Bernie Sanders Supporters: who is your second choice, and what’s your opinion of Yang?

Warren is my second choice.

Of the eight candidates, Yang is the one I agree with the least. I took the NY Times “quiz” on 10 big issues, Yang and I agreed on only two.

Haven’t you heard? Bernie or bust! (Prolly bust)

I like Yang pretty well, but then again, I’m more of a centrist edgelord type.

Tulsi Gabbard. I think her platform could use a lot of work, but I agree 1000% with her on not starting wars. I think she would have the 2nd best chance of beating Trump after Sanders. All other candidates (maybe Yang could eek it out) will play out just like 2016 with Trump running to the LEFT of moderate democrats that try to run on civility and being polite.

I like Bloomberg.

Bernie, I’m not a big fan of college for all. How is that going to work? Are my taxes going to go up to pay for some rich people to get college paid for their kids?

@jca2 “Are my taxes going to go up to pay for some rich people to get college paid for their kids?”

No. Their taxes are going to go up to help pay for your kids’/grandkids’/greatgrandkids’ college. Progressive taxes on everyone, and equal access to services. Do you resent the fact that your tax dollars go to pay for police, fire, libraries, K-12, etc. that help rich people too?

@jca2 – Free college for just the not rich ensures an underfunded, second rate system. If the rich aren’t invested in the outcome, they’ll try to kill it forever, since, under most models, they’ll be paying for it.

In case no one has mentioned it yet – Bloomberg is a media owning billionaire with a history of corruption, influence buying, machine style politics, party flipping, racism and authoritarianism, trying to buy his way into a campaign he said he wasn’t in last March. Don’t buy into the all powerful and wise billionaire savior narrative. Democracy can’t afford any more fuck ups.

@Smashley Bloomberg is not a “party flipper.” All of NY knew his politics. Democrats, Republicans, and independents all voted for him no matter what party he ran under. It wasn’t like he falsely represented himself under the party he ran under. I also take great issue with accusing him of being a racist, but I know some people are upset about him re the stop and frisk thing. A lot of the things he’s authoritarian on, like health issue related, the liberals like.

I’m not pushing him as a candidate, I just think he is being accused unfairly.

@JLeslie “I also take great issue with accusing him of being a racist”

I mean Bloomberg was a total monster with respect to the Central Park 5. So there’s that…

Tulsi Gabbard. I agree with gorillapaws above.

Yang has some ideas I like, and he’s not part of the establishment machine, but his environmental policies are not good enough for me to support him.

Warren would be my third choice of the people still running. She has said and done some great things, but she has too many times shown her entanglement with the establishment to prefer her to Gabbard.

@gorillapaws He wasn’t Mayor during the time of the Central Park 5. Maybe I’m missing something.

@JLeslie It became apparent that they were wrongfully convicted and Bloomberg’s administration spent $6million taxpayer dollars trying to make sure they weren’t compensated for the 13 years each they spent in jail, claiming the police/prosecution did no wrong in coercing the confessions from the minors.

@gorillapaws I’ll read up on it. I don’t think that makes him racist, but it might be a legitimate point that he should not have spent all of that money. I guess maybe the men would t settle? I don’t know how that’s usually handled in the judicial system these wrongful convictions. That whole story is quite tragic. What happened to the woman, the men convicted, the city, it’s just an awful thing what happened. I think if it had been 5 white young men, Bloomberg probably would have done the same.

I just googled it and look at the NY Times site, and I found this article, which explains things:

https://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/20/nyregion/5-exonerated-in-central-park-jogger-case-are-to-settle-suit-for-40-million.html?searchResultPosition=19

Christ, I’m not even going to comment on Bloomberg.

1st choice: Bernie Sanders
2nd choice: Bernie Sanders

@JLeslie ”...I don’t think that makes him racist…”

I’m not saying he is a racist, but his actions were certainly wrong and when viewed in combination with his stop-and-frisk policy and then you start to have a pattern of policy that’s widely PERCEIVED as being a racist, which isn’t going to help turn out in a general election.

@hmmmmmm That’s really answering the questions.

^ Sorry.

1. I don’t have a second choice. I live in MA and we don’t have ranked choice voting. I’m not a Democrat, but there is a Democrat I will vote for: Bernie Sanders.

2. I can’t imagine any Sanders supporters liking Yang. He’s a right-wing (economically) guy who shares very little policy with Sanders.

@hmmmmmm What if something happened to Sander’s, God forbid, who would you vote for? It’s just a hypothetical. You can say you don’t know, that won’t bother me. Yang believes in the UBI, so I thought maybe some Sanders people might like him for that, but I wasn’t assuming anything. I really had no clue what Sanders’ supporters felt about Yang, that’s why I asked about him specifically. .

@JLeslie “Yang believes in the UBI”

Except he’s paying for it with a VAT—which is incredibly regressive, not to mention that it decreases demand for goods/services…

I do like Yang’s “Democracy Dollars” concept where everyone gets a budget they can use to support political candidates they like. If they don’t donate it, it just goes away (you can’t keep it for yourself).

@gorillapaws If he is paying with VAT that is new to me. I only hear him talking about paying for it by taxing the big corporate winners like facebook, amazon, and similar. He says we help make those companies big money, and we should be receiving a check for our services. They use our marketing data, etc. He different than Warren, is not looking to break up these companies, but argues that these companies do their business very well, and provide a service, and in stead of trying to break them, he wants them to pay us (taxes) for their success, they don’t pay taxes now. I’m not pushing for Yang, I am not here to influence anyone. Maybe he believes in VAT too, I might have missed that.

Edit: Ok, I just did some googling, and indeed he does talk about VAT, I had never heard him say that before, and I had not noticed that before when I read about him. I also usually don’t like the idea of a VAT, I feel it is too regressive. Although, his would not be on staples like groceries. I’ll read up more on that regarding Yang. Thanks.

@JLeslie: “What if something happened to Sander’s, God forbid, who would you vote for?”

I wouldn’t.

Senator Warren is a very strong alternative to Senator Sanders if you ask me.
Their policies overlap a great deal, and I am strongly behind most of them.
On the NY Times quiz my answers tied the two of them.

In my opinion Yang is a one-trick pony. There is a good bit of sense to his Universal Basic Income, but he didn’t come up with the idea and he does not bring much else to the game.

@dabbler “Their policies overlap a great deal,”

At the beginning of the race I would have agreed with you 100%. Now I don’t think I can trust that Warren will do as she says. This mostly changed for me when Warren shifted away from the Medicare for All plan in a really slimy way, designed to signal that she didn’t ultimately support Medicare for All, while simultaneously pretending to support it eventually.

It would be like saying “I’ll give every one of you reading this a house, after I win the lottery—TWICE.” I would have had more respect for her if she’d just been honest about her platform. I also lost trust/respect for her with the recent debacle with Bernie. It appears to me she tried to shiv her friend/ally in the back to win political points.

Just saw this tweet:

“So one thing I’ll never forget about Yang:

I went to Netroots 2019 and he sent a staffer to the Disability Caucus that commandeered the conversation to their campaign and didn’t even know about the disability issues he was supposed to be talking about.”