You obviously were never actually around when people were first starting to play, that’s for sure. People were going fucking bananas when rare stuff was appearing at first, you’d see entire park-loads full of people rushing, running, hollering at each other if a rare spawn like a Charizard or something showed up.

True. Another poster pointed out that it almost doesn’t matter, so long as the dems manage to finally unite behind something, anything, and send a singular strong message.

Here here. Whether it’s single-payer or, as I believe, ethics reform that should be front and center, the party absolutely must stand united and get off the god damn fence about whatever it is they’re going to be united about.

Selling it as pro-business might very well be the best way to actually sell it, frankly. Couldn’t agree more, there was certainly no need for you to open up with a juvenile insult.

I mean... probably? Maybe? I suppose it depends on if we end up with a President Pence that still controls Congress??

Oh, I know they do. That’s not the question though, the question is how to get them to vote. Saying that ‘oh this is so terrible now they’ll just have to vote!’ didn’t really work very well during the Presidential campaign though, and I see no reason to believe it will somehow work in crucial districts in 2018.

I do want to emphasize that I, personally, am very much all for single-payer healthcare. You’re totally preaching to the choir on that front.

You got me. Guilty as charged.

You make it sound like I’m against it, I’m not. I’m a card carrying Californian *liberul* who is excited to see the crazy push it’s gotten in my state’s Congress.

I have no admiration for billionaires, because you’re supposed to admire things that are good. A billionaire is simply somebody with a lot of money and cannot inherently be good, because ‘money’ is not a character quality.

I mean, you’re not wrong. Many of them really do care more about simply staying in office than they do about goodwill or altruism. The key is just to show them that the key to staying in office is actually giving us what we want.

That ‘go-to-plan’ is just Trump’s plan, though. It took a couple weeks for their terrible healthcare plan to collapse, but Mitch’s repeal bill died before lunchtime. GOP senators keep breaking ranks from Trump on this issue because, lo and behold, Trump isn’t really a Republican, or a Dem, or anything else at all;…

A lot of people are driven by fairly simplistic things, when it comes to voting, especially democrats. GOP voters are loyal beasts, they keep going to the polls, but we put an abysmal turnout even with one of the most excellent and qualified candidates in living memory. The mere ‘inconvenience’ of voting was enough to…

Ok yeah, I admit; if a scenario really does come to pass (though it’s seeming less and less likely) where the GOP really does force the healthcare industry to collapse out of spite, then yes. I will totally reverse my opinion. That’s an easy win if you build an election on that.

And just to go kinda further with this whole thing about why I really don’t think single-payer should be the focus of 2018 elections is because while single-payer *might* be popular with a majority in say, California and New York, that is quite simply not where the dems need to win seats.

That’s not what I’m saying, read it again. Ethics reform and anti-corruption is not the same as simply being negative about Trump. The dems absolutely should not build a platform around ‘hey we’re not Trump,’ because that would be idiotic. That would play deeply into the whole ‘dems are the kings of obstructionist’…

Eeeh... I think his campaign was really more ‘Obama bad, Hillary bad, these are things they support, they are bad.’

33% is still ferociously low support for building a crushing election campaign though. Not saying you’re wrong - healthcare is on the minds of millions of Americans - just that an election campaign is going to get very bogged down in 2018 if they try and build it on that.

You have more faith than I in people’s ability to read :(

I’m not saying that single payer shouldn’t be pursued, just that it should not be the foundation of a campaign upon which the dems seek seats in 2018. It won’t energize the base, not once the attack ads about how it will impact taxes come out. It should still absolutely be pursued in Congress, but not a centerpiece…