Establishment vs Bernie by Nancy OhanianJudging by the polls, the roll-out for Status Quo Joe went well-- especially (and ironically) with black women. According the new poll released yesterday by Morning Consult, Biden is the top choice among all men, all women, white men, white women and black men and black women... But the black women were most likely to have fallen for the Biden bullshit (also least likely to have fallen for the McKinsey Pete bullshit; that honor goes to white men). So the question is... do black women just not know that Biden built his entire career on racism and anti-families/anti-progressive values... or they just not care about that? I suspect it's the former and that when they look into his record more thoroughly, his support will sink back down to reasonable levels. The idea of a fraud and hollow establishment hack like Biden beating Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren and Bernie among black women is bizarre and probably-- or at least hopefully-- temporary.Change Research is a more credible polling firm and they also released a new survey yesterday, showing, among other things a 15 point decline for Biden since March, exactly in line with a 15 point rise for a virtual Bider The Younger (McKinsey Pete). Among likely Democratic primary voters nationwide, their poll shows this lay of the land among candidates polling 5% or more:
• Biden- 21%• Bernie- 20%• McKinsey Pete- 17%• Beto- 9%• Elizabeth Warren- 8%• Kamala Harris- 7%
The survey also found that the "plurality of Democratic voters (22%) select health care as the most important issue to them in the upcoming election. However, their concern about health care is not driven by dissatisfaction with their own insurance plans. 82% rate theirs as at least acceptable, and 54% rate it as excellent or good. Just 15% say their coverage is poor. 70% say they have been continuously covered the last five years. Despite these acceptable insurance conditions, 62% say that they or someone in their household has struggled to cover the costs of health care. Solid majorities support a “Medicare for All” or single-payer system." Bottom line support Medicare for All and 92% believe the government should regulate the prices of life-saving medicine, Bernie's programs, opposed by Biden and the GOP. "71% of Democratic voters are more likely to vote for a candidate if the candidate supports Medicare for All. 69% would be less likely to vote for a candidate who opposes Medicare for All and a public option... Democratic voters rate Bernie Sanders as their preferred candidate on health care issues (66%), followed by Elizabeth Warren (54%), Joe Biden (49%), Kamala Harris (37%), Beto O’Rourke (36%), and Pete Buttigieg (34%)."A couple of days earlier, Vox published a piece by Dylan Scott-- The Health Care Industry Is Betting On Joe Biden In Its War Against Medicare-for-all-- that demonstrates why Biden has to hope Democratic primary voters continue to be hoodwinked by a campaign that shows his strategy to be to lie as much and as deeply as Trump. Biden's healthcare agenda is all about preserving the status quo, strengthening and improving a very inadequate Obamacare. And the health care industry is jumping for joy-- as happy as Wall Street that he's in the race.
Industry lobbyists aren’t certain Biden will win. One Democratic health care lobbyist grimly predicted to me Sanders would take the Democratic nomination. A trade association leader brought up Biden’s two previous failed presidential bids. But they finally have a candidate in their corner with the profile to battle Sanders and single-payer.The health care industry-- doctors, hospitals, insurers, pharmaceuticals-- has united in the Partnership for America’s Health Care Future, a lobbying coalition, to stop Medicare-for-all. That organization aggressively denounces single-payer at every opportunity, and has condemned proposals like a public option or letting people 55 and older buy into Medicare.“Let’s do Alexander-Murray,” a top trade association president told me, referring to the bipartisan Obamacare stabilization plan from Sens. Lamar Alexander (R-TN) and Patty Murray (D-WA) that fizzled out after Obamacare repeal failed. “Make the individual market better, which we clearly could do; it wouldn’t cost that much money.”Industry insiders expect Biden to, at most, support a public option that allows some or all people under 65 to buy into Medicare. The Biden campaign did not respond to requests for comment on the candidate’s health care plans.“The industry would just like to see a candidate who would be responsible and be pragmatic,” this person said. “From the industry standpoint, it’s like, what was all the energy about 2010? Biden would be more sympathetic toward that.”Sanders has made Medicare-for-all something of a primary litmus test, and several of his opponents-- Sens. Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris, Cory Booker, and Kirsten Gillibrand-- have signed on to his bill. Not every 2020 Democrat is backing single-payer, of course. Pete Buttigieg, Beto O’Rourke, and Amy Klobuchar talk about alternative plans that don’t go as far as the single-payer system envisioned by the Vermont senator.But it’s Biden who’s leading the polls, edging out Sanders for the most part, while the other lesser-known candidates still trail behind. He’ll position himself as the most viable center-left alternative to Sanders, the best bet to beat Trump in the general election. The primary will be Biden versus Sanders until proven otherwise, and the industry obviously views the vice president as the guy on their side.“This encapsulates a liberal versus a moderate in people’s minds. People want to beat Trump. They know a socialist can’t. The government isn’t going to fix everything,” a Democratic health care lobbyist said. “To that extent, people are waiting for” a candidate like Biden who wants more incremental improvements.We shouldn’t understate the success single-payer supporters have had in bringing the idea into the mainstream political debate. Sanders has gone from being the lone sponsor of a single-payer bill in the Senate to having a bill with 17 co-sponsors, including Warren, Harris, Booker, and Gillibrand. A full 80 percent of Democratic voters said they supported the plan in the most recent poll from the Kaiser Family Foundation....The health care industry does generally seem to see Biden as their best chance to stop Sanders, or Warren or any of the other Medicare-for-all supporters. At least one high-profile guest at the vice president’s first big fundraiser is reported to be a health care executive.“He’s the only bet,” the Democratic lobbyist said. “He’s the only person that’s anyone.”
I don't know... Twitter found Status Quo Joe tied with Trumpanzee as the least politician who can be expected to perform like Arya. So there's that. Elizabeth Warren was seen as the most Arya-like-- and she has a grudge against Biden, when Biden's plans to help the credit card companies that financed his vile political career screw over working people.
In the 1990s, the increasing number of US consumer bankruptcies led to a push by the financial sector to make it harder for people to seek relief from the courts. Lenders argued that deadbeats who had been borrowing to fund lavish lifestyles would then use bankruptcies to erase their debt. It was called the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention Consumer Protection Act (BAPCPA).Warren, a nationally recognized expert on the topic, used her research to argue that the real problem could be found in lax lending practices, like credit-card companies opening accounts for teenagers with no incomes, or the impact of sudden, enormous medical bills on family finance.Nonetheless, the legislation was enacted, but president Bill Clinton refused to sign it, in part thanks to Warren’s lobbying of first lady Hillary Clinton. With George W. Bush in the White House following the 2000 election, the legislation was reintroduced, and eventually became law. Its top champion among Senate Democrats was Biden of Delaware, a state called home by several major lenders whose employees contributed generously to his campaigns.BAPCPA proponents note that bankruptcies have fallen since it became law in 2005. But researchers say its main effect has been that financially strapped consumers simply delay filing for bankruptcy, piling up more debts they can’t afford.One of the decisive moments came in a February 2005 hearing, when Warren testified before the committee on which Biden sat as the senior Democrat. The collapse of Enron was fresh economic trauma. Warren criticized an aspect of the bill that allowed the Houston-based energy company to conduct its bankruptcy proceedings in Delaware, a jurisdiction where its employees found it difficult to challenge decisions that included the future of their pension fund.Delaware’s economy is founded on cozy relationships of its courts with corporations, and Biden took umbrage in a series of testy questions for Warren:Biden then launched into a critique of Warren’s views, suggesting that she was thrusting the responsibilities of the government on innocent businesses....Warren has said that the experience of seeing the bankruptcy bill pass was a wakeup call. Being right was not enough; the political power of entrenched interests made traditional remedies for consumers obsolete. Two years later, she would publish an article calling for the creation of a federal Consumer Financial Protection Agency as a new, direct solution for the problem of unsafe financial products.She would also lose patience with members of her own Democratic party who made compromises with the financial sector. When she found herself an adviser in the Obama White House, with Biden as vice president, she clashed with treasury secretary Tim Geithner over the powers that should be given to the new agency when it was created by the Dodd-Frank financial reform law. Ultimately, Obama gave the job of running the new agency to Ohio attorney general Richard Cordray, and Warren ran for a Massachusetts senate seat in 2012.Warren was one of the first candidates to throw her hat in the 2020 Democratic presidential ring, running on a platform of policy ideas that can be traced to the views of the American economy she developed in her research into bankruptcy. When Biden, a frontrunner in the polls, finally got in the race last week, Warren didn’t waste any words.“Our disagreement is a matter of public record,” she said. “When the biggest financial institutions in this country were trying to put the squeeze on millions of hardworking families who were in bankruptcy because of medical problems, job losses, divorce and death in the family, there was nobody to stand up for them. I got in that fight because they just didn’t have anyone, and Joe Biden was on the side of credit-card companies.”In the 2016 primaries, Hillary Clinton’s support for the same bankruptcy law proved a potent critique for Bernie Sanders, who’s also in the Democratic race this time around. On a future debate stage, Biden will have a difficult time changing the subject when Warren lays into him about his links to the financial industry.
Biden is a TOTAL piece of shit-- almost on a Trumpian level (not quite, but along the worst of lines). Don't fool yourself and further wreck the country.