2020 Field

Julio3000 said:
I had treated him rather as a joke (not a crackpot, per se, just a gimmick candidate) and his first debate performance tended to underscore that. But his second debate was strong and I thought he was excellent—though I disagreed with him on several particulars—in the CNN climate forum.

One thing he emphasized in that venue was something I’ve been harping on for ages, which is that GDP is a terrible measure of progress/success.

He’s been a pleasant surprise to me so far.
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Angus Deaton, 2015 Nobel prize winner, has popularized a new source of information to measure economic well-being: household surveys that ask people how happy they are. His 2015 book, The Great Escape: Health, Wealth, and the Origins of Inequality, examines how the patterns of economic development and technological change in the past 250 years of human existence have transformed lives and affected economic well-being.

And I remember as a freshman in Econ 101 many years ago my professor discussing how GDP left out certain things like clean air and clear water that were important to human welfare.

The United Arab Emirates have a minister of happiness. Easy to make fun of. But I think a good idea. Dubai has pronounced 2019 the year of tolerance. Previous years were pronounced years of culture, reading etc. I think those kinds of things are important and definitely worthy of promotion via government policy.
 
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Anyone curious just how much new spending these candidates have proposed? Stossel added it up... including Trump's proposals:

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striker42 said:
Why would anyone think the left is nicer than the right. The left is still made up of human beings. Human beings are awful.
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You have it in a nutshell. I think the difference is that with the 24-hour news cycle and the explosion of social media, the meanness comes out rapid and there gets to be a "Can you top this?" element to the debate. I mean, a lot of the stuff on Twitter in response to an event/statement is quite witty and funny (from both sides), but then someone will come along and poop in the punchbowl and things devolve from there.

I've worked in partisan politics. It can get nasty and neither side has a monopoly on that. The difference now than when I was in the trenches is that the boundaries of what is accepted behavior have expanded widely. I think 57 is partially right in putting a lot of this on Limbaugh's show. There have always been cranks, but Limbaugh's show is a constant drumbeat that never lets up. That paved the way for an action/reaction escalation of venom. But there have been cranks on the left as well. They just never had a platform similar to Limbaugh until recently.
 
Minnesotan that I am, I was glad when Senator Amy "Easy to Like, Hard to Love" Klobuchar went after Bernie's health care plan. The total lack of fiscal sense in both parties is abominable.
 
50PoundHead said:
Minnesotan that I am, I was glad when Senator Amy "Easy to Like, Hard to Love" Klobuchar went after Bernie's health care plan. The total lack of fiscal sense in both parties is abominable.
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Amy I like. I think she is a logical choice for veep.
 
nsacpi said:
Amy I like. I think she is a logical choice for veep.
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I agree, but I don't think there is a match for whomever will be on the top of the ticket. Biden would have to "go left" and Warren will have to pick a man ala "Mi Llamo Tim Kaine." That said, she'd be a good VP in that she knows how to get things done and can work with both sides.
 
50PoundHead said:
I agree, but I don't think there is a match for whomever will be on the top of the ticket. Biden would have to "go left" and Warren will have to pick a man ala "Mi Llamo Tim Kaine." That said, she'd be a good VP in that she knows how to get things done and can work with both sides.
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I'm thinking more of geographic considerations. I think Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan and Iowa are all in play to one extent or another and having a veep from that region might get you an extra 1%, which in a close race is important. Plus she has a bit of a gritty, blue collar (her grandfather was a miner), eastern European family background, which will help with certain demographic groups that are in play.
 
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sturg33 said:
That's bc conservatives will at least TALK to the other side without calling them a nazi

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No, they just call them all socialists. You need to get on the e-mail money-begging list from the members of the House Freedom Caucus.
 
nsacpi said:
I'm thinking more of geographic considerations. I think Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan and Iowa are all in play to one extent or another and having a veep from that region might get you an extra 1%, which in a close race is important. Plus she has a bit of a gritty, eastern European family background, which will help with certain demographic groups that are in play.
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That's true, but I just wonder how the nationalization of the political discussion affects the choice of running mates. She would also do well in Western Pennsylvania.

It's been fun to watch her. She has won awards from a couple of my clients and she has really upped her wit and sense of humor (a lot of it self-deprecating) in her public persona. She was an all-business County Attorney (her prosecutorial record may work against her the same way Harris' has worked against hers) that never exuded that much warmth. I think part of that is the trap a lot of female public officials face in that they risk being branded a lightweight if they deviate from a certain form. On the other hand, there's the Hillary model that was so cold and robotic that the B-label stuck like glue. I'm curious to see how it works out for Klobuchar.
 
50PoundHead said:
You have it in a nutshell. I think the difference is that with the 24-hour news cycle and the explosion of social media, the meanness comes out rapid and there gets to be a "Can you top this?" element to the debate. I mean, a lot of the stuff on Twitter in response to an event/statement is quite witty and funny (from both sides), but then someone will come along and poop in the punchbowl and things devolve from there.

I've worked in partisan politics. It can get nasty and neither side has a monopoly on that. The difference now than when I was in the trenches is that the boundaries of what is accepted behavior have expanded widely. I think 57 is partially right in putting a lot of this on Limbaugh's show. There have always been cranks, but Limbaugh's show is a constant drumbeat that never lets up. That paved the way for an action/reaction escalation of venom. But there have been cranks on the left as well. They just never had a platform similar to Limbaugh until recently.
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Maybe Limbaugh knew what the left was planning all along.

Call me a cook all you want but if you have listened to him the past you can see that his truth is coming to pass currently with the radical left.
 
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