Your 2020 Presidential Candidate Speculation Thread

I'm sure all the candidates will have the correct left position on Israel!

Re: Israel/Palestine, here's a colleague of mine on the subject:

But the reality is, what Israel is posing as a, quote, two-state solution is a Swiss cheese, in which Israeli-controlled territory is the cheese, meaning it’s contiguous, and the Palestinian towns and villages in that small, shrunken part are the holes, not contiguous. So that’s what we’re dealing with.

What we have today is one state. If we define a state as a territory in which one government controls, that’s what we have in historic Palestine. Israel, the West Bank, East Jerusalem, West Jerusalem, and Gaza, all together are controlled by one government. That’s the Israeli government. The Palestinian Authority has municipal authority–garbage collection, teachers, etc. It doesn’t control land, people, courts. It has courts, but they’re not the dominant courts. The Israeli military courts are still dominant in the West Bank. We hear that Gaza is no longer occupied because in 2005 Israel made the decision to withdraw the 7,000 settlers and take the soldiers and redeploy them out of Gazan territory onto the border of Gaza, which is also completely enclosed in a wall. We don’t hear as much about the Gaza wall as we do about the West Bank wall, but both are completely enclosed.

What we have in that situation is the exact definition of the international covenant against the crime of apartheid, which defines the situation in which two different populations live in the same territory with two different legal systems designed to privilege one group over another group.

JAY: Yeah. One group can’t vote.

BENNIS: One group not only can’t vote, but one group–for example, if you look at the West Bank today, if you look at the question of children, if children throw stones, if a settler child throws a stone, in fact, nothing happens. In fact, they are never really held accountable. But in theory that child is appropriately brought to a juvenile court, where the goal of the court is rehabilitation of children and where the dignity of the child is to be paramount.

If a 12-year-old Palestinian child–or in one case a three-year-old child was pulled out of her bed in the middle of the night and told if she didn’t say where her brother was, who was charged with throwing stones, that–the soldiers said they would destroy her home. A three-year-old. I mean, it’s impossible to imagine. But a 12-year-old child, Palestinian child, charged with the same thing, of throwing rocks, is held accountable in a military court.

And now they have a special military court for children, which is–you know, this is the definition of apartheid in one state. So that’s, I think, important to recognize what exists today, because if we’re looking at what there needs to be, we have to start with what exists.

JAY: Right. And I would even say that even if you got rid of the Swiss cheese and then had two-state, you’re going to have one country with this practically modern European economy–

BENNIS: Right. Twenty-third wealthiest country in the world,–

JAY: –next to–.

BENNIS: –and another country of enormous impoverishment.

JAY: I don’t understand how two-states could ever be equal.

I mean maybe complete Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank and devolution of settlements to a notional second state with normalized relations is a pipe dream but at least one can articulate it as a goal, and I know ethnic nationalism is illegal now or whatever but I don’t think it’s any less of a pipe dream to suggest that Israel will reconstitute itself to not be a Jewish State. But I’m willfully dumb about all this stuff.

Wrong thread tho at this point

ya heard that

Yup. Substantially changing Israel's policies toward the Palestinians is not likely to occur in the foreseeable future through near term changes in the direction of the Democratic Party.

nor, uh, 2020 presidential candidate speculation

Kamala Harris to publish memoir in early 2019. https://t.co/xrS2TXvZkQ pic.twitter.com/djPx13O1yQ

— San Francisco Chronicle (@sfchronicle) July 17, 2018

Later than Obama published his iirc

It’ll barely be out before she announces!

the chapters about getting the bankster's wrists slapped with hefty fines will be riveting

She will get to tell the moving tale of her difficult struggle to prevent imprisoned trans people from accessing HRT

Is Adam Schiff ever mentioned? I like him whenever's he on CNN. He's quite boring and would make a good president, I think.

to be honest we could really use a boring president again

if it comes down to sanders v harris it's gonna be 2016 all over again but worse

If sanders runs I will personally push him into a crevasse

I mean like also he wouldn’t make it far in a bigger field where all the candidates including Cory fucking Booker have moved in on his territory

ehhh not that i think he'll run but a bigger field would help him this time around because he has the largest ride-or-die fanbase built in. plurality wins, like trump in 2016. obviously that year, the small field was a tremendous benefit to sanders tho obviously by itself not explanatory (see: martin o'mentum)

I like what Schiff is doing wrt to the investigation and calling out GOP obstruction but he’s only a congressman and not that progressive on the whole.

I don't know if it's just homerism or what, but most of my Oregon friends seem to be under the impression Merkley's going to give it a go.

and here in WA I'm not the only one thinking Inslee will give it a shot

merk def appears to be keeping his options open, but i doubt he makes a dent in a big field

Los Angeles mayor Eric Garcetti hasn't said he won't run yet. I suspect he'll do about as well as Jeb! did if he tries.

Inslee isn't term limited and he would probably coast to reelection in 2020 so I don't know why he would run for president. I'd bet on Bob Ferguson over him, if I were picking Washington state people to run for president.

Merkley's started his own PAC for electing Democrats in 2018 and my wife and I decided to feed his kitty for a hundred bucks. We figure it couldn't hurt him to have chits to call in later on, whether or not he shoots the moon on a presidential run in 2020.

Is Adam Schiff ever mentioned? I like him whenever's he on CNN. He's quite boring and would make a good president, I think.

this is a wonderfully Canadian sentiment and I applaud it. Alas, no, he wouldn't stand a chance.

Can't help but read "we could use a boring president again" as "can't wait till I can safely not give a shit about politics while the world burns down in a quieter fashion"

Yeah you shouldn’t actually

But it's a reference to something something Palestine, no?

― Frederik B

it's "begin reagan palestine"

inslee pres bid gets talked abt for “attack dog” vp, ferguson vs constantine for wa gov. all imo acourse

it's "begin reagan palestine"

Birthday party cheesecake jelly bean boom

Biden is good in a room and he does the hardhat thing well. But do you really think re-litigating '08-'16 is the way to win?

— Richard M. Nixon (@dick_nixon) July 25, 2018

Can't help but read "we could use a boring president again" as "can't wait till I can safely not give a shit about politics while the world burns down in a quieter fashion"

― Simon H., Wednesday, July 18, 2018 2:19 AM (one week ago)

go to hell, btw

i only take political advice from twitter parody accounts impersonating dead traitors

Most of the presidents considered 'boring' by Americans have dropped bombs on or invaded other countries. Or instigated coups de etat. Even hapless Gerald Ford presided over the last gasps of the US Vietnam debacle. Whichever country Jimmy Carter bombed escapes me at the moment, but I am certain one exists.

Well there was the failed Iran hostage rescue

When Carter sent arms to the Afghan mujahedeen against the USSR invasion, he undoubtedly sent military personnel, too. But on the whole, history's greatest monster probably was the least bellicose President since Hoover. No wonder he left office reviled and mocked by the conservatives.

yeah if Biden won next time liberals could go back to sleep for 4 years, as Dennis Perrin says

lookit rushomancy pullin' out "traitor" retrospectively! damn, libs be on the firing range now.

(spare me the Vietnam lesson, chump, i was alive)

What, does Perrin slip you a ten spot every time you invoke his name or something? Maybe he'll do you a solid and say something worth repeating one day.

(luv u, boo)

“Carter was the least violent of American presidents but he did things which I think would certainly fall under Nuremberg provisions,” said Noam Chomsky.

https://www.counterpunch.org/2015/08/18/jimmy-carters-blood-drenched-legacy/

you can measure every true leftist by how fast they rush to point out that jimmy carter was Just As Bad As Every Other President (see, they've got this noam chomsky interview where he says so!)

and you can measure stooges by their handwaving of imperial support for slaughter

(I know you didn't read the article, J.D., as it's not a Chomsky interview and because you're you, but it also lists a Bunch of Good Things That Jimmy Carter Did)

dude could totally rock a cardigan I hear

lookit rushomancy pullin' out "traitor" retrospectively! damn, libs be on the firing range now.

(spare me the Vietnam lesson, chump, i was alive)

― a Mets fan who gave up on everything in the mid '80s (Dr Morbius)

it wasn't known at the time, but his backchannel machinations aimed at sabotaging lbj's peace talks with north vietnam in '68 qualify as that in my book.

i've read the article before, i'm pointing out that citing chomsky as if he's some grand old historian of american history (instead of an important linguist whose offhand cranky opinions about politics invariably inform his historical pronouncements, such as the idea that the cuban missile crisis was all our fault, the cold war was all our fault, the war in the pacific was all our fault -- gee, notice a pattern here?) is a bad idea.

funny to see online leftists get so upset about the word "traitor." are we still allowed to call robert e lee a traitor? maybe not on counterpunch, where half the articles seem to come from right-wing libertarians.

previous articles by matt peppe, expert on the carter administration:

Media Promote Baseless Assertions By Government Officials Of Russian Interference As Facts

The New York Times’s Biased Obituary of Fidel Castro

Media More Outraged by Possible Murder by Putin Than Definite Murder by Obama

what are his errors about Carter's presidency? don't answer.