Your 2020 Presidential Candidate Speculation Thread

redefining the word 'union' to only include unions you like doesn't really accomplish much

The public sector is a completely different situation. From my experience these last six years on City Council, I do not think it is in the community’s best interests, certainly not in the taxpayers’ best interests, to have collective bargaining by the police and firefighters.

This is a pretty shitty position.

Jim's stance is pretty standard among leftists (myself included)

there's a difference between having a stance on police unions such as 'they are bad' and having a stance on whether words should have clear meanings so that we can actually talk to each other

Alex Press has a good overview on this

https://alexnpress.com/2017/08/08/left-police-unions-labor-movement-uaw-racism-teamsters/

I include unions I don't like: many of the large unions in north america are "bad"

it's the 3 Stooges of ILX liberalism, everbuddy

Team Castro might as well close up campaign headquarters right now if they can’t get you on board

yr acid wit is apprec'd as always

also Castro is just a bullshitter, as his brainpower quote indicates

which one are you? xp

show me an example of unionized cops engaging in union busting

i don't know much about castro, other than that he was some hotshot relative newcomer who was rumored to be clinton's VP in 2016 (good thing she went for tim kaine!!!!!!), but the picture of him that was in the NYT morning briefing email thing this morning was very fake bullshit politician-y

https://i.imgur.com/slkpWPL.jpg

lolz at union puritans

union puritans caused a bit of a stir round your end iirc darragh

youre gonna have to be more or less specific than that tbh

Watching lefties tear each other up over Tulsi Gabbard, with more fun to come. One of the perks of not backing anyone for president is avoiding these clashes, which are little more than political fantasy football.

— Dennis Perrin (@DennisThePerrin) January 13, 2019

Given all that's been dredged up over the last little while, not convinced Gabbard is even gonna make it to the debate stage.

At some point you must really explain to me how you always avoid clashing with anyone over politics, Morbs, I am deeply envious.

Tulsi can always say she "evolved.'

yep, he's running

Bernie Sanders is staffing up ahead of a potential 2020 campaignhttps://t.co/wYaCwFinWw

— POLITICO (@politico) January 14, 2019

everyone i know just agrees that she sucks, not really seeing any tearing up

xps

Gabbard is a walking Clickhole article to me at this point tbh

Lol

What is the good thing about Tulsi Gabbard even supposed to be? She endorsed Bernie Sanders, and... Isn't that pretty much it?

She has a rep for being "anti-war" but that doesn't really hold up to scrutiny either. She seems to have a weird cachet among libertarian types

Libertarian types? Well, now you're talking. That's the backbone of the Democratic party.

despite their protestations, i've found that "libertarians" in the post-Ron Paul era are really into islamophobia & homophobia. so that probably helps her with this crew.

the thought that someone could support a politician best known for backing Bernie and yet also consider themselves a libertarian makes my brain bleed.

But no other Democrat has been received like this. Gabbard has alienated some “Democrats by meeting with Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad, and, more recently, by echoing conservative accusations of “religious bigotry” against Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii) after she questioned a conservative Catholic Trump nominee. That led the president of the Center for American Progress to joke that Gabbard could own the “pro-Assad, pro-Bannon, anti-Mazie Hirono lane” of the primary.”

“But what makes some Democrats most nervous about a Gabbard candidacy is the potential for mischief on her behalf. RT, the Russia-funded news network, has run a series of glowing pieces about Gabbard, content that dredges up painful liberal memories of Russian propaganda boosting the 2016 Trump campaign.

“Establishment figures on both Right and Left are scrambling to smear the antiwar congresswoman with impeccable identity-politics bona fides,” read a typical RT dispatch this weekend.

Gabbard has barely registered in early primary polls, but no candidate makes Democrats so nervous about the tone of their coming contest.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/paloma/the-trailer/2019/01/13/the-trailer-will-sanders-s-2016-supporters-rally-behind-him-this-time/5c3954241b326b66fc5a1c2e/

the thought that someone could support a politician best known for backing Bernie and yet also consider themselves a libertarian makes my brain bleed.

― Evans on Hammond (evol j), 14. januar 2019 17:12 (twenty minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

eh... The only Danish dude I know who was a fall on BernieBro - he went to the US on holiday to volunteer - used to be anti-tax libertarian posting on facebook about how socialists wanted to send all opponents to Gulags. There's def an overlap, however small. But the Ron Paul brigade was always small as well.

I don't think we need to think too hard about Tulsi. The "ex-gay" stuff is quite enough to put her out of the running for your bog-standard NPR / Whole Foods urban-suburban cultiral lib set.

Unexpected: One of the first issues Elizabeth Warren emails her list about after getting into the presidential race is...D.C. statehood.

(from Friday, am told this went to her whole list, not just DC residents) pic.twitter.com/npUdmpEX6V

— Alex Seitz-Wald (@aseitzwald) January 14, 2019

v cool

that sounds like a great way to tip the balance in the Senate, but what kind of timeframe does this have? could it happen, like, before 2020?

it'll never happen

same with Puerto Rico, or American Samoa or wherever - the minority party will block any move to give the majority party more Senate seats

Maybe the republican party won’t always exist.

It's kinda insane it didn't happen in 2009.

a great way to really ensure it never happens is to never get popular politicians to propose/promote it

I don't think convincing Democrats of the virtues of statehood for various American territories is really the issue

Might be just good politics to get it in the conversation, it’s not like she’ll make her entire candidacy on promising to make it happen. If the hindrance to it is Republicans then getting them on record trying to justify the unjustifiable doesn’t hurt

Republicans mostly ignore the issue of DC and PR statehood, but they've had decades in which to form their vague and evasive public justifications, so this is hardly a potent 'gotcha'.

There is basically no downside to a D candidate advocating DC statehood.

Dems are like "yes please, two more Senators."

Republicans get even more spittle-flecked with hysterics about the Radical Liberal Agenda!!!eleventy!!, which means they spend more time with Elizabeth Warren occupying their heads "rent-free," as they used to say about Sarah Palin.

Lastly the constitutional hurdles it would take would involve decades of sustained advocacy and truly herculean political will. Neither of which is realistic in the present environment. So it's a zero-cost feel-good move to declare yourself in favor of it.

(Which is not to say I'm against it! Quite the contrary. Just saying it doesn't cost a Dem anything to advocate it, and it's so unlikely to actually come up for a vote that it doesn't require much effort past the general statement of support.)

Similarly I’d kind of like to see ending the electoral college brought up by a candidate even if the hurdles are impossible

Maybe the republican party won’t always exist.

― Trϵϵship, Monday, January 14, 2019 12:58 PM

Nor will America.

Oh you heard about Oumuamua too?

Similarly I’d kind of like to see ending the electoral college brought up by a candidate even if the hurdles are impossible

― Nerdstrom Poindexter, Monday, January 14, 2019 3:31 PM (fifty-five minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

tombot was convinced after the 2016 election that the electoral college would be abolished in 5 years

lol

Eliding the differences between someone who publicly supported civil unions and was too cowardly to say more and someone who *opposed even civil unions* while calling gay people "homosexual extremists" is a pretty stan move, imo. https://t.co/Q6ir3ZjG8i

— Osita Nwanevu (@OsitaNwanevu) January 15, 2019

Gabbard fans/stans are so fucking weird