Dam8610

The Astros were built practically from farm alone. So were the Dodgers. It can be done. That said, adding top tier free agents does accelerate the competitive window. Signing a Machado or Arenado and a Sale would really help, but the core of the next competitive team will come from the farm system.

"Flippable assets" are typically guys that you're taking a chance on them succeeding. Sometimes it works sometimes it doesn't. Those "garbage reclamation projects" were the Sox attempt at acquiring "flippable assets", it just didn't work out for them.

Donn Roach is almost 29 years old and has a career MLB ERA of nearly 6 in about 40 IP. You would've hated and complained about him as well.

You might get one of those other high schoolers with a $405K offer. That's the max the Sox can offer at the moment.

A caricature through which many alt-right conspiracy theories flow.

But several people have proven that theory wrong, now, in both positive and negative ways. Bernie Sanders ran an extremely competitive presidential campaign with no PAC money and Clinton's corporate money didn't help her beat Trump. More recently, the two biggest surprise winners on the Democratic side, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Conor Lamb, both refused corporate money, and made it a campaign point. It can be done and done effectively, and I don't think we'll see campaign finance reform until there's a large group of Congresspeople who haven't taken that money, allowing them to actually represent the interests of their constituents rather than the corporate donors.

So then you're against taking corporate money?

I advocated for spending a boatload of the owners' money on veteran players to help the team compete, and still you're unhappy it. Why? Isn't that what you want?

Wait until 2020, sign Arenado and Sale.

Yes, but they have billionaires with terrible agendas bankrolling them. That leaves you with the options of sell out your ability to implement policy you want to mega corporations who will demand things like caulfield posted or to actually and legitimately appeal to the people and do things they approve of, which will mean perception of your party will matter. You seem to be okay with the former choice, but I don't think the American people can continue to afford having their quality of life sold away to the highest bidder.

Not caring about the perception of your party as long as you're winning is a great way to start losing.

Where did the command go?

All the work I've heard being done regarding eliminating closed primaries has involved going through the DNC. Plus the DNC argued in court that they have total control of the nominating process. I would assume that includes whether a primary is open or closed. I don't personally know where to even begin checking the laws and regulations that govern that, but I would think the people fighting for the change would know where and whom they need to be fighting.

If Democrats are so concerned about voting rights, why do they have closed primaries? Same day registration should be a thing, both for general elections and primaries.

It's not about importance. Those issues are just as important. It's about winning some positive policy change that will help. You're the one making it about importance, I'm talking about enacting positive change instead of spitting platitudes their way for votes only to never do a damn thing to actually help them.

Yes, you ALSO fight those fights AFTER you've won the others.

You'll have a harder time changing the minds of the old (literally and figuratively) voters than you will finding new ones to outvote them if you have the right platform.

That's why you also abolish private prisons (Sanders platform point), make college and healthcare free for all (Sanders platform point), and actually listen to the victims to try to implement solutions to the other problems (as Sanders did when he yielded his rally to BLM). Most of the problems you listed can be solved through economic policy. It's so much more difficult to remove racial biases from an individual or a group than it is to enact fiscal policy. Why fight (and typically lose) the harder fight first?

How far out is"long-term"?

But when you have more minorities by percentage in poverty, combating poverty disproportionately helps minorities without giving the appearance of unfairness on which Republicans love to capitalize.

If the goal is more equality, the means of reaching it shouldn't matter. Millennials get it, so it seems does iGen. We can outwait and outvote the boomers.

So when did fighting poverty stop fighting racism? Remember, kids, it's socioECONOMIC status. If your economic status improves, so does your socioeconomic status.

The subject we were talking about was the midwest. Here are some facts on that. Bernie Sanders won more midwest states than Hillary Clinton (4-3), more midwest primaries (3-2), and was within half a percentage point in Iowa and 2 percentage points in Illinois, where Clinton should've had home state advantage. To me, that says that the people of the midwest were very receptive to Bernie Sanders's economic populist message, and I see no reason that this wouldn't carry over, especially since healthcare and the economy are the top two issues of voters as of now, and the most popular policy positions on each of those issues came directly from the Bernie Sanders platform. But I suppose that's cherry picking or manipulating data?

Ms. Duckworth likely understands her Illinois constituency very well, but Illinois is not the whole of the midwest, and she's no more qualified to comment on the seven state region than Ms. Ocasio-Cortez is. Judging by the results I spoke of earlier, there's even a distinct possibility that Ms. Ocasio-Cortez might be more well informed about the midwest as a whole. Given that Ms. Ocasio-Cortez has previously worked as an organizer for a presidential campaign and has traveled to each state, it would be reasonable to believe that she might have a better handle on what the constituencies of the six non-Illinois midwest states are looking for in a political candidate than Ms. Duckworth.

Looks like you answered your own question.