2020 Democratic presidential primary

Morbzbait

Right, if he had taken the stance that deficit scolds should fuck off and Social Security isn’t going to be touched (wasn’t this basically Al Gore’s position?) the acceptable parameters of economic policy in the Democratic Party might look different. And I’m not so idealistic that I can’t acknowledge the decent things he did and the constraints he was under, but it does affect my impression of him that he was happy to screw over millions of people for the sake of a bipartisan deal that would impress the David Brookses of the world.

jfc I keep forgetting I'm on a board with male white libs who continually forget how race works in this country

anyway

at this point I'll vote for Bernie or Warren in the CA primary, whichever one is ahead.

to bring it back to obama: if either of those candidates is ahead he will be coming out against them

but the lesson to be learned from that dynamic is not "our guy was BAD" it's that the opposition (as currently constituted) is not worth negotiating with.

Obama hasn’t learned that, though. Nor have any of the candidates he favors over Bernie and Warren this time.

if either of those candidates is ahead he will be coming out against them

lol no he won't, shall we place bets

if either of those candidates is ahead he will be coming out against them

lol no he won't, shall we place bets

― Οὖτις, Thursday, December 5, 2019 3:17 PM (forty-nine seconds ago) bookmarkflaglink

california is a little early i suppose

Obama will stay out of the primary until the convention. I guess you guys are all privy to behind-the-scenes maneuvering that you seem to think matters, I don't particularly give a shit or believe anything that leaks to the press on that particular topic. He's not gonna publicly endorse Joe Biden or anything, that's fingers-on-the-scale/norms-violating stuff, and Obama - more than anything - is an institutionalist.

just Bernie is what Politico said xp

i have my doubts, the Dems will be slightly more subtle about it

Wouldn't the norm be that he endorsed his Veep? What did Carter do in 84?

He’s the guy who kept Biden out in 2016, of course he’ll work behind the scenes.

Xxxp

I’m not saying he literally should have said “deficit scolds fuck off” but he was accomplished enough rhetorically to argue that fiscal responsibility did not require cuts to Social Security, it’s not like that’s an unpopular stance.

Anyway.

to bring it back to obama

― #FBPIRA (jim in vancouver), Thursday, December 5, 2019 3:16 PM (fourteen minutes ago)

why tho

/there are ILX polls for this I think? or maybe those are just "best".

guys i just gave majorr pete a swirlie feels great

frightened white people and their lib Cuban American cohort.

new board description?

ha yeah my point is for all the handwringing over Obama’s terrible badness when compared with imaginary superior presidents, he tends not to look so bad when compared against uh any other actual US president in the lifetime of any ILXor

Drinking a gallon of pee was infinitely superior to eating a pound of shit.

I can tell you are going to just love the next several presidents! Here's a hint: when all you get on the menu are choices ranging between major destruction and mild amelioration, it's OK to choose the amelioration every time.

Drinking a gallon of pee was infinitely superior to eating a pound of shit.

― Greta Van Show Feets BB (milo z), Thursday, December 5, 2019 5:59 PM (nineteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

depends on what you're into

it's OK to choose the amelioration every time.

Pretty sure no one's argued that they wish they had voted for McCain or Romney. I'll take the gallon of piss over the pound of shit every time - but I'm not real happy about either.

Finally, consensus

Drinking a gallon of pee was infinitely superior to eating a pound of shit.

― Greta Van Show Feets BB (milo z), Thursday, December 5, 2019 5:59 PM (nineteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Could you ice it down first?

oh goodie another Obama argument

This is a scat argument now.

skibbidy bop obama wowowwwww

I'll just quote from this part of the NYRB piece that jaymc linked earlier today on Democratic (Party) Direction

The story in Colorado is more transparent—and, from the Democratic viewpoint, much more heartening. Democrats there are on a winning streak that culminated, in 2018, with a state-government trifecta. Republicans had dominated the Colorado legislature since the 1960s. What happened?

In the early 2000s, Winter relates, a quartet of rich, politically inexperienced liberals (“the Gang of Four”) decided to stop entrusting political outcomes to the Democratic powers that be and to take matters into their own hands. Applying a “business mentality” and adopting the mantra “Check your shit at the door,” they decided to scrap policy debates and instead to do “whatever it took to put Democrats in office, under the assumption that having more Democrats in general would be better for any one donor or organization’s preferred cause, whether gay rights or labor law.”

Of course, Colorado Democrats aren't always the optimal progressives you want in office, which is why the author later concludes that

They need to embrace partisan commitment. It is mystifying and demoralizing for grassroots activists that their basic assumptions (say, that the Republican Party, not just the Republican president, is unfit for power in a democracy) find no echo among their Washington representatives. When ordinary people are emptying their wallets, getting arrested, and putting their careers on hold to fight for the cause, the least they expect of the well-paid professional politicians they have worked to elect is that they will conduct themselves with equal determination and will side with them, not Republicans. Republican politicians, some Democratic officials seem not to grasp, are not guys in a bar with opinions different from your own. They are people who have chosen to devote their lives to undermining the core interests of your supporters and their families and communities. When Representative Peter King, a Republican from Long Island and a loud Trump fan, recently announced his retirement, he was lauded by Schumer for being “principled” and having “stood head & shoulders above everyone else.” If the Democratic Party is to remain viable, that kind of thing has to stop.

It's a very good piece. Follow the link and read the whole thing. 15000 posts by Iowa!!

re: the exchange with the guy in Iowa, it's much less of a dust up than the headlines would have you believe. People are hysterically claiming Biden called the guy fat but I don't hear it; at the very end he says some like "look, that.." not "look, fat". He did call him a liar which is maybe kind of tactless but I don't expect tact from Biden.

That is a good piece. I was intrigued that Joseph O'Neill seems to have taken up political punditry as a sideline to writing novels.

xp

Coolest thing Biden's done in years tbh

Bloomberg's Thursday Night Football ad felt like a for-profit trade school ad.

he's not very good at this, is he

In a television interview, Mr. Bloomberg’s first since he announced his presidential campaign, the billionaire and former mayor of New York City rejected the idea that he had an unfair advantage, saying that while other candidates asked donors for money, he had made his money himself and then given most of it away.

“I turn and they’re criticizing me for it,” he said on “CBS This Morning.” “They had a chance to go out and make a lot of money. And how much of their own money do they put into their campaigns?”

a man of the people!

He uses his own money because he’s smart!

why didn't i think to use my billions of dollars as a campaign resource? oh yeah, it's because i'm not smart

it's such a fucking softball, too. all he has to do is say that corporate money in politics is a big problem, and that (probably lying on this part) while he's lucky because he can primarily draw on his own hard-earned (lol) fortune for his campaign and avoid the nefarious influence of lobbyists/k street (lol) etc etc, he intends to use his advantage to help eliminate the problem bla bla bla

but instead he's just like "why aren't you rich too?"

he must surround himself with yes men, because you'd think the #1 thing for bloomberg and his advisors would be "how are you going to respond to criticisms of your wealth?", and that's what he came up with

bloomberg, after the interview: sorry team, i was really taken off guard by that question about my enormous wealth. why didn't we prepare for that?!

re: the exchange with the guy in Iowa, it's much less of a dust up than the headlines would have you believe. People are hysterically claiming Biden called the guy fat but I don't hear it; at the very end he says some like "look, that.." not "look, fat". He did call him a liar which is maybe kind of tactless but I don't expect tact from Biden.

I don't think this is worth all the hand-wringing that is being done over it, but I'm pretty sure he meant to say 'fat' and then cut himself off before he followed it up with a perjorative. I mean, all that about being 'sedentary' and comparisons of relative fitness.. that's where he was going.

yeah I mean there was no reason Biden would even know what "sedentary" means, let alone how to use it in a sentence.

it's such a fucking softball, too. all he has to do is say that corporate money in politics is a big problem, and that (probably lying on this part) while he's lucky because he can primarily draw on his own hard-earned (lol) fortune for his campaign and avoid the nefarious influence of lobbyists/k street (lol) etc etc, he intends to use his advantage to help eliminate the problem bla bla bla

even trump knew well enough to say p much exactly this

the question is, are we more talented and insightful than the leading political advisors in the country, or...does bloomberg surround himself with people who are afraid to say he's wrong

honestly i would like for bloomberg to replace biden/pete as the centrist asshole in the race, because at least he would talk about climate change a bunch

the question is, are we more talented and insightful than the leading political advisors in the country, or...does bloomberg surround himself with people who are afraid to say he's wrong

he surrounds himself with people who enjoy getting paid. (sincere) talented and insightful people don't sign off on "let's skip all the early states and be legends" as a viable strategy

god I hate this fucking piece of shit

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/henrygomez/pete-buttigieg-chick-fil-a-gaydar

"I do not approve of their politics,” Buttigieg told listeners, “but I kind of approve of their chicken.”

“My belief is that we should primarily deal with political issues in the political arena.”

this is grade-school level idiotic

pete-buttigieg-chick-fil-a-gaydar

filed under "URLs I Will Never Willingly Click"

But then you'll miss the photo of him staring into the middle distance with a button that appears to say "Beige" on his sweater.

Is Kamala Harris kicking him in the neck? I would click on that.

The article is from March 27, 2019, so Kamala and Pete probably hadn't met, yet.