Mega-Thread: Democratic 2020 Primaries

[Endus]

That's kind of ignoring all the polling showing that the top concern among primary voters is beating Trump and that people are worried about candidates going too far left.

If the top concern is about "beating Trump", then they're willing to swallow "too far left" to achieve that top concern. That's sort of the point.

It's particularly silly when "too far left", in this case, means "talking about universal health care like literally every other developed nation on the planet". Medicare for All is a mildly left-of-center policy position, at best.

This is what I meant when I said the country's possibly already lost. You've bought in to the idea that centrist views are "too far left". Your choices are "center right" and "extremist right".

Except Endus I'm not arguing that at all. In fact what bewilders me is you even said that, when I have explicitly mentioned in the post directly above the one you quoted (and in countless others), that I've put away my personal politics for years to come. It's in a box, in the attic, to be opened in the 2030s. Maybe.

But the positions you're attacking for being alarmingly left-wing aren't.

You're assessing them based on your own politics, whether you say so or not.

Progressive Democrats need to basically sit down, shut up, and let the centrist wing convince the Wisconsinite surburban yokels into blaming Trump for all their problems and convincing them that Democrats will do a marginally better job. And then when elected, Democrats can indulge themselves.

I think the operative failure here is a single word in this paragraph.

That word is "convince". These aren't people you can "convince". At best, you can poke them with a stick and hope they react the way you want.

And I'll freely admit that the Democrats are super bad at poking people with rhetorical sticks, and see it as gross and bad. I think it should be gross and bad, but if they won't listen to anything else, break out the poking sticks.

I don't think it takes convincing them your policies are good. I think all it takes is poking them with how stupid it is to support Trump, over and over and over, until the pokes get through the outer layers of hide and start doing damage.

Don't campaign there on M4A, sure. You'll never convince them to like it. Instead, campaign on "you'd have to be a moron to think a New York City oligarch with Russian friends would ever care two shits about your lower-middle-class plight." Don't be accusatory, in the sense of saying "YOU are this moron", just talk about generic morons, and spread that shit-flinging so wide and so deep in those States that they're wading through it knee-deep wherever they go. Talk about how Trump's response to people losing jobs is "you're FIRED". Use every stupid comment he makes against him. And make these people wade through this condemnation wherever they go.

You could campaign on a policy of "puppies and kittens are cute", and you'll never convince these people to agree. You've gotta break their fuckheaded enchantment with Trump and co first. Once they're disillusioned and see that no one's got their backs, maybe they'll be open to listening.

The root issue here is that Democrats think too highly of people, in general. If they'll only listen to bullshit propaganda that tugs on their heartstrings, feed them the pap they demand. Once you get the system back under control, you can work to fix the massive intergenerational fuckups that have led to having a society this easily-led.

[Elegiac]

If the top concern is about "beating Trump", then they're willing to swallow "too far left" to achieve that top concern. That's sort of the point.

It's particularly silly when "too far left", in this case, means "talking about universal health care like literally every other developed nation on the planet". Medicare for All is a mildly left-of-center policy position, at best.

This is what I meant when I said the country's possibly already lost. You've bought in to the idea that centrist views are "too far left". Your choices are "center right" and "extremist right".

This. America's been conned into a mindset where despite being in need of urgent structural reform that a simple return to a sequence of center right WASPs will put everything back to rights.

- - - Updated - - -

Novel thought: instead of freaking out about M4A maybe y'all should put your galaxy brains to work thinking of a way to sell it to the rubes you insist will put Trump back in office.

EDIT: Just realised that was a NYT poll, lol. Miss me with that shit.

[Skroe]

I'm pretty sure I said what I mean and will continue to say as such to anyone who insists that the Democrat nominee needs to be America's most sterling Republican.

I just wanted to know... I literally pointed at my screen and said to myself... maybe the almighty himself "you see this shit", in the most incredulous fashion I can.

namely this part:

Democrat nominee needs to be America's most sterling Republican.

Like honestly, sometimes I have to go the PAC because I read shit like this and have to be reminded I'm not entirely wasting my time in my anti-Trump side job.

Repeat after me... this is not about Democrats and Republicans. And what they believe. It's about scoring Electoral Votes in three of 6 states that Trump carried in 2016, by appealing... however insincerely... to about 150,000 additional yokels. And thus in the process, saving democratic.

And you're here talking about Democrats and Republicans.

To which I say to provenience itself "can you believe this shit?"

it doesn't matter Elegiac. Your beliefs are important to you.

*nobody cares*. My beliefs are important to me *nobody cares*.

The only thing that matters right now is figuring how to get 150,000 yokels to switch sides. That is the strategy. How do we do that. The end. That is the only thing to consider. That will decide if Trump spends the period 2021-2025 in the White House or trying to stay out of the Big House. And I very much want to see the Orange Fascist in an orange jumpsuit doing 20-to-life.

So I say to you and all progressives, please stop getting the the goddamn way of it and let the people actually try to rope in those yokels do their job, for you. Then come 2021 when President Warren makes her M4A push you can thank me with an edible arrangement or something.


All I have to say Elgiac, is if you and your ilk were on the right, Mark Meadows and Jim Jordan would fricken love you guys. Ideologues... got help the rest of us.

[Endus]

Novel thought: instead of freaking out about M4A maybe y'all should put your galaxy brains to work thinking of a way to sell it to the rubes you insist will put Trump back in office.

"Are you happy with spending thousands of your hard-earned dollars to ensure that pharmacorp owners and hospital shareholders can buy a new vacation home or buy their daughter a solid-gold Lambo for their Sweet Sixteen?

"Are you happy paying all that money, only to be denied coverage for the treatment you need, because health insurance companies make money by denying coverage, not by paying for it?"

"Maybe you'd be better off spending a lot less of your money on a program which provides you;
A> better coverage than what you're currently buying,
B> zero chance of being denied coverage to protect some rich playboy's profit line, and
C> way lower prices for drugs and treatments across the board, because fatcats aren't able to play off each other to make themselves rich at your expense?"

"Support Medicare For All. Because the alternative is letting yourself be assfucked by the wealthy."

This shit isn't even hard to write. It's not a hard sell, it's just that Democrats don't have the balls to call this shit what it is, because they all still want some of that sweet, sweet medical lobby money.

[Elegiac]

I just wanted to know... I literally pointed at my screen and said to myself... maybe the almighty himself "you see this shit", in the most incredulous fashion I can.

I mean, I could really say the same thing given that your entire premise is that the continued survival of the US is a good thing. Which is - wait for it - a fundamentally ideological position. It's dishonest in the extreme to criticise progressives as being ideologues when you are equally as ideologically motivated, when the only difference is that your ideology isn't mutually exclusive with the US' electoral structure.

Again; put that big brain of yours to good purpose trying to deradicalise the rubes in the Midwest so that they understand M4A is actually a pretty politically centrist policy. Because Biden is just slapping a neoliberal bandage on a sucking chest wound.

[Skroe]

I think the operative failure here is a single word in this paragraph.

That word is "convince". These aren't people you can "convince". At best, you can poke them with a stick and hope they react the way you want.

And I'll freely admit that the Democrats are super bad at poking people with rhetorical sticks, and see it as gross and bad. I think it should be gross and bad, but if they won't listen to anything else, break out the poking sticks.

I don't think it takes convincing them your policies are good. I think all it takes is poking them with how stupid it is to support Trump, over and over and over, until the pokes get through the outer layers of hide and start doing damage.

Don't campaign there on M4A, sure. You'll never convince them to like it. Instead, campaign on "you'd have to be a moron to think a New York City oligarch with Russian friends would ever care two shits about your lower-middle-class plight." Don't be accusatory, in the sense of saying "YOU are this moron", just talk about generic morons, and spread that shit-flinging so wide and so deep in those States that they're wading through it knee-deep wherever they go. Talk about how Trump's response to people losing jobs is "you're FIRED". Use every stupid comment he makes against him. And make these people wade through this condemnation wherever they go.

You could campaign on a policy of "puppies and kittens are cute", and you'll never convince these people to agree. You've gotta break their fuckheaded enchantment with Trump and co first. Once they're disillusioned and see that no one's got their backs, maybe they'll be open to listening.

The root issue here is that Democrats think too highly of people, in general. If they'll only listen to bullshit propaganda that tugs on their heartstrings, feed them the pap they demand. Once you get the system back under control, you can work to fix the massive intergenerational fuckups that have led to having a society this easily-led.

I used the word convinced and fixated on it. That's funny, because last minute I replaced another word with it.

The word was 'con'. I think that's more accurate.

You are correct. There is no convincing these people. Merit based arguments for M4A and all that nonsense is a waste of time. That's a very democratic thing to do.

Solution: don't try. It's not a path to victory.

Your prescription on what to campaign on is correct and pretty much exactly what I have been saying here across the last series of posts, and is what my PAC is focusing on. Negative campaigning against Trump is the way to win. And a big part of that is the 'con', which is to have Trump blamed for the things that ail their lives. That is not entirely true. No single politician is. Or persons. But still, it doesn't take much to get a President blamed for things, and Trump makes it easy.

You calso con them by basically playing a cagey denial game with the whole progressive agenda. That's basically what Obama did in 2008, after he had wont he primary. It does work. That is a fact. People are stupid. If EW denounces M4A next year in the general, it'll convince people if she does it loudly and often enough.

My concern, is that she's going to think it doesn't, and that Bernie Sanders is going to stay in to make sure she doesn't. And that progressive activists, who want "things" more than beating Trump, which make sure she doesn't.

I want Trump gone. I don't care how it gets done or who does. And consistent with the second part of your post, that means largely talking about him and what he would do and why he is bad, and not why Democrats are good and what Democrats would do.

Problem is, Democrats are doing PRECISELY the opposite right now, and Elizabeth Warren's unforced error on Friday with her M4A release timing is evidence of that.

[Elegiac]

Solution: don't try. It's not a path to victory.

And in these words, we see how the modern Republican party turned from the party of ideological conservatism to the party of let's carry water for actual fascists.

[Endus]

Problem is, Democrats are doing PRECISELY the opposite right now, and Elizabeth Warren's unforced error on Friday with her M4A release timing is evidence of that.

It also bears pointing out the difference between a primary campaign (what's going on right now), and the national campaign. The issues won't be the same. Here, she's speaking to an entirely Democratic crowd. She can then put M4A on the backburner for the national campaign and make appeals to voters who aren't yet convinced.

If they try and bring that up to attack her in the national campaign, she just needs to sneer at it and say something like "yeah, how radical an idea is it to fix our healthcare to catch up to the rest of the developed world? Why don't you care to fix the industry that's bankrupting middle class Americans on a daily basis?" Just spin it right around.

[Elegiac]

It also bears pointing out the difference between a primary campaign (what's going on right now), and the national campaign. The issues won't be the same. Here, she's speaking to an entirely Democratic crowd. She can then put M4A on the backburner for the national campaign and make appeals to voters who aren't yet convinced.

I also do want to point out that, not a few months ago, we had endless stories about how "Warren is campaigning smarter than Sanders but she'll never win against Biden because she doesn't have black support!". And now people are freaking out because "Warren is campaigning smarter than Biden but she'll never win against Trump because she doesn't have Midwestern support!"

I'm honestly kinda astonished by the levels of amateurishness being ascribed to a campaign distinguished primarily by its reliance on experts in their respective fields.

Oh, wait. It's because Americans think left wingers are all carebears of no administrative or political substance. -.-

[kaelleria]

We have like 1600 pages of the shitshow thread detailing all the horrible things Trump did. Don't you think that literally any democrat will be better than Trump is?

Sorry for feeling more moral outrage at kids stuck in cages, LGBT people losing rights, and a whole host of other things than an ideological purity test that Sanders and Russia turned the primary into in 2016.

[Elegiac]

We have like 1600 pages of the shitshow thread detailing all the horrible things Trump did. Don't you think that literally any democrat will be better than Trump is?

Sorry for feeling more moral outrage at kids stuck in cages, LGBT people losing rights, and a whole host of other things than an ideological purity test that Sanders and Russia turned the primary into in 2016.

The fact that you think things like healthcare and climate change are "ideological purity tests" is, again, why Endus and I are saying the country might already be lost. Neoliberalism is part of the problem. It is the perspective of moneyed white people who do not understand that the status quo is causing incredible amounts of suffering.

Like...grats, we bought a whole eight extra years before the country went entirely to shit. So, yay?

[kaelleria]

The fact that you think things like healthcare and climate change are "ideological purity tests" is, again, why Endus and I are saying the country might already be lost. Neoliberalism is part of the problem. It is the perspective of moneyed white people who do not understand that the status quo is causing incredible amounts of suffering.

Like...grats, we bought a whole eight extra years before the country went entirely to shit. So, yay?

Find me a democrat in the top 5 with a bad climate policy? Go ahead I'll wait. They're all 10000000000 x more progressive than what we have now.

Same with Healthcare, everyone's plan agrees there's an issue, the difference is in how you go about fixing it.

So yes, I find M4A or bust an ideological purity test.

[Elegiac]

Find me a democrat in the top 5 with a bad climate policy? Go ahead I'll wait. They're all 10000000000 x more progressive than what we have now.

Biden. We're at the point any climate change plan with the word "compromise" is as good as "do nothing".

Same with Healthcare, everyone's plan agrees there's an issue, the difference is in how you go about fixing it.

Yeah, no.

The issue is that people don't understand America's healthcare system is the result of too much private sector ownership. What Biden and the other centrists are proposing is...What did Warren call it?

Medicare for All Who Can Afford It.

It's functionally no different than the system we have now because the chief goal of Biden, Buttigieg etc. is not fixing the healthcare system. It's ensuring that insurance companies can continue to extract profit without being so *obviously* detrimental to people's wellbeing.

Call that an 'ideological purity test' if you like, but it's also a basic fact.

[Skroe]

I mean, I could really say the same thing given that your entire premise is that the continued survival of the US is a good thing. Which is - wait for it - a fundamentally ideological position. It's dishonest in the extreme to criticise progressives as being ideologues when you are equally as ideologically motivated, when the only difference is that your ideology isn't mutually exclusive with the US' electoral structure.

Again; put that big brain of yours to good purpose trying to deradicalise the rubes in the Midwest so that they understand M4A is actually a pretty politically centrist policy. Because Biden is just slapping a neoliberal bandage on a sucking chest wound.

On the contrary, I believe if handled correctly, the Fall of Trump would draw the curtain on a very specific 50 year era of American history that started with Vietnam, accelerated with Nixon/Watergate, and came to a catastrophic close with the Triple failure of the War on Terror/Iraq War + Financial Crisis/Great Recession + Trump Presidency.

It will in the word, be the end of an America as we know it, and the beginning of the next one. I do not seek perpetuance of that America, that ended with Trump. I seek renewal. I seek reform.

There is a school of thinking that says that the 19th century really didn't end until the Treaty of Versailles after World War I. That the forces of democracy versus kingly authoritarianism, rising nationalism, imperialism really didn't come to conclusions (for some of them) or modern forms (for others) until the end of World War I. As the school of thought sees it, the 19th century began with the French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars, continued through colonalism, the revolutions of 1848, German Unification, the opening of Japan, the US's Westward expansion and economic growth, the decline of the Ottoman and Russian empires, and culminated with American troops stepping foot in Europe, the post-Concert of Europe balance of power coming into being, the Russian revolution, and the end of some empires and growth of ethnonationalism.

In much the same, perhaps the 20th century ends not with the year 2000, or with 9/11 or the Financial Crisis as some have said, but with the end of the Trump era. Certainy from a geopolitical angle, the American-led Liberal World Order is fundamentally threatened. Trump has systematically undermined our post-War institutions. But also, unrelatedly, the US-Chinese competition, the main theme of the 21st century, has spent years moving up in importance and is only a few years out from becoming the dominant theme.

I believe the America that faces that will have to be different from the 20th century America that lost two wars in Iraq in a generation, and elected Donald Trump. So don't presume I'm seeking to go back to the status quo ante. I am certainly not. I have no clue what the next America will look like. My only conviction is that the authoritarian system Donald Trump and his Republican enablers are seeking to bring about not be part of it.

's dishonest in the extreme to criticise progressives as being ideologues when you are equally as ideologically motivated, when the only difference is that your ideology isn't mutually exclusive with the US' electoral structure.

I don't know how you can possibly say this to me, after what I've said about how I've put aside my politics, ALREADY VOTED for your girl Warren, against my ex-party, and plan to donate big to her next year should she become the nominee. Oh and work at a PAC staffed by mostly Democrats.

Like are you not paying attention the words I write and assuming that others are as ideologically driven as you? I'm a Massachusetts man. We're kind of good at being pragmatic. Thats why our liberal state elects Republican governors.

I have no a care about tax policies or abortion or healthcare or any of that as it applies to some larger vision of what "America should be". Pointless nonsense right now, anywhich way. When was the last time I said something about what taxation should be? Ages ago? I can't even remember.

My only concern is about the fragility of democracy in this country. With regards to democracy, I am extremely ideological. But on other things, absolutely not. And you'd be hard pressed to find evidence in the Trump era of me somehow trying to turn this dire situation to my political advantage. There is no advantage here for anybody. The two options are:

-> We go deeper in the shit.
-> We get out of the shit.

Again; put that big brain of yours to good purpose trying to deradicalise the rubes in the Midwest so that they understand M4A is actually a pretty politically centrist policy. Because Biden is just slapping a neoliberal bandage on a sucking chest wound.

That's "curing" them Elegiac. You think you're doing that by Fall 2020? Not happening. That's going to take 15 years and generational turnover. At a minimum.

Cures are for a later date. This is about Triage. Getting Trump out. When we see him gone, then we can talk about cures.

Do you not recall what I wrote a week ago, about how I am torn in that I think Biden is the "triage" candidate but Warren is "candidate who could cure"? That Biden can get elected and stop the bleeding, but probably wouldn't be nearly as good at rooting out corruption and reversing the growth of the Presidency as Warren would? This is exactly what I am getting at.

You progressives are so eager for cures, you're going to let the country bleed out while you plot your utopian transformation. Triage first, end of story. What I want to see from Elizabeth Warren, and what I pray to every heaven there is that she does, is find a way to sell herself as the anti-corruption crusader who could be BOTH Triage and Cure.

But she is not NEARLY there yet. And talking M4a to Wisconsin rubes is not going to be the way to do it.

[kaelleria]

Biden. We're at the point any climate change plan with the word "compromise" is as good as "do nothing".



Yeah, no.

The issue is that people don't understand America's healthcare system is the result of too much private sector ownership. What Biden and the other centrists are proposing is...What did Warren call it?

Medicare for All Who Can Afford It.

It's functionally no different than the system we have now because the chief goal of Biden, Buttigieg etc. is not fixing the healthcare system. It's ensuring that insurance companies can continue to extract profit without being so *obviously* detrimental to people's wellbeing.

Call that an 'ideological purity test' if you like, but it's also a basic fact.

Except even in other countries with nationalized health care, private insurance still exists. Australia is an example of this.

Also... Even Greenpeace rates Biden's climate plan as a B... So I'm not really sure what you're talking about. It's still a billion times better than Trump.

[Skroe]

It also bears pointing out the difference between a primary campaign (what's going on right now), and the national campaign. The issues won't be the same. Here, she's speaking to an entirely Democratic crowd. She can then put M4A on the backburner for the national campaign and make appeals to voters who aren't yet convinced.

If they try and bring that up to attack her in the national campaign, she just needs to sneer at it and say something like "yeah, how radical an idea is it to fix our healthcare to catch up to the rest of the developed world? Why don't you care to fix the industry that's bankrupting middle class Americans on a daily basis?" Just spin it right around.

Yeah, and I've mentioned that. I also said (I'm sorry if my posts are dense) little of consequence has happened in 2019 that will have bearing on the 2020 election on the Democratic side yet. Beto is the Democratic's "Bobby Jindal". Few people remember what happened in 2015 in the Republican's primary.

But the time where that is true is running out. Quickly. We're going to move from 1 debate a month to 2, then 3 debates a month.

And furthermore, in a normal campaign, after Super Tuesday, it would probably just be two alternatives. Let's say Biden and Warren. And they'd both have their eyes towards the General Election at that point, and so would modernize. The problem this time is Progressive interest groups.

I wrote about it here a few weeks ago. It's probably a few dozen pages back in this thread. My PAC has to coordinate with progressive PACs. And they're terrible. This PAC is not ideological. Those PACs might as well wear uniforms. They love money. Really. Progressives here, in this forum talk in idealized terms. The standard bearers out there deal in dollars, because that is how US politics work.

Progressive interest groups were burned by Obama baiting and switching them (as they see it) in 2008. They will not be burned again this time, so they swear. They will undermine Biden. If Warren moves to the center, they will undermine her too. And they'll do it because win or lose, they win. If Warren wins the Presidency, they become the kingmakers. If Warren loses, they play a key role in the cleanup, where moderates get blamed. This is what played out over the last 10 years in the Republican Party. It is happening now in the Democratic Party. Extraordinarily organized and financed centers of power are forming that didn't used to exist.

So that is one fear - that Warren will be unable to swing to the center to basically con the rubes of Wisconsin.

The second is old man Sanders.

As it stands right now, if we game all the states through Super Tuesday, Biden will get the most (though fewer than hillary). Warren will take a healthy share. Sanders will get scraps.

But I don't expect him to bow out until the the convention.

First, he is an ideologue. And he will stay in the campaign to make sure, through the summer, Democrats don't swing centrist with a more general-election friendly message.

Second, he has a lot of money, so he can stay in the election as long as he likes.

Third, he is a bit of an egotist. I think we're seeing in sanders someone whose fallen into a kind of feedback loop with the support he's gotten since he stepped into national level politics. He did it for noble reasons, then a kind of cult of personality sprung up about how transofrmative he could be, and then he started to believe it. I'm not sure if he wanted to be President in 2015/2016. I think he very much wants to be President in 2019/2020. I don't think he'll clear the board for a Biden/Warren contest, even though he'll have been mathematically vanquished, because of this.


All of which put together, is a big red flag. Because it means this primary messaging will drag on until the Summer of 2020. This when Donald Trump is already running $1.5 million of anti-Democrat adds in Wisconsin every week.

[Elegiac]

That's "curing" them Elegiac. You think you're doing that by Fall 2020? Not happening. That's going to take 15 years and generational turnover. At a minimum.

Cures are for a later date. This is about Triage. Getting Trump out. When we see him gone, then we can talk about cures.

Do you not recall what I wrote a week ago, about how I am torn in that I think Biden is the "triage" candidate but Warren is "candidate who could cure"? That Biden can get elected and stop the bleeding, but probably wouldn't be nearly as good at rooting out corruption and reversing the growth of the Presidency as Warren would? This is exactly what I am getting at.

You progressives are so eager for cures, you're going to let the country bleed out while you plot your utopian transformation. Triage first, end of story. What I want to see from Elizabeth Warren, and what I pray to every heaven there is that she does, is find a way to sell herself as the anti-corruption crusader who could be BOTH Triage and Cure.

But she is not NEARLY there yet. And talking M4a to Wisconsin rubes is not going to be the way to do it.

Oh. Okay. I think I get what we're actually disagreeing on.

I don't view M4A as a cure. I view it as triage, much in the same way of view a lot of the public/private systems like you see in Australia or France - which, mind you, despite their relative cheapness compared to American healthcare are still struggling with an aging population and environmental health problems. Problems that are only going to get worse as the increasing rift in relations across the Pacific grows and climate change gets more severe. The fact America is lagging behind countries which are already going to have to reform to survive...

Think of it this way. I view M4A as a way of making our existing butter go much further, so we can afford the guns we will need to fight climate change or fool around in Cold War 2: Oriental Boogaloo.

And thank you for admitting your doubts about Biden, so I'll share in kind. I'm not deaf to the line of argument that Warren is going too far left too quickly, and I myself have had concerns. But ultimately I've chosen to think about it less in terms of policy and more in terms of personal and campaign conduct.

Like I said; she was flagging in black support, and she rolled out an impressively targeted campaign that pulled it in. She's managed to assemble a highly professional and expert driven campaign team almost entirely from small dollar donors, and has managed to build a specific brand that makes her stand out in the progressive lane. Even as a Senator she's shown eagerness to listen to people she knows are qualified in their fields and has shown nothing but concern for the integrity of America and the welfare of its people. Look how quickly she made up her mind about impeachment after reading the Mueller report, for example.

So I'm confident that, should she win the candidacy, she won't deafen herself to voices like yours. There's a reason Bernie Bros call her a DINO, after all.

Even should she not have the Congress to enact broad reform, I also look at her in terms of personality versus, say, Obama. She's unlikely to take an obstructionist Senate lying down, and is highly unlikely to be conciliatory towards either Russia or any Americans on their payroll. And I think she's the sort of person who knows foreign policy experts are experts for a reason and won't, say, lay down a red line in Syria without being willing to enforce it.

America needs reform, but it still needs a competent executive. That's why I picked her over Bernie.

[kaelleria]

Yeah, and I've mentioned that. I also said (I'm sorry if my posts are dense) little of consequence has happened in 2019 that will have bearing on the 2020 election on the Democratic side yet. Beto is the Democratic's "Bobby Jindal". Few people remember what happened in 2015 in the Republican's primary.

But the time where that is true is running out. Quickly. We're going to move from 1 debate a month to 2, then 3 debates a month.

And furthermore, in a normal campaign, after Super Tuesday, it would probably just be two alternatives. Let's say Biden and Warren. And they'd both have their eyes towards the General Election at that point, and so would modernize. The problem this time is Progressive interest groups.

I wrote about it here a few weeks ago. It's probably a few dozen pages back in this thread. My PAC has to coordinate with progressive PACs. And they're terrible. This PAC is not ideological. Those PACs might as well wear uniforms. They love money. Really. Progressives here, in this forum talk in idealized terms. The standard bearers out there deal in dollars, because that is how US politics work.

Progressive interest groups were burned by Obama baiting and switching them (as they see it) in 2008. They will not be burned again this time, so they swear. They will undermine Biden. If Warren moves to the center, they will undermine her too. And they'll do it because win or lose, they win. If Warren wins the Presidency, they become the kingmakers. If Warren loses, they play a key role in the cleanup, where moderates get blamed. This is what played out over the last 10 years in the Republican Party. It is happening now in the Democratic Party. Extraordinarily organized and financed centers of power are forming that didn't used to exist.

So that is one fear - that Warren will be unable to swing to the center to basically con the rubes of Wisconsin.

The second is old man Sanders.

As it stands right now, if we game all the states through Super Tuesday, Biden will get the most (though fewer than hillary). Warren will take a healthy share. Sanders will get scraps.

But I don't expect him to bow out until the the convention.

First, he is an ideologue. And he will stay in the campaign to make sure, through the summer, Democrats don't swing centrist with a more general-election friendly message.

Second, he has a lot of money, so he can stay in the election as long as he likes.

Third, he is a bit of an egotist. I think we're seeing in sanders someone whose fallen into a kind of feedback loop with the support he's gotten since he stepped into national level politics. He did it for noble reasons, then a kind of cult of personality sprung up about how transofrmative he could be, and then he started to believe it. I'm not sure if he wanted to be President in 2015/2016. I think he very much wants to be President in 2019/2020. I don't think he'll clear the board for a Biden/Warren contest, even though he'll have been mathematically vanquished, because of this.


All of which put together, is a big red flag. Because it means this primary messaging will drag on until the Summer of 2020. This when Donald Trump is already running $1.5 million of anti-Democrat adds in Wisconsin every week.

I would love for Sanders to miss the viability cut off in Iowa. I think that would probably be a death blow to his campaign... He'd stick around, but I think he'd be stuck under double digits in future primaries.

[Fugus]

https://www.c-span.org/video/?c47285...s-ruling-class

Fast forward this video to about 2:30.

This will be plastered wall to wall in the General if Biden makes it to the general, let alone all the lies spun off it to make it worse. What chance do you REALLY think Biden has with stuff like this over his head?

Like I said, the next election can't be Trump Vs Not-Trump.

[Cthulhu 2020]

Recall early in the Obama Presidency, people in the White House likened him to Spock... a Vulcan. Logical. Rational.

Bullhonkey.

Modern Democrats have positions largely based on logic, rationality, and reason (I've basically repeated myself 3 times). They are passionate about things that, even if you disagree with the conclusions, have a rational, and logical foundation.

The Democrats greatest failing across the last 20 years - since they transitioned from being the Party of the working glass to the party of the educated - is to think this applies to everyone, people in general, and is smart politics.

Obama, famously, did not actively negotiate with Republicans in the House and Senate. He left that to House and Senate Democrats. This broke with precedent. Bush '41 directly negotiated wit the opposition party in the Legislature. As did Bill Clinton, George H.W. Bush and Reagan. Obama did this because he wanted to be seen "above the fray", basically non-partisan, and felt that his positions were so logical and self evident, that they spoke for themselves.

This is, of course, really, really bad politics, and is a big reason Obama was a legislative loser of a President after the 2010 midterms, far more than mere Republican obstruction. Obama's White House - much to the chagrin of Democrats in Congress - did nothing to bring Republicans aboard as stakeholders. And when Congressional Democrats attempted to do that on their own, the White House wouldn't necessarily go along with it. Let's be clear: during the Obama era, Congressional Democrats regarded the Obama White House largely as a hostile party, because they did not engage in the art politics which turns proposal into policy into law. Most notable was the failure to create a budget in 2013 which lead to sequestration. What ensued after was Democrats and Republicans deciding to make a budget for themselves, cut the White House out, and tell it "you're singning it, it's veto proof, we'll see you for it next year, where you'll have no voice in it again".

An arrangement which lasts to this very day.

Democrats are rational to a fault. Politics is about people and people are irrational. They are emotional. They are prejudiced, ego-centric, short sighted and largely uninformed. Democrat's greatest consistent political failure is that they appeal to people's brains rather than to their hearts. That they appeal based on facts, rather than capitalize on people's emotions.

M4A is an excellent example of this. Factually, it is cheaper for everyone. You pay far less, and just to somebody named "Uncle Sam" in the form of a tax rather than "Blue Cross Blue Shield" in the form of a bill. Emotionally, the overwhelming majority of Americans are plenty happy with their health care, don't really want to exchange it for M4A, and don't really give much of a fig about the people who don't have healthcare, or who healthcare backrupts.

Does that mean Democrats abandon their M4A agenda? No. It means you maneuver around American's healthcare prejudices and misconceptions. Right now, Democrats are basically saying "you're wrong, and here's why" in so many words. Since when is that an effective way to convince a person of anything? All it does is put a person in the position of either hardening their position - which they are likely to do - or admitting they are wrong, which people almost never do.

The way Democrats win is quite simple. Drop the policy arguments. Drop the specifics. Tell the special interest groups who want flags to be waved to sit down and shut their fucking mouths. And then go around the swing states and terrify people about what Trump will do to their jobs, retirement, healthcare and children's education.

It will work. It will work big. And then in 2021, President Democrat can resume making the public case for Medicare For All, hopefully with an emotional-egocentric argument, rather than a logical, educated one.

The default Democratic position should be: presume people are the worst. Because they are. People are stupid. People are weasels. People are prejudiced. People are egocentric. People are highly emotional, illogical and inconsistent. Now accepting the sheer awfulness of your fellow man, make it work for you.

I mostly agree with most of this. mostly, but there's some things I want to say. Democrats tried to run a logical campaign while Trump was flinging shit and winning people's hearts (and accepting "unsolicited" aid from Russia in the form of shit slinging ads).

Hillary was largely "unlikable" by the general knuckle-dragging populace because the Republicans, knowing she'd be the front running candidate in 2016, spent the entire Obama presidency trying to pin nontroversy after nontroversy on her. While she was basically exonerated of the wrongdoing the Republicans tried to shove on her, it made her "untrustworthy" and "unlikable" in the eyes of many Americans. Americans who, in 2008, probably would have voted for her as the former first lady and American Honey who did so much to help our country as the first lady. I used to believe that Americans would be won over with logical discourse and rational thinking, but I've gradually been proven very wrong on this - though technically not so wrong. Hillary DID win the popular vote, just not the votes in the right states. The cards were stacked against her and she knew it, and she did her best to shrug off all the shit slinging from Trump and the Republicans, to not validate it, and run a campaign mostly appealing to the minds of Americans. Meanwhile Trump was winning hearts by running energetic but mostly dumb-as-a-brick rallies where he got people to scream "BUILD THE WALL" "LOCK HER UP" and other nonsensical tripe, nonsensical tripe that WORKED.

Hillary is irrelevant now, so what does this have to do with the 2020 election? The problem I see with Biden is that I do not see him running a ramped up, energetic campaign that appeals to the hearts of Americans. Biden's failing is that he's old and out of touch. The problem I see with Bernie is that while he may run energetic campaigns, he largely does not have enough support as his policies are seen as too far fetched. The problem with Warren is that she's making the same mistakes as Hillary. But this is still the primary, and I think most Democrats are still in primary mode. They're looking to edge out their CURRENT contenders, not their future one. Once the Democrat primary is over, we will see how the front runner handles Trump.

Honestly, I believe they should take a page from the Republican playbook. They need to plaster ads all over the internet and TV about Trump's past before he was president, how he's never paid back a single loan, how he does not pay his workers, about his past corruption filled life, and they also need to focus on his presidency as well, and sling every bit of shit that they can. Democrats see themselves as being "above" shit slinging, above using another candidate's failings as a weapon. And this needs to end if they truly want Trump out of office.

I used to think Democrats SHOULD be above shit slinging, that we shouldn't "go down to their level". But that's largely because I saw shit slinging as a neanderthalic thing to do. They should present the facts of Trump's failures and corruption, and then let the facts speak for themselves. It mingles with the current "logical" approach Democrats take, with the shit slinging Republicans do. They should not chant "LOCK HIM UP" or other things that seem too outlandish and crazy. Just let the facts of Trump's failings and corruption speak for themselves.

And then they should appeal to the hearts of Americans. Not what they need as you say, but what they want. When Trump ran, "the economy" was a major front runner of thing on people's minds. And unfortunately, many people equate "the economy" and "the budget" together as one thing. If the budget is doing poorly, so is the economy, and vice versa. The economy is doing well, but the budget is in the toilet, and we're facing an impending recession, so jobs are something Americans still want to hear about.

I will say one thing though, I partially agree and disagree about your assessment of M4A. Healthcare still polls as an issue a large number of Americans care about. It should be talked about - to an extent. It should not be a front runner issue that a candidate circulates their entire campaign around, much like Bernie does (or like Warren is doing right now). The people who care about healthcare are mostly hard-line Democrat voters, people who will vote D no matter what. Healthcare needs to be talked about just enough to bring those people out to the polls, make them feel like their vote is worth casting rather than staying home, but then it needs to rest, and not be pushed as a central topic. This is largely what Trump did. He said "I'm going to bring you health care for more people, for less money, that gives better care". And while anyone with a brain knew that was a complete lie, it still resonated with people who were on the fence about Trump. The people who don't have a brain, but a heart instead.

- - - Updated - - -

https://www.c-span.org/video/?c47285...s-ruling-class

Fast forward this video to about 2:30.

This will be plastered wall to wall in the General if Biden makes it to the general, let alone all the lies spun off it to make it worse. What chance do you REALLY think Biden has with stuff like this over his head?

Like I said, the next election can't be Trump Vs Not-Trump.

The first part may not speak to a lot of people with "I don't think wealthy are the enemy", but he goes on to talk about how we need to help the workers, to fix the wealth gap, raise a progressive tax code, take care of medicare and social security. He's railing on the current tax cuts on the rich and talking about how middle class helping programs need help. Who doesn't agree with that? Aside from the alt-right. He's talking about raising the taxes on the rich that helps the middle class.