Your 2020 Presidential Candidate Speculation Thread

that's fair I was just counter-zinging the "Friday afternoon" zing or w/e

I'll save my eyerolls for Booker

idk shit about tulsi gabbard but fwiw i came across this on fb, from a friend of a friend (who i otherwise do not know at all):

'Her father has led all of the anti-gay initiatives in Hawai’i politics for the last 20 years. Tulsi was right out in front spewing hate until she had her “epiphany” when she ran for Congress. I watched her on more than one occasion SCREAMING at LGBT folks and their allies in front of the Capital. She told me, to my face, in front of a crowd, that I and all my faggot friends (HER words) were going to burn in hell...and that it couldn’t happen soon enough. So that’s a first person account and that’s Tulsi Gabbard.'

She is a legit crank

okay okay, screenshotting your own tweets is kinda lame, so here's a thread by @pplswar listing all the unrelated political reasons for why Tulsi Gabbard sucks https://t.co/n2c1agyoa9

— Sous la plage (@SousLaPlage) January 11, 2019

Her badness has been pretty well documented for a while

https://www.jacobinmag.com/2017/05/tulsi-gabbard-president-sanders-democratic-party

Ok I know Tulsi isn't the one, but I also am willing to let the process play out. If this thread is a just a skeet shoot it will get tiresome fast.

OK, I really like and respect every single Democrat who's announced so far and all those who are likely to announce soon, and would support any of them in a Presidential election with fervent and unfeigned enthusiasm, except Tulsi Gabbard, who sucks.

OTM

tulsi is creepy af. quite apart from what she says, her associations are a nightmare: she's been surrounded her whole life with nothing but the passionate worst. other (bad) dems talk clash-of-civilizations but david duke doesn't pop up to say they should be secretary of state.

whatever eccentric erected a billboard a block from my favorite hot dog place a decade ago to denounce "dirty doctors" in letters made of electric tape (story behind this is probably awful) now uses it mostly to denounce tulsi, sometimes for being in collusion w dirty doctors. wouldn't surprise me a bit.

Hopefully her higher profile and the magnifying glass on her awfulness might lead somebody to primary her out of her seat

Julian Castro is in

Someone on FB posted Gabbard's announcement, saying "who is this???" and one of the most fervently right-wing people on my feed, a guy who spends his whole day jumping on peoples' comment threads and decrying their political correctness, immediately came in to praise her and say he would definitely vote for her.

Can't decide whether this is

a) Gabbard actually has appeal for affluent highly-educated right-wing people who think Trump is a fool but hate their suburban advanced-degree liberal surroundings more than anything else
b) Gabbard is the image of what right-wing people think of left-wing people as finding appealing and so RW people are inclined to cynically talk up her candidacy because they believe this will successfully split Democratic votes

Anyway, Julian Castro, great! I like Julian Castro a lot.

I saw someone report that Harris is waiting to announce on MLK day, which is fucked up. Don't step on the man's day!

synergy

Gabbard is the image of what right-wing people think of left-wing people as finding appealing and so RW people are inclined to cynically talk up her candidacy because they believe this will successfully split Democratic votes

it's that one

it's kind of the stopped clock situation and how some leftists could at least appreciate Ron Paul's anti-imperialsim and vigorous denunciation of the Iraq invasion. but with Tulsi and conservatives it's the racism & homophobia

Harris is waiting to announce on MLK day

She just wants to claim his aura by standing in it, which is totally a politician thing to do, because it is wholly symbolic and without substance, yet elections regularly are decided by baseless symbolism and appeals to emotion and they lean on that lever as hard as they can.

i don't see any problem with harris announcing on MLK day. it's symbolic, and for good reason. she is in a position to announce her candidacy as one of the main contenders for the president of the united states in no small part because of the work that King accomplished. she's paying respect to that while also looking forward to the work that still remains to be done.

So, who’s announcing on Valentines Day?

O'Malley obv

someone who wants to lose the Valentines Day Blows vote

KM otm

It's like if someone took a bunch of random warmed over liberal talking points from the 1990s and put them in a humanoid. https://t.co/CNt4HnT9GY

— Matt Stoller (@matthewstoller) January 12, 2019

"Today, we live in a world in which brainpower is the new currency of success." #Julian2020

— Julián Castro (@JulianCastro) January 12, 2019

lol that’s fuckin nonsense

my god

Hopefully her higher profile and the magnifying glass on her awfulness might lead somebody to primary her out of her seat

― harvey wall/barrier (voodoo chili), Saturday, January 12, 2019 4:56 AM (seven hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

All my friends here on Oahu are hoping so too.

I’m sure castro is a nice guy but how can he think that kind if campaign could ever prevail.

campaigning for veep? polishing his MOR credentials for some future gov/sen race? i have no idea.

Castro is a Clintonite, not interested

Fuck. Well okay fair enough. Team Castro might as well close up campaign headquarters right now if they can’t get you on board

If Julián Castro, as part of his campaign to become President of the United States, wants to issue uninspired, uninspiring, and semi-nonsensical tweets that sound like posters for employee break rooms written to mimic fortune cookie wisdom, then I for one am content to let him do so as often as he likes., for as long as he likes. Where's the harm in it? If he wants to sit in a corner and twiddle his lips, that's his call, too.

I don't currently see my role as criticizing his choices, unless or until those choices are likely to affect me or those I care about.

With a name like that, dude won't ever be elected president of the united states.

(and of course, I mean "Julian".)

Good review https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2019/01/kamala-harris-truths-we-hold-review/579430/

wild that she isn't already pretending she was never a prosecutor tbqh

With a name like that, dude won't ever be elected president of the united states.

― pplains, Saturday, January 12, 2007 11:16 PM (12 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah who could ever become president with a name like "barack hussein obama"

Intercept gonna Intercept

Jesus Fucking Christ ya'll. Wallace Burgerman and the Intercept are trying to spin Beto as anti-union over him opposing A POLICE UNION when he was on a city council.

How the can you pretend this kind of shameless shit in't about smearing the NotBernie? https://t.co/t2pZ4e2ldV

— Custodial Weedle (@weedlewobble) January 13, 2019

From the writer of “The Liberal Case for Trump” no less.

Wtf?

I can literally not think of a more divisive and stupid thing for TheIntercept to do than to attack a politician for going after Police Unions. What on earth are they thinking?

Do reflexive contrarians ever have to think?

Chasing clicks. It's not complicated

Police "unions" aren't unions just to reiterate an obvious point

How so? Police unions participate in collective bargaining. Maybe you meant they are simply unions like, say, electrical workers or auto workers.

So do professional associations of managers in some places. Call them guilds or fraternal organizations or whatever. I suppose I am speaking from a purist left-unionist position that doesn't believe in the legitimacy of such organizations being considered part of the labour movement of trades unions since they are dedicated to eroding the rights of the working class.

redefining the word 'union' to only include unions you like doesn't really accomplish much

The public sector is a completely different situation. From my experience these last six years on City Council, I do not think it is in the community’s best interests, certainly not in the taxpayers’ best interests, to have collective bargaining by the police and firefighters.

This is a pretty shitty position.

Jim's stance is pretty standard among leftists (myself included)

there's a difference between having a stance on police unions such as 'they are bad' and having a stance on whether words should have clear meanings so that we can actually talk to each other