2020 Democratic Nominee

[David Dennison 18,950]

23 minutes ago, 6th Street said:

Warren would lose badly in the Midwest - she is not pulling the blue collar vote from Trump.

The tariffs are going to be a weight around his neck in the midwest. So are the tax cuts.

Elizabeth Warren, if she's the nominee, is smart enough to capitalize on those mistakes.

[RDCanecutter 26,475]

1 hour ago, Lobo said:

Have we ever had a president with Italian heritage?  I mean, I know there's no 100% or even 50% Italian presidents.  But anybody have like a quarter in 'em?  

Well, the Roman Empire held Britain longer than Spain held any Hispanic territory, so I guess all the founding fathers could show up at the Medici family reunion. (Don't drink THAT punch, drink THIS punch.)

[FondrenRoad 4,378]

22 minutes ago, 6th Street said:

Warren would lose badly in the Midwest - she is not pulling the blue collar vote from Trump.

I disagree.  She is better liked than Hillary in the Midwest, and Hillary came close to winning even though she forgot that the Midwest existed.  Warren also benefits from the fact that Trump has been leading poorly and has not brought back jobs to the Midwest.  In 2016, Trump could get them with vague jobs promises, but his ability to build policy around promises or follow through was unknown.  Now its known. 

All it would take for a Dem, including Warren, to beat Trump in the Midwest is for a Dem to campaign there and actually be pro-union and pro-labor. 

[Fozzz 152]

May main hangup with Liz is her foreign policy, which feels like a continuation of Obama.  

[RDCanecutter 26,475]

1 hour ago, Fozzz said:

We will have a Jewish President before we have an Italian one.  

According to a drunk Frenchman and a drunk Palestinian I met in a bar, all of our presidents that they could name were secretly Jewish.

There is very little that drunk Frenchmen and drunk Palestinians don't know. Just ask them.

[Chuckie Finster 22,749]

40 minutes ago, David Dennison said:

The tariffs are going to be a weight around his neck in the midwest. So are the tax cuts.

Elizabeth Warren, if she's the nominee, is smart enough to capitalize on those mistakes.

Lose the farm to own the libs!  MAGA!

[BLKNSTY 289]

Maybe I’m reading a little too into this, but was McRaven makin’ waves today? Granted, he had to step down as Chancellor cause of cancer - but does that really make a difference after Double Cheeseburger-in-Chief

McRaven/Yates would be a godsend.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[gmr548 16,617]

9 hours ago, 6th Street said:

Warren would lose badly in the Midwest - she is not pulling the blue collar vote from Trump.

Warren's pro-labor, anti-corporate oligarchy approach and actual record on that front would play very well I think. I don't know that'd she'd reclaim Iowa or Ohio, those seem to lean a bit more red, but she'd take back Wisconsin and Michigan. PA is going Dem regardless of who runs. Turnout in Philly and Pittsburgh will be enormous.

[bad_teammate 13,225]

"The Midwest is going to hate a pro-labor, economic populist firebrand." - A Moron

[WhatTheBuck 28,803]

9 hours ago, 6th Street said:

Warren would lose badly in the Midwest - she is not pulling the blue collar vote from Trump.

No less than Bernie. 

[ChiTownDoc 21,172]

I love me some Kasich.  He’s too good. We deserve more shit tossed in our face.  

[LongestHorn 759]

32 minutes ago, OatmealRaisinCookie said:

The only true answer is to have Kaisch...

I laughed.  

[Brisketexan 105,403]

Exactly. Everyone loves Kasich except the 15% who get thrilled and adrenalined up thinking about a Pro-Nazi society and the 15% who are mentally thinking about how they are going to spend all that free money they get from the mean rich people.

Which is why he was crushed in the GOP primary. I voted for him. Me and like 7 other guys.

Stop pretending that the GOP is a rational party. They CHOSE Trump. They support him by an 80%+ margin TODAY. It’s the party of Trump. Kasich would get smoked again.

[Brisketexan 105,403]

Which is why he should be a D.

And I doesn’t matter. It’s Trump’s country now.

[zork 629]

26 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

Which is why he was crushed in the GOP primary. I voted for him. Me and like 7 other guys.

Stop pretending that the GOP is a rational party. They CHOSE Trump. They support him by an 80%+ margin TODAY. It’s the party of Trump. Kasich would get smoked again.

None of the establishment R. guys were polling for shit early on in the primaries.  Probably due in part to this, and your(and like 7 other voters per primary per candidate) milquetoast voters:

Quote

...

In its self-described "pied piper" strategy, the Clinton campaign proposed intentionally cultivating extreme right-wing presidential candidates, hoping to turn them into the new "mainstream of the Republican Party" in order to try to increase Clinton's chances of winning.

The Clinton campaign and Democratic National Committee called for using far-right candidates "as a cudgel to move the more established candidates further to the right." Clinton's camp insisted that Trump and other extremists should be "elevated" to "leaders of the pack" and media outlets should be told to "take them seriously."

...

...

The document stated, "Clearly most of what is contained in this memo is work the DNC is already doing. This exercise is intended to put those ideas to paper."

It continued, "Our hope is that the goal of a potential HRC campaign and the DNC would be one-in-the-same: to make whomever the Republicans nominate unpalatable to a majority of the electorate."

The memo articulated a three-point strategy. Point 1 called for forcing "all Republican candidates to lock themselves into extreme conservative positions that will hurt them in a general election."

At the time, there were more than a dozen Republican presidential candidates. The "variety of candidates is a positive here," the Clinton campaign said.

"Many of the lesser known can serve as a cudgel to move the more established candidates further to the right," the memo noted.

 

 

"In this scenario, we don’t want to marginalize the more extreme candidates, but make them more 'Pied Piper' candidates who actually represent the mainstream of the Republican Party," the Clinton campaign wrote.

As examples of these "pied piper" candidates, the memo named Donald Trump — as well as Sen. Ted Cruz and Ben Carson).

...

 

https://www.salon.com/2016/11/09/the-hillary-clinton-campaign-intentionally-created-donald-trump-with-its-pied-piper-strategy/

Blame the Hillary funded, see Donna B.'s book for details, or summary here of the extent which Hillary had control due to her giving millions to the DNC:

https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/11/02/clinton-brazile-hacks-2016-215774

Trump took the early advantage and played it as well as anyone could have expected, working harder in the Blue wall than she did.  

[Chuckie Finster 22,749]

https://www.salon.com/2016/11/09/the-hillary-clinton-campaign-intentionally-created-donald-trump-with-its-pied-piper-strategy/
Blame the Hillary funded, see Donna B.'s book for details, or summary here of the extent which Hillary had control due to her giving millions to the DNC:
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/11/02/clinton-brazile-hacks-2016-215774
Trump took the early advantage and played it as well as anyone could have expected, working harder in the Blue wall than she did.  

But Hillary-ing the Republican primaries. Wow.

[Js1 85,590]

23 minutes ago, Chuckie Finster said:

But Hillary-ing the Republican primaries. Wow.

Zork is a two Trick pony.  But Hillary and yay tax cuts 

[zork 629]

18 minutes ago, Chuckie Finster said:

But Hillary-ing the Republican primaries. Wow.

Did you see the polling numbers, or delegate numbers, in the first month of the R primaries?  Trump was one of the only guys with a pulse except for an exception or two in the first two months.

Follow along here if you don't recall:

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/us/elections/primary-calendar-and-results.html

[Brisketexan 105,403]

Did you see the polling numbers, or delegate numbers, in the first month of the R primaries?  Trump was one of the only guys with a pulse except for an exception or two in the first two months.
Follow along here if you don't recall:
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/us/elections/primary-calendar-and-results.html

Which is why I put the blame right where it belongs: the GOP primary voters who overwhelmingly went for Trump. Hillary didn’t vote in the GOP primary. Repubs did. They own it. And they own it proudly. Party of trump.

Fuck em.

[zork 629]

21 minutes ago, Js1 said:

Zork is a two Trick pony.  But Hillary and yay tax cuts 

So you don't believe she funded the DNC to control it as Donna B said?

Do you not believe the Pied Piper strategy was put into effect by the D's, DNC, etc?  Truth is truth.

[Michael Knight 12,995]

10 hours ago, David Dennison said:

The tariffs are going to be a weight around his neck in the midwest. So are the tax cuts.

Elizabeth Warren, if she's the nominee, is smart enough to capitalize on those mistakes.

They didn't vote in their best interests last time why makes you think they will this time

[zork 629]

24 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

Which is why I put the blame right where it belongs: the GOP primary voters who overwhelmingly went for Trump. Hillary didn’t vote in the GOP primary. Repubs did. They own it. And they own it proudly. Party of trump.

Fuck em.

Also, there was much commenting about the excessive amount of free press Trump got in the early months.  Whether he was controlling the narrative, which controlled the press cycles, or whether the D's influenced the MSM to give him the early boost is not clear but could be inferred from the wiki-leaks discussions beyond what I posted.

https://shorensteincenter.org/news-coverage-2016-presidential-primaries/

 

Edited August 17, 2018 by zork

[Michael Knight 12,995]

On 8/15/2018 at 12:39 AM, FondrenRoad said:

No man. You're getting Oprah. Followed by the Rock and Justin Timberlake who will both do alright, all things considered. Then that's followed by a string of former Disney whores as they turn 35. First Miley Cyrus, then Demi Lovato if she stays alive, and then Ariana Grande who gets the Bieber amendment passed to allow naturalized citizens to run.  Then we have our final President, Justin Bieber. 

Yet the republican party is the only one to nominate 2 actors

[zork 629]

26 minutes ago, zork said:

Also, there was much commenting about the excessive amount of free press Trump got in the early months.  Whether he was controlling the narrative, which controlled the press cycles, or whether the D's influenced the MSM to give him the early boost is not clear but could be inferred from the wiki-leaks discussions beyond what I posted.

https://shorensteincenter.org/news-coverage-2016-presidential-primaries/

 

this is from the Harvard depiction of the 2016 primary:

 

Trump and Cruz, were the early media darlings on the R side, just like the pied piper strategy called for in the Hillary campaign letters said.

Edited August 17, 2018 by zork

[Brisketexan 105,403]

Also, there was much commenting about the excessive amount of free press Trump got in the early months.  Whether he was controlling the narrative, which controlled the press cycles, or whether the D's influenced the MSM to give him the early boost is not clear but could be inferred from the wiki-leaks discussions beyond what I posted.
https://shorensteincenter.org/news-coverage-2016-presidential-primaries/
 

Repubs voted for him.

They still support him.

Period. They are guilty.

But I DO admit that I find it amusing that on the one hand, a party pushing social media etc about a candidate is no big deal, meaningless, and a waste of time to even discuss...yet another party pushes a candidate in some way, and they’re culpable. Fascinating.

[Chuckie Finster 22,749]

this is from the Harvard depiction of the 2016 primary:

 
Trump and Cruz, were the early media darlings on the R side, just like the pied piper strategy called for in the Hillary campaign letters said.

“DURR WE JUST VOTE FOR THE MAN ON THE TV” - zork’s view of Republicans, apparently

[zork 629]

19 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

Repubs voted for him.

They still support him.

Period. They are guilty.

But I DO admit that I find it amusing that on the one hand, a party pushing social media etc about a candidate is no big deal, meaningless, and a waste of time to even discuss...yet another party pushes a candidate in some way, and they’re culpable. Fascinating.

I am just a dude from Texas who reads about what happened and am commenting.   Anecdotal stuff, if you will.  But sometimes the little things ring true and are decent explanations for what was going on.  Believe it or not. I care not.

[zork 629]

19 minutes ago, Chuckie Finster said:

“DURR WE JUST VOTE FOR THE MAN ON THE TV” - zork’s view of Republicans, apparently

And surly, shaggy, D's, everywhere.  All the R's are idiots, right?  That is not coming from me, necessarily.  And it was a Harvard graphic of what actually happened, not made up nor necessarily absolute in any way except for what the coverage was by date.

Edited August 17, 2018 by zork

[Brisketexan 105,403]

I am just a dude from Texas who reads about what happened and am commenting.   Anecdotal stuff, if you will.  But sometimes the little things ring true and are decent explanations for what was going on.  Believe it or not. I care not.

Fascinating.

Hillary decided the GOP nomination.

Yet Russian interference had no impact on Trump’s win in the general.

Truly, you have a dizzying intellect.

[Skyline 325]

Kasich is certainly popular, but I very much doubt he can win in the Dem primaries. He would rightfully be seen as shifting just for the votes. Look at the main Dem candidates like Booker, Harris, Warren, Gillibrand, and Biden. They've been in a battle to out-left the others. Kasich can't keep up without selling out and burning all his current GOP popularity in Ohio. 

Another moderate Democrat is simply not going to win.

[RDCanecutter 26,475]

Kasich.

[Chuckie Finster 22,749]

I mean, isn't this the distilled argument for why the Russian disinformation attacks are so dangerous. The influence? 
I'm not agreeing with zork, necessarily, but I'm also not thinking he's completely out of touch here either. Some of you people have completely lost the ability to be objective.

Yes, Trump received an inordinate amount of television exposure.

Yes, increased television exposure can lead to more votes.

No, I will not buy the logic that Republican voters were helpless against a Hillary-led conspiracy.

[zork 629]

28 minutes ago, OatmealRaisinCookie said:

I agree with you on all three points. I'm just saying, in a cocktail of 25 ingredients, there's at least a drop of what our deranged friend zork here is trying to chug.

[Michael Knight 12,995]

Trump received way more TV coverage except everytime he was on TV he was saying something awful. Yet people still voted for him

[LongestHorn 759]

I believe Oatmeal is trying to give your position a measure of credibility with a splash of sarcasm.  Some of you people have lost your objectivity.

[zork 629]

32 minutes ago, LongestHorn said:

I believe Oatmeal is trying to give your position a measure of credibility with a splash of sarcasm.  Some of you people have lost your objectivity.

How better to be seen as deranged than to immediately post an inflammatory pic flipping him off and calling him an asshole?  But, still, he can take his 'deranged' description and shove it up his asshole, for the record.   

Salon, Harvard, not the worst sources for discussion on the election.(Harvard clearly superior while I also have never seen an article disagreeing with the notion from wiki-leaks concerning the "Pied Piper" strategy. With the Harvard graphic showing two of the three, unlikely in all of 2015, from that strategy getting the lion's share of the reporting in 2016)

 

From ABC News soon after election day(pied piper coming in at number one reason):

 

Quote

5 Missteps That May Have Doomed the Clinton Campaign

1 Underestimating Trump’s Appeal

Among the hacked documents from Democratic organizations released by WikiLeaks was a memo that Marissa Astor, the assistant to Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook, sent campaign chairman John Podesta in April of 2015 about an upcoming campaign strategy call. The memo named Trump, Sen. Ted Cruz and Dr. Ben Carson as preferred opponents in the general election.

“We need to be elevating the Pied Piper candidates so that they are leaders of the pack and tell the press to take them seriously,” the memo said.

Clinton and the Democratic Party establishment repeatedly stressed Trump’s lack of political experience as a knock against him during the general election campaign, but nationwide, the electorate valued the ability to bring about change.

Trump, who blended celebrity cachet with vocal right-leaning populism, had no formal political experience, and voters saw him as more likely to bring change to Washington than a candidate who has been in the highest reaches of government for much of this century.

2Getting the Map Wrong

...

3Basket of Deplorables

...

4Lack of Transparency

...

5Playing It Safe

...

 

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/missteps-doomed-clinton-campaign/story?id=43422676

Many more examples here:

https://www.google.com/search?rlz=1C2CHBD_enUS773US774&ei=3Up2W7eHJuGd0gLA_4EI&q=pied+piper+strategy+false+clinton&oq=pied+piper+strategy+false+clinton&gs_l=psy-ab.12...35067.37905.0.39983.10.10.0.0.0.0.131.1223.0j10.10.0....0...1.1.64.psy-ab..0.8.974...33i160k1j33i21k1.0.zqkAhHHnyHw

 

 

[LongestHorn 759]

Fuck your blame Obama remark, asshole.

[zork 629]

To get back on track:

Biden/Sanders FTMFW.

[David Dennison 18,950]

19 minutes ago, zork said:

To get back on track:

Biden/Sanders FTMFW.

I would not be pleased having to vote for this ticket.

[PittsburghTiger 6,199]

Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts has one-upped socialists Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: She proposes to nationalize every major business in the United States of America. If successful, it would constitute the largest seizure of private property in human history.

Warren’s proposal is dishonestly called the “Accountable Capitalism Act.” Accountable to whom? you might ask. That’s a reasonable question. The answer is — as it always is — accountable to politicians, who desire to put the assets and productivity of private businesses under political discipline for their own selfish ends. It is remarkable that people who are most keenly attuned to the self-interest of CEOs and shareholders and the ways in which that self-interest influences their decisions apparently believe that members of the House, senators, presidents, regulators, Cabinet secretaries, and agency chiefs somehow are liberated from self-interest when they take office through some kind of miracle of transcendence.

Under Senator Warren’s proposal, no business with more than $1 billion in revenue would be permitted to legally operate without permission from the federal government. The federal government would then dictate to these businesses the composition of their boards, the details of internal corporate governance, compensation practices, personnel policies, and much more. Naturally, their political activities would be restricted, too. Senator Warren’s proposal entails the wholesale expropriation of private enterprise in the United States, and nothing less. It is unconstitutional, unethical, immoral, irresponsible, and — not to put too fine a point on it — utterly bonkers.

It is also cynical. Senator Warren is many things: a crass opportunist, intellectually bankrupt, personally vapid, a peddler of witless self-help books, etc. But she is not stupid. She knows that this is a go-nowhere proposition, that she will be spared by the Republican legislative majority from the ignominy that would ensue from the wholehearted pursuit of this daft program. It is in reality only a means of staking out for purely strategic reasons the most radical corner for her 2020 run at the Democratic presidential nomination. The Democratic party in 2018, like the Republican primary electorate in 2016, is out for blood and desirous of confrontation. So Senator Warren is running this red flag up the flagpole to see who salutes.

To propose such a thing for sincere reasons would be ghastly stupidity. To propose this program for narrowly self-serving political reasons is the sort of thing that would end a political career in a sane and self-respecting state, which Massachusetts plainly is not and has not been for some time.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/08/elizabeth-warren-plan-nationalize-everything-woos-hard-left/

[Message Board User 12,396]

 

[gmr548 16,617]

8 hours ago, PittsburghTiger said:

Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts has one-upped socialists Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: She proposes to nationalize every major business in the United States of America. If successful, it would constitute the largest seizure of private property in human history.

Warren’s proposal is dishonestly called the “Accountable Capitalism Act.” Accountable to whom? you might ask. That’s a reasonable question. The answer is — as it always is — accountable to politicians, who desire to put the assets and productivity of private businesses under political discipline for their own selfish ends. It is remarkable that people who are most keenly attuned to the self-interest of CEOs and shareholders and the ways in which that self-interest influences their decisions apparently believe that members of the House, senators, presidents, regulators, Cabinet secretaries, and agency chiefs somehow are liberated from self-interest when they take office through some kind of miracle of transcendence.

Under Senator Warren’s proposal, no business with more than $1 billion in revenue would be permitted to legally operate without permission from the federal government. The federal government would then dictate to these businesses the composition of their boards, the details of internal corporate governance, compensation practices, personnel policies, and much more. Naturally, their political activities would be restricted, too. Senator Warren’s proposal entails the wholesale expropriation of private enterprise in the United States, and nothing less. It is unconstitutional, unethical, immoral, irresponsible, and — not to put too fine a point on it — utterly bonkers.

It is also cynical. Senator Warren is many things: a crass opportunist, intellectually bankrupt, personally vapid, a peddler of witless self-help books, etc. But she is not stupid. She knows that this is a go-nowhere proposition, that she will be spared by the Republican legislative majority from the ignominy that would ensue from the wholehearted pursuit of this daft program. It is in reality only a means of staking out for purely strategic reasons the most radical corner for her 2020 run at the Democratic presidential nomination. The Democratic party in 2018, like the Republican primary electorate in 2016, is out for blood and desirous of confrontation. So Senator Warren is running this red flag up the flagpole to see who salutes.

To propose such a thing for sincere reasons would be ghastly stupidity. To propose this program for narrowly self-serving political reasons is the sort of thing that would end a political career in a sane and self-respecting state, which Massachusetts plainly is not and has not been for some time.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/08/elizabeth-warren-plan-nationalize-everything-woos-hard-left/

Yeah, because Germany and Denmark, which operate under similar (more strict in Germany's case) frameworks when it comes to corporate law, are such anti-business communist hellholes.

[Hugo Stiglitz 23,367]

On 8/17/2018 at 8:56 AM, PittsburghTiger said:

Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts has one-upped socialists Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: She proposes to nationalize every major business in the United States of America. If successful, it would constitute the largest seizure of private property in human history.

Warren’s proposal is dishonestly called the “Accountable Capitalism Act.” Accountable to whom? you might ask. That’s a reasonable question. The answer is — as it always is — accountable to politicians, who desire to put the assets and productivity of private businesses under political discipline for their own selfish ends. It is remarkable that people who are most keenly attuned to the self-interest of CEOs and shareholders and the ways in which that self-interest influences their decisions apparently believe that members of the House, senators, presidents, regulators, Cabinet secretaries, and agency chiefs somehow are liberated from self-interest when they take office through some kind of miracle of transcendence.

Under Senator Warren’s proposal, no business with more than $1 billion in revenue would be permitted to legally operate without permission from the federal government. The federal government would then dictate to these businesses the composition of their boards, the details of internal corporate governance, compensation practices, personnel policies, and much more. Naturally, their political activities would be restricted, too. Senator Warren’s proposal entails the wholesale expropriation of private enterprise in the United States, and nothing less. It is unconstitutional, unethical, immoral, irresponsible, and — not to put too fine a point on it — utterly bonkers.

It is also cynical. Senator Warren is many things: a crass opportunist, intellectually bankrupt, personally vapid, a peddler of witless self-help books, etc. But she is not stupid. She knows that this is a go-nowhere proposition, that she will be spared by the Republican legislative majority from the ignominy that would ensue from the wholehearted pursuit of this daft program. It is in reality only a means of staking out for purely strategic reasons the most radical corner for her 2020 run at the Democratic presidential nomination. The Democratic party in 2018, like the Republican primary electorate in 2016, is out for blood and desirous of confrontation. So Senator Warren is running this red flag up the flagpole to see who salutes.

To propose such a thing for sincere reasons would be ghastly stupidity. To propose this program for narrowly self-serving political reasons is the sort of thing that would end a political career in a sane and self-respecting state, which Massachusetts plainly is not and has not been for some time.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/08/elizabeth-warren-plan-nationalize-everything-woos-hard-left/

 

And so begins the scare tactics, lies, and character assassination of the right wing media corporate machine.

Elizabeth Warren’s plan closely resembles Teddy Roosevelt’s original political platform.

 

Teddy’s Platform 

“Without a redistribution of wealth away from the upper class, Roosevelt feared that the country would turn to radicals or fall to revolution.[282] His Square Deal domestic program had three main goals: conservation of natural resources, control of corporations, and consumer protection.[283] The Square Deal evolved into his program of "New Nationalism", which emphasized the priority of labor over capital interests and a need to more effectively control corporate creation and combination, and proposed a ban on corporate political contributions.[202]

The party's platform built on Roosevelt's Square Deal domestic program and called for several progressive reforms. The platform asserted that "to dissolve the unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics is the first task of the statesmanship of the day". Proposals on the platform included restrictions on campaign finance contributions, a reduction of the tariff and the establishment of a social insurance system, an eight-hour workday and women's suffrage. The party was split on the regulation of large corporations, with some party members disappointed that the platform did not contain a stronger call for "trust-busting"

 

Now let’s look how this lines up with Elizabeth Warren’s Accountable Capitalism Act 

 

“Instead of advocating for expensive new social programs like free college or health care, she’s introducing a bill Wednesday, the Accountable Capitalism Act, that would redistribute trillions of dollars from rich executives and shareholders to the middle class — without costing a dime.

Warren’s plan starts from the premise that corporations that claim the legal rights of personhood should be legally required to accept the moral obligations of personhood.

Traditionally, she writes in a companion op-ed for the Wall Street Journal, “corporations sought to succeed in the marketplace, but they also recognized their obligations to employees, customers and the community.” In recent decades they stopped, in favor of a singular devotion to enriching shareholders. And that’s what Warren wants to change.

The new energy on the left is all about making government bigger and bolder, an ideal driven by a burgeoning movement toward democratic socialism. It’s inspired likely 2020 Democratic contenders to draw battle lines around how far they’d go to change the role of government in American life.

Warren supports expanding many of the programs in play, and she’s voted to do so. But the rollout of her bill suggests that as she weighs whether to get into the presidential race, she’ll focus on how to prioritize workers in the American economic system while leaving businesses as the primary driver of it.

Warren wants to eliminate the huge financial incentives that entice CEOs to flush cash out to shareholders rather than reinvest in businesses. She wants to curb corporations’ political activities. And for the biggest corporations, she’s proposing a dramatic step that would ensure workers and not just shareholders get a voice on big strategic decisions.

Warren hopes this will spur a return to greater corporate responsibility, and bring back some other aspects of the more egalitarian era of American capitalism post-World War II — more business investment, more meaningful career ladders for workers, more financial stability, and higher pay.

As much as Warren’s proposal is about ending inequality, it’s also about saving capitalism.

The conceit tying together Warren’s ideas is that if corporations are going to have the legal rights of persons, they should be expected to act like decent citizens who uphold their fair share of the social contract and not act like sociopaths whose sole obligation is profitability — as is currently conventional in American business thinking.

Warren wants to create an Office of United States Corporations inside the Department of Commerce and require any corporation with revenue over $1 billion — only a few thousand companies, but a large share of overall employment and economic activity — to obtain a federal charter of corporate citizenship.

The charter tells company directors to consider the interests of all relevant stakeholders — shareholders, but also customers, employees, and the communities in which the company operates — when making decisions. That could concretely shift the outcome of some shareholder lawsuits but is aimed more broadly at shifting American business culture out of its current shareholders-first framework and back toward something more like the broad ethic of social responsibility that took hold during WWII and continued for several decades.

Business executives, like everyone else, want to have good reputations and be regarded as good people but, when pressed about topics of social concern, frequently fall back on the idea that their first obligation is to do what’s right for shareholders. A new charter would remove that crutch, and leave executives accountable as human beings for the rights and wrongs of their own decisions.

More concretely, United States Corporations would be required to allow their workers to elect 40 percent of the membership of their board of directors.

Warren also tacks on a couple of more modest ideas. One is to limit corporate executives’ ability to sell shares of stock that they receive as pay — requiring that such shares be held for at least five years after they were received, and at least three years after a share buyback. The aim is to disincentivize stock-based compensation in general as well as the use of share buybacks as a tactic for executives to maximize their one pay.

The other proposal is to require corporate political activity to be authorized specifically by both 75 percent of shareholders and 75 percent of board members (many of whom would be worker representatives under the full bill), to ensure that corporate political activity truly represents a consensus among stakeholders, rather than C-suite class solidarity.

It’s easy to imagine the restrictions on corporate political activity and some curbs on stock sales shenanigans becoming broad consensus points for congressional Democrats, and even part of a 2019 legislative agenda if the midterms go well. But the bigger ideas about corporate governance would be a revolution in American business practice to undo about a generation’s worth of shareholder supremacy.  

[snip]

In conversations with ex-staffers of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign during the winter of 2016-’17, it was repeatedly said that their research showed an extremely high level of public interest in the idea of making corporations share profits with rank-and-file workers, but that they’d never managed to make the media or the public focus on their plan to increase profit sharing.

The reasons for this, however, are not that mysterious. The Clinton profit-sharing initiative, though worthy in its way, was designed as a somewhat opaque tax measure that would incentivize companies to adopt profit-sharing plans. It was, in other words, deliberately structured to not seriously alarm business leaders — a good match for an overall campaign strategy that was focused on the idea that decent people from all walks of life should unite to reject Donald Trump.

Warren’s plan is not like that. If imposing stakeholder responsibilities on businesses and requiring many of the seats at the biggest firms to be elected by workers pushed the S&P 500’s Q ratio down to German levels (which is probably a high estimate since German codetermination rules are somewhat tougher than her proposal), share prices could fall by 25 percent. For the vast majority of people who earn the majority of their income by working for wages, cheaper stock would be offset by higher pay and more rights at work.

But for billionaires with huge stock holdings — and for CEOs with compensation packages tied to share price performance — it would be a disaster. If they thought the idea stood a snowball’s chance in hell of happening, rich people would denounce it to anyone who would listen — and since executives and major investors enjoy privileged access to the media, their denunciations would be heard.

Indeed, it seems likely that literally trillions of dollars of paper stock market wealth could be eliminated by weakening shareholder hegemony in this way. But as economist Ed Wolff has shown, that lost wealth is owned overwhelmingly by a small minority of the overall population.

In exchange, the laboring majority would make important gains.

Most obviously, the large share of the private sector workforce that is employed by companies with more than $1 billion in revenue would gain a measure of democratic control over the future of their workplace. That wouldn’t make tough business decisions around automation, globalization, scheduling, family responsibilities, etc. go away, but it would ensure that the decisions are made with a balanced set of interests in mind.”

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.vox.com/platform/amp/2018/8/15/17683022/elizabeth-warren-accountable-capitalism-corporations

Edited August 18, 2018 by Hugo Stiglitz

[Biff Tannen 45,746]

ALEC should be dismantled as well.  Corporations should not be allowed to write their own laws.

[JimmyJames 12,271]

I’m all about the win. If trump is still president and running again, it has to be Biden. If not, it’s wide open. 

[Hugo Stiglitz 23,367]

The definitive ranking of 2020 Democrats

https://www.cnn.com/2018/08/16/politics/2020-democrats-biden/index.html

5. Bernie Sanders: Perhaps no pick generated as much controversy last month as placing Vermont's junior senator at number five. Some wanted him higher because he retains high favorable ratings nationally and came in second to Hillary Clinton in 2016. Both are fair points, and why he's so high up on the list. Sanders' problem is he's trailing Biden, has many of Biden's flaws (old, white and male) and carries a huge additional one: Sanders is not a Democrat. Even after winning the Democratic nomination for Senate in 2018, he declined the nomination and forged ahead with his independent bid. Most of the people who vote in Democratic primaries are Democrats. (Previous ranking: 5)

4. Kirsten Gillibrand: No one's ranking this side of Bernie Sanders got a bigger reaction from people last month than the New York senator's. Lots and lots of people think we have her ranked too high for, among other reasons, the fact that her conservative record as a House member suggests her liberal turn is easily caricatured as entirely political. Maybe! But the 2018 primary season so far has taught us that the Democratic Party wants to elect liberal women. And Gillibrand will have the record (in the Senate) and the money to make that case. (Previous ranking: 4)

3. Kamala Harris: Harris carries obvious advantages that few other Democrats can claim. We saw how Trump leveraged the media to his advantage in 2016, and Harris hails from the state with the second-largest media market in the country (Los Angeles). Being an Indian-American and African-American woman will help her draw a sharp contrast with a white male Republican who made his bones in reactionary politics. Harris is also very liberal in a party that is becoming more liberal, but has ties to the establishment. The latter may hurt her, though so far the establishment is doing about as well in 2018 primaries as it did in 2016. (Previous ranking: 3)

2. Elizabeth Warren: "We believe that in America every family deserves a fighting chance, and we're ready to fight as hard as it takes, as long as it takes, to deliver on that promise," the Massachusetts senator said earlier this month. "I get it. It won't be easy. We're going to have to fight uphill. But me? I'm going up that hill. And I hope you are, too." That speech was to the liberal Netroots Nation annual convention, but it could easily double as a piece of Warren's 2020 announcement/stump speech. That sort of leaning-in rhetoric coupled with the fact that two of Warren's aides have recently signed on to senior positions in the New Hampshire Democratic Partymake it pretty easy to connect the dots: She's running. (Previous ranking: 2)

1. Joe Biden: The former vice president retains the top ranking on our list. Yes, his age (75) and the fact that he's a white man have their disadvantages in a Democratic Party that is getting younger, more diverse and is nominating more women every cycle. Biden, though, continues to have clear advantages: he was the vice president to President Barack Obama, who remains the closest thing the party has to a leader. And Biden himself is very popular. He also currently ahead of his nearest competitor by about 10 points in primary polls. Even at this point, polls have forecasted the nominee since 1972 about half the time when no incumbent was running for a major party nomination. (Previous ranking: 1)

[RayDog 682]

I don't get why the mainstream media keeps trying to push Biden. The Politico poll showed a random Democrat is a 13 point favorite over Trump but Biden was a 7 point Biden. So, anybody but Biden was 6 points better than Biden.

[RDCanecutter 26,475]

^^^Writers like the above (article, not Raydog) who routinely spout how horrible it is that Candidate X is white? They repel me.

Edited August 19, 2018 by RDCanecutter

[Js1 85,590]

56 minutes ago, RayDog said:

I don't get why the mainstream media keeps trying to push Biden. The Politico poll showed a random Democrat is a 13 point favorite over Trump but Biden was a 7 point Biden. So, anybody but Biden was 6 points better than Biden.

No one is actually generic D. He/she’s doesn’t exist. 

[JimmyJames 12,271]

58 minutes ago, RayDog said:

I don't get why the mainstream media keeps trying to push Biden. The Politico poll showed a random Democrat is a 13 point favorite over Trump but Biden was a 7 point Biden. So, anybody but Biden was 6 points better than Biden.

Ok, but your last sentence doesn’t make sense. So exactly who that’s a democrat is more than 7 plus over trump and therefore over Biden?  Random unnamed dems don’t get elected president. Actual candidates with warts and all do.