2020 Democratic presidential primary

canniest messaging + seems to have pretty strong Dem institutional backing + already getting endorsements + seems to be adept at smoothing over potential issues rather than skidding into them a la Warren

I think she’s only gotten endorsements from people who serve in California. Similarly Warren got the Joe Kennedy III endorsement

Biden is the front-runner right now in polls that include people who haven't declared.

Again, meaningless till he opens his mouth. Name recognition plus O nostalgia.

Harris is the frontrunner according to betting markets. And we all know they are never wrong.

Yeah, everything is meaningless now I'm just saying he's currently the technical frontrunner.

my mind is boggling at people claiming Harris isn't african american because she's half Jamaican, as though black people just sprung out of the soil in Jamaica organically

did half of her spring organically out of the soil in America tho

I just feel like people forget her South Asian heritage. Threatening to lock you up for skipping school - that doesn't come from nowhere.

only just saw the breakfast club thing

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kh_wQUjeaTk

damn, more dislikes than likes, not seen that before. reading those comments too, the breakfast club audience not keen at all

I wouldn't read too much into that or believe that it's the breakfast club audience/any normal group of people commenting.

stop doing that

bernie is fucking cancelled

omg Bernie NO!!!! pic.twitter.com/663WUYC0Xo

— GhostTrace (@owenrumney) February 18, 2019

what's wrong with that?

lefty Sorkin hatred

There aren't really many good answers to that question.

He shoulda gone Bill Pullman in Independence Day and then started making explosion noises

Chauncey Gardiner obv

Wait, is this View appearance from three years ago?

Yeah, it seems to be from this (Apr 2016): https://www.mediaite.com/online/bernie-sanders-identifies-which-lady-of-the-view-is-his-celebrity-crush/

Bernie was doing irony

He's Running...For Something!

https://www.chron.com/news/politics/amp/Beto-O-Rourke-seeks-to-sharpen-his-border-stance-13625707.php

https://i.imgur.com/y7lc7W6.jpg

“I know, right?”

This is good:

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) will unveil a major new initiative on Tuesday designed to make sure every family can afford high-quality child care, according to several people who have heard about the proposal or seen material describing it in the past week.

The plan seeks to make access to child care universal, the sources told HuffPost, by offering federal funds to providers that offer care at their facilities on a sliding income scale.

No family would have to spend more than 7 percent of its household income on child care, no matter the number of kids. Families with incomes below twice the poverty line, which is roughly $50,000 a year for a family of four, would pay nothing.

Only providers that meet federal safety, staffing and curriculum standards could qualify for the funding.

Officials with Warren’s 2020 presidential campaign declined to comment on the proposal and the sources familiar with the plan cautioned that some details were still in flux as of last week.

I understand that universal childcare is important and a necessary step into the fully cybernetic abolition of the family but I never get excited about it because I’m a nulliparous aesthete

She's not really talking about universal childcare anyway.

First candidate to talk up universal surrogacy gets my vote

Democratic voters shrugging off Warren's ancestry.

In interviews over the last month with about three dozen Democratic voters, many in early primary states, almost all of them expressed far more interest in Ms. Warren’s policy ideas than her ancestry and said that they were exhausted or uninterested by the story line. They described it as overblown, reflecting a disconnect between voters in the party’s base and some political elites, media commentators and conservatives who have been preoccupied with the issue.

“Right now is a time to listen to ideas,” said Holly Sauers, a staunch Democrat and resident of Charleston, S.C. “That’s what we’re focused on.”

Among these voters, who were mostly white and black Democrats who acknowledged their own misunderstandings about Native American communities and history, Ms. Warren is not a perpetrator of harm, but a victim of a Washington culture that delights in any scandal among politicians — and particularly elected officials who are women.

and:

Julian Brave Noisecat, a Native American journalist and activist who has criticized Ms. Warren previously, said: “Based on my conversations with tribal leaders and advocates, the consensus position is that she’s one of the strongest allies of Indian country in Congress. She has good relationships with tribes across the board. And I think that’s relevant.”

Mr. Noisecat said the ancestry matter had become double-edged: More than any other Democratic presidential candidate, Ms. Warren has caused the most upset among Native American communities, but has also probably done the most outreach and is more vocal on issues that effect tribal citizens than other presidential candidates.

So apparently this other dude is running?

pay no heed, he actually stands for stuff

A little surprised at the tone/style of the announcement video, which seems primarily interested in countering the "Bernie gets nothing done" narrative.

i'm glad he's running. people here can say what they want, but bernie sanders has done more than anyone in america to advance the issues that are most important. because of him, issues like raising the minimum wage, medicare for all, and free college—just to name three—are mainstream positions that almost all of the current candidates say they support.

as an american this is more important to me than what his supporters do online. i fucking hate the internet anyway.

he served his purpose as a dyspeptic John the Baptizer.

that's if you trust all the other candidates to actually prioritize the american people while in office. history has shown that the platforms people campaign on are only a rough indicator of what their priorities will be once in office.

what did his supporters do online?

i'm not on twitter so i don't even know. but that seems to be the knock against bernie—that there are roving bands of "bernie bros" like susan sarandon harassing people and poisoning the public against mainstream democrats.

it's just a complete invention. Every candidate has a number of enthusiastic/annoying supporters, the real poisoning of the public was this cynical neolib assertion that enthusiasm for his policies was actually some kind of personality cult

also— *that's* the personality they think a misogynistic cult would form around?

i agree with you. i think it was overblown and ultimately a smear from hillary partisans. but on ILX people believe that "bernie bros" were a thing and enough of a thing that it gives them reservations about the candidate. maybe they see it more in their corners of the internet.

yeah it worked

re. him being old and "dyspeptic"—paving the way for a younger, smoothers candidate—I like people who are awkward and rough around the edges. glamorous people who make an incredible first impression haven't always been the best people, in my experience. i also like elizabeth warren's normcore stylings and general awkwardness.

P sure he allied with Putin to elect Trump and turn the nation's college students into mansplainers or something. Tad Devine's last name was in the subject line of an email, you know.

lol

Sanders' 2020 agenda, per aides:
- Medicare 4 All
- Green New Deal/climate
- $15 min wage
- Criminal justice reform
- Free college
- Break up biggest banks
- Gender pay equity
- Paid leave
- ⬇ Drug prices
- Expand Social Security
- Save unions
- DREAM Acthttps://t.co/CyM52Cw2pf

— Jeff Stein (@JStein_WaPo) February 19, 2019

i'll vote for that platform

all of it is necessary in order to even get the country started on a path to becoming something other than a capitalist dystopia.

w/ the exception of Warren there is not a single other candidate who would actually carry that platform through to the general election

I don't know where she is on the college thing

There's a few more planks in the thread btw, including ending cash bail - does Harris have a stance on that?

i agree with that very much, hadrian. bernie and warren seem to see america like i do -- a country that is increasingly unaffordable, where people feel trapped and hopeless while the powerful profit more and more each year -- and the other candidates don't seem to get it. harris should be commended for the homeowner relief—not a small thing—but in general i see her as a pragmatist, not someone crazy enough to believe that america could actually be a decent place for ordinary people to live.

xp