Your 2020 Presidential Candidate Speculation Thread

I do think it's a little off-putting to hand-wave Dem politicians who weren't staunchly in favor of gay marriage until recently. I heard the Pod Save guys do this on their latest episode and even though I know I don't have a lot of company on this board in terms of generally liking those guys, it did stick in my craw. Someone like Obama deserves zero credit for "evolving" on the issue. I've been wrong about a lot of things in my life but I have always been 100% in favor of gay marriage, even as a teenager, so miss me with that bullshit.

I would like to not have Sanders, Trump or Clinton run in 2020.

Xpost Agreed but it’s often in the context of the exceedingly bad equivalency of people the pro civil unions but too scared to publicly support gay marriage pols as “the same thing” as Gabbard’s past.

*people comparing

I don’t see a good reason for Bernie from his POV not to run as long as he’s healthy. I don’t want to see a return of 2016 grievances to the discourse as much as anybody else but I don’t think that kind of thing is going to be a part of his message. And if it’s not everyone else should be able to avoid bringing that stuff into the debate.

yeah I'm with Simon, being against gay marriage is insane and always has been, Dems who said nothing in 2004 when Karl Rove made it a marquee issue are cowards. Gabbard is on another level though - you can't recover from a documented past of yelling at activists and calling them slurs and "homosexual extremists."

Yeah, I never understood people who evolved in that thinking. They mean it just became a political or social liability at some point.

yeah that's something you figure out when you're a kid, it's more black & white than abortion for example imo

Abortion was pretty black and white to me as a kid.

yeah my only change on abortion even as someone raised catholic was pivoting from the "should be safe/legal/rare" line to "free, easily accessible + on demand"

obama's "evolution" on gay rights was of course implausible and surely his early reticence reflected cynicism and political cowardice. but it more or less flew, because he *was* tracking (or trailing) public opinion so well. it genuinely jibed with an "evolution" that a ton of straight americans had gone through in the course of the 90s and 00s. that that happened reflects tremendous ongoing legal and cultural work done by queer activists for decades, so that should be celebrated.

gabbard's version doesn't wash, not only because the stuff in her history is so egregiously and non-passively shitty, but because she was *not* in step with this cultural shift. she was screaming slurs and opposing civil unions when the norm was becoming some version of "huh maybe being gay isn't a choice, and my neighbor's nephew is gay and the sky hasn't fallen in, and 'civil union' sounds like a nice nonthreatening thing, and i find the gay characters on TV kinda loud and annoying but also harmless and sexless." now we can look back at that period and its blinkered separate-but-equal solutions and boxed-in roles for gay identity and sigh, and we should. but obama was in step with the outflowing tide, and gabbard was behind it; her remarks and activism now sit high and dry as ugly things that most dem voters are not going to feel a positive emotional identification with.

yeah that's something you figure out when you're a kid, it's more black & white than abortion for example imo

If you grow up in a churchy environment and go to private Christian school for most of your youth, you might be college age before your perspective begins to "evolve." I'm speaking from personal experience.

That said, Tulsi Gabbard's history is FUCKING AWFUL and does not mirror mine in any way.

Abortion was pretty black and white to me as a kid.

― Yerac, Tuesday, January 15, 2019 12:24 PM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

me too, but unlike gay marriage there are subsets to the issue, liek Simon & Johnny said: what stage is OK to terminate, "should be last resort/rare," access, pay. gay marriage is literally just two people that want to get married.

marriage is pretty overrated as a hill to die on but if it prevents death or suffering i hope everyone gets fucking married

equal marriage is a hill to die on

I never felt like “marriage” was the ultimate point so much as it was an obvious way to push 14th amendment jurisprudence forward as pertains gay folks. Like for all his various flaws and the vagueness of the Obergeffel opinion Kennedy did put it in black and white once again that equal protection means equal protection and that was worth the effort. I’m sure all the wealthy white gay marriage advocates are now turning their efforts to the protection of young trans people of color right?

equality is a hill to die on

Looking back on it, sure it seems ludicrous to deny equal marriage rights to all consenting adults. But when you grow up in an environment that's so sheilded and heteronormative, you really don't begin to experience real empathy for people not exactly like you until you begin meeting them.

I was fortunate to never have been directly told that homosexuality is evil and that gay people were out to destroy civilization. I was pretty much never told anything at all. But that's unfortunately not the case for a bunch of people who grew up in situations similar to mine.

That damage is long lasting and deeply embedded.

When someone says their thinking has evolved, I totally get it.

i don't really get "evolving" on gay marriage in middle age. i mean just from a personal point of view, in my 30s my police are so calcified already lol

politics fuck

All depends on when you start questioning yourself, really. I was still firmly in the "separate but equal" camp as recently as the 2000 election...just like a lot of candidates were.

And that was 10 years after I last stepped foot in a church.

I never felt like “marriage” was the ultimate point so much as it was an obvious way to push 14th amendment jurisprudence forward as pertains gay folks.

^^^ This. And you know who was most obtuse about misunderstanding this basic point? Gays. NO WE DON'T WANT A BOURGEOIS INSTITUTION.

seems a little bit of an obtuse point, obv that wasn't the liberal rationale for opposing gay marriage

look i'm not a fuckin RCP think-by-numbers type or anything but the police unions question seem resolutely uncomplicated to me

1. police unions are unions
2. police, when following their typical orders at scale, enact the power relations of private property and capital
3. police, at scale, are workers operating on behalf of the ruling classes
4. a police union, by operating in the ostensible best interest of those particular workers, operates at scale on behalf of the power relations of private property and capital
5. while this is the opposite of the typical purpose of a labor union, it's very much in line with the purpose of a company union, which have a long history that's continued since their outlawing nearly a hundred years ago

it's not about semantics it's about power ffs

obama's "evolution" on gay rights was of course implausible and surely his early reticence reflected cynicism and political cowardice.

iirc obama actually said at some point in the mid-90s that he favored gay marriage and then he just sort of awkwardly ignored that fact for a while

Gillebrand announced and no one here or on Twitter is talking about it. and as we know that's a perfect microcosm of the electorate.

all kidding aside, that doesn't seem great for her.

the real question is will i ever actually learn to spell her name correctly?

She did it on Colbert though, right? That doesn't air until 11:30. Give it time to break through.

not seeing this announcement anywhere (the Hill, politico, WaPo, NYT, Huffpo, etc.) so uh if she announced she sure fucked it up

i saw the headline a couple of hours ago on cnn.com

being against gay marriage is insane and always has been

there's a real difference between irrational and insane

not there now:

https://www.cnn.com/us

It's not wise to make such an announcement on the day that gave us 'hamberders'.

Gillibrand announcing on Colbert's show means she will follow 5 minutes of hamberder jokes

i don't think gillibrand has much of a chance tbh

She’ll have to deal w both the insane people who blame for the Franken thing and also people critical of her blue dog past.

with a field this large, few have much of a chance

yet someone will win

anyway i don't think anybody remembers where/when Obama announced. not a big deal when most of the country doesn't know you yet.

I mean I know who they are, but idg the Franken fuckbois. Dems should be absolutists on harrassment/misbehavior, and MN still has a Dem senator. Where is the great and unforgivable damage?

also she's unlikable and uncharismatic.

obv a lot can change between now and 2020 but it feels more and more like harris every day

I like her and she has charisma. WTF are you on about?

i don't particularly want a democratic prez who once had a 100 percent rating from the NRA

She hasn't skirted talking about that in the last few years, so I don't know why she'd start now. Her gun position movement is believable.

She gonna switch back to pro-gun?

i have yet to speak to a person irl who likes her but maybe she just hasn't been around enough and when she is debating + giving press conferences etc ppl will warm up to her

i love ppl seeing an aura of inevitability when no votes have been cast yet

(I mean the fix was in 4 years ago and she still almost crashed... in the spring)

hey it could be anyone i don't know the future maybe there won't be an election at all maybe edward snowden will win.

obv a lot can change between now and 2020 but it feels more and more like harris every day

― Mordy

Mordy otm, I've reluctantly come around to her even though she was/is a prosecutor

all the rest of them suck even more