2020 Democratic Presidential Primaries

Politics
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That helps with the incumbents, so I’ll give you that. I should keep that in mind going forward, actually.

It’s with new candidates that things get tricky. A couple of years ago I ran into someone running for the town board of selectmen just outside the post office. Now, he seemed like a nice fellow and he had a pretty good website explaining his stance on the issues, etc. There were no red flags on him and as he actually seemed to be going out and trying to meet people, he got one of my votes (we had to vote for several slots on the board). However, I didn’t know any of the other candidates. I only went with this one because I met him in person and he seemed cool across the board.

(For those of you unfamiliar with New England town government, many smaller towns here are still run by town meeting, where every resident of the town who is registered to vote gets to periodically meet, debate, and vote on major issues that affect the entire town. Boards of selectmen are elected to deal with the day to day running of the town between town meetings.)

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I will grant you that yeah, new candidates is tougher. You can look them up but you’re never sure if you have the right one and you’re significantly more likely to get radio silence if you reach out and ask if the person you’ve found is in fact the person running for office.

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In my head right now, Sen. Warren is ahead of pretty much the rest of the field.

As much as I like Biden, he’s become a little to “vapid, jaded politician” for my liking. I never was part of the Bernie train, mostly because of his “I’ll show up at the end and everyone will love me attitude.”. The pair of them are also hitting the “I’m always right because I’m old, rich and white.”-years old.

The new white guys I find less interesting and really should be just trying to unseat Senators from red states.

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Senator Warren is my preferred choice by a vast margin. Even if she manages to fall behind, somehow, I’m sticking with my goal of #NotAWhiteGuy2020.

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My only really worry about a Liz presidency is that I lose her as my senior senator.

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That is one of the problems. Also she can mostly do what she needs to do from the senate as far as proposing policy. And how much of being a “normal” president is just doing everything other than policy.

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You all should be talking to your other friends/family outside this forum about why Warren is the better candidate.

That is literally the best thing you can do right now. It only works if you put the work into it. Use your male privilege for good.

EDIT: BECAUSE I HAVE TO CLARIFY

Talk to people who are all Woo-game-caping for the OLD/WHITE MALE candidates and see if the know that this bad bitch has literal plans, in writing, on whatever issue and see if their penis having candidate has a plan and what that plan is.

Encourage them to research her and compare the other candidates.

Ask why they don’t think a woman candidate is their #1. See what Apreche & thewhaleshark said below and use those points.

On a personal observation:

Question for all the men in this forum:
Have you noticed how the presence of women posters on this forum diminished over the last few years? Why don’t they post more?

Something to think about.

NO, I’m not going to discuss it with you because I really don’t have the patience to, nor do I owe you an explanation.

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I’m not so sure Warren is in fact the better candidate, at least if we care about winning the election. She is arguably the most capable candidate, or at least she’s just as capable as any of the other top candidates. That is true. She also has some really good ideas and plans on how to implement them. That is true too.

However, there is the perception, rightly or wrongly, that she is too liberal for swing states and districts.

Now I like her. A lot. I voted for her as my senator. I’m still very strongly considering voting for her in the primary. In a perfect world, I’d be game for voting for her in a heartbeat. However, right now, the Democratic party, no, America, needs a candidate who can beat Trump. I’m not so sure Warren is that candidate, at least not right now.

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Why can’t she? Because you don’t believe she can, and no other reason. Where is the evidence to support this belief? There isn’t any.

Candidates on the right don’t seem to think they need to pick someone more centrist in order to get swing voters and win. They are happy to pull all the way to the extreme right. They do NOT have the numbers. Democrats are in the majority.

The reason Trump was able to get out the vote is not because he is right wing, but because he was anti-establishment. That is why you have this crossover with Bernie Bros. They don’t give a shit right or left, they just hate the man as we all do!

Democrats picking a more centrist candidate to appeal to the right is what makes them LOSE, not win. Obama, who people on the right hated even more than Hillary, won big time. Twice. How? Because people were excited to vote for Obama. People were less excited to vote for Hillary.

To win you need a candidate that excites people. That makes people want to go out and vote for them. People are not running excitedly to go vote for Biden. To get the swing voters you don’t need a centrist. You need a leftist. Hell, you need a fucking Bolshevik if you’ve got one available. Anti-establishment candidates are the key to victory.

The ideas you are parroting are false. They were created by people on the right to get people exactly like you to believe them and protect capitalism.

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Y’know, I’ve been thinking about this for a bit.

And I’ve espoused this line.

But actually.

No, the point is not to beat Trump.

Trump is awful and horrible and terrible YES, this is all true, but Trump is a SYMPTOM, and we have to really really grok what that means.

It means that the whole of the GOP is complicit in making him work. I mean, remember that article a while back about those “unsung heroes” subverting the worst of his decisions? And the Mueller report essentially stating that Trump would’ve committed obstruction directly had staffers not literally ignored his orders?

Trump is nothing. Trump is literally an empty suit. He is literally a stooge. He is literally a straw President.

You can’t defeat a strawman.

And so, I think focusing on finding a candidate who we think can “beat Trump” is exactly the point of Trump. Trump is not an actual politician nor a candidate; I think he is the manifestation of the GOP’s ultimate goal, which is to have the President be a nothing ineffectual stooge so the “common people” literally do not have a voice. That’s what they’ve been doing. Put all the attention on the President while also subverting their authority so people attack the wrong target.

We need to defeat the GOP and the systematic issues that have lead to their uprising, but I am no longer convinced that we need to do that by compromising away our values.

If we conceive of this as a fight, Trump is basically a feint. It’s a target the GOP is presenting us that we can’t ignore, and they are centering their game around us trying to defeat the thing that they are holding out for us to defeat.

That is a losing prospect, always, 100% of the time.

So fuck beating Trump. We need a candidate who excites the entire liberal base, not someone who can appeal to people who aren’t actually trying to be won over. It’s a ruse, it’s always been a ruse, and it will always be a ruse, until we stomp out the GOP.

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The “electibility” aspect is nebulous at best. They tried pushing it with Clinton, they tried it with Kerry, and they are going to try it now with Biden. It’s failed hard cause neoliberals think that convincing a few moderate Republicans is worth sacrificing several less-influential democrats. Shit doesn’t work when the Republican party is already as corrupt as they are. They’ll lie to your face until they hit the polling place.

Warren is definitely picking up steam and steam. She has the policies and the backbone to light a fire under the base. Usually the biggest complaints I heard about her is “She’s just not very charismatic” which is totally subjective or that “She’d be better as a behind-the-scenes person.” I don’t want to pussy-foot around with that, I’d want a leader who can get shit done and willing to actually call out shit. We’re already failing in the behind-the-scenes aspect with Pelosi and Schumer being very unsure of themselves.

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The first debate is scheduled for June 26.

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As per my previous post.

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Apparently America’s largest voting demographic is contrarian assholes who vote for whoever is described as least electable

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It’s true. Left or right, our common enemy is “the man”. If you just think about all the presidential elections just in my lifetime, the winner has Almost always been the person who is more exciting, and more anti-establishment.

Reagan the Hollywood actor was certainly less establishment than any of his opponents.
Bush Sr. Is probably the exception, but his opponent was branded as a doofus.
Sax playing Bill Clinton.
Al Gore actually won his election.
Bush Jr. won against Kerry, who was as exciting as a pile of rocks.
Obama vs any of his opponents.
And yeah, Trump is the least establishment of them all.

People on left and right simply hate the corrupt government and corrupt corporations. Presidential elections are when “everyone” comes out to vote, not just people who pay attention to politics. The most exciting candidate is going to win. “Safe” candidates are actually the least safe of all.

In this sense you could say the presidential primary system itself is fucked. Democrats would be wise to change it. The candidate with the least chance of winning the general election usually has the highest chance of winning the primary. Towing the party line and being pro-establishment wins a primary.

The point is, if you are voting in the primary, you should vote for who you would most like to be president. If you are going to ignore that advice and want to pick someone with the highest chance of winning in the general election, you should be voting for Bernie or Warren who are going to excite voters and take on “the man” more than Biden or the others.

So-called conventional wisdom is conventional, but it is not wisdom.

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You know, pulling out the lines leftists have been shouting since 2016 and then just vaguely going “Uh, neoliberals did it”, it’s not really convincing on account of the fact that there hasn’t been a sudden mass outbreak of amnesia, and people haven’t forgotten that shit. Especially considering that some of it was not that long ago, when Warren announced, and during the period when she and Harris were the primary threats to Bernie, instead of Biden.

And while I can’t speak for Schumer, as for Pelosi, unsure of herself? Haven’t laughed that hard in a while.

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Assuming I’m reading the sentiment here correctly, there’s an Overton-window-sized difference between

“there are disenfranchised minority, queer, and working class people living in ‘red’ states who have been wholesale abandoned by Democrats”

and

“we can’t argue too stridently for ‘progressive’ policies, or middle-class suburban voters will yank the football away and vote for Trump”

It’s very disappointing to me that these are getting combined in anyone’s mind.

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Not quite. There’s always been moderate democrats who worry about “Going too far” and scaring people off, because let’s face it, “Democrats” is a big tent, encompassing everyone from effectively-just-republicans like Tulsi Gabbard and Steve Mnuchin through to serious progressives like AOC and Warren, of course you’re going to get some cowardly moderates in.

However, a lot of Leftists have been, in and since 2016, getting very vocal in disagreeing with the idea that that people should focus on helping Women and PoC, rather than outreach to the white working class. In part due to a large swell in popularity of various forms of Class-first and anti-identity politics styled socialism, the Dirtbag left, and so on. Shit, just in 2017 one of the most popular, praised, and widely played games written from an explicitly leftist perspective, Night in the Woods, was basically a treatise on how those good old white working class people in middle America aren’t racist, sexist, or homophobic, no no no, they’re just a little out of touch and economically anxious.

Less an Overton window difference, than a disagreement on where effort should be focused. Or, really, in this case not even that, I’m just getting the shits with nonsense revisionist history, and the word “Neoliberals” being used like a political version of something between the boogeyman and “It wasn’t me! It was the one armed man!”

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So like West Virginia is a pretty complex state when you get down to it. Very Religious, very blue collar, it used to be a 100% Democratic state and until recently it reliably elected Democrats to state and local positions even when voting for R’s on a federal level. It would be a prime example of a state that would be in play if you had a candidate that was truly running on Economic populist left topics, but as soon as social issues and environmental issues come into play it start moving away from the D column. It’s a state that would be interesting to watch if Sanders or Biden wins and possibly Warren but probably not worth the effort for any particular democrat in the 2020 race since there are much easier states like MI, WI and PA to worry about and other states that give a bigger EV reward like TX, FL, OH.

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