2020 Democratic presidential primary

i just thought you should know

s'cool

Beto is pro-weed legalization but that doesn't really count anymore.

into today's Democratic party if you're not pro-PCP you're nothing

Here's some Beto platform stuff from the '18 campaign...not sure how much of this will carry over.

https://ballotpedia.org/Beto_O%27Rourke#Campaign_themes

Healthcare

Healthcare is a moral question that transcends politics – it is a basic human right, not a privilege. 4.3 million Texans – including over 600,000 children – can’t see a doctor, or when they do, they’re so sick they have no choice but to go to the Emergency Room where the cost will be many times more expensive and the outcome will be worse.

When a mother forgoes a routine mammogram because she is uninsured, or a father ignores chronic pain because he didn’t qualify for a subsidy to buy insurance, everyone’s healthcare costs are likely to be greater in the long-term. We want our parents and our children to be healthy and live to their full potential. This is much more likely when they have access to the healthcare they need.

Steps that we should take together to transform healthcare include:

Improving the Affordable Care Act (ACA) by stabilizing our insurance markets. Guaranteeing continued payments for ACA subsidies that reduce enrollees’ cost-sharing and reimbursing insurers for high-cost individuals.
Incentivizing insurers to participate in the exchanges, especially in underserved counties.
Expanding Medicaid to cover more Texans and protecting the Medicaid guarantee for vulnerable children, the disabled, and the elderly.
Lowering premiums and prescription drug costs by using the government’s purchasing power to make healthcare more affordable for everyone.
Creating a public option on the exchanges so that Americans are guaranteed affordable coverage.
Achieving universal healthcare coverage— whether it be through a single payer system, a dual system, or otherwise – so that we can ensure everyone is able to see a provider when it will do the most good and will deliver healthcare in the most affordable, effective way possible.

Wasn't exactly pushing Single Payer then either.

"otherwise"

Psychedlic Warlord says baby steps

Man, I'm very far from a Harris fan but I'd back her in a heartbeat over Beto or Biden. An opportunist willing to pivot left >>>> this substance-free muck

now you're getting it

Beto: Right For Texas, Wrong For America

anyway it's march of 2019 it's still only lunatics paying attention so

true

Sparkle Motion so OTM.

I can hear his concession speech: "Sure, Trump's gonna serve until 2025, but fucking look at this - three more Muslim women were elected to Congress on my coat tails!"

If you can't win against the most loathesome Texan, you don't deserve a shot at beating the most loathesome human.

... who coincidentally, once beat the most loathsome Texan.

Beto: Right For Texas, Wrong For America

― pippin drives a lambo through the gates of isengard (Sparkle Motion),

Beto: Too Right for America

... who coincidentally, once beat the most loathsome Texan.

― pplains, Monday, March 18, 2019 2:32 PM (sixteen minutes ago)

cruz trounced trump in the TX primary, 44-27%

To get so close to beating Cruz -- and genuinely frightening him until the end -- is nothing to sneeze at. He should run for the other seat in 2020.

no question. What he should not do is run for president

beto should join mars volta

Man, I'm very far from a Harris fan but I'd back her in a heartbeat over Beto or Biden. An opportunist willing to pivot left >>>> this substance-free muck

otm

Opportunist? I thought people were using that for Gillibrand or Warren or <insert any other woman>.

i almost posted Booker w/out thinking how that would read

heh

Booker is the sort of person who at a campaign rally would sincerely say, "I'm every woman."

Opportunist? I thought people were using that for Gillibrand or Warren or <insert any other woman>.

Personally I apply that term to anyone whose convictions seem to evolve conveniently according to prevailing political trends. I think that applies to Harris, but not Warren.

fwiw Warren is doing one of those CNN "town halls" tonight (at Jackson State in MS)

To get so close to beating Cruz -- and genuinely frightening him until the end -- is nothing to sneeze at. He should run for the other seat in 2020.

― recriminations from the nitpicking woke (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, March 18, 2019 1:53 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

no question. What he should not do is run for president

― pippin drives a lambo through the gates of isengard (Sparkle Motion), Monday, March 18, 2019 2:06 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yep. Yep.

is there a reason why we're ok with buttigieg running but not beto, other than beto's centrism? i see/share the view that it's a selfish decision by beto. but i'm guessing buttigieg would also be credible senate candidate in his state. is it just that buttigieg doesn't have a chance for president, and beto does?

one of the reasons buttigieg is running is that he has no chance at statewide office, except maybe if the Presidential race raises his profile

Indiana doesn’t have a Senate election in 2020?

Also he’s much less of a serious candidate than even Beto so the idea of him running is harmless.

anyway I thought we were mad at Beto for running because he's a centrist using a progressive instagram filter

yeah i don't know much about indiana but i don't see why he's any more of a long shot for senate than beto. if beto is selfish for not taking his chance to run for senate then i guess i don't understand why buttigieg isn't too.

note: i think should run for tx senate and i'm fine with buttigieg running for president, but that's based on their politics and good tactics for the democrats. i don't care about "selfishness" or whatever, which seems to be a thing in the way we talk about beto.

maybe i'm imagining the selfishness criticism ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Indiana elected Pence, Buttigieg is gay

I hope Beto runs forever.

xp he's also a veteran and he won a mayoral race in a congressional district that went for trump by 20 points ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

i'm not saying he wouldn't get his hair mussed if he ran for senate

Indiana doesn't have a Senate election until 2022 and Buttigieg is certainly improving his chances in that race (should he want to run) by getting the national name recognition of a presidential candidate now. I guess he could run for Gov against Holcomb next year.

ah, fair enough. no senate race in 2020 is a pretty good argument

Beto feels like a dress rehearsal for the next generation of politicians raised in the internet years

Opportunist? I thought people were using that for Gillibrand or Warren or <insert any other woman>.

― Yerac, Monday, March 18, 2019 3:16 PM (forty-nine minutes ago)

right, warren...

xpost ugh yes

beto will need more favourable material conditions for (what I presume are) his politics to come back into play

Worth reading.

Of the 45 U.S presidents to date, only three were older than 65 when taking office. These three instances aren’t exactly an advertisement for the advisability of electing someone in his late 70s. (Sanders would be 79 when inaugurated, and Biden would be 78).

William Henry Harrison was 68, and famously dropped dead within a month. Admittedly that was a long time ago, but...

Ronald Reagan was 69 (a full decade younger than Sanders/Biden would be on taking office). Reagan was clearly suffering some serious mental decline during his second term: so much so that there was talk among his aides about potentially invoking the 25th amendment.

Donald Trump was 70. Trump has always been an utterly loathsome grifter without a single redeeming characteristic, but if you watch interview with him from 20 or even 10 years ago, his present mental decline is striking.

...

A word about ageism. To be a coherent concept, ageism means taking someone’s age into account in an inappropriate way, not merely taking it into account at all. There are all sorts of reasons to be highly skeptical of electing very old people to the presidency.

First, the risk for dementia doubles every five years from age 65 on. It is very low at first, but by 80 it’s getting quite significant, and by 85 it’s a big risk.

Second, electing an 80ish president means electing someone whose initial and therefore in many ways most important formative political experiences were literally two generations ago, i.e., in the 1950s, aka a radically different world.

Third, leaving aside more drastic forms of cognitive decline, really old people are generally not as good at learning things/changing their minds when doing so is warranted than they were when they were younger.

some of the stuff in there is ageist, especially the last sentence \_(ツ)_/¯

If you say so, grandpa.

That last sentence, as the key adverb stresses, is "generally" true.

This is why I support a Sanders/young Trotsky ticket.