Comment by fixxer | Hacker News Reader

Comment by fixxer | Hacker News Reader

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Nothing would make me happier than if the Democratic party was able to capture my vote in the next general.

In order to do that, they're going to need to start making some serious changes:

1. Become the party of free speech. What is happening on college campuses is not something I will ever support. No safe spaces, no shouting down someone who doesnt define racism as "prejudice plus power". The regressive left is killing your party.

2. Stop supporting foreign policies that are as bad as the neocons. We don't need to export democracy to Libya, Syria, Yemen, Egypt... We don't need to engage ourselves in civil wars in other countries. We are not the world police. Follow the money for this election and it is painfully obvious that HRC was the candidate for the military industrial complex as much as she was for transgender bathrooms.

3. Stop pushing for foreign trade deals that further depress domestic wages. HRC stopped supporting TPP because Bernie and Trump were against it. If we get wage growth, entitlement expansion isn't necessary to capture the electorate and left candidates will be able to advance all the LGBT social reforms they want without scaring the moderate right away with tax increases.

HRC won the popular vote this time, but a lot of the GOP turnout effort was half assed because they never thought Trump would pull it off. Reorient the party towards blue collar, or keep doing the same old same old and lose. This election cost you the Supreme Court. You really don't have any choice other than to move to the middle.

2 & 3 are Bernie's basic platform. He should have been the nominee.

Did he not also want to layer on entitlement expansion (free college? Who was going to pay for that?).

I actually think Bernie would have lost. Interesting thought exercise though.

I don't.

There's a fair amount of states who voted for Sanders and Trump: idaho, montana, north dakota, wisconsin, west virginia, oklahoma, kansas, nebraska - lots of these states were close races in the general, it's not hard to think that sanders would have won there since he was actually trying to address their core issue of middle class jobs. And it shows that at least the democrats in those states preferred Sanders to Clinton.

The states that voted for Sanders and Clinton: washington, oregon, colorado, minnesota, lots of new england states - basically all the guaranteed blue states no matter who the candidate is.

"Socialist Coder" would have voted for Bernie.... Shocked, I say, shocked. ;)

Well, can you counter his arguments?

We're not arguing here. Election is over. All I can say is that I would not vote for Bernie.

I think:

- Primary voting is suggestive of turnout, but when you've got a candidate that people are voting against out of hate, it is hard to infer true support. So, I don't know if Bernie would have won.

- I heard (unconfirmed) that 9% of registered democrats voted for Trump. Such a weird section that, again, it is hard to infer support.

- It is all moot now anyways.

Difficult to counter hypothetical arguments.

I agree that the "free college" issue was not laid out clearly enough. In reality, many countries offer free public education at the college level, it's not a ridiculous proposition. It's a worthy cause as long as the programs being subsidized lead to more capable and, eventually, more affluent American work force that would boost the economy.

Ideally, Bernie's platform would offset the cost of some free higher education by closing corporate tax loopholes, releasing non-violent drug offenders from tax-funded prisons and jails, and significantly reducing military spending.

also think about it like this... when automation comes in and takes away just about every job, and only engineers, scientists, doctors, developers are left-- and only maybe 25-30% of the populace can find work at all -- who's going to pay ANY taxes when nobody earns any income? -- The more people that go to college, get HIGHER paying jobs, leave poverty, and end up paying taxes contributes more to the economy than not letting them go to college, and instead making them reliant on welfare for life.

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