2020 Democratic presidential primary

Learning that unperson sees the US as inherently and irrevocably an international death machine but also is fine with that explains a lot.

Y'all can correct me but I'm confident WI and MI are back in the blue column for 2020.

― recriminations from the nitpicking woke (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Sunday, 7 April 2019 18:40 (fifty-five minutes ago) Permalink

how bout FL?

You're seeing Trump as the cause rather than a symptom

I believe it is more accurate to say Hadrian VII views him not as a cause, but as an accelerant. In the same sense that adding gasoline to a small fire makes it a much larger fire that is more capable of setting other material on fire.

Y'all can correct me but I'm confident WI and MI are back in the blue column for 2020.
― recriminations from the nitpicking woke (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Sunday, 7 April 2019 18:40 (fifty-five minutes ago) Permalink

how bout FL?

― buttigieg play the blues (crüt), Sunday, April 7, 2019 2:39 PM (one minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

v possible, but i'd throw PA in this mix of back in blue and thats a wrap

Learning that unperson sees the US as inherently and irrevocably an international death machine but also is fine with that explains a lot.

I'm not fine with it, but I see no realistic path to changing it. So I'm doing what's best for me, an almost-50-year-old with health issues, which is making concrete, real-world efforts to get me and mine the fuck out of the US before it goes up/down in flames.

The realistic path to changing it is electing a plurality of representatives opposed to it, which gets easier the more a counter-death-machine set of policies gets airtime. Which is never gonna happen if a Harris gets in.

how bout FL?

― buttigieg play the blues (crüt), Sunday, April 7, 2019 2:39 PM

Not so fast.

/Learning that unperson sees the US as inherently and irrevocably an international death machine but also is fine with that explains a lot./

I'm not fine with it, but I see no realistic path to changing it. So I'm doing what's best for me, an almost-50-year-old with health issues, which is making concrete, real-world efforts to get me and mine the fuck out of the US before it goes up/down in flames.

So I'm doing what's best for me, an almost-50-year-old with health issues

Wait, I don't get this. Isn't a proper healthcare system a positive for you? And isn't Bernie the most realistic path to that?

So, other than Biden's coyly playing footsie with announcing his candidacy, are there any names out there who haven't made clear their intention to run or not run, but are spoken of as strong potential contenders?

Obama.

Isn't a proper healthcare system a positive for you?

Yes, very much so.

And isn't Bernie the most realistic path to that?

Ha ha ha ha ha, fuck no. Two words: Mitch McConnell. How are Bernie's magical powers of "revolution" going to overcome McConnell and his relentless efforts to dismantle the shitty American health care system that currently exists?

Stacey Abrams xxp

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Democratic_Party_presidential_primaries

i don't get the argument that trump is "the least destructive foreign-policy president in 40 years" at all. by at least some reports, trump has already killed more civilians in drone strikes than obama managed in eight years. he also trashed the iran nuclear deal and reversed obama's efforts at detente with cuba. he's not down there with W or even reagan, but he's pretty bad.

xxp Stacey Abrams isn't running. She has more sense than Beto O'Rourke.

I don't think she will, but she hasn't definitively ruled it out yet, right?

idk if she's "definitively" ruled it out but I don't see why she would throw her hat in the ring.

https://www.ajc.com/blog/politics/the-jolt-blitz-stacey-abrams-nixes-biden-pact-and-questions-beto-appeal/trl7OWsdhJrwR8H5ao83aI/

why am I running? Well my favorite book is "Red Harvest" and it taught me that America needs a steady and amoral hand to play all sides of the ongoing vicious struggle for power

— 'Weird Alex' Pareene (@pareene) April 6, 2019

Unperson

get me and mine the fuck out of the US before it goes up/down in flames

I have met this attitude and, yeah, I get it, I understand its pull.

But it also seems kinda contrary to progressive/liberal/left politics as I understand them. Namely, a politics based on compassion for the downtrodden and those less fortunate.

On the "me and mine" view, once you are able to get "you and yours" "the fuck out," well, that's the extent of your moral duty.

Those poor schmucks without the resources or opportunity to get the fuck out? Well, too bad so sad.

Personally I find it very hard to distinguish that attitude from the right-wing "I got mine, fuck you if you didn't plan as well as me" attitude.

Idk, it's ok to think of your own family first in some circumstances. Some of my family took that attitude and got the hell out of eastern Europe in the early 20th century. The ones who didn't or couldn't all got slaughtered. At some point, it's just about basic survival.

Y'all can correct me but I'm confident WI and MI are back in the blue column for 2020.

Not only are you wrong to be confident about this as regards Wisconsin, people in the past were also wrong to be confident that Wisconsin was going to go Dem in the presidential election. Yes, it did so a bunch of years in a row, but that's because Democrats won the popular vote umpteen years in a row! In 2000 and 2004 the Democrat won by less than half a percent. Wisconsin is half Democrats and half Republicans, has been for a while, and these "now Wisconsin is a blue state" / "now Wisconsin is a red state" takes come roaring in after every election and they are always wrong. (So yes, to be clear: any idea of Wisconsin as part of a "blue wall" is wrong, but so is the laughable idea that Wisconsin is "Trump Country.")

I have zero idea which Dem nominee would have the best chance to win Wisconsin. (Well, I mean, Tammy Baldwin would, but she's not running and I'm pretty sure never will.)

so what youre saying is "turnout is important"

That's definitely a big part of what I'm saying. There are certainly voters in Wisconsin who vote for different parties in different years, but my general sense is that most Wisconsin voters have pretty strongly defined party preferences and it matters a lot more which group of voters shows up.

well, yeah

a Republican Supreme Court judge won a statewide race in Wisconsin last week too

Yeah, that was a really eye opening. You'd think by now that the Dem base would learn that every voting opportunity is important, especially things like Supreme Court justices, and would fucking turn out to make sure the wrong people don't win.

But nope.

You'd think by now that the Dem base would learn that every voting opportunity is important

When you think that the USA began with a revolution, has been a democracy for more than 240 years, has given the franchise to all citizens of 18 years of age or older, has compulsory education provided by public schools, and has just about the fewest restraints on freedom of the press of any nation, it is gobsmacking just how poorly US citizens understand their own political system or how to effectively exercise their own power within it. The conservatives in the media who rail against how the 'liberal' schools and universities are brainwashing the nation's youth must secretly be chortling in their soup at the inability of liberals to teach people how to seize and hold power.

You'd think by now that the Dem base would learn that every voting opportunity is important, especially things like Supreme Court justices, and would fucking turn out to make sure the wrong people don't win.

Dem turnout was in fact high -- Neubauer got well more votes than the liberal candidate in the last Supreme Court race (who won.) In this particular race, conservative voters turned out in much greater numbers than they usually do in judicial races and that was the difference. Sometimes liberals get cringey and feel like conservatives have some kind of manically effective voter delivery service, but they don't! Conservative voters, just like liberal voters, don't bother to show up most of the time unless there's a federal candidate on the ballot, and often not even then.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/beto-orourke-on-benjamin-netanyahu-racist/2019/04/07/313e34e0-598c-11e9-842d-7d3ed7eb3957_story.html

In response to a voter’s question about his policy toward Israel and Palestinian rights, O’Rourke reiterated his support for a two-state solution and accused Netanyahu of having “joined forces with far-right parties who are inherently racist in their speech and the way that they want to treat their fellow human beings in that part of the world.”

He then went further, telling reporters in a gaggle afterward that Netanyahu is a “racist.”

“The U.S.-Israel relationship is one of the most important relationships that we have on the planet, and that relationship, if it is to be successful, must transcend partisanship in the United States, and it must be able to transcend a prime minister who is racist as he warns about Arabs coming to the polls, who wants to defy any prospect for peace as he threatens to annex the West Bank and who has sided with a far-right racist party in order to maintain his hold on power,” O’Rourke said.

As far as I'm concerned, O'Rourke is welcome to say that as often as he wishes.

best I've heard from him so far (cept for the opening dribble)

He could have added "corrupt" while he was on the subject.

Beto had a solid record in the House re: Palestine, enough to have an AIPAC bigwig lean on him in the last year or two.

You'd think by now that the Dem base would learn that every voting opportunity is important, especially things like Supreme Court justices, and would fucking turn out to make sure the wrong people don't win.

The Democratic base is younger, poorer, busier and has more obstacles in place to getting to vote. Nor do they (black churches aside) have a twice-weekly meeting where they're reminded to vote the right way.

If some 'good guy' billionaire wanted to save their neck from the guillotine, they should privately fund all the work ACORN was doing. Its entire budget was only like $20mn a year.

Nor do they (black churches aside) have a twice-weekly meeting where they're reminded to vote the right way.

wait, what thread is this?

This is offensively stupid. pic.twitter.com/Li6GYNmSQ5

— Sebulba (@Tankie_Viciedo) April 7, 2019

in lockstep w/ Maddow

Do you not believe this to be true? There are heaps of evidence.

I mean, Tim Ryan may be "stupid," I don't know. But it is not false to claim that Russia has exploited controversies here to sow discord.

can we ban politicians from ever appearing again in public wearing open-neck shirts w/sleeves rolled up

either go full dirtbag and wear stained cargo shorts and a ripped tshirt or put on some goddamn neckwear and a jacket and stop pretending that this stupid halfway-business-casual look is somehow more approachable

I dont want to go back to the days of ties

Would love a #streetwear president though who wore yeezy boosts and limited edition supreme hoodies and stuff

the time has come for America’s first cosplay-enthusiast president

definitely not

i want a president who dresses like the cool kids at my local coffee shop

five panel caps and the rest

i have some stuff i can loan to warren if she wants to pursue this

don’t be such a stick in the mud, dude, free your mind and imagine the prez giving a state of the union in full sailor moon regalia