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

but would they not vote for the nice 71-year-old lady if she's had six months of TV ads and interviews by November

what are Biden's policy platforms with which they are most engaged?

the older folks in my family that are leaning joe i would say are primarily focused on beating trump.

Gad you defeatists for the past three hours.

Its the JUDICIARY, dummies. Even if Biden or Bloomberg or Buttigieg don't tickle your nethers, even if you understand that both Bernie and Warren won't have enough of a mandate to get more than a small fraction of their platforms enacted, a Trump reelection means a judiciary packed with Federalist Society cunts for the next several decades.

I will gladly vote for any Dem in November. Among other things, because we're one supreme court justice away from clothes hangar abortions...

I will gladly vote for any Dem in November.

As will everyone but Morbs.

If I broke my "never vote for someone who voted for the Iraq War" pledge in a meaningless red state election once, I can do it again.

Its the JUDICIARY, dummies

still requires Senate votes...

This is a very good argument for Bernie's electability:

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/01/bernie-sanders-message-media-machine-could-be-potent-against-trump

I'm not worried about his electability

Okay. Just read that article and wanted to post it somewhere, and I've quit Twitter, so.

I'm at happy hour. Hve we killed the New Deal

no, but we are rebranding it as the Big Fuckin Deal in honor of uncle joe

Yeah sorry milo, a meaningless vote in NY for Biden would make me wanna jump off my fucking roof more than cancer costs under Obamacare.

I’m not throwing stones.

Proud Nader 2000 voter

We really need some senatorial candidates running on the platform of abolishing the Senate

― Swilling Ambergris, Esq. (silby)

That's a Republican position

― totally unnecessary bewbz of exploitation (DJP)

It is?

― TikTok to the (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn)

Pretty sure there is a conservative-libertarian-"Tenther" position that wants to repeal the 17th Amendment that nationalized direct election of Senators, and return to having state legislatures appoint Senators.

The idea being that Senators should advocate for the state itself vis-a-vis the Federal union, as opposed to advocating for their constituent humans within the Federal construct, like House reps are supposed to.

The philosophy is that states aren't mere geographic subdivisions within a nation-state. The idea is that states are more like the sovereign countries that make up (for example) the European Union, as opposed to the way that, e.g., a US state has counties in it.

So as I understand it, it's not so much that Republicans want to do away with the Senate. They just want it to return to where it was in, say, 1850. It's a states' rights argument.

Now let's pause to consider whether there might be some problematic aspects to that position. I seem to remember we've heard about "states' rights" before and that didn't go so well.

nah, fuck it, the Senate is undemocratic

Yeah Alfred sums up my objection.

Also late to this but as much as I abhor death cultism its appeal is undeniable and it wins elections for the other side

tangent, but serious question: besides being annoying, is there any actual benefit for bloomberg from being in the next debate that he is not already accomplishing by throwing shitloads of money at TV advertising

It might add marginally to his 'seriousness' as a candidate, but in general, I'd say no measurable benefit. He's been the mayor of a city much larger than South Bend.

If he thinks he can make a persuasive case for the claims in his TV ads by speaking whole sentences, then it's a benefit for him to get to do so. If he believes he can make a more convincing case for himself as a candidate when set against the others, or if he has a notion that his TV ads are shallow and unconvincing, it benefits him to be set against the others and to add to his seriousness.

(People in this thread may not have the same estimates of his capacity at making a case for himself as he does, but these seem plausible thoughts for an individual to have. One certainly hopes that being the mayor of a city with a larger population than most countries gave him the political awareness that his ads do not, in themselves, do anything at all to back up their own claims that Mike Will Made It Git-R-Done.)


[I dunno that said mayorship says much to the great lumpenvoter tbh]

There should be no more primary debates. They're pointless and stupid. And I'm sick of Pete Buttigeig's fucking face. Just start voting and weeding out more of these cunts, as quickly as possible.

a-motherfuckin-men

man, the DNC. awful.

When @CoryBooker led an effort to change the debate thresholds, the DNC refused—saying they couldn’t benefit any candidate.

It seems the only candidate they’re willing to benefit is a billionaire who’s buying his way into the race. Total mess. https://t.co/mw0MhdyjBr

— Julián Castro (@JulianCastro) January 31, 2020

One reason the right has been so successful is they don’t apologize for their beliefs. Another is they understand that centrists are the enemy. https://t.co/iKF9ymqkuP

— Doug Henwood (@DougHenwood) February 1, 2020

#BREAKING: The Des Moines Register, CNN and Selzer & Co. have decided note to release the final installment of the #IowaPoll as planned this evening. https://t.co/tVi97cDFPX

— Des Moines Register (@DMRegister) February 2, 2020

well that's weird

maybe it showed bernie with a 40 pt lead wow what are they hiding

apparently one of the questions, or a person asking the questions, omitted one of the candidates for that one question

I’m drinking a beer downtown des moines right now ama

nbc news local hq is apparently two doors down and the trailers take up half the block. street parking is tight because Yang is three blocks away. canvassing groups are showing up to drink

ppl argue about polling as tho it creates reality not reflects it

News: The @DMRegister is weighing whether to release their @jaselzer poll as planned tonight after @PeteButtigieg camp complained that his name was left off at least one survey questionnaire https://t.co/9dNNMrtUmc

— Jonathan Martin (@jmartNYT) February 2, 2020

the biggest shortfall of this whole damn process is that beto didn't just pile drive that fucking twerp when he sonned him in the debate beef. but here we are.

fight fight fight

(it was julián who bodied buttigieg, yes?)

i do not recall. i regret my uh, “poorly motivated” post. the general frustration and lack of faith in candidate butti that i expressed are real enough tho.

A good, if often frustrating, read

Over the past week, I asked readers of my newsletter to write to me if they’ve switched allegiances throughout the primary, and to explain why. The newsletter is largely made up of people who subscribed to it between 2014 and 2017, with a huge spike during the heady resistance days after Trump’s election. It’s a pretty broad cross-section of progressive readers, roughly 135,000 in all, and, like all large email lists, it’s made up disproportionately of people over the age of 50 or 60. It is not, in other words, simply a hive of Sanders supporters, but over the year has popped with fans of Pete Buttigieg, Amy Klobuchar, Warren, and anyone else running in the primary. More than 100 people wrote back, and many of their responses, with typos fixed, are below.

https://theintercept.com/2020/02/02/voters-switched-candidates/

it cements my growing feeling that Bloomberg might be a real threat despite the whole "skipping the early states" thing

Bloomberg is absolutely a real threat!

Bloomberg is really the only person capable of making me consider a Biden administration fondly.

nobody who reads the intercept is switching to biden haha

I can't imagine Biden won over a lot of new converts with his campaign tbh, anyone who's in the tank for him already was, for the most part, imo

Bloomberg is 3rd only to Warren and Sanders on climate, so I'd frankly prefer him to Biden, Buttigieg, Klobuchar. Some things can be fixed in 4 years, the carbon is in our atmosphere for thousands.

take it from NYers -- Bloomberg wd be a problem

just one strand: rewarding a billionaire who threw RNC protestors into jail w/out charges in nagl

Yet NYers reelected him twice.

ILM, like other lefty circles, is a bit of an echo chamber. Most of the country wouldn't be troubled by the things I infer most on the Left hate about Bloomberg: 1) stop&frisk 2) made his money servicing Wall St.

popcorn.gif

3) is a technocratic billionaire who excites and inspires basically nobody, and is the opposite of the eat-the-rich socialistic impulse that is driving the enthusiasm for sanders, warren, et al.

excites and inspires basically nobody

He's more than willing to take the fight directly to Trump, though, which may win people over.

Response to Trump's tweets and other comments from Bloomberg's National Press Secretary Julie Wood

"The president is lying. He is a pathological liar who lies about everything: his fake hair, his obesity, and his spray-on tan."

— Tarini Parti (@tparti) February 2, 2020

is the opposite of the eat-the-rich socialistic impulse that is driving the enthusiasm for sanders, warren, et al.

Most people in America don't want socialism in the sense of working to benefit other people in their own class. They want to fuck the rich because they hate the rich. If Bloomberg can thread the "I'm rich as fuck but I hate those Wall Street scumbags just as much as you do" needle, he's got a shot. Plus, he can keep throwing money into the furnace all the way to November.

Side note: I don't give a fuck about the protesters he locked up. Protesting in the street outside a political convention is stupid and accomplishes nothing.

The real reason Bloomberg won't go anywhere electorally is because he's a dwarf. Calling him "Mini Mike Bloomberg" is the closest thing to a good idea Trump's had so far.

I'd prefer that Bloomberg spent his money more wisely and gave the maximum $2,800 to every Dem candidate, too.

But he is the sort of candidate that could win low-info Obama-Trump voters. There's a lot of them, and they have the virtue of actually voting regularly, unlike the under 35 demographic.

^ that is, not run, and give several million dollars to every nominated Dem candidate down to state level races.

Shared on Twitter. This is...interesting:

https://twitter.com/NumbersMuncher/status/1224010076370980864/photo/1