As far as the debates go Boot Edge Edge was one of the no hopers originally. But it turned out he had a load of talent. Excellent at policy, brilliant media skills, veteran, multiple foreign languages and so on. He went from mayor of a tiny town nobody had heard of to national prominence because of the initial promotion from the DNC and the debates in particular. So the DNC getting its candidates national coverage or the GOP equivalent for that matter does turn up any fucker who has any ability at all.
Most importantly Boot was ready for primetime, was excellent on the TV and most amazingly among candidates in either party had a solid knowledge of policy, economics and so on. He was getting more media coverage than almost the whole field put together after the first couple of debates but he still couldn't turn that into a win. But the system unearthed a talent and if there'd been more like him they would be nationally known now too. Boot has a career in Democratic politics now. He'll get top jobs in future administrations and could run for prez again. The other 2020 candidates not so much. There's a reason why.
Here is one big reason why Boot didn't win and Biden did. I was looking for this the other day:
“Black voters know white voters better than white voters know themselves,” one voter told Herndon. “So yeah, we’ll back Biden, because we know who white America will vote for in the general election in a way they may not tell a pollster or the media.”
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020...e-sanders.html
The backbone of Democratic primary voters is Black voters and they understand American politics and how it works a lot more clearly than white liberals do.
The Democratic party has multiple factions. You've got old school liberals, socially conservative union members, gays, Blacks, environmentalists, unions, progressives, you name it. The Democratic party is a big tent compared to the GOP which is basically the white power movement these days. And it does lead to weakened coalitions and fractious politics among the various factions. The GOP is far more unified.
But so what? Unless you're an abortion/gun/god voter there is no reason at all to vote for the GOP. They're better at controlling spending and handling the economy? Seriously? If anybody believes that they have no fucking idea what they're on about. There is no evidence to prove it and all of the evidence points the other way. All of it. Great, you're voting for a unified party but you're voting on cultural issues for a party which is then going to pick your pocket and redistribute wealth upwards to the people who fund it.
They literally don't have any other policies or ideas other than upward redistribution of wealth and scrapping regulation of the wealthy. Just look at healthcare. In non pandemic times this is American voters' biggest issue. In 2009 the Democratic party adopted a conservative Heritage Foundation healthcare policy that had been GOP policy since the nineties and had already been set up in one state by a GOP governor and this conservative policy became known as "Obamacare". The GOP created hysteria over their borrowed policy. It was literally going to be the end of America if it was passed into law. Once it became law they vowed to repeal it and replace it with something. That was in 2009. Google tells me they voted to repeal it seventy times when Obama was prez.
In 2017 they got the chance to repeal it and replace it. They announced what they were going to replace it with and they were going to replace it with............ a capital gains tax cut. Seriously. Obamacare was funded by a tax on capital gains and the GOP plan was to scrap Obamacare, leave the replacement up to individual states (which was the situation before Obamacare) and hand the Obamacare funding back to the capital gains tax payers who were paying it. A few months ago they announced that their economic policy to fight the pandemic was................. a capital gains tax cut.
The GOP side of American politics is a small bunch of billionaires who don't want to pay taxes or be regulated or have any other costs imposed on them. They fund a party who use culture war bullshit and now conspiracy bullshit to get elected and when they are elected they enact massive tax cuts for the wealthy and slash regulation on big business. That's it. That's all it is, no more complicated than that.
And those tax cuts add up. The big five banks have made over thirty billion extra profit just from the Trump tax cut in basically three years. And of course were given a comprehensive open ended bailout a few months ago unlike GOP voters. This is a better option for Americans than the fractious Democratic party? If the Democratic party has an extremist wing (who believe in extremist stuff like clean energy and a social safety net, policies which will be the definition of moderate and will be uncontroversial in a few years and which currently majorities of Americans support) what the fuck is a party that exists to cut taxes and regulation for five hundred guys and uses crazy conspiracy shit to get elected to do it?
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