Your next 2020 Democratic presidential primary thread: Now we're serious

ugh. ban cars.

Bernie would almost certainly want every American to be able to travel locally on trams or intercity on a big choo-choo while wearing a conductor's hat and smiling out the window, but given the current state of American infrastructure this is absolutely not a votewinner, and major steps toward it could not be achieved* in a four-year term

* without cancelling the Pentagon's entire budget and committing it towards loads of new jobs for rail construction and operation, which the fantasy Bernie in my head would do by executive order on his second day in office, u love to see it

the not a votewinner thing is real though.

I don't think this would put off the voters if it's sold properly as a structured plan.

Simon H otfm

I don't think this would put off the voters if it's sold properly as a structured plan.

I don't think it would put off a constituency if it's sold etc etc. And winning votes is more urgent than not putting off votes. Energy spent on explaining policies to voters who don't understand how the policies benefit them is energy wasted, given the attention span assigned to voters by the US media. "LOCK HER UP" and "BUILD THE WALL" connected, and "MEDICARE 4 ALL" gets its point across in nearly as compact a delivery.

Even "the top 1% of the top 1%" sounds like homework to the lumpenvoter: Warren is folksying it pretty well with "the first $50 million is yours to keep, then we take 2c out of every dollar on top of that, and we turn it into education and housing and etc etc" but it still gets turned into a "YOU'RE RAISING TAXES" cudgel.

Explaining how America's insane dependence on cars & guzzoline & construction of freeways & devaluing of trains is the result of deliberate anti-worker conspiracies by oligarchs a century ago, and that commuting & downtowns & neighbourhoods & parks are all improved by public transport, is more effectively done when you have a few years to message, rather than three seconds.

Booker's out. Formal announcement coming later today. The only remaining question is how long he continues "dating" Rosario Dawson.

Eric Andre has been canvassing for Bernie, so this is bound to put an extra spring in his step.

nyt is announcing their endorsement on 1/19, and they've started publishing the transcripts of long interviews between the candidates and the editorial board, something they've never published before (to my knowledge). those interviews are being published this week, starting with sanders and steyer today.

for those with a subscription: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/01/13/opinion/election-nytimes-the-choice.html

I'd expect them to go w/ Warren

I would love to see their reasoning if they pick Biden.

Eric Andre has been canvassing for Bernie, so this is bound to put an extra spring in his step.

― bold caucasian eroticism (Simon H.), Monday, January 13, 2020 11:10 AM (twenty-seven minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

happy to see the endorsement, sad to see eric andre split with his good friend vulture capitalist hannibal buress

xp simon

that was my first thought as well. warren or biden. i wrote in a long comment about warren and sanders. hopefully they will publish my comment and it will singlehandedly swing the primary toward them

if anyone can do it Karl, it's you!

“I like Elizabeth Warren. [optional]” the script begins. “In fact, she’s my second choice. But here’s my concern about her.”

This is brutal, don't see how she could recover from such nasty personal attacks

thanks calzino! see, what the NYT and the WORLD doesn't understand is that of the candidates left, only sanders and warren really GET climate change. you can't incrementally tackle climate change now. maybe back in the 1990s and 80s when tons of people were already sounding the alarms about it, but not now. and they GET it, see???

that was the gist of my comment. get ready for the new age of taurus everyone, the zeitgeist is coming

This is brutal, don't see how she could recover from such nasty personal attacks

It's hilarious what ppl interpret as "toxic" now. Apparently no one remembers....every previous, far worse Dem primary cycle

warren should hit back twice as hard by instructing her outreach team to let everyone know that sanders is her second pick and that she also doesn't completely agree with him on everything

then, just to freak the hell out of everyone, they should give a joint press conference where they both reaffirm that they are their own top choices for president, and that they don't agree on everything. maybe they could even talk a little about what they disagree about, and why, so voters could make an informed choice between them. they could call this night a Democratic Debate and do on tv, it would be incredible

https://youtu.be/kddX7LqgCvc

that's a good idea too - instead of scheduling the debate, structure it takes place as a series of unexpected phone calls at 3:00am. candidates won't know when they'll get the call or what the topic will be. they have to pick up the phone and give the best answer they can, to whatever it is. these calls take place over a month or two, on an unpredictable schedule.

if that freaks people out, there's an incremental version: candidates must answer questions and debate while preparing a 4-course meal for a panel of culinary experts. at the end of thing, they are rated 50% on their political acumen, 50% on cooking skills

because that's pretty much what being president is like, along with occasionally thinking and praying about people who die in mass shootings

I like Warren better than Sanders but come on, that call script is extremely milquetoast "Look we both like them both but here's my argument for why my candidate is incrementally better and you should vote for him," it's not exactly scorched-earth shit.

I think people are marinating themselves in Twitter accounts by a small number of very loud "Warren is a WAR PIG" people, somehow convincing themselves that is the Official View of The Left, and then seeing that subtext everywhere

because that's pretty much what being president is like, along with occasionally thinking and praying about people who die in mass shootings

― But guess what? Nobody gives a toot!😂 (Karl Malone)

and offering Happy Meals to fire fighters.

the idea that Sanders will bring in people that Warren wouldn't is pretty compelling though

I like them both but Sanders' hardline stance on war makes me favor him

I'm sad about Booker being out. I was sad about Harris being out too. Even though I probably wouldn't have ended up voting for either of them. There are just a lot of people who would make fine Presidents who won't get to be.

Erik Loomis: "When the left supports white candidates and liberals support white candidates and centrists support white candidates and whites support white candidates and blacks support white candidates and Latinos support white candidates, a white candidate field is what you get!"

I mean, he's not wrong but

I think people are marinating themselves in Twitter accounts by a small number of very loud "Warren is a WAR PIG" people, somehow convincing themselves that is the Official View of The Left, and then seeing that subtext everywhere

― Guayaquil (eephus!), Monday, January 13, 2020 12:22 PM (eleven minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

at this point I am substantially-to-heavily leaning Bernie, but given that some of those people have harassed my friends who support Warren (including comments on their physical appearance, weight, and other things of that nature) I'm not sure "marinating" is the correct word

OK fair point. I don't do intra-Dem politics on Twitter and I am not a member of the gender whose physical appearance tends to get derided on Twitter so I was not really thinking about this.

I've been told often I'm not lefty enough by many long-haired white Bernie supporters to know it's a thing.

Booker is a hilariously transparent con man and machine-friendly NJ pol

raise thy standards

I mean, basic focus grouping would tell you that the only people who thought black people were going to automatically line up to vote for Booker were white people

Machine politics is probably more noxious to me than DLC third wayism in terms of the prior century’s legacies to the Democratic Party. In no small part because locally they helped elect the handpicked successor of our child-raping mayor.

sure ok cnn

https://www.cnn.com/2020/01/13/politics/bernie-sanders-elizabeth-warren-meeting/index.html

The description of that meeting is based on the accounts of four people: two people Warren spoke with directly soon after the encounter, and two people familiar with the meeting.

are they sure that's four different people

https://www.cnn.com/2020/01/13/politics/bernie-sanders-elizabeth-warren-meeting/index.html

sure ok cnn

prez my man

Sanders' response is pretty good:

"It is ludicrous to believe that at the same meeting where Elizabeth Warren told me she was going to run for president, I would tell her that a woman couldn't win," Sanders said. "It's sad that, three weeks before the Iowa caucus and a year after that private conversation, staff who weren't in the room are lying about what happened. What I did say that night was that Donald Trump is a sexist, a racist and a liar who would weaponize whatever he could. Do I believe a woman can win in 2020? Of course! After all, Hillary Clinton beat Donald Trump by 3 million votes in 2016."

won't be enough for the Bernie Didn't Campaign for Clinton fantasists

the idea that Sanders will bring in people that Warren wouldn't is pretty compelling though

Warren has been my top choice since the campaign began, but this is what's making me reconsider. Of course, by the time I vote in mid-March, who knows what the field will look like.

i for one am dropping out of the presidential race

Brad won't settle for being my VIP

I kind of relate to this (I haven't spent any time around active Warren campaigners, but the realization that the Warren base is demographically narrow was disheartening):

“I had always liked Warren and I liked the idea of having another candidate with progressive stances, who was a woman and a little younger than Bernie, that I could potentially support,” said Lauren Rinaldi, a Philadelphia-based artist who was an early organizer of the "Philly for Warren" Facebook group and first spoke with POLITICO at a Warren campaign event in July. “I was also thinking that maybe she could be the candidate to sort of bridge the Hillary people and the Bernie people.

She described the experience as "fun and a bit exhilarating at the beginning, but then I started to feel a little turned off by the whole thing; I found that I was in a bubble of mostly white, college-educated supporters with, what felt like to me, almost an artificial 'wokeness.'" Rinaldi is now supporting Sanders, as she did in 2016.

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/01/09/elizabeth-warren-2020-closing-argument-097023

artificial wokeness
sets the body free
artificial wokeness
baby you & me

Not that true real authentic American wokeness we all crave

BREAKING:

2 ex-warren staffers told me that in a confidential meeting between Bernie and Warren, Bernie kept insisting that "boys go to college to get more knowledge" and that "girls are from jupiter, because they are stupider"

he would sing the song and clap until we cried

— mister angry at oscar (golden man bad) (@mistermoviespod) January 13, 2020

"and that commuting & downtowns & neighbourhoods & parks are all improved by public transport, is more effectively done when you have a few years to message, rather than three seconds."

A campaign won't be three seconds and actually a lot can be done over a couple of months. Job if the campaign to put into place a set of messages that can resonate. There has been quite a lot of messaging over the Green New Deal so it would be an extension of that.

"two people Warren spoke with directly soon after the encounter, and two people familiar with the meeting"

is this just a fancy way of saying "four people who were not present at the meeting"?