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Serious 2020 Democratic Primaries

I was infuriated by Gravel not being included in the debates as well. I wasn't planning on posting on this, but I am happy that folks here know of his reputation, so I am cheered up enough to add my two cents. Gravel is absolutely brilliant with rock solid credentials and proven history as a progressive, most ambitious platform out there on foreign, social or economic policy. He is an honest man too. This is the legendary senator who fillabustered the draft for the Vietnam war again and again to stop the war, and made the Pentagon papers public record. He takes no prisoners. I loved his recent commercial exposing Joe Biden for the empty suit that he is. I put it down below for your entertainment and delight.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=yPFNgzF32Ug

What's troubling about Gravel not being included in the debates is that you are not required to meet both the polling threshold and the individual donor threshold to qualify for the debate. A number of candidates currently participating in the second debate do not meet both criteria. Bill de Blasio, Delaney, Tim Ryan, Michael Benney, Hickenlooper only meet 1 qualification as well, yet they got seats in the debate.

The maximum amount of people allowed in the debate is 20, and the current field of candidates well exceeds that number. It is a historically-large primary. Now I don't blame the DNC just for not allowing more than 20 people, it is already confusing and the debate stage is honestly overcrowded at just the 20. So I don't object to their making cuts, but the other candidates cut from the first and second debate did not meet any of the qualifications, Wayne Messam, Tom Steyer, Seth Multan, Joe Sestak. This was not the case with Mike Gravel. He is the only exception to this. He had over 65,000 individual donors, so ousting him is more controversial.

What makes the situation appear biased is that now that Eric Swalwell dropped out of the race there was an empty space, and it was given to another nobody, Steve Bullock who was not in the first debate. Steve Bullock definitely did not meet the donation threshold. Even his meeting of the polling threshold I would question because initially the DNC rejected a poll he submitted showing him above 0 as not an acceptable source. If he really did get 1% in the polls though, he still does not have the donation threshold. It is a legitimate source of debate-- which criteria is better? The polls or the donations? You could make the argument that having the individual donors as Gravel has is a better representation of who supports you since Bullock is not polling outside of a margin of error. If the polling is more important to you however then every candidate should have the equal opportunity to be accounted for in a poll. If you are not represented as an option in the polls for people to vote on then of course you will not meet that qualification, so you face a catch 22. Also bear in mind that you can't just go get anyone to do a poll for you. The DNC has specific polls they will review, and there is no deviation from it. There have been polls that did actually show Gravel meeting the threshold like Emerson, but they weren't polls the DNC slated for consideration. It is a system that is unfair.

Frankly I think the party would rather give the slot to another corporate candidate, enter Bullock, than they would a firebrand like Gravel.
 
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On a side note - Marianne Williamson is absolutely a meme contender, but at the same time, who else gets the impression that she is decidedly more sincere than nearly every other candidate on stage?
 
Her said:
On a side note - Marianne Williamson is absolutely a meme contender, but at the same time, who else gets the impression that she is decidedly more sincere than nearly every other candidate on stage?
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I honestly can't tell if she's sincere and fucking insane or pulling a publicity stunt and fucking insane.
 
Marianne Williamson is sincere I am sure. She has shown interest in politics since the 90s, and has donated to many democratic candidates and causes. She supported Bernie Sanders in 2016. She also ran for congress herself in 2014 as an independent. Her work helping others through her charitable foudations is even older.

Now the recent bid for the nomination by hedgefund manager turned philanthropist Tom Steyer gives me more pause. Not saying that his message won't be worth hearing, we'll see. He at least says he is for a living wage. I am just pointing out that his interest in activism is newer than Marianne's by comparison. He's most associated with lobbying to impeach Trump.

Marianne at least proved to me that she has all the magnamity of a meme queen this month. When she heard that Mike Gravel was trying to raise money to get to 60,000 individual donors she rallied her supporters to his aid in a rescue mission, requesting they make a donation to the Gravelanche's campaign. She was fighting for an equal playing field, and explained the importance of having Mike's alternative voice in the conversation. There is a snippet from the letter she wrote down below.
https://thehill.com/homenews/campai...ign-uses-fundraising-email-to-help-rival-2020

She gave him a boost of over 10,000 people fast. So on the basis of integrity I think she checks out. I personally like having Luna Lovegood in the race. Loony but good. I'd take her right now over 10 of the Wormtails on our debate stage.
 
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I haven't been catching up with politics as of recent, but I do think that Sanders has a pretty good chance of defeating Trump.
 
I think that all of these candidates bring something to the table and the primary should be very engaging and telling. I hope to see Rep. Swalwell throw his hat back into the ring, I do not think we saw enough of him to really see how the voters would respond to his potential candidacy. I wonder what the reaction is to Mayor Bloomberg categorically rejecting a bid to campaign as well.
 
VisionofMilotic said:
There is an enormous field of candidates out there, and several I like, gotta say!

I wanted to share a comprehensive list with PC of everyone who has thus far announced their candidacy for 2020. There are so many dems out there that you practically need a map to find them all :)

https://www.google.com/amp/s/qz.com...-2020-democratic-presidential-candidates/amp/

Are you supporting or considering any of these candidates? Please share with us why. Also is there somebody you would like to see run who is not currently running or announced?

Even if you are not eligible to vote, don't leave! You are still welcome to answer, just say who you would support if you could.

If you are interested in following the race then check back and view the guide in the link sometimes. It gets updates for new candidates when they enter. I will note that former Alaskan senator Mike Gravel's name is absent from the list, and he recently has announced a campaign so they should include him. His goal is to be in the debates, but he is a candidate neverthelessess.
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Mainly just Bernie and Warren. No one else has stood out so far, candidate wise.
 
Some numbers for the night, Warren led everyone in speaking time with 18 minutes and 33 seconds, followed by Sanders, Buttigieg, and Bullock.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive...-speaking-time.html?smid=tw-nytimes&smtyp=cur

Marianne Williamson, seems to have made a large impression, as she got the most twitter followers of the night despite having far less speaking time.

https://twitter.com/ddiamond/status/1156395768217051136?ref_src=twsrc^tfw

Overall from twitter impressions it seems that Marianne Williamson has set herself up as the latest flavor of the month now that Kamala Harris has fallen behind, and Buttigeg has practically disappeared.
 
Finally managed to see round 1 of the second debate. Some quick thoughts.

Overall, it seems pretty clear that most of the candidates went into this with the mentality of targeting Sanders and Warren both because they are front runners and because they are much more progressive. I think both Sanders and Warren did a good job of defending their stances and I think in particular Bernie stepped up his debate game after the feedback from the first debate. Warren I think was a little bit too obstinate when it came to the moderators and a little too keen to interject herself into every discussion - but overall this didn't hurt my impression of her too much and I can see how it would improve her standing in the eyes of others.

Buttegieg handles himself very well also. I don't agree with everything he said, but overall he has a good demeanour and a solid plan for how he wants to run the country. He comes off as genuine and he's prepared to stand up for his policies and provide a back up argument. He's certainly not my favourite candidate but I'm happy with him.

Delaney was good in the debate... but that's not necessarily a good thing. He, much like Biden, is an embodiment of the typical, centrist DNC. The way he talks about middle ground routes and making feasible promises sounds good but it's lip service to the impossible because it ignores how extremely divided US politics is. The middle road is a dead end where things don't necessarily get worse but they don't improve either. Unlike the other moderate candidates, however, he did handle himself extremely well in the debate and he spoke well so he gets credit for that.

Marianne Williamson... I have no idea. She's a meme. I can't tell if all this is just a Trump-inspired publicity stunt or of she's simply misguided enough to actually think she should be the President. I will give her credit that she did sound better this time around, might have done some more research or something. That being said, she still has no qualifications and she still isn't actually presenting a plan to do any of the things she talked about. What she did do though was act as though she re-enacting every cheesy presidential speech from every bad over-patriotic movie ever. Every time she speaks she makes it clearer she doesn't belong on that stage but that she might make a good activist if she focused her energy there.

The rest all blended together. Let them hence forth be known as the DNC conglomerate because they were all spewing the same pointless, centrist, republican-pandering content as Delaney but with a fraction of his eloquence and political savvy. Not much more to say on them.

So from round 1 I liked Sanders, Warren and Buttegieg and the rest can bugger off.
 
colours said:
What's likely going to happen is that it's all going to come down to Biden vs Bernie, though. But that's just a big ol' assumption based on poll numbers. We'll see what the debates have to weed out.
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Well now politics can be unpredictable. I remember similarly in the lead up to 2016, everyone was sure it was going to be Jeb Bush for the Republicans, and we see how that turned out. The voters can decide to flip on a dime if they so choose.
 
AlolanRattata said:
Well now politics can be unpredictable. I remember similarly in the lead up to 2016, everyone was sure it was going to be Jeb Bush for the Republicans, and we see how that turned out. The voters can decide to flip on a dime if they so choose.
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Good on you for quoting a months old post, way before the debates started happening. =P

There's a reason why I said it was a massive assumption based on poll numbers, and also that the debates can change things. In the first debate, it was clear that Warren/Kamala/Castro were the headline makers, while I haven't done a whole lot of looking into who exactly "won" the second debate or turned heads this time around aside from maybe Tulsi for dunking on Kamala. I've also heard Warren did really well, as did Sanders.

What these two debates have in common is that both were pretty poor showings for Biden. Whether that really matters is something we'll end up seeing, or whether his demographic will keep holding onto him and make him the hill they die on.

That said as things seem to be currently, it's pretty much down to only like four or five people that really matter. The rest are there for TV screen time or to get their name out there so they can run for local/federal office later on.
 
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Good on you for being immediately defensive without even trying to be rational. Truly well done.

I said the voters can flip on a dime. Anything can change things, not just debates. Whether the voters care about how other people think Biden did in the debates does remain to be seen, yes. Everyone has their supporters, it's not over until it's over.
 
AlolanRattata said:
I said the voters can flip on a dime. Anything can change things, not just debates. Whether the voters care about how other people think Biden did in the debates does remain to be seen, yes. Everyone has their supporters, it's not over until it's over.
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Actually not. Most voters have a clear idea of what they want by now, especially with two of the frontrunners (Bernie and Biden) having 100% name recognition, and everybody else becoming increasingly better known after the debates. At this point, the only remarkable development is Warren's slow but steady improvement in the polls, but in a way that is not that surprising after all- she was always one of the top choices, and she seems to have captured the liberal/college-educated whites side of the primary.

By now, all the 0-1% also-rans may as well give up, if they haven't broken through already I don't know what can possibly push them into the top tiers. And, to be honest, I don't know why anybody other than Biden, Warren, Bernie, Harris and Buttigieg (in this order) are still running, though I guess it'll take an Iowa for most of the rest to finally give up.

And I'm not just being defensive or whatever- we are at the point in which the person leading the polls tends to have a 50% or higher chance of winning the whole thing eventually. By now, it's still possible that, say, Warren does surprisingly well in a couple of the early states (her massive campaign infrastructure in Nevada has been described as "a monster" by other candidates), becomes "electable" and edges out Biden. Or Harris does a massive comeback by carrying California and its hundreds of delegates, or what-have-you. But I can't really see how Booker comes back, let alone the pack of random white dudes or the 0% guys nobody remembers.

Bonus: Sanders's numbers in the polls are really awful for someone who won 40-odd percent of the vote three years ago and has a positive approval and 100% name recognition. Turns out that he can do well when he's the only alternative to Clinton, but he's struggling mightily to hold on to his more reluctant 2016 voters against Warren.
 
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Black said:
https://twitter.com/iheartmindy/status/1159655720796786688

"Poor kids are just as bright and just as talented as white kids." Nice save at the end there Joe. :laugh-squinted:
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I don't know what bothers me more that people are now linking leftism to racism or that this will make little difference to the chances of a republican who can't string two words together winning the primary.

Honestly, my opinion of Biden degenerates every time I hear about him.
 
While nobody plummeted or soared in the polls after the second debate, I do think it is intriguing that Kamala took more of a hit in the polls than anyone else, and is back at single digit for now, even after the momentum she gained from the first series of debates. Pretty sure this is related to the discussion of her unethical criminal justice record, just as the support Kamala siphoned from Biden was due to his anti-bussing legislation and segregationist ties.

Biden also tipped downward after the last debate. To any comrades of mine on the progressive wing we still need to knock Biden off his high horse and close that comfy lead he holds, but he's not picking up anything from these debates. Even when Kamala Harris was directly attacked for her criticism of Biden, it didn't result in Biden trending upward.

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/polls-since-the-second-debate-show-kamala-harris-slipping/
While I don't think debates benefit Biden at all based on his previous attempts to run in primaries in addition to this election cycle, who I think can benefit from debate is Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders. I don't say this just because I would rather have Bernie or Liz as the nominee than Uncle Joe, though that is certainly true-- I'd look forward to either Sanders or Warren's domestic policies as president. What I also see is that this pair trended upward the most last debate, and that ability to keep growing is some good news.
 
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