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

making grand promises about how your program is better is not sufficient to winning elections

https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fmedia.salon.com%2F2013%2F04%2Fchange_we_need.jpg&f=1&nofb=1

thanks for the personal attack tho mordy, good to see civility isn't a problem for you

i'd like to think that a coherent vision of an america which offers its citizens decent healthcare, education and work in a society committed to averting climate catastrophe would be more motivating for voters and non-voters than 'orange man bad' but ymmv i guess

Most Americans don't have a coherent vision of their day post-breakfast. Focus them on an enemy (and Trump is happily doing a lot of the work in that department himself), wind 'em up and watch 'em go.

Lol, DJP, I'm with you there, although my personal fantasy is more of a French Revolution scenario.

bernie's messaging on who america's enemies are is pretty clear too iirc xp

bernie's messaging on who america's enemies are is pretty clear too iirc xp

What I meant is, Trump is doing a really good job of jumping up and down, waving his arms and shouting, "Over here! Look at me! I am your enemy! Me!"

Seriously, the idea of most Americans having any idea what the candidates and parties stand for, or how politics and our political institutions function, is laughable on its face.

Speaking as a product of American public education, I can't help but issue a hearty 'what the fuck is a politics?'

how are y'all doin today

I am proud to report that there were stodgy farmers wearing "fuck trump" t-shirts showing up to caucuses

just trying to figure out if I can afford to enter a clinical trial to treat my illness on my marketplace healthplan and a permatemp job

so, nothing to do with politics...

xp

Folks if y’all are gonna keep this up all winter im gonna hurl

get a bucket

I'm feeling twinges of deep anxiety the likes of which I have thankfully dodged for a number of months. Kinda thinking I need to not pay any attention to the primaries, however irresponsible that might feel in the abstract. Because, like, if this is any kind of preview, I will most assuredly aneuryze before we get to November.

The news is a machine designed to make you keep staring at it out of anxiety and has almost no value

There’s nothing “responsible” about knowing what’s going on. I still don’t really know what Isis is

Isis is the first transgender contestant to compete in a cycle of America's Next Top Model

Oh shit I should get on that

ME:"An Iowa caucus victory?

At this time of year?

at this time of day?

in this part of the country?

Localized entirely within the app that you own?"

PETE:"Yes"

ME:"May I see it`"

PETE:"No"

— unforgetable luncheon sweetie (@Glennfinito) February 4, 2020

Useful thread:

I don't think caucus turnout is indicative of general voter enthusiasm. A big problem with the caucus is that an expectation of high turnout can reduce turnout, because long lines create a traffic jam that adds a very long wait to what is already a big time committent.

— Will Wilkinson 🌐 (@willwilkinson) February 4, 2020

The news is a machine designed to make you keep staring at it out of anxiety and has almost no value

― Swilling Ambergris, Esq. (silby), Tuesday, February 4, 2020 9:44 AM (seven minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

otm

our next president should outlaw broadcast news j/k but really they're all so bad

fwiw I'd be more interested in comparing the numbers to the 2004 numbers when we also had an incumbent republican president hell-bent on driving the country directly into a sinkhole

fwiw my coworker made an excellent point that we really need a federally funded nonpartisan election agency that can provide infrastructure and services to any sort of election across the country

he was looking at it from a computer and operational security perspective, but I think it logistically makes sense

I love how the results of 100k Iowan caucusgoers are delayed by less than 24 hours and the media is wall to wall WTF OUR SYSTEM IS BROKEN HOW WILL AMERICA SURVIVE!!1!!1! A few million disenfranchised minority voters in North Carolina, Georgia, Wisconsin, and Kansas would like a word.

Sorry but "federally funded" and "nonpartisan" are mutually exclusive now.

I feel like in the old days they would have just had everybody fax their results to the central office and it would have worked fine. Technology backward steps, I guess .

Folks if y’all are gonna keep this up all winter im gonna hurl

― Swilling Ambergris, Esq. (silby), Tuesday, February 4, 2020 11:42 AM (twenty-four minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

to be fair they're only going to keep it up for about a month or two of winter, then they'll keep it up all spring, summer and fall

(I don't actually know what "they" or "it" are referring to here, I just couldn't resist the low-hanging joke)

over/under on results announcement? nothin til 4pm Central i'd say

just not sure what day

prescient

I am hearing a tentative 4pm from my person

this seems reasonable and not like it will cause any problems at all

Iowa party officials are holding a call with the campaigns.

Troy Price tells them he'll put out about *50%* of results at 4 p.m. today.

There are objections.

He won't say when the rest are coming.

— Shane Goldmacher (@ShaneGoldmacher) February 4, 2020

jfc you're this late, why not wait till you've got them all in?!

throwing a life preserver to those unmoored CNN anchors

We're going to give you 50% and one of the candidate's numbers are false. You get to guess which!

as many pundits have mentioned, the real winner in this is biden.

from the looks of it last night, along with the early data provided by sanders and pete, it seems like he was WELL below the top 3 (sanders, pete, warren), and down in amy "punchin' above my weight!' klobuchar territory. one of the big takeaways right now should be "biden gets his ass kicked in iowa", but instead he's over in new hampshire, smelling like death

moving to full-on gameshow mode

"I'd like to solve the puzzle, Troy Price"

Michael R. Bloomberg’s presidential campaign moved on Tuesday to exploit the chaotic outcome of the Iowa caucuses, escalating an already massive campaign of television advertising and publicly making the case that a messy outcome in the early states opened the way for Mr. Bloomberg.

Mr. Bloomberg, the former New York City mayor whose campaign is fueled by a multibillion-dollar personal fortune, conferred with advisers on Tuesday morning about the muddled results in Iowa. Encouraged by the murky outcome, Mr. Bloomberg authorized his campaign team to double his spending on television commercials in every market where he is currently advertising and expand his campaign’s field staff to more than two thousand people, strategists involved in the conversations said.

The Bloomberg campaign has been attempting to chart an unprecedented route to the Democratic nomination, skipping the first four nominating contests in February but aggressively contesting the array of larger states that begin voting in March. From the outset, Mr. Bloomberg’s advisers believed the strategy would only have a chance of working if another moderate candidate — most likely former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. — failed to emerge from February with a decisive upper hand in the race.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/04/us/politics/michael-bloomberg-campaign-ads.html

was just about to c + p +

so Bloomberg doesn't see Biden as the winner in all this hoohah.

If Bloomberg actually gave a fuck about anyone but Bloomberg he could've put his money towards a purpose much more constructive than wildly firing a cannon at the legitimate democratic nominees.

Bloomberg 2020: Because I deserve a chance to live in the White House.

ftr, when I heard a while back that Iowa Democrats were planning to rely on a new app for reporting results, my first thought was, 'that's bound to turn out badly'.

I know none of this should be at all surprising but it's still wild to me that when Bloomberg announced the consensus was that there was absolutely zero constituency of people who could theoretically be excited about his campaign and yet through sheer money and not a single thing else he has made himself viable.

the great thing is that he can't be corrupted because he already has a bunch of money!!!

he is not viable

viable? in the sense that he never has to drop out for lack of money

well yeah but he isn't going to win delegates

No one is hitting back with shit like him buying Toomey's re-election in Pennsylvania, giving us Brett Kavanaugh and ensuring Mitch McConnell's ability to dry fuck the country.