2020 Presidential Election

[Voronwë the Faithful]

That's also not correct, I'm afraid. What the CNN article says is "the campaign offered the field staff a boost in pay that would guarantee a $15 an hour salary commensurate with a 40-hour work week" but not that the workers would be limited to working only 40 hours per week. If you read the Washington Post article cited by CNN as breaking the story, you will see that the union rejected the campaign's proposal because it was also "seeking to extend the workweek to six days."

ETA: The campaign is now saying, in response to the controversy, that they will limit hours so that no one makes less than $15/hour. https://www.newsweek.com/bernie-sanders ... sy-1450267

ETAA: I doubt, however, that will be the end of it, as in my experience when such promises are made they either are immediately broken, or worse, lead to the employer demanding that the employee complete the work that realistically would require 60 hours to do in only 40 hours, and then complain when it is not getting done. As for Bernie himself, far from "agreeing" to the worker's requests as yov said, his response was to blast the workers for airing the grievances publicly. Apparently he is all for transparency, accept when it comes to his own actions.

[Cerin]

So, in summary, problems arose with the number of hours people were working and the campaign is dealing with it. Hypocrisy!!

[Frelga]

Apparently he is all for transparency, accept when it comes to his own actions.

Well, he's the guy who was railing against "millionaires and billionaires" until it was revealed that he was a millionaire. Now it's just billionaires.

But at least he is paying his taxes.
https://www.politico.com/story/2019/04/ ... re-1276928

[Cerin]

If we're going on about hypocrisy and transparency, how about the candidate who criticized a fellow-candidate in a nationally televised debate for not supporting federally mandated school busing, while conveniently forgetting to mention to the millions of people watching that she doesn't support federally mandated school busing either.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

That's not quite an accurate characterization of either Biden's longstanding position or Harris's position. Biden has long expressed antipathy towards any use of busing as a way of achieving desegregation in schools. It was this longstanding position that Harris addressed at the debate and that Biden was so unsuccessful at responding to at the time. Biden later tried to claim that he only opposed federally-mandated busing, but that contradicts many statements he has made in the past. Harris's position is that today federally mandated school busing is only necessary in cases where local governments are actively opposing integration, but that in the 1960s and ’70s, when many local institutions were working against integration of the schools federally-mandated busing was crucial to overcome those obstacles.

To say that their positions are the same is a vast simplification of a complicated issue, and just not true.

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[yovargas]

And the Bernie story was also an oversimplification of a more complex story. Media today. Meh.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

I think the media is reporting the facts about the Bernie story. You can claim that I am over-simplifying it if you like, and while I disagree (obviously), that is a reasonable position to hold. But don't blame the media for reporting the facts and having people like me interpret them. To me is pretty clearly hypocritical for Bernie to claim that the law should be a $15 per hour minimum wage and then take actions that would violate that law if it were in place. Moreover, I think if he said they were working through the issues with their great workers, it would be largely a non-story to me. But because he choose to attack the people who were complaining about not being able to make ends meet on their current salaries in such an aggressive fashion, it made me lose much more respect for him. I think the last thing we need to combat Trump is another abrasive, aggressive New Yorker.

But of course your mileage may, and obviously does, vary.

[Alatar]

Looks like Trump just needs to keep schtum while the Democrats all savage each other. What a stupid system.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

I don't know, a little competition is not necessarily a bad thing, if the result is that the best possible candidate results from the process. I don't think the things that the candidates are addressing at this point in the primary process are going to make the slightest difference as to whether or not the ultimate winner of the Democratic primary will be able to beat Mr. Trump. I agree that there are aspects of the system that are troubling, with the electoral college giving a potentially outsized amount of influence to the voters in a few states, but ultimately, I don't think our system is necessarily worse than other democratic or semi-democratic systems such as the parliamentary system used by many other countries, and which also has some troubling aspects (as seen, for instance, by what has been happening in the UK). But that is perhaps a subject for a different thread.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

To his credit, the Sanders campaign has reached a new deal with the union.

https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4 ... rker-wages

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[yovargas]

Did you really doubt that he would?

[Dave_LF]

On a different (sub) topic, I suspect Trump would like nothing more than for 2020 to be about whether he's a racist. Inasmuch as the man thinks his actions through at all, I'd bet that's the motivation behind much of his current behavior. The problem is, he's not wrong that certain Democrats "always play the race card." That card has been played so often and under so many questionable circumstances, an awful lot of people just roll their eyes and tune out now whenever they hear the r-word, even when it is in fact justified. That's the whole problem with crying wolf, after all. Which is not to say Trump should be given a free pass. But in my opinion, the Democrats would be wise to quit taking his bait and instead keep their primary (pun intended) focus on the fact that the man is a lawless buffoon.

[yovargas]

Heh, it's funny, I've thought about the crying wolf lesson many times when it comes to the left's attitude on identity politics. It's something I think the left really, really needs to think about, but I doubt that will happen. And not really so much about crying wolf when there's no wolf but for crying wolf when there's, like, a raccoon.

[Frelga]

Or talking about lone wolves and voting for a pack.

[River]

He's doing this because it gets him applause from his fanbase. As for why people find this sort of disgusting behavior applaudable, I can't say. Maybe some agree with him and are happy he's voicing what they don't have the courage or bad manners to speak out loud. Maybe some just enjoy the reactions he gets. But I think there'd be a lot of value moving the discussion away from what Trump's saying and towards why anyone is cheering him on for this s***.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Metaphorically speaking, the existence of Carcharoth doesn't mean that lesser wolves should not be called out.

In reality, of course, wolves are noble beasts with an important role in the scheme of things, but that doesn't negate the metaphorical point.

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[RoseMorninStar]

Knowing that our country elected someone who speaks in such an undignified, low, base, vile, divisive, & hateful manner with so little self-control is heartbreaking.

[Túrin Turambar]

I read an interesting Op Ed in The Guardian making the case that the push to impeach Trump is a fixation of educated urban liberals, and the Democratic Party would be far better focusing its attention on issues relating directly to the standards of living of working-class people (healthcare, education, employment, working conditions, etc). I don't have a dog in the fight, but I think it's a valid concern.

[RoseMorninStar]

From a purely political partisan view that is probably true. From a legal, moral/ethical point of view, perhaps not.

[River]

Why not both?