Election 2020 - Here we go again

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Mongrel
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Election 2020 - Here we go again

Postby Mongrel » Sat Mar 16, 2019 3:30 pm



That's a bad look, Bob
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Thad
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Re: Election 2020 - Here we go again

Postby Thad » Sat Mar 16, 2019 5:10 pm

Welp, I guess it's finally happening: we have presidential candidates who are young enough to have an online record of the stupid shit they said when they were in high school. The next few decades of elections are going to be interesting.

I can't really separate myself from my biases on this one. I, too, am a privileged white dude who said stupid shit online in his teens. And twenties. And...hopefully less stupid shit in my thirties, but I'm sure there's plenty in there too. Also, before my teens.

I would just as soon not be judged based on stupid shit I said when I was a teenager, and I'm inclined to extend that same courtesy to Beto. Though of course I reserve the right to change my mind if other, worse stuff comes out.

That said, there are plenty of other, more compelling reasons I'm lukewarm on O'Rourke's campaign. He's middle-of-the-road, he's never held a statewide office, and I legitimately have no idea what losing to Ted Cruz by 2.6 points means in terms of presidential electability. (On the one hand, he almost won, in Texas, as a Democrat! On the other, he couldn't close the deal even against a guy who everybody hates! What does that mean in terms of the 2020 electoral map? I don't know!)

But here's the thing: I don't actually have to decide who I'm going to vote for in next year's primary yet. I probably am going to switch my registration to D so I can vote for somebody, but I don't need to have a precise idea of who it's going to be right now, in March 2019.

By all means, look at the candidates and evaluate them. Form opinions. Decide who you like and who you don't. But even if you're in an early primary state (I am, of course, addressing Americans at this point, not you, Mongrel), you don't have to vote until February. And my primary is six weeks after that. Is Beto even still going to be in the race a year from tomorrow? There's a pretty good chance he isn't.

The race is going to look a lot different by the time I actually vote. And that's the major reason I haven't started a "primary 2020" thread. Not that I'm criticizing you for doing it, or anybody else for participating, but I feel like it's best for me to keep things in perspective and remember that I don't actually have to know who I'm going to vote for yet, and that it's going to depend entirely on what the race looks like a year from now.

Would I vote for Beto? That depends on (1) whether he's still in the race and (2) who else is still in the race.

Between O'Rourke and Warren? Warren.

Between O'Rourke and Biden? O'Rourke.

Between O'Rourke and Harris? I don't know. And I don't have to, because it is March 2019. If that winds up being the matchup by March 2020, well, I've got plenty of time to make up my mind before then.

Let me put it this way: at this point in 2007, I was backing John Edwards.

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Re: Election 2020 - Here we go again

Postby Grath » Sat Mar 16, 2019 5:13 pm

To be fair, he was apparently also the one who nominated the first female member of cDc at a time when hacking was a very boy's-club scene. But that is mixed in with a whole bunch of stupid shit from his teenage years.

Also,

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Re: Election 2020 - Here we go again

Postby Thad » Sat Mar 16, 2019 10:07 pm

Yeeeeah, I gotta say, though, "at least it wasn't blackface" isn't a very good defense.

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Re: Election 2020 - Here we go again

Postby Mongrel » Sat Mar 16, 2019 10:55 pm

It IS however, a hilarious burn.
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Re: Election 2020 - Here we go again

Postby Blossom » Sat Mar 16, 2019 11:39 pm

I would just as soon not be judged based on stupid shit I said when I was a teenager, and I'm inclined to extend that same courtesy to Beto. Though of course I reserve the right to change my mind if other, worse stuff comes out.


I dunno, how about stupid shit he's said just in the last few days?



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Re: Election 2020 - Here we go again

Postby Grath » Sun Mar 17, 2019 12:43 am

Thad wrote:Yeeeeah, I gotta say, though, "at least it wasn't blackface" isn't a very good defense.

That... wasn't a defense, it was making fun of the republicans who keep getting caught doing blackface and then getting elected anyways because humans are shit.

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Re: Election 2020 - Here we go again

Postby Thad » Sun Mar 17, 2019 2:14 am

TA wrote:
I would just as soon not be judged based on stupid shit I said when I was a teenager, and I'm inclined to extend that same courtesy to Beto. Though of course I reserve the right to change my mind if other, worse stuff comes out.


I dunno, how about stupid shit he's said just in the last few days?

I mean, I get that it was a pretty long post, but you could have read two sentences farther before replying. I did explicitly draw a distinction between not wanting to vote for him because of what he wrote on the Cult of the Dead Cow boards and not wanting to vote for him because he's too conservative.

Grath wrote:
Thad wrote:Yeeeeah, I gotta say, though, "at least it wasn't blackface" isn't a very good defense.

That... wasn't a defense, it was making fun of the republicans who keep getting caught doing blackface and then getting elected anyways because humans are shit.

...Ralph Northam is a Democrat.

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Re: Election 2020 - Here we go again

Postby Mongrel » Sun Mar 17, 2019 3:59 am

TA wrote:
I would just as soon not be judged based on stupid shit I said when I was a teenager, and I'm inclined to extend that same courtesy to Beto. Though of course I reserve the right to change my mind if other, worse stuff comes out.


I dunno, how about stupid shit he's said just in the last few days?




Yeah, I would agree that O'Rourke is the current Dem flag-bearer for "Liberals" and "Centrists".
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Re: Election 2020 - Here we go again

Postby Thad » Sun Mar 17, 2019 2:24 pm

Mongrel wrote:Yeah, I would agree that O'Rourke is the current Dem flag-bearer for "Liberals" and "Centrists".

But mostly because Biden hasn't declared, the Klobuchar campaign seems DOA based on the stories about her mistreatment of her staff, nobody knows who Hickenlooper is, and even the centrists won't take Gabbard.

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Re: Election 2020 - Here we go again

Postby Blossom » Sun Mar 17, 2019 2:38 pm

Biden hasn't officially declared but is still being viewed as a frontrunner and is being actively polled. The Onion has a lot of work to do for their crimes rehabilitating the image of that racist groper.

I've been calling an O'Rourke/Harris or Harris/O'Rourke fix for a while now. The candidate with the highest name recognition, highest polling, highest approval rating, and highest campaign donations so far is Sanders, but we all know whether or not the DNC is gonna let that happen.
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Re: Election 2020 - Here we go again

Postby Thad » Sun Mar 17, 2019 11:15 pm

I think there's a lot more to Sanders's defeat last time than DNC fuckery. They had a clear favorite and they put their thumbs on the scale for her, but they're not all-powerful; there were plenty of other problems that led to his defeat, from systemic (closed primaries) to local (polling places unable to accommodate demand) to Bernie's own campaign (he never quite managed to appeal to minority voters, outside of the youth vote) to the sheer size of the Clinton machine. All that and he still did better than anyone expected. He's got an uphill battle ahead of him this time, and the DNC's not going to help, but I wouldn't count him out yet either.

Another problem is the recent changes to the superdelegate system: the superdelegates have less influence on first ballot than they used to, but greater influence on second ballot. It's entirely possible that this won't matter, that this huge field will be winnowed down to two candidates within the first few primaries and one of them will win an outright majority on the first ballot. But it's also possible that, with a field this size, nobody will get a majority, and then the superdelegates pick.

If the primary were tomorrow...well, leaving aside that I'd be SOL because I haven't changed my registration to D so I can vote in the primary yet, if the primary were tomorrow I think I'd take Warren over Sanders. I'm more simpatico with Sanders's view that capitalism is the problem than Warren's belief that we can fix capitalism with proper oversight and regulation, but in terms of what a president can practically accomplish in eight years, I don't think those two beliefs will result in substantially different policy outcomes. I really like some of the policy proposals Warren has put out there, like the wealth tax. (Though maybe that's a good argument that we're better off keeping her in the senate.)

On the other hand, her claim of native heritage, and her subsequent handling of the scandal, have not impressed me, and some of her recent statements have concerned me too. While I agree with her proposal to break up big tech, the arguments she makes in her Medium article don't impress me (you're going to try and make a case for breaking up Amazon and you're going to go with "they have their own store brand" and not even mention AWS?). Plus she's made some recent remarks on copyright where she used some key phrases that sound like MPAA/RIAA talking points, and nope I definitely don't think the solution to the tech cartel problem can be found by getting advice from the media cartels.

All that said...this is very probably a moot point, for reasons stated upthread: the primary isn't tomorrow, it's a year from now, and I find it unlikely that I'll have to choose between Warren and Sanders. They're largely competing for the same voters, and I think it's likely that one of them will take a clear and early lead over the other (probably Sanders over Warren, for the reasons you mention). If they're both still in contention by this time next year, I'll back whichever one of them stands a better chance of getting the nomination. If they're both knocked out early, well, Gillibrand would be my next choice but I don't expect her to outlast the both of them. (And I like everything I've heard about Buttigieg, but I'd be very surprised if he became a major contender.) If it really is looking like Biden/Harris/O'Rourke/Booker or similar, well, I'll cross that bridge when I come to it. I don't like Harris on criminal justice, I don't like Booker on education or healthcare, and I don't like Biden or O'Rourke on a lot of stuff, but if all the progressive candidates get knocked out early, I guess I'll figure out which of the remaining candidates I dislike least.

Of course, there's one more vexing fact that makes the entire primary season frustrating, and that's that the winner of the Iowa caucus has gone on to win the Democratic nominee in every election since I've been old enough to vote*. It's entirely possible that that happens again, that one candidate takes an early lead, the narrative snowballs, and that early lead becomes self-reinforcing. I think that, with a field this size, we're probably looking at a more volatile scenario than that, and Iowa's influence may be diminished this time -- but there's really no way of knowing until we get there.

...which is a giant wall of text to say that basically I've got preferences right now but they probably won't make much difference by the time I actually vote. Which is why I haven't talked much about the primaries up to this point. I've got a lot to say, but I recognize that what I think a year before the primary is probably going to bear very little resemblance to my decision once people actually start voting.

* I didn't vote in the 2000 primary but I found out later that I could have. I was only 17 at the time of the primary, but it turns out that in Arizona, if you're 18 by the general election, you can vote in the primary.

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Re: Election 2020 - Here we go again

Postby Bal » Mon Mar 18, 2019 7:12 pm

In response to nothing in particular: God I am already SO TIRED.

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Re: Election 2020 - Here we go again

Postby Thad » Tue Mar 19, 2019 12:43 am

SO tired.

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Re: Election 2020 - Here we go again

Postby Mongrel » Wed Mar 20, 2019 4:39 am

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Re: Election 2020 - Here we go again

Postby Mongrel » Wed Mar 27, 2019 6:32 pm

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Re: Election 2020 - Here we go again

Postby Mongrel » Thu Mar 28, 2019 12:51 pm

Not going to lie; until about two days ago, I didn't know that Andrew Yang was actually a real person.

No, really. I thought he was just a joke meme made up by SA/4chan/whoever.
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Re: Election 2020 - Here we go again

Postby Blossom » Sun Mar 31, 2019 1:08 am

A full reading, breakdown, and review of Pete Buttigieg's campaign book, and what it says about him as a candidate, politician, and person.

Short version: Terrifying neoliberal sociopath, his only real value is the word "values", and seems to want to be president only because it's the next step on the meeting's agenda.
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Re: Election 2020 - Here we go again

Postby Thad » Sun Mar 31, 2019 12:20 pm

Thad wrote:(And I like everything I've heard about Buttigieg, but I'd be very surprised if he became a major contender.)

Welp, we can strike that first part, anyway. As for the second, I don't know that I'd call him a "major contender" yet (he may still prove to be more of a flavor of the month), but...he's getting enough attention that I'd no longer be surprised if he became one.

The good news is that more attention means more scrutiny. Thanks for the link; it sure doesn't paint a flattering picture. He comes across as something like a Silicon Valley Libertarian, with the notion that all our problems can be solved by apps and automation, and with a disinterest in issues like economic disparity and racial inequality. Dismissing Iraq War protesters as "social justice warriors" ain't a good look either.

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Re: Election 2020 - Here we go again

Postby IGNORE ME » Sun Mar 31, 2019 12:38 pm

Buttergig is the exact kind of person that Donald Trump was elected as a protest vote against.

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