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

it's okay to admit that Biden's low-enthusiasm polling is not a good thing. I don't get the impulse to dismiss it.

This is like the not-wearings-masks thing in the other thread...it certainly doesn't help the situation, so what's the point in questioning it?

I definitely think the enthusiasm thing matters when young people and minorities just so happen to live in districts where you have to wait in line for 5 hours to vote

I am always excited to vote regardless of the candidates, but that's in a system with 100% voter enfranchisement. I just like voting.

it would be really neat to have a candidate face trump who generates enthusiasm, so that if/when large swaths of the public somehow think his normalized behavior even accepts acceptability, democrats have something to push back with. but we have biden instead, and clinton before that.

otm (except that many millions of people were genuinely excited to vote for Clinton, and even more were excited to be able to vote for a woman)

at this point can't relate to anyone who doesn't want both trump and biden to drop dead tbh,

Biden can lie down on a settee first and expire gently (after naming Warren or Abrams as VP)

unfortunately the virus has been very very bad at targeting the deserving thus far

Dominic Cummings was only diagnosed yesterday!

I meant *successfully* targeting

though its record of potato-headed fascists already failed us with Dutt0n

(in ever more record-setting numbers)

? white evangelicals portion of the vote has held steady at around 25% for the last 12 years.

maybe that should say "electorate" instead of "vote"

voting Republican (in ever more record-setting numbers)

helps to read all the words

but over the 20 years where white evangelicals have maintained about a quarter of the vote share, their actual real world number has declined, which means they're turning out more fervently (and more for Republicans)

I'm not sure what record you think is being broken there

... the percentage voting Republican

has their real world number actually declined? i could imagine with immigration sure but i'd think generally speaking evangelicals would have a higher birthrate than other groups. (not based on any particular information - just general knowledge about religious fundamentalism, anti-bc/anti-abortion politics and fecundity.)

i think evangelicals grudgingly vote for politicians who don't share their values all the time!

― Mordy, Tuesday, March 31, 2020 11:25 AM (twenty-four minutes ago)

I think this has flipped in the states where all the faith-based crap and Koch-funded initiatives to send kids to lobbyist/policymaker camps have resulted in state legislatures packed with republicans in the midwest. I have no idea how much they believe since I'm not a mind reader, but the rhetoric is a lot harsher than what I'd expect from the average voters

white evangelicals used to vote Republican like Asian-Americans vote Democratic, now they vote Republican like African-Americans vote Democratic.

bc death cult

idk I can't recall a time when every single white evangelical wasn't a diehard Republican, I've never met one that was a Democrat.

(usually because abortion)

In the past decade, white evangelicals as a percentage of the overall population declined by a quarter and Protestants overall by 20% (from over half the population to just over 40%)

the Republican Party decided it was time to more closely reflect the will of their voters. might be time for the Democratic Party to do the same.

xxxp better advertising and coherent (if repulsive) world view imo

they actually used abortion as one of the big emotional wedge issues! polling showed that the majority of evangelical christians were ambivalent to abortion as a legal issue decades ago. the moral majority assholes elevated it as a dealbreaker

the basic math is they make you think you're voting to save babies, when you're really voting to give the chamber of commerce complete power

idk I can't recall a time when every single white evangelical wasn't a diehard Republican, I've never met one that was a Democrat.

In our lifetimes, 70% have been (now 80-85+%) - that was my point, responding to mordy's argument that dedicated voters aren't enthusiastic. White evangelical Republicans are the definition of reliable and highly enthusiastic.

On the flipside, African-American women are very reliable and also very enthusiastic.

The idea that the most regular voters aren't enthusiastic is nuts.

the Republican Party decided it was time to more closely reflect the will of their voters. might be time for the Democratic Party to do the same.

― A-B-C. A-Always, B-Be, C-Chooglin (will),

I do wonder what those judges/justices, Obamacare thing, and that bill last week were about.

enthusiastic about voting != enthusiastic about a particular candidate. the latter does suggest inconsistency imo.

“moral clarity” eve if manufactured, is pretty good at turning out voters.

I think there are lots of younger people in the post New Deal, post-Civil Rights era that honestly don’t know what the Democratic Party actually stands for. Not entirely sure I do tbh.

In this era to expect consistency from the Democratic Party is impossible -- too fractious a caucus. Unlike the GOP, the Dems remain a coalition party with genuine conservative and moderate wings; you might say it absorbed the remaining GOP moderates during the Bush era and has accelerated under Trump.

Abortion is the only wedge issue with staying power at this point. The gay marriage wedge election in 2004 was heartbreaking, and a decade later the tide had turned fairly decisively. In 2016 or so anti-trans “bathroom bills” were passed in a couple places but triggered successful court challenges, corporate boycotts, and more, and there’s not currently (to my knowledge) a mainstream appetite for more of it. But abortion restrictions keep marching through state legislatures.

i think evangelicals have reason to be happy with what trump has gotten them (at least vis-a-vis the supreme court tho overturning roe v wade seems elusive still) but they did not seem enthusiastic about voting for him

*even if

my mom and sister both attend white evang. churches and are lifelong Dems

Democrats belong to a centrist party with liberal-left and conservative wings. They believe in science, reason, a functioning government that regulates social services and protects access to safe abortions, and an enforcement of the Fourteenth Amendment. That I have to mention the first three shows how far we've moved to the right since Reagan; the Republicans before 1980 for the most part believed in those things too.

the democratic party is a huge umbrella brand that encompasses everyone in america left of the republican party. to expect it to 'stand for' things is a fundamental misunderstanding of what it is.

roe v wade seems elusive still) but they did not seem enthusiastic about voting for him

They voted for him in record numbers.

No, there ARE positions it takes, but I've explained it already.

But it may be fundamental in understanding why they can’t stop losing unless they have a rock star candidate

the Republican Party decided it was time to more closely reflect the will of their voters. might be time for the Democratic Party to do the same.

― A-B-C. A-Always, B-Be, C-Chooglin (will)

and to believe that joe biden is not someone who closely reflects the will of the democratic party voters while bernie sanders is requires some olympic level mental gymnastics

Democratic voters stand pretty far to the left of Biden on most issues.

The real problem is that the Republican Party is not yet a regional rump party so there’s no way for a schismatic left to break away from the Dems and achieve any national success

democratic party voters feel very strongly about *checks notes* keeping healthcare inaccessible and dooming iranians

I guess a decent number are confortable-to-indifferent re the latter

very little overlap afaict between people who vote for Democrats and people who consider ending the forever war a major issue

p much boils down to fact that the GOP donor class doesn’t care about abortion or guns. could not give a shit. or, in many instances, openly embrace the same objectives as the chuds.

meanwhile the big money folks in the Dem party are hostile to uni healthcare and meaningful action on climate change. and I’m honestly not sure how that ever gets rectified.

so much easier to believe that there's some conspiracy keeping sanders down than to accept that sanders campaign - despite having tons of publicity and money - deeply failed to convince more than 35% of the democratic party that bernie sanders was a good choice for president.

if the goal is to elect more left-wing politicians, you probably need to at some point accept that not everything sanders did was massively popular and try and figure out why his ceiling existed.

it’s not a “conspiracy”, it’s just $$$

lol what, in what universe was Bernie outspent

if the goal is to elect more left-wing politicians, you probably need to at some point accept that not everything sanders did was massively popular and try and figure out why his ceiling existed

more of an issue w/ the messenger than the message AFAICT

nobody's actually talking about Bernie Sanders except you today iatee

I’m not talking about campaign spending.

I’m saying that the GOP donor class has no qualms with the wants/ demands of the great unwashed masses in a way that their Democratic counterparts do.

xpost

I mean Mike fuckin Bloomberg is a Dem sugar daddy now, and if you don’t think that comes with strings...

I’m saying that the GOP donor class has no qualms with the wants/ demands of the great unwashed masses...