2020 Democratic presidential primary thread, pt 3: life is very long

I don't think Joe's sure night in SC was destiny - Clyburn waited as long as he could to see if one of the centrists broke out IMO.

Idk anything about clyburn but maybe he would’ve backed Bloomberg if he hadn’t so thoroughly embarrassed himself in the debates?

Obama clearing the field for Hillary in '16 at Joe's expense and making it up to him after his brain has turned to mush is beautiful.

biden was consistently winning sc polls well before clyburn endorsed anybody

he did 30 points better than his polling a week before and 20 points better than his polling a month before - if Clyburn hadn't endorsed and he squeaked out a narrow victory, the narrative is completely different, if he only finishes 15 points ahead of Petey Butts in SC it's much harder for Reid or Obama to make the call and tell him they'll make sure he gets the next Indiana gubernatorial nomination (so he can lose 70-30).

James Carville's eyes are going to bleed with anger that Bernie's sticking it out to do one last debate

I'm a michigan resident in a non-'bubble' community & the voter apathy here is deeply saddening, especially considering that our state has become such a demographic linchpin. b/w this and esp the 2016 general, i'm just left reeling, wondering if perhaps I could've done more. Perhaps i could and should have.. Dunno, but i wish many of those around me realized what power they really have to shape the things to come.

I posted this on another ilxor's fb thread & thought I'd repost on ilx proper. Somehow I can't help but feel PERSONALLY RESPONSIBLE for the poor decisions of my state writ large, even though I know it is SOLIPSISTIC AS FUCK to feel that way.

My hope is that at the debate Bernie will hold back on attacking Biden explicitly but make a strong case for pushing the party’s platform left. Maybe he’ll go on the attack. I don’t know what good that would do anybody at this point though.

Obama clearing the field for Hillary

A politician endorsing another politician, the shock and corruption of it all.

You can try to "clear the field" all you want, it still comes down to actually winning votes. If people don't turn out to vote for you, it doesn't matter who endorsed you. None of those people are mindless puppets any more than you are.

I think it's prob likely that biden's strength w/ southern blacks was always there, which was more of a real base than anything the other moderates had, so he would have been in the strongest position after the slog and would have won a lot of southern states, but I don't think buttigieg and klobuchar dropping and giving him glowing endorsements was a given, and he might not have ended up in a stronger spot than sanders by convention

xp

I posted this on another ilxor's fb thread & thought I'd repost on ilx proper. Somehow I can't help but feel PERSONALLY RESPONSIBLE for the poor decisions of my state writ large, even though I know it is SOLIPSISTIC AS FUCK to feel that way.

― Poptimus Grime (Pillbox), Tuesday, March 10, 2020 11:47 PM (four minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

for what it's worth I feel the opposite; I was born in one swing state that voted for biden (and also trump) and grew up in another swing state that voted for biden (and also trump) and thus feel personally responsible for no longer living there, even though moving there would likely leave me indefinitely unemployed

I felt the same way years back while living in Ohio, but not having state residency. Of course, that was during the Obama era, when Michigan was still reliably blue.

A politician endorsing another politician, the shock and corruption of it all.

You can try to "clear the field" all you want, it still comes down to actually winning votes. If people don't turn out to vote for you, it doesn't matter who endorsed you. None of those people are mindless puppets any more than you are.

Oh man, some Joe that time has forgotten since the primaries started 12 years ago

Since announcing his candidacy, Biden has proven himself exceptionally gaffe-prone, repeatedly referring to former British prime minister Theresa May as Margaret Thatcher, claiming he was vice president during the 2017 high school shooting in Parkland, Florida, and saying, "Poor kids are just as bright, just as talented, as white kids," at a speech in Iowa. Apart from making verbal stumbles, he's also defended his working relationship with segregationists in Congress.

(from an article on Obama discouraging him from running this time)

Obama merely advises, he does not endorse.

In the end, he will shill for Joe, however reluctantly, and would have for Bernie, more reluctantly.

has there ever been such an age-based divide on two candidates? to this degree? no one i know supports joe biden except people a few generations above my own. i don't know anyone who likes biden! like, anyone! it's so fucking weird

and i'm sure that in older circles, absolutely no one they know likes bernie except for their children and their friends

the impression i get from wealthy MSNBC pundits is that every single biden voter is a former mcgovern voter, now wise

i was thinking about these same wise old biden voters, and who or what they thought they stood for in the 60s and 70s.

*kids in the hall voice*

i CRUSH you

I'm in my late forties. Most of my same-age friends are fine with both Sanders and Biden and will enthusiastically back whoever gets nominated; I have some friends my own age who are ride or die Sanders and some who prefer Biden to Sanders but really very few who are e.g. canvassing for one or the other at this point. Very few of my friends started out with Biden as first choice; at least half Warren (middle-aged people with advanced degrees) and some Harris, too. (And lots of them did canvass for & contribute to Warren.) My parents and my wife's parents are all definite Biden voters. How old are you, Karl?

36. everyone i knew was bernie or warren, with all the allegiances to warren shifting to bernie, because come on, joe fucking biden

yeah I think the Biden line is more like 45. It's not just 60-year-olds or people who remember McGovern going for him, is what I'm saying. It's your friends in ten years.

Biden 2020 is the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull to Obama 2008's Raiders of the Lost Ark. KotCS was fucking terrible, but it also made $800m on name-recognition & franchise nostalgia. No one *liked* it, but everyone saw it.

Does that make him the New Jersey of thr Democratic Party?

*the

Since everyone seems to have agreed that Sanders is done,

half of the delegates are yet to be assigned and most of the states have still to vote

James Carville's eyes are going to bleed with anger that Bernie's sticking it out to do one last debate

One hates to say "the fix is in" and suggest that everyone dropping out and endorsing Biden after agitation from the DNC and Clyburn was a desperate attempt by the bound-to-donor-class to secure their sinecures for another four years while society collapses, but

Rep. Clyburn on NPR four hours ago: "I think when the night is over, Joe Biden will be the prohibitive favorite to win the Democratic nomination... If the night ends the way it has begun" it's time to "shut this primary down," meaning the DNC should "step in" and cancel future debates. He says prolonging the primary process only makes it more likely that the favorite, Biden in his eyes, "gets himself into trouble" and hurts himself for the general election.

Lol, will Biden also be able to hide from Trump.

i remember 'underhwelming turnout' being a concern early on in the year, but this bodes well (N/A for states that switched from caucuses to primaries)

There are still ~1 million uncounted votes in CA, so this number will rise, but so far Dem primary/caucus turnout is up about 26% compared to 2016 pic.twitter.com/fSw9InLlHM

— Steve Kornacki (@SteveKornacki) March 10, 2020

a desperate attempt by the bound-to-donor-class to secure their sinecures for another four years

Yep, like usual. It's not that this isn't bad or corrupt, it's just baked in to some degree. Everybody wants a job or the promise of a shot in the future or both.

And yeah, that turnout was what I was talking about before. I think Democratic participation is up a lot this year, which is most likely good news for the nominee in November.

i write about healthcare for a job and frequently cover Medicare and senior care programs and the most interesting thing about boomers literally choosing biden and trump is that they're absolutely all going to suffer and struggle under either one of those dudes.

— ghost wife (@eponawest) March 11, 2020

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_drive

xp that jump in voting in texas in particular is very good to see. one big flip like that could make up for a lot in november

turnout still lower than 08 from what I can see sorry

also it seems that Trump is still setting records for uncontested turnout?

I've been scared, dismayed, or disappointed by election results before but I don't think I've ever been this viscerally disgusted. Hillary Clinton was at least highly intelligent and serious about the issues.

— Sund4r

One for the 'Democracy vs Autocracy' thread. I mean, not really, but it is painful to see entire nations systematically shoot themselves in the foot when offered a sensible counter-option. Which is why this…

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_drive

— xyzzzz__

…is otm, with the (shared) proviso that this is hardly a reason to give up. But boy does it ever suck.

Aka life is very wrong.

Btw I think the solution here is to have a media savvy Neo-Stalinist communist in the running so as to make social democrats like Bernie seem less 'radical' to the US public.

is otm, with the (shared) proviso that this is hardly a reason to give up. But boy does it ever suck.

― romanesque architect (pomenitul), Wednesday, 11 March 2020 bookmarkflaglink

Not giving up for a second.

I'm surprised you're not all more pessimistic!

There are pandemics, recessions and more besides but there are also solutions and people out there willing to fight for those so who is to say whether this is good or bad.

Fear of the next few months has put a real damper on my fear of the next few years.

Something I had forgotten about is that Biden had a bad stutter and that some of his speech issues might be tied to that rather than mental debility

I speculated earlier he might bring that up himself at some point just to make ppl pipe down.

For some reason the biggest and most trusted newspaper here in Finland has been continuously mentioning the stutter to explain away all of his gaffes... But as someone said in the previous thread, the fact that he was seemingly able to better navigate the stutter and avoid mistakes earlier in his life than he is now could in itself be a sign of diminished cognitive capabilities. And of course the stutter doesn't explain all of it, like mistaking his sister with his wife.

Yeah Joe’s been in the public eye for a long time and this is the first I’m ever seeing and hearing of his stutter

for your sanity, plz turn motherfucking MSNBC off

also let's just call that guy "the nominee"

Jim Clyburn has the vibe of a corrupt mayor for a reason

That guy, just a stellar character https://t.co/LI7Yrpu9U0

— Thomas: Malarkey Watch 2020 🕰️ (@ThomasIsOnline) March 11, 2020

go die in a fire, dude

Yeah this has all been one big slow motion bummer but I don’t see the need for Bernie to debate this fool again. It’s a waste of time and will only (further) turn him into a “villain”.

Maybe time to redirect that energy and fundraising into something other than running a quixotic primary campaign. What that looks like exactly I don’t know. Well, other than progressives on the ballot and campaigning and fundraising for them to primary conservatives democrats where feasible...

also it seems that Trump is still setting records for uncontested turnout?

may be because he's actually campaigning in these states, something which Presidents generally do not waste their time doing