2020 Democratic presidential primary

https://i.imgur.com/fnkZ3zg.jpg

lol

Honestly the best argument Biden can make for his position on busing is still terrible ("my constituency charged me with fighting busing and my job was to represent my constituency") but at least is a position that allows plausible deniability between himself and the avowed racists he recruited to help his cause.

watching harris make biden eat shit rn

wonderful

states rights! my god

It was a great exchange for Kamala but afaik federally mandated desegregation busing is still a very unpopular position and I don’t expect to see her or any candidate making it a talking point on the stump.

no, and it doesn't matter, it works emotionally and now that it's looping as a debate highlight it has served its purpose

I also liked how Harris tweaked the standard "I met a man named Gary at a diner in Des Moines" trope by making her vignettes more hypothetical and therefore more universal by not being ostensibly tied to a single individual. I'm thinking particularly of when she imagined a mother in Central America sending her child to the US with a coyote or when she painted the picture of a mother with a feverish child trying to decide whether to walk through the door of the ER knowing she'd be stuck with a huge deductible.

I guess it’s not going to be a Biden Harris ticket then?

Biden is too fragile for that

yup

At this point, I would be happiest with a ticket that consisted of virtually any combination of Warren/Harris/Sanders as P/VP with Castro/Booker/Inslee/Buttigieg as alternate VP choices.

The only reason I would be happy if Warren missed the ticket completely is that she could continue being my senator.

Warren/Harris/Sanders as P/VP with Castro/Booker/Inslee/Buttigieg as alternative VP choices

otm. Whatever else, this is the best crop of Dem hopefuls since....1976? Who the hell knows.

^that’s pretty much word-for-word my view as well, including the second paragraph!

(To djp)

I also liked how Harris tweaked the standard "I met a man named Gary at a diner in Des Moines" trope

I always want someone to tell the story of a guy they met on the campaign trail who had to choose between getting health coverage and buying weed

So it's def gonna be Biden/De Blasio right?

de Blasio seems aiite
*is swiftly KO’d by NY ilxors*

Warren and Harris, majestic.

ever watched this?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=75&v=m6WsyWRXY18

er

https://youtu.be/m6WsyWRXY18

Marianne Williamson has chaotic recurring Frasier character energy

— alex (@alex_abads) June 28, 2019

she's like the perfect midway point between Roz and Daphne Moon.

no, and it doesn't matter, it works emotionally and now that it's looping as a debate highlight it has served its purpose

Sure but it would be nice maybe to also hear a substantive debate on politically realistic things that could be done to improve struggling public schools. Maybe in the next debate.

As I was forcefully reminded on another board last night, debates aren't the places to learn about policy: they're arena sports designed to show how candidates eliminate or fail to eliminate the opposition.

also about how they handle themselves in high pressure moments, responding and adjusting in real time. all things that are very different from prepared speeches, choreographed campaign events, and policies researched by a staff

apparently people who work on Biden's campaign were whispering to journalists that he wasn't following their advice last night

if the ship is leaky already that's uh not a great sign

Harris was spectacular when going in on Biden but I found her uninspiring when talking about her own proposals. The first thing she mentioned when asked about the 'first thing she'd do' is a middle-class tax cut? Taxes on the middle class are probably necessary to pay for the programmes nearly every candidate is proposing, judging by the tax rates of p much any social democracy. Credit to Sanders for being honest about that. Her climate change proposal had a lot of passionate denouncement of Trump but seemed to boil down to re-entering the Paris Agreement (which afaik doesn't do anything but bind the country to set targets) and then a deflection to talking about Trump's relationships with Kim Jong-un and Putin...

...which was still better than Sanders's deflection when asked about diversity. Wow, he needs to get better at that. I did like that he began to suggest an alternative foreign policy model in placing greater emphasis on strengthening the UN and multilateral decision-making on international issues, which begins to get at an answer to what could fill the void if the US moves away from an interventionist superpower model. Transitioning funds from military spending to a green transition sounded good too. It was interesting that a lot of the most concrete things he had to say seemed to be about international issues. Many of the specific domestic policies he focused on so heavily in 2016 - getting large donations out of political campaigns, $15 minimum wage, free tuition, even the recent proposal to forgive student loan debt - barely seemed to come up in his statements. If anything, Gillibrand probably talked more about some of those things. He did talk about single-payer health care but even that was largely when pressed on it by Bennet or a moderator question. His domestic policy focus in this debate seemed to centre around some idea of mobilizing the population to revolt against capital (Wall Street, major corporations, and the military-industrial complex), which, if taken at face value, seems more radical than anything he was saying in 2016.

Williamson obv the winner.

Also, wow this party has moved to the left since 2008, when Obama-Clinton debates could feel like debates between moderate members of the Conservative Party of Canada.

Booker is a crook
Buttigieg is a lightweight cipher
Judy is a punk

Does Yang not count as a person of colour btw?

Buttigieg was awful imo. Lots of words but barely anything concrete, and what there is seemed totally milquetoast.
xp

Like, at least Yang and Swalwell each had one clear unique idea they were there to push.

"Marianne Williamson, your closing remarks?" pic.twitter.com/SPacctUofC

— Ellie Hall (@ellievhall) June 28, 2019

Like, at least Yang and Swalwell each had one clear unique idea they were there to push.

― All along there is the sound of feedback (Sund4r), Friday, June 28, 2019 11:18 AM (fourteen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

what was swalwell's idea? most of what he said mostly seemed to be "don't vote for the old guys cause they're too old"

swalwell's idea is to get punched so hard that no one ever has to see his face again

and to try to take joe biden down in the process

Primary focus on gun control and a government buyback of all assault weapons xp

His domestic policy focus in this debate seemed to centre around some idea of mobilizing the population to revolt against capital (Wall Street, major corporations, and the military-industrial complex), which, if taken at face value, seems more radical than anything he was saying in 2016.

― All along there is the sound of feedback (Sund4r), Friday, June 28, 2019 12:05 PM (twenty-three minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This is a thoroughly unsatisfying way of responding to questions looking for specifics. I think it's dumb and self-defeating to treat M4All, Green New Deal, free college, etc. as magical fairy pipe dreams, because there are actual goals, plans, and strategies backing them up, but this approach above is pure deluded fantasy. the current President is a rapist putting children in cages while the Supreme Court just gave the green light to rampant gerrymandering, and only a handful of people are even protesting (I mean, I'm not either). I can't even fathom how bad things would have to get for Sanders' revolution to actually come to fruition.

Yeah, I thought it was bizarre, considering how specific and issue-oriented he was in 2016.

Pareene modestly proposes

https://newrepublic.com/article/154389/take-marianne-williamson-seriously

"and to try to take joe biden down in the process"

don't you know it's not how hard you get hit it's how you get up or some other bullshit joe always says

tbrr I don't think being a crook or lightweight cypher disqualifies you from being a decent Vice President (see: Joe Biden)

(I also fundamentally disagree with the characterization of Booker as a "crook" considering that the business interests he has served are also part of his constituency)

loved last night how often Biden said "we" did this or accomplished that during Obama's term.

look buddy, we all watched Veep, we know you spent 97% of your time asking if Barry called and berating your subordinates.

a substantive debate on politically realistic things that could be done to improve struggling public schools.

Not going to happen during a presidential campaign.

the business interests he has served are also part of his constituency

hmmm, I'm talking about some other things, like machines and bosses

https://newrepublic.com/article/154305/booker-wrong-side-new-jersey-fight

https://www.politico.com/states/new-jersey/story/2019/06/25/bookers-problem-with-new-jersey-progressives-1072617

Maybe i missed this clip being posted already but wow

Marianne Williamson's first order of business as president would be to call the Prime Minister Of New Zealand pic.twitter.com/dJHX574o8c

— TPM Livewire (@TPMLiveWire) June 28, 2019

GURLFRENDURSOAWN

joe biden continues to be a device designed to convert oxygen into saying the wrong thing

Joe Biden: "We've got to recognize that kid wearing a hoodie may very well be the next poet laureate and not a gangbanger." 😬 pic.twitter.com/67HFGjPON8

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) June 28, 2019