Mega-Thread: Democratic 2020 Primaries

[Draco-Onis]

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.

I think you are again missing my point Biden is having trouble now 3 months away from the first vote, it shows poor management, if he can't handle the primary right what makes you so confidant that he will get his act together for the general?

[Skroe]

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.

Presidents Ron Paul and John McCain would like a word......

This is incredibly incorrect. Both state's demographics are very different than the demographics of Michigan and Pennsylvania (2 of the 3 states Democrats must win), and economically very different from Wisconsin. Furthermore Iowa will almost certainly go Republican and New Hampshire likely Democrat. So there is little value in building big operations in these states at this time when they won't carry over to the General election.

In fact, if your goal is to win the primary, you focus on delegate rich states, which are generally not swing states you need to win in the general election either. The major exceptions to this are Florida and Pennsylvania. Biden, for example, will almost certainly win extremely delegate rich Texas in the primary, but has no chance of winning in the general.

There is just very little overlap between must win states in the primary and general elections, and as a result very little overlap in infrastructure and fundraising requirements.

To be more direct about it - Wisconsin and Michigan are not important primary states. Neither is Arizona, Colorado and debatably North Carolina. So little primary infrastructure is ever built in these places. But all of them are essential to meaningful general election states and see substantial general election spending.

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I think you are again missing my point Biden is having trouble now 3 months away from the first vote, it shows poor management, if he can't handle the primary right what makes you so confidant that he will get his act together for the general?

No I entirely get your point. I just don't think it is relevant. I think on the basis of the target states in the general and the rate at which money scales up (and when) don't think there is any reason to think anything in the primary translates to the general. I think we could go through every contested general election since 2000 and see them basically disconnected from each other on the basis of the thing you think is meaningful here.

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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).

Oh i mean this is absolutely correct. I'm only not mentioning this point because on this Friday, at the end of Elizabeth Warren's terribad week, I've been issuing something of a reality check to Democrats here about how this actually works.

They want this to be an ideas election badly. So badly. It's a little sad. They want to run against Bush in 2000 again. They still have come to grasp about Donald Trump and what he represents. It's what I've been saying for months: how many Democrats see an opportunity in Trump and how many Democrats see a mortal threat to American democracy?

My feeling? Too many Democrats think Trump has no chance of winning in 2020 and thus feel like they can indulge themselves in the arena where they are strong - policy debates. It's similar to what happens when I debate foreign and security policy with Europeans, particularly in regards to Russia and especially China. They have a massive defense blindspot to China in particular. They think we're past large scale warfare by industrial powers. So they want to keep the discussion on the place where the EU is strong (diplomacy) so they don't have to change their behavior in anyway.

It's insane that in November 2019, i still have to say these things. But just today, Mulvaney spit in the face of the House and ignored a subpoena. He's like the 10th Trump White House figure to do so. And why shouldn't he? There has been zero consequences to violating them. Democrats, otherwise playing the Impeachment game well in the House *still* haven't gotten through their well mannered, principled skulls that public shaming doesn't work on the shameless.

Democrats want to treat 2020 like a normal election. So they are indulging themselves on flights of fancy and living in a fantasy land about how this is going to go down, what matters, and what President Democrat will meaningfully do (which will be nothing, because of how the post-sequestration budget model has sidelined Presidents).

My Prediction: Trump not only has a better than 50/50 chance at winning... he has an excellent chance of picking up New Hampshire and maybe ninjaing Minnesota. And it's largely because Democrats haven't been able to separate what they MUST do from what they WANT to do, and are incapable at firing the political cruise missiles Trump puts in front of them directly back at him.

As I've said, if I feel after the 2020 election that Democrats and I were not on the same team in taking down Trump, I'll consider making like you did a few years back and taking my riches (so to speak... poetic licence really) elsewhere while the trapped denizens of the fallen American Empire bludgeon each other over the last scraps.

[kaelleria]

Presidents Ron Paul and John McCain would like a word......

This is incredibly incorrect. Both state's demographics are very different than the demographics of Michigan and Pennsylvania (2 of the 3 states Democrats must win), and economically very different from Wisconsin. Furthermore Iowa will almost certainly go Republican and New Hampshire likely Democrat. So there is little value in building big operations in these states at this time when they won't carry over to the General election.

In fact, if your goal is to win the primary, you focus on delegate rich states, which are generally not swing states you need to win in the general election either. The major exceptions to this are Florida and Pennsylvania. Biden, for example, will almost certainly win extremely delegate rich Texas in the primary, but has no chance of winning in the general.

There is just very little overlap between must win states in the primary and general elections, and as a result very little overlap in infrastructure and fundraising requirements.

To be more direct about it - Wisconsin and Michigan are not important primary states. Neither is Arizona, Colorado and debatably North Carolina. So little primary infrastructure is ever built in these places. But all of them are essential to meaningful general election states and see substantial general election spending.

100% misunderstanding me.

He won't make it to the general if he gets crushed in Iowa and NH. People will latch on the Buttigieg.

[Skroe]

100% misunderstanding me.

He won't make it to the general if he gets crushed in Iowa and NH.

No I got you,

That's never been a thing in the primary, ever though.

Ron Paul won in Iowa in 2012. Newt Gingrich won big in South Carolina.
Mike Huckabee won big in Iowa in 2008.
John McCain beat George W Bush in New Hampshire in 2000.
Bernie Sanders beat Hillary Clinton hugely in New Hampshire in 2016.
Obama beat Hillary in Iowa in 2008, but lost New Hampshire to her.

And they were not predictors of either the eventual nominee or the the general election outcome of those states.

This is like deja vu. Four years ago I was here, arguing the exact same shit towards Bernie Sanders supporters about how not a single fucking thing truly matters until Super Tuesday. And sure enough, Super Tuesday rolled around... Hillary squashed him. And what ensued? BernieBros spending months saying "it's not over yet".

Narrator: "But in fact, it was truly over".

I know you want to badly dent the sheer power that Biden's name recognition and centrist-lane provides. It's not going to work. At all. The history of primary vs general elections are not on the sides argument you are attempting to make.

Pretty much every primary campaign that goes on to win the nominee hard resets to form a new general election campaign, that is far more vast in scope and financing. That's just the way it is. To say one is a predictor of the other is nonsense.

[kaelleria]

The GOP != Democrats. Literally no democratic candidate has won the nomination after losing both Iowa and NH since 1976...

in fact the Iowa caucuses have been predictive in every year other than 88 and 92.

[Benggaul]

Ok, lets check betting sites. Thats hard facts

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

Yepp trump is lowest odds

Bookies overwhelmingly chose Clinton for 2016. Again, have fun in your alternate reality.

[BeepBoo]

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

I've needed help with plenty and will continue to need help. However, the amount of help I've received is exactly the amount of help that was WILLINGLY given by the people who helped me. The point isn't that people shouldn't get help or wouldn't get help. It's that the help would come from your personal support network or by soliciting for help, not at the expense of the general public who may or may not care about you and has no say. The amount of help being received would be the exact amount of help that would otherwise naturally be given. Not some artificial attempt to increase the amount of help resources available via the government.

What you want is for everyone to have a blank check and a mutual understanding of "well, yeah, I'd help out anyone!" and I can say 100% without a doubt I would not help out anyone under any circumstance. I want to pick and choose, and I want others afforded the ability to pick and choose.

What I would never do is sit there, have some unfortunate circumstance hit me, be unable to handle it myself, then be unable to garner the help I need, and then try to enact laws that demand people help me out because I'm just that selfish. I'd find a way to deal with it, or deal with the repercussions of not being able to garner that help like an adult (meaning sit down, shut up, and accept it with dignity).

[Elegiac]

But entirely consistent with the fact that only Joe Biden, as it stands right now, has a realistic chance of beating Trump in the states that matter.

From the perspective of Democratic donors, I'm sure.

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This is why M4A and Climate Change is terrible general election politics, no matter how right it is.

You sure about that?

This country is going to "play it safe" right to the morgue, swear to christ.

[jeezusisacasual]

Presidents Ron Paul and John McCain would like a word......

This is incredibly incorrect. Both state's demographics are very different than the demographics of Michigan and Pennsylvania (2 of the 3 states Democrats must win), and economically very different from Wisconsin. Furthermore Iowa will almost certainly go Republican and New Hampshire likely Democrat. So there is little value in building big operations in these states at this time when they won't carry over to the General election.

In fact, if your goal is to win the primary, you focus on delegate rich states, which are generally not swing states you need to win in the general election either. The major exceptions to this are Florida and Pennsylvania. Biden, for example, will almost certainly win extremely delegate rich Texas in the primary, but has no chance of winning in the general.

There is just very little overlap between must win states in the primary and general elections, and as a result very little overlap in infrastructure and fundraising requirements.

To be more direct about it - Wisconsin and Michigan are not important primary states. Neither is Arizona, Colorado and debatably North Carolina. So little primary infrastructure is ever built in these places. But all of them are essential to meaningful general election states and see substantial general election spending.

- - - Updated - - -



No I entirely get your point. I just don't think it is relevant. I think on the basis of the target states in the general and the rate at which money scales up (and when) don't think there is any reason to think anything in the primary translates to the general. I think we could go through every contested general election since 2000 and see them basically disconnected from each other on the basis of the thing you think is meaningful here.

- - - Updated - - -



Oh i mean this is absolutely correct. I'm only not mentioning this point because on this Friday, at the end of Elizabeth Warren's terribad week, I've been issuing something of a reality check to Democrats here about how this actually works.

They want this to be an ideas election badly. So badly. It's a little sad. They want to run against Bush in 2000 again. They still have come to grasp about Donald Trump and what he represents. It's what I've been saying for months: how many Democrats see an opportunity in Trump and how many Democrats see a mortal threat to American democracy?

My feeling? Too many Democrats think Trump has no chance of winning in 2020 and thus feel like they can indulge themselves in the arena where they are strong - policy debates. It's similar to what happens when I debate foreign and security policy with Europeans, particularly in regards to Russia and especially China. They have a massive defense blindspot to China in particular. They think we're past large scale warfare by industrial powers. So they want to keep the discussion on the place where the EU is strong (diplomacy) so they don't have to change their behavior in anyway.

It's insane that in November 2019, i still have to say these things. But just today, Mulvaney spit in the face of the House and ignored a subpoena. He's like the 10th Trump White House figure to do so. And why shouldn't he? There has been zero consequences to violating them. Democrats, otherwise playing the Impeachment game well in the House *still* haven't gotten through their well mannered, principled skulls that public shaming doesn't work on the shameless.

Democrats want to treat 2020 like a normal election. So they are indulging themselves on flights of fancy and living in a fantasy land about how this is going to go down, what matters, and what President Democrat will meaningfully do (which will be nothing, because of how the post-sequestration budget model has sidelined Presidents).

My Prediction: Trump not only has a better than 50/50 chance at winning... he has an excellent chance of picking up New Hampshire and maybe ninjaing Minnesota. And it's largely because Democrats haven't been able to separate what they MUST do from what they WANT to do, and are incapable at firing the political cruise missiles Trump puts in front of them directly back at him.

As I've said, if I feel after the 2020 election that Democrats and I were not on the same team in taking down Trump, I'll consider making like you did a few years back and taking my riches (so to speak... poetic licence really) elsewhere while the trapped denizens of the fallen American Empire bludgeon each other over the last scraps.

I would recommend atleast looking at the chance at getting duel citizenship as i have done. I see no reason as to not have a backup plan in a more uncertain future given the current populist wave with the US consensus to rather throw bricks at each other instead of realizing that the US is about to be eclipsed as the worlds governing power. Also using my degree before it is rendered useless due to technology helps put me in a place with a decent to moderate social service nation to provide a better change of career once Finance is automated / merged with other standardized tasks.

I will fly back next winter to get a reminder that the cold bitter weather of Wyoming is fucking horrible but to cast my ballot at hopefully challenging the current shitshow. No party wants to combat the problems that has lead to the rise in global populism and they want to wag fingers while talking down to those whom they disagree with ( This goes for both sides ). Will Joe the truck driver be fucked if the USD loses it place? Well yes but myself the analyst or you the engineer can and will go anywhere and be just fine and it will be Joe's fault.

[Omega10]

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).

I wish I disagreed with your analysis and predictions. I think there is a very high probability that, if anything, it will be even worse than what you describe here. The leading indication of this is the republican responses to the Kentucky governor race.

[Tenlo]

I've needed help with plenty and will continue to need help. However, the amount of help I've received is exactly the amount of help that was WILLINGLY given by the people who helped me. The point isn't that people shouldn't get help or wouldn't get help. It's that the help would come from your personal support network or by soliciting for help, not at the expense of the general public who may or may not care about you and has no say. The amount of help being received would be the exact amount of help that would otherwise naturally be given. Not some artificial attempt to increase the amount of help resources available via the government.

What you want is for everyone to have a blank check and a mutual understanding of "well, yeah, I'd help out anyone!" and I can say 100% without a doubt I would not help out anyone under any circumstance. I want to pick and choose, and I want others afforded the ability to pick and choose.

What I would never do is sit there, have some unfortunate circumstance hit me, be unable to handle it myself, then be unable to garner the help I need, and then try to enact laws that demand people help me out because I'm just that selfish. I'd find a way to deal with it, or deal with the repercussions of not being able to garner that help like an adult (meaning sit down, shut up, and accept it with dignity).

Ok so you're a selfish cunt got it.
Seriously dude the "support network" should be your society.
I know a guy who got a new heart. He's young and healthy. It's not like he.ate big Macs all day everyday. But fuck him right? He shoulda just fucked off and died cuz reasons I guess.
I truly hope you never have a surprise hospital visit, cancer, lose your job, or basically anything bad ever happens..
Who am I kidding the moment something should happen to you you'll be the first guy begging for money on Kickstarter.
[Infraction]

[BeepBoo]

Ok so you're a selfish cunt got it.

Nope but thanks for playing.

Seriously dude the "support network" should be your society.

Did society have a say in everyone that enters it? No? Then no, it shouldn't be the defacto support network. Support is personal, and society is decidedly not personal.

I know a guy who got a new heart. He's young and healthy. It's not like he.ate big Macs all day everyday. But fuck him right? He shoulda just fucked off and died cuz reasons I guess.

"cause reasons" I could go into what are very valid reasons, such as undue burden, etc, but the last time I tried that it got me a time out because apparently the idea that humans don't have innate value doesn't fly around here. Not surprised, but I will stay the fuck away from it.

I truly hope you never have a surprise hospital visit, cancer, lose your job, or basically anything bad ever happens..
Who am I kidding the moment something should happen to you you'll be the first guy begging for money on Kickstarter.

This is a pointless attack because
1) you'll never know even if something were to happen
2) you'll never know how it's handled (hint: I wouldn't beg strangers)
3) even if I stood by my values, you still wouldn't respect my position and would go on thinking whatever dumb opinions you do about it currently because you think morality exists (or should exist) in some universal fashion.

Kindly move on with life instead of engaging with me. Neither of us is changing our minds and it has precisely 0 impact on either of us.

[Gestopft]

My feeling? Too many Democrats think Trump has no chance of winning in 2020 and thus feel like they can indulge themselves in the arena where they are strong - policy debates.

Your "feeling" indicates that while you have a keen understanding of a lot of things, you don't "get" Democrats. Which is understandable since you aren't one, but let's be clear: 2016 was a shock to most people on this side of the aisle, and Democrats don't want to get burned again. The complacency of 2016 has been seared out. Now as you have pointed out, (Democratic) voters' number one concern is "someone that can beat Trump." People -including Progressives- are fundamentally operating from the perspective of "Trump might win again-" it's just that different factions have different perspectives on how to beat Trump. Back before Biden even announced, I started a thread of reasons to question his electability- and while I made sure to couch it in terms of "these are issues that dogged Clinton in 2016" or "these are issues that could affect support amongst key constituencies," there were still (tellingly) responses of "well you just don't like Joe Biden." Our own ideologies mean we take a different moral out of the same story, and NeverTrump Conservatives, Moderate Dems, and Progressives all took different lessons from 2016. I can only really speak from the Progressive perspective, and I can assure you- we're scared of Trump: round two.

Now, it is true that policy is a strength: people generally prefer mainstream Democrat ideas over those of the GoP, but policy is important for more reasons than just that. While most voters aren't going to pay attention to Warren's 47-point plan to blahblahblah or argue the merits of and distinctions between blither and blather, having a plan is still an important part. First, it allows them to contrast themselves with Trump. Even though the details aren't the most important part of the message, "Democrats have plans, Trump has Twitter rants" is a distinction that needs to be drawn.

Second, and more importantly, the reason to have someone who is known for their policies is to have a better control of the positive narrative. 2016 was a historic shitstorm of negativity, and while the media certainly didn't help, Trump had a far better control of his narrative. In the months-long tornado of pussy-grabbing, emails, calling Mexicans rapists, is Clinton secretly ill?, making fun of disabled people, pizzagatehowthefuckdidpeoplethinkthatwasreallyathing, etc etc etc, people were still able to tell exactly what Donald Trump stood for. Now of course, while banning Muslims, building a wall, and bringing factory jobs back were/are all just as unlikely as anything Democrats are proposing this time around, people were able to identify Trump with those things. They knew exactly what he was trying to do: Make America Great Again. Now, Clinton? Beyond a thick haze of Benghazi re-litigation, emails, Clinton Foundation, and twenty-plus years of other built-up bullcrap, some of it completely fabricated, what did people associate her with? That she could be the first woman president? That...Trump bad? That she was going to be...like more of Obama? I'm not sure that the average voter had a good idea of just what she stood for. In 2020, there will again be another category five storm of misinformation and negativity. It is already very easy to see "but Hunter Biden getting $50,000 a month" as the next "but her emails," but it's not just Biden: every single potential nominee is going to have poop thrown at them for months by the GoP, opposing interest groups, and whatever foreign powers care to engage. Now of course it's unlikely that any Democrat will have the disadvantage of the very, very low starting point that Clinton suffered from, but I think the candidate that can win is the candidate that can control a narrative in the face of a hurricane. They need to have a positive something that sticks out that people will associate them with. One of the GoPs best strategies at this point is going to be the use of misinformation and whataboutism to depress turnout. Trump already lost the popular vote once and hasn't gotten any more popular. Voter apathy is going to be Trump's ally, so bemoan "purity" all you want, but the way I see it, the better the Republicans are at convincing people that the Democratic nominee is "same shit, different color," the better they will do.

Then there's also the manner in which "conventional wisdom" completely failed to comprehend the rise of Trump. It hit the political establishment like a wrecking ball, and I think as a result, there is a healthy skepticism that the punditocracy in the beltway that was taken utterly by surprise knows how Trump can be defeated anymore now than they did then. The fate of "conventional wisdom," or at least this era's version of it, may not be written yet. On a related note, thinkers on both the left and the right view the rise of Trump on the right and Sanders on the left as a sign that a consensus change is happening (which would explain the failure of "conventional wisdom")- that the country is rejecting the Neoliberal consensus that followed the breakup of the New Deal/Keynesian consensus, and that the party that fails to realize this is going to be left in the dust. Usually this is phrased as "establishment" or "status quo," but it's one of the primary reasons many Progressives genuinely believe that a Biden is not the right kind of person to run against Trump.

You can disagree (and probably do) with anything I laid out from the premises to the conclusions, but I know of zero Democrats (at least whose opinion matters to anyone) whose view is "we've got this in the bag, so let's talk policy."

[ringpriest]

I would recommend atleast looking at the chance at getting duel citizenship as i have done. I see no reason as to not have a backup plan in a more uncertain future given the current populist wave with the US consensus to rather throw bricks at each other instead of realizing that the US is about to be eclipsed as the worlds governing power. Also using my degree before it is rendered useless due to technology helps put me in a place with a decent to moderate social service nation to provide a better change of career once Finance is automated / merged with other standardized tasks.

I will fly back next winter to get a reminder that the cold bitter weather of Wyoming is fucking horrible but to cast my ballot at hopefully challenging the current shitshow. No party wants to combat the problems that has lead to the rise in global populism and they want to wag fingers while talking down to those whom they disagree with ( This goes for both sides ). Will Joe the truck driver be fucked if the USD loses it place? Well yes but myself the analyst or you the engineer can and will go anywhere and be just fine and it will be Joe's fault.

The problem with dual (American) citizenship is the financial burden it imposes (that, and not Donald Trump or my disagreements with US politics in general was my primary motivator behind renouncing my citizenship) - first, there's the fact that the United States is one of the few nations that taxes foreign earned income (yes, there's an exclusion, but its not that high); second, there's difficulty banking, as many banks are unwilling or unable to do business with American citizens due to the burden doing so places on them (thanks, Obama); and finally, there's the difficulty and cost in finding a good accountant who can handle the intersection of doing business abroad and complying with US tax law.(Although, in the other direction, be aware that expatriation is not cheap or easy - Uncle Sam makes you jump through hoops and pay through the nose for your freedom; the "right" answer is very much going to depend on long term plans and individual financial situation (although keep in mind that one reason to hold US citizenship ("the Marines will (within reason) come get you if the country you're in goes to hell") is no longer in effect - it is for other major countries, from EU member states, to China, to India, but the United States now lets its citizens go hang if they have the bad fortune to be doing the "business of Empire" when the fire starts (even, or perhaps especially, if the US participates in the fire-starting)).

[Elegiac]

Now of course it's unlikely that any Democrat will have the disadvantage of the very, very low starting point that Clinton suffered from, but I think the candidate that can win is the candidate that can control a narrative in the face of a hurricane. They need to have a positive something that sticks out that people will associate them with. One of the GoPs best strategies at this point is going to be the use of misinformation and whataboutism to depress turnout. Trump already lost the popular vote once and hasn't gotten any more popular. Voter apathy is going to be Trump's ally, so bemoan "purity" all you want, but the way I see it, the better the Republicans are at convincing people that the Democratic nominee is "same shit, different color," the better they will do.

So, I wanna add on to this excellent point because of a relevant article that Politico ran very recently.

Elizabeth Warren has been on the receiving end of an onslaught of jabs, swipes, missives, think-pieces and general bashing from opponents this past week, the likes of which she hasn’t experienced since she jumped into the presidential race.

But more surprising than the attacks — Warren, having risen to frontrunner status, had those coming — has been her response. In two words: No comment.

Her surrogates and campaign aides aren’t going on cable TV to defend her — even as her rivals and their aides are constantly on shows bashing her. Warren advisers haven’t taken to Twitter to shape “the conversation.” There’ve been no statements from Warren HQ calling out rivals by name. Even when former Vice President Joe Biden portrayed Warren as an out-of-touch elitist — while he was attending a fundraiser with real estate moguls, offering the corruption-focused Warren a freebie rebuttal — the campaign kept quiet.

The only response of note to the elitist charge was a subtweet the Warren campaign posted Wednesday with a video about her humble upbringing and challenges as a young mother.

The campaign’s refusal to engage this week has baffled rival campaigns and some Democratic strategists. But it’s not an outlier. Internally, communications director Kristen Orthman refers to the approach as “blinders and bulletin board” — as in, put your blinders on to the horserace drama and stick your retorts on a bulletin board rather than tweeting them out. (Orthman has an actual bulletin board on which she also posts critical stories about Warren as a motivation tool.)

“Fighting on Twitter most of the time does not advance our goals,” said one campaign official in explaining Warren’s refusal to follow “The War Room” ethos that political campaigns have hewed to for decades. In short: All attacks must be publicly returned, and then some.

“How are you going to run for president — and run against President Trump — around a campaign that doesn’t answer questions and debate your own policy proposal? I don’t get it,” said James Carville, the man behind the original war room set up for Bill Clinton’s 1992 run.

Warren aides said they're not adopting a pacifist posture; they expect that some attacks will require a response. Rather, they say they're adapting to the modern media environment where responding to everything can distract from more important tasks and muddle their message.

This ties into a point I and many others have made regarding many of the Third Way parties in general ranging from the Democrats, to New Labour, to the Australian Labor Party; that the greatest failing of the movement was that the scope of argument was always being defined in conservative terms. Rather than talking about net cost to people in terms of healthcare, we're stuck in discussions of whether or not taxes will go up on the middle class. Rather than talking about a wealth tax as a means of funding vitally necessary social programs and climate change, we're talking about whether or not the wealth tax will upset billionaires and hurt wall street earnings.

Warren especially is trying to redefine the scope of political discussion by, as you say, rejecting the conventional wisdom entirely because it's ultimately a product of that same post-Reagan/Thatcher era narrative in which taxes are an intrusive nuisance to fund bloated bureaucracies giving handouts to lazy people. The public has begun to reject that narrative as the promises of the Reagan Revolution have turned out to be...you know...bullshit - and a lot of people simply don't believe that continuing to couch the party's manifesto in that narrative as Biden and the other centrists ultimately are is the key to defeating Trump.

Skroe mentioned rather derisively that Democrats like to fall in love with their candidates, using Obama as an example; and the thing is, Trump's election was so shocking precisely because it turned so many previous Obama voters. What did Obama have that Hillary didn't, or McCain, or Romney? The answer was a platform of reform.

There is a clear desire in the US for a change.

[ringpriest]

Your "feeling" indicates that while you have a keen understanding of a lot of things, you don't "get" Democrats. Which is understandable since you aren't one, but let's be clear: 2016 was a shock to most people on this side of the aisle, and Democrats don't want to get burned again. The complacency of 2016 has been seared out. Now as you have pointed out, (Democratic) voters' number one concern is "someone that can beat Trump." People -including Progressives- are fundamentally operating from the perspective of "Trump might win again-" it's just that different factions have different perspectives on how to beat Trump. Back before Biden even announced, I started a thread of reasons to question his electability- and while I made sure to couch it in terms of "these are issues that dogged Clinton in 2016" or "these are issues that could affect support amongst key constituencies," there were still (tellingly) responses of "well you just don't like Joe Biden." Our own ideologies mean we take a different moral out of the same story, and NeverTrump Conservatives, Moderate Dems, and Progressives all took different lessons from 2016. I can only really speak from the Progressive perspective, and I can assure you- we're scared of Trump: round two.

Now, it is true that policy is a strength: people generally prefer mainstream Democrat ideas over those of the GoP, but policy is important for more reasons than just that. While most voters aren't going to pay attention to Warren's 47-point plan to blahblahblah or argue the merits of and distinctions between blither and blather, having a plan is still an important part. First, it allows them to contrast themselves with Trump. Even though the details aren't the most important part of the message, "Democrats have plans, Trump has Twitter rants" is a distinction that needs to be drawn.

Second, and more importantly, the reason to have someone who is known for their policies is to have a better control of the positive narrative. 2016 was a historic shitstorm of negativity, and while the media certainly didn't help, Trump had a far better control of his narrative. In the months-long tornado of pussy-grabbing, emails, calling Mexicans rapists, is Clinton secretly ill?, making fun of disabled people, pizzagatehowthefuckdidpeoplethinkthatwasreallyathing, etc etc etc, people were still able to tell exactly what Donald Trump stood for. Now of course, while banning Muslims, building a wall, and bringing factory jobs back were/are all just as unlikely as anything Democrats are proposing this time around, people were able to identify Trump with those things. They knew exactly what he was trying to do: Make America Great Again. Now, Clinton? Beyond a thick haze of Benghazi re-litigation, emails, Clinton Foundation, and twenty-plus years of other built-up bullcrap, some of it completely fabricated, what did people associate her with? That she could be the first woman president? That...Trump bad? That she was going to be...like more of Obama? I'm not sure that the average voter had a good idea of just what she stood for. In 2020, there will again be another category five storm of misinformation and negativity. It is already very easy to see "but Hunter Biden getting $50,000 a month" as the next "but her emails," but it's not just Biden: every single potential nominee is going to have poop thrown at them for months by the GoP, opposing interest groups, and whatever foreign powers care to engage. Now of course it's unlikely that any Democrat will have the disadvantage of the very, very low starting point that Clinton suffered from, but I think the candidate that can win is the candidate that can control a narrative in the face of a hurricane. They need to have a positive something that sticks out that people will associate them with. One of the GoPs best strategies at this point is going to be the use of misinformation and whataboutism to depress turnout. Trump already lost the popular vote once and hasn't gotten any more popular. Voter apathy is going to be Trump's ally, so bemoan "purity" all you want, but the way I see it, the better the Republicans are at convincing people that the Democratic nominee is "same shit, different color," the better they will do.

Then there's also the manner in which "conventional wisdom" completely failed to comprehend the rise of Trump. It hit the political establishment like a wrecking ball, and I think as a result, there is a healthy skepticism that the punditocracy in the beltway that was taken utterly by surprise knows how Trump can be defeated anymore now than they did then. The fate of "conventional wisdom," or at least this era's version of it, may not be written yet. On a related note, thinkers on both the left and the right view the rise of Trump on the right and Sanders on the left as a sign that a consensus change is happening (which would explain the failure of "conventional wisdom")- that the country is rejecting the Neoliberal consensus that followed the breakup of the New Deal/Keynesian consensus, and that the party that fails to realize this is going to be left in the dust. Usually this is phrased as "establishment" or "status quo," but it's one of the primary reasons many Progressives genuinely believe that a Biden is not the right kind of person to run against Trump.

You can disagree (and probably do) with anything I laid out from the premises to the conclusions, but I know of zero Democrats (at least whose opinion matters to anyone) whose view is "we've got this in the bag, so let's talk policy."

You're probably right when you talk about Democratic voters (and probably even moreso the hardworking and under-appreciated rank and file who keep things running), but all it takes is a quick survey of the candidate clown car to see that far too many of the candidates agree with Skroe instead of you; most of those people should not be running for President - they should be running for Senator or Governor or running a PAC, but they look at Trump in 2016 (he got the nomination! anyone has a shot!) and then look at Trump now (he's a flaming dumpster fire of an administration! the real challenge is winning the nomination, then the general will be easy!) and think they'll take a 1% shot at becoming President, because why not? (Some of them, like my old governor, have gotten wise, but more idiots, especially billionaires (who could be doing a hell of a lot more good funding PACs and attacking Trump and his Republicans) are playing to their own egos (and helping Trump in the process); and virtually none of them are actually preparing for the general or asking themselves hard questions like, "WTF are we going to do if Trump keels over during the holiday and the GOP nominates (for examples) Romney/Haley (or worse, a Haley/Gabbard "American unity" ticket - how does Uncle Joe respond to something like that?") I don't think that outcome is particularly likely, but if the unexpected catches you unprepared, you're toast.

As for the idea that the paradigm of US politics is changing.... I don't think that's quite right; I think the current system is failing - that's an exceptionally nasty place to be in, but getting out involves recognizing that the first appealing idea to come along (<cough> Trump <cough>) isn't necessarily a good, or even functional one. If the United States is lucky, it will get a modern day FDR, who can save the system from itself (because the odds of directly transitioning into a new, better system are astronomical); if it isn't lucky (and I fear it won't be) then it's gong to thrash around like a headless snake for a decade or three while things get progressively worse (if anyone does want to get out, keep that in mind as you're picking destinations - there are not many (if any) places to confidently dodge the fallout of a writhing United States (the EU is good now, but it needs to get its military act together (thanks, Trump, honestly) and younger generations are in danger of forgetting why the EU exists (never another WWII. Ever.) Australia and New Zealand are good if you can get in (and honestly, I'm not sure how 'globalism-collapse-proof' they are), Canada is vulnerable to the United States, Norway is nice for Norway - I've thought about this one a lot, but I don't see any sure answers)).

[Kallisto]

So...

I don't think these two things can be accurate...

Trump down by double digits to all 4 frontrunners and trump edging out everyone in battleground states.

I think the truth is probably somewhere in the middle.

It's simple if true. Trump is getting huge numbers against him in West Coast and New England, battleground states he's edging out.

Remember it's nice to have popular lead but getting million more votes in california as a Democrat really means you got nothing. Losing that million but gaining it back in battleground states gets the Whitehouse.

[Ghostpanther]

It's simple if true. Trump is getting huge numbers against him in West Coast and New England, battleground states he's edging out.

Remember it's nice to have popular lead but getting million more votes in california as a Democrat really means you got nothing. Losing that million but gaining it back in battleground states gets the Whitehouse.

Very true. And it is also very early. Hillary was leading Trump by double digits when she first starting running and still maintained the lead well into the summer in the swing states she lost. The big difference this time however, is the betting odds are on Trump.

[Theodarzna]

It's simple if true. Trump is getting huge numbers against him in West Coast and New England, battleground states he's edging out.

Remember it's nice to have popular lead but getting million more votes in california as a Democrat really means you got nothing. Losing that million but gaining it back in battleground states gets the Whitehouse.

This is true. Democrats spend too much time catering to people they don't need to cater to. The Neo-Liberal Wine Aunt crowd, the Billionaire's and Drag Queen Story Time voter is really not a voter who you ever need to worry all that much about. They are going to vote for you no matter what. Worry instead about the constituents whom are harder to convince, who aren't "ride together die together" Democrats. The biggest challenge is that most non-voters are probably socially conservative but on economics much more socialist, as a point of fact almost nobody is a libertarian. The other, and perhaps easiest vote to get would be to go all in on a Sanders and Yang style shake up of major revisions of the system. Mainly because those voters aren't IMHO transferable voters, they won't hope to another candidate. They just leave.

[Thekri]

So I just got (yet another) political add on YouTube, which raised two important questions:

1) Why the fuck is Tulsi Gabbard still running ads?

2) Why is she dog whistling 9/11 truthers? Seriously, the whole add was a clear appeal to conspiracy theorists.

I couldn't find the add, but here is an article about it.

Just what we needed, another candidate that throws around dangerous conspiracy theories to promote their political agenda.