2020 Democratic presidential primary

Hillary Rodham of course

Bernie mortally wounded her

xp

Morbz.... otm?

From a practical standpoint, it is much easier to move a politician to a position they already occupy or are only a step or two away from.

i was parodying idiot Clintonites, Shakey

you don't think his candidacy damaged her? seems like a fairly non-controversial take to me

Less than Hillary's run damaged Obama, if the numbers are to be believed.

or remember PUMA

yer right, she should've been anointed

let's have this argument again, I'm sure everyone's dying to see how it turns out this time

the question is who is the frontrunner who should be chosen unanimously for '20

hopefully the debate 6 months from now will settle this

and who is in which lane

I hate when drivers go 20 mph in the left lane!

old guys like Bernie

or ppl from Florida

This is revisionist. One of the notable things about the race was that Beto was running as unapologetically progressive in a Texas Senate race.

“beto being a bland can-win-in-texas centrist was fine when he was running to replace ted fucking cruz.“

this is true of both, but I don't care what the motivation is tbh, and it bothers me when leftists bring up the motivation as something critical to determining whether they can "trust" the candidate or not. Trust no one, is what I say! What you want is someone who responds to pressure, the results are what matters.

― Οὖτις, Thursday, December 20, 2018 11:59 AM (five hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

the more pessimistic way to look at this would be to say that people whose votes or priorities can be so easily swayed could also respond to pressure from those hostile to our interests. whereas someone with genuine progressive beliefs (for which voting record seems to be the best proxy, unless someone can suggest something better) would not be as vulnerable to this

weird to assume that a voting record is a reflection of beliefs (and not, say, a reflection of kowtowing to constituent priorities and following orders from party leaders)

It's not weird, it's so normal that political scientists writing on the subject generally have to devote a significant portion of their publications to countering this view because it's such a norm

huh, I’d love to read a review article by a political scientist explaining why past voting record is not predictive of future voting record, and what a better alternative is, if such a thing exists

I mean I also don’t care about “beliefs” — they are unknowable. I care about what someone is likely to support

goalposts moved

like I could very easily explain to you why a House voting record is not predictive of a Senate voting record or actions in the White House without reference to "beliefs". And not to harp on my favorite example for the millionth time but exhibit A: LBJ.

data, please

every vote taken is the result of very specific contexts - who is pressuring the elected official, what leverage or political capital is being exercised or expended, when is it taking place (just prior to an election? just after?), the constituency involved (national vs. state vs. district), etc etc. Publicly professed "beliefs" become very malleable in these contexts.

LBJ voted against *every single* civil rights bill that ever came up in the House while he was there. Every one. Then he became Majority Leader of the Senate and managed to pass, for the first time ever, a compromise civil rights bill over the objections of his southern colleagues. Then he became VP and didn't give a shit/was powerless re: civil rights. Then JFK died, he took the measure of his power and the political winds in the party, and did what JFK - an avowed pro-civil rights liberal - could not, and passed the Civil Rights Act.

There are tons of less dramatic and historically significant examples of this, but it happens all the time on various scales.

for another, perhaps more recent example, you can take all the incoming House Dems that said they would vote against Pelosi as leader and are now keeping their heads down and putting their hands up.

Joe Manchin loves coal miners and the coal industry and has voted in their interests more times than I can count, but on the other hand he does things like this: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-12-05/manchin-changes-mind-on-trump-s-pro-coal-nominee-amid-pressure Is this because he no longer loves coal? Or never actually loved coal? Or is it because Trump pissed him off? Or because his party is swinging left? Or because he suddenly believes climate science?

or is it because he wanted that committee chair and this vote (which affected nothing, really) was the price for that?

ok, and that context and the forces upon a politician in a primary are different than those in a general election or when they actually have to govern

again, as I said in my original post, I care about a person’s voting record insofar as, taken over a large sample, it seems likely to me to predict their progressive resoluteness when those forces pull from either side. you seem confident that that is not the case, so I assume there are data...

xp

I mean is the argument seriously that, given a choice between two democrats, the one with the more progressive voting record would be no more likely to be more progressive in the future? that is a fascinating, counter-intuitive claim that I would need to see substantiated by something other than cherry-picked anecdotes to believe

I don't think you can reliably predict "progressive resoluteness" at all tbh, esp when you're talking about a President, who is subject to a unique set of political pressures unlike any other office

You should base it on the policy promises they make for the office they are currently running for. The “politicians always break promises when in office” cliche is historically the opposite of true.

Nixon wasn't progressive by any measure and was a total asshole, yet he championed the EPA and the Clean Air Act. Reagan was a super-belligerent sabre-rattling anti-communist who managed to negotiate the end of the Cold War, (as opposed to ushering in the nuclear oblivion many of us on the left were expecting at the time). We all figured Obama to be pretty anti-war and anti-middle east adventurism, and then he was the first president to order the extra-judicial murder of an American citizen. The presidency is rife with contradictions like this, that could not have been predicted based on voting records. I dunno if all this anecdotal evidence adds up to anything convincing, I don't have an academic study to hand, this is just off the top of my head.

Nerdstrom hits closer to the truth I think - voting record is part of it and does tell you *something* about the candidate, but what they are promising to get elected, how they are running their operation, who their allies are (in the party and without), those things all add up to give you a more complete picture.
xp

Yeah I’m curious to see who they align w and who they talk about appointing as a indicative. Beto would have to talk a good game to overcome the experience deficit that someone like Bernie has for example if they were both running on Single Payer

I agree that there are other factors than voting record to be taken into consideration. when it comes to primary elections, when campaign promises are necessarily similar, and voters have to choose among candidates, I am wondering whether past voting record, relative to party, is predictive of future voting record (or presidential priorities, or results), relative to party line. this is something that I imagine has been studied empirically and I'll try to look into it myself

watching Bernie play against a whole bunch more moderate Dems with less name recognition will be interesting, in terms of how far left the others will be willing to bend at least in terms of messaging in order to not seem like sellouts by comparison

Potentially he has the move where he can say “I was the only one the stage saying this four years ago and now look”

Who knows where we’ll be but I agree w whoever said the one who is most anti-Trump will get the most momentum.

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/12/21/18150359/beto-orourke-voting-record

kind of a weird piece insofar as it feels like Yglesias can't decide whether he wants to emphasize the fact that Beto's voting record is comparatively conservative or that duh, of course it's comparatively conservative because Texas. the two perspectives end up undercutting each other and the whole thing essentially resolves into a shrug emoji.

It is mostly just shrug emoji. Beto O'Rourke has about the voting record you would expect. That's kinda what the conclusion is. I think this part is the most important part: In the grand scheme of things, the differences between these voting records are not enormous, and if you’re thinking about policy outcomes, the limiting factor is going to be what the most conservative Democratic Party senators can swallow, not whether the president is a bit more liberal than those senators (or a lot more liberal).

Conservative Democratic Senators gain or lose influence in a Democratically controlled Senate in direct proportion to the extent they constitute the votes necessary to pass legislation. If there are five of them and you only need, say, one or two of them to vote in favor, it's much easier to peel off those votes and get your bill passed. It's all a numbers game.

the odds that the Dems will have a comfortable margin for passing legislation in the Senate are very long

You are right about the odds. But two years can bring incalculable changes, especially under the present regime.

that's true. obviously my fear is that significant progressive legislation will be at the mercy of the likes of Joe Manchin (just as Obamacare was at the mercy of Lieberman and Nelson)

The bigger the wave, the more that gets swept aside or carried in. If the country swings in a definite direction, the politicians all see that trend and tend to swing along with the voters. And 2020 will have a more favorable map for dems in the senate. Good luck, USA.

it's more favorable, but it isn't 60-gettable seats favorable

A (mostly) earnest question for those who like Beto for 2020: Is there a policy you like that he supports and other likely candidates do not support? An idea he talks about that other likely candidates don't?

— Osita Nwanevu (@OsitaNwanevu) December 23, 2018

Threads of Sanders supporters going on about how supporters of other candidates don’t know/care about issues and are mere fans. Never gets old.

Interesting that he thinks this

It's interesting to me that centrist Dems haven't been buzzy about any candidate in particular until Beto. There's been no comparable push for, say, Booker or Harris. https://t.co/aVMwi6AcL1

— Osita Nwanevu (@OsitaNwanevu) December 24, 2018

Hm yes what is the difference between those candidates, let me think on it for a sec

There was some mild talk about Harris last year that resulted in a similar freak out