2020 US Election (Part One)

[Camikaze]

Erm... Cami, the Clinton camp enganged in unrestrained, unveiled misandry basically from day 1.
Months on end, wall to wall, nothing but claims that young men only voted for Sanders because they were men and sexist (which goes without saying).

As far as I'm aware, Clinton isn't running in 2020, so I'm not sure what the relevance of this is?

There's actually probably a similar problem with some Sanders supporters now as there was with some diehard early Clinton supporters for the 2016 election. In 2016, Clinton was a known quantity in a healthy position in the polls, and a lot of people dismissed other candidates because they'd already made up their minds. Now, Sanders is in a somewhat similar position, being a known quantity in a healthy position in the polls. When other candidates emerge, I think there can be a bit of a reflex to kill them in the womb rather than maintaining a mind open to the possibility that there might be a better candidate than Sanders. Doesn't mean there will be, but the common theme between some Clinton supporters in 2016 and some Sanders supporters in 2020 might be an unwillingness to hear out the alternatives.

Luckily in 2016, a large number of Democratic primary voters were willing to hear out the alternative(s). I hope they do this time as well, so there can be suitably dispassionate debate.

Right! Senator Harris!

Last page we went on and on about the New Jim Crow.
How about: Kamala Harris is the Red Hand.

Kamala Harris has defended the death penalty, directly affecting the referenda that narrowly resulted in the prospect of more than 700 convicts facing potential - streamlined - execution.

Kamala Harris hes defended various criminal justice harshnesses that disproportionatly affect poor people and minorities.

Kamala Harris has fought tooth and nail to uphold wrong convictions, and has only outdone herself in ever more fiercely fighting to uphold wrongful convictions with a racist or sexist (read: misandrist) spin to them.
(At this point i feel reminded of the proud electoral history of Martha Coakley.
Btw, how is your healthcare doing?)

Here is a gentle outline of her work, almost going out of the way to defend her:
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/17/opinion/kamala-harris-criminal-justice.html

Kamala Harris annihilates people for her convenience.

(We do not know whether Kamala Harris has said something bad about gay people when she was 20, without power, young and stupid. The record shall reflect that she is not known for having done such a horrible thing.)

And Kamala Harris embarked on this her carreer trajectory, blatantly, obviously, by being a victim sleeper upper of almost cartoonish quality.​

There, i feel this was very collaborative and useful in finding a good candidate, by which i mean a candidate better than Kamala Harris.

Yes, that's exactly right. I don't know much about Harris, so how should I know whether she'd be a good candidate without legitimate criticism? Of course, if it's just presented as a laundry list of complaints without any further basis, it can be hard for someone to distinguish between smears and legitimate criticism, so it can be easily dismissed by those who for one reason or another want to maintain their preconceived preference. Like if you take the above list, without the article, it's hard to tell how legitimate the criticisms are. But the article helps, because it lets me know that a lot of the criticisms concerning her involvement in individual cases were when she was a district attorney instead of the state Attorney-General; she would presumably have a lot more direct involvement in individual cases in the former position compared to the latter.

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.

Why not both? It is absolutely the responsibility of a political party to put forward a palatable ticket that a winning plurality of the electorate can vote for. But when there is such a clear and obvious difference between the options put forward by the parties in the general election, it is absolutely the responsibility of voters to hold their nose. One doesn't absolve the other. RBG isn't going to make it to 2025.

That is definitely a depressing position to be in, but it doesn't make it untrue. It just means the US political system is depressing.

 

[Takhisis]

Yes, Tim Kaine may have been a bad sign, but failing to show up and vote when the alternatives have been George Bush or Donald Trump and allowing them to steal elections via the electoral college is simply not excusable.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Do you really imagine that anyone with this mindset was going to vote for Clinton in the first place?

How do you claim authoritatively that they wouldn't? It isn't like there has never been a bruising primary before. Usually a bruising primary educates everyone. The Sanders campaign played to the naive and made a point of keeping them that way, apparently, because in the end his staunch supporters were saying "pie in the sky with ice cream or you are garbage and might as well be Trump." And they still are.

 

[Broken_Erika]

How do you claim authoritatively that they wouldn't? It isn't like there has never been a bruising primary before. Usually a bruising primary educates everyone. The Sanders campaign played to the naive and made a point of keeping them that way, apparently, because in the end his staunch supporters were saying "pie in the sky with ice cream or you are garbage and might as well be Trump." And they still are.

Bern or Burn?

 

[Berzerker]

Howard Schultz for President!

CEO of Starbucks might run as an independent

Before I started voting Libertarian I supported Ross Perot's run until he backed out

This guy has the * bucks and the infrastructure (all them stores and employees) to get on the ballots everwhere

 

[Berzerker]

uh, well lookie there - a Jon Miller

 

[Phrossack]

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.

Don't get me wrong; I prefer real progressives to neo-con liberals any day. I'm not saying we should stick to status-quo candidates. By all means, we need a healthy primary, and push for real progressives in it over the status-quo candidates.

But if they don't win, we cannot afford to simply stay home and pout lest we suffer even more damage, much of which is probably permanent. I'm seeing a lot of attitudes that if the DNC doesn't present the mythical Perfect Candidate, that Dem voters must punish them by not feeling motivated enough to bother voting and so throw the election to people who want to reverse 130 years of painstaking progress.

Destructive infighting is and always has been the favorite sport of leftists. Some are slowly realizing that someone like Clinton is still a much less deadly poison to swallow than Trump. Vote against Clintonian candidates in the primary, but ye gods, just keep the Trumpians out.

 

[Estebonrober]

Howard Schultz for President!

CEO of Starbucks might run as an independent

Before I started voting Libertarian I supported Ross Perot's run until he backed out

This guy has the * bucks and the infrastructure (all them stores and employees) to get on ballots everywhere

The last thing the US needs is more corporatocracy. Hard pass. I hope he does run as an independent though and Trump gets four more years. I'm in a dark mood. This social hierarchy needs to burn.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/elizabeth-warrens-unconstitutional-wealth-tax-11548442306

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/3-problems-with-elizabeth-warrens-wealth-tax-191056473.html

https://www.howestreet.com/2019/01/...x-despite-the-fact-that-its-unconstitutional/

https://www.aei.org/publication/a-7...be-smart-politics-but-is-not-smart-economics/

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-poli...rcent-marginal-tax-rate-scalise-norquist-spin

I love the taxation is theft line on a planet that could probably be scarcity free with proper planning. Its proof we are headed for a reckoning.

 

[Ironsided]

Destructive infighting is and always has been the favorite sport of leftists. Some are slowly realizing that someone like Clinton is still a much less deadly poison to swallow than Trump. Vote against Clintonian candidates in the primary, but ye gods, just keep the Trumpians out.

A slow death by poison is not necessarily preferred to a quick one. The infighting is because DNC is not left at all; but an ideological nothing. Fully prepared to drum up support for a no ideology candidate like Clinton ahead of an ideologically grounded candidate like say Bernie. Clinton had no plan for any change at all to the root of problems with inequalities in America; just populist empty gestures to minorities on race and LGBT. Even the feminism was lacking and turned into an empty; “sisters vote for me – I’m a woman” - which they duly did not. Because most women have a better sixth sense than that. I find nothing strange with people not supporting the continuation of this Democratic mess. And I support their non-support. Unless the DNC is chewed up and shat out in a new ideologically enlightened form this election cycle we will probably see a new party rise before next. Probably for the best.

 

[Phrossack]

A slow death by poison is not necessarily preferred to a quick one. The infighting is because DNC is not left at all; but an ideological nothing. Fully prepared to drum up support for a no ideology candidate like Clinton ahead of an ideologically grounded candidate like say Bernie. Clinton had no plan for any change at all to the root of problems with inequalities in America; just populist empty gestures to minorities on race and LGBT. Even the feminism was lacking and turned into an empty; “sisters vote for me – I’m a woman” - which they duly did not. Because most women have a better sixth sense than that. I find nothing strange with people not supporting the continuation of this Democratic mess. And I support their non-support. Unless the DNC is chewed up and shat out in a new ideologically enlightened form this election cycle we will probably see a new party rise before next. Probably for the best.

You prefer Trump to Clinton? Really?

I could see how one could mayyybe argue that Trump has rallied Democrats around leftist causes and voting in general. But he's a huge risk. The parks he's privatizing, the oil he's drilling for, the alliances he's straining, the tax laws he's having passed, the SCOTUS judges he's appointing--this damage will last generations, and he's only been here two years! And that's without the threat of him starting a war somewhere for giggles and grins.

Imagine the damage he can do in two more years when he can probably make the SCOTUS far-right for the next generation. Imagine what he could do if he wins in 2020. We're facing a window to prevent the worst of climate change that is closing with terrifying speed and cannot afford to waste time with extremists in charge holding us down. We HAVE to keep people like him out of power, even if it means voting for a non-preferred candidate. I cannot see how anyone on the left could see years of Trump as worth it unless they don't live in the US or actually think that destroying the country is somehow going to give us a chance to rebuild something better from the ashes. Usually it just leads to a lot of suffering and no lessons learned.

The main reason the GOP has survived is because they can rally behind their candidate, no matter who he is, in sufficient numbers. If the Dems could do the same, their edge in votes would crush the GOP and lock them out of the White House. But no. We have to endure year after year of irreparable damage because the Mythical Perfect Candidate didn't show up, so we gotta sit home and hand everything over to the worst possible people.

 

[AdrienIer]

The problem is that politics isn't just about voting for one person to avoid another one from getting into power. At some point you have to coalesce onto one candidate and one platform, and the republicans are so far to the right that the democratic party is composed of people with very different ideas (basically all the US people with sane politics will vote democratic). It's the party of both Michael Bloomberg and Bernie Sanders. So if a part of the democratic party (its left wing in this case) is always presented with a choice between a candidate they rate "pretty bad" vs a candidate they rate "100% awful", they might vote for the "pretty bad" candidate a few times but at some point it's also normal to want a candidate you rate "pretty good"

 

[Phrossack]

The problem is that politics isn't just about voting for one person to avoid another one from getting into power. At some point you have to coalesce onto one candidate and one platform, and the republicans are so far to the right that the democratic party is composed of people with very different ideas (basically all the US people with sane politics will vote democratic). It's the party of both Michael Bloomberg and Bernie Sanders. So if a part of the democratic party (its left wing in this case) is always presented with a choice between a candidate they rate "pretty bad" vs a candidate they rate "100% awful", they might vote for the "pretty bad" candidate a few times but at some point it's also normal to want a candidate you rate "pretty good"

That's what primaries are for! Bernie didn't win. I voted for him and preferred him to Clinton, but he didn't win. So I voted for Clinton in the general.

If you want a progressive candidate, VOTE IN THE PRIMARY. Campaign, door-knock, fundraise, and push that candidate. If it works and you win, great! If not, sufficient support can force the other candidate to move towards yours by co-opting ideas.

But once the general election comes, it's well past time for sulking. There's a war to fight.

 

[Kyriakos]

Corporatocracy?
More like coprocracy, amirite

 

[Ironsided]

You prefer Trump to Clinton? Really?

I fully agree with you that Clinton would be a much better president than Trump but that’s in practice a half-truth because so would a rubber ducky. I am concerned about climate change as well and I think you are probably right in the short term. But America has had short term for too long (forever?). I believe it was Boots made a really smart post soon after the election about why suffering Trump will also be healthy for moving the discussion beyond the superficial and fishing for votes. I agree with that. Generalising wildly I’d say Americans have been and are still too damn politically lazy.

 

[Phrossack]

I fully agree with you that Clinton would be a much better president than Trump but that’s in practice a half-truth because so would a rubber ducky. I am concerned about climate change as well and I think you are probably right in the short term. But America has had short term for too long (forever?). I believe it was Boots made a really smart post soon after the election about why suffering Trump will also be healthy for moving the discussion beyond the superficial and fishing for votes. I agree with that. Generalising wildly I’d say Americans have been and are still too damn politically lazy.

We definitely have become complacent and short-termist, on that we can agree. But it's hard to focus on the long term when there are so many crises that need immediate action. The best we can do for now is vote for the candidates we want in the primary, then vote for the best/least bad candidate in the general.

 

[onejayhawk]

You prefer Trump to Clinton? Really?

Wouldn't any unbiased rational being?

The Democratic primaries have a long tradition of pulling down front-runners. At this point, those seem to be Sanders, Warren, and Biden. Kamala Harris will likely be in the same mix. My inclination at this point, is to wonder who else is capable of joining the lead peloton? The second is to wonder which of the leaders is already laboring and about to lose pace?

J

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Wouldn't any unbiased rational being?


J

Nope, mostly just idiots and GOP shills.

 

[Berzerker]

You prefer Trump to Clinton? Really?

She voted to invade Iraq, armed Syrian rebels leading to a civil war, the refugee crisis and the rise of ISIS, and she was complicit in the fall of Libya. She's a drug warrior, you know, all those 'super predators' she identified in support of the 1994 crime legislation the Democrats passed. Trump signed a bill into law that gives some relief to the victims of the drug war. The trail of blood she left behind is long, wide and deep.

 

[Phrossack]

She voted to invade Iraq, armed Syrian rebels leading to a civil war, the refugee crisis and the rise of ISIS, and she was complicit in the fall of Libya. She's a drug warrior, you know, all those 'super predators' she identified in support of the 1994 crime legislation the Democrats passed. Trump signed a bill into law that gives some relief to the victims of the drug war. The trail of blood she left behind is long, wide and deep.

Trump wasn't a Senator and never had the chance to vote for those things. Clinton had years to do those things; Trump's only had two, and he's intent on catching up. Not to mention the immense damage he's causing to world stability, environmental protection, and the fight against climate change. Those could add up to millions of deaths--more if his man Bolton has his way in foreign policy.

 

[metatron]

Trump wasn't a Senator and never had the chance to vote for those things. Clinton had years to do those things; Trump's only had two, and he's intent on catching up. Not to mention the immense damage he's causing to world stability, environmental protection, and the fight against climate change. Those could add up to millions of deaths--more if his man Bolton has his way in foreign policy.

Last time i checked Clinton couldn't find a war (or unilateral bombing) that she didn't like.
And she had the offensive arrogance to boot to claim i had "no memory".

Wait...

... i lost track of my thought here...

...right! Bolton is worse.