2020 Democratic Candidates Tracker - Part II

[theprestige]

Sunk cost, then? ; )

I don't know how that applies.

 

[theprestige]

As demonstrated by what?
Her loss to an opponent considered one of the most unqualified to ever run?

The fact that it was such a close race, between Hillary Clinton and Donald ******* Trump, that James Comey re-opening the emails inquiry was enough to tip the scales, should tell you something about the limits of her electability.

 

[Dr. Keith]

There are those of us who think the Dems should not run McGovern II aka Bernie Sanders.

I agree with them.

 

[Dr. Keith]

I mean, seriously, what's your plan here? Ridicule me for considering Warren? Try to talk me out of voting for her? Try to convince me I'm not going to vote for her? Do you want more Trump? Because this is probably how you get more Trump.

My plan would be to buy you a beer and see if you could give me more insight into this line of thinking. But you are pretty far away and I'm not heading your way in the foreseeable future. So, how about you buy yourself a beer and you put it on my tab? I'm good for it, honest. (Just don't get some Trappist monk crap that is going to set me back the cost of whole six pack. A beer means a beer.)

 

[theprestige]

My plan would be to buy you a beer and see if you could give me more insight into this line of thinking. But you are pretty far away and I'm not heading your way in the foreseeable future. So, how about you buy yourself a beer and you put it on my tab? I'm good for it, honest. (Just don't get some Trappist monk crap that is going to set me back the cost of whole six pack. A beer means a beer.)

Fair enough. Pilsner okay?

 

[Dr. Keith]

Fair enough. Pilsner okay?

Sure.

Are craft pilsner any better than German or Czech pilsners? I've never really ventured down those paths.

I feel like Warren would better be able to understand that question than any of the other candidates except maybe Beto.

I like Beto, but this was not his time to run and his wild grasping at the end is going to turn off a lot of Texas voters if he tries for another shot at the Senate.

ETA: I don't think Warren would be able to give me much of an answer to the question, just that she would understand it.

 

[dudalb]

I am coming from the viewpoint that Beating Trump should be the #1 priority for the Dems, overriding everything else, as a matter of national survival. They should nominate the candidate most likely to do that.
I also contend that the Swing voters ..the much despised "Moderates" and "Centrists" will decide this election. There is no vast hidden "Progressive" vote out there. So,logically, the Dems need to nominate somebody who can bring out the moderates and centrist. My fear is if the Dems nominate too radical a candidate, the Moderates will decide it's a case of two equal evils and stay home.
And if large numbers of the progressive wing of the Dems will stay home or throw away their votes on a third party candidate if somebody not "Progressive" enough for them is nominated, it's a lost cause anyway.

 

[Brainster]

There were quite a few warning signs about Hillary's electability. When she ran for the Senate she won by 12.3 percentage points in a state which Al Gore carried by 25 percentage points in the presidential election that year. Look at the numbers:

Gore 4,113,791
Bush: 2,405,676
Clinton: 3,747,310
Lazio: 2,915,370

It seems pretty obvious that a pretty substantial number of voters cast their ballot for Gore, then crossed over and voted for Rick Lazio over Hillary.

 

[angrysoba]

I am coming from the viewpoint that Beating Trump should be the #1 priority for the Dems, overriding everything else, as a matter of national survival. They should nominate the candidate most likely to do that.
I also contend that the Swing voters ..the much despised "Moderates" and "Centrists" will decide this election. There is no vast hidden "Progressive" vote out there. So,logically, the Dems need to nominate somebody who can bring out the moderates and centrist. My fear is if the Dems nominate too radical a candidate, the Moderates will decide it's a case of two equal evils and stay home.
And if large numbers of the progressive wing of the Dems will stay home or throw away their votes on a third party candidate if somebody not "Progressive" enough for them is nominate., it's a lost cause anyway.

You need the candidate who can beat Trump in Wisconsin. Why don’t the Dems just move the state primaries of the key states to the beginning of the order and see who wins there. Then just go for it.

No offense to you but you are in California. Your vote is as important as mine and I live in Japan.

 

[kellyb]

My fear is if the Dems nominate too radical a candidate, the Moderates will decide it's a case of two equal evils and stay home.
And if large numbers of the progressive wing of the Dems will stay home or throw away their votes on a third party candidate if somebody not "Progressive" enough for them is nominated, it's a lost cause anyway.

How is one scenario a total "lost cause" and the other is a totally reasonable scenario to base a voting strategy off of?

 

[acbytesla]

There were quite a few warning signs about Hillary's electability. When she ran for the Senate she won by 12.3 percentage points in a state which Al Gore carried by 25 percentage points in the presidential election that year. Look at the numbers:

Gore 4,113,791
Bush: 2,405,676
Clinton: 3,747,310
Lazio: 2,915,370

It seems pretty obvious that a pretty substantial number of voters cast their ballot for Gore, then crossed over and voted for Rick Lazio over Hillary.

It's a different race. Apples and Oranges.

 

[angrysoba]

How is one scenario a total "lost cause" and the other is a totally reasonable scenario to base a voting strategy off of?

Because in both cases the progressives are bad!!!!1!

 

[Venom]

I am coming from the viewpoint that Beating Trump should be the #1 priority for the Dems, overriding everything else, as a matter of national survival. They should nominate the candidate most likely to do that.
I also contend that the Swing voters ..the much despised "Moderates" and "Centrists" will decide this election. There is no vast hidden "Progressive" vote out there. So,logically, the Dems need to nominate somebody who can bring out the moderates and centrist. My fear is if the Dems nominate too radical a candidate, the Moderates will decide it's a case of two equal evils and stay home.
And if large numbers of the progressive wing of the Dems will stay home or throw away their votes on a third party candidate if somebody not "Progressive" enough for them is nominated, it's a lost cause anyway.

And again, you might not need some vast hidden pool of progressives. Not everyone who voted for Trump was a hard right winger who supported everything he was about either.
Internal polling suggests that Sanders would beat Trump by about 10 points each in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. Make of that what you wish but he has a solid influence in some battleground states that Trump handily beat Clinton in in 2016.

Some interesting numbers:

Bernie Out-Raises Biden in Obama-Trump Swing Counties

 

[Tsukasa Buddha]

I am coming from the viewpoint that Beating Trump should be the #1 priority for the Dems, overriding everything else, as a matter of national survival. They should nominate the candidate most likely to do that.
I also contend that the Swing voters ..the much despised "Moderates" and "Centrists" will decide this election. There is no vast hidden "Progressive" vote out there. So,logically, the Dems need to nominate somebody who can bring out the moderates and centrist. My fear is if the Dems nominate too radical a candidate, the Moderates will decide it's a case of two equal evils and stay home.
And if large numbers of the progressive wing of the Dems will stay home or throw away their votes on a third party candidate if somebody not "Progressive" enough for them is nominated, it's a lost cause anyway.

Who are the moderate swing voters, and what policies will win them over? Karl Rove proved that turning out the base rather than reaching out to moderates works as well. I don't think we can declare one strategy best on paper. Republicans won the Senate on Kavanaugh, a base turn out, but Democrats won the House on health care, a moderate appeal.

Leaving the abstract terms, in terms of electoral demographics from the 2016 election the shift of White voters without college degrees to Republican and the fall in Black voter turnout seemed to be the end of the Obama coalition. If we called populist "White voters without college degrees" "moderates" and "Black voters" "the base" both theories are kind of accurate, but also a bit off.

More analyses of 2016 are also a bit conflicting:

And of course, it is the Electoral College that decides presidential elections, not the popular vote, so where swing voters are based geographically can have huge electoral consequences. Catalist, a Democratic data firm, recently found that the shifts in vote margin from 2012 to 2016 in many swing states were predominantly driven by changes in vote choice rather than changes in turnout. According to their analysis, the change in vote margin in the three key states of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin could mostly be explained by people shifting which party they voted for, rather than by changes in turnout. On the other hand, using data from the 2016 Cooperative Congressional Election Study, a large nationwide survey that focuses on respondents’ political attitudes, other researchers have suggested that depressed voter turnout or votes for third-party candidates could also explain a big part of the national swing toward the GOP. So while estimating the number of swing voters is challenging — and the number will vary depending on what data and definitions you use — the importance of swing voters should not be understated. How they swing in 2020 could make all the difference.

Linky.

 

[angrysoba]

And again, you might not need some vast hidden pool of progressives. Not everyone who voted for Trump was a hard right winger who supported everything he was about either.
Internal polling suggests that Sanders would beat Trump by about 10 points each in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. Make of that what you wish but he has a solid influence in some battleground states that Trump handily beat Clinton in in 2016.

Some interesting numbers:

Bernie Out-Raises Biden in Obama-Trump Swing Counties

Who are the moderate swing voters, and what policies will win them over? Karl Rove proved that turning out the base rather than reaching out to moderates works as well. I don't think we can declare one strategy best on paper. Republicans won the Senate on Kavanaugh, a base turn out, but Democrats won the House on health care, a moderate appeal.

Leaving the abstract terms, in terms of electoral demographics from the 2016 election the shift of White voters without college degrees to Republican and the fall in Black voter turnout seemed to be the end of the Obama coalition. If we called populist "White voters without college degrees" "moderates" and "Black voters" "the base" both theories are kind of accurate, but also a bit off.

More analyses of 2016 are also a bit conflicting:



Linky.

I’m going to predict the future...we haven’t heard the last of this “lost tribe”!

 

[dudalb]

The Berniebots are out in force I see.

 

[angrysoba]

The Berniebots are out in force I see.

That’s impossible. There is no lost tribe.

 

[Delphic Oracle]

It's Schrodinger's Lost Tribe. They are at once so insignificant they shouldn't be catered to, yet also responsible for losses (or are predicted to be).

 

[Tsukasa Buddha]

The Berniebots are out in force I see.

If I had to vote today I would vote for Warren, but I don't feel compelled to advocate for anyone particularly. There are legitimate strengths and weaknesses for each, and Iowa and NH largely get to decide for us.

 

[Tsukasa Buddha]

A wild Pokémon appears:

In 2008, Democratic Presidential candidate Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) requested $500,000 in taxpayer money to go towards an anti-drug program run by Minnesota Teen Challenge, a group with anti-LGBTQ views that is also associated with the world’s largest Pentecostal group, the Assemblies of God. The Pentecostal denomination is fundamentalist and very anti-LGBTQ.

While it’s unclear if Minnesota Teen Challenge ever received the money, it was meant to fund their “Know the Truth” program for “drug prevention education efforts for teenagers.” The group also called “Halloween, Harry Potter, and Pokémon” gateways to drug addiction” and listed homosexuality as a problem similar to drug addiction.

Linky.