Democratic Primary 2020

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Re: Democratic Primary 2020

Postby Windy » Fri Apr 19, 2019 12:01 am

There's more than two sides though.
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Re: Democratic Primary 2020

Postby Marcuse » Fri Apr 19, 2019 8:42 pm

Loathe as I am to combo breaker all these one line zingers. I have a question:

I'm not American but I spend some time looking at US politics because globally the shit you guys get up to tends to affect everyone to a greater or lesser degree. Before the field announced themselves I'd only heard of Bernie and Elizabeth Warren before. I understand some of the candidates (like Buttiegieg) are unknowns in the US as well, but still I'm not massively familiar with the field.

Having said that, is there anyone there that has a snowball's chance of actually presenting a consistent challenge to Trump? All I hear from the candidates I've read about is as though they live in a different country to the one that elected Trump (yeah EC is flawed but it's not like he got 10% of the vote). What's making the candidates skew so far to the left (for the US) and why do they think that's a viable strategy for winning? Are they just skewing left in the primary in order to win that and move to the center once they're the confirmed candidate?

Is there any chance that someone could fairly beat Donald Trump to the White House next year and put an end to the ridiculous circus that is his Presidency? From what I can see there isn't, but am I wrong about that?
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Re: Democratic Primary 2020

Postby Absentia » Fri Apr 19, 2019 9:39 pm

Marcuse wrote:Is there any chance that someone could fairly beat Donald Trump to the White House next year and put an end to the ridiculous circus that is his Presidency? From what I can see there isn't, but am I wrong about that?


Trump is not all that popular with the general electorate. His approval numbers have been consistently underwater since he took office. His numbers among independent voters are abysmal. The states in the Upper Midwest that he won to take the electoral college went strongly to the Democrats in the 2018 congressional election. He's nowhere near invulnerable, and that's assuming the economy stays strong for the next 18 months.

As far as which of the candidates would have the best chance to win: *shrug*. That's the ongoing debate among Democrats. Leftist vs. Centrist, Establishment vs. Outsider, Old vs. Young, Fighter vs. Uniter, etc. Personally I think that any of the top tier candidates except maybe Bernie would be more likely to win than not.

Marcuse wrote:What's making the candidates skew so far to the left (for the US) and why do they think that's a viable strategy for winning? Are they just skewing left in the primary in order to win that and move to the center once they're the confirmed candidate?


That has traditionally been the pattern, which causes a lot of consternation among the true believers who are inevitably disappointed when it happens. My guess is that most of the candidates would head for the center (where, again, Trump looks vulnerable) if they got the nomination. Bernie probably wouldn't, which is part of why I don't think he's a good nominee.
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Re: Democratic Primary 2020

Postby cmsellers » Fri Apr 19, 2019 10:22 pm

@Marcuse:
Yes, Trump's approval ratings have consistently been between 37% and 43%, and seem to have mostly settled in the 41-42% band. If it weren't for the economy, which he inherited from Obama, and where the effects of his trade war have largely remained localized, he'd have very little chance of winning. As it is, most observers put it around 50/50.

As I understand it, his support has collapsed with white, white-collar, college-educated, suburban voters, in the Rust Belt/Midwest. It has also declined with those same sorts of voters in the Sunbelt, and declined with white, blue-collar, non-college-educated, suburban and rural in the Midwest/Rust Belt. The result is that Democrats in 2018 made inroads in both Romney/Clinton and Obama/Trump country.

But, because his floor has been steadily at 41% for the past year, and because the economy is still doing well, it's still only 50/50 to beat him. It's not clear whether Democrats should target the "Blue Wall" states Trump won or narrowly lost (Minnesota and Maine), the Sunbelt states Clinton narrowly lost and/or Democrats won or narrowly lost in 2018, or spread resources out on both, and it's not necessarily clear which candidate is best for each strategy.

The left wing of the party has been arguing that Obama/Trump voters in the Midwest abandoned the party because it moved towards the center on economic issues, even though actual polls of those voters has consistently shown that they were motivated more by cultural issues. So this is what is driving the popularity of Sanders and Warren, and this is what has driven Kamala Harris to run hard to the left.

These candidates are convinced that by winning back Obama/Trump voters and increasingly turnout among young and minority voters (hence abolish ICE and stuff like that), they can easily sweep the Rust Belt, winning back not just the three states Trump narrowly flipped, but Iowa and Ohio as well, and they can do it without giving up Virginia, New Hampshire, Colorado, and Nevada, which the Democrats have carried the last three elections but where swing voters are more likely to be the white-collar suburbanites who've been abandoning the Republicans.

The appeal of Klobuchar, Biden (if he runs), and Buttigieg to an extent, is that they can potentially replicate this strategy while running more towards the center, because they speak about the economic issues blue-collar voters actually care about, which does not tend to be free college and abolishing the ICE.

Beto, Castro, Hickenlooper seem to be hoping that as socially liberal, fiscally centrist candidates, they can do the reverse: increase gains in the Sunbelt, especially among white-collar suburbanites, which again, combined with increased youth and minority turnout, can flip sunbelt states like Florida, Arizona, North Carolina, Texas, and Georgia. If Abrams runs, she'd probably be in this category too.

Buttigieg, Beto, and Booker are also running as sunny young charismatic unifiers who hope that a message of hope can either recreate the Obama coalition or create a new one, and therefore compete in both the Sun Belt and the Rust Belt, as Obama did. This seems to be Booker's whole strategy, he seems to still think he's as "cool" as he was when he was mayor of Newark. Beto's strength is in his appeal to young voters and Latinos; Buttigieg's strength is in his appeal to young voters and Midwestern voters.

I'm not convinced anyone running hard to the left in the Rust Belt camp has a great chance, and I believe Warren is particularly weak, as I've made clear many timees before. Otherwise, I think the northern and southern approaches both have potential and I favor the candidates I think have the best shot of doing well in both. If I had to pick, I'd probably say the Sun Belt strategy is better. However my top choice has consistently been a Rust Belt candidate (first Klobuchar, now Buttigieg), because I believe that they're simply stronger candidates. Abrams could change that, because I feel that if she runs, she is the strongest Sun Belt candidate possibly barring Beto, but a much more serious person than Beto is.

You also have some candidates trying to carve out a niche for themselves. Tulsi Gabbard is weird because she combines fairly left-wing politics with a more moderate approach, a very pragmatic outlook on foreign policy, and a lot of quirks that are all her own. Then Inslee is the climate change candidate, Yang is the guy who wants to give us all a UBI, Gravel is the guy running to troll the DNC, and Delaney is the "why is he running? No, seriously?" candidate.

As for obscurity, I'd heard of all of the senators, Castro, Gabbard, Gravel, and Hickenlooper before 2016. Beto made a big name for himself in 2018, as did Abrams. Yang, Delaney, Buttigieg, and Inslee, I only know because of their presidential runs. But I'm, of course, relatively well-informed. I've met people in Texas who still don't know who Beto O'Rourke is.
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Re: Democratic Primary 2020

Postby Krashlia » Sat Apr 20, 2019 5:54 am

Did I already say I don't want Yang to win, because Social Credit System reasons?

Also, I think his insistence that he doesn't want the support of "White Supremacists" (we're assuming they're all actually White Supremacists) is... Futile?

It sounds kinda like the insistance post 2016 that "we don't need those people to vote for us."

If elections are won by supporting numbers of people, then logically he can't really reject their votes, or he should be aware that shooing them off is really just a performance.

Screenshot_20190420-005023.png
Screenshot_20190420-005023.png (771.05 KiB) Viewed 5177 times


Its kinda like this, except less corpses and that castle is the White House.
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Re: Democratic Primary 2020

Postby cmsellers » Sat Apr 20, 2019 7:05 am

I had to google it, and Yang's social credit proposal appears to be substantially different from the Chinese Social Credit System. While both are based around rewarding "good" behavior, Yang's proposal doesn't penalize "bad" behavior, and seems to be more about giving people something to strive for in a post-scarcity society than controlling people. It's utopian and way ahead of its time, and he should have used a different name, but it doesn't sound very nefarious to me.

Doesn't really matter though, because Yang becoming the Democratic nominee in 2020 seems about as likely as Ron Paul becoming the Democratic nominee in 2020.
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Re: Democratic Primary 2020

Postby Deathclaw_Puncher » Sat Apr 20, 2019 8:56 am

The real question is whether he has more or less of a chance than Williamson.
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Re: Democratic Primary 2020

Postby Krashlia » Sat Apr 20, 2019 7:18 pm

cmsellers wrote:I had to google it, and Yang's social credit proposal appears to be substantially different from the Chinese Social Credit System. While both are based around rewarding "good" behavior, Yang's proposal doesn't penalize "bad" behavior, and seems to be more about giving people something to strive for in a post-scarcity society than controlling people. It's utopian and way ahead of its time, and he should have used a different name, but it doesn't sound very nefarious to me.


I still think its all bad, even the well intentioned and benevolent use of it is a normalization. Because it opens it up for use as a tool of incentive, and after that a form of management.
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Re: Democratic Primary 2020

Postby gisambards » Sat Apr 20, 2019 10:54 pm

To be honest, I think Andrew Yang will probably just be happy that someone actually knows enough about his platform to be able to take issue with it.
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Re: Democratic Primary 2020

Postby Absentia » Mon Apr 29, 2019 11:04 pm

Remember when I mentioned before that it would be an electoral college apocalypse for Republicans if they lost Texas?

https://emersonpolling.reportablenews.com/pr/2020-texas-biden-and-beto-in-dead-heat-in-democratic-primary

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With the obvious caveat that it's a single poll sixteen months out from the election, this is basically porn for Democrats. It's hard to overstate how big of a deal it would be if they can turn Texas into a swing state.

This is also possibly the best advertisement that Beto could buy, and he didn't have to spend a nickel.
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Re: Democratic Primary 2020

Postby Deathclaw_Puncher » Tue Apr 30, 2019 12:23 am


So, it appears Mike Gravel is a Southern Strategy denier.......
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Re: Democratic Primary 2020

Postby Absentia » Tue Apr 30, 2019 1:59 am

I think he means the opposite, that it is possible for parties to change sides and that's why you should be loyal to more permanent ideals.

Of course, the point he really wants to make is that it's okay to be farther left than mainstream Democrats because they aren't embracing his particular ideals hard enough. That's sort of the opposite of a Nixonian polar reversal.
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Re: Democratic Primary 2020

Postby Crimson847 » Tue Apr 30, 2019 4:43 am

Deathclaw_Puncher wrote:
So, it appears Mike Gravel is a Southern Strategy denier.......


Claiming that the DNC platform in 1850 supported slavery and in 1920 supported segregation isn't any kind of denial, it's just a historical fact. Presumably if Gravel believed the modern Democratic coalition must therefore have the same basic views about race that the Democrats of that era did, he wouldn't be running for the Democratic nomination.
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"If it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them; but the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?"
- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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Re: Democratic Primary 2020

Postby Marcuse » Tue Apr 30, 2019 2:41 pm

Isn't he saying that blindly following your "side" and supporting things that are wrong is a bad idea? He seems to be promoting supporting what's right whoever supports it.
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Re: Democratic Primary 2020

Postby gisambards » Tue Apr 30, 2019 6:57 pm

Placing that tweet in the context of the rest of the Gravel feed (which isn't actually run by Mike Gravel at all, it turns out, but two teenagers, which makes a lot more sense) does make it a little less sensible, however. They seem to be suggesting that anyone who openly supports the current Democratic Party, or claims to be proud of the modern Democratic Party, is inherently blindly loyal, and thus will always support it even if it becomes something they actually disagree with, which isn't really a fair assumption and derives primarily from their apparent guiding ethos (which comprises the vast majority of the tweets) that anyone who doesn't support Gravel's ideology to the letter, whether they're candidates or voters, is worthy only of derision.
I suspect their real belief on this is less "support your beliefs over party loyalty", and more "be blindly loyal to Mike Gravel's beliefs, which is okay because they're not represented by a party".

I think it's a bad sign that this campaign seems to be getting as much traction as it is, because the impression one gets is that Gravel's campaign exists only to be disruptive, not to actually make a positive contribution to the debate. Recent highlight from over the weekend is them telling George Takei off for criticising Dem candidates making personal attacks on the grounds that they need to be able to call them out on bad behaviour, only to immediately follow that with a weak meme insulting Seth Moulton's appearance, calling Joe Biden feckless and sharing a bad picture of Pete Buttigieg while claiming (w/o evidence) that he isn't a real progressive.
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