2020 Democratic presidential primary

"One time, according to a friend, Beto collected an especially verdant turd from one of their kids’ diapers and put it in a bowl, telling Amy it was avocado." https://t.co/qNqipzIaSh

— Henry J. Gomez (@HenryJGomez) March 19, 2019

if Trump was actually good at nicknames he'd start calling Beto "the verdant turd"

v uncool to share this at lunchtime

gonna pass on the guac now thanks

I have yet to read a profile of Beto where he doesn't come off as still adjusting to being a full grown boy.

Yam can call him Pinocchio

Glimmers of actual policy ideas from O'Rourke.

"When are we going to get an actual policy from you, instead of just platitudes and nice stories?" Beto O'Rourke is asked.

O'Rourke discusses health care, education, criminal justice reform: "I'm trying to describe not just the goal...but the path that we will take to get there" pic.twitter.com/SmIrc33CsE

— ABC News (@ABC) March 19, 2019

it does put folks like Beto in the position of being asked if they support these initiatives
― We were never Breeting Borting (President Keyes), Tuesday, March 19, 2019 2:31 PM (three hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

bingo. warren isn't just running for pres, she's running to shift the conversation. as was (is?) sanders.

i don't think o'rourke is nearly as amazing as his fans seem to think, but i also don't think he's as lightweight as many of the left folks dunking on him have been portraying him as.

He's completely inert. Just what we like in presidential candidates.

How the F did he get into Columbia when he failed a math class and supposedly was in remedial algebra (just kidding, I know).

i dunno, he's given some decent extemporaneous answers on policy questions, even if they included a fair bit of hedging.

For reasons I can't explain -- a Texas Democrat? -- he performs inartful fan dances around policy questions that he might've learned at the feet of Bill Clinton in 1995. Is he thinking, "The vague and more colorless I am, the more it distinguishes me from the competition"?

Is he thinking, "The vague and more colorless I am, the more it distinguishes me from the competition"?

Close. He's thinking, "The more vague and colorless I am, the more the mainstream political press will hold me up as the necessary counterweight to all these shouty radicals, plus I stay an empty vessel people can pour their dreams into."

He's tall ---> mistakenly handsome and smart.

This is Bernie’s new press secretary? Really? https://t.co/rYcFi0uJRc

— Scott Stedman (@ScottMStedman) March 19, 2019

Beto sucks and is pointless.

xpost -- I just saw this tweet in the context of Aaron Rupar interpreting it as Gray claiming the hacks were an inside job by the DNC, which is somehow even dumber than the tweet itself.

I think I thought the same in 2016, tbf, not that I should be anyone's press secretary.

*Sept 2016

more feigned outrage from the usual twitter shitheads. "Ugh. Really? So over Bernie."

I want to flag another thing about this @PeteButtigieg interview. He talks about race and the economy in a way that gets beyond the tedious "LOL but economic anxiety" versus "not everyone in Trump country is racist" debate:https://t.co/2IqZ9MlFsn pic.twitter.com/QH0dch2d09

— Greg Sargent (@ThePlumLineGS) March 19, 2019

there need to be alternate sources for food and lodging

TIL a Buttigieg stance that gives me pause

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/2020-candidate-pete-buttigieg-troubled-by-clemency-for-chelsea-manning/

I've enjoyed Buttigieg's statements and policy positions, and he's one of the best speakers in the pack, but can't he run for governor or senator?

I agree ^

w/Alfred I mean

We talked about that yesterday. No senate election in Indiana in 2020. Not sure about gov.

Oof there is one and the republican one it with 51% of the vote.

*won

I think Butty is running as a "pioneer"

xpost and a libertarian got 3.2%
Kind of an uphill climb for the Dems

The Snowden/Manning opinion isn't controversial. Or at least I see it enough from very progressive people that they knowingly broke the law, it doesn't matter for whose greater good it was.

So...Sanders' new press secretary, Briana Joy? I watched that SXSW interview with AOC that she conducted and thought she was a little empty-headed but generally OK, but now I'm reading that she voted for Jill Stein in 2016 and said "but I live in New York so it's OK". So...go Bernie!

unperson why do you care about this

If we want to end the opioid epidemic, we must work to address the root causes of abuse. That’s why @SenCoryGardner and I introduced legislation to limit opioid prescriptions for acute pain to 7 days. Because no one needs a month’s supply for a wisdom tooth extraction.

— Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (@gillibrandny) March 15, 2019

Oh fuck that

Kirsten Gillibrand is lame

problem solved. good work.

unperson why do you care about this

People who make bad staffing decisions make other kinds of bad decisions. And since I am anti-Bernie generally, I will present evidence of his badness as a candidate as it crops up.

what's wrong with that opiod rx proposal?

I think Gray has written some good stuff for Current Affairs iirc but she really does suck on Twitter, I refollowed her maybe a couple of weeks ago and then unfollowed her again like yesterday I think. at least now she's getting paid to stan for Bernie, there is more honesty in that (note: I'm NOT anti-Bernie).

People who make bad staffing decisions make other kinds of bad decisions

so because she's "airheaded" acc to your shining perceptions and voted for Stein in New York, she will be a bad press secretary. got it.

She's a bad journalist, why do you think she'd be a good press secretary (someone who deals with journalists all day and night)?

Voting for Jill Stein anywhere if you're over 18 is a sign of decay.

xps it seems pretty arbitrary and lumping the needs of patients in longer recovery (who need pain management of more than 7 days out of the gate) w/ "wisdom tooth" dig is unnecessarily belittling

She's a bad journalist, why do you think she'd be a good press secretary (someone who deals with journalists all day and night)?

you didn't like her in a youtube interview and now she's a bad journalist

as someone who works in the medical field and also has a parent addicted to Rx opioids I’m entirely in favor of the Gillibrand/Booker proposal and have been advocating for similar restrictions for years. Opioids have limited effectiveness against both acute and recurring pain anyway. There are other solutions.

legislation should not be introduced via tweets, unless there is bigger documentation linked to it. That tweet is just weird.

I assume she made of point of saying acute pain rather than all pain or chronic pain.

also, what do you know about the senior staff of the other candidates? many of them are probably DC lifers with way fucking darker skeletons to dig up.than anything Gray's got xxp

agreed that the wisdom teeth dig is awful.

i don't know what their definition of acute (vs chronic) pain is.

do you think it should be a bigger number than 7 or do you object to the limit in principle?

xpost military hospitals were giving my dad like 500 ct bottles of hydrocodone probably because he was bitchy enough about getting it. It was absurd.