Serious 2020 Democratic Primaries

[User Anon 1848]

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.

Personally only a couple of the establishment dems have struck me as racist but Biden was asking for it here. Over the last year or so I've noticed right-wingers adapt the "no u" strategy. It's amusing to see but I don't think it will be effective.

 

[VisionofMilotic]

I am sad that Gravel has officially ebded his campaign. I wanted him at least in 1 debate. The man is an American hero, so let me toss him his bouquet for trying at least. I believe that he had the potential to influence the conversation about foreign policy in this country without winning as Bernie Sanders did with domestic policy in 2016. The party is the worser not to have Gravel's input.

I love foreign policy discussions, and we desperately need more anti-war voices like his on the debate stage. His platform was the best, ending the use of military drones,denuclearization, no more arm sales overseas, closing Guantanamo Bay and paying restitution for survivors, bringing home every troop deployed.

Now that Trump has put Venezuela under an embargo this week I want to see some more democrats in the this primary channel a drop of the Gravel's courage.

On the issue of Venezuela as far as I am aware no democrat running directly endorses military intervention in this country, which is good. The issue of sanctions is another matter though, only a handful of candidates have specifically said "no" to this, the majority support them or haven't addressed this aspect one way or the other.

I was pleasantly surprised to see Marianne Williamson and Andrew Yang were among the voices who came out against the sanctions on Venezuela on their website and social media. Tulsi Gabbard has also clarified that her anti-intervention stance includes no sanctions on the country.

Gravel has always been the loudest voice against sanctions as a form of economic warfare however. Nobody says it quite like him and a quote he made earlier this year in an interview with Intercept was just music to my ears.

"It is absolutely ridiculous to think that there's a threat to us. There is, for terror. Now, that's a whole other problem. And we bring that terror onto ourselves by the way we conduct ourselves around the world. Here, just look at the issue of sanctions. Who the hell are we to sanction anybody? Sanctions — like what we're doing right now in Venezuela — those sanctions are going to cost tens of thousands of deaths primarily children, I might say. And so we do this wantonly and with a level of arrogance. My God, where's the sense of morality in our leadership today and in the past?"

https://theintercept.com/2019/05/08...-american-threat-to-iran-venezuela-and-women/

It is always refreshing to hear someone put it that bluntly.

 

[Ivysaur]

I am extremely torn in the case of Venezuela because Maduro is an incompetent dictator that survives in power through blatant election-rigging, the state-endorsed kidnapping of opposition MPs (after abolishing Parliament when he lost the legislative elections) and paramilitary squads of hitmen that murder civilians (according to a UN report written by the former left-wing President of Chile). And by the time the sanctions kicked in, Maduro (and Chávez, his predecessor) had already managed to destroy most of the country's industry and cause hyperinflation and massive recessions and poverty, and was in debt default. And half of the sanctions imposed by Trump involve freezing the millions of dollars of ill-gotten gains Maduro and his henchmen had ammassed at the cost of millions of citzens over the past decades.

When the only people coming out to demonstrate against the sanctions are state employees threatened with dismissal by Maduro and party echelons, well, I don't know whether the real anger in the country is against Trump or the kleptocracy starving them (something that was happening before Trump was even elected). But it's true that, like in Cuba, making things harder for the population will do nothing to help them. It's a tough thing to solve, but the US needs to do something while at least 70% of the Venezuelan population is begging to be freed of their dictator.

 

[AlolanRattata]

Actually not. Most voters have a clear idea of what they want by now

This does not have anything to do with what we're talking about. This says nothing about which candidate they are likely to support.

 

[Ivysaur]

This does not have anything to do with what we're talking about. This says nothing about which candidate they are likely to support.

The fact is that polls at this stage in a primary *are* indicative. At this point (week -40), slightly over half of the time they pointed out in the right direction.

And if Biden isn't going to win, chances are one of the other frontrunners will. There is no reason why anyone under Buttigieg in the polls will rise out of nowhere if they haven't yet. There's a difference between many voters being "persuadable" or floating between different options and them being capable of "turning on a dime". People do not wake up and decide they're going to dump, say, Warren and instead support Steve Bullock out of nowhere.

 

[AlolanRattata]

If that were the case people would be dropping out right now. The candidates continue to be in the news day in and day out and there is always the chance for the news to report something that changes minds. The news and other talking heads continue to try to tear down Biden using any public appearance he makes, it definitely is not a foregone conclusion.

 

[gimmepie]

If that were the case people would be dropping out right now. The candidates continue to be in the news day in and day out and there is always the chance for the news to report something that changes minds. The news and other talking heads continue to try to tear down Biden using any public appearance he makes, it definitely is not a foregone conclusion.

Most of those people know they have no hope. They're running to put themselves on the map or to apply pressure.

 

[Her]

i.e Inslee and his highly respectable and singular focus on ensuring that climate change is a top issue in the debates, which I have a feeling will be shuffled off the debate cards the moment he drops out :/

 

[AlolanRattata]

Most of those people know they have no hope. They're running to put themselves on the map or to apply pressure.

By apply pressure I assume you mean take votes away from other candidates.

Even if their hope is preposterously slim, and statistically that is the case for most of them, especially with a field this large, it's difficult to say anything is unlikely.

 

[gimmepie]

By apply pressure I assume you mean take votes away from other candidates.

Even if their hope is preposterously slim, and statistically that is the case for most of them, especially with a field this large, it's difficult to say anything is unlikely.

Sort of? It's less about taking votes away and more about narrowing margins, making a political statement with any votes they do get and using the platform of the election to their political stances heard where they otherwise wouldn't be.

It's pretty easy to say it's unlikely really. Like you said, statistically speaking, most of these candidates have preposterously slim chances of success. That is the very definition of unlikely and they know this. At this point any of that crowd who haven't dropped out are either in denial or have other reasons for continuing to run.

 

[Ivysaur]

Relevant to the current discussion: Hickenlooper is quitting the race today. Hopefully he'll run for Senate. Like Bullock should have. And Beto/Castro.

 

[Neil Peart]

You guys are getting Trump again in 2020 if Biden is the candidate. Period. Young voters continue to get screwed with moderate fossils like Hillary and Biden; not to mention, fake progressives like Harris, Buttigieg, and Beto. They'll sit on their hands if Biden is the nominee, and I really won't blame them. Bernie Sanders is about as real as real gets in American politics, but people are too dim to realize that what he calls for isn't "radical" by any means.

 

[VisionofMilotic]

There's a petition at Change.org for the DNC to expand the list of polls they review. One of the controversies of the second debate was that Mike Gravel was barred from the stage because he didn't meet the polling threshold of enough qualifying DNC polls. Note, it doesn't mean he wasn't polling at 1% or more, it just wasn't in polls that the DNC had selected. Understand also the DNC rejecting a poll does not mean the poll was faulty or unscientific, it is just at their discretion which polls they want to use.

Many polls the DNC did review didn't have Gravel as an option to vote for, therefore he couldn't meet the threshold, and the place on the debate stage was given instead to another candidate Steve Bullock, who was in the DNC-approved polls, but actually had far fewer individual supporters that donated his campaign than Gravel.

The polling threshold has doubled since the July debate to 2% and has the number of individual donors required to participate in the third debate from 65,000 to 130,000.

Julian Castro hit and exceeded the magic number of over 130,000 individual donors way back in July, Tulsi Gabbard also has exceeded 130,000 donors. Both of these guys still can be thrown out of the next debate unfortunately like Gravel was. While these candidates have provided different polls that show them meeting and sometimes exceeding the minimum of 2%, the DNC has rejected some of their polls. The DNC-approved polls have them too low to qualify for participation.

Among the polls that voters are demanding the DNC review include Emerson, Suffolk and The Economist. These are scientific polls, but they are not on the DNC's short list right now. The DNC has only accepted 3 of Julian Castro's polls and only 1 of Tulsi Gabbard's. They must have at least 4 polls the DNC has approved of by August 28th, or else they will probably not be let on the stage come September.

I know that Amy Klobuchar has been granted a spot on the debate stage already for September, though Gabbard has offered twice the number of polls showing her hitting 2-3% threshold as Klobuchar. But Amy Klobuchar's were approved by the DNC's list, but not Gabbard's. This doesn't sit well with me.

Neither Julian Castro or Tulsi Gabbard are my #1 choice, but I think their performances have both been strong and articulate in in debate, better in my opinion than the some of the people who have been garunteed a spot in the next debates. They have made some good points on several topics like immigration, the criminal justice system and ending war that I would like to hear expandeded on in the discussion. Honestly though, it is the principle that gets me most. I don't like the idea of candidates being thrown out on perhaps a trick of procedure, so I'm gonna sign onto this petition here. It's about to meet the goal of 10,000 signatures.

https://www.change.org/p/democratic...xp=message-17263088-en-US&share_bandit_var=v3


Who will definitely be in the September debate is of course Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg, Cory Booker, Beto O'Rourke, Amy Klobuchar and Andrew Yang.

 

[Neil Peart]

Technically, I'm still a US citizen, so I could vote if I wanted to. I voted for Hillary in 2016 because I thought she would be a better choice for president than a fascist. However, if it's not Bernie in 2020, count my absentee ballot out. I don't care who they put on that stage for those debates -- the fact is, Bernie has been consistent with his "radical" views for decades, and he has more civil rights street cred than any fake progressive or moderate shill you'll see behind a podium. The DNC is just as inimical to progress in the US as the RNC; the only difference is the ideology. So, I hope that for the sake of the working class, America gets its shit together and gets behind Bernie, whether the shills at the DNC want him or not.

 

[Ivysaur]

Can I just say that the more I listen to Warren, the better I think of her?

 

[colours]

Can I just say that the more I listen to Warren, the better I think of her?

There's a reason I massively prefer her to Sanders. =P

 

[AlolanRattata]

It's pretty easy to say it's unlikely really. Like you said, statistically speaking, most of these candidates have preposterously slim chances of success. That is the very definition of unlikely and they know this. At this point any of that crowd who haven't dropped out are either in denial or have other reasons for continuing to run.

Um actually, statistics and politics don't really go together in this sort of linear fashion that you're going by. Statistically, President Trump should have lost in 2016, a win for him there was "unlikely". Yet he won.

My point here is this, the human element in politics is what keeps people in the race.

 

[gimmepie]

Um actually, statistics and politics don't really go together in this sort of linear fashion that you're going by. Statistically, President Trump should have lost in 2016, a win for him there was "unlikely". Yet he won.

My point here is this, the human element in politics is what keeps people in the race.

The whole thing with statistics is that anything short of 100% is no guarantee of success. This doesn't change that fact that it is all but certainly not going to be even close for the vast majority of these candidates. You can't just decide everyone has a fair chance because of an upset in 2016, that's not how math works. It is still very unlikely that anyone aside from the front runners will win the primary.

 

[colours]

Um actually, statistics and politics don't really go together in this sort of linear fashion that you're going by. Statistically, President Trump should have lost in 2016, a win for him there was "unlikely". Yet he won.

My point here is this, the human element in politics is what keeps people in the race.

I'm not sure what it is with people forming the narrative that "anything goes" simply because Trump won. Trump was an unlikely candidate to win, sure. Unlikely doesn't mean impossible though, and there are several factors that played into his win. Looking at things more critically, everything that could've gone well for Trump pretty much did—Clinton not only severely underestimated him and not taken him seriously, the rest of the media didn't either, not to mention he was controlling the media narrative anyway—in addition to pretty much everything going wrong for Clinton pretty much happening. Comey slamming Clinton for the use of a personal email server certainly dinged her for a while, but it was not irrecoverable by any means and she had regained ground, but by the time the election was about to happen, the Comey letter (whether you admit it's a direct factor or not, it was certainly on people's minds) was released. Because of this, anyone who was essentially on the fence about Clinton waffled over to Trump because she appeared too much of an establishment elite while Trump was playing the more moderate flute in comparison.

Thing is though, Trump can't stick to the "centrist" playbook, because he's not a centrist. He can't use that tactic again on anyone who isn't a diehard Trump supporter, anyway. People are going to reflect on children bring in cages, the fact that he, whether one admits it or not, enables white supremacy and racism and relishes in it. People are going to reflect on the constant mass shootings in this country and how nothing is constantly being done about it. People are going to reflect on their healthcare and ask themselves whether they get to keep their own insurance or be forced to drop it (Obamacare is most certainly still the #1 target for the GOP, after all). While Trump being re-elected is a possibility and certainly not impossible, it would take a sequence of events much like what happened with Clinton to make that happen. In other words, everything has to go right for one side in order to win against another despite (un)popularity numbers.

As it stands currently, no Democratic frontrunner that's named Biden or Kamala has anything to worry about as far as skeletons in their closet go. Even Warren's worst gaffes are peanuts in the grand scheme of things and people are willing to forgive her over it if it means she can move on and won't do it again.

So really, no, things really aren't as coin-flippy as you think they are.

 

[Ivysaur]

My point here is this, the human element in politics is what keeps people in the race.

And, speaking in the Democratic race only, there's a difference between a general election with Trump having roughly a 33% chance of winning (looking at 538 on election day) because he has a hard floor of 40% of the electorate who are hard-core republicans and will vote for a green dog if it has an R next to its name (same goes for the other side) and a primary in which someone like Bill de Blasio has literally nothing going for him.

I can accept that this started as a wide open race in which anybody could win. But this isn't the first week, we are nearing the moment in which historically the frontrunners are clearly emerging. Of course, we don't know whether Biden will hold on to his narrow lead, whether Warren or Sanders will run away with the progressive vote or fade against the other, or whether Harris or Buttigieg will have a second youth, outperform in Iowa and become the top dogs. But what we do know is that Inslee and Ryan and (insert a dozen people here), who are stuck in 0-1% after months of campaign, have a massively steep mountain to climb and have so far not shown any evidence of being able to do it. Anyone who doesn't qualify for the second debate by next week -and so far only 10 people have- are essentially done for.

And this is all a circle. No support in the polls, no debate invites, no media coverage, people don't know who you are, and round and round it goes. Underdog candidates had a chance to make a first impression. Everybody has had their chance by now, and polls stubbornly show only a handful of candidates breaking 5%. Having a second chance to make a first impression is rare and unlikely, and it's even harder if there are no cameras looking at you ebcause you've become a running joke more than an actual candidate. And that's where half of the field find themselves in.