2020 Democratic Candidates Tracker

[Skeptic Ginger]

See, I look at it the other way around - picking Biden over Trump is ignoring 30 years of Biden's baggage, support for anti-abortions bills, the Iraq war, and Wall Street, just to name a few.

Trump's a moron - Biden's a cynical hypocrite.

I'll concede this: "Biden's a cynical hypocrite".

But you couldn't be farther off base than this: Trump's a moron.

And that's exactly what I posted that you ignored: Post 3150:

While Trump's out there getting press attention for being crazy, the rest of them are quietly gutting federal lands including threatening National Parks, no doubt Trump has cronies profiting from that. They have ruined the lives of Hispanic immigrants who were not harming anyone and could have been dealt with humanely. They've rolled back any and every pollution regulation that any corporation wanted regardless of what they were discharging into the water and air. Trump is also raiding funds for any number of programs. And he's literally flooding the federal courts with people on a list from the Federalist Society; things won't need to be decided by SCOTUS, all the lower courts will rule in favor of corporations and Evangelical religious beliefs all the way up the line. It'll be like a swarm of little Scalias all over the court system. And the Democrats can't stop McConnell filling every open seat they filibustered during Obama's administration. And they are eroding LGBTQ rights. Then there is the risk of an even more biased SCOTUS.

Then there is the attempt to skew the Census so the GOP can gerrymander even more districts and make the Democrats votes count for an even smaller fraction of what GOP votes are worth.

I don't think that's the whole list, that's just off the top of my head.

 

[Venom]

Even if both were true, my vote goes to Biden.

Same.

For the most part, Trump has done the GOP's bidding, even if he isn't the guy they'd prefer in charge. Republicans are overwhelmingly on the Trump train and he clearly feeds off of it.
On the fate of an important bill like S.J.Res 54 I trust the opportunist Biden to not veto it more than I do Trump.
Biden isn't my first choice, probably not even my fifth or sixth, but over the AGW-denying uneducated dunce, take my vote PLEASE.

 

[Cabbage]

An extreme;y small minority.

In general, the Republicans are still crawling up his backside every chance they get.



It always amuses me when people can't understand a very simple discussion.

The entire discussion was always about why I would vote for Trump over Biden, because it's on record I'd support any other Democratic candidate, and particularly Elizabeth Warren.

The only reason Trump's record came up is because I say Biden is so little of an improvement on Trump that I'd keep Trump for the LULZ factor.

The joy of forums is, it's all there for you to check. All nicely in chronological order.

Evidence is a bitch.

Nevertheless, the specific claim of yours I took issue with was this:

And another classic example of irrational loony lefty thinking!

Can you not see how much worse things would have been with a true homophobe in charge?

Can you not accept that if Pence were President, everything on the LGBT front would be far worse than it is, not to mention other areas he might have been much worse than Trump.

You're blaming Trump for everything, despite the fact he might be better than other Republicans. Trump derangement syndrome rears its ugly head.

...which, as I have said repeatedly (and, indeed, is quite clear to see!), concerns Trump vs Pence. Whether or not Biden was an issue at the beginning of this discussion, he is quite clearly irrelevant to the content of the specific post quoted above.

But whatever. It's impossible to make a simpleton realize his mistake if he simply refuses to listen.

 

[The Great Zaganza]

The bigger danger, more than losing the White House in 2020, is (in my opinion) to raise expectations for a post-Trump administration too high.
This would set up the next President for a backlash in the Midterms and this might push the time at which a Democratic President can pick someone for the Supreme Court even further back.

 

[Travis]

Politics is religion, complete with belief the other side is mislead by, if not actively participating with, the devil, and the need for tsk tsk and out of hand rejection of the other side's words.

Poltics completed this, ironically, by recognizing the power of religion in motivating the masses to follow leaders, and so banned its use by politicians in legislation. This left politics, memeplexes as giganic as any religion, the sole memeplexes wielding the ability to legally force itself on unwilling meme instantiation units AKA humans.

In other words, politics is wielding the power of government for the exact same reason this was denied to religion.

Both "sides", enjoy your anger worldviews as you bend the knee to a handful of the power hungry at the top, who want you angry for their own advancement as surely as any religious fraud.

Yeah, you're woke, alright.

In an alternate universe politics is illegal and everyone hates each other over ice cream flavors.

Are we expecting a massive die off in white people between 2016 and 2020? If not... what's your point?

The Dems have got to get over this. At least looking into the whys of as to why certain demographics didn't vote for you isn't the same as validating their irrational fears or otherwise selling yourself out.

"Those votes are gone forever, there's no point in even trying to get them back... no scratch that those people are so horrible we don't even want their votes!" is a horrible mentality for the losing side to have.

Or you can just all be Travis.

Look, if people want the Democrats to make nice with genocidal inclined racists, that is their right. I just find the tactic distasteful.

 

[varwoche]

Even if both were true, my vote goes to Biden.

Same, in the blink of an eye. That's not a ringing endorsement of Biden. I'd vote for most anyone over Trump.

If space aliens invade the earth intent on wiping out humanity, and the only way to stop them is for the people of the world to unite, I don't plan on nursing petty differences at that moment.

 

[Mumbles]

The bigger danger, more than losing the White House in 2020, is (in my opinion) to raise expectations for a post-Trump administration too high.
This would set up the next President for a backlash in the Midterms and this might push the time at which a Democratic President can pick someone for the Supreme Court even further back.

This is one thing that makes me take a good long look at Kamala Harris in addition to Liz Warren. Her plans aren't quite so bold as Warren, but she's making it very clear that she understands that McConnell, if still in power, will simply kill any attempt to fix anything - and has stated that, for example, she'll put DREAMers on a path to citizenship that future presidents will essentially be unable to undo.

The ideal, of course, is for McConnell to be tossed out on his ear, he's the most damaging elected official today and will go down with the likes of McCarthy, Tillman, and Calhoun as one of the worst senators in US history. But if he's still around, and is hellbent on strangling the legislative branch entirely, the government must continue to operate.

 

[Belz...]

They really should have term limits for senators.

 

[TragicMonkey]

They really should have term limits for senators.

Or alter the rules so a single individual can't stop the entire legislative process dead. It seems counterintuitive to have a body of many members with a bottleneck of one or two.

 

[Belz...]

Or alter the rules so a single individual can't stop the entire legislative process dead. It seems counterintuitive to have a body of many members with a bottleneck of one or two.

Yeah, why can he do that?

 

[JoeMorgue]

Look, if people want the Democrats to make nice with genocidal inclined racists, that is their right. I just find the tactic distasteful.

"The genocidal inclined racists" are holding the cards right now. If you want those cards back you have to at least lower yourself to interacting with them, unless your goal is an internet persona stuck in a constant state of neutered outrage.

You can't declare the world hopelessly effed in one breathe and demand a percentage of it's effedupedness in the next.

Give up and drink the Kool-aid or keep fighting the fight, one or the other.

 

[JoeMorgue]

Yeah, why can he do that?

Congressional procedural rules are a bit murky so don't take this as gospel, but I'm not 100% sure he can in the sense that he could do it if the rest of the Republicans were willing to just... not listen to him.

There's a difference between "Mitch McConnell can just straight up order something to not happen" and "Mitch McConnell can functionally do that because the Republicans aren't going to turn on one of their own" and my gut is we're a lot closer to the later than the former.

 

[Belz...]

"The genocidal inclined racists" are holding the cards right now.

Are they, though? I mean, the genocidal part.

 

[JoeMorgue]

Are they, though? I mean, the genocidal part.

No but I have no desire to try and talk Travis's dramatic persona back from that particular cliff.

 

[Brainster]

Or alter the rules so a single individual can't stop the entire legislative process dead. It seems counterintuitive to have a body of many members with a bottleneck of one or two.

The bottleneck only exists because many members agree to let it exist, and I suspect similar bottlenecks exist in every legislative body in the world. Do you think that anything moves forward in the House of Representatives that doesn't have Nancy Pelosi's seal of approval on it? The UN Security Council gives each member veto power. Most parliaments are run by the prime minister.

 

[theprestige]

I like legislative bottlenecks. I'd rather a government be bogged down because it can't get enough broad consensus to move forward, than a government that can move forward on contentious policies with a bare majority. Exhibit A: The ACA. Healthcare reform is badly needed in this country. But forcing it through on a bare majority and pissing off half the country in the process was absolutely the worst way to go about it. They virtually guaranteed that it would be crippled from the start, and gutted by the opposition the moment they got a bare majority to work with.

The modern political idiom in America seems to be "compromise without moderation". Which is to say, rather than finding some lukewarm, middle of the road, moderate policy to implement, and make progress by slow degrees; the "compromise" simply means that the party currently grasping the reins of power forces only as much of their policy as they think they can get away with over the protests of the opposition.

 

[TragicMonkey]

I like legislative bottlenecks. I'd rather a government be bogged down because it can't get enough broad consensus to move forward, than a government that can move forward on contentious policies with a bare majority. Exhibit A: The ACA. Healthcare reform is badly needed in this country. But forcing it through on a bare majority and pissing off half the country in the process was absolutely the worst way to go about it. They virtually guaranteed that it would be crippled from the start, and gutted by the opposition the moment they got a bare majority to work with.

The modern political idiom in America seems to be "compromise without moderation". Which is to say, rather than finding some lukewarm, middle of the road, moderate policy to implement, and make progress by slow degrees; the "compromise" simply means that the party currently grasping the reins of power forces only as much of their policy as they think they can get away with over the protests of the opposition.

But can't that be taken too far? The Republicans preventing the appointment of any SC justice, for example, merely to deny it to the other party strikes me as beyond the pale of permissible partisan wrangling. That wasn't legislation that wasn't sufficiently popular, it was a deliberate move to steal powers of another branch of government.

 

[JoeMorgue]

If one person can stop the process, either officially or just functionally, ti raises the question for me as to what all the other people are doing.

Why not have just McConnell and get rid of the rest of the Republicans if he's the final say?

 

[The Great Zaganza]

I like legislative bottlenecks. I'd rather a government be bogged down because it can't get enough broad consensus to move forward, than a government that can move forward on contentious policies with a bare majority. Exhibit A: The ACA. Healthcare reform is badly needed in this country. But forcing it through on a bare majority and pissing off half the country in the process was absolutely the worst way to go about it. They virtually guaranteed that it would be crippled from the start, and gutted by the opposition the moment they got a bare majority to work with.

The modern political idiom in America seems to be "compromise without moderation". Which is to say, rather than finding some lukewarm, middle of the road, moderate policy to implement, and make progress by slow degrees; the "compromise" simply means that the party currently grasping the reins of power forces only as much of their policy as they think they can get away with over the protests of the opposition.

That might make sense - if the US system wasn't set up to allow a maximum of two years for a party to get anything done ... at BEST.
Either party has little incentive to give the other legislative accomplishments.
McConnell is Exhibit A, when he stated that his primary job was to make sure that Obama didn't get anything passed.

Bottlenecks are fine if there is a scenario when the two sides MUST cooperate - but currently, one sides failure is the other's win. There is nothing but zero-sum calculation, hence nothing but gridlock.

 

[theprestige]

But can't that be taken too far? The Republicans preventing the appointment of any SC justice, for example, merely to deny it to the other party strikes me as beyond the pale of permissible partisan wrangling. That wasn't legislation that wasn't sufficiently popular, it was a deliberate move to steal powers of another branch of government.

I don't know that it can be taken too far.

I also don't really agree with any part of your characterization of SC nomination cock-blocking.

One place where bottlenecking might be a real risk to the nation is in times of war. But there, the Executive branch has substantial constitutional and delegated authority to ignore legislative gridlock and get to work.

Nothing in the legislature's domain should be so urgent that contentious policy "right now" is preferable to delaying action until a national consensus emerges. If something is that urgent, it should already be in the hands of the Executive.