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

xp to jimmy

https://i.ibb.co/KxT7SYY/tumblr-lgc0p0zh-QK1qgb5c3o1-500.jpg

Looks like my favorite uncle is tied for first in iowa!

im so off the path i legit dont know which clinton youre demdunking there

Jeb Clinton is the one that’s running this time

Pete's appeal to the average voter who isn't glued to Twitter isn't hard to fathom. he's the only legit candidate under 800 years old, for one thing. he's Obama Lite. he espouses a desire to heal America that everyone on this board knows is absolutely foolish given the state of the Republican party but time and again you see surveyed and interviewed voters reiterate this longing for unity and and an end to partisan divisiveness.

I wonder how much it burns Beto's ass that Pete outmanuevered him so effortlessly.

yeah that's the scary thing about Pete to me is that he seems to have that Biden thing where the more you know about him the less you like him, I feel like the Republicans would just be sitting on a ton of stuff, small time mayor local politics stuff that's going to look terrible in the open

Pete has appeal as long as you don't know anything about him; he becomes a blank for you to project your hopes onto. In other words, a standard politician.

jinx

xxpost FWIW, the GOP doesn't really seem to be into sitting on stuff these days. If President Turd is aware, it's going out in a tweet five minutes later.

I'm just assuming they keep stuff from dad

An interesting article.

An Unsettling New Theory: There Is No Swing Voter

What if everything you think you know about politics is wrong? What if there aren’t really American swing voters—or not enough, anyway, to pick the next president? What if it doesn’t matter much who the Democratic nominee is? What if there is no such thing as “the center,” and the party in power can govern however it wants for two years, because the results of that first midterm are going to be bad regardless? What if the Democrats' big 41-seat midterm victory in 2018 didn’t happen because candidates focused on health care and kitchen-table issues, but simply because they were running against the party in the White House? What if the outcome in 2020 is pretty much foreordained, too?

To the political scientist Rachel Bitecofer, all of that is almost certainly true, and that has made her one of the most intriguing new figures in political forecasting this year.

Bitecofer, a 42-year-old professor at Christopher Newport University in the Hampton Roads area of Virginia, was little known in the extremely online, extremely male-dominated world of political forecasting until November 2018. That’s when she nailed almost to the number the nature and size of the Democrats’ win in the House, even as other forecasters went wobbly in the race’s final days. Not only that, but she put out her forecast back in July, and then stuck by it while polling shifted throughout the summer and fall.

And today her model tells her the Democrats are a near lock for the presidency in 2020, and are likely to gain House seats and have a decent shot at retaking the Senate. If she’s right, we are now in a post-economy, post-incumbency, post record-while-in-office era of politics. Her analysis, as Bitecofer puts it with characteristic immodesty, amounts to nothing less than “flipping giant paradigms of electoral theory upside down.”

...

The classic view is that the pool of American voters is basically fixed: About 55 percent of eligible voters are likely to go to the polls, and the winner is determined by the 15 percent or so of “swing voters” who flit between the parties. So a general election campaign amounts to a long effort to pull those voters in to your side.

Bitecofer has a nickname for this view. She calls it, with disdain, the “Chuck Todd theory of American politics”: “The idea that there is this informed, engaged American population that is watching these political events and watching their elected leaders and assessing their behavior and making a judgment.”

“And it is just not true.”

I guess the block for me is that I find him too unpleasant to blankly project anything onto, especially hope xps

The Dems I know who like him really like him yet can't explain why. Which goes to show how little policy positions matter to many.

as much as it would seem that Bloomberg's candidacy represents a very concerted effort to prevent a potential Bernie nomination, this does feel correct:

It’s amazing to me how much Bloomberg’s presence in the race is hurting Biden and helping Sanders. Bloomberg exists as this theoretical white knight for a certain group of Dem donors/moderates that gives them an escape valve from do-or-die Biden support.

— Chris Hayes (@chrislhayes) February 6, 2020

which of course would mean Bloomberg's primary objective is stroking his own ego, which couldn't possibly be the case.

I mean, yeah, that's the impression I get. In a sense, Bloomberg is the Trump of the 'left' this time around, someone simply looking to boost their profile and who doesn't have any real intention of winning.

"Pete has appeal as long as you don't know anything about him; he becomes a blank for you to project your hopes onto. In other words, a standard politician." this was my experience. When he entered I was like, "yeah! he's smart! he talks well!" but then as time went on I cooled significantly. I don't hate him nearly as much as you all do but he slipped to my third or fourth choice.

You know who else had a hooked penis? Bill Clinton.

Mayor Pete is clearly a lock.

Uh-oh

Many Errors Are Evident in Iowa Caucus Results Released Wednesday

fucking morons

If this isn't the last Iowa caucus...

Trumpists ratfucked Iowa precinct reporting hotline

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-02-06/trump-fans-flooded-iowa-caucus-hotline-top-democrat-says

In light of all the questionable electoral bullshit in 2016, the single most important goddamn thing the people in charge of this thing should've spent the last several years doing is ensuring that the results would be unimpeachable (no pun intended). I mean just what the fuck.

Iowa results, very unimpeachable and very cool

These discrepancies have not gone unnoticed in Bernie circles over the last few days, and have not helped tamp down conspiratorial thinking.

There’s no legal obligation for any of this to work well, right? The Democratic Party (whatever that is, exactly) could decide its nominee based on who can hit the most layups in a minute, or who name the most signatories to the Declaration of Independence. Right?

Pretty much, afaik. One of the bigger concerns, I feel, is utilizing methods of selecting a presidential candidate that don't make your party look like a bunch of hapless clowns.

It's not like these caucus results haven't been shady in the past
There's just been an extra million sets of eyes on the process this time thanks to the app fuckup

Has it ever taken them 5+ days to confirm Iowa caucus results before?

In 2012 the republican caucus was delayed for months iirc

It took 16 days before Santorum was declared winner in 2012 https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/02/04/iowa-second-caucus-debacle-eight-years/

I feel like there should be a name for the kind of mental paradox you find yourself in trying to decide between botched / conspiracy / botched conspiracy

Yeah seriously get over it, press.

Trump outright asked for a do-over of Iowa in 2016 and accused Cruz of cheating. It was forgotten very quickly

the article unperson posted was pretty interesting, not heard of her. definitely *feels* right in some senses but like most of them she seems to dismiss stuff that doesn't fit into her theory.

I like trying to prove that the entire pundit class is entirely useless

I was just about to post the same thing. I am biased because it comports with my belief that there being a material number of swing voters is a myth.

Also, minor lol at her calling the swing voter model the “Chuck Todd theory of American politics”.

agreed. I definitely vibe with the belief that there isn't some group of swing voters out there who are super informed and just carefully weighing the scales between parties every election. that definitely seems like a myth.

I like trying to prove that the entire pundit class is entirely useless

the pundit class are ceaseless in their efforts to prove this hypothesis correct

I hope she's right, of course. That article made me feel better about November than anything I've encountered in the last few weeks. Though it does make me wonder if maybe the person with the best chance of winning, because he can afford to be laser-focused on scaring people about Trump, is Bloomberg.

President Bloomberg would look very much like permanent oligarchy for the USA.

I'm sure I sound like a broken record on this, but getting in a centrist pre-Trump-status-quo dweeb would be a great way to usher in Trump But Worse next time.

True, but so is getting a leftist politician who can't deliver on his promises.

Imo

laser-focused on scaring people about Trump

so, Hillary's argument without the "I'm a woman" half

I'm sure I sound like a broken record on this, but getting in a centrist pre-Trump-status-quo dweeb would be a great way to usher in Trump But Worse next time.

Only if it's Buttigieg or Klobuchar (ie, someone who isn't a straight white man)

Biden and Bloomberg would have the palliative "well it's still a white grandpa so I can just disagree with the policy instead of completing my full transformation into a bigoted reactionary assclown" going for them (which, to be clear, is NOT a reason to vote for them; I'm just pointing out that the American public is looking for an Enemy and right now that Enemy is "not a straight white man")

As if I needed more reasons to hate Bloomberg. (CW: Walker Bragman)

Here's @MikeBloomberg in December 2016 at Oxford explaining how trans rights simply won't fly in the midwest because only the "intelligentsia" can understand why "some man wearing a dress should be in a locker room with their daughter." pic.twitter.com/g6aa8aB1jq

— Walker Bragman (@WalkerBragman) February 6, 2020

put him in a cannon and fire him into the sun

the sight of him drawing a crowd of a couple thousand a couple nights back was worrisome even if I remain unconvinced he has any kind of viable path to the nomination