a clown car full of millionaires: the 2016 presidential primary thread

like a bunch of other things are going to be on various state ballots in 2016 (and not just House seats) - better to spend time+energy on those, where marginal victories are achievable and desirable and will have a serious impact, then to entertain fantasies of ol' man Bernie winning the Dem nom (so not gonna happen) and then the Presidency (even more so not gonna happen). But flipping your state legislature from red to blue? Might happen. Throwing out your shitty governor? Might happen. etc.

the monster who lives behind the dumpster

GHWB lives behind a dumpster now? how fortunes fade

those blowouts are surely magnified by them being midterm years, yes? not to say that incumbency effects aren't real and very powerful but the extra pathetic turnout in midterm years is not coincidental to the extra severe one-sidedness of those races.

i'm on the fence about the "energy should have been put into something else" thesis. again, i never thought bernie was running to win, still don't, so it's not like i could really feel surprised or ripped-off when he turns out to not win. perhaps having this progressive loudmouth in the race and polling as well as he is, is a good thing, or a better thing than not having that, and accepting that the sole consensus is around the corporate wing of the party. yes, that can be boiled down in soundbite form to statements of no substance like: "will he 'move hillary to the left.'" but i don't agree that the enthusiasm stirred up by a bernie just goes away and accomplishes nothing once he inevitably doesn't win. i think this could be extended by saying, again, that having the progressive loudmouth do this well actually enables those downticket people to run, or gives them the confidence to run on a single-payer health care platform when they previously would have hemmed and hawed about tweaking obamacare. who knows. this of course depends on how he 'does' which is measured not in whether he wins, but in whether he can muster real quantities of delegates in states besides vermont, quantities that make people (candidates, donors, local newspaper editors) pause and go "huh, he did that well? against party heir apparent hillary clinton? maybe there's something going on in america here." and we're not really yet at the point where those kind of effects can be measured.

however i would understand the argument that it's less important/urgent to field more progressive democrats or build a progressive consensus, than it is to try and flip statehouses or win ballot initiatives where possible. i might even agree with it, though it's not so clear to me how people throwing $10 to bernie every so often and clicking 'share' for him is actually hindering those efforts. just going on facebook shares i feel like the same people also click share on stories about, with my circle of friends, a recent outrageous ohio state legislature move regarding planned parenthood. it's not an either/or (not that you were saying it necessarily was).

freely admitted, i think i've made virtually this same post once a month since june, but the race is basically in the same place it was when it was june and all reasonable folks said "well, nothing actually happens until next year, this is all sideshow." that's... still true, right? like just because we're bored of nothing happening doesn't mean something has suddenly happened, right?

Wait, that's the scene right before he goes out back and meets the monster who lives behind the dumpster.

― pplains, Wednesday, 28 October 2015 21:59 (16 minutes ago) Permalink

MASSIVE lol at this, thank you!

meanwhile i guess there's another republican debate tonight? missed that. the hopeless goofnuts (pataki, jindal, graham and santorum) are on right now.

though it's not so clear to me how people throwing $10 to bernie every so often and clicking 'share' for him is actually hindering those efforts

yeah these aren't necessarily mutually exclusive but I do think that in general people are liable to get *more* excited and engaged about a presidential candidate than they are about smaller stakes stuff like their local state rep (whom most voters probably can't even name). This is understandable, people like that frisson of national media attention - "we're part of a MOVEMENT!" - it feels more significant, the political landscape is often simpler and easier to grasp. But it also plays into a national misconception/delusion that all that matters is "the most powerful office in the world". In reality, in terms of real hard policy that directly affects people's lives, if someone really cares about the issues Bernie cares about, it's not that much of a stretch to say that those interests will be more concretely advanced if that enthusiasm is channeled into local and state elections.

Folks.

Tellin' ya.

GAMECHANGER.

https://twitter.com/Bencjacobs/status/659492313853353984

for a sec i thought you said "like their local state (whom most voters probably can't even name)"

with you on the rest though tbh. definitely we would be better off rolling up our sleeves and ~getting involved~ generally speaking than clasping our hands to the sky and waiting for a superman. but, just to explore this a bit, is that an argument against bernie running specifically because he obviously has no chance, or would it also apply to long-shot candidates who sort of have a chance? like what's the break point where "don't accept local politics as they are, get involved and change them" takes us to "and therefore accept national politics as they're given, the ready-for-coronation candidate is the only likely outcome so why bother"? to be clear i think there could be a range of points there, where bernie in 2016 versus Clinton Has Been Waiting is a pie-in-the-sky candidate to campaign for, but other people aren't.

i personally don't agree with the pie-in-the-sky characterization of course, not because i think he can win but because i think non-winning candidates can matter, as outlined above. hillary will remain hillary but the party can change, the agenda can change, the overton window can change, and those things can matter a lot for those local races and referenda. not saying that national races are the only thing that can move that window, or even the main thing; if anything, i think they tend to lag behind a bit. but they're part of this wider picture of different fronts, different gears turning at different rates. nice to keep them all moving in the right direction.

yeah and that's why I don't begrudge Bernie his candidacy too much - he has had some impact on what the "conversation" even is, he's made Hillary shift rhetoric, he's clarified what the base is most fired up about.

re: is that an argument against bernie running specifically because he obviously has no chance, or would it also apply to long-shot candidates who sort of have a chance?

Obama was a similar long-shot candidate who sort of had a chance, and for different reasons. He was more closely connected to Dem party apparatus, he had a natural flair as a candidate, a messianic appeal as the guy who might actually be the first black President - and Hillary ran a really shitty campaign that revealed weaknesses that he was prepared and able to exploit. 2008 was a genuine upset (albeit one that had been presaged a bit by Kerry's dismal showing and the shadow of the Iraq War), and I was totally onboard for Obama, something I can't say I really regret. But Bradley? Sanders? Jackson? Dean? These guys were all pretty doomed from the start in terms of them winning the nomination. Which is not to say their campaigns were totally worthless, just that what goals they may have ended up achieving were pretty distinct from winning the nomination and subsequently the White House. I get that Bernie can't really come out and say "I have no chance of winning, but I want to have some impact on what issues are talked about this campaign and where party resources go, and that's why I'm running!", because that's not much of a rallying cry, it would be a self-defeating admission. But any time anyone would tell me how good Bernie's chances were I couldn't help but roll my eyes.

"Obama was a similar long-shot candidate who sort of had a chance"

Obama was not a long-shot candidate at all and 2008 was seems an upset if you were not paying attention to Obama and/or Clinton for the previous 4 (or 16) years.

if you were not paying attention to Obama and/or Clinton for the previous 4 (or 16) years

prior to a few months before the Iowa primary, this was most of the electorate tbh

Yes well suffice it to say that changed pretty quick.

Except even by a few months prior to that Obama had been obliterating fundraising records. Also Obama clearly about a million times better candidate than any of those other guys you mentioned. I remember people (democratic party mouthpieces, not just random lefty types) saying after 2004 convention speech "this dude will be president". I think only surprise was how quickly it happened, but it wasn't like this guy was a fringe/long-shot dude. He had a lot of support from the get go.

We're obviously talking about the perceptions of different subgroups here - I didn't think he was much of a longshot by Iowa for all the reasons you mention, and because I remembered his speech coming out against the war, and his speech at the convention, and his fundraising numbers. But I think there were plenty of other Dem primary voters who were taken by surprise, or wanted to cast him as fringe/longshot (what was the name of those vocal women-for-Hillary groups? I can't remember)

Hillary definitely had plenty of support and I think her supporters (PUMAs, I think?) were trying to dismiss him as unelectable (not sure about fringe, Obama was pretty MOR Democrat really) but again I think for most folks paying attention his rise was not a huge shock. He still could have been turned out to be a bad campaigner (he wasn't though--maybe a little lackluster in a debate or two) and Hillary a great campaigner (she's obv not though) but I'd say on the surface by this time in 2007 anyone arguing that he was the equivalent to a Dean or a Bradley was a little deluded.

Ha you might want to take a look back at the Ilx threads from that time period before you double down on that statement.

i think a sanders campaign could be very very useful in terms of having an impact on local, state, and congressional races. the dean campaign was ultimately a doomed protest campaign (turns out shouty vermont pols don't play well w/ voters) but it innovated techniques w/ campaigning, fundraising, and gotv that allowed the dems to take the house and senate in 06 and the white house in 08 and 12. that 06 victory came via the strategy of dnc head dean, two years after hearing predictions of rove having secured a permanent republican majority, and despite constant criticism and attack from clintonland, w/ terry mcauliffe (who'd managed to give the gop the senate and allow them to reverse their losses of the previous two elections in the house)(during a midterm, during a recession) claiming if he'd still been head of the dnc the dems would've managed a larger margin which is comparable to brady hoke claiming if he'd still been coach instead of harbaugh michigan wouldn't have lost to michigan state.

http://media.giphy.com/media/12ZQbvNTmoFUyI/giphy.gif

the problem is sanders isn't running that kind of campaign. there's no innovation and he's not creating a movement that has a potential to matter much a year or four years from now. nobody is going to copy bernie sanders. that said he's shown that you can be 'extreme far left' and not toxic, if trump and carson have "normalized" the politics of hatred and batshit stupidity then bernie has done as much (and more, he is polling better than either trump or carson. radically different sized fields admittedly but still.) w/ a populist message, he is bringing issues to the table and making them seem not crazy and plausible. he also allows/forces hillary to move left or highlight instead of downplay policies that play to the left (this notion that hillary's liberalism is phony is a bit ridiculous as well; she's a policy wonk so pragmatism is her first ideal which generally leads to centrism but we haven't seen so far this century and i predict won't see anytime soon a bill to make it to the floor of congress as ambitiously liberal as hillarycare was. her foreign policy is fucked and wrong, but it's a liberal foreign policy, i can't think of any argument she made samantha power didn't have her back on), while at the same time allowing her liberal policies to look like a safe middleclass friendly compromise. as for 'lol she think's her being a woman matters', it does fucking matter, if you think there aren't blindspots to women's issues you're going to have because you're a male or to minority issues you're going to have because you're white wtf are you thinking, w/ a congress that's obsessed w/ destroying planned parenthood i can totally understand why an important base of democratic voters (more important than gun owners i'll wager) might put more faith in the female candidate w/ a long history of fighting for women's issues and family issues (again SCHIP) than the old man waving his arms around going 'all i know is if there's blood in the sheets wake them up and push them into a hot shower while screaming 'everything is going to be okay"), white guys ran this country for over two hundred years. by and large they sucked at it. would it be alot better if there was a candidate alot better than hillary running (or out there period)? yes. bernie sanders isn't that candidate.

^^^ otm about Dean. His candidacy ended up fundamentally altering election landscape/Dem strategies

i am curious about how sanders campaigns in the south, because there is that heavy anti-wall street anti-bank sentiment to tap into but the same voters are the most lockstep hannity or beck parroting kneejerk anti-anything that carries the whiff of dem libtard approval. i can remember conservative acquaintances who wanted somebody to do something about wall street, that somebody should break up the banks, but were against dodd-frank cuz they didn't like liberals trying to regulate the economy like they were smarter than everybody else. they want somebody to break up the banks as long as somebody isn't the government. santa claus maybe. in conclusion the south is full of idiots.

insert absalom absalom quote here

http://www.alternet.org/election-2016/why-bernie-sanders-starting-attract-conservative-voters

i do feel, and maybe this is me falling for the "it feels like nothing's happening" vibe, like sanders is starting to feel overdue for some new 'phases' in his race. like a high-profile "southern campaign" although don't call it that because it sounds like sherman is coming back. but you know, something like "for the next month he'll be doing every whistle-stop below the mason-dixon line." speak at every bingo hall, every church, every food court. a campaign line mccain had in 2000 that didn't quite work but which i think has some kind of potential was this like "i'll talk to anybody, i want to meet with conservatives, liberals, republicans, libertarians, trotskyites..." aside from the lols of a presidential candidate talking about "trotskyites" (probably not an angle sanders wants to bring to mind) i thought that was a 'good look' for someone pitching themselves as not-the-conventional-politician-there-are-big-problems-that-most-people-in-both-parties-want-us-to-be-working-on candidate.

in the spirit of the dean "50 state strategy," particularly given that sanders doesn't have to be thinking about his odds in a general election where the southern states are all presumed safely red without the name 'bill clinton' on the ticket, why not start pitching old-fashioned progressivism down south and see if you get more bites than you think? leave behind a trail of organizing offices every few stops, maybe some of them snowball and can get people on the ballot for county commissioner or whatever, i don't know. obviously, this could also dovetail with the equally crucial task of continuing to listen to and forge real alliances with minority communities, as has been discussed at length here.

where online can i watch this thing

Lots of great ideas, DC.

xpost

cnbc is broadcasting it.

The third Republican presidential debate, titled "Your Money, Your Vote," will air Wednesday night. But if you want to learn more about how you should cast Your Vote, you'll have to fork over some of Your Money to the debate's host, CNBC, first. Unlike CNN, which hosted the previous Democratic debate, CNBC will not stream the event online for free. If you want to watch it, you have two options: Pay for cable or pay for CNBC's premium service, CNBC Pro, which will run you $29.99 for a month's subscription or $299.99 for a year's. Ouch.

Fuck that, good luck Republicans, can't wait to read about the stupid shit you said.

If these guys ever stop talking, this might work:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=uXPTtek9-mQ

538 mentioned, kind of casually, in reposting the graphic of how high the previous debates' ratings have been, that "Each debate’s audience had a median age of around 60 and a median household income of about $74,000." so i guess CNBC is hoping to get in on some of that sweet median-age-60 cash, but it sort of makes me wonder what the point even is of polling to see who "won" a debate when the demographics are that skewed. (actually though i have no idea: what is the median age of americans old enough to vote?)

lots of horrible ideas dc! he needs to focus on iowa and new hampshire and if he wins both then the press will take him incredibly seriously (more than they should but no harm as the press routinely takes politicians more seriously than they should). eyes on the prize. dean's 50 state strategy was very useful at the time and as was remarked upon by many obama's huge cash advantage allowed him to basically do some venture capitalism of different strategies. i am now firmly in the whistling pass dixie camp. obama had as favorable a set of circumstances as could be imagined and they called georgia for mccain five minutes after polls closed. michael thurmond and michelle nunn (michelle NUNN) were as broadly liked as any potential democratic candidate, were well funded, and ran against incredibly weak opponents and there races were called five minutes after polls closed. even john barrow finally lost. the south is a dry well. maybe, maybe, demographics shift that (though really what i've noticed is that for all the talk of demographic destiny, that's only worked twice, when obama was actually on the ballot. there was alot of ppl noting that if the electorate demographically looked like it did in 1984 romney would have won by reagan numbers. what scares me is that when obama hasn't been on the ballot the electorate has looked liked it did in 1984), and georgia is finally purple along w/ texas and arizona but i'm not holding my breath. it don't come easy as paul mccartney once sang.

There's got to be a better way than watching the back of these Alex Jones idiots watching the debate.

it is well known that old people are fanatical about voting and so the likely-voter demographic skews older than the registered-voter demographic, while in turn the of-voting-age demographic skews youngest of all.

(xpost) Yeah, not sure how much of this I can take.

I live in Florida, the test case -- a place where the GOP has a supermajority in the legislature, the House and Senate despise each other, united only by their mutual odium for Rick Scott; where our Republican supreme court pushed the legislature's post-2010 census maps into their faces and said, "This is fucking gerrymandering, fix it"; yet the population centers are Hispanic, liberal, college educated, gay, and energized. We need help.

This is like Mystery Science Theatre or something

it don't come easy as paul mccartney once sang.

Ringo, you fuck

Imagine four years of listening to and watching Jeb! every day

Did Cruz just offer to be the country's designated driver?

Did the Gov of NJ just offer to take Hillary out?

i just feel like reifying the imaginary iowa/new hampshire bottleneck is how you become part of the problem. yeah you have to play that game ~enough~ to get more money and more TV coverage which in general is good for getting the message out and doing all the things i want him to do. but by that C.W., all he has to do in those states is beat "expectations" right? put another way, anything shy of winning both states is going to be spun as "a BIG WIN for hillary clinton today as she firmly shuts down challenger bernie sanders in iowa and new hampshire, as her campaign which once seemed to be struggling has clearly found its feet" ----- like, whether she wins by 5 or 25 points that's going to be the narrative anyway, right?

i say use the money now while it's definitely still flowing and go fucking pitch socialism everywhere it might conceivably have an audience. not because it's going to mean georgia flips to blue for hillary in the general but because of all this down-ticket stuff we've been discussing. that means going to ferguson as well as going to west virginia btw. i recognize that ferguson is above the mason-dixon line --- just saying, if you're trying to articulate a populist future for the party it's time to start going where people have already articulated a critique and a platform concerning the failures of the system as it currently exists.

i realize this may start to make me sound like frederik b. mind, a few months ago, i was saying that it totally made sense that sanders has been focused on big rallies in safe, sanders-friendly zones, since the most important thing was arming his campaign financially and just getting the message out there at all. the big poll numbers he's seen do prove that he has some kind of audience, and he gets attention going into and out of other events like debates that puts him safely out of the o'malley zone. so, check, that's done. now keep doing things with it.

xposts - balls tagging a post with a deliberately misattributed classic rock line is one of his running gags though

I think these Alex Jones clowns must need to talk all the time to justify essentially streaming the debate. It's commentary, not undercutting CNBC.

john kasich looks like hamilton leithauser iii

This is better:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0HHmGRw0AQk

John Kasich just got bodied

xpost Thank you for that. I have a feeling not everyone is getting out of this debate alive.

^^^

Carly Fiorina just said we can reduce the "72,000 page tax code" to three pages. The incredulous CNBC moderator asked her to repeat it.

The people who make photocopiers would go out of business. She needs to think through the ramifications of this bold proposal.

at this point he loses everything if he doesn't win or at least santorum-win iowa and new hampshire. that wouldn't have been the case six months ago but there was a time when not winning iowa or new hampshire wouldn't have been the end of the world for dean either. america hates losers.

I've got to give Trump some credit: I would not have expected a billionaire asshole to have the patience for this.

I think Trump has to be getting bored at this point.