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2020 Democratic Candidates Tracker

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kellyb said:
OMG! I just clicked on it and I wasn't that far off!

ETA: the text of the article has absolutely nothing to do with the sentence "Even today, there are American progressives who still see the totalitarian state as an agent of progress." Here Friedman is just complaining about the GOP and calling us a "one party democracy" because the GOP was obstructing Obama and the democrats. Or something like that.
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I really don't get why you're obsessing over this. You may find an occasional person who might refer to themselves as a progressive that support these things, but they are outliers. At least in the US. That said, there are totalitarian concerns that arise from both the right and the left. There are at least as many Francisco Francos and Pinochets out there as there are Robespierres.
 
acbytesla said:
I really don't get why you're obsessing over this. You may find an occasional person who might refer to themselves as a progressive that support these things, but they are outliers. At least in the US. That said, there are totalitarian concerns that arise from both the right and the left. There are at least as many Francisco Francos and Pinochets out there as there are Robespierres.
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What am I obsessing over? The predictability and absurdity of Thomas Friedman's writing style? lol

eta:
Were you maybe not following the conversation back to the sentence "Even today, there are American progressives who still see the totalitarian state as an agent of progress" used as a hyperlink text to an article about a totally different topic?
 
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Travis said:
Well I'm an "ends justify the means" kind of guy. The program worked and is considered a huge success that was emulated in numerous other cities and was a key platform plank when Harris ran for and won the election for state Attorney General.
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I don't know why we had this whole conversation then. You are absolutely OK with innocent children and parents being threatened with jail, as long as the program "works". You could have just said that to start with.
 
A (female) writer talks about the problems the women who are running on the Democratic side are facing:

Neither of these numbers are as high as they should be. But when you look at them next to how much the male candidates are out-polling and out-fundraising female ones for the 2020 presidential race, it's obvious that people really aren't talking the talk. Look no further than South Bend, IN, Mayor Pete Buttigieg pulling ahead of Sen. Elizabeth Warren in Iowa, in third place behind former Vice President Joe Biden and Sen. Bernie Sanders. He has also outearned Warren, bringing in $7 million in the first quarter of 2019 while she brought in $6 million. A late-March Quinnipiac poll shows him tied for fifth place with Warren nationally.

Why are some voters choosing Buttigieg over a policy heavyweight who has brought more exciting and well thought-out ideas to the table than any candidate so far? Like the senator from Massachusetts, he's a capitalist who wants to tax the rich and get big money out of politics. Like Warren, he's also open to abolishing both the Senate filibuster and the Electoral College so Democrats can actually make their proposals happen. But unlike her, he doesn't have a ton of specific details on his plans or experience bringing them to life. "I really like Pete Buttigieg. He is intelligent. He is decent. He is curious," tweeted commentator Jill Filipovic. "But when he says, 'I think that policy matters, I’m a policy guy,' but all of his policies are basically Warren's (except less specific and less progressive), I wonder why he's not working for her." Good question.
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Note the assumption there that voters want more specific and more progressive. Actually I think the real problem for Warren is that the lane she wants to run in is already filled by Bernie Sanders.

As for Buttigieg, he's the shiny new candidate, like Obama in 2008 and Howard Dean (less successfully) in 2004. Plus Buttigieg checks off all the right boxes for the meritocratic millennials; he went to the right school (Harvard), then Oxford for a Rhodes Scholarship, then worked for McKinsey and as a Naval Intelligence Officer in Afghanistan and was elected mayor of his hometown (some of these occupations overlapped a bit). Oh, and he's gay.

However, I do think the writer makes an interesting point here:

The misogyny in political coverage is made worse by the fact that 70% of political coverage overall and 74% of election news at online news outlets is done by men, according to a new report from the Women's Media Center. It's made even worse when you consider that they seem to exist within an echo chamber: Male political reporters retweet other men three times more than their female colleagues. It's all but guaranteed that most people who tweet this article will be women, when it's the male reporters who need to read it most.
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Foolmewunz said:
Sadly, because he knows the political minefield, the apology needs to be made, but more in lieu of an explanation. Some things need to be taken back from the ideologues who have co-opted them.

I have no problem with the idea that we need to return to a better, more forward-looking America with progressive and liberal (in the founders' sense of the word) ideals. In short, anyone who wants to get America back on track and turn away from the egocentric hedonistic miasma the conservative movement it has fallen for. You know, there's a nice phrase for that sentiment.... let's make America great again.

But that expression has been co-opted by people who want no such thing. They want to return America to Ward and June and Wally and Beaver times - times that didn't exist.

Mayor Pete didn't realize that the phrase was being used to say, "Hey, you're not special, sparky! All lives matter; get over yourselves!" Just as the little Mooslim Congresswoman didn't realize that the words she was using had been co-opted by numerous Anti-Semites couching themselves in Anti-Zionist jargon. Nothing wrong with being anti-zionist... why some of my (((best friends))) are. But when you use words that have been taken on as a mantra by reprehensible dogmatists, you pay the price.
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It doesn't really help when people like Peter King or Cheeto Benito are overtly anti-Semitic yet are given a pass by the same people that insist Rep. Omar is a horrible anti-Semite for speaking out against anti-Muslim hysteria or anti-BDS laws. Makes it rather clear that the actual objection is to her being black/female/Muslim/refugee, rather than any concern about hatred of Jewish people.

I still have objections to "mayor Pete", including some rather disturbing hints about lead poitoning that he contributed to by demolishing older buildings without taking lead paint dust into account. But from the link, it sounds like he fully understands what the issue with the "all lives matter" retort to the BLM movement is, so I see no need to belabor that particular point.
 
Matthew Best said:
I don't know why we had this whole conversation then. You are absolutely OK with innocent children and parents being threatened with jail, as long as the program "works". You could have just said that to start with.
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Personally, as long as the parents are also being offered help for whatever is causing the child to miss such a high number of school days, I have no real problem with it.

Now, are there local DAs that will abuse such a system? Quite possibly - and in that case, the solutions is to replace the local DA, since they're certainly abusing their power in other ways as well.
 
Mayor Pete was on Rachel Maddow tonight, and he presented himself well enough that I expect he'll pick up a couple points in the next polls. A lot of people I know are starting to take him seriously.
 
I'm curious how organizing these debates will go. The first few are going to be an absolute circus given how many candidates there are. Hopefully there will be a quick narrowing of the field to something more manageable.

I expect there to be much gnashing of teeth over who gets put at the "kids table" should they split the debate into tiers.
 
SuburbanTurkey said:
I'm curious how organizing these debates will go. The first few are going to be an absolute circus given how many candidates there are. Hopefully there will be a quick narrowing of the field to something more manageable.

I expect there to be much gnashing of teeth over who gets put at the "kids table" should they split the debate into tiers.
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The DNC has said they will hold the first debates split over two nights with qualifying candidates supposedly being randomly selected to avoid that issue.

I guess we will see if they actually follow through
 
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WilliamSeger said:
This morning, he's moved to 2nd place on Democratic Underground: Harris 12%, Buttigieg 11%, Biden 10%, Sanders 8%, undecided 44%. (Looks like he picked up points from the undecided.)
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Oh, I like Undecided. Definitely the best representative of the Democratic Party. Let's elect President Undecided.
 
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