Bernie Sanders Announces 2020 Presidential Campaign
Feel the Bern, Part Deux? Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) announced he will once again seek the Democratic nomination for President of the United States in 2020.
Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, whose idiosyncratic 2016 presidential campaign earned him a national following and made him a leading figure in the modern progressive movement, announced Tuesday morning that he will seek the White House again in 2020.
“I am writing to let you know I have decided to run for president of the United States,” Sanders wrote in an e-mail blast to supporters officially announcing his candidacy, “I am asking you to join me today as part of an unprecedented and historic grassroots campaign that will begin with at least a million people from across the country.”
Sanders enters a growing Democratic primary field, which now includes five of his colleagues in the U.S. Senate, with a substantial advantage over his competitors in both name recognition and grassroots organizing strength, but will likely face difficulties in winning over some in the party following an at-times tense 2016 race against former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
Sanders also made the announcement on Vermont Public Radio Tuesday morning, saying he wanted to give his constituents a heads up about his plans.
“I wanted to let the people of the state of Vermont know about this first,” Sanders said. “And what I promise to do is, as I go around the country, is to take the values that all of us in Vermont are proud of — a belief in justice, in community, in grassroots politics, in town meetings — that’s what I’m going to carry all over this country.”
A self-described Democratic socialist and a political Independent, Sanders’ campaign brings with it a vast organizing network built during his 2016 campaign that saw him notch wins in key primary states like New Hampshire, Michigan and Wisconsin.
Unlike 2016, where Bernie Sanders became the de facto rallying point for anyone not satisfied with the carefully coordinated coronation of Hillary Rodham Clinton, he enters a wide-opened race with no clear frontrunner. With much of his “Democratic socialist” message having been co-opted to one degree or another by much of the party, including many of his fellow candidates, recapturing the ‘magic’ of a distant second place finish in 2016 might be a tall order, let alone winning the nomination.
I think that he is too old probably. So is Trump (age being the least bad disqualifier), as is Biden, and probably Warren too. The demands of the Presidency are probably best for someone in their mid 40s to early 60s.
That being said, I’m skeptical of the Bernie Woulda Won arguments from 2016 for a variety of reasons:
1. Even though a lot of people did not get that Sanders was Jewish like us Jews did, I think it would have become an issue as soon as he got the Democratic nomination. I suspect that the anti-Semitism against Sanders would rival the anti-Catholic baiting Al Smith received in 1928;
2. He would have been red-baited for doing things like supporting the Sandinistas and praising Cuba;
3. It would probably be 1 and 2;
4. Despite the fact that he did well in states like Michigan in the Democratic primary, most of his support did seem to come from well-educated hipsters/hippies. This is only anecdotal as an observation.
My one counter-thought is that Bernie could have combated Trump’s bullshit claims on being a self-made man more because of his gruff Brooklyn accent/background.Report
I think there’s a LOT more stuff to throw at Bernie than whatever can be dredged up via anti-Semitism.
As my rabbi observed back in 2016: “Sanders is Jewish, and I’d love to vote for a Jewish candidate for president someday, but he’s such a *putz*…”
This summed up my own feelings on him pretty well at the time, and still applies.Report
True and there is a chance that a lot of journalists would not go for the anti-Semitism and give Trump a hard time for it but because Trump and the GOP are complete sleezeballs, I don’t think they would be able to help themselves. Kevin McCarthy posted anti-Semitic memes about George Soros and still tried to call Democrats the real anti-Semites because of Rep. Omar’s tweets.
They are bad faith actors all around.
We would get four years of Larry David impersonating the President on SNL. That is a plus.Report
Bernie really benefited from two things:
1) Not Being Hillary Clinton
Um… I started writing entries for #2 but they were mostly rephrasings of #1. He was a proud socialist, he was an unapologetic lefty, he had principles, he was charismatic, so on and so forth.
So maybe I should say
2) Not Being Donald Trump
Now, the upside is that both of these things remain true for the upcoming primary but they’re a lot less interesting now because they’re true for everybody else in the field.Report
I am not expecting a particularly impressive performance from the Bern. Without 2016 his running mate De Fault at his side the Bern has pretty much nothing going for him.Report
This might be true eventually but is not true now for a variety of reasons:
1. He has name recognition and that counts a lot at this stage in the game;
2. His fans still like him way too much.Report
Well sure but there’s no “performance” at this stage. Just a bunch of phone surveyors asking people (most of whom don’t think of politics at all this time or most times of the year) who they like. Name recognition is everything at this stage of the game and at this stage of the game all that’ll get him is money and the ability to move on to the next stage of the game.
To be fair, that’s all you need at this stage of the game too of course.Report
The primary concern is that, with a large field, the sane candidates could split the sane vote, and the not-sane vote could be enough for Sanders to win. Basically what happened in the Republican primary in 2016.
Men of reason can disagree; all the rest seem to agree on Bernie.Report
Sharing for the headline alone. (I do not know if the source is good nor even whether the facts as depicted are accurate.)
Bernie Sanders breaks Kamala Harris’ Day 1 individual donations markReport
huh, that’s interesting if true.
My priors are that Bernie was mostly (but not entirely) the Not-Hilary candidate… and, as Andrew and you note, not being simply Not-Hilary is hard to gauge how that will translate.
Still, I’ll be surprised if he can carry the field with plenty of other options willing to co-op and even run to his left.
But, those are pretty good numbers, even if they only reflect residual goodwill.Report
I think people are underestimating what it meant in 2016 that Bernie was the not-Hillary candidate.
Hillary Clinton occupied a particularly exalted place in Rightward demonology, but on the Left she was Just Another Politician[tm]. She was the Establishment, bereft of authenticity and just itching for a chance to sell out progressive change to Wall Street.
I was and remain of a Bernie skeptic and supported Hillary vigorously but the Leftward picture had a lot more truth to it than the Rightward picture.
So maybe Bernie can still get some mileage out of being Not Hillary.Report
Doesn’t surprise me at all. Bernie has a fan-base, email lists and an established fund raising network from being the Not-Hillary candidate in 2016. How is Kamala Harris supposed to compete with that for dollars?
Only way it’d be news is if he didn’t get that kind of outcome.Report
On that note:
The narrative coalesces.Report
Pah, he got more coverage that Amy did and she’s an actual Democratic Party member.Report
Poor Amy. She’s the most boring and, as such, the most electable… but the invisible primary has to happen before we get to the visible one.Report
Well I think/hope she’ll make it through to the visible one. The invisible primary is mostly wrapping up now.Report
Didn’t Jeb! destroy the competition in the invisible primary?Report
Of course. He’s Mr. Invisible. Compare to Jeb!, Claude Rains went around in Hawaiian shirts and chartreuse Bermuda short.Report
That’s why I hate colorized classics.Report
Not really? I mean the field was plenty full after it was done but Jeb! did really cripple a lot of the other candidates in the establishment lane with him.Report
Part of that invisible one is money, money, money.
The twitters are pointing out that Bernie has made $3.3 million since announcing this morning.Report
The narrative coalesces.
Which narrative and around what?Report
The narrative that Bernie shouldn’t be running at all because he doesn’t have a chance.Report
Ahh, OK. So is it your view that CNN / MSNBC are pushing that narrative?Report
No, it hasn’t become official *YET*. Bernie’s only been announced for, what? 12 hours?Report
So, you *do* think CNN and MSNBC are pushing the narrative that Bernie shouldn’t run because he has no chance?Report
I wonder if it would be more irritating for me, personally, if I retyped the first word of my comment above or if I copied and pasted it.
I also wonder if I ought to have used a different word than “coalesces” because that one seems to be read as identical to “has completed” and I more intended a word that meant “begins the process of coming together”.Report
The inference from your comments is that yes, you do believe that CNN and MSNBC are pushing that particular narrative. But when I ask you if that’s what you believe, you won’t just say yes or no. Oh well.
A more interesting issue is why you believe that, since in my view, given the lack of evidence to support that conclusion, you’re imposing a narrative *upon* CNN and MSNBC rather than observing it. But we just can’t seem to get there…Report
He hasn’t even been running for a day, yet, Stillwater.
The narrative isn’t established. We don’t know what it will be when it is established.
Personally, I think that the information that Bernie has raised $4 million so far will shatter any attempt to create a narrative that Bernie doesn’t have a chance…
But I am not the journalist who said, and let me copy and paste this:
“If Bernie Sanders announces for president, and no one hears it… The Sanders announcement not rating as a lead story on CNN/MSNBC.”
But let’s check what CNN has on its front page right now.
Do a search for “Bernie” and I see three headlines:
“Trump comments on Bernie Sanders”
“5 Reasons to be skeptical about Bernie Sanders”
and
“Bernie Sanders lost in 2016. Here’s what he needs to do in 2020.”
Let’s look at MSNBC:
There are two headlines.
“This time around, Bernie Sanders has a tougher sale: himself”
and
“Bernie Sanders raises $3.3 million hours after 2020 announcement”
So that’s what I see on CNN and MSNBC.
There isn’t a timestamp on that last one, but I assume it was written after Bernie raised $3.3 million and not before.
The invisible primary continues… but, sadly, we might have needed a new “we the people” first.Report
Jaybird: He hasn’t even been running for a day, yet, Stillwater. dotdotdot
Also Jaybird: The narrative coalesces.Report
Yeah, I should have used a word that indicated that stuff wasn’t yet set in stone rather than “coalesces”.
I regret the error.Report
So, you *don’t* believe CNN and MSNBC are pushing the narrative that Bernie shouldn’t run because he has no chance?Report
As far as I can tell from the front pages of their website, they seem to have two different things going on.
CNN doesn’t seem to have any purely positive Bernie stories, based on those three headlines I mentioned above.
MSNBC seems to be talking about how much tougher it will be for Bernie this time around and, yes, the headline about how he seems to have raised $3.3 million so far.
So it looks like CNN is interested in only talking about Bernie through one context and MSNBC was doing similar but the news that Bernie did…
Well, we don’t know about how well he did. Apparently this is well within what we ought to have expected from Bernie…
The news that Bernie is meeting expectations.
But if we get rid of the headlines that mention facts and only look at the ones that editorialize, is there a pattern that we can see?
I mean, taking into account how it’s early yet? Or should I conclude that it’s too early to tell and I shouldn’t even look for patterns among the headlines that might be editorializing?
Because I am 100% down with the argument that it’s too early to look for a narrative just yet.Report
I’m trying to coin a term for an analysis that is a derivative of the mathematical function of the Cult Of The Savvy, sort of a one step removed meta analysis of meta Beltway divination.
I’m going with Dilbertesque for now.Report
…wasn’t the Dilbert guy the only guy who called it correctly a year and a half in advance?Report
That’s your takeaway from Scot Adams’ writing?Report
I’m just saying that if you want to mock somebody for crappy political divination skills, you should give them a nickname of someone who got the election wrong.
I feel like I’m taking crazy pills.
Edit: Why not Sam Wang?Report
Yes. And not only did he call it correctly but he called it for the correct reasons and explained the nuts and bolts of what Trump was doing as it happened.
It was like someone explain inside baseball, i.e. “the coach will do X because of Y and aim for Z”.
Trump pulls emotional levers. Adams has studied that sort of thing (he’d call it ‘mind control’ but that term carries a lot of baggage).Report
I would expect the guy with a pre existing national fundraising infrastructure to have a better opening day than the rookie.
The question is how much more can he draw from that well.
Also, based on recent history earned media is as important as fundraising, and Harris has been doing fine with that. (I for one, liked the coat. I couldn’t pull it off myself, though).Report
I don’t know what the expectation ought to have been. I don’t know when I need to switch from “okay, that’s what I expected” to “huh, that’s pretty good”.
It’s apparently over $4 million now (from 150,000 people… that’s, um, an average of 26 dollars and 66.666666666666666666666666667 cents).Report
Yeah, his thing is the 27 dollar donations, right?
Remember all the RON PAUL! Moneybombs?Report
With 20/20 hindsight, I think that we might be able to say that Ron Paul and the r3VOLution was an indicator of what was coming.Report
“I would expect the guy with a pre existing national fundraising infrastructure to have a better opening day than the rookie.”
haw. “We expected a KO in three rounds, but the champ lasted all the way through round five! Clearly this kid hasn’t got what it takes.”Report
In the first 24 hours, he raised $6 Million, according to the New York Times.
I don’t know whether this fails to meet expectations, meets expectations, or exceeds expectations.Report
Tangential…
Milwaukee maybe not fancy enough to host Dem Convention.
…
But maybe since Chicago is so close, they could use those fancy facilities and just come for the primetime stuff.
Oh dear.Report
Yeah not a good look; everyone knows only nerds and Democrats care about logistics. Brownie did a heckuva job in FEMA too.Report
Semi-OT but CNN hires a GOP flack to oversee 2020 coverage:
https://www.vox.com/2019/2/19/18231993/cnn-gop-operative-2020-election-coverage
Maybe internet rage will get this person dismissed quickly but this seems to be kind of stuff that is leading to liberals being just as distrustful of the MSM as conservatives. Only this time with more of a basis in my view. The MSM hates the liberal bias charge so much that they will do anything to get it to go away, including unconditional and unquestioned hiring of GOP hacks.Report
Did Jay Carney, George Stephanopoulos, or Jim Sciutto have any comment?Report
Jay Carney was a journalist for time before he became Obama’s press secretary. He had journalistic experience. George Stephanopolus does anchoring/commentary, he does not manage/oversee coverage behind the scenes.Report
Ah, so we’re only worried when someone hires true scotsmen to provide commentary on the British Open?Report
HOLY CRAP KARL LAGERFELD HAS DIED
People will see pictures on television screens and think that Bernie grew a ponytail and started wearing sunglasses like Roy Orbison.Report
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/2/19/18231758/bernie-sanders-today-video-burlington-vermont-socialistReport
Here’s a story from Valentine’s Day that may or may not be particularly relevant:
Report
The number of people I see around the interwebz that blame Bernie for Clinton’s loss is remarkable.Report
Anything to have it not be the emails!Report
Peter Daou’s twitter has been interesting as hell. He’s spent a while blaming the Berniebros for Clinton’s loss (there was a Verrit code demonstrating that Clinton lost because of Berniebros who switched to Trump, for example) but then eventually tried to build bridges between himself and the Berners because he seemed to notice that his unwavering support for Clinton to the point where he attacked Sanders came across (fairly or not) as attacks on the principles of the progressive left rather than being some variant of politics not being beanbag.
(This is after two years of yelling at Sanders supporters. Here’s a representative thread.)
His feed is worth checking periodically. Whether you think he’s sincere as heck or whether you think he merely knows which side his bread is buttered on, he’s shifted his sights from Berners to… this can’t be right? Mainstream Media?Report
If anything, these sort of gyrations remind me of Andrew Sullivan.Report
I think he saw this article and, after his initial rage passed, he sat down and took an honest accounting. (Or, hell, even a purely cynical accounting.)
I see him as one of the bellwethers of what’s to come… and I’d be willing to bet that his current set of positions has not completed its evolution.Report
The number of people I see around the interwebz that blame Bernie for Clinton’s loss is remarkable.
“If Bernie wasn’t so well liked my very disliked candidate surely would have won.”Report
And yet if Bernie was so well liked, why didn’t he win? Don’t say ‘superdelegates’ because they would have jumped over to a truly popular vs unpopular candidate.
Bernie was popular in a certain set. He was also very unpopular and made himself disliked by other key parts of the party well before Nov. 2016. His remarks about African Americans for instance have been beyond tone deaf, and fed into the narrative that only *white* working class people count (and really only WWC men if you listened to a lot of his supporters). Plus the claims that primary wins for HRC in the south (which were fueled by 80+% AA turn out for Hillary) somehow shouldn’t count because those were red states, but his primary wins in western red states that are lily white absolutely should.
In short, outside of a fairly closed circle he was not all that well liked by the democratic base in 2016. Given all the stuff that’s come out about how his campaign became a pipeline for disseminating Breibart smears against HRC to young progressives, I doubt that perception has improved.Report
And as I’ve said repeatedly, that Clinton won the primary is evidence of a broken Democratic party.Report
He didn’t run a very good campaign. His staff was pretty lousy (even relative to Hillary’s, which, um), he got into the race too late, and he his slapdash approach to talking about policy needlessly alienated a lot of wonks, who are actually a somewhat important Dem primary constituency.
I think he’ll probably make these unforced errors again, making it (more) likely that he won’t really get anywhere.
But maybe he won’t. And maybe it will help.Report
The topic on this subthread is backward looking, that Trump-voting BernieBros are being blamed for HRC’s loss in the general election. I think that view deserves derision and mockery, but whatever. I’m not sure why establishment Dem voters are so antagonistic towards Bernie. At a minimum, given that Hillary lost, they should be at least *open* to the possibility that he would have defeated Trump in the general. Why think he would have done *worse* than lose?Report
Because he’s not a Democrat! He’s an independent who caucuses with the Democrats except when he’s running for President.
This is a silly reason to oppose a candidate if you’re just a voter, even an engaged and active one, but if you’re actually really invested in the Democratic Party as an organization and institution, it’s in your self-interest to oppose such candidates.Report
This is a silly reason to oppose a candidate if you’re just a voter, even an engaged and active one, but if you’re actually really invested in the Democratic Party as an organization and institution, it’s in your self-interest to oppose such candidates.
Agreed, however I can’t help but view this comment as supporting my claim that the Dem party is broken, especially if liberal/Dem voters reflexively vote for whoever the party insiders tell them to.Report
Exactly backwards, IMO.
This happens precisely because the party has something to offer insiders. When it doesn’t, that’s when we’ll know it’s really screwed.Report
Also generally speaking it makes a measure of sense for partisans to follow the lead of a party establishment. It’s not always the optimal approach but it’s a decent heuristic.Report
I note that this ignores absolutely everything I pointed out about him alienating a major voting block in the Dem party – not establishment, but AA voters. He also said a bunch of stuff to hack off women. Alienating to a big chunk of people who can traditionally be counted on to turn out and vote for the party candidate generally makes any candidate a bad choice.
Add in the flailing and bad decisions (popping off for an $$ junket to Rome in the middle of the NY primary), not releasing his taxes (with excuses just as lame as Trump’s), and the fact that he tends to vote somewhat pro-Putin (voted against sanctions – only non-GOP to do so), plus the rape-fantasy porn he wrote in his earlier days, and there are a lot of red flags wrt thinking he’d be a good candidate, let alone a good president. But, little as I like him, I’d still hold my nose and vote for him over Trump.Report
Ignoring wasn’t really what I was going for, but there’s a tendency to focus only on those issues at the expense of other significant unforced errors that (IME) are rarely mentioned.
I’m at best lukewarm on Sanders, didn’t vote for him in the 2016 primary, and have a hard time imagining a scenario where I’d vote from him in the 2020 primary.Report
One reason establishment D’s don’t like Bernie is because he isn’t a D. He hasn’t wanted to be one and was happy to piss into the tent when it suited him. That is fair enough and reasonable.
Would have won, that is separate question and silly to keep debating. The internecine inter D fights are pointless at this point. We got a a bunch of candidates many with good qualities and ideas to choose from. The toxic fights don’t help any of them.Report
One reason establishment D’s don’t like Bernie is because he isn’t a D.
Does the concept “establishment Ds” extend to voters? If so, that’s a big part of the problem with the party, seems to me.Report
From what i see on facebook yes some D voters did not like a guy (and his supporters) who wasn’t in the party get sort of pissy when he didn’t win and seem to feel he deserved it.
I’m already regretting even thinking about typing this again but…..the fact that Clinton got the nom was always the most likely outcome. It didn’t work out that well except for the peeps who love the current mega corruption ( waves to the Sec of Commerce) but parties are social. They are built of people many of whom had ties to the Clintons because that is how parties work. Leaders put people who support them in jobs. It happens in every party. . So it isn’t really a surprise that Clinton got it and doesn’t really signify much except that the Clinton’s were big in the D’s for decades. We are better off that they are gone now.Report
And this tweet is circulating now.
If you don’t feel like watching it (and I don’t blame you) it shows a young woman explaining that she is $226,000 in debt for getting a four-year degree in Greek Mythology.
And that’s why she’s going to be voting for Bernie Sanders.Report
I think the term for Greek Mythology is usually “classics” and it has been around as a field of study for a long time.
There is a real anti-intellectualism in the snark against her and similar things that actually borders on classist elitism. Why is it better to live in a world where only the wealthy study classics and other liberal arts subjects? Or even go to college at all?
I agree with you that “college is not for everyone” but I don’t think it should be decided on economic lines and what people can study also decided on economic lines. Often it feels like “college is not for everyone” quickly morphs into this though along with a sneer against intellectual study in general.Report
The phrase book learning has often been delivered with a sneer. Plus, it is easily possible to go into big debt while studying an allegedly practical subject like law. You need to get a bachelor’s degree in something to go to law school. Both undergrad and law school cost a lot of money. Chances of getting a law job that is remunerative enough to pay the debts are low. If enough people get STEM degrees, the demand for those jobs and therefore the salaries are going to decrease because of a labor glut.Report
For what it’s worth, my point is not in service to “anti-intellectualism”.
It’s in service to a perfectly good education in Greek Mythology being available here. For free.
Now, granted, you have to put your back into it. You have to friggin’ read, read, and then read some more. But there it is.
Now, let’s say that what you could learn from a self-started self-study won’t be as good as a $226,000 degree in the topic. (For what it’s worth, I think this is pretty uncontroversial.) What would such an education be worth?
Give me a number.
Now we can do some light math and talk about the difference between this number and $226,000 and the difference between the quality of the education you’d get from reading the sources in that Wikipedia page and the stuff it links to (and the stuff those pages link to (and the stuff those pages link to)).
And then, I think, we could discuss the grave harm done to this child by shackling her to $226,000 worth of debt. (I just went into an inflation calculator and her debt load is within 1% of the price of my house, when I got it.)
I understand that you want to frame this as being some kind of anti-intellectualism… that way you can argue against the people who sneer at reading books.
I’d like to argue against that by saying that I’m a fan of intellectualism.
I wish we had more of it.Report
Wikipedia is not a substitute for a college education with actual classes and seminars. She probably studied a lot of Greek language classes and a lot of texts that are not often found in wikipedia entries She probably spent a good deal of time reading and translating texts from Greek to English. It also involves the study of culture and art and architecture.
Saying that wikipedia is a good substitute for this is anti-intellectualism for me.
What is wrong with a society that makes it affordable for as many young people as possible to attend university and study what interests them?Report
Not much. The problem is with a society that tells people it’s affordable to do this when it isn’t.
And while these people are technically adults when they make the decisions, a lot of the responsibility lies with other people who have better reasons to know better.
Spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on a degree in Greek mythology is not a great idea.
Lending someone hundreds of thousands of dollars to get a degree in Greek mythology is also not a great idea.
For some reason, though, we want the people who do the borrowing to bear all the risk. It’s a mystery as to why.Report
I largely agree. The issue is that I want to live in a world where you can study Greek mythology for less than hundreds of thousands of dollars and to do so in an official classes and seminars way and not through wiki and just taking out of books from the library.
But there are lots of people who seem to want to burn down the university and just have it all be be self-learning. I’ve been banging about theories why. I think it is partially from our Protestant heritage that rejects middlemen/interpreters, part of it seems to the libertarian version of “anti-establishment”, part of it is own the libs.
On your last sentence, I think it is for the same reasons and it is easier to do.Report
I think we should, too, but… hmm.
Look, I’m going to sound a lot like @jaybird here because he’s actually right about a lot of this.
We can have a society where people can really study the Classics without being really privileged, and we can have a society where really studying the classics is a major status signal, but we can’t really have both.
I think we associate far too much status with college education for a variety of reasons most of which actually suck.Report
For some reason, though, we want the people who do the borrowing to bear all the risk. It’s a mystery as to why.You tell me what the rules are, I’ll tell you what my actions are.
If you’re telling me that my risk when lending money to you is very high and the return is very low, then I’ll refuse to lend to you. For example if someone can’t get a job teaching Greek means they don’t need to pay back the loans, then people learning Greek can’t get loans.
At the moment we have a society where anyone can study Greek, and even get loans to pay for it. This is freedom. It’s not only freedom the study Greek, but the freedom to screw up doing so.
I have one kid in college and I’m about to have another as well. One of the things that stands out is easy it is and how much work it takes to make it “easy”. Success is easy. Failure is easy. But the rules are well posted for anyone who wants to know them.Report
Yeah and the way I see it, loaning people a ton of money to study Greek Mythology is a risky idea, so if you’re discouraged from loaning it to them, or they have to pay a higher interest rate because of the risk of default, either is better than what we have now.Report
I like this idea, a lot.Report
Make it dischargeable in bankruptcy and we see all of these problems evaporate.
Then, I suppose, we can see people complain about how it’s unfair that people aren’t willing to loan money to people who want to better themselves by getting degrees in something not obviously useful for employment… (but I suppose those people could always go to commuter colleges and pay less for a degree that’s just as good).Report
I was trying to describe the likely effects of making it dischargeable in bankruptcy in a roundabout way.
A lot of these degrees just aren’t worth tens of thousands (let alone hundreds of thousands) of dollars. That doesn’t mean they’re bad or people shouldn’t get them, but it does mean people shouldn’t pay that much for them!Report
I’m having a hard time seeing banks care about what type of degree you have. More likely they’ll just raise the rates for people of little means.Report
I’m having a hard time seeing banks care about what type of degree you have.
“Why do life insurance companies care whether you get your steps in?”Report
When I got a lot more, they had a nurse measure my BP and called it a day.Report
Banks care a great deal if someone can pay them back, though, and it’s not like the degree sought has no bearing on that.Report
True but is close monitoring with the bank’s estimation on GPA to Major to job status really the laziest way they can do this?
I guess I’m looking for side effects here. I’m good with Greek being harder or more expensive to get loans for, I’m even good with only rich parents being able to afford to have kids that get PhDs in Greek whatever.
However this thought experiment also raises the risk for loaning to disadvantaged orphans or people with just parents without resources. Not just “if they’re studying Greek” but just “in general”.Report
True. Honestly we should probably not be relying as much as we do on loans as a way to fund post-secondary education.
Also we should probably be clearer about what it’s for. Personal enrichment? Training in economically valuable skills? Certification for post-graduation employers? Status and class signaling?
It’s sort of a mix of all of these, which is itself a problem. And when you get down to it, a Speech Pathology degree from Directional State, despite being education in a field with good employment prospects, may not offer the same kind of ROI that a literature degree from Yale does.Report
Wikipedia is not a substitute for a college education with actual classes and seminars.
I didn’t say that it was.
Instead, I asked a simple question. Here, let me repeat it:
Saying that wikipedia is a good substitute for this is anti-intellectualism for me.
That also is not what I said. Here, let me copy and paste what I said again:
Report
“What is wrong with a society that makes it affordable for as many young people as possible to attend university and study what interests them?”
Nothing, but that’s not what the people who talk about college increasing lifetime earnings potential are telling us that college is for…Report
What is wrong with a society that makes it affordable for as many young people as possible to attend university and study what interests them? [emphasis mine]
What about non-traditional students?Report
I don’t think so, it’s only classics if read in the original Greek. Otherwise, if read in translation, its a literary degree. Which doesn’t answer the question of whether it is time well spent… it certainly could be.
…but the gal says that she’s $226k in debt for Speech Pathology… which seems a fine vocational degree. I couldn’t say whether $226k is a good investment in a career as a Speech Pathologist. But it is clear that only approx $25k-$50k for the Master’s degree is path dependent… undergrad? Was there a particular reason to spend $175k +/- on the BA? Is that a Public State school? Do we have any particular reason to believe that College for All will pay $175k for Private School tuitions? The 10 most expensive public in-state schools cap out at $18k tuition… room/board for both my college students is about $9k. So, $108k is probably max for College for All… I’d expect it will be less in practice.
$100k would certainly be helpful to someone $226k in debt, to be sure… but, and I think a lot of people miss this, in order to get the $100k, your choices will be constrained. And that’s ok too. My kid’s choices are pre-constrained by not valuing a 4-yr degree above what can be paid, or paid back.
I don’t fault the person for spending $226k on Speech Pathology… I’m just not particularly moved by her plight since there are multiple paths to a career in Speech Pathology that don’t require going $226k in debt.Report
Too bad she doesn’t have a degree in Hearing Pathology or maybe she could help me understand the voices in that video!Report
but the gal says that she’s $226k in debt for Speech Pathology
That is a *COMPLETELY* different degree. It’s even STEM adjacent and everything.
I would like to acknowledge the error and apologize to the young woman for misjudging her. (I had thought that she had done something GIGANTICALLY AND MONUMENTALLY stupid. As it is, she was less taken advantage of than I thought.)
I imagine that a career that you get in Speech Pathology is likely to be more remunerative than one that you get in The Humanities.
Hell, why not google it? So I got on the google and put in “speech pathologist salary”.
73,410 USD
That’s from 2015, though.
There was also a page that did it by State and is using 2019 numbers (two numbers, hourly and yearly).
The top is Massachusetts:
Massachusetts – Speech Pathologist Salary $54.27 $112,885
The bottom is North Carolina:
North Carolina – Speech Pathologist Salary $39.69 $82,551
Smack dab in the middle is Delaware:
Delaware – Speech Pathologist Salary $48.35 $100,565
Does it make sense to get $226,000 in debt for a job that pays $112,885?
I don’t know. I got a degree in the humanities from a commuter college. My college debt at the end of the last semester was somewhere between six hundred and eight hundred dollars.Report
Its ok, first time I heard it I thought she said she went to college for “True bleeeehv”Report
I bet if she wrote a thesis paper that Trump is a Tragic Classical Hero in the mold of Ajax, she could recoup that quarter mil pretty damn quick on the Intellectual Dark Web circuit.Report
She could clean up.Report
Only if she accepts payment in generic viagra and anti-fiat money literature.Report
If someone sold me a bill of goods for a quarter million dollars, I might vote for Bernie Sanders too.Report