2020 US Election (Part One)

[Kyriakos]

Indeed. Heaven forbid someone actually meaning to do stuff to take some money away from the super-rich. He must be either a loon or a racist; we all know that first one has to deal with the black minority- deal as in do nothing but say words.
Ofcourse Bern would help all poor with his program. But that is a problem; why help all poor when you can help none of them.

 

[Camikaze]

The one thing I'm not looking forward to in the 2020 primaries is the cannibalism. It should be a pretty interesting campaign, where candidates can be the subject of disinterested, legitimate criticisms, with everyone being safe in the knowledge that whoever wins will be far better than Trump. Pointing out flaws in candidates should really be a collaborative exercise, with those who like a particular candidate especially interested in making sure their choice is the best one.

But in all likelihood it's going to be a rancorous slugfest, with proportional allocation of delegates ending up in a brokered convention with a bunch of people feeling cheated by people they've spent a year perceiving as the enemy.

Unfortunately Bernie Sanders fans generally seem to be the most prone to attacking other candidates, probably because a) Sanders supporters are more locked in; you're not yet going to have many diehard Harris fans yet, for example, and b) Sanders supporters are likely to be politically further away from the other candidates. But I feel that could be counter-productive in the end, because a) it turns off people who aren't already all-in on Sanders, b) it doesn't set him up to be an acceptable second choice for those who support other candidates, in the likely event that no candidate achieves a majority of delegates, and c) it can create blind spots which might hurt Sanders in the end, if it is simply assumed he is already perfect.

 

[Kyriakos]

Pretty sure no one claims Bern is perfect. That is, though, supposedly enough to make him as garbage as the establishment candidates

 

[onejayhawk]

The one thing I'm not looking forward to in the 2020 primaries is the cannibalism.

There is a reason that they call it a clown car. We used to have a thread for that but it got hijacked.

J

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Pretty sure no one claims Bern is perfect. That is, though, supposedly enough to make him as garbage as the establishment candidates

Thanks for demonstrating the point that @Camikaze made.

"Bernie isn't perfect, but anyone who runs against him is garbage, so may as well vote for Trump" worked out so freaking well that you and the rest of the Bernie Bros recommend we just try it again. That's the kind of thing that makes people wish Bernie had never existed.

 

[Kyriakos]

Well, maybe we just don't see the point of the usa having two right-wing parties. Dnc is pretty much a show; the haunting of hill ( ) house.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Well, maybe we just don't see the point of the usa having two right-wing parties. Dnc is pretty much a show; the haunting of hill ( ) house.

And as long as we've got self-sabotage bringing down the party through in-fighting, it will never become left-wing. Hell, it won't even stay in power to be relevant.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Well, maybe we just don't see the point of the usa having two right-wing parties. Dnc is pretty much a show; the haunting of hill ( ) house.

How about the USA has about 85% "right wing" citizens, so you would expect them to have "right wing" representation? Hence two "right wing" parties?

 

[Traitorfish]

"Bernie isn't perfect, but anyone who runs against him is garbage, so may as well vote for Trump"

Do you really imagine that anyone with this mindset was going to vote for Clinton in the first place? The worst you can say is that Sanders got them engaged where they otherwise may have stayed home, and if your electoral strategy revolves around discouraging voter participation- well, what makes you better than the Republicans?

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Do you really imagine that anyone with this mindset was going to vote for Clinton in the first place? The worst you can say is that Sanders got them engaged where they otherwise may have stayed home, and if your electoral strategy revolves around discouraging voter participation- well, what makes you better than the Republicans?

Yes, absolutely. They all hated Trump but were turned off by Hillary. They were as surprised as everyone else when Trump won because they didn't think that was a possible outcome. A lot of people learned in this election that your vote does in fact matter and sometimes you have to hold your nose and vote for someone you don't care for.

I don't know if this was a majority of those no-voters but there was a substantial amount that this would apply to.

 

[Berzerker]

hmm...late last week I heard Kamala was withdrawing and now she's gonna announce

moral dilemma for the anti-Trump media... To expose Trump's hypocrisy the media interviewed people working at his resorts to show he has been hiring people here illegally, now people are being fired. Good job, media... Scoring your political points was more important than their jobs. Hey, who needs ICE if the media just spent their time running around exposing employers who hire illegal immigrants.

 

[Takhisis]

the Clinton camp enganged in unrestrained misandry

vada fa- I mean, what is this?

 

[adcarrymaokai]

American focus on STEM and devaluation of humanities is the reason why we see such confused postings and young men taking their ideas from Jordan Peterson and sites like "Thinkateria".

 

[metalhead]

Not completely blameless, no.
My point is that there are vast differences here.
And that the difference between say Biden and say Sanders is so huge that one is acceptable one is clearly not.

I don't mean this as a particular endrosement of Sanders, he merely presents himself as an obvious contrast to Biden (or some others), due to being comparatively better for one and having actually voted on these things as a Representative, rather than merely commented on them.

But he voted FOR them! You do understand that, right? Bernie Sanders voted in favor of the legislation in question that has inarguably led to disproportionate imprisonment of Black Americans.

I'm afraid either you have the facts wrong or your argument doesn't make any sense.

And this is somehow Bernie Sanders' fault because he shares a skin tone with the guilty ones? Because that seems to be what you are saying.

What did I say is Bernie Sanders' fault, exactly? It's not a "fault" that you can go get arrested at a rally and not have to worry about being brutalized. It's a relative privilege. Privilege is not fault. Bernie Sanders had a privilege lots of other people at those protests did not have.

Pretty sure no one claims Bern is perfect.

Uh, have you met an online Bernie fan?

 

[Kyriakos]

Well, yeah, given there are a few even on cfc

Likewise, corbyn is far from perfect yet still is hugely preferable to either tories or blairtories.

 

[sophie]

Yes, absolutely. They all hated Trump but were turned off by Hillary. They were as surprised as everyone else when Trump won because they didn't think that was a possible outcome. A lot of people learned in this election that your vote does in fact matter and sometimes you have to hold your nose and vote for someone you don't care for.

I don't know if this was a majority of those no-voters but there was a substantial amount that this would apply to.

Really depressing if this is the takeaway that the broader American political culture has taken away from 2016.

And given the stable of Democratic Presidential frontrunners, it seems to have been the case.

 

[Phrossack]

Really depressing if this is the takeaway that the broader American political culture has taken away from 2016.

And given the stable of Democratic Presidential frontrunners, it seems to have been the case.

There were a lot of lessons taken away, one of which is that Democrats absolutely have to unite behind their candidate or risk losing their national parks, functioning government, foreign relations, human rights, and more at the hands of a party that has perfected the art of nose-holding at the voting booth.

 

[metalhead]

No, he voted against "them". He voted for the one that included VAWA, for that reason.

He voted for more than one "tough-on-crime" bill and was happy to tout an awful lot of "tough-on-crime" votes in his 2006 Senate campaign.

I have established quantitative and qualitative difference in very clear terms.
You are free to take an absolutist position and claim these differences don't matter.
That's fair.
Not sure why you have to insinuate that i must be misinformed or stupid.

Because you appear to be misinformed. You also demand a nuanced look at Bernie Sanders' record while not affording anyone you're comparing him to any nuance in examining their records. The happy coincidence being that this allows you to paint him in the best possible light, the others in the worst possible light.

You want to use his "civil rights" record to prove he is less blameworthy for tough-on-crime votes but you do not extend that exact same formula to assessing the record of anyone else. He doesn't appear to have approached this issue any differently than any of the other white politicians you're trying to distinguish him from, except for the one time he said a bill was dooming millions . . . and then voted for it anyway.

 

[sophie]

There were a lot of lessons taken away, one of which is that Democrats absolutely have to unite behind their candidate or risk losing their national parks, functioning government, foreign relations, human rights, and more at the hands of a party that has perfected the art of nose-holding at the voting booth.

The more prescient takeaway, though, is that Democrats WILL unite around candidates with genuine progressive/Leftist credentials, and that putting up Neoliberal candidates who only in the eleventh hour will gesture vaguely towards progressive politics will fail catastrophically.

Hillary's failure wasn't the fault of voters not voting for her, it was the fault of her failing to campaign on a sufficiently electrifying platform and the Democratic establishment refusing to push her to endorse those electrifying politics or putting up a VP candidate who could shore up the Leftist base or at least signal to them that their policies were received and would be represented going forward. Tim Kaine is the perfect embodiment of everything that was wrong with the Hillary nomination. Here is your anointed candidate, having just won a primary race which, while the final tally was firmly in her favor, was nevertheless a hard-fought and brutal race revealing a strong, energized contingent of young voters eager for genuine Leftist, anti-technocrat politics, who took the loss to the Neoliberal embodiment of all that is Technocrat extremely hard and were still regarding with a great deal of skepticism. And whom do you put up to signal to that energized group that they should be excited to lean in and represent the Democrats as a united front? Not Bernie Sanders, not Elizabeth Warren, not Barbara Lee, no. What they put up was a milquetoast white dude whose sole credential, sole calling card, is that he can speak Spanish. Yeah, no thanks.

The onus is on the party to put up a candidate people will want to vote for, will get excited to vote for, and will get so excited they'll go out and get all their friends to go and vote for.

 

[Traitorfish]

There were a lot of lessons taken away, one of which is that Democrats absolutely have to unite behind their candidate or risk losing their national parks, functioning government, foreign relations, human rights, and more at the hands of a party that has perfected the art of nose-holding at the voting booth.

The problem is not so much the conclusion that nose-holding may be necessary, but that it is inevitable. That the Democratic establishment will advance a noxious candidate, that this candidate will win, and that any resistance to this, any attempt to present a genuinely progressive candidate, is doing the Republicans' work for them. It's either a profound pessimism or a second-hand reflection of the Democratic establishment's belief in its own right to rule.