2020 Democratic presidential primary

wish that essay told us what schedule spice said about the impact of reaganomics

xpost it was during the Kelly Clarkson show with Garth Brooks that was on the tv 🙂

[insert usual caveats about polling here]

After a steady late-summer rise, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) is losing ground with the Democratic electorate.

The latest Morning Consult poll, conducted Nov. 21-24 following Wednesday’s Democratic presidential debate, found 15 percent of likely Democratic primary voters prefer her as their first choice, down 2 percentage points from the previous week and marking her worst showing in the national polling since late August.

The finding marks a 6-point drop from the 21 percent first-choice vote share she had held from late September through a poll conducted Oct. 16-20 following the Oct. 15 Democratic presidential debate. It erased the slight lead she held over Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), a candidate whose policies appeal to the type of Democratic voter her own policy plans appear to target.

The decline in her polling numbers has been driven by statistically significant drops in support among almost every demographic group surveyed — and, most notably, among the highest-educated voters, the oldest voters and voters who identify as liberal and very liberal — compared to her vote share in an Oct. 7-13 poll conducted before last month’s debate. Warren lost her lead with liberal voters and now trails Sanders by 4 points, 16 percent to 20 percent.

https://morningconsult.com/2019/11/25/warrens-september-surge-has-evaporated/

Buttigieg only seems robotic in the way that every boring ambitious person seems robotic.

That seems possible, she's kind of fucked up her lane with people who saw her as a slightly younger/not-white-guy alternative to Bernie who wouldn't be that different in office.

I never thought of him as robotic or fake. I just think he's full of shit. xp

The polling seems quite clear that she has lost votes to both Buttigieg and Sanders.

that would make some sense to me, Pete's winning over some of the "pragmatic branding" voters and Sanders is winning over (back?) some of the lefty ones

I'm a single issue Medicare for All voter right now which has me thinking voting anyone but Sanders in the primary would be bizarre on my part.

Warrren's technocratic wonkishness remains appealing b/c of my inside the beltway childhood tho

as i mentioned on another thread i've become a single issue climate change voter and it's disappointing how uncentral it seems to all the various campaigns (since Inslee dropped out). even the Green Deal proposals seem much more expansive than merely concern with climate change which imo reduces the sense of urgency on the issue. i don't see it as one of a number of important issues but as the only true existential threat we face. i'd be okay putting off M4A for a while longer (esp since we just had a major reform 6 years ago) if it meant we could act more decisively on climate change. (if yr pt is that a gov that could act decisively on climate change is one that could do M4A as well - or that neither or likely - or a similar argument along those lines - i think there's merit to that pt; i just wish the candidates talked a lot lot more about climate change.) i guess the issue is that the electorate doesn't seem to care as much? if i think too much about it i get sad + anxious.

I don't hear about climate policies that connect as viscerally with a progressive primary electorate as "medicare for all" does; a viable candidate who rolled out a "build trains, ban cars" headline would become my first choice but I don't think that's as broad of a winner as "medicare for all" is

like why isn't Biden running on "give Amtrak billions of dollars" instead of "hey it's me Diamond Joe from the Onion"

a lot more than half the electorate doesn’t care about climate change

the green new deal has other planks than purely carbon stuff because it would massively restructure our energy infrastructure and economy and there would need to be programs to anticipate that fallout. this is a pretty well understood point I think

that would make some sense to me, Pete's winning over some of the "pragmatic branding" voters and Sanders is winning over (back?) some of the lefty ones

― Simon H., 26. november 2019 18:55 (fifty-four minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Yeah. There's a technocratic centrist contingent, and it was pretty incredible that Warren had them to begin with. I suspect Pete will lose them as well when he comes under more scrutiny. I kinda hope they come back to Warren at some point, after they've been with every other of the pseudo technocratic candidates. She is just straight up the smartest one, no?

Sanders has been legitimately good the last few weeks, I think, so it's no surprise that he has taken a few points back.

I'm for Sanders, but this anti-Warren stuff from Obama made me extra mad. It confirms @pareene's assessment that the Obamanauts do not take Sanders seriously but actively opposes Warren (probably because Warren *is* taken more seriously among their social set). pic.twitter.com/G9q1aOdwZ1

— Adrian (@blagojevism) November 26, 2019

tbh Obama coming across a little Party Unity My Ass in that politico piece tsk tsk

i feel like the business class think they can ~handle~ bernie, who is not serious to them, but aren’t sure about warren.

and inversely, lefties think bernie is indomitable, and warren already compromised.

i should look for any backup on these opinions!

It's weird, Warren reads so clearly to me to be the "if you like Obama you'll like _______" candidate -- I mean in the sense that their brand is a combination of patriotic inspiration and "the things that are fucked up are fixable and while I'm giving this inspirational speech my team of nerds with advanced degrees is nailing down the details"

Like I can't get my head around the idea that a vote for Warren is a vote to repudiate Obama-ism and yet this article posits that BHO himself sees it that way. Does Warren?

It's weird, Warren reads so clearly to me to be the "if you like Obama you'll like _______" candidate -- I mean in the sense that their brand is a combination of patriotic inspiration and "the things that are fucked up are fixable and while I'm giving this inspirational speech my team of nerds with advanced degrees is nailing down the details"

― Guayaquil (eephus!), Tuesday, November 26, 2019 3:56 PM (eight minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

otm

Like I can't get my head around the idea that a vote for Warren is a vote to repudiate Obama-ism and yet this article posits that BHO himself sees it that way. Does Warren?

― Guayaquil (eephus!), Tuesday, November 26, 2019 2:57 PM (fifteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

obama and warren have had their differences

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/05/the-five-flash-points-of-the-long-simmering-obama-warren-feud/446433/

What is a technocrat?

Someone who believes fine tuning policy is enough and deemphasizes that they need to wrest political power away from the people preventing good policies from being enacted.

Warren isn’t one

warren built her reputation on aggressive criticism of the obama admin's response to the financial crisis. no doubt obama's memory on that is a lil longer and more specific than the public's (and also i think he thinks she has been Ungrateful to him for the opportunity to be his foil) but he's not wrong to interpret a prospective warren nomination as the party moving away from the ideology his name's on. this is why despite being a solid sanders vote and getting full-body hives from the word "smart" i can't ever stop liking warren: i remember 2009 and agree w obama that there's a meaningful difference between a party that congratulates itself for being mature enough to recognize larry summers' genius and one that doesn't.

qft

https://www.theroot.com/pete-buttigieg-is-a-lying-mf-1840038708

Apologies if that's already been posted.

can kinda see this race turning into a brokered convention where sanders and warren delegates team up against buttigieg and biden delegates.

xp that article (and the clip that inspired it) are pretty damning for mayo pete. still struggling to understand his constituency. is it just "i'd vote biden but he's old"?

the slate piece defending buttigieg i.e. "'overcompensating bootlicker' is a protected class" is so fucking stupid

There's a follow-up to that Root piece; it went up about two hours ago.

The first thing you should know about me is that I absolutely hate talking on the phone.

My friends, family and co-workers all know this about me. It’s not the talking that bothers me, it’s the anticipation angst from waiting for a phone call. Therapy and self-reflection have informed me that my subconscious anxiety is fueled by the fact that I’ve received news of personal and family tragedies via telephone.

Also, talking bothers me.

The second thing you should know about me is that I will fight.

I don’t enjoy fighting. I don’t even fight very well. In fact, if I combined my amateur fist-fighting record, my jiu-jitsu sparring, all of my slap-boxing exhibitions, and the time Zevalon Jackson slapped me for talking smack while running a Boston on her in spades, my winning percentage is well below .500. But I believe fisticuffs are a legitimate way to settle disputes while arguments are usually pointless exercises to get one party to proclaim why the other party is wrong. I’d rather you beat me up.

So when I received a text message from South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg’s presidential campaign about an article I wrote, I genuinely hoped that he was going to send four or five of his thugs over to rough me up and that would be it. (And if you don’t believe there are Pete Buttigieg supporters out there willing to throw hands, then you probably aren’t on Twitter. I think they should call themselves the “Pete Patrol.” Or the “Buttigang.”)

I figured one of his surrogates would argue with me for a few minutes and I could continue my day trying to be a thorn in the side of white supremacy (The third thing you should know is that I actually keep a small photo of the mouse from Pinky and the Brain beside my bed that says: “What are you going to do today, Michael?” The answer is always the same: “Fuck with white people.”)

Luckily, as soon as I agreed to take a phone call, the phone rang. The voice sounded vaguely familiar and I knew it wasn’t a surrogate or a campaign volunteer when the person said:

“I don’t think I’ve ever been called a ‘lying motherfucker’ before.”

It was Pete Buttigieg.

Well, I thought. Maybe he does want to fight.

elsewhere on the Buttigieg beat

“We will support candidates who focus on showing voters what we are for — not just what we are against — and understand how to do so in terms of our everyday lives,” he continued.

Two years later, as his 2020 presidential campaign began to take off, Buttigieg shut down the group. And it hadn’t come close to living up to his billing of its aims.

The PAC had done relatively little to help Democrats during the 2018 midterm elections, when the party waged its hard-fought battle to win control of the U.S. House. But it had paid significant sums to a host of Democratic consultants and staffers to promote Buttigieg’s image. Of the slightly more than $400,000 Buttigieg raised for the PAC, it donated just $37,000 to other Democratic candidates.

At the same time, the PAC paid nearly $70,000 to Lis Smith, who served as Buttigieg’s spokesperson and became the communications director for his presidential bid. Another $27,500 went to Michael Schmuhl, who served as the PAC’s treasurer and is now Buttigieg’s campaign manager. The PAC’s finance director received $34,500. A top Democratic media consulting firm was paid $28,500.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/pete-buttigiegs-pac-was-supposed-to-help-elect-democrats-it-mostly-promoted-him_n_5ddd6cbde4b0913e6f74ff7e?aw

Nathan Robinson, whose piece trashing Buttigieg as just another elite Harvard neoliberal was widely praised in my circles, now has a piece trashing Elizabeth Warren as just another elite Harvard neoliberal; let's see how it goes!

always good to hear from harvard phd student nathan robinson

https://www.theroot.com/pete-buttigieg-called-me-heres-what-happened-1840055464

Look, I know I shouldn’t be using obscenities around the maybe-president (Please don’t tell my mother), but he said “motherfucker” first! Plus, he went to Catholic school and served in the Navy, two of the three cussing-est organizations in the world (Donald Trump’s cabinet remains No. 1). I’m pretty sure you have to say “motherfucker” to pass the Naval officers’ exam.

Someone who believes fine tuning policy is enough and deemphasizes that they need to wrest political power away from the people preventing good policies from being enacted.

Oh, interesting. I usually understand "technocracy" as something more like "rule by an elite chosen for their specialized expertise". Technocracy can be radical (the Soviet Union may have been technocratic) but it is not populist aiui. Obv most large complex societies need some amount of technocracy but, as a matter of emphasis, I can see how both Warren and Buttigieg are among the more technocratic candidates in different ways. If there is a significant contingent of the party that places a high emphasis on credentials/'qualifications'/detailed-sounding plans (and it's believable to me that there is), I can see why someone might hope that they come back to Warren.

maybe my definition is too tied to the american context. in both cases, though, the soviet and the american there is an idea that efficiency is more important than democracy. i.e. if the right people are making the decisions, what's the problem?

Yes, absolutely.

btw the reaction to the Root piece on what I call the Centrist Clintonite F*gg*t news site is "clearly written by a homophobe and/or Russian troll."

in both cases, though, the soviet and the american there is an idea that efficiency is more important than democracy

have linked it before but this is a fun, rangy orwell piece (and obvious early thinking-thru of lots from 1984) on what was called "managerialism" back when its ideologues were first pivoting to the corporate sector. it's not "fake" that pete feels to me but something closer to the kind of cynical described here:

The rulers of this new society will be the people who effectively control the means of production: that is, business executives, technicians, bureaucrats and soldiers, lumped together by Burnham, under the name of ‘managers’. These people will eliminate the old capitalist class, crush the working class, and so organise society that all power and economic privilege remain in their own hands....

The masses, it seems, have vague aspirations towards liberty and human brotherhood, which are easily played upon by power-hungry individuals or minorities. So that history consists of a series of swindles, in which the masses are first lured into revolt by the promise of Utopia, and then, when they have done their job, enslaved over again by new masters....

Political activity... is a special kind of behaviour, characterised by its complete unscrupulousness, and occurring only among small groups of the population, especially among dissatisfied groups whose talents do not get free play under the existing form of society. The great mass of the people ... will always be unpolitical. In effect, therefore, humanity is divided into two classes: the self-seeking, hypocritical minority, and the brainless mob whose destiny is always to be led or driven, as one gets a pig back to the sty by kicking it on the bottom or by rattling a stick inside a swill-bucket, according to the needs of the moment. And this beautiful pattern is to continue for ever.

the soviet and the american there is an idea that efficiency is more important than democracy

The only problem I see that we face atm which seems to cry out for immediate technocratic solutions to leapfrog over democratic hegemony is climate change. Even the root issue of population control could wait a bit for democracy to catch up with existential necessity without courting utter disaster, but climate change is charging down on us like the 2004 Christmas tsunami on the shores of the Indian Ocean.

A principle difference between Warren's and Buttigieg's brands of technocracy is that moderates/centrists offer no solutions to existential threats like climate crisis or emerging hereditary plutocracy. Warren, if elected, won't accomplish 10% of her plans, but we have to move the Overton window.

principle principal

Thanks for the definitions everyone. I had to mentally dissociate that technocrats from the concept of expertise.

xxxxp

a lot more than half the electorate doesn’t care about climate change

I just couldn't let this one slip by. Let's review some polling numbers.

- According to Gallup, 44% of Americans worry a great deal about climate change.
- Another Gallup poll from 2018 shows that 62% of respondents think the gov't is not doing enough for the environment.
- A recent poll from Pew shows that 67% feel that the gov't is doing too little to reduce the effects of climate change.

Maybe a better statement is "a lot more than half the electorate isn't willing to sacrifice anything for climate change."

100% of people support "doing something" for climate change that they'll never notice

this drops to about 50% when people realize that something would have to change that they would notice

Citation?