2020 Democratic presidential primary

I like how Biden's current plan appears to be to lower expectations so that when he doesn't win any of the first four primaries he can still portray himself as a viable candidate because of his foresight/honesty

decisive turn for Harris will be if she can pick up Biden's african american support in time for NC. if that doesn't pan out for her it's game over.

If I had to bet at the moment I would put money on Warren, Bernie has a ceiling that she doesn't.

A decide turn for Harris would be if her staff stopped planting briefing memos in Applebee's.

I've been putting money on Warren, without it being a bet.

i won't have time to read it til tonight, but harris released her criminal justice plan

The plan, perhaps the most ambitious effort of Ms. Harris’s campaign so far, focuses on reducing the prison population, creating national standards in policing, ensuring humane treatment for incarcerated people and prioritizing historically vulnerable communities. It also embraces ideas that have gone from the policy fringe to largely consensus positions popular among Democrats, including ending mandatory minimum sentences, eliminating private prisons, legalizing marijuana and incentivizing states to untether themselves from a cash bail system that disproportionately burdens the poor.

...There are several progressive policies in Ms. Harris’s new plan that she opposed during her career as a prosecutor. She pushed for higher cash bails for certain crimes in 2004 as San Francisco’s district attorney, declined to support marijuana legalization in 2010 and, as California’s attorney general, refused to back independent investigations for police shootings as recently as 2014.

...When asked about her apparent evolution, Ms. Harris said the political environment had shifted — not her core ideology.

“I was swimming against the current, and thankfully the currents have changed,” she said. “The winds are in our sails. And I’m riding that just like everybody else is — because it’s long overdue.”

(https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/09/us/politics/kamala-harris-criminal-justice.html)

this is kind of what i meant by her recent The Daily interview, from which i came away feeling like i understood her better, especially her motivations in making decisions, while simultaneously thinking less of her as a candidate. she is a very pragmatic person, it sounds like. and that may very well be the right path to the presidency, who knows. obama was very pragmatic. he underwent a noteworthy "evolution" as well. i can understand being wary of political currents. they often limit what is possible and what can be achieved in the short-term, which is paramount for her, as i understand. but there's a difference between lying low and choosing to shift priorities when political currents are against you, vs being in a position of political power and actively pushing WITH the dumb political currents.

i've digressed into too many current metaphors and now i am on a boat, working all the live long until i see some shore again. anyway, looking forward to reading her plan. i'm sure it's packed with good stuff. i just wonder how much of that will be in there after she assesses the political currents of 2022 with a deadlocked senate.

or maybe there's no point in talking about plans because they don't become laws (?)

“I was swimming against the current, and thankfully the currents have changed,” she said. “The winds are in our sails.

But the evidence of her actions show that swam with the current, not against it, and that she is happy to sail where the prevailing winds take her. This is pretty common among politicians who would like to prolong their careers, but her saying otherwise is pure pretense.

feel like if you look at what’s been happening in boston with the straight pride parade protesters — essentially a judge throwing a tantrum because the DA wanted to drop charges, even saying that the nazis weren’t getting enough of an airing — you can surmise what sort of roadblocks harris might have encountered in a decidedly more pro-throwing-the-book time

i’m not entirely defending harris mind you, just noting that the discourse has evolved a lot and there are still institutional factors at play

Why look at the complicating factors of a situation when you can instead pretend the DA's office is an autocratic fiefdom immune to any and all outside forces and the person who holds it can do whatever they want, whenever they want?

hahaha sigh. yeah

otm.

yeah when you can look at her donors and immediately write her off on the merits

It would have been perfectly accurate for Harris to say the current was too strong to swim against and rather than waste her strength, she chose to go where it took her and stay in office so she could be effective in other ways. But her saying she 'swam against it' denotes that she actively opposed it with the strength she possessed, and I don't see evidence of that.

I also believe her when she says she would have preferred a different direction at the time and likes the present direction better, but in using that imagery she is falsely crediting herself with being an active leader in opposition to that past "current". This is also very politician-like, and easily understood and forgiven, but it is not attractive when compared to some others in the race, who have taken stronger and more consistent stands over time.

Harris and foreign policy:

http://inthesetimes.com/article/22051/kamala-harris-foreign-policy-war-aipac-iran-north-korea-russia

"She's got to be stopped."

Jim Cramer and a @CNBC panel discuss Wall Street executives being absolutely terrified of Elizabeth Warren and how they've never seen anything quite like it before. This is the greatest Warren campaign ad possible. pic.twitter.com/VCrGOfxOX0

— Adam Best (@adamcbest) September 10, 2019

lol @ that bullshit hitpiece, I mean just check out this well-reasoned geopolitical critique

Kamala Harris has ... repeatedly depicting the North Korean peace process as a nefarious example of Trump cozying up to a dictator—rather than a de-escalation Korean people desperately want. In May, for example, amid climbing tensions between the U.S. and North Korea, and days after U.S. seizure of a North Korean ship, she said, “We cannot put our arms and embrace this North Korean dictator in the way this president has done.” And in June, during the Democratic debate, she declared, “You want to talk about North Korea, a real threat in terms of its nuclear arsenal. But what does [Trump] do? He embraces Kim Jong-un, a dictator, for the sake of a photo op.” The implication of this statement is that engaging Kim Jong-un in talks makes the world more dangerous, when—in fact—it’s the only path to formally ending the Korean War and reunifying families. Social movements in South Korea have long been calling for demilitarization, and they do not have the luxury of waiting for more desirable negotiating parties.

can anybody tell me why Alfred's latest post is blank for me? I have images turned on...

do you have an add blocker or something? it's an embedded tweet.

I have a DuckDuckGo privacy extension and something called Cyberhaven download monitor as add-ons in my browser, but that's it

lol

http://emersonpolling.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/47/2019/09/NH-Head-to-heads.png

😒

DREWMENTUM

if we're posting dumb single head-to-head polls then

#New Texas General Election Match-up:

Sanders 48% (+6)
Trump 42%

Biden 47% (+4)
Trump 43%

Castro 44% (+3)
Trump 41%

Warren 44% (+2)
Trump 42%

Booker 43% (+2)
Trump 41%

Harris 45% (+1)
Trump 44%@UnivisionNews /UH Pre-Debate Pollhttps://t.co/aP1mjJtC8V

— Political Polls (@PpollingNumbers) September 10, 2019

If you’re using Firefox you have to disable tracking protection (little shield in the address bar) to be able to see embedded tweets, YouTube videos, etc.

aha! thanks

I do not suggest trusting Jim Cramer on any subject.

Leftists shitting on the NYT for being the voice of centrism in America but jumping up and down with glee the moment Cramer, of all people, support their narrative is my new definition of the echo bubble.

and I say this as someone who really really hopes Warren is the president from 2020 to 2028.

as it happens, warren's nightly plea this evening for cash leaned on the Cramer bit precisely

she also literally retweeted him and said "I support this message"

lmao

I thought this was interesting - the central point about black women delivering the margin of victory for Dems seems indisputable.

https://beta.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/09/10/what-do-black-women-voters-want/

https://www.washingtonpost.com/resizer/8IkFvV5cxNv46Y3xHVzWOpThS4I=/1440x0/smart/arc-anglerfish-washpost-prod-washpost.s3.amazonaws.com/public/74FF5BABJVHDHP4TKL23ERC3HY.jpg

Most surveys, including the most recent Post-ABC News poll, show that the campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination is a three-person race between Biden, Sanders and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.). But the Essence-Black Women’s Roundtable survey shows it to be a four-person contest with Harris firmly in the mix. She comes in behind Biden overall at 15 percent and behind Sanders with 17.1 percent among younger black women voters.

Notice how Harris, the only black woman in the contest, gets more support the 18-to-34-year-olds than she does with the entire group of black women. With “criminal justice and policing reform” the top issue for these young women, the criminal justice plan Harris released Monday will be of great interest. Despite the polls, I’ve long believed Harris was stronger than it appears on the surface. This survey gives credence to my position.

https://beta.washingtonpost.com

sorry, due to my workout regime, glistening abs, and how much i love bleeding steak, i only read alpha opinions

Leftists shitting on the NYT for being the voice of centrism in America but jumping up and down with glee the moment Cramer, of all people, support their narrative is my new definition of the echo bubble.

― Van Horn Street, Tuesday, September 10, 2019 9:31 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

there are lots of leftists saying "warren will be bad for wall street"?

I'm still confused about Biden's support in the black community.

I think it's fairly explicable - older black voters know how deeply racist this country is and are more inclined to think that as a result a white man (or in Hillary's case, a white woman) will have an easier time maneuvering the levers of power in their favor than a black candidate. Black voters on the whole didn't coalesce behind Obama until he won Iowa, there was a huge swing after that. Same dynamic.

I'm still confused about Biden's support in the black community.

― akm, Wednesday, September 11, 2019

I said last month that you can't underestimate the symbolism and reality of an older white dude gladly being a #2 to the first black president.

Shakey also otm.

I don't support Biden but I did have a moment where I was thinking "goddammit am I now an older black voter"

everybody over 35 is old fyi

That being said, I think Biden's support base is pretty obvious both due to Shakey's and Alfred's arguments, plus you have to acknowledge that the black community is not "radical" despite what the media would have you believe; it's just as establishment-oriented as any other American community and the defaults are going to swing towards the centrists most closely aligned to their interests.

xp was just about to ask about that demarcation.

shit, i became old a few months ago, then. wait, why am i wearing a red maga hat...hold the phone...

noooooooooooooooo

my main takeaway from the black women voter poll numbers shakey just posted is that - after more or less a full year of pre-campaigning - the clear winner for all age demographics is still "Other/Prefer Not to Answer"

Local Right-wing gasbag actor I know's gig today was being Beto's camera test stand-in at the debate, and it amuses me to no end.

Andrew Yang’s campaign manager just called to tell me that at tomorrow night’s debate, Yang will be doing "something no presidential candidate has ever done before in history.” He declined to go further than that.

— Sam Stein (@samstein) September 11, 2019

Self-immolation would certainly be novel.

He should give a thousand bucks to every person in the audience.

he's going to debate shirtless

get your yang-yangs out!

he's announcing Grimes will be his running mate

actually he's taking off his Andrew Yang mask and revealing that he *is* Grimes