2020 Democratic Presidential Primary: Welcome Home

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Pinterest Mom: Jun 9, 2009

Merkley has been spending time and hired staff in IA/NH, he should probably be on the list. Hickenlooper too~

# ¿ Oct 10, 2018 15:34

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# ¿ May 19, 2024 13:15

Pinterest Mom: Jun 9, 2009

Feldegast42 posted:

Another note -- is Warren actually running? I haven't seen much from her on that front. She didn't run in 2016 and pretty much the entire left base was begging her to do it.

SEPTEMBER 29, 2018
HOLYOKE � Senator Elizabeth Warren on Saturday made her most definitive indication to date that she is mulling a run for the White House in 2020, telling a town hall crowd that she will take a �After Nov. 6 I will take a hard look at running for president� after the Nov. 6 midterm elections.

https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2...rgoJ/story.html

# ¿ Oct 10, 2018 19:58

Pinterest Mom: Jun 9, 2009

Raskolnikov38 posted:

bernie will win a plurality because of the clownshow, get hosed over by his own superdelegate rules change (jeez i wonder why the leadership accepted any revision to superdelegates) and i will cry/laugh as trump pulls a reagan in '84 over whoever the establishment coalesces behind

I think the Dems were more than happy to pair a meaningless superdelegates rule change with a reduction in the number of caucuses, and a more generous absentee ballot process for states that keep their caucuses. Caucuses reward candidates with smaller more enthusiastic followings, and that'll hurt Bernie. It looks like MN, CO, ID, NE, and ME are all flipping from caucus to primary, and UT and WA might as well. Bernie got a combined ~120 delegate margin from those states, flipping them from caucuses that he won 2-1, 3-1, 4-1 to places that are a lot closer is going to have a big negative effect on his math.

# ¿ Oct 10, 2018 23:18

Pinterest Mom: Jun 9, 2009

Brony Car posted:

And will his supporters go on and on about the Democrat Party being rigged for months after that again?

Here, have tomorrow's conspiracy theory, today.
https://twitter.com/HCTrudo/status/1047165969297235968

# ¿ Oct 11, 2018 15:04

Pinterest Mom: Jun 9, 2009

�The Democratic Party and its various institutions preferred a candidate� (especially in the context of a two person election in which one of the candidates was explicitly running against the party) is not the same as �the primaries were rigged�.

The DNC�s role in the primaries is to schedule some debates, prepare the convention, and adjudicate delegate disputes (there were none in 2016). It�s a nonsense statement to say that an entity who doesn�t handle any votes, doesn�t vet who is or isn�t allowed to run, and has no impact on the eventual results is capable of or did �rig� a primary.

# ¿ Oct 11, 2018 15:42

Pinterest Mom: Jun 9, 2009

If the �full weight of the organisation� amounts to some snippy internal emails that fantasise about possible lines in off-the-record briefings, I don�t know what there is to be upset about. The DNC does not, in any meaningful sense, run �the Democratic Party� or the primary process, and I think it�s pretty clear that Sanders made the calculation that he gets a lot more out of positioning himself against the party insiders than he would get out of cozying up.

Like, in 2016, mid-campaign, his campaign [i]sued the DNC[\i]. That was a popular move with his supporters, but it very obviously made people within the DNC less-than-pleased at him, and since then he�s kept occasionally poking a stick in the eye of various parry insiders and committees. That�s something that his supporters like, but it�s fundamentally incompatible with having party insiders be neutral-in-their-hearts about him, and that�s the point. He wants, and his supporters want, the sense of outsiderness and fighting the insiders.

# ¿ Oct 11, 2018 16:00

Pinterest Mom: Jun 9, 2009

Jaxyon posted:

edit: I don't think the "pocahontas" poo poo sticks with anyone who wasn't already predisposed to dislike her.

I have a leftist friend of indigenous descent who is legitimately bothered by her listing fictitious indigenous ancestry on her application. It's far from disqualifying her in his eyes, but I was surprised when I brought it up, kinda of dismissing it, and he told me that he didn't like it.

Raskolnikov38 posted:

unless warren runs to the left she's going to be fighting for bernie's base as a more acceptable choice to centrists which isn't going to work with bernie running

Ideology isn't a one-dimensional line, and people vote on things other than straight ideology. If they run on very similar platforms, except that Warren looks like someone who has actually thought about and cares about the mechanics of implementation and is fluent in policy details, that matters to a lot of people. It matters to me!

# ¿ Oct 11, 2018 19:50

Pinterest Mom: Jun 9, 2009

Ytlaya posted:

Ideology is unequivocally more important than policy details, especially in a figure like the president (who isn't writing the legislation directly). At the end of the day, "can this be done" isn't a serious question for all the things the left desires. There is no question that we can afford and do these things, so the question of "how to precisely implement it" is basically a secondary one that can and will be addressed (or rather has already been addressed in most cases) but is not a factor in deciding whether or not to support them. For a leadership figure, the most important thing is simply establishing the actual goals you want to achieve (for example giving everyone free-at-use healthcare, or a living wage).

I'm aware that the opinion you're expressing here feels like "something a smart person should think," but it falls apart under scrutiny. It's similar to "the government should be fiscally responsible and budget like a household" in the sense of being "an opinion that feels like one a smart, reasonable person should express," but is actually only used to try and shut-down attempts to significantly change the status quo (because, for some strange reason this same level of scrutiny is not applied to most elements of the status quo).

I agree with the first paragraph, yeah, but I disagree that it means that we don't need to actually evaluate or make a guess at how effective we think candidates will be at implementing their agenda. We're going to have a lot of candidates running on an unabashedly left platform (by my count, at least four? Bernie, Warren, Gillibrand, Merkley), and that means we get to ask ourselves not just whether we want a left agenda, but what kind of person we want putting that agenda forward.

Specifically re: Bernie and your second paragraph, I'm not concerned that there don't exist people in the world that can turn his priorities into legislative language, but I don't think the jump from "those people exist" to "don't worry about it" is warranted. Bernie's got access to great policy advice and experts right now, but he still put out the BEZOS bill a few weeks ago that would have been really counterproductive. The messaging and symbolism of that were great, but the actual nuts-and-bolts policy were awful, and I'm not super satisfied with "the filter from goals and ideas to policy isn't in place now, but it will be once he's in the White House".

Gillibrand has made it clear she won't be outflanked from the left (by, say, being the first senator to say "abolish ICE" out loud, or by providing the legislative language for the transition to medicare for all in Bernie's bill), Warren has a lot of economist populist cred and has experience setting up the CFPB, Merkley I know next to nothing about but he endorsed Bernie last time so :shrug:

, so Bernie's not the only game in town for the left. All those candidates also have downsides, and Bernie's definitely got all of them beat on the affect/"I know and trust where his heart is" question, which counts for a lot, but this is a discussion I don't think you just get to dismiss.

# ¿ Oct 11, 2018 22:21

Pinterest Mom: Jun 9, 2009

https://twitter.com/ddale8/status/1051771373041922049
https://twitter.com/ddale8/status/1051778204208377861

# ¿ Oct 15, 2018 12:00

Pinterest Mom: Jun 9, 2009

Yeah I'm not sure this actually... does anything. Maybe hurts? The emotional core of the attack was always "it was ridiculous for this white-rear end white lady to claim a not-actually-lives indigenous identity on a form", and this doesn't do anything to counter that.

If anything, if Warren is (actually or implicitly) defending her choice to check that box by showing "see I have at least one indigenous ancestor", as if that's a defence, and as if every single white person on the continent whose family has been here for three generations couldn't make the same claim, that could actually hurt her in the primary.

# ¿ Oct 15, 2018 12:57

Pinterest Mom: Jun 9, 2009

Tony Gunk posted:

...except the box wasn't on a job application, it was on a form for a Harvard faculty facebook in which she indicated that she had Native American ancestry. Harvard already confirmed that they didn't have any idea about it when they hired her. I think it's debatable whether it helps, but it in no way hurts.

Now, when Donny Peepants starts doing fake war dances and tomahawk chops on stage, Very Serious People can't go "well, she could just take a DNA test and shut him up!" Now she has. He won't shut up, but the Very Serious People will finally stop asking the question.

Who said anything about a job application?

I meant that with her releasing this test, this potentially shifts the narrative from "look, family folklore, maybe it was silly" to "wait are you really saying, in the year two thousand and eighteen, that you have a legitimate claim to indigenous identity based on this", and the second one seems like it might be fraught to navigate in the primary.

# ¿ Oct 15, 2018 13:21

Pinterest Mom: Jun 9, 2009

Tony Gunk posted:

...no, it didn't prove Donny was right. Jesus Christ, she wasn't dressing in native dress and doing war dances on stage. All she said was that somewhere in her family tree, there was Native American blood. Once. On a form for a Harvard facebook. It isn't like she was even claiming that she was half or 25% Native American. She wasn't trying to claim any special exemptions or demand any special treatment.

According to Politifact, several times, over a decade, to a professional organisation as well as two schools.

quote:

The Boston Globe followed the Herald with a report that the Association of American Law Schools listed Warren as a minority law teacher each year from 1986 to 1994. In that time, Warren went from being a law professor at the University of Texas, to the University of Pennsylvania, and finally in 1995 to Harvard University.

That association received faculty lists from law schools and sent personal profile forms to new faculty members. The group first asked about minority status in 1986.

Given the association�s process of sending the form to new faculty, it is possible that Warren filled out that form three times: once in 1986 when she was at the University of Texas, in 1987 when she moved to the University of Pennsylvania, and a third time when she spent a year as visiting faculty at Harvard in 1992. In 1995, when she moved to Harvard, she no longer appears in the minority teacher list.

(...)

"At some point after I was hired by them, I also provided that information to the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard,�� she said in a statement issued by her campaign. "My Native American heritage is part of who I am, I�m proud of it, and I have been open about it.��

Typically, Warren would have filled out forms for tracking faculty diversity. The Boston Globe found that Harvard reported one Native American teacher when Warren was there as a visiting professor, then again when she joined the permanent faculty. The University of Pennsylvania had similar reports.

https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2017/dec/01/facts-behind-elizabeth-warren-and-her-native-ameri/

# ¿ Oct 15, 2018 14:07

Pinterest Mom: Jun 9, 2009

Demon Of The Fall posted:

It blows my mind people think this will matter at all after this week

It matters to recruiting staff and organisers and volunteers, which is a very large part of the ballgame rn. There's only finite amounts of talent really familiar with IA/NH/NV/SC, and the candidates are going to asking people to give up the next year+ of their lives as they start staffing up. This DNA test, and the way that the Warren team clearly thought this was a masterstroke, is going to give a lot of activists pause about spending the next 16 months in the Warren camp if this is the braintrust.

# ¿ Oct 17, 2018 01:39

Pinterest Mom: Jun 9, 2009

QuoProQuid posted:

can you point to gaffes by other candidates that led to a problems in finding campaign volunteers a year later?

Obviously, there's no database of "party activists", and who they choose to endorse and why. Even if there were, it'd be impossible to establish causality. But this is how this sort of thing works! There's a loosely-connected network of core party activists in each state, and as the ~invisible primary~ starts up people start chatting about the candidates, evaluating how they're doing, maybe get pitches from activists in their networks to join them on one campaign or another. Things like lacklustre launches definitely get noticed in that circle, and I'd kinda expect that in an especially crowded field the impact is magnified since people have a lot of other places to look at.

I'm not saying that because of this, Warren definitely won't have a full slate of 1700 precinct captains in Iowa or whatever, but I think a lot of party activists are suddenly going to be a bit more interested in what Bernie, Gillibrand and Klobuchar have to say over the next few months.

# ¿ Oct 17, 2018 02:37

Pinterest Mom: Jun 9, 2009

Majorian posted:

I, too, can't tell the difference between the 29-year old and the 49-year old.

Pac-Man came out in arcades when Booker was 11, not everything is cynical pandering.

Championship Edition 2 is trash though.

# ¿ Oct 19, 2018 14:14

Pinterest Mom: Jun 9, 2009

Lightning Knight posted:

I think you can credibly argue Bernie meets this metric, at least as phrased (he didn�t support gay marriage officially until 2009 but never explicitly or implicitly opposed it as far as I can find).

He did, in 2006, with his usual framing of "why are we worrying about civil rights when there are millionaires and billionaires still at large". He's generally been good on LGBT rights though.

quote:

In November 2000, just before Election Day, Mr. Sanders and the state�s two senators accompanied Robert T. Stafford, the 87-year-old Republican elder statesman, to a news conference where Mr. Stafford asked, �What is the harm?� in allowing gay unions. When it came time for Mr. Sanders to speak, he deplored the demonization of gay people but complained that the virulent opposition to civil unions diverted attention from prescription drug costs, health care and other economic issues.

�There are a dozen other issues out there that are as important or more important as that issue,� he said.

The following years were something of a wilderness period for gay activists in Vermont, as many politicians wanted a break after the fight over civil unions. In 2006, Mr. Sanders, trying to make the leap into the Senate, seemed to shy away from the issue. Asked in a debate against his Republican opponent whether the federal government should overturn laws on same-sex marriage, he argued that it was a states� rights issue. When asked by a reporter whether Vermont should legalize same-sex marriage, he said, �Not right now, not after what we went through.�

https://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/28/us/politics/as-gay-rights-ally-bernie-sanders-wasnt-always-in-vanguard.html

# ¿ Oct 20, 2018 12:49

Pinterest Mom: Jun 9, 2009

KOTEX GOD OF BLOOD posted:

Didn't Gillibrand sponsor that bill to make supporting BDS a felony?

She did, and then she withdrew her sponsorship.

quote:

Gillibrand said she changed her position after meeting with the American Civil Liberties Union, which opposes the bill.

"We went through their reading of the bill and why they believe it says � it chills free speech, which means the bill is ambiguous," Gillibrand said at the town hall.

The bill would fine individuals or companies anywhere from $250,000 to $1 million for engaging in any activity that supports the BDS movement, according to the ACLU. Violators could also face up to 20 years in prison.

Gillibrand changed her position because, in her view, individuals should not face that kind of punishment for expressing their opinion.

# ¿ Oct 21, 2018 02:21

Pinterest Mom: Jun 9, 2009

Yeah, she still says she opposes BDS. I guess she thought it was a meaningless message bill showing ~support for Israel~ (which, in her partial defence: no elected official outside Israel, other than POTUS, represents a larger jewish constituency than she does). Still lovely instincts on that question, and I wish she didn't oppose BDS, but I think it means something that she listened to the ACLU on it.

I guess I'll do the Gillibrand post.

# ¿ Oct 21, 2018 02:35

Pinterest Mom: Jun 9, 2009

Name: Kirsten Gillibrand
Joementum Meter: She didn't stab the Clintons in the back in order to have a long career in the Senate.
Age in 2020: 53
Major Electoral History: Senator from NY (2009-present), Rep from NY (2007-2009)
Medicare for All status?: Co-sponsor. Wrote parts of Bernie's bill. Supported Medicare buy-in in her first run in 2006.
Good Dem!: First Senator to endorse a jobs guarantee. First Senator to call to abolish ICE. Postal banking. Financial transactions tax. Refuses corporate PAC money Banning "men", the entire gender. Lowest 538 Trump score in the Senate. If there's a leftist cause c�l�bre, she's probably signed on to it.
Yeah, but: Her record in the House was considerably more conservative than her position in the Senate, and there's the question of whether she really means it or is just sensing where the political winds are blowing.
Bad Dem!: As a House member, supported cracking down on unauthorized immigration and had an "A" rating from the NRA. Distressingly pro-Israel. Hillary prot�g�e. As a corporate lawyer, represented Philip Morris.
In Her Defense: She legitimately did grow up in and represent a district that was conservative on those issues, and tacked left the exact second she was appointed to the Senate, and she did have some very progressive positions on health care even as a House member from a red district. Is a Senator from New York. Burned the Clinton bridges.

Gillibrand's been cozying up to the capital-L Left for a while, and really making it clear that she wants to be considered for their votes. It's easy to view this as cynical, since she's running for President and might view her path as "the candidate who is acceptable to both the left and the hashtag resistance", but hey, Senators pandering to the Left is better than Senators not pandering to the Left. She's made a lot of waves over the past couple of years by taking visible, gutsy stands: she led the bloc of women Senators who forced Franken out, she called to abolish ICE when no mainstream Dem (or Senators-caucusing-with-the-Democrats) was, picked a visible fight with the Clintons, and has been the most consistent anti-Trump vote in the Senate. Those stands haven't come for free - she's pissed off a lot of folks from Clintonworld and the male Democratic establishment. She's got the stink of Hillary to shake off, and it's not clear that she has, despite her efforts: she views Hillary as a mentor, was appointed to take her Senate seat, and there's always this suspicion that the positions she takes are calculated, not from the heart. She's been making sure to support candidates around the country during the midterms, and despite her polling in low-single digits for the moment, the last couple of years have shown she's got solid political instincts, has a great sense of where the Democratic Party is, and isn't afraid to take risks.

Pinterest Mom fucked around with this message at 03:22 on Oct 21, 2018

# ¿ Oct 21, 2018 03:05

Pinterest Mom: Jun 9, 2009

DynamicSloth posted:

To add to the (cartoonishly) bad she was also a lawyer for big tobacco, still at least her career arc is facing the progressive direction and fundamentally I think the timely sensing of where the political winds are blowing is a quality you want in a politician.

Oh yeah, that Philip Morris chestnut seems relevant. Added it, thanks~

# ¿ Oct 21, 2018 03:18

Pinterest Mom: Jun 9, 2009

"A majority of people polled say they support medicare for all" is true in the narrow sense, but it's not a finding that's very robust. The Kaiser Family Foundation did a poll last year that tested different messages.

"Do you support medicare for all" had 54-43 support, but that 43 number opposed shot up to 66% when people were asked "what if you knew that it would increase many Americans' taxes", and to 60% when asked "what if you knew it would eliminate the role of employers in health care".

People, by a 47-42 margin, even thought that they'd be able to keep their current health insurance plan under medicare for all!

I'd love to think that m4a is a political slam dunk, but every single fight to change something about the health care system has been a tough slog, and I think people focusing on "it's wildly popular!" re:m4a are fooling themselves a bit. It's probably the right thing to do, but I'm not convinced that polling is a reason for Dems to embrace it.

# ¿ Oct 21, 2018 14:26

Pinterest Mom: Jun 9, 2009

# ¿ Oct 21, 2018 17:40

Pinterest Mom: Jun 9, 2009

For comparison, ~12% of Bernie voters voted for Trump, and ~75% voted for Hillary, so there was a bit more defection in 2016 than in 2008, but not a whole lot.

In both cases though, a lot of their support was from ancestral white dems in places in places like Appalachia and the South, and those people were just never going to vote for a Dem at the presidential level, so who knows how concerning it is.
https://twitter.com/b_schaffner/status/900377120202829824

# ¿ Oct 21, 2018 18:07

Pinterest Mom: Jun 9, 2009

karthun posted:

Do you happen to have found the numbers of Bernie primary voters who would have voted for Trump in a Bernie vs Trump general election?

This particular survey didn't ask it, no.

West Virginia's primary exit poll did, though, and there, about 35% of Bernie's primary voters said they would have voted Trump in a Bernie/Trump general, in a semi-closed primary where registered Ds could only vote on the D side, which gives a sense of the scale of how much of Bernie's support in states like WV, KY, OK, and the parts of the white south he won would have stuck around. Obviously, in other parts of the country, that number was probably single digits.

# ¿ Oct 21, 2018 18:23

Pinterest Mom: Jun 9, 2009

Of course, in the real world,

# ¿ Oct 22, 2018 18:36

Pinterest Mom: Jun 9, 2009

Speaking of, this seems like an unusually ambitious plan to tackle the racial wealth gap, courtesy of Cory Booker.

# ¿ Oct 22, 2018 22:39

Pinterest Mom: Jun 9, 2009

Willie Tomg posted:

Cool, accounting for inflation then by the time a child born two years from now turns 18 they can afford almost an entire semester of college, or 1/200th of an illness. Thanks, Cory.

That already is accounting for inflation, average in-state tuition in the US for public universities was 9,410 per year in 2016, and Booker also supports medicare for all, so I'm not sure what point you're making here.

# ¿ Oct 22, 2018 22:48

Pinterest Mom: Jun 9, 2009

Not a Step posted:

It seems like an extremely wonky solution to the problem, and making the future even more reliant on strong economic growth seems a bit questionable. You're exposing everyone to interest rate risk and convoluting the plan for no real gain. If the goal is to give people money, why not just give people money? Treasury can snap billions of dollars into existence to buy bombs to drop on foreigners, they can snap money into existence for the people just as easily without all of these vulnerable to manipulation intermediary steps.

VVVV That too. It feels like a dodge on a bunch of underlying problems. Oh, America is a capitalist hellscape where access to wealth is the primary determining factor of health and success? What if we gave you a one time influx of money? You know, to navigate the immutable capitalist hellscape

I think the answer to most of this is that the program is designed "defensively" to give it the veneer of universality and "wealth-building", to make it seem like you're not just giving a bunch of black kids 40k-50k as soon as they turn 18. Obviously stuff like "government invests in a low-risk fund" is silly and could easily get waved away (probably would?) in actual implementation and transformed into "government accumulates a sum in a ledger for you and then you have access to it when you turn 18". It's a really roundabout way to deal with the wealth gap, yeah, and I'm not sure how "you're 18, now here's 40k. Either spend it on your college tuition or buy a house or leave the money in a fund for a few more years" works in practice.

Frightening Knight posted:

I would say that the primarily problem with the plan is that it assumes we should still have universities you have to pay for rather than treating them like elementary or high school education where everyone can go at will.

I suspect that this is going to be a large part of Booker's higher-ed accessibility plan. At current tuition costs (which, yeah, will go up faster than inflation, so this can't be the only part of it), this is roughly equivalent to free college for students at/near the federal poverty line, so this serves as a Hillary-style means-tested plan on that end. Then, it has the added bonus of giving a bunch of extra wealth for poor kids to spend on housing (or whatever) if they choose to not go to college.

quote:

Likewise, it assumes that healthcare is something you still have to pay for at point of use.

I don't understand how that's a takeaway from this plan at all :confused:

Bright Wanderer posted:

How does he plan to pay for all this? What's his budget plan?

I think finding individual pay-fors for policies is a trap. That's really not how the federal budget works!

(But he says "capital gains and estate tax").

# ¿ Oct 22, 2018 23:29

Pinterest Mom: Jun 9, 2009

Frightening Knight posted:

The problem with means-testing college is that all the middle class suburbanites will spite vote against it. Means-testing makes programs weaker in terms of public support.

Yeah, "ambitious program to close the racial wealth gap that survives racist attacks" coupled with "means tested way to pay for college education" that somehow survives because "look, this is universal, middle class kids get ~7k out of this (compared to 45k for poor kids)" is a uh... tough balancing act.

# ¿ Oct 22, 2018 23:40

Pinterest Mom: Jun 9, 2009

Yeowch!!! My Balls!!! posted:

the hilarious part is he's genuinely saying what a sizeable segment of the party aparatchiks are thinking, but they at least have learned to shut the hell up and talk about "no, honestly, I just think Biden's our guy. for reasons" instead.

Is Biden actually getting significant backroom support? I haven't seen any reporting on this.

# ¿ Oct 25, 2018 17:49

Pinterest Mom: Jun 9, 2009

Ytlaya posted:

Can this money be used to pay for rent or healthcare? Because if it's specifically limited to homes, education, and retirement, that's really bad. Most poor people are not going to be getting houses, and there are problems with affording education beyond just the tuition (though paying for tuition obviously helps).

Booker's answer to "what can this money be spent on" is generally "we don't know, but generally wealth building activities. We'll have 20 years to figure it out."

# ¿ Oct 26, 2018 12:10

Pinterest Mom: Jun 9, 2009

He won Oklahoma last time because he wasn't Hillary. He still won't be Hillary this time, but neither will the other candidates.

And, idk, I don't think "will win up to 16 delegates in Vermont" is going to be much of a story on the night of

code:

*Alabama Primary (presumably) (52)
*American Samoa Territorial Caucus (presumably) (6)
*California Primary (presumably) (416)
*Colorado Precinct Caucus (presumably) (67)
*Georgia Primary (presumably) (104)
*Massachusetts Primary (presumably) (92)
*Minnesota Precinct Caucuses (presumably) (75)
*North Carolina Primary (presumably) (110)
*Oklahoma Primary (presumably) (37)
*Tennessee Primary (presumably) (64)
*Texas Primary (presumably) (223)
*Virginia Primary (presumably) (99)
*Vermont Primary (presumably) (16)

I think the best argument for Biden is that he's got a tremendous ability to emotionally connect with an audience. That matters.

Pinterest Mom fucked around with this message at 21:52 on Oct 31, 2018

# ¿ Oct 31, 2018 21:46

Pinterest Mom: Jun 9, 2009

Frightening Knight posted:

Yeah but everyone who is realistically going to run in 2020 with the exception of possibly Bloomberg, the Zuck, and maybe Warren can do this. Charisma will be cheap and plentiful in 2020.

That's true to an extent, but I haven't seen another of the candidates give a speech anything like this one.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GwZ6UfXm410

# ¿ Oct 31, 2018 23:29

Pinterest Mom: Jun 9, 2009

VitalSigns posted:

What was Biden's take, was it "lying slut" or "the rear end-slapping was not done in an inappropriate manner" before he confirmed an LGBT-hating bigot to the highest court in the land

# ¿ Nov 1, 2018 01:33

Pinterest Mom: Jun 9, 2009

Sorry what

Someone makes an accurate factual statement (that they subsequently back up), you probate them for it, and you praise the person who called them a "loving liar" for falsely calling them a liar?

# ¿ Nov 1, 2018 22:01

Pinterest Mom: Jun 9, 2009

Lightning Knight posted:

LT2012 intentionally framed the post as "Bernie has an A+ rating from the NRA." Bernie had an A+ rating, once, 28 years ago, which immediately dropped to a D the next term. LT2012's framing implied some kind of long-standing staunch support for conservative gun rights, rather than what amounts to the NRA not evaluating him very well when he first ran for the House. That's not honest argumentation.

WampaLord posted:

Why are so many people giving noted troll Leon Trotsky 2012 so much loving benefit of the doubt? Why do you and Hellblazer187 think he's arguing in good faith?

Why do y'all have zero sense of pattern recognition? Just because he posts a lot of words doesn't make his argument better or more credulous, he's pushing you all into a conservative framing of issues and you just let it happen.

Am I the only poster who recognizes usernames and notices when people are intentionally lovely?

I happen to not think of myself as bound by what LT2012 posts~

Idk, I might be telling on myself here, but I don't think anything they posted on the last two pages was unreasonable or clearly in bad faith. The point about the issue positions of candidates running this cycle is a really fair one, and I don't know that holding someone to the strictest possible reading of their post is something we want to do. People use hyperbole and overstate things all the time, and "not all the policy positions on this list (or parenthetical supporting evidence) were held for exactly 30 years" seems pretty thin to me, especially given that the list was obviously meant to be a mirror of the kinds of posts people make about bad positions others candidates have held in order to dismiss them.

# ¿ Nov 1, 2018 22:22

Pinterest Mom: Jun 9, 2009

Has anyone actually done the work to compile what "Medicare for all" means to different potential candidates - or at least all the things M4A might mean?

# ¿ Nov 1, 2018 22:27

Pinterest Mom: Jun 9, 2009

Lightning Knight posted:

As for Medicare for All, I was under the impression there was an actual bill that has been written, proposed, and endorsed in the Senate, is there not?

Paracaidas posted:

Booker, Harris, Warren, and Gillibrand all cosponsored the Sanders Medicare for All bill---but it's worth noting that there are no meaningful stakes to doing so when there is zero chance that bill goes anywhere at all.

Sure, there's a bill, but it's also the case that a bunch of people running on M4A in the House are being intentionally hazy about their definition. I think it's definitely the case that we don't have a great sense of what Booker, Harris, Gillibrand and the like have as their, I don't know, "minimal acceptable definition of medicare for all". You can imagine a public option being described as "medicare [buy-in] for all", and I don't think it's the case that anyone co-sponsoring that bill is considering themselves wedded to every particular of a bill they didn't write.

# ¿ Nov 1, 2018 22:38

Pinterest Mom: Jun 9, 2009

GreyjoyBastard posted:

Has the Senate been getting redder though? Don't get me wrong, I'm more or less on board with the "30% of the country shouldn't have 70% of the senators, abolish the senate, guillotine the rurals", but I'm not actually convinced the Senate situation is going to get worse so much as not get better when it should.

also it's easier to make the Senate have fewer responsibilities than it is to actually abolish it

538 had a piece on this.

quote:

Consider: In 1980, there were 18 states where the presidential margin was at least 5 points more Democratic than the national result, 18 states where it was at least 5 points more Republican than the national result and 14 states in between. Hypothetically, over three successive election cycles, all either party needed to do to win a Senate majority was win all 36 of the seats in the friendly states plus at least 15 of the 28 swing-state seats.

Today, Republicans don�t even need to win any �swing states� to win a Senate majority: 52 seats are in states where the 2016 presidential margin was at least 5 percentage points more Republican than the national outcome. By contrast, there are just 28 seats in states where the margin was at least 5 points more Democratic, and only 20 seats in swing states.

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Pinterest Mom: Jun 9, 2009

Hellblazer187 posted:

So, just taking one example, same sex marriage. A ton of big time dems, Clinton, Obama, etc, all said no way in 2008 but were on board by 2016. So there's three possibilities here:

1) They didn't really oppose it in 2008, but thought they couldn't get away with publicly supporting it.
2) Genuine personal movement from opposition to support
3) They didn't really support it in 2016, but felt they had to say they did.

I don't have any evidence to support this, but it seems to me like option 1 is the most plausible of the three.

Obama was definitely 1, and I think Clinton was 2.

quote:

In 1996, as he ran for Illinois state Senate, Chicago�s Outlines gay newspaper asked candidates to fill out a questionnaire. Tracy Baim, the co-founder and publisher of Outlines, dug up a copy of the questionnaire in 2009, cataloging the president-elect�s shift.

He had written on the 1996 questionnaire, "I favor legalizing same-sex marriages, and would fight efforts to prohibit such marriages."

# ¿ Nov 2, 2018 22:25

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