These are the ones I think have the best shot at the presidency. Both approach politics differently and have a unique niche. Biden is the centrist candidate with a well known name and probably has a lot of the Clinton vote. Sanders is also well known at this point but is known as being a fiery progressive, the opposite of Biden ideologically. Harris is kind of the middle ground compromise between the two with a heavy focus on intersectionality. She appears to be pursuing the Obama coalition by striking a balance between centrism and progressivism, while also appealing to women and people of color.

That said:

Does Joe Biden stand a chance?

Primaries are weird. Especially with this many candidates. Some primaries are relatively boring with the frontrunner being known before hand and they just maintain their lead the entire race. Joe Biden is a familiar name, he was the vice president under Obama, and he has a good chance with some of the Hillary Clinton vote due to his centrism. He could theoretically coast to the presidency. However, it's also possible his support is primarily because of name recognition and that if he declares, he may find himself embroiled in a world of controversy. Biden is a very controversial figure. He has run for president multiple times before and always lost. And at this point it might be too late for a "new democrat" to win, especially with all of the ammo progressives have to sink his campaign with. At the start of his political career, a mere decade after Bernie Sanders was arrested for standing with civil rights protesters, Joe Biden was in the senate....turning people against integration and busing programs. This may have played well with his constituents at the time, but let's be honest, the dude was flat out on the wrong side of history. And while people often forget this about him now, it's been coming up in recent years given the possibility of him running again, and it might be brought up again by opponents. He also has a very abysmal record on the drug war that does not fit in the party today. This is likely going to be brought up again. Again, he could make an argument that it made sense at the time, and that he can pivot in different ways, but does America really want someone who flip flops? The more I look at him, but more I see a white male Hillary Clinton candidacy all over again.

Biden is also a "gaffe machine". You think Howard Dean's "BYAH!" was bad? Biden is infamous for saying the wrong thing at the wrong time and this ability could kill his campaign just like Howard Dean. He could start off as the front runner but say stuff that alienates voters, driving them to other candidates. Heck he's already alienated me from voting for him by downplaying millennial experiences with the economy and telling us to "give him a break." No, Joe, you give US a break. I mean between this and his vocal opposition to basic income, a policy I champion regularly on here, he has basically lost me before he's even declared. I'll vote third party again if he is the nominee, just saying.

Finally, Biden comes off to some as kind of "creepy." He is known to touch people in uncomfortable ways and while nothing to my knowledge flat out goes into sexual harassment territory, some have speculated that he is going to be "me tooed" out of the race.

It's possible that despite all of this baggage he maintains enough popularity to win and make it to the general, but he would be going into the general mired in controversy just like Hillary Clinton did. If I had to guess, once the spotlight is on him and all of this stuff comes out, he will likely lose a lot of support, with Sanders and Harris becoming far more likely to win.

Does Bernie Sanders stand a chance?

With Biden being the tenuous front runner who may implode upon announcing his candidacy, does Bernie Sanders stand a chance? If I had to guess, yes, yes he does. He is starting out 2020 with a strong base of support, already gathering huge crowds in his first campaign rallies in Brooklyn and Chicago. His campaign also raised $6 million from small donors within 24 hours of announcing. He has tremendous energy. He has also polished up his stump speech and has far more of a focus on intersectionality than he did in 2016, so people can't realistically say he doesn't appeal to minorities (news flash, they still do, nothing will be good enough for these people unless he was a black woman himself). He went on a town hall on CNN and nailed it, despite the fact that CNN did everything in their power to make him look bad by stacking the audience full of DNC operatives and lobbyists. I mean, he's far stronger than he was in 2016 message wise, and listening to him, and looking at his energy, if I had to guess who would win this time around, I'll say this: Bernie Sanders stands the best chance of any candidate in the running. He draws in tons of small donor money, tons of crowds, and enthuses people in a way few people do. He's strengthened his platform, he's clearly learned from 2016. He's back and means business. The haters still hate him and are still trying to do dirty tricks against him, but I don't think they will work this time because he is starting out with tons of momentum and not just one percent. To me, for anyone else to become the nominee, he is THE person to beat, along with Biden, who I see as far more beatable. While I suspect Biden will lose a lot of support if he declares and the race goes on, Sanders comes off as someone with a strong following and enthusiasm, and the only way he will lose his current support is if he gets sick given his advanced age and apparent propensity to give speeches during snowstorms (hello, William Henry Harrison), or if another progressive comes up and possibly splits the vote.

Does Kamala Harris stand a chance?

This is tricky, because it's unclear whether she does. She has been pushed as the frontrunner before and when she declared her candidacy was given all kinds of special treatment it seemed which propelled her to the third place slot. However, she has not taken off since then and much like Beto O'Rourke before her, might just be a flavor of the month. Someone pushed artificially high by the media tipping the scales, but who does not have a strong base of support when the dust settles.

However, as the Fox article points out, she has a lot going for her. People in 538 and the like seem to think she stands a good chance because she can theoretically bring in people from all over the party including minority voters, young voters, progressives, and establishment figures. She's pushed as this unifying figure who triangulates all of the different factions in the party and brings them together. Despite that though, she's only third place and does not seem to have the traction, for example, Sanders has. However, say Biden does drop out of the race. Since establishment figures like Harris, it's possible Biden's supporters could flock to her, giving her a commanding lead. However, at this time her level of support doesn't seem high enough. This could change, and I still think she's a strong candidate in the running, but I'm not sure she can seal the deal. Her level of support and enthusiasm seems relatively low at the time despite getting lots of media coverage.

Candidates I think will drop out

So, moving on, and covering the front runners, I think I want to cover candidates I don't think will make it very far. Here's the thing, when you have a race this competitive, with so many different people in the race, you end up getting an oversupply of candidates who all tend to overlap with each other. By this I mean, they have no niche, and appear too similar to a candidate who has a better chance at the presidency. Here are the people I think fit this category:

Tulsi Gabbard- Gabbard is quite frankly, too similar to Sanders. Her big claim to fame is giving up her position as DNC vice chair to point out funny business in the democratic party and back Sanders. As such, the vast majority of her support comes from people who already back Sanders. Unless Sanders gets sick, I see him as a near unstoppable freight train in this sense. People like Tulsi have no base of support. The only people I have seen who like Gabbard over Sanders are people who are openly anti Semitic, and people who think Bernie fails to meet insane purity tests and think Tulsi has more guts in standing up to the establishment like. These people are a minority and I doubt her campaign will get off the ground.

Either Sherrod Brown or Amy Klobuchar- It's unclear which of these candidates will drop out, but these two seem too similar to each other. Both of them are relatively centrist/pragmatic candidates from the midwest whose big claim to fame is being able to win the areas of the country Trump lost. Brown has a more labor oriented message while Klobuchar comes off more like your typical Clintonite. Either way both reject big solutions to problems like free college, medicare for all, and the green new deal and prefer more centrist paths to accomplishing their goals. I just don't think the race is big enough for both of these candidates, although if their voters all rallied behind one of them, they might stand a chance. It's also if Biden drops out or doesn't run that they could pick up some of his support and be a force to be reckoned with themselves. Otherwise it's possible both will be crowded out due to Joe Biden's presence in the race.

Kirsten Gillibrand, Cory Booker, and Julian Castro- These candidates all come off as too Harris-like. I think Harris has the whole "centrist pretending to be a progressive while appealing for the Obama vote" crowd locked down. Too many copycats of copycats at this point.

Pete Buttigieg- Combined with having many of Tulsi Gabbard's problems related to overlapping with Sanders, this guy is relatively unknown. His big selling point is that he's a millennial who has run a city before but nothing about his platform seems to stand out. He's another Bernie copycat.

Elizabeth Warren- I think Warren will make it further than most on this list. She's more progressive than most candidates while being not as progressive as Sanders. She has a niche and strong credentials that way. She's not explicitly copying Sanders but trying to carve out her own path with her own unique policies. But she is suffering severe likeability and image problems. While she appears to be trying to triangulate as being left of the Harris crowd and to the right of the Sanders crowd, offering a "capitalist" alternative to Bernie's democratic socialism, she just doesn't appear to be taking off. Many of her prospective voters likely already back other candidates and she is questioned as to whether she has the chops to take on Trump effectively after the whole "Pocahontas" thing. Better than most on this list, but a long shot.

John Delaney, John Hickenlooper, Michael Bloomberg- Despite being very vocal, these avowed centrists seem to have next to no support in the party at all. I think they will be crowded out of the race while Biden and maybe Klobuchar and Brown pick up the "centrist" vote.

Jay Inslee, Marianne Williamson-  Who has even heard of these guys?

Don't get me wrong, one or two of these guys may take off given certain circumstances, but as a whole, I just don't see these guys as gaining enough traction to win. That said, why did I leave off Andrew Yang? Well, to get into that....

Does Andrew Yang stand a chance?

Andrew Yang is so unknown most are not aware of his existence. Most mainstream news outlets don't cover him, most pollsters don't ask about him, he's relatively unknown. However, I can't help but find parallels to his campaign, and Bernie and Trump in 2016. Yang, when he is polled, tends to get around 1% from what I see. He also seems to be getting a major boost from his appearance on Joe Rogan's podcast. I mean it sold me on him too, despite still having reservations about some of his policies. When people hear him and listen to him, he seems to get a lot of people on his side and talks sense in a way few people do. Not just liberals, but conservatives as well. People in this country do want change, and I am convinced of this. It's why Trump won in 2016 and one of the reasons I think Bernie will win 2020. But it's possible Yang's vision is more popular than Bernie's. Bernie is good at stump speeches and inspiring people, but Yang has a way of systemizing the issues and explaining them in a way that most people have never heard of before, and make perfect sense. Right now his goal seems to be to make it to the debates. If he does, he could raise his profile for awareness and possibly come out of nowhere, gaining a lot of support. People who are committed to Biden or Sanders but who think they're too old might vote for him. People who think the green new deal and Bernie Sanders' "socialism" as too far gone but want a progressive alternative might vote for him. Yang ultimately is both an idealist but also somewhat of a pragmatist. He understands we can't do everything and has a clear vision insofar as what he wants. I could see him going from 1% or less right now to hitting 3-5% in the debates, and possibly creeping up into the double digits before the Iowa caucus and New Hampshire primary. It's also possible he never takes off like so many others, but I think that if we are going to have a candidate who is not currently well known and on the radar come out of nowhere and take it, it's probably going to be Yang. He has a niche no one else does, his message is unique and makes sense. While other candidates seem like general copycats of other candidates, Yang is one candidate I think has a unique niche, and in this crowded race it's good to find something that makes you stand out that resonates. It's unclear whether basic income can be that thing, but it's possible.

At the same time there are a lot of good reasons to believe that Yang will NOT take off, or at least not win. The centrist camp of the democratic party hates progressives with big ticket programs. They hate medicare for all, they hate free college, they hate the green new deal, and they would hate basic income. One of the reasons I am so disillusioned with the centrists is their refusal to think big about these programs and think the status quo or some variation of it is "good enough." So instead of getting UBI the furthest left they will go is Kamala Harris' "lift act" or an expanded EITC.

Some democrats oppose UBI because they see it as a program designed to make people poorer and help the rich. They see a tech oriented rich person like Yang push this and they see it as a conservative plot to destroy welfare. I could see some on the left and center oppose UBI because they want to defend current programs. This happened before when Nixon supported a UBI style program to replace Johnson's "great society". Democrats get touchy when people try to one up their past accomplishments. We saw this recently with Hillary not wanting to replace Obamacare with single payer. It's also possible the idea is just too forward thinking and radical for people to get behind.

Much of the country who is progressive seems to be behind Sanders' message which is in favor of a jobs program. Many people really can't think of a world without work yet and would rather create more work to give people a paycheck than see people do "nothing." While I think Yang's aspirations are more realistic than Bernie's here (UBI would only cost a fraction of what the green new deal would), it is possible people just aren't ready for UBI and will vigorously fight against it. I personally was thinking originally UBI would not be introduced into the debate in a serious way for another decade or so, but Yang seems to be pushing it now. It's possible it's too early.

Finally, I think Yang is making too many of Sanders' 2016 mistakes. Yang reminds me a lot of 2016 Sanders: someone who wants to run an issue based campaign but who is naive and doesn't realize that he will be torn apart for it. Yang is one of the few people who published numbers for funding his ideas on his website and quite frankly, as I already covered, they don't work well and need an overhaul. If I can point this out, imagine how CNN treats them when he gains awareness in the country. They will do the same thing they did to Bernie in 2016. Yang also seems to be avoiding the pit of snakes that is identity politics, but as Bernie learned, you need to either adapt to them or get swallowed up. Yang, in running an issues oriented campaign, will be blasted for not pandering to people of every single identity group properly, and honestly, I really don't see the democrats as a party to unite behind common solutions to problems unless they get pandered to specifically based on identity. You can't just say "here's UBI, it will work and make your lives better", you need to explain to women how it will make their lives better, and then African Americans and latinos, and people in the LGBT+ community, and everything else. Otherwise you'll be written off as "too white" (despite Yang being asian) and too male and your supporters will be called "Yang bros". I've heard it said by someone I introduced Yang to that he's "too smart to be president" and sadly I think that's not far off the mark. Sadly, many people don't care about ideas, they care about being pandered to specifically, and while I find it sickening, it's the truth.

Yang's message seems to appeal primarily to the people who are needed to win the general. Sadly, these are not the same people who vote in the primary. They are not loyal democrats, they are independent swing voters. And while Yang is correct that if you don't offer good solutions from the left these people will succumb to xenophobia and move right, they also often don't come out and vote as a bloc on the democratic side in primaries, and many who do likely already back Bernie.

That said I can't rule Yang out and think he has a stronger chance than most candidates, going so far to say I think he might come in 4th or 5th. However, I can't see him winning. It's possible, but I cannot see how a coalition would come together to seal the deal unless he manages to "Trump" everyone. I see him as this cycle's Ross Perot, or Ron Paul, or Hermin Cain. Someone with very unique ideas that maybe should be listened to somewhat but who will likely only acquire a small  base of support not capable of winning the party's nomination in and of itself.

Conclusion

I'm just gonna call it now, if I had to guess who will win the primary right now, it will be Bernie Sanders. I say this because he is currently second in the polls, and because I don't think Biden will make it out of the primaries unscathed. I think he has the strongest, most loyal base of support this time, and there are enough candidates out there where he could win with a strong plurality vote, likely not needing a full majority to lock down the nomination. Biden has a strong chance too though, and while I don't think he will definitely win, I could see him limping into the general like Clinton did as a vastly unpopular, damaged candidate who managed to beat the competition. I could also see Harris possibly gaining support from other candidates dropping out, giving her enough of a base to win. Other than that, I think it's hard to guess. I think most other candidates will drop out as they lack unique messages that could resonate with the voter base. I do think Yang will make waves this election, but I think it's unlikely he will win. I would like to see him gain more awareness in the country though in order to inject basic income into the debate though.

Bernie Sanders or Andrew Yang? That is the question....

So, I wrote a bit ago about how I felt about the presidential candidates and the race so far. My views haven't changed much, outside of one aspect. I like Andrew Yang a lot more than I did a few weeks ago. I listened to him on Joe Rogan and other podcasts, and he hit it out of the park. I mean, this guy is almost me in terms of politics. A bit of an exaggeration, but pretty close. I mean, he speaks about the issues like I do, sees the world like I do, and advocates for solutions like I do. There are some areas of disagreement, he's slightly more pro capitalism than I am (while recognizing a need for systemic change), and I will vehemently disagree with the nuances of a handful of his policies (for example, his plan to fund UBI, which I already covered), but other than that he strongly aligns with my highest priorities. Universal basic income, universal healthcare, a need to fix our system and bring it into the 21st century, realizing jobs aren't the answer any more, etc.

However, at the same time, he's sometimes very cringey. He seemingly keeps downplaying that there's a $1 trillion hole in his UBI plan and that what he's peddling in terms of funding is basically left wing reaganomics. To be fair, people like AOC are doing the same thing with the green new deal, and that frustrates me too. It's like Yang and others want to give us these expansive programs but are too cowardly to raise taxes and make the sacrifices needed to make them work. Which is a shame, the taxes are a total paper tiger for most Americans; they seem way more intimidating than they actually are and most Americans would be better off in net even if they think they wouldn't be. I really wish Yang would be more honest with the numbers and push the details hard to explain to people how they work so they would be better off. We lefties can't come off like Santa Claus, trying to fund something for nothing and racking up the debt in the process. That's a way to destroy our credibility and hand the ideological football back to small government conservatives who scream about the debt all the time.

Yang also has other ideas I don't like. He has a policy in which he would give us a "news and information ombudsman" to crack down "fake news" and alleged Russian trolls. I'm against this because, watching the democrats for the last 2 years, the idea of them having anything remotely close to a "ministry of truth" in which they regulate the press and users on social media scares the crap out of me. It comes off as a way to suppress dissent within the democratic party (and as you can tell, I'm a VERY vocal dissenter) and I'm concerned that these powers could, quite frankly, be abused. To be fair it does seem more oriented toward 'corporate offenders", but such an idea still scares the crap out of me in theory. Maybe it won't be as bad as what I'm thinking, but I don't want to set a precedent.

He also has ideas that sound almost conservative in nature. One idea is to sunset old laws by measuring laws according to certain goals and repealing them if they don't meet those goals. The problem I have with this is, well, our system is corrupt. While I get the spirit of what he's going for here, in practice I'm afraid this policy will heavily favor laws corporations lobby for and sunset laws that said corporations claim "hurt jobs" or something like that, which would apply to virtually every labor law if a simplistic understanding of econ 101 is to be believed. I mean, hey, we just lost the whole fair labor standards act and OSHA, but at least I can carry ice cream in my back pocket again. Yay America! Again it's possible that I'm being hyperbolic and that the parameters for repealing laws would be a lot more stringent, but I don't want to risk it. He also wants to cut the size of the federal work force, which, could interfere with the productivity of important agencies, or at least put a lot more stress on federal workers than currently exists.

Now, it's possible I'm blowing many of these flaws out of proportion, but I could see some harm done with these ideas. I don't think Yang means harm; I think these policies exist because he's not a politician and doesn't necessarily understand how these ideas can be abused, but they are concerning.

On the bright side, Yang also has many many innovative ideas that would make up for these poor policies. He wants to do things like eliminate first past the post and implement ranked choice voting. He wants to eliminate corruption, get money out of politics, and give people money they can use specifically to donate to politicians in hopes that it will drown out corporate money. For every bad idea this guy has, he has three good ones. He also seems to understand the need to fundamentally change how our economy works and make it work for the people. And honestly, it's possible I misunderstand his policies or am blowing their flaws out of proportion. So he's a solid candidate.

 At the same time, I still feel a draw toward Bernie Sanders. Bernie is...Bernie. And I love Bernie. He's dusting off his 2016 platform, making some adjustments, and advocating for the same things he always does. He has a more socialist bend to his politics. He sees the core problem as the rich screwing over the little guy, which isn't inaccurate, and proposes a wide array of solutions like a $15 minimum wage, green new deal, medicare for all, and free college. I closely aligned with him in 2016, and I still love and respect the guy a lot. Moreover, he seemed to fine tune his numbers for his plans. For example, in 2016 Sanders got a lot of criticism for his medicare for all funding numbers. This time around, as I recently analyzed, his numbers some to come out perfectly according to the metrics he puts forward. He is a much more pragmatic candidate, while I see Yang as having some issues with his platform due to his lack of experience. Don't get me wrong, Yang is very smart for someone who hasn't run for office before, but his naivete and inexperience on policy shows sometimes. Sanders is much more experienced and has a much better ideal of what he's doing.

Another advantage Sanders has is electability. Sanders, I believe, can win the primary this time around. As a matter of fact I would give him the highest shot right now based on this. He already has a strong loyal base of support that seems to be growing since he announced. He consistently scores second in polls with Biden leading, and honestly, I think Biden is a lot like Clinton in the sense that if he ran, between his personality and politics, he would alienate people, and his support would split among different candidates given the more crowded 2020 field. I could see his supporters splitting among Beto o Rourke, and Amy Klobuchar, and Kamala Harris, giving Bernie a win. Yang...I can't see him winning the primary. I could see him winning the general as his message is heavily geared toward the areas of the country the democrats lost in 2016, and he also seems to be making inroads with some Trump supporters for what I see, but he would need to get out of the primary first. It's gonna be tough enough for Sanders to win with the progressive base united behind him. If we just splinter off and support Yang and Tulsi Gabbard and the like, it could cost Sanders the primary, giving us a moderate like Biden or Harris.

While I would take someone who has somewhat cringey policies at times but is far more closely aligned with my views over someone who isnt really aligned with my views and pragmatic (the justification for my Stein vote over Clinton), Sanders is relatively close to my views compared to most other candidates. While Clinton arguably represented, say, a 50% match with my views weighted by priority, and Stein represented say a 70% match, Sanders represents like an 85-90% match and Yang more like a 90-95% match. It might be worth voting my heart against someone I feel like I disagree with 50% of the time but it isn't worth it over someone I might only disagree with 10% of the time. If Sanders has a better chance to win, it may not be the time to protest vote or play around with unelectable candidates. We need to focus on who can win and implement some sort of vision close to my own. That said, based on the sheer pragmatism of his ideas and the fact that I believe he can win the primary while I'm not sure Yang can, Bernie might actually be the better candidate to support. While I would greatly miss UBI as a central policy in the next democratic administration, I would not be particularly unhappy with Sanders and his ideas. He's still moving us in the right direction and we could always revisit the issue in 2028.

Honestly, at this point, I am just undecided. I guess for now I will root for both. I keep fluctuating between the two. One day I feel like an Andrew Yang guy, the next a Bernie guy. I guess I will need to wait until next year and see how the field develops to see what I should do. I do at least want to see Andrew Yang get into the democratic debates. It might influence the field and for all we know Sanders might integrate some sort of UBI into his platform if it's popular. Who knows. I will say that barring some major development or some other candidate better than them both entering the race, those two are the ones I'm keeping my eye on most and have the most support for at the moment. There are some other decent candidates out there, but right now I have to say I like these two most.

The overall tax burden and savings of medicare for all and UBI on "average" earners

So I recently looked at Andrew Yang's UBI proposal and medicare for all in terms of funding. With Bernie Sanders' medicare for all proposal, I found that the numbers added up for the most part and that it was sufficient as it is. With Andrew Yang's UBI, I found the numbers did not add up and offered corrections that should come close to bringing in enough revenue, most notably a 10% payroll tax and income tax on other forms of income in addition to Yang's 10% VAT and spending cuts.

Now I want to look at how different people and families will be impacted across the spectrum. I won't focus on the top income earners as there are too many taxes to keep track of, but I can probably get a good idea of how it would impact people in the bottom 90% of the spectrum. So here I will analyze people at the 10th, 30th, 50th, 70th, and 90th percentile of earnings.

Taxes on average earners

Average earners would would face a number of higher taxes with UBI and medicare for all. Most notably, they would face a 10% payroll/income tax on earnings, and an additional 10% VAT from the UBI. They would also face an additional 7.5% payroll tax paid by employers for healthcare, and a 4% premium they pay based on their earnings.

Savings by average earners 

Individual adults over 18 would receive a $12,000 UBI, with 2 adult households getting $24,000. While medicare for all would tack on an additional 7.5% payroll tax paid by employers, this replaces a 7.6% premium already paid for health insurance. That said it cancels itself out and breaks roughly even and will not be counted. I will count the additional 4% tax paid by households, but it should be noted that the average household spends 8% on healthcare right now, so this would cut household expenditures in half in practice, effectively shifting the burden to the rich. That said while I could account for an extra 4% in taxes households pay, I could also deduct 4% in practice due to the extra spending power they should have. I understand household costs are asymmetrical across households, with some paying very little and some paying a lot, but this is a model for looking at the overall big picture so your mileage may vary vs my calculations.

That said, I will account for 6% effective extra payroll/income taxes on households in practice, and an extra 10% on top of that in terms of a VAT, as this will be the extra overall money coming out of peoples' paychecks. I will also apply the $12,000 UBI to income between the payroll tax deduction, which would apply here, and the VAT deduction, which would apply to the UBI itself.

10th percentile income

Now, before I begin I will cite my sources and point out for individual and household incomes I am drawing my sources from here and here. I will assume 1 adult for individual income and 2 adults for your average household.

At 10th percentile, your individual income is $7000. With an effective 6% payroll tax accounting for healthcare savings, you will pay in $420 and make a total of $6520. You will get a $12,000 UBI bringing your income up to $18,520. You will then pay 10% in VAT bringing your income down to $16,722. This will leave you 164% better off compared to where you would be under a laissez faire system. It would effectively lift you out of poverty.

For households, your income would be $14,280, which would be brought down to $13,423 after the effective payroll tax. You would then get $24,000 bringing your income up to $37,423. Paying the VAT, you would have a total of $33,680 at your disposal in net. You would be MUCH better off than under the status quo, a whopping 135%. I can't comment on how and whether welfare would make you better off than this at all, but I'm guessing probably not.

30th percentile income

 At 30th percentile income, an individual would make $24,001 a year. After the payroll tax they would make $22,561. With the UBI they would get $34,561. With the VAT they would get $31,105. This makes them almost 30% better off than they are now.

For households they make $35,495. After payroll taxes they will make $33,365. UBI would then bring them up to $57,365. The VAT would bring them back down to $51,629. This makes them 45% better off than they would be right now.

50th percentile income

Now we are getting into medians; true "averages." This is what your actual average joe would get under this plan.

At 50th percentile income, an individual would make $39,048. The payroll tax would bring this down to $36,705. UBI would bring this up to $48,705. The VAT brings this down to $43,835, which is 12% more than one would make now.

For households, they would make $61,822. With the payroll tax it would become $58,113. The UBI would bring this up to $82,113. With the VAT, it would go down to $73,901. They would be roughly 20% better off than they are now.

70th percentile income

At 70th percentile, an individual earns $60,020 a year. The payroll tax would bring this down to $56,418. UBI would raise this up to $68,418. The 10% VAT would reduce this to $61,577. This means that someone at this level, which is where you start getting into the bottom of the upper middle class in my opinion, would be 3% better off than they are now.

For a household, they would make $98,823 a year. The payroll tax brings this down to $92,894. UBI would bring this up to $116,894. The VAT would bring it back down to $105,204. This would make people 6% better off than they are now.

90th percentile income

At 90th percentile income, an individual earns $114,068. The payroll brings this down to $107,224. The UBI brings it up to $119,224. The VAT brings it back down to $107,301. This would leave such an individual 6% worse off than the status quo. That really isn't bad at all considering how much money that is.

For households, 90th percentile is $178,793. The payroll tax brings them down to $168,065. UBI brings them back up to $192,065. The VAT brings it back down to $172,859, which leaves these guys 3% worse off. Again, not bad.

Discussion and conclusion

So, I do want to keep in mind this analysis is a little deceptive. I did not include what these guys currently pay in taxes. I did not include the full extent of the extra taxation burden here, which would be closer to 24% rather than 16%. HOWEVER, also keep in mind you will not have to pay for health insurance. That expense is GONE. Those hundreds, if not thousands, you spend every month on insurance? Off your back. Copays, deductibles, medical debt? Don't worry about it. All taken care of. That's where that extra spending power comes from.

Relative to the status quo, while a UBI and medicare for all would raise taxes nominally on working families by as much as 24% on the end that they would actually face (ignoring the employer premium that they already pay), the extra spending power and freedom it brings would leave the vast majority of Americans much better off in practice. I'm almost stunned how well the numbers work out. Almost 80% of people would benefit from this shift to my knowledge. You would have more spending power in your pockets at the end of the day, not less. People at the bottom would obviously benefit the most. At the 10th percentile you would be 2.5x as well off as you are today roughly. At the 30th percentile, still a good 30-45% better off. At the median, closer to 12-20%. At the 70th percentile, a modest 3-6%. People at the 90th percentile would be 3-6% worse off in contrast.

UBI costs a lot of money on paper. But that deceptive. It pumps a lot of money in and out of the economy, taking it from some and redistributing it to those who need it most in practice. Such taxes on paper should be economy destroying but they're not because all of that income is being pumped back into the economy like a massive stimulus. And best of all it does it in a way that should not greatly discourage work effort, as marginal tax rates for most Americans would likely remain below 50%. Medicare for all seems astoundingly expensive too, but in practice, removing healthcare off of peoples' backs actually leaves them better off. It is a weight around their necks that threatens to send them into financial ruin.

Don't let the massive costs of these programs dissuade you, you might be thinking, oh my god, $8-9 trillion federal budget, how are you gonna pay for that? Well, we already discussed it over 3 posts. While the taxes would take tons of money out of the economy, it is not like it goes into a black hole never to be seen again. It ends up being redistributed back into peoples' hands via UBI and being freed from the burden of high medical costs. I mean if we go by the graph here from the CBO, the nominal rates will go up. Lower income households will nominally be paying 28% of their income in taxes vs the 4% or so they do now. Second quintile people will be paying 32%. 3rd quintile people around 37%. 4th quintile around 42%. Top quintile anything from 45% on up, with the top really getting hosed due to Bernie's tax increases on them. I cannot comment on whether these high rates can be achieved or if the rich will hide their money or what, but on paper, this plan seems to work at least. And lots of people will be getting lots of money back offsetting this burden and leaving most better off for it. This reminds me of what a European nation charges in terms of taxes. Those nations are the most prosperous on earth and have the most expansive safety nets. We can be like them. UBI and medicare for all would make us like them. I think this is a worthwhile goal. This is, in my opinion, what our vision should be going into 2020, and what I would support in an ideal world where I could magically have a candidate with Yang's UBI plan (modified to my specifications) and Bernie's medicare for all plan.

Analyzing Bernie Sanders' Medicare For All proposal

So, seeing how I'm getting into analyzing how we pay for things like Andrew Yang's UBI plan, I decided to also analyze Bernie Sanders' medicare for all proposal since I also would like to see universal healthcare implemented. I came across this page on his senate website outlining how he plans to pay for it, and looking at it, our current spending, and what we would need to implement medicare for all, I will see if the numbers add up.

We spend $3.5 trillion on healthcare per year as a country, which is a little different from Sanders' claim of $3.2 trillion, but not off by a lot. It is possible that this is derived from the same data, just looking at it differently, or that the data is from a different year. I will look at how his numbers add up to both estimates in this article. We currently spend $1.036 trillion between medicare and medicaid, a trillion less than what Sanders claims, so we need roughly $2.2.-2.5 trillion in order to fund it in theory. This sounds like a big gap to fill in theory but let's look at Sanders' plan.

So we get $1.036 trillion from current spending.

We would get $390 billion from a "7.5% payroll tax paid for by employers."

We would get $350 billion from a "4% income based premium paid by households."

We would get $420 billion a year from tax breaks that we would no longer need that go to people like employers who currently fund healthcare.

We would get $500 billion from saving on administrative costs.

We would get $113 billion from saving on pharmaceutical costs.

So far this gets us a total of about $2.8 trillion dollars. Effectively, depending how one looks at it, it would raise taxes between 4% and 11.5% on people, and as far as the employer base payroll tax that might actually take the place of a lot of current contributions employers pay so it might actually come out much lower. It would be a tax increase on average people, but considering how much of that spending replaces current spending on insurance, many people might be better off. Sanders points out that the average family could save around $4400 a year under this plan so it sounds like it would be a net positive for most families.

And that's not all, Sanders also had other proposals that would help close the remaining $400-700 billion gap that are targetted at the wealthy and wall street. These include:

Higher taxes on those making over $250,000 a year, ranging from 40% up to 52%, as well as taxing capital gains like regular work and "limiting tax deductions for the wealthy." This would raise $180 billion a year.

He would raise $24 billion from increasing the estate tax on estates over $3.5 million.

A wealth tax would raise $130 billion per year.

He would close the "Gingrich Edwards" tax loophole which should raise $25 billion per year.

He would tax off shore profit holdings in the Cayman islands and the like, raising $77 billion per year.

He would "impose a fee on large financial institutions", raising $12 billion per year.

Finally, he would "repear corporate accounting gimmicks" for an additional $11 billion yet year.

This would give us an additional $459 billion per year total, which combined with the previous $2.8 trillion, gives us a total of around $3.26 trillion. Assuming Sanders' $3.2 trillion figure is accurate, his numbers add up on paper. I can't guarantee he will raise the revenue he claims to, but on paper I have to give his plan a tentative pass. I will admit that based on the $3.5 trillion figure that I do come up $240 billion short that way of looking at it, but it is unknown whether the two figures were derived from reading the same data differently or what. The point is the numbers add up close enough in theory that I have to give this idea a tentative pass.

Also, another thing that we need to take into consideration with single payer healthcare is that in such a system, the government is effectively a monopsony, or the only buyer of healthcare (hence the name "single PAYER"). This is basically the buyer equivalent of a monopoly in economics. The advantage of such a system is the government can effectively strongarm businesses into charging lower prices because if they don't, the government can force their hand by refusing to buy from them. So they can set prices and control costs much better, and this could lead to further savings in the long term where maybe one day we can only spend 10-12% of our GDP on healthcare like the rest of the world.

That said, it looks to me that while single payer healthcare is very expensive, almost as much as my universal basic income plan, Bernie Sanders does have a solid funding proposal to pay for it to the best of my knowledge. I can't go into the specifics of whether the nominal tax rates he will attempt to charge will bring in the amount of revenue he claims they will or any of that really advanced stuff you would need a full fledged economist to analyze, but his numbers to be, look good enough where I have to approve of this plan.

My opinion on the green new deal

So I recently discussed the standoff between Dianne Feinstein and some school children and I hinted at the idea that I'm not fully behind a green new deal. I would not say I'm completely opposed to it, but as per the post I wrote the other day, I believe that there are only so many programs we can pragmatically pursue at once and I believe that there are opportunity costs associated with whatever program we choose. The green new deal is likely going to be a very expensive program. I am not sure of the exact costs, but if I had to guess, it would cost trillions per year. This makes it a direct competitor to the proposal I champion, which is the universal basic income. Quite frankly we cannot afford both. While I believe we have room to expand our safety nets to be more Scandiavian in size and scope, there are limits and one of these proposals will put us in line with Scandinavian countries spending wise, which I see near the realistic maximum a market based economy can bear. Past that we literally have a much bigger public sector in our economy than a private sector, and this basically would inhibit growth and move us toward a nationalized economy similar to what you would expect from a failed communist state. No, just no. I am not a supporter of that. My utopian ideals must be tempered with a reasonable amount of pragmatism, and I realize we cannot have it all. That said, we must decide what to prioritize.

The green new deal sounds compelling in some ways. It would completely change how our economy works to make it more green, while providing jobs and economic security for all. These are not bad aspirations. My key concern is the approach, and considering how I'm weighing the concept of the proposal against a UBI, my standards are quite high and I honestly would rather have a UBI.

First of all, I don't consider the green aspects of the green new deal to be pragmatic. The program is ambitious, too ambitious, and the initial goals put forward by Alexandria Ocasio Cortez seem completely unfeasible to me. She supported things like retrofitting every building in the entire country to be more green, which I just can't see happening. Many buildings in the US are quite old, and it's already burdensome to mess with the infrastructure. Whenever someone installs a gas furnace in my neighborhood they dig up the street and cause tons of disruption. Imagine that times several hundred million in the next 10 years. This is madness. She wants to replace all heaters with electric to get rid of all fossil fuels, which may raise the heating costs for many Americans. She wants to basically make so much high speed rail it makes air travel obsolete, but high speed rail is, in and of itself, quite expensive, and making enough for the entire country and to accommodate the volume necessary for air travel...I just can't see it working. They want to get rid of nuclear power, which I see as one of the most reliable forms of power out there and is far better than fossil fuels, even if not perfect. Even worse, if you trust Andrew Yang's assessment on it, which I see as realistic, the US only produces 15% of carbon emissions so say we implement all of these things to completely remove the carbon impacts of the US, well, we still have the other 85% of the world to worry about. So on the green front, we're basically pushing these extremely expensive high scale solutions that will ultimately have a marginal effect on the problem if they're even feasible at all. I mean I hate to say it, but I think we are screwed on climate change and while I do support mitigation where practical, the green new deal approach seems more new deal than green in practice.

Then you have to look at the economic front. It basically pushes FDR's second bill of rights and tries to guarantee healthcare, job training, and jobs to all Americans. This isn't bad, I definitely support universal healthcare and job training and education. I support many overhauls to our labor laws to raise wages and make working conditions better. But I will say what I've always said here, JOBS ARE NOT THE ANSWER. So say we spent trillions creating jobs. Okay, for the next decade as we improve our infrastructure that makes sense. What will we do then? Create more work for the sake of creating more work? Will tax payers be willing to pay more money (and I'll get to funding later, that's a doozy) to the tune of hundreds of billions or trillions a year for the purpose of creating jobs so others can have a paycheck? Why not just cut out the middleman and give everyone a paycheck like with UBI? I am not totally opposed to the economic aspirations here, but I do think they're a bit outdated. Guaranteed jobs made sense when FDR suggested it, but even then it wasn't perfect. We need to also consider where these jobs will be located. The key issue with the economy in some ways in terms of jobs is some communities are just...dead. Obviously they're not gonna create a job for every displaced coal miner or factory worker living in Appalachia or the burnt out cities in the rust belt. And honestly, will people necessarily be qualified to do the jobs at hand? Infrastructure jobs are dangerous and generally are only good for young people with good physical strength, stamina, and coordination. Older people and even some younger people may not be physically fit for these jobs. That said, the logistics of how this would work just seem mind boggling to me. It sounds nice on paper, but wouldn't it be better just to cut everyone a check?

Finally, AOC, while I respect her in a lot of ways and see her as young Bernie, doesnt seem to be experienced enough to know how to pay for this. I already criticized Yang's proposal and tried to improve it, but now I'm criticizing this. AOC wants to use modern monetary theory to just inject money into the economy, which is a terrible idea. Even if MMT is true, and I do believe it has merit, you're gonna devalue the currency by an insane amount to pay for it, perhaps even creating hyperinflation.Yeah, this is just a terrible idea.

Look, I love the left. I love the upcoming political revolution that realigns the parties and moves us left as a country. We need solutions to problems that have been ignored for far too long. But we have to be smart about it. The green new deal would cost a ton of money and has impractical aspirations on the front of curbing climate change. It's a lot of money with diminishing goals. On the economic front it's better and I like the idea we're finally discussing guaranteed livings in a market economy, but honestly, I'm more in support of Andrew Yang's UBI proposal. I think it's better just to cut everyone a check and help them find their own happiness rather than create a vast job creating bureaucracy that might make sense in the next decade but will likely become less and less relevant beyond that. Finally, there doesn't seem to be a realistic proposal to pay for it all. I'm not saying we can't. I mean, if we can fund a UBI which I believe we can, we can fund this. But the proponents are relying on deficit spending instead and this is just a terrible idea. Honestly, I'm not fully opposed to a green new deal in practice, and if Bernie is the nominee for president and pushes one I will support it and hope for the best. Still, I do not see it as the best approach and would rather support a UBI proposal like Andrew Yang supports over this.

My very mixed opinion on the Diane Feinstein debacle

So Dianne Feinstein was caught on camera in a confrontation with a bunch of school children over support for the green new deal, and it's gotten a lot of controversy. Personally, viewing the video, I have a very mixed view on the video, and it's largely a lot of negativity toward both sides here. I'll explain why.

Before getting into Feinstein herself, I want to focus on the school children. Let me ask you this, when you were the age of these children, were you into politics? I sure wasn't, and don't know of any kid who was. I was too busy watching Power Rangers and playing Pokemon. It seems to me like either the parents or the teachers, or maybe both, put them up to this. This rubs me the wrong way. First of all, I'm against childhood indoctrination into topics like religion and politics. I was indoctrinated into religion and to an extent politics as a kid and a teenager, and considering how my deconversion and changing my views are what inspired me to name this blog what it did, I have very negative views toward parents and teachers manipulating children into having political views at their age. They are not at an age of reason, where they can think about these issues for themselves. These opinions are imposed on them. It doesn't matter to me if they're on the "right" side of history or happen to agree with me, I dislike the concept of kids being involved in politics because that normally involves some level of indoctrination they have no control over. Second of all, sending children to do your dirty work is...well....dirty. The purpose of using children to send a political message is for emotional manipulation. It's the whole Mrs. Lovejoy "won't somebody please think of the children" routine. I'm against this because I support actual rational and open debate and consider using children to be more manipulative. It's a trap to make Feinstein look bad if she says no, because who can say no to children? The purpose is to try to trap her into a positive position in order to force her hand on the issue regardless of the merits. That said, I could almost forgive Feinstein for calling them out on this...almost.

Which brings me to the other half of the equation, Feinstein. I admit if I were in her shoes I would not exactly be the picture of grace under fire either. This is part of the reason I would suck as a politician. For all of the ideas I have, I often lack charisma and in moments like this when confronted, I would have barely more charisma than Hillary Clinton. Which is kind of why I have to rip Feinstein here. Feinstein reacted like I would expect Hillary Clinton to react. I mean, she not only failed to meet my admittedly low standards here, but she shattered my low expectations by going so low with this that I can only express extreme disdain toward her over this. Feinstein reacted arrogantly. She literally reminded me of Clinton's 2016 persona. Actually considering the video, she made Clinton look good. She went on about how she won her last election. She went on about how the kids didn't vote for her because they're too young. She told them to run for office if they think they can do a better job. She completely and utterly talked down to the kids and crushed their dreams in a way that I just find morally reprehensible, and she is exactly what I find so offputting about the old guard of the party. These guys think they know better than everyone else, that they are owed their seat, and don't have to listen to their constituents. Her challenge to the kids to run something comes off as even more offputting because let's be honest, she's in a safe district, and it's likely the DCCC would discourage primary challenges and powerful interests would work against them because "unity." Sure she wins elections, but it's because the demographics combined with the broken 2 party system make it where she is in a position of complete job security. And she will likely hold that position in the senate until the day she dies or retires. She knows it. She's untouchable. And it makes her words even more insulting. That said, screw Dianne Feinstein. This is exactly the kind of democrat we should not hold our nose and "vote blue no matter who" for. Screw party unity if this is the kind of people we have to unite with. We can do far better.

That said, I'm very mixed on this issue. I don't believe either side is really "right". I think both are, to varying degrees, wrong. I don't blame the children as they don't know any better, but I do blame the parents and/or teachers. Sending children to try to emotionally manipulate a senator and the public's reaction to the issue is...well...wrong. There are many good reasons to be for the green new deal and many reasons to be against it. I'd rather focus on actual debate rather than these kinds of underhanded tactics. At the same time, Feinstein's reaction managed to let down my relatively low expectations for a response here. I'm not expecting Feinstein to react perfectly here. She was put into a bind. But she literally outdid Hillary Clinton's arrogance and condescension in her response, and really reminded me of why I can't stand centrist neoliberal politicians. If you're not for the green new deal, fine, I'm mixed on it myself and question if it's the best approach. It's not that I oppose expansive government programs that provide economic security and try to tackle climate change, I just question if it's the right path to solving the problems at hand. But don't talk down to children simply because they're not old enough to vote for you. I didn't vote for Feinstein either as I don't live her your district, and if she were in my district, your attitude would send me backing to the green party so fast I wouldn't be supporting her in the future. This is exactly the kind of democratic candidate I actively refuse to support. This whole debacle is just failure all around.