Mega-Thread: Democratic 2020 Primaries

[Draco-Onis]

Yes. And polls to this day are quite clear showing it.

Honestly it's getting to be a bit like a broken record at this point. Looking over this thread, the super srs discussion about all the democrats policy proposals is like some kind of spill over from a parallel universe where this was a policy election.

Biden has offered almost no policies. Yet leads Warren and Biden in most states, and leads them both against Trump in the swing states. He does not lead in Iowa or New Hampshire. The myth of Elizabeth Warren primacy was shot in the face by the swing state poll against Trump this week, which then ran up against the fact her M4A funding proposal was... how shall we say... a work of some interesting math.

This is not a policy election. It it ireelvant how many progressives want to talk about all the wonderful things they want. It doesn't matter. It will continue to not matter. Trying to make it matter is not going to change the fact that the forces arrayed against it being a policy election are so immovable, there is nothing that will change that.

The only relevant question this election - and the one that voters keep coming back to which is why electability and name recognition are STILL carrying Biden - is if you want 4 more years of the Donald Trump show or not.

How many times have we seen in this damn thread "oh Elizabeth Warren is going to do so well against Donald in the debate". Oh my god.... jump off a goddamn bridge people who think that. Donald Trump went 0-3 against Hillary Clinton. Your ridiculous mano-a-mano showdown is a feel good moment and nothing more.

Debates don't matter.

Rallies. Rallies don't fucking matter either Donald Trump just illustrated that in Bevin's loss. A bunch of like minded people getting together to cheer a bunch of lines they already agree with is an exercise in public masturbation. That's it.

What matters is ground game / get out the vote and fundraising to finance that ground game. And they only matter in a handful of states. That will decide if Joe Biden wins or loses against Trump.

Which brings me to my entire point. The things Democrats consider most important in a candidate are not the things that will structure the defeat of Trump in 2020. Ideas. Enthusasiasm. Oratory. Irrelevancies. Quaint irrelevancies.

If you wanna beat Trump, you focus on a handful of states and scare to death the people living in them about what Trump is going to do in a second term to their healthcare, jobs and security. And tie all of it into Trump's corruption and self dealing. Tell them what they want to hear.

Biden will do that. I hope Warren would do that. I know Bernie won't. And that's why Biden is the best choice.

Let's be blunt Biden has that support solely because of Obama and name recognition but Biden is no Obama he is no inspirational figure he is flailing and will continue to do. It may not be about debate but it is about personality and Biden seems to have none, we learned this in 2016 people need something to vote for someone to gather excitement. Joe Biden is as exciting as paint drying with the personality to match, again he is male Hillary Clinton when it comes to campaigning and Trump has exposed that he has just as many skeletons.

[Skroe]

Let me give you an example.

https://www.stltoday.com/lifestyles/...ampaign=buffer

http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-s...committal-guns

Vaping is a *massive* American small business success story. Put aisde the health angle of it... an entire industry has popped up around vaping products in the last few years. Tens of thousands of mom and pop stores. All of which are in deep freeze because of the massive, encroaching legislation on it.

Vaping, like smoking, is also a working class thing. Vaping is also predominantly a male habit.

Vaping is also objectively healthier than smoking. Healthier still, of course, is not doing either. Really, it's a disgusting habit in general, but that's not what we're discussing.

But Trump administration regulations are going to fuck vapers.

Democrats should run with this issue in Central PA and Suburban Wisconsin. Paint the Trump administration as a distant, out of touch government that is going to take your vape hobby way, and force you back on ciggerettes, that Trump is in bed with the producers of. Is that true? Who knows. Run with it anyway. See how easy that is?

This is a good message because it turns a policy issue into something personal, and has a policy of Trump effect his voters directly, rather than abstractly.

So what do you think is a better tool against Trump? Hitting him on a policy that will be unpopular among supporters? Or trying to convince people their M4A prejudice is unfounded?

This isn't hard. Democrats make it hard. Because they are political fools.

[kaelleria]

Obviously national polls don't matter for winning the EC.

My point was they both can't be right. There is no universe where Trump loses by 10 points nationally and doesn't lose the battleground states.


Clinton won the popular vote by 2... not 10. Even with an average miss going Trump's way in 2020 the current frontrunners would win by far more than 2.


I'm not saying the state and national polls are wrong, but you need to realize they both cannot be accurate.

[Skroe]

Let's be blunt Biden has that support solely because of Obama and name recognition but Biden is no Obama he is no inspirational figure he is flailing and will continue to do. It may not be about debate but it is about personality and Biden seems to have none, we learned this in 2016 people need something to vote for someone to gather excitement. Joe Biden is as exciting as paint drying with the personality to match, again he is male Hillary Clinton when it comes to campaigning and Trump has exposed that he has just as many skeletons.

I'm looking on the sheet of "things required to win the Presidency" and am failing to see "excitement" on the list.

The Democrats problem is they want a champion. They want another Obama. Obama is an epochal figure. The complete package. We may see another like him one more time in our life time. If you keep looking for Obama 2, you'll be looking for decades. It took nearly 50 years - from JFK in 1960 to Obama in 2008 - for another champion to show up.

Most Presidents are Jimmy Carter or George W. Bush. Sometimes you'll even get a Bill Clinton, who was transformative for the Democratic Party, but also not nearly an Obama or a JFK. People like Bill Clinton. Excited about Bill Clinton? Ehh... no. Not in the way you mean. Not like Obama.

Name recognition is power. You may sneer at it. It's value is more than all the money Warren and Sanders have raised thus far.

The way to win the Presidency for Democrats is quite simply really. It's to get people to a point psychologically that when they are alone in the booth, the choice between Trump and Democrat X is an objectively easy one.

What do you think it is?

The danger of Trump for another 4 years of his shit show, versus Boring Uncle Joe, who I know and will be harmless? Joe will easily win. That is the power of Joe Biden's name recognition. It is comfort. it is familiarity. That is electability translating into a tangible win.

The danger of Trump for another 4 years of his shit show, versus Warren's enormous plans to remake the economy? Well Trump may be dangerous, but it's a known danger versus an unknown danger of what Warren, who they don't know, could do in theory. They'll go with the know danger and say "maybe Democrats will give me someone more to my liking in 4 more years".

The most pressing thing Warren has to do is is make the yokels of America feel safe with her. Feel like there is no risk in voting for her over Trump. Does she have time to do that still? Absolutely. She needs to stop self-goaling though, and start paying towards the yokels of Wisconsin.

[Draco-Onis]

I'm looking on the sheet of "things required to win the Presidency" and am failing to see "excitement" on the list.

The Democrats problem is they want a champion. They want another Obama. Obama is an epochal figure. The complete package. We may see another like him one more time in our life time. If you keep looking for Obama 2, you'll be looking for decades. It took nearly 50 years - from JFK in 1960 to Obama in 2008 - for another champion to show up.

Most Presidents are Jimmy Carter or George W. Bush. Sometimes you'll even get a Bill Clinton, who was transformative for the Democratic Party, but also not nearly an Obama or a JFK. People like Bill Clinton. Excited about Bill Clinton? Ehh... no. Not in the way you mean. Not like Obama.

Name recognition is power. You may sneer at it. It's value is more than all the money Warren and Sanders have raised thus far.

The way to win the Presidency for Democrats is quite simply really. It's to get people to a point psychologically that when they are alone in the booth, the choice between Trump and Democrat X is an objectively easy one.

What do you think it is?

The danger of Trump for another 4 years of his shit show, versus Boring Uncle Joe, who I know and will be harmless? Joe will easily win. That is the power of Joe Biden's name recognition. It is comfort. it is familiarity. That is electability translating into a tangible win.

The danger of Trump for another 4 years of his shit show, versus Warren's enormous plans to remake the economy? Well Trump may be dangerous, but it's a known danger versus an unknown danger of what Warren, who they don't know, could do in theory. They'll go with the know danger and say "maybe Democrats will give me someone more to my liking in 4 more years".

The most pressing thing Warren has to do is is make the yokels of America feel safe with her. Feel like there is no risk in voting for her over Trump. Does she have time to do that still? Absolutely. She needs to stop self-goaling though, and start paying towards the yokels of Wisconsin.

Let me ask you did if name recognition, comfort and the status quo are such a winning combination, why did Americans go for Trump? those swing states votes are just as unhappy after Trump that they were after Obama. Do you think the best sales pitch is let's go back to Obama?

[Skroe]

Obviously national polls don't matter.

My point was they both can't be right. There is no universe where Trump loses by 10 points nationally and doesn't lose the battleground states.


Clinton won the popular vote by 2... not 10. Even with an average miss going Trump's way in 2020 the current frontrunners would win by far more than 2.


I'm not saying the state and national polls are wrong, but you need to realize they both cannot be accurate.

Of course there is. Because national population distribution is incredibly uneven.



Trump is incredibly unpopular where people are densly packed. But there is only a smuttering of that kind of density in Wisconsin, Michigan and PA. The key divide in the US is between the urban and rural, which is why suburban areas have been described as the principle battleground territory in this election (and all elections since 2016).

In these swing states, Urban and rural fairly neatly balance each other other, with suburban voters being the swing.

So yes, Trump can be down that much nationally, and still win, because of the electoral college giving disproportionate voting power to states.

- - - Updated - - -

Let me ask you did if name recognition, comfort and the status quo are such a winning combination, why did Americans go for Trump? those swing states votes are just as unhappy after Trump that they were after Obama. Do you think the best sales pitch is let's go back to Obama?

Because Trump beat Hillary Clinton on name recognition. Yes. Maybe not among our politically inclined types. But in the areas he needed to win? Absolutely. Trump received nearly $2 billion in free advertising from how the media capitalized on his quixotic campaign. He has been a known public figure for decades. All of this conspired to create a name recognition scenario where not only was he arguably better known than Hillary Clinton, but the lack of a Clinton last name and outsider status created a situation whereby folks felt safer voting for him, than for Hillary Clinton. He was a risk, but she "with all her corruption, Benghazi, etc. etc" was the bigger one.

And status quo isn't a word I used. What democrats have though is a power incentive, in the form of Trump, to tell the yokels of wisconsin "wouldn't you want to return to the quieter, more civil, more respectful status quo ante, if given the chance?"


The crucial thing to remember about voters is they are intrinsically conservative. I don't mean ideologically conservative. I mean conservative in the sense that they'll go with known quantities over risks. That they operate from the position of having a lot to lose. And indeed, that was the foundation of Trump's entire campaign in 2016: vote for me, and not only will you keep everything you have, we'll make it BETTER and America Great Again".

This is why M4A and Climate Change is terrible general election politics, no matter how right it is. Because the 85% of Americans who have healthcare from their employer are (according to gallup) pretty happy with it, and they really don't give a fig about the 15% of Americans who don't have that.

Now is this about doing the right thing, or winning an election? Because if you want to win an election, convincing that 85% of Americans with healthcare that this unknown way is superior is objectively bad politics. They don't care about the 15%. You won't be able to make them care. But that also isn't the route to getting elected. We are running for President, not Saint.

This is why negative politics works. This is why scaring people about what they'll lose works. And why inspirational campaigns rarely work. You think change was Obama's most powerful message in 2008? It wasn't. It was "look how much you've lost in the financial crisis with a Republican President... are you really going to risk 4 more years of loss?"

Playing to people's fear of loss is the way to the White House. Period. M4A and Climate Change are all about trade offs. But the American electorate - basically with the intellectual capacity of children and incapable of more than one dimensional thinking - won't hear the specifics. They'll hear "I won't have my doctor anymore", and "I don't want to not be able to use my AC in the summer".

The way to win this year is paint Donald Trump is the guy who will burn what little they still have down, and scare them to death over it. And then turn Uncle Joe's name reocognition into a safety blanket. That is basically what Trump did in 2016.

[Bodonius]

Does it really matter, they will loose.

[Skroe]

Does it really matter, they will loose.

No. They can beat themselves by campaigning wrong and having a poor organization and terribad staff.

But Donald Trump has been electorally declawed. He's a political loser.

But with the right strategy, the right message and the right staff, any one of the three major democratic candidates could hadily beat Trump.

This entire conversation is largely about risk reduction: how do we get to November 2020 with the candidate in the absolute best position to flip three states Hillary lost, while losing none that Hillary narrowly held onto.

What we're having is a good faith disagreement about the best way to do that.

[Bodonius]

So far there is no democrat that even come close to trump and yes trump isnt a good person just democrats is worse.

[Benggaul]

So far there is no democrat that even come close to trump and yes trump isnt a good person just democrats is worse.

Just about every poll so far says otherwise, but hey, why let facts get in the way now?

[Draco-Onis]

So far there is no democrat that even come close to trump and yes trump isnt a good person just democrats is worse.

This is the best you could come up with to quote your hero SAD!!!!!!

[Bodonius]

Just about every poll so far says otherwise, but hey, why let facts get in the way now?

Ok, lets check betting sites. Thats hard facts

https://www.oddschecker.com/politics...on-2020/winner

Yepp trump is lowest odds

[Draco-Onis]

The way to win this year is paint Donald Trump is the guy who will burn what little they still have down, and scare them to death over it. And then turn Uncle Joe's name reocognition into a safety blanket. That is basically what Trump did in 2016.

Do you think Uncle Joe has it in him to make that case? my point which you are missing is that he hasn't shown that he can. Now maybe there is some fire in him somewhere but evidence says otherwise you are just assuming people will know that based on name recognition alone that's a pretty risky gamble.

You can say what you want about Trump but campaigning he is animated and captivating to these yokels.

[Bodonius]

This is the best you could come up with to quote your hero SAD!!!!!!

Trump is better then germans, but im not a fan

[Skroe]

Do you think Uncle Joe has it in him to make that case? my point which you are missing is that he hasn't shown that he can. Now maybe there is some fire in him somewhere but evidence says otherwise you are just assuming people will know that based on name recognition alone that's a pretty risky gamble.

You can say what you want about Trump but campaigning he is animated and captivating to these yokels.

I think it scarcely matters. One way or another. Fire mostly comes out through what? Rallies and debates, and rallies and debates don't move votes. Democrats, again, want to be thrilled in the way they were with Obama. They got addicted to being fired up. In some way, I think they're envious that in Trump the right has someone who can finally do that too (after decades of having rather staid figures). But that's basically hoping you can strike gold twice.

What does make a difference is ground game, messaging around the ground game, and retail politics. That is where the Presidency will be won or loss. That is something Biden is very good at. Warren does it pretty well too. But Warren's message is disjointed from the target voter.

And therein likes the disconnect. Warren is very much putting ideas on the table and saying "voters... come to me". It might work... in another year. Not this year. The way to win is to do the exact opposite. To go to targeted swing voters and say "what do you want?" and then do it.

Warren's biggest problem is her ever grander, more unrealistic plans have successfully worked her into a corner that if she captures the nomination, she'll have to work her way out of, but in doing so giving Trump ammunition that she's untrustworthy. Biden's minimalist approach thus far gives Trump little ammunition.

But that's because Biden is running the strat that ALWAYS should have been the 2020 strat, which is a minimalist campaign on ideas that targets voters in a handful of states and makes Trump run against himself.

But then Democrats, pushed by Bernie Sanders, felt the need to masturbate in public with their fucking hopes and dreams as the fap material. And Donald Trump has a lot better chance at re-election than by rights he should.

[Draco-Onis]

I think it scarcely matters. One way or another. Fire mostly comes out through what? Rallies and debates, and rallies and debates don't move votes. Democrats, again, want to be thrilled in the way they were with Obama. They got addicted to being fired up. In some way, I think they're envious that in Trump the right has someone who can finally do that too (after decades of having rather staid figures). But that's basically hoping you can strike gold twice.

What does make a difference is ground game, messaging around the ground game, and retail politics. That is where the Presidency will be won or loss. That is something Biden is very good at. Warren does it pretty well too. But Warren's message is disjointed from the target voter.

And therein likes the disconnect. Warren is very much putting ideas on the table and saying "voters... come to me". It might work... in another year. Not this year. The way to win is to do the exact opposite. To go to targeted swing voters and say "what do you want?" and then do it.

Warren's biggest problem is her ever grander, more unrealistic plans have successfully worked her into a corner that if she captures the nomination, she'll have to work her way out of, but in doing so giving Trump ammunition that she's untrustworthy. Biden's minimalist approach thus far gives Trump little ammunition.

But that's because Biden is running the strat that ALWAYS should have been the 2020 strat, which is a minimalist campaign on ideas that targets voters in a handful of states and makes Trump run against himself.

But then Democrats, pushed by Bernie Sanders, felt the need to masturbate in public with their fucking hopes and dreams as the fap material. And Donald Trump has a lot better chance at re-election than by rights he should.

But Biden currently has a terrible ground game and is running out of money a lot of what you are saying here seems more like wishful thinking. Let's not forget Biden has run for president several times he has proven to be very bad at it. Also I am not sure what you mean that Trump has very little ammo on Biden with Warren he has to talk policy but with Biden the strategy is to paint him as another corrupt politician and Biden has enough history to twist to do that.

[Tenlo]

You're not owed a life. If you're going to sit there and demand I take care of you, I get a say in that. Just because two people decided to get together and make a bad decision doesn't obligate me to bare that burden for the rest of it's life. Society should have freedom to decide who lives and who dies based on their contributions versus their burden.

Well I truly hope you never need any help with anything.

[Skroe]

But Biden currently has a terrible ground game and is running out of money a lot of what you are saying here seems more like wishful thinking. Let's not forget Biden has run for president several times he has proven to be very bad at it. Also I am not sure what you mean that Trump has very little ammo on Biden with Warren he has to talk policy but with Biden the strategy is to paint him as another corrupt politicians and Biden has enough history to twist to do that.

The amount raised and the magnitude of the ground game now is irrelevant. Sanders has what? $24 million in the bag or something? Biden $9 million? Pocket change.

This is going to be a $3 billion election and Democrats better get used to it. Donald Trump will probably out raise them substantially to. But it's going to cost north of $1 billion over the next year for any Democrat to get elected. So there isn't much currency in counting coppers at this early stage. Especially when Trump's quarterly fundraising as the unified candidate already is drowning all of them in an ocean of red money.

That goes for organization too. The largest and most well funded campaigns - Sanders and Warren - have paid staffers numbering in the double digits. That will need to expand into the thousands by next year, for whoever is the candidate.

This is a big part of why I keep saying "little of what has happened so far actually matters". Because the "real" Presidential election has scarcely begun. A bunch of CNN Town halls and once monthly debate is not the election. That's an entertaining television show.

What is going to change is next year. From February-April, Debates will increase at a rate of 2-3 per month. And after Super Tuesday it should just be Biden and Warren, but we all know Bitter Bernie will stay in it until the very end. And that's also the time when money will need to start seriously getting raised, staff for the general election start really being stood up, and general election messages start forming. By July they'll need to start having the in fracture in place to collect, and utilize, a surge in donations over the next 4 months.

To offer context, we can look at 2008.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundra...ntial_election

In the 3rd quarter of 2007, Obama raised $21.3M against Hillary's $27M.
In the 4th quarter of 2007, Obama raised $23.5M against Hillary's $27M.

These numbers are roughly comparable to what Bernie, Warren and Mayor Pete are raising, unadjusted for inflation.

By the end of the campaign a year later in 2008, Obama had raised $778.6 million.

https://www.bloomberg.com/politics/g...n-fundraising/

In 2016, Hillary spent the primary raising around $26 million, and ended in the general with $1.2 billion raised versus Trump's $646 million.

This is what it looked like for HRC on the timeline:



Q2/Q3/Q4 on that were all in 2015. When the calendar shits into 2016, it spikes in April, then spikes big in July and stays there the rest of the campaign.

[ringpriest]

Skroe's analysis above is pretty on the nose (although he forgot Nebraska's 2nd district and Maine's 2nd district, which would matter in certain very close EV scenarios that are a little more likely this time around) but you're all missing the pile of coal in the ballroom: before Trump, blantanly illegal election shenanigans were fairly limited, if by nothing else than the belief that linking them directly to the candidate's campaign would be a disaster in the short or medium-term. Slanderous or deceptive calls to key demographics on the eve of the election (so the opposition has no time to react), and PAC co-ordination with a fig-leaf of deniability ("We post all our plans on Twitter! Anyone can read them! If that benefits PACs helping our candidate, so what?") were the limit, but post-Trump, that whole "gentlemen don't get caught reading each other's mail" mentality has met the fate of an infantryman at Verdun.

Over the next twelve months America is going to be totally swamped by a tidal wave of information warfare it is utterly unprepared to deal with -
Republican state governments are going to pull out all the stops on legal, quasi-legal, and illegal voter suppression; there's going to be a flood of propaganda from domestic and foreign sources, some of it AI-generated; the Russians are going to hit American election systems hard - the GOP has practically invited them to (and they're going to do it through proxies as much as possible, so not only will the GOP & media be arguing about what was done, they're going to be arguing about who actually did it).

The Russians (and anyone else who cares to get involved - China and North Korea are probably the most likely participants) are going to target voter rolls, voting machines, databases, publshed results, polling; they're going to use Facebook (which has invited them in) and Twitter (which hasn't, but whose management is right-leaning) and more forms social media that I can shake a stick at. And the goal won't be to just hand Trump a victory - the goal will be to de-legitimize the whole process and American faith in their government and institutions; oh, they'd rather have an incompetent and cowardly puppet they own than a competent and hostile technocrat, but if they can convince 25% of the US that said technocrat is a Chinese puppet who stole the election, and provoke some domestic terrorism they'll be almost as happy. And thanks to #MoscowMitch and Donald Trump, America has done virtually nothing to prepare.

Subverting the whole thing might be hard, but making one state such a mess that even a Democratic House won't see its EV as legitimate (assuming it can even manage to send EVs to Congress) will be a lot easier - and such an outcome can throw the election either to the GOP-majority Supreme Court (illegally and unconstitutionally, imho, but was done in 2000), or to the House where the state-by-state vote will almost-certainly hand the election to Trump, again, and even less legitimately.

I'm not exactly following this closely, but as far as I see, the DNC's chief priority has been to make sure they aren't seen negatively as rigging the election for Biden, with election security and information warfare so low priority as to be irrelevant - I suspect that's going to prove disastrous to America and the free world. And the one other possibility I haven't seen mentioned is that the GOP will "come to its senses", Trump will leave office, and a Democratic party and nominee preparing to run against Donald Trump will suddenly face a candidate more like Mitt Romney (but who will, like most of the current GOP leadership, be subordinate to Russian interests).

[kaelleria]

Biden's issue is that his ground game is trash in Iowa and NH.... there's never been a nominee that lost the first two states.

The I'm super electable argument falls flat if you get crushed in the early states.