2020 Democratic presidential primary

I bless the Yangs down in Africa

also it would be good to get someone under the age of five trillion to keep an eyes on tech in the government

It's almost as if you're speaking about replacing an administration in which the president's cybersecurity czar - one Rudiculous A. Giuliani - got locked out of his iphone

I did the AmeriCorps program City Year. It's better than Teach for America in that it doesn't replace local professional teachers with random out-of-towners with little teaching experience. But it still planted a bunch of kids without any connection to the local culture into disadvantaged schools with inadequate training to handle the tough situations we were going to face. It paid a stipend that was half of minimum wage, in an expensive city. We were expected to work 50-60 hour weeks, every week. The organization was very aware of how punishing the work was, and used cult indoctrination techniques to keep us from quitting -- making us do call-and-response chants, use City Year exclusive lingo with each other, have creepy struggle sessions where we were encouraged to talk about extremely personal things and deep traumas in front of the entire corps, and do "unity rallies" in high-traffic public spaces where we got into military formations and did chants and exercises.

A lot of the work we did was positive, but it was completely hobbled by the fact that we were exhausted, dramatically underpaid, manipulated, and disrespected. It felt like we were being taken advantage of. The US government didn't want to expend the effort and money to fix the educational system, so it threw us hungry, underemployed, and idealistic young people at the problem to serve as a band-aid and keep us busy.

These kinds of programs are not a real solution to anything, and they harm the people who join them.

thanks for relating your experience

and, yikes

that's an extreme situation but i think most of those boss tactics and work issues, in essence, apply to any entry-level not-for-profit education/civics/arts job

and yeah, sorry it was as rough as that

Almost three-in-four Democratic voters say they will back whoever becomes the party's nominee, according to a new Hill-HarrisX poll.

The survey, released Monday, found that 73 percent of Democrats would support the party’s pick to challenge President Trump, even if their preferred candidate doesn't become the nominee. Twelve percent of Democratic respondents said they would not vote if their candidate doesn't become the party nominee.

Just 8 percent said they would support the GOP nominee, who is likely to be Trump, if their preferred candidate didn't win the Democratic nomination.

who the fuck are these people

A lot of the work we did was positive, but it was completely hobbled by the fact that we were exhausted, dramatically underpaid, manipulated, and disrespected.

aka teaching

xp mostly upper-class folks who think Trump's an idiot and an embarrassment but most of all don't want to pay to make anyone else's lives better

biden voters mostly

Just 8 percent

Just?!

xp Teaching does have a lot of these issues, but I know what it's like to be a teacher, and this was a lot worse and crossed more boundaries. At one of those "struggle sessions" I mentioned, I watched a dude get manipulated into standing up in front the entire corps of around 200 people and talking about his childhood sexual abuse until he was weeping too hard to continue.

yuck.

Come to think of it, City Year was kind of like teaching without the protection of a teacher's union, or any of the more standard legal protections like minimum wage. City Year is essentially neoliberal in character: figure out who will do this extremely hard work for the least compensation and in the worst conditions, then manipulate them into wanting to do it, while dressing the whole enterprise up in the language of public service. We literally had a high-paid consultant visit us and give the whole corps a lecture on self-help, which none of us could actually follow due to our crushing workloads.

It's no wonder Mayor Pete loves this sort of thing, the guy is neoliberalism personified.

I mean, I am not really for the idea of mandatory civil service that includes as part of its remit telling a bunch of strangers about your most intimate traumas. That sounds insane and immoral.

Yeah, fuck that. I was (briefly) in a cult/commune; I don't ever need to experience that shit again.

Here Macron is trying to bring back a national service requirement of like a month or two the summer after high school, but the military doesn’t want this because it will be very annoying and expensive to manage. You won’t have to choose military service but most will and so the plan may not end up enacted.

going to be really awkward when Pete advocates working for a corporate management consultancy as part of an extended character-building plan

Buttigieg has more momentum than I'd ever have thought he could get. Could someone explain to me?

A white, younger, gayer Biden.

It's not difficult!

ILXors being mystified that 8% of Democratic voters would even consider voting for Trump and ILXors being mystified that Buttigieg has non-negligible polling numbers are related I think

yes

yes to the former and no to the latter.

I like Buttigieg, kind of.

Could someone explain to me?

imo Buttigeig has been carving out his niche as the comfortable-feeling candidate for white, middle class, college-educated, middle-aged and under voters, who are not politically active and who are relatively secure with the status quo, but who feel uneasy about the socially-repressive agenda of the Republicans and for whom Biden feels old and out of touch. If he can pull about 14% in Iowa and 16% in NH, he'll be poised to get a big push from the media as the exciting dark horse no one saw coming.

His best chance is to outlast Biden, while Warren and Sanders split the progressives, making his eventual 40% look stronger than their combined 60%. He could do this, because some big money backers are quite ready to bankroll him if he can make that strategy work, and they've already given him the seed money to see him through Iowa and NH.

It's important to remind y'all that few people are paying any attention now, and they won't until at least January.

thanks Aimless (and everyone else.)

Biden is fading badly in Iowa. Good lord he is a shitty candidate. My explanation of the rise of Buttigieg is along your lines but also that he's surviving the inevitable implosion of a few other seriously flawed candidates.

I wonder how many Republicans would vote for a gay person.

the thing that boggles my mind is how many people are just interested in candidates and are looking to check them out socially

I mean, getting the bad out is huge. The first caucus struggle is getting prospective voters to come out. The second is getting people who don’t actually vote at all, and maybe never have, to do more than browse a local event

the majority of complete non-voters I’ve met in Iowa are in the northwest corner of the state, unsurprisingly

hanging with my friends and realizing our friends who are visiting, one of whom was a college radio dj I was aware of when I was at the same school, has never even been registered to vote and we’re all nearly 40

steve king country

xp

I grew up in NW Iowa. My county routinely voted 95+% Republican. People I knew voted out of duty but I wouldn't have any idea what the actual participation rate was or is.

What's a "complete non-voter" ?

as mh's personal attorney, i can answer for him. it's a person who completely non-votes

an adherent to the theory of non-participatory democracy

I know a few complete non-voters

never voted, never even registered

there are still conspiracy theories out there that registering to vote means the government is going to find you for unpaid taxes or whatever via government magic. don’t register or they’ll getcha

or they're going to get you for jury duty

Could someone explain to me?

He seems like an authentically nice guy, he'll vote the right way and appoint the right judges, he'll put people in charge of agencies who actually want to do the job. And he's Midwestern and a Troop so he gives liberals in coastal cities who've been made to feel (incorrectly) that they aren't Real Americans somehow a good feeling that Real Americans have liberal politics too. (That last part only applies to people in NYC who like Buttigieg, not to people in Iowa who like Buttigieg.)

that is the main one! thanks for reminding me

among people who think you can not escape it at all, it’s a fear. because you couldn’t make ends meet if you had to report for jury duty

jury duty is the inverse of that Starship Troopers meme bg posted. CITIZENSHIP MEANS SERVICE!

xp
So he's the young, male HRC?

he's got way more personal appeal

she had her moments? ironically, among the politically-aspiring, screwed over by men class. Clinton was offering slightly better, or at least the status quo of struggle to workers and wonks in women’s health, organizers, etc

people got up in arms when Sanders put PP among the status quo, but it’s not wrong: women’s health lobbying is a necessary force, and the clinics need to aspire to but can’t conceive of a world where they’d be equal citizens as healthcare providers after being beat down for so long

it's hard to hate any of the democratic candidates for the most part

i think i hated delaney

wait is delaney still in the race?

(deleted my mini essay on reasons everyone is suspect)

I honestly can’t remember about Delaney but laughed at some new friends in town describing him as a thumb

It's pretty easy to hate Biden.

(Periodic reminder that Hillary Clinton was the most popular politician in the US in 2013)