2020 Democratic presidential primary

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)

Also fairly easy to hate Gabbard. And the self financing billionaires.

I had a week-long infatuation with Buttigieg as the candidate. I'm definitely his target audience: we're a month apart in age, his father was one of my professors in college, I like that he has the Obama seal of approval, he's obviously intelligent, I like that he served in the military (though I can't imagine he didn't see it as a resume-building experience for a national politcal career), he seems nice?, and so on. But his brand of milquetoast technocrat appeal won't do jack-crap in Michigan or Pennsylvania, let alone Florida. He's not going to energize any of the key voting blocs. Still, it's quite extraordinary that the mayor of South Bend is running fourth in a presidential race, so I give him that.

Opinion: If you’re scared of Trump’s foreign policy, Warren’s should terrify you https://t.co/E1pbOpBTgh

— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) November 5, 2019

this dude's columns are just concern trolling:

Democrats should confront their revolutionaries before it’s too late

Amy Klobuchar is Trump’s worst nightmare

The Green New Deal is a declaration of an unwinnable ‘World War G’

Bernie Sanders is probably just another one-hit wonder

Ilhan Omar is the Steve King of the left

Tesla’s new SUV model shows just how silly the Green New Deal really is

Democrats, beware the path of the tea party

Joe Biden’s climate change plan is a gift for Trump

Of course Elizabeth Warren would raise taxes on the middle class

what was the last time anybody polled the idea of unilaterally withdrawing troops from afghanistan/the middle east?

policy: make them pay, get the oil

that column makes warren sound fantastic

Go WAPO go
Read more:

Jennifer Rubin: The eight big problems with Warren’s Medicare-for-all plan

Megan McArdle: The math for Warren’s health-care plan adds up if you accept its ludicrous premise

Paul Waldman: What Elizabeth Warren’s new health-care plan gets right

Greg Sargent: A small dose of realism in Elizabeth Warren’s new health proposal

Leana S. Wen: Can we please stop talking about Medicare-for-all?

lol, poor Leana

Gabbard will be on The View tomorrow. That should be a real meeting of the minds, her and McCain.

https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2019/11/05/how-kamala-harris-went-from-female-obama-to-fifth-place-229901

Unmistakable signs of a floundering campaign are all around her: Harris’ town hall crowds are thinner and more tepid than they once were. Applause lines are scarcer. Network embeds who have followed her for months are plotting their next moves. Inside her campaign, staff morale sinks lower with each new poll. Aides sometimes talk about the campaign in the past tense before catching themselves. Unrest over the choices made by top campaign leadership has grown. Some Harris staffers felt blindsided by a decision to lay off field organizers in New Hampshire when they previously were led to believe that they could be redeployed to Iowa.

what a URL

i’m still surprised how poorly she’s done.

Yeah, she's doing no better even in California.

Even I thought "Hey, maybe do a little senatoring before you go for the brass ring."

people said that about Obama too but as has been said he was a unique talent who made an instant connection with millions after the '04 convention and was drawn into the presidency as if by gravity. Harris ain't that, I guess

also Harris didn't consolidate the black vote; she tried to run out the gate as the establishment candidate and, since everyone still thinks the establishment candidate is a white man, confused the fuck out of everyone who wanted her to be The Political Mo'Nique

^^^this is a key point

Biden basically hogged both lanes that she wanted/needed to get into