Democratic Presidential Campaign 2020

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Hype
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Re: Democratic Presidential Campaign 2020

#26 Post by Hype » Fri Feb 01, 2019 6:35 am


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chaos
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Re: Democratic Presidential Campaign 2020

#27 Post by chaos » Sun Feb 10, 2019 7:34 pm


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Re: Democratic Presidential Campaign 2020

#28 Post by JOEinPHX » Mon Feb 11, 2019 5:54 pm

We just may find out if that "Bernie could have won!" line from the Bernie Bros is correct.

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Re: Democratic Presidential Campaign 2020

#29 Post by SR » Tue Feb 12, 2019 4:56 am

Don't know much of her, but I really like Amy Klobuchar. Of all, during the Kavabeer/Squee hearings, her questions revealed the folly of the man and the insistent governmental bias that even a white, well educated, woman are to be summarily dismissed.

Still love Bernie though

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Re: Democratic Presidential Campaign 2020

#30 Post by Hype » Tue Feb 12, 2019 4:53 pm

Right now I'm leaning on Booker to run and lose.

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Re: Democratic Presidential Campaign 2020

#31 Post by mockbee » Tue Feb 12, 2019 5:28 pm

So far all the candidates are running as if it's 1992.
:noclue:

I predict the candidate with the least number of apology tours will win the nomination and loose to Trump, and a 'radical' outside figure not groomed by the Dem party with A+ persuasion skills could beat trump if allowed into the nomination process.

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Re: Democratic Presidential Campaign 2020

#32 Post by chaos » Tue Feb 12, 2019 5:43 pm

I think a Biden/Klobuchar ticket has a good chance of beating a Trump/Pence ticket.

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Re: Democratic Presidential Campaign 2020

#33 Post by mockbee » Tue Feb 12, 2019 5:46 pm

The media and DNC wants kamala, if no dark horses surfaces, I think that's who will be nominated.

I don't see Biden getting anywhere. Maybe 2016 that would have worked due to security/fear factor, but he is not inspiring anyone, and I think the working class midwest on the fence would stick with trump this time around.

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Re: Democratic Presidential Campaign 2020

#34 Post by chaos » Mon Mar 04, 2019 5:48 pm

Image
From left: Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris, Cory Booker, Kirsten Gillibrand, Amy Klobuchar, Jay Inslee, John Hickenlooper, Julián Castro, Tulsi Gabbard, John Delaney, Pete Buttigieg, Andrew Yang, Marianne Williamson.

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Re: Democratic Presidential Campaign 2020

#35 Post by Hype » Tue Mar 05, 2019 8:22 am

It's impressive that there's near parity of women to men in that group (6:8). There are also a decent number of minorities represented, and only four old white men. :lol:

So, basically, not clear how this will shake out.

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Re: Democratic Presidential Campaign 2020

#36 Post by JOEinPHX » Wed Mar 13, 2019 5:34 pm

Beto is in.

He's got my vote.

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Re: Democratic Presidential Campaign 2020

#37 Post by Hype » Thu Mar 14, 2019 4:12 pm

Six7Six7 wrote:
Wed Mar 13, 2019 5:34 pm
Beto is in.

He's got my vote.
Something to think about, at least:
https://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/ ... J8V0zne_Dw
Let me draw your attention to the most horrifying paragraphs of this Vanity Fair profile of Beto O’Rourke, the Texas congressman who announced his presidential campaign Thursday morning:
O’Rourke is careful to pay homage to progressive icons, crediting Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren with advancing the national conversation on health care and consumer protections, but sells himself as something slightly different: a youthful uniter, willing to listen and learn from the most recalcitrant right-wing voters and work with Republicans. “If I bring something to this,” he says, “I think it is my ability to listen to people, to help bring people together to do something that is thought to be impossible.

“My sense is, following some success that I had in Congress, and working with Republicans to actually get things signed into law, including both President Obama and President Trump’s administrations, that I may have an ability to work with people who think differently than I do, come to a different conclusion that I’ve come to on a given issue, and yet find enough common ground to do something better than what we have right now.”
If you finish that passage and think you’ve just read something positive about a Democratic presidential candidate, then—to warp the old Jeff Foxworthy bit—you might be Beto O’Rourke’s constituency.

If, on the other hand, you shuddered in something like horror, get ready for a nightmarish year of watching this candidate attract the most superficial, issue-ignorant, aesthetically inclined simpletons disguised as thoughtful voters. Watch them flock to him like moths to a flame. As Matt Christman put it, in his own vision of dystopia:
Matt Christman
@cushbomb
The Democratic nomination is gonna come down to Beto vs Biden in an epic battle between the dumbest boomers and the dumbest millennials let’s goooooooooooooooo.
This development is very bad, and it's very bad because unlike some of the other bad candidates running, Beto could actually win.

In 2008, I was swept up in the energy surrounding Barack Obama's campaign. I volunteered at phone banks, I gave money, I heroically posted on the Internet, etc. etc. I was 25 years old, and I believed in Obama the transformational figure, and believed in the Great Man theory of systemic change. I believed, in short, that Obama could bend history to his will, and each time he talked about reaching across the aisle and working with Republicans, I envisioned a future in which, like me, those Republican congressmen would find him irresistible, bow to his political talents, and, well…get things done, or something.

Of course, we know what happened. Obama had two years with a stacked Democratic Congress, and the most he accomplished was to institute a healthcare system that was barely adequate to survive the first real GOP onslaught, and that was utterly inadequate at resolving a staggering crisis in America. Republicans heard his pitch about pragmatism and compromise, and spit in his face just before going into an obstructionist crouch that lasted eight years.

But instead of immediately shifting to war footing in response, Obama and his team spent those eight years continuing to believe in the original idea of West Wing-style triumphalism, and what they did manage to accomplish was pretty horrific—deportations, drone strikes against U.S. citizens, a massive bailout and subsequent lack of prosecution for the criminals of the economic crisis. In a brilliant essay on the “Obama Boys,” those staffers who recently released books about their time in the White House, Nathan Robinson at Current Affairs perfectly summarized this cowardice:
The Obama administration bent over backwards to show that it was pragmatic and moderate and sensible, even inflicting cruel harm on families to show their toughness. Here is Tyler Moran, who was a deputy immigration policy director on Obama's White House policy council:

There was a feeling that [the White House] needed to show the American public that you believed in enforcement, and that [we weren't pushing for] open borders. But in hindsight I was like, what did we get for that? We deported more people than ever before. All these families separated, and Republicans didn't give him one ounce of credit. There may as well have been open borders for five years.

We deported tons of people and separated families, and Republicans wouldn't praise us!
I bring this up to say that I was naive to fall for the Obama magic in 2008. I missed the central problem of his campaign, which became the central problem of his presidency and which was outlined by David Samuels in a biting piece from 2012: “He uses words that call attention to the desire of his audience to feel part of a collective in search of something better without referring in any tangible way to the real-world problems faced by any specific class, gender, or race. As a political actor, he is the product of the shidduch made in the early 1990s by Bill Clinton between the “centrist” wing of the tottering Democratic Party and that forward-looking segment of Wall Street that was interested in speeding up the movement of what it called global capital.”

Nevertheless, I forgive myself. I was an innocent then, and though I wasn't rich, I was at least comfortable enough that I only really cared about politics because it seemed exciting once every four years. Like many political naifs, the two most fascinating aspects were the horse race and the sense of community. And like many privileged white people, I wanted the communal vibes without doing much work, and that's exactly what Obama offered: Elect me, and you're part of the team, but I'll do all the heavy lifting by sheer force of personality. To that point in my life, I only knew the sleaziness of Bill Clinton and the impotence of Gore and Kerry, and Obama's pitch seemed perfect.

As I said, I give my 25-year-old self a pass. But 11 years later, having witnessed the failure of Obama, having watched how Republicans obstructed him and then fell in line totally with Donald Trump—in short, having borne witness to the utter failure of the pragmatic centrism espoused by Obama, and the total, unyielding corruption of the Republican party—I feel nothing, upon reading that Beto O'Rourke quote, but the deepest sense of revulsion and dread. Compromise?! Anyone who has paid even marginal attention to American politics since 2008 knows that compromise is a dangerous illusion; it's another term for giving Republicans special concessions and getting nothing in return.

I have no special foresight, but it doesn't take a crystal ball to see that an O'Rourke presidency would be a sad retread at a time when we can't afford to lose a day, much less four years. The future, if it includes Beto in the oval office, will follow the same path, and the path is grim.

And anyone on the nominal left who believes otherwise—this is too important to mince words—is an idiot.

What, exactly, is Beto O'Rourke's appeal?

It's not policy-oriented, and it's not identity-based. He's independently rich, and despite his grab at exoticism by transforming “Robert” into “Beto,” he's white. As the Vanity Fair piece noted, he won his first House race by “drawing a large number of white Republican voters to his cause, which deepened suspicion from left-leaning Chicano activists.” Representing a safe Democratic district, he nevertheless voted with Republicans 167 times in six years. Even before then, on the El Paso City Council, he was carrying water for his rich Republican father-in-law, who wanted to gentrify the downtown district using eminent domain, destroy affordable housing, and build a Wal-Mart and Target:

O'Rourke, fluent in Spanish like his father, went door-to-door trying to convince residents the city would build affordable housing elsewhere. A local historian and activist, David Romo, accused O'Rourke and his allies of destroying buildings of historic significance to Chicanos and driving immigrants from what he deemed the “Ellis Island” of the border (a phrase that O'Rourke would later use to defend El Paso against Trump's wall idea). They pointed out that his father-in-law stood to profit from the plans—and indeed, Sanders had formed the Borderplex Realty Trust for just that purpose. The city opened an ethics investigation, and though O'Rourke was cleared of wrongdoing, he recused himself in the public debate and from voting on it.

Let's state it plainly: If you like Beto O'Rourke, you like him because he seems cool, and you think the fact that he seems cool means he's going to bring everyone together under the banner of good feelings and become the next Obama. His appeal, to answer the question above, is purely aesthetic. Nathaniel Friedman expressed his own frustration with this reality on Twitter:
Nathaniel Friedman

@freedarko
I don’t find Beto disturbing because he could beat Sanders. If he wins he wins. It just weirds me out that he’s such an attractive candidate for so many people.

Nathaniel Friedman

@freedarko
Replying to @freedarko
People like Beto’s charisma. They like his language. They like his energy and the way he wears his heart on his sleeve. That’s all aesthetics.

Nathaniel Friedman

@freedarko
Replying to @freedarko
It almost doesn’t matter what Beto wants policy-wise because his appeal is policy-agnostic. It’s like Obama—he’s a cool dude whose heart seems to be in the right place. And that’s enough, I guess.

Nathaniel Friedman

@freedarko
Replying to @freedarko
If Beto is smart he’ll just follow the Obama playbook and be totally vague and sweeping because it’s worked great for him so far and apparently lots of people didn’t learn that lesson the first time around.
What has Beto actually done that people might like? Well, he gave a nice speech about Colin Kaepernick that a lot of people wanted to cast as bold, but was actually so bold that Nike employed the same tactic a few months later. He did some air drumming at a fast-food drive-thru. He skateboarded. He was in a punk band. He has lots of energy, he's young-ish, he's tall, he's good-looking.

Again, all aesthetics. His appeal is the appeal of the surface, of the pathetic yearning to feel good without fixing anything.
I mean, look at this meaningless BS:
CNN Politics

@CNNPolitics
Embedded video
Beto O’Rourke speaks in Iowa after launching his 2020 bid: “We have the single greatest mechanism to call forth the genius of our fellow human beings. This democracy … can bring the ingenuity, the creativity, the resolve of an entire country” https://cnn.it/2UCXErR
Does that gloopy word salad move you? Do you think he’s actually saying something? Then, yes, you might be Beto O’Rourke’s constituency.

On a policy level, he’s one of the most conservative Democrats in the field. He doesn’t concretely support Medicare for All, except in some “it would be great, eventually!” sense. He voted against free public college. He makes vague noises about liking the Green New Deal without signing on. He gets money from oil and gas executives, and thus he won’t take a hard position against fossil fuels. He folded on the Israel Iron Dome question under the slightest pressure, he voted to let Obama negotiate the Trans-Pacific Partnership (which cost him the AFL-CIO endorsement in his race against Cruz), and the sheer amount of awful Republican bills he’s supported is enough to fill an entire article.

Now, we don’t live in a perfect political world, and despite O’Rourke’s quirks, he’s a hell of a politician…for Texas. It would have been a wonderful miracle if he defeated Cruz. It would be a wonderful miracle if he defeats John Cornyn, the state’s other senator, in 2020. He’s far from the worst Democrat in Congress, and we need people like him in the red and purple states. Nevertheless, the point needs to be made: Nothing about this guy’s politics are special. Nothing about his record screams “get this man in the oval office!” We are at a critical juncture in American history where policy change is desperately needed, and as Jacobin put it so succinctly, “We don’t need another photogenic media star with run-of-the-mill liberal politics running for president.”

If Obama represented a transformation that seemed credible, to some, in 2008, Beto O’Rourke represents that same kind of transformation for people who, a decade later, haven’t learned the most basic lesson of the American political nightmare: This is a street fight, the other side is the enemy, and if we keep losing, the penalty is poverty and sickness and death for more and more people, and, oh yeah, the environmental destruction of the planet. There is no space for a fool like Beto O’Rourke in the post-Trump era, because Beto O’Rourke, despite all his charismatic gifts, is a man who centers his political life around himself rather than the people. His book shelves are lined with the biographies of former presidents in what amounts to a paean to his own ambition, and in closing that Vanity Fair piece, he said something telling:
The more he talks, the more he likes the sound of what he’s saying. “I want to be in it,” he says, now leaning forward. “Man, I’m just born to be in it, and want to do everything I humanly can for this country at this moment.”
It’s up to you what part of that statement you think is the most true: The part about him being “born” for the role, or the part about him wanting to help the country. It’s not that they can’t both be true, to some extent, but taken in conjunction with the quote that led this piece, it’s clear (to me, at least) that Beto sees himself as a special agent of change. A man of all the people, a man of both parties, a man who can transcend these petty divisions that separate us and shine brighter than his dim surroundings.

He’s good enough at what he does that he’s going to make other people believe that, too—the most gullible, the most naive, the most vapid. Let’s return to a key word: The premise of his campaign is the premise of transcendence. He’s the comic book hero that many liberals have been waiting for, the man who will return us to the golden days of Obama and erase the nightmare that was Trump. He’s the savior, and because he’s the savior, he only asks for our most superficial support. He doesn’t need a grassroots movement that extends beyond the ballot box, he doesn’t need a political revolution at his back, and he doesn’t need to be anything more than a viral superstar who captures our hearts for the duration of the campaign season.

If you’re the kind of person who doesn’t even try to understand the failures that brought us Donald Trump, or who doesn’t even try to see the failures of the Obama presidency, or who doesn’t like to look too deeply at the systemic injustices of late-stage capitalism underlying the modern American experience, Beto O’Rourke provides a great deal of comfort. You can close your eyes, project whatever you want onto the blank slate he presents, and hope for the best.

You can ignore the fact that transcendence and compromise are ugly myths that perpetuate inequality, and that when the concept of transcendence meets the reality of hard-nosed Republican opposition, it immediately decays into craven compromise that drags us further and further to the right. You can ignore the fact that Beto has already demonstrated this Obama-esque tendency to capitulate even while operating in the safest possible blue district. And you can ignore, above all, the obvious, unsettling conclusion: If we elect this man, we are screwed.

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Re: Democratic Presidential Campaign 2020

#38 Post by JOEinPHX » Thu Mar 14, 2019 5:44 pm

Sounds good to me.

Beto 2020!

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Re: Democratic Presidential Campaign 2020

#39 Post by Hokahey » Thu Mar 14, 2019 9:13 pm

Yep. Voting Beto. These leftist purity tests are destroying the Democratic party worse than Trump.

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Re: Democratic Presidential Campaign 2020

#40 Post by guysmiley » Thu Mar 14, 2019 10:15 pm

Hokahey wrote:
Thu Mar 14, 2019 9:13 pm
Yep. Voting Beto. These leftist purity tests are destroying the Democratic party worse than Trump.
Exactly. I'm sick of the shit show. This in-fighting is what will get Trump reelected if people don't come off their soap box. I've kind of already resided to the fact it will probably happen. This is where extremism leads.

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Re: Democratic Presidential Campaign 2020

#41 Post by drwintercreeper » Fri Mar 15, 2019 6:25 am

“On a policy level, he’s one of the most conservative Democrats in the field. He doesn’t concretely support Medicare for All, except in some “it would be great, eventually!” sense. He voted against free public college. He makes vague noises about liking the Green New Deal without signing on. He gets money from oil and gas executives, and thus he won’t take a hard position against fossil fuels. He folded on the Israel Iron Dome question under the slightest pressure, he voted to let Obama negotiate the Trans-Pacific Partnership (which cost him the AFL-CIO endorsement in his race against Cruz), and the sheer amount of awful Republican bills he’s supported is enough to fill an entire article.”


I am okay with all of this. He stands a decent shot at winning compared to some of the other dems, and he will guide our ship down into the abyss hopefully a little slower than these other clowns. In the long run we are still spending too much money on shit. Bernie and company will drag it down that much faster with 50 trillon dollar wishlists, and we see how serious the repubs are about deficits and the national debt. Maybe i am being too pessimistic but 20 years from now we will still spend too much on domestic programs, and we will still face russia and china etc. as intl rivals and thus spend way too much on preventing revisions to the intl order, so if those things dont change, and we dont change, we are fucked.

Beto!!!!! Impurity 202020

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Re: Democratic Presidential Campaign 2020

#42 Post by Hype » Fri Mar 15, 2019 9:35 am

I think there might be good reasons to vote 'meh' to get rid of Trump. :lol:

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Re: Democratic Presidential Campaign 2020

#43 Post by mockbee » Fri Mar 15, 2019 12:03 pm

Beto seems fine in his emphatic mealymouthness. It could be a winning strategy if he makes a stand out from the crowd celebrity status of himself and stays confidently vague.
:noclue:

The instant he apologizes for anything though or seems too contrived, he will be finished in the primary (or general if he makes it there)

He should follow Trumps lead in that respect.

He seems too contrived to me already, but I thought that about Obama as well, until he was actually able to pull it out.

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Re: Democratic Presidential Campaign 2020

#44 Post by guysmiley » Fri Mar 15, 2019 12:56 pm

I just want to kill myself. Welcome to the honest world.

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Re: Democratic Presidential Campaign 2020

#45 Post by guysmiley » Fri Mar 15, 2019 1:02 pm

Honestly I think I should invest in bunkers rather than pay for my impossible student debt.

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Re: Democratic Presidential Campaign 2020

#46 Post by Hype » Fri Mar 15, 2019 1:51 pm

mockbee wrote:
Fri Mar 15, 2019 12:03 pm
Beto seems fine in his emphatic mealymouthness. It could be a winning strategy if he makes a stand out from the crowd celebrity status of himself and stays confidently vague.
:noclue:

The instant he apologizes for anything though or seems too contrived, he will be finished in the primary (or general if he makes it there)

He should follow Trumps lead in that respect.

He seems too contrived to me already, but I thought that about Obama as well, until he was actually able to pull it out.
Yeah. It's a meh from me. That Buttigieg guy is more interesting, but can't win with that name (as stupid as that is...).

The Democrats can secure the popular vote overall easily, but unless they have a workable strategy for handling the flyover / rust-belt shit they're doomed.

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Re: Democratic Presidential Campaign 2020

#47 Post by guysmiley » Fri Mar 15, 2019 2:08 pm

Hype wrote:
Fri Mar 15, 2019 1:51 pm
mockbee wrote:
Fri Mar 15, 2019 12:03 pm
Beto seems fine in his emphatic mealymouthness. It could be a winning strategy if he makes a stand out from the crowd celebrity status of himself and stays confidently vague.
:noclue:

The instant he apologizes for anything though or seems too contrived, he will be finished in the primary (or general if he makes it there)

He should follow Trumps lead in that respect.

He seems too contrived to me already, but I thought that about Obama as well, until he was actually able to pull it out.
Yeah. It's a meh from me. That Buttigieg guy is more interesting, but can't win with that name (as stupid as that is...).

The Democrats can secure the popular vote overall easily, but unless they have a workable strategy for handling the flyover / rust-belt shit they're doomed.
They are doomed. And sharing extreme ideology will fuck us all.

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Re: Democratic Presidential Campaign 2020

#48 Post by guysmiley » Fri Mar 15, 2019 2:13 pm


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Re: Democratic Presidential Campaign 2020

#49 Post by Hype » Sat Mar 16, 2019 5:02 am

guysmiley wrote:
Fri Mar 15, 2019 2:08 pm
And sharing extreme ideology will fuck us all.
Not sure what you mean by this. Explain?

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Re: Democratic Presidential Campaign 2020

#50 Post by Hype » Tue Mar 26, 2019 4:59 am

Many years ago I said that Obama would win the nom over Clinton, despite my preference for Clinton at the time, because Americans are racist, but way, way more misogynist. Turns out that's still true.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions ... 2fa7d76f07
In part, that’s because, as Jill Filipovic reminds us, we judge women by their accomplishments but men by their potential. Ambition in a man is considered admirable, while it’s considered threatening in a woman.

We’ve seen this time and again. Hillary Clinton’s popularity bounced up and down depending on whether she was seeking an office. Or take Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.). Back in 2016, many on the left held up Warren as everything they wanted in a presidential candidate. The key, though, was that Warren wasn’t running. Once she did run, many of those same people decided they weren’t so enamored of her after all. She used to be brilliant and charismatic; now people have decided she’s an inauthentic schoolmarm.

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