Hey there! Tool checking in from the fighting 14th congressional district. Land of Sunnyside, Jackson Heights, Corona, Astoria, Woodside, and da Bronx (southern). I’ve been on a short break from Dailykos but wanted to return to chime in about a few parts of the debate that stood out from me!
I returned to Sanger Hall in my residential neighborhood (where the prices of the houses cost more than what most people in the area make in a lifetime) to watch the debate with my wife (I got married last week after 10 years together — goooo hunter’s moon) — and the crowd was a little less raucous than I last remembered it. This time there was not a drinking game but the hall was filled with Warren & Bernie posters, life size cardboard cut outs of the two, and chairs well ordered to fit about a hundred people.
The hall was filled and everyone was listening attentively. I arrived a few minutes into the debates and quietly asked a waiter if I could move a table at the back and sit on it. They agreed and with my seat secured I grabbed us some food and drinks.
I know this happened on Tuesday and is ancient history in terms of the news cycle of our dastardly orange duckard resident, but it was not lost on me or the crowd that Senator Warren was being attacked from the rightward section of the democratic party that was on stage during the debate.
Each one of the debates has followed what appears to be a highly scripted media narrative that sets the range of what is acceptable for the debate according to the billionaire media owners & their compatriots in the republican party.
That’s quite a claim Tool. I know right? It’s almost like each one of the debates has addressed the same topics, with the same questions, in the same way, in a predictable manner that in designed to force democratic candidates to answer false choice logical fallacies. These questions are apparently offered up by people with Masters degrees in journalism and asked at each one of the debate.
One of these reoccurring zombie talking points type questions was repeated by very serious moderator Lacey.
LACEY: Senator Warren, we've proposed -- you've proposed some sweeping plans, free public college, free universal childcare, eliminating most Americans' college debt. And you've said how you're going to pay for those plans. But you have not specified how you're going to pay for the most expensive plan, Medicare for all. Will you raise taxes on the middle class to pay for it, yes or no?
This is called a false choice question with the objective of forcing democratic candidates to say they will “raise taxes” on the middle class.
The media or pundits like to call these “gotcha” questions but democratic voters and republican voters definition of what constitutes a “gotcha” question may be wildly different.
WARREN: So the way I see this, it is about what kinds of costs middle-class families are going to face. So let me be clear on this. Costs will go up for the wealthy. They will go up for big corporations. And for middle-class families, they will go down. I will not sign a bill into law that does not lower costs for middle-class families.
Warren makes the point and Senator Sanders reaffirms their shared understanding that when you get rid of deductibles, co-payments, insurance premiums, and out of pocket expenses for health related costs — it does not matter two flying flagons of a flailing fungal frog that taxes will go up by 2% for the middle class and dramatically more for the rich & corporations — since out of pocket costs for families, the poor, and millions of U.S citizens will go down.
The real T in the debate is costs but all we hear from the media is “how are we going to pay for it.” and rightward frames that represent the interests of the rich and business interests over that of the 99%.
Senator Warren has made this point over and over at the debates. Senator Sanders has made this same point over and over at the debates. Yet they get called “being evasive” or “not leveling with the U.S people about the true costs.”
Does any media person ever ask “How are we going to pay for it?” when it comes to war? We have spent a couple trillion since I was 18 on war. How are we gonna pay for it?
Anyone in the media ever ask “How are we going to pay for those tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations?” No? Did Trump and republicans not just pass a multi-trillion dollar tax bill as their only signature legislative bi-partisan accomplishment over the last four years?
Hmmm. Why is it that the only place democrats and republicans seemed to get along over the last few years was Trump’s tax bill. It’s almost like money can have a direct influence over a political party or candidates.
WARREN: ... and cancel -- no, let me finish, please, and cancel student loan debt for 95 percent of the people who have it. My question is not why do Bernie and I support a wealth tax. It's why is it does everyone else on this stage think it is more important to protect billionaires than it is to invest in an entire generation of Americans?
This is a central question to our moment in time. It’s not a question that we as a party, nation, or a people can dance around. It’s a difficult question and one that is emotionally difficult for many people to consider.
In April of this past year I wrote a diary that detailed a meeting that Mayor Pete Buttigieg attended with many power brokers in the democratic party.
www.cnbc.com/...
- Pete Buttigieg’s increasingly popular presidential run has drawn the support of more than two dozen top Democratic fundraisers, according to a list CNBC obtained from campaign aides.
- The list includes people who bundled big-dollar donations for Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.
Pete Buttigieg’s increasingly popular presidential run has drawn the support of more than two dozen top Democratic fundraisers, including people who bundled big-dollar donations for Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton during their White House bids, according to a list CNBC obtained from campaign aides.
The financiers on the roster range from former U.S. ambassadors to real estate executives, the latest evidence that the South Bend, Indiana, mayor’s underdog bid to challenge President Donald Trump next year is catching on with Democrats as the party sorts through a crowded primary field.
My critique was focused on the inequality of power between Mayor Pete and who he was seeking advice, help, guidance, and influence from. He did not have an army of volunteers behind him. He did not have millions of small donors behind him. He did not have anything resembling what power brokers like Chuck & Nancy respect and in my belief were looking to groom him as the next neo-liberal power house.
I was cautiously optimistic of Mayor Pete over the last few months. He returned the money that he raised from that meeting and returned the money of a bunch of wall-street bundlers. He understood that the perception of taking money from capital this cycle would not be a politically smart move.
Yet we must examine his language and views since April.
BUTTIGIEG: Well, we heard it tonight, a yes or no question that didn't get a yes or no answer. Look, this is why people here in the Midwest are so frustrated with Washington in general and Capitol Hill in particular. Your signature, Senator, is to have a plan for everything. Except this.
No plan has been laid out to explain how a multi-trillion-dollar hole in this Medicare for all plan that Senator Warren is putting forward is supposed to get filled in. And the thing is, we really can deliver health care for every American and move forward with the boldest, biggest transformation since the inception of Medicare itself.
But the way to do it without a giant multi-trillion-dollar hole and without having to avoid a yes-or-no question is Medicare for all who want it. We take a version of Medicare. We let you access it if you want to. And if you prefer to stay on your private plan, you can do that, too. That is what most Americans want, Medicare for all who want it, trusting you to make the right decision for your health care and for your family. And it can be delivered without an increase on the middle-class taxes.
(bold by me)
This one paragraph should and could possibly sink all of Mayor Pete’s political ambitions in the modern democratic party. Let’s look at this hog-wash a little closer.
- “Medicare for all who want it.”
I’m going to be real here. That’s a very neo-liberal phrase. Why? It makes the assumption that market based solutions and that consumer choice are the most important things in the healthcare debate. Anybody using the term “medicare for all who want it.” can not be trusted as a voice for labor given the same language is employed by the right for unionization. “Unions for all who want them.”
- But the way to do it without a giant multi-trillion-dollar hole and without having to avoid a yes-or-no question is Medicare for all who want it
This is a lie. Senator Warren is not avoiding the question. You’re just getting enough campaign donations so you intentionally don’t understand that you’re not creating a multi-trillion dollar hole by eliminating out of pocket costs for families when they have a healthcare emergency.
- We let you access it if you want to. And if you prefer to stay on your private plan, you can do that, too.
Sadly, this is the neo-liberal rub. Nobody like their private insurance. They like their doctors and their health care providers. Employers change peoples plans all the time. Mayor Pete tosses around the republican, I mean neo-liberal talking point that Warren will throw 150 million people off their private health insurance. As if that’s really what’s going to happen instead of those people being offered a medicare expansion option that will be in place before private insurance is phased out. There is nothing wrong with keeping private insurance for cosmetic surgeries (like they do in every other major western country that has eliminated for-profit healthcare).
Yet Pete can’t see that point. Nah, he can see it. He just refused too. That’s the neoliberal rub. It’s not just a “different perspective” — it’s that two candidates represent the people and everybody else on that stage is representing corporations, the wealthy, or foreign governments like Gabbard.
Senator Warren asks the most important question of the debate:
My question is not why do Bernie and I support a wealth tax. It's why is it does everyone else on this stage think it is more important to protect billionaires than it is to invest in an entire generation of Americans?
“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” — Upton Sinclair.