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

this is not important in the long run.

hard disagree. these people have been fairly effective kingmakers, at least on the democratic side, for 30 years. they don't understand how the world works, and the democrats have paid the price.

well, the democrats haven't paid the price, but we have. you know what i mean.

On this morning’s kerfuffle:

For those upset about critique of establishment politics:

There are D reps in SAFE blue seats who side w/ the NRA, are anti-LGBT+, and yet are protected because they advance the interests of big donors, Wall St, fossil fuels, etc.

It’s not “wrong” to take that on and do better. https://t.co/0Frl0vPlap

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) February 23, 2020

I live and deal with the sort of stupid fucks that voted for Obama, and then voted for Trump. The oppo isn't all out, and certainly not all well publicized. Mud works.

― tetragrammaton in vain (Sanpaku), Sunday, February 23, 2020 12:11 AM (fifteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

There's no question that the oppo is going to get a lot more signal boost come the general, but otoh I think a lot of the same kind of "radical communist" stuff that will get trotted out against him also failed against Obama. The GOP is a bit of a boy who cried wolf on this stuff, and also some of the extreme claims can wind up coming off hokey/campy/only effective as red meat for the base. That said, who knows. It's sort of an unprecedented election. But it's hard to imagine worse oppo than the oppo on Trump and none of that stopped him.

also, if sanders' opponents/the democratic party/the GOP/whomever are intent on ratfucking bernie, one would think between 2015 and now the oppo would have merged. this isn't an rpg, they're not saving their final attack until the end

s/emerged

This has been there pretty much all along... https://t.co/AhVwF7K86Q

— Steve Kornacki (@SteveKornacki) February 23, 2020

seriously

From the entrance poll, among the 34% of NV Dem caucus participants who call themselves moderate or conservative:

Sanders 23%
Biden 22%
Buttigieg 20%
Klobuchar 14%
Steyer 10%

— Steve Kornacki (@SteveKornacki) February 22, 2020

FWIW, the Kornacki tweet where he imagined the scenario of voters falling in line behind Sanders is from April 2019.

xp man alive:

The "undecided" voters I know are in their 60s/50s and late 40s and looking at their retirement accounts. They're my stepmother's church ladies. They're looking for excuses to vote for the status quo, the sort of people that "whataboutism" is effective with. They're going to see stories about a guy who didn't have a steady job till his late 30s, who stole electricity from neighbors, who had an out of wedlock son, who attended rallies where Nicaraguans chanted "Death to Yankiee", and for them that will cancel out Trump's sexism/racism/ties to the Russian mob/ignorance of law or Constitution/dismantling of the rules based international order. None of that matters to them, so long as they're still personally doing okay. They vote for personalities, not policy. When RW media pushes outrage at trangender athletes participating in HS athletics, they pay attention, ignoring the climate crisis, or the plutocracy crisis.

We should be better than this, but thanks to partisan news/social media, there's not a lot of critical thinking going on. Maybe young people will for once in several lifetimes actually bother registering to vote. Maybe Sander's will do that. But I want the Sanders peeps to take the oppo seriously, get out in front of it, and figure out how to counter it in the eyes of the dumbfucks who gave the 2016 election to Trump.

Why do you know those people

some people speak to their families

Idk my parents are cool what’s wrong w your parents

My aunt’s grouchy I don’t call but she won’t visit bc she’s too neurotic to use a dogsitter

You could always tell them to vote for Bernie yknow. When you aren’t spraying them in Purell

also, if sanders' opponents/the democratic party/the GOP/whomever are intent on ratfucking bernie, one would think between 2015 and now the oppo would have merged. this isn't an rpg, they're not saving their final attack until the end

you don't need an oppo dump, sanders has policy positions that can't be exploited by his opponents in a democratic primary (where the positions are actually pretty popular) and can be exploited in the general (where they aren't.) we're handing the gop a simple and seemingly reasonable case to make to swing voters in wisconsin: the other guy's a scary radical.

if this were a normal election and we were up against a pre-trump republican with a strong economy, the election would be over right now. the only reason why we still have a shot with a weak candidate is because donald trump is so deeply bad and unpopular.

If they’re so weak-minded surely they’re liable to persuasion by Sanpaku earths greatest brain genius xp

A great time to run someone who might not win otherwise!!

We’re all dead anyway, this is garbage time, let’s have fun with it

xp: Yesterday, I just spent the better part of 30 minutes discussing transgender HS athletes with my 58 year old sister. This sort of shit isn't in my newsfeeds, but its the sort of thing that the RW media has gotten very good at pushing before old-people eyeballs. Push the "disgust" button or the "Soviet communism" button, and they're off into their own world...

We watched Chernobyl. For me, its a very clear allegory about lies, ignoring science, and the climate crisis. For her, it was just a tale of how bad communism was.

I think that's one of the most reasonable arguments you can make for sanders as a candidate, if your whole goal is just to sneak someone like him in and see wtf happens, this might be one of the best shots at doing it. (if your goal is to actually have someone achieve meaningful left-wing policy wins, this def isn't the best time.)

xp

“If not now, when?” said Rabbi Hillel

the best time is 2032

the sweet spot, 2032

everybody just hang back, lie low, til '32

wait

make that 2036

It's so ridiculous to hear about the deadly oppo coming for Sanders when there is no easier target in the world than Trump. This is not a one sided election. Sanders should have no problem humiliating and diminishing Trump at every turn.

Can i just say tonight was amazing? And seeing chris matthews melt down

How many meltdowns is that? Isn't he just one big albino puddle by now?

everybody just hang back, lie low, til '32

well we're all going to still be on ilxor.com when nothing meaningful happens in the next 4 years so we can bump this thread and laugh at how cute it was that some people were hopeful for one fine moment despite everyone but morbs having pretty solid knowledge of how a bill gets passed in congress.

that's why i bumped it back to '36

i'm reminded of the sad thing with climate change, where with every passing year the amount of mitigation/reduction that needs to happen to meet the target becomes even steeper. until at some point you just have to do the thing that has to happen eventually, now. or else.

knee deep in whisky but hopefully that sails through

we've been over this but electing Bernie Sanders and having him accomplish nothing would still be better than electing say Joe Biden and having him accomplish nothing and also probably do some fun drone wars just to get his aging shitty dick hard

the only way to win an election is to put forward the candidate deemed acceptable by sanpaku's shitty relatives

this is why i'm endorsing hilary clinton

to those so concerned about sanders' "electability", what's the positive case for your preferred candidate's electability then? sanders is a risk sure, but so are all the other candidates who have just as evident flaws from that perspective, and don't have the data to back up their chances (sanders has one of the highest approval ratings of any us politician and the only dem candidate to have a rating higher than trump's currently). winning over moderate republicans was clinton's playbook in 2016, which didn't work, and also that of most of the dem candidate field this time around. trump is a weak enough candidate and his margin of victory was small enough that i wouldn't rule that strategy out as completely unviable this time (really bloomberg is the only serious candidate left who i wouldn't think has any chance), but it seems foolish to stick to it.

i don't really believe there's any overwhelming wave of oppo against sanders yet to be revealed either, beyond fairly typical republican talking points - if it existed surely the dem establishment would have used it by now. the 2016 clinton oppo leaked at the time and it's everything that's been brought up fairly ineffectively again and again.

iatee did you get old

Idk my parents are cool what’s wrong w your parents

he specifically said, she goes to church

if it existed surely the dem establishment would have used it by now. the 2016 clinton oppo leaked at the time and it's everything that's been brought up fairly ineffectively again and again.

― ufo, Sunday, February 23, 2020 2:14 AM (twenty-seven minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

exactly, and it isn't as if the gop establishment is just sitting on their hands and waiting their turn to demonize the opposition, see: joe and hunter biden.

we've been over this but electing Bernie Sanders and having him accomplish nothing would still be better than electing say Joe Biden and having him accomplish nothing and also probably do some fun drone wars just to get his aging shitty dick hard

I've never understood this one either. 'He'll get in and won't be able to accomplish anything' vs what? The others either don't have anything they want to accomplish anyway or face the same issues.

if this were a normal election

The world has changed, two consecutive 'non-normal' electons with non-viable candidates in Trump and Bernie

The "undecided" voters I know are in their 60s/50s and late 40s and looking at their retirement accounts. They're my stepmother's church ladies . . . They're going to see stories about a guy who didn't have a steady job till his late 30s, who stole electricity from neighbors, who had an out of wedlock son, who attended rallies where Nicaraguans chanted "Death to Yankiee" . . . They vote for personalities, not policy. When RW media pushes outrage at trangender athletes participating in HS athletics, they pay attention, ignoring the climate crisis, or the plutocracy crisis . . . I want the Sanders peeps to take the oppo seriously, get out in front of it, and figure out how to counter it in the eyes of the dumbfucks who gave the 2016 election to Trump.

If these people vote for personalities not policies, how can the campaign get out in front of this stuff? They can't change his personality.

you don't need an oppo dump, sanders has policy positions that can't be exploited by his opponents in a democratic primary (where the positions are actually pretty popular) and can be exploited in the general (where they aren't.)

This is C- MSNBC punditry. Everything Republicans believe is unpopular. Most of what moderate Democrats agree to is unpopular.

The Bernie won't accomplish anything line is amazing after decades of talking about the Imperial Presidency.

Quick question...if a pundit/analyst etc gets it wrong for two presidential elections in a row...shouldn't they lose their contracts?

— Yashar Ali 🐘 (@yashar) February 23, 2020

if someone is having a purell pool party, I AM THERE.

Does the President decide that?

― equam phillips (crüt), Saturday, February 22, 2020 10:29 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

nope

― longtime caller, first time listener (man alive), Saturday, February 22, 2020 10:30 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

Ok but this is also true of a lot of things in a candidate's platform, including M4A, much of Green New Deal, etc.

despite being opposed to doing anything about the filibuster, sanders does have a planned solution to the problem it poses, which is using the VP's power to include key legislation in budget reconciliation which can be passed with a simple majority. idk why he doesn't just say he's also for removing the filibuster but it's kinda irrelevant because removing the filibuster seems like it would be just as difficult as passing M4A without the reconciliation loophole. i guess unless there's some small group of senators who support removing the filibuster but don't support medicare for all but are fine that removing the filibuster would make it easier to pass on principled grounds or something? idk that seems like an unlikely scenario but all the politics around this sort of procedural stuff can be pretty inscrutable so ???

You can only use reconciliation once a year, so it's not much of a progressive agenda, is it?

despite being opposed to doing anything about the filibuster, sanders does have a planned solution to the problem it poses, which is using the VP's power to include key legislation in budget reconciliation which can be passed with a simple majority. idk why he doesn't just say he's also for removing the filibuster but it's kinda irrelevant because removing the filibuster seems like it would be just as difficult as passing M4A without the reconciliation loophole. i guess unless there's some small group of senators who support removing the filibuster but don't support medicare for all but are fine that removing the filibuster would make it easier to pass on principled grounds or something? idk that seems like an unlikely scenario but all the politics around this sort of procedural stuff can be pretty inscrutable so ???

iatee did you get old

Light the first light of evening, as in a room
In which we rest and, for small reason, think
The world imagined is the ultimate good.

This is, therefore, the intensest rendezvous.
It is in that thought that we collect ourselves,
Out of all the indifferences, into one thing:

Within a single thing, a single shawl
Wrapped tightly round us, since we are poor, a warmth,
A light, a power, the miraculous influence.

Here, now, we forget each other and ourselves.
We feel the obscurity of an order, a whole,
A knowledge, that which arranged the rendezvous.

Within its vital boundary, in the mind.
We say God and the imagination are one...
How high that highest candle lights the dark.

Out of this same light, out of the central mind,
We make a dwelling in the evening air,
In which being there together is enough.