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

Sanders voters assuming Warren voters will break their way do not know the same Warren voters I do. They are mostly women, and a lot of them really dislike Bernie. My guess is if Warren's out, at least as many go to Biden as Sanders. Warren staying in might have the benefit of making the "progressive wing" look larger than it will look if it's just down to Sanders.

It’s great that we’re not spending yet another primary season bitterly divided or anything

(That said, the Twitter video a few posts up just scared the shit out of me)

the last Democratic primary I can recall not being particularly bitter was Gore, and that was because all the embittered lefties had Nader.

it was ever thus

xxpost

like, nobody hated (or really loved) Bill Bradley.

xps

Social media has amplified the anxiety, it's true.

Those Paul Tsongas supporters could be brutal, let me tell you.

emily's list endorses warren

big difference is that Biden's liable to start a war, imo

I don't think there's any big appetite for another war within the military or within the Dem party. it would have to be sold as a "humanitarian" war to bring "freedom from oppression" to a beleaguered people to have any chance. I think Biden sees himself as a master of diplomacy and the art of negotiating deals. But I'm willing to be instructed about his warlike tendencies, which I'm sure will include supporting Bush/Cheney's wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. But he'd probably try to put the Iran nuclear deal back together again, if it's mendable at all.

Biden's voted for other people's wars, an easier gesture than starting your own.

xpost

(That said, the Twitter video a few posts up just scared the shit out of me)

was this the first footage you have seen of Biden in years

when he had his marbles he was scary enough

Biden would extend my streak of voting for a minor-party candidate in November to nine prez elections

would be 11 if i hadn't caved on Mondale (pee-yuu)

Sic, I avoid debates and have only actually heard him speak here and there this primary season. I probably forgot how bad it could get.

Biden is an objectively terrible candidate. But also I don't think any of the three old men should be running, so.

what worries me is that I caught Biden on some talk show around 2017 or so and he was fairly lucid and coherent, nothing like the confused and borderline-senile guy you see today. whatever's ravaging his brain is fairly recent.

it's ok, they'll all win and they'll all lose and they'll beat Trump and lose to Trump and we'll all masturbate and we'll all cry

it would have to be sold as a "humanitarian" war to bring "freedom from oppression" to a beleaguered people to have any chance.

That's been the sales pitch on every war of our lifetimes, so what's the difference?

what worries me is that I caught Biden on some talk show around 2017 or so and he was fairly lucid and coherent, nothing like the confused and borderline-senile guy you see today. whatever's ravaging his brain is fairly recent.

― frogbs, Monday, March 2, 2020 5:26 PM

I have personal experience with this. Men over 75 are fine until suddenly something in their brain starts to crumble. Hence my worry about Sanders: he's lucid now, will he be in two years? If the presidency aged healthy men with active workout schedules like George W. Bush and Obama, what hope Sanders and Biden?

America deserves dying presidents

Biden as the nominee is some depressing shit. Not as depressing as Bloomberg, but pretty depressing.

whatever's ravaging his brain is fairly recent.

Not to be flippant about such things, and obviously everyone ages differently to some degree, but the science on this is pretty clear and it can happen pretty fast. (As anyone knows who has watched it up close.) See the first graph here: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4906299/.

he can step down and Killer Mike will ascend

xxxp

OK WAIT TIL WED MORNING SEEYA THEN

Anyone actively supporting Biden either a) hasn't heard him speak at length recently, b) has heard him speak recently and is willing to pretend that he doesn't sound the way he sounds, or c) doesn't hear anything out of the ordinary when he speaks. These are all unnerving scenarios. The Trump/Biden debate will be the scariest performance of Waiting for Godot you've ever seen.

Trump isn't going to do any debates

so we've already moved on to Biden winning the nomination, man y'all really like the silly hot takes

If Trump won't debate and Biden does a series of town halls instead it's even worse.

At least in a debate the moderator can stop his rambling.

NB: my post was not an assertion that Biden will be the nominee. I simply expect that he and Trump will have a debate at some point. Perhaps they will both aimlessly wander into the same park while half dressed a few years from now.

Old men yell at cloud

That's been the sales pitch on every war of our lifetimes

Nah. The big selling points for Bush/Cheney's wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were pure fear of WMDs and the desire for post 9/11 revenge. The humanitarian stuff was tacked on as a nice sop to assuage liberal consciences, especially after the WMDs never showed and both wars went sideways on us.

Trump isn't going to do any debates

why not, they get good TV ratings and he thinks he's awesome at them

anyway my online leftist friends are gleeful about all the centrists who've dropped

xp: to be clear my position on this is "who gives a fuck if someone wants to have a 'parasocial relationship' with a candidate; it is morally neutral, regarding a topic where there are hundreds of things that are not morally neutral"

basically I can't wait for this to be over so I can stop existing in a state where no matter what I think I am deemed morally bankrupt by The Discourse

since the Discourse encompasses us all, all thoughts and feelings make you the mortal enemy of someone

(including having that thought and being unable to unhave it, which itself is a thing that makes me morally bankrupt according to The Discourse)

Diss the Discourse

I don't think people are going stop having opinions any time soon.

I have never seen this The Discourse thing before! is a chef involved. Is that the right one?

TIL @JoeBiden was instrumental in halting a @BernieSanders effort to stop Big Pharma from price-gouging with publicly-funded research https://t.co/0cNCAMQ06j

— ryan cooper (@ryanlcooper) March 2, 2020

you know, the discourse, the au jus, the ambient smog of opinions and takes, most of which are constructed as all-or-nothing moral imperatives

I gotta say my life has improved in a small way since I shut myself off from a couple main sources of The Discourse so I can stay well shy of toxic woke shock

but that’s the thing, one of the moral imperatives is to not stop paying attention (see: the sheetcaking discourse)

I'm so relieved that I have no fucking idea what you're talking about

sheetcake as in the SNL sketch? if so, wasn't the point of that sketch lampooning white allies for talking a big game but not showing support in any real meaningful way?

google exists; it’s one of the few things where the discourse is in consensus

what on earth are you going on about

this thread is a landfill today

oh right, based on a sketch that everybody disagreed on.

I quote DJP cos he was pretty otm when it aired but
------------------------------------
Why is everyone automatically assuming that Tina Fey playing a character screaming at a cake before shoveling it into her mouth is meant to be taken as a 100% sympathetic, valorous character? Isn't a big chunk of the joke here that, despite meaning well and thinking some good, rational things re: how to be a decent person under normal circumstances, we're watching a terrified person who has no idea what to do so she's settled on screaming at her food before eating it? How do you remove the portion of the presentation where she is obviously terrified and doesn't know what to do and have anything cogent to critique?

― this iphone speaks many languages (DJP), Friday, August 18, 2017 1:12 PM bookmarkflaglink