2020 Democratic Candidates Tracker - Part II

[ArchSas]

That's good. I have said multiple times that If he wasn't gay he'd run away with the election. He carries himself incredibly well. He's a war veteran. Ivy league education. He speaks a half a dozen languages where Trump barely speaks one.

Things like that are a big part of why I really don't like Pete. The more I learn about him and his past, the more apparent it is that he desperately wants to be a successful politician and will do whatever he think will help achieve that goal. His entire life, he's been working towards a career in politics, and most of what he does (to me, at least) comes across as trying to engineer himself as a marketable person. Including always using the kind of language that makes it sound like he's putting forward big ideas, while actually committing to nothing (no doubt a skill he picked up working for McKinsey consulting, one of his few non-political jobs).

Have you read the essay he wrote praising Bernie Sanders for a high school competition? It's quite interesting considering his career trajectory since then; in may ways, he's become exactly the kind of politician he demonizes in the essay.

It's a good example of why he just doesn't come across as authentic to me. Or as a person who actually stands for anything beyond his own political gain. That on top of him having no real qualifications for the office (a few years as the mayor of a college town doesn't really work, especially with some of the issues his tenure has had) makes him a pretty bad candidate in my eyes. IMO, a somewhat inexperienced career politician without any real principles beyond PR-friendly platitudes is exactly the wrong kind of person to be the nominee. What kind of interest is somewhat like that really going to inspire? Sure, he can effectively use politician double-speak, but that's pretty much all the has, and with more public exposure, more people will probably start figuring that out.

 

[kellyb]

What does that make you when you wish that Warren would be the next POTUS (among the top tier) but think she's too high risk for the general? I'm whatever that is.

It might depend on what you mean by "among top tier".
It also might depend on if you think it's the label/stigma of being of "too far left" which will primarily do her in.

I don't know. You could just be a leftist operating from a better fact base than I am, or a progressive in the making. Or a centrist.

If you know we need to fight like hell for things like UHC, you're a leftist.
If you think "not yet", it will never be "yet", then yeah, you're a centrist, which is fine!

 

[kellyb]

Have you read the essay he wrote praising Bernie Sanders for a high school competition? It's quite interesting considering his career trajectory since then; in may ways, he's become exactly the kind of politician he demonizes in the essay.

That would make sense. There's a certain sort of centrist who just thinks having progressive goals in America is something "children" engage in. "Grownups" "know" Americans just can't have nice things like they do in the rest of the world.

It's totally a con. They know we can do it. They just don't like the progressive goals themselves. They just can't come right out and say that, though.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

At least that puts Biden's "elect me, and the republicans will become sane again!" talking point into some sort of context. He's not insane like that, maybe. He's just telling people what many of them want to hear.

It's like saying Biden can make America what it was when he was young.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

I like Obama. But I was highly disappointed in his Presidency, particularly the first two years when the Dems held a majority in the Senate and the House. He should have nominated a hell of a lot more judges. Which became impossible the final 6 years. Who ever is elected must be ready to swing the power they have like a baseball bat.

IIRC, the issue was still needing 2/3 of the Senate. I suppose in hindsight...

I do think Obama should have taken McConnell to court about Merrick though.

 

[Aridas]

How does that predict what will happen in a national election?

Irrelevant. I was correcting the presented fact, not speaking to any implications.

I'll agree to disagree with you on this one.

About the experience part? More experience certainly is good, yes, but as I noted, I'm not sure how more experience would have prepared him for the Republicans going all in on hurting America for the sake of partisan gain as a strategy. About the suggestions about where he failed? The latter is on fairly safe grounds. The former is harder to firmly back up by its nature, though. Either way, I'm okay with agreeing to disagree, but my questions are more about figuring out in what way we disagree.

At least that puts Biden's "elect me, and the republicans will become sane again!" talking point into some sort of context. He's not insane like that, maybe. He's just telling people what many of them want to hear.

Hmm? That position was never insane, though. Overly idealistic, definitely, but not completely insane, given that the Republicans won't feel the need to defend a brazenly criminal leader. That will ratchet down the Republican insanity significantly. And yes, lots of people, myself included, don't actually want all the power to rest in the hands of any single political party. That the Democrats are the only sane and principled party currently makes for a powerful argument in their favor for the short term, but in the long term, problems would arise from corruption and complacency in dealing with it. There really does need to be at least two sane and differing options to chose from for a viable democracy to work work well.

IIRC, the issue was still needing 2/3 of the Senate. I suppose in hindsight...

I do think Obama should have taken McConnell to court about Merrick though.

The better thing might have been an ultimatum - Actually give a fair hearing to the guy or the failure to do so will be taken as advice and consent along the lines of "We have no opinion, do as you like." Trump and McConnell could easily have abused that just as much as they're doing now, of course.

 

[acbytesla]

IIRC, the issue was still needing 2/3 of the Senate. I suppose in hindsight...

I do think Obama should have taken McConnell to court about Merrick though.

The issue was cloture (60%, not 2/3rds) which McConnell abandoned for judges. Something I knew the GOP would do.

 

[acbytesla]

Things like that are a big part of why I really don't like Pete. The more I learn about him and his past, the more apparent it is that he desperately wants to be a successful politician and will do whatever he think will help achieve that goal. His entire life, he's been working towards a career in politics, and most of what he does (to me, at least) comes across as trying to engineer himself as a marketable person. Including always using the kind of language that makes it sound like he's putting forward big ideas, while actually committing to nothing (no doubt a skill he picked up working for McKinsey consulting, one of his few non-political jobs).

Have you read the essay he wrote praising Bernie Sanders for a high school competition? It's quite interesting considering his career trajectory since then; in may ways, he's become exactly the kind of politician he demonizes in the essay.

It's a good example of why he just doesn't come across as authentic to me. Or as a person who actually stands for anything beyond his own political gain. That on top of him having no real qualifications for the office (a few years as the mayor of a college town doesn't really work, especially with some of the issues his tenure has had) makes him a pretty bad candidate in my eyes. IMO, a somewhat inexperienced career politician without any real principles beyond PR-friendly platitudes is exactly the wrong kind of person to be the nominee. What kind of interest is somewhat like that really going to inspire? Sure, he can effectively use politician double-speak, but that's pretty much all the has, and with more public exposure, more people will probably start figuring that out.

Inspires the HELL out of me. I don't see him as inauthentic at all. I just see all that as knowing what he wanted to do. How is that different from an athlete training for what he wanted to do?

When I was young, I wanted a career in politics. I was on the debate team. I went to Boys State and Boys Nation just like President Clinton. I learned multiple languages and then forgot them. I worked on campaigns. I wrote to Senator Jackson and Magnuson and was nominated to Annapolis. Which I turned down like an idiot, because I met a girl and didn't want to leave.

Pete Buttegieg taught himself how to lead. Maybe you don't respect that, but I do.

 

[ArchSas]

Maybe you don't respect that, but I do.

I'd respect it if he stood for something, but he doesn't (at least not anymore; honestly, Pete bugs me more than a lot of politicians because his loss of principles and engineering is so obvious and public - he come across like more of a salesman than even most politicians). Even your defense of him seems to acknowledge that. Politics aren't sports: an athlete trains to play a game, politicians are supposed to govern and enact policies that have real consequences on people's lives. I'd prefer having politicians that stand for principles and care about more than their own power. I also don't think all the money he's been getting from the healthcare industry is a good look. But I guess we're just just have different opinions about what we want our politicians to be.

 

[kellyb]

Hmm? That position was never insane, though. Overly idealistic, definitely, but not completely insane, given that the Republicans won't feel the need to defend a brazenly criminal leader. That will ratchet down the Republican insanity significantly. And yes, lots of people, myself included, don't actually want all the power to rest in the hands of any single political party. That the Democrats are the only sane and principled party currently makes for a powerful argument in their favor for the short term, but in the long term, problems would arise from corruption and complacency in dealing with it. There really does need to be at least two sane and differing options to chose from for a viable democracy to work work well.

Nobody's talking about going to a uniparty system! I've been suggesting the addition of a third, centrist party. It wouldn't suffer form the spoiler effect, so I really think it could work. I could be missing something, but I don't think so.

Obama thinking the R's would be sane became insane pretty quickly. He never seemed to accept reality there. He went to them and offered them, VOLUNTEERED to them, major social security cuts in exchange for a teeeny tiny tax increase, and it still wasn't enough. But he still kept the faith, that they would just change if you gave them even more.

 

[kellyb]

Inspires the HELL out of me. I don't see him as inauthentic at all. I just see all that as knowing what he wanted to do. How is that different from an athlete training for what he wanted to do?

When I was young, I wanted a career in politics. I was on the debate team. I went to Boys State and Boys Nation just like President Clinton. I learned multiple languages and then forgot them. I worked on campaigns. I wrote to Senator Jackson and Magnuson and was nominated to Annapolis. Which I turned down like an idiot, because I met a girl and didn't want to leave.

Pete Buttegieg taught himself how to lead. Maybe you don't respect that, but I do.

He hasn't tested and honed his leadership, coalition building, consensus building skills, though. They're not skills at all yet. They're hypothetical, future skills.

Experience matters. It really does. He probably has a bad case of Dunning Kruger, "pre-competence".

And we can't vet his character in terms of politics at all. He really could be a republican for all we know. He has literally no track record.

He's just this guy who walked onto the world stage, and we don't even know what he did for McKinsey, because they're so secretive.

 

[acbytesla]

He hasn't tested and honed his leadership, coalition building, consensus building skills, though. They're not skills at all yet. They're hypothetical, future skills.

Experience matters. It really does. He probably has a bad case of Dunning Kruger, "pre-competence".

And we can't vet his character in terms of politics at all. He really could be a republican for all we know. He has literally no track record.

He's just this guy who walked onto the world stage, and we don't even know what he did for McKinsey, because they're so secretive.

It does matter. But what do you think being a Congress critter prepares you to do?

The man has been a Mayor of a fair size city for half a decade. So to suggest he's any less competent than a Senator or a Congress critter is a stretch. I don't think anything quite prepares one to be President.

 

[ArchSas]

The man has been a Mayor of a fair size city for half a decade.

Do you really think that's a defense of his experience? Because that honestly sounds more like an insult to the idea of his experience to me. Without all of your other context, I would have just assumed that was sarcasm.

 

[kellyb]

It does matter. But what do you think being a Congress critter prepares you to do?

It teaches you about how congress interacts with the executive brach in a real way, not a merely academic one. You get to see the way power works there. If you hire someone to fill the role fresh off the street from a temp agency, they're just going to be a puppet for people who know for a fact how it really works.

The man has been a Mayor of a fair size city for half a decade. So to suggest he's any less competent than a Senator or a Congress critter is a stretch. I don't think anything quite prepares one to be President.

It's not a stretch. He would have a much bigger learning curve. It doesn't mean he'd necessarily fail or not be able to figure it out, though. But the more complex our technocracy gets, the more experience the expert roles require.

 

[acbytesla]

Do you really think that's a defense of his experience? Because that honestly sounds more like an insult to the idea of his experience to me. Without all of your other context, I would have just assumed that was sarcasm.

I think you underestimate the value of that experience. I ABSOLUTELY believe that is better executive experience then what Obama had when he became President.

 

[kellyb]

So:
https://twitter.com/NateSilver538/status/1196133366002855938

Early returns on how Warren is handling the scrutiny phase are somewhat mixed, although her surge was quite robust (lasting over many months) so my prior is she'll keep most of her gains.

Buttigieg Surge 2.0 means a Buttigieg scrutiny cycle 2.0 is coming soon with results TBD.

This whole "the scrutiny phase" and "the scrutiny cycle 2.0" stuff has been made up on the spot today, right?

The cycles appear to be reliant upon external factors, like ex presidents passively aggressively attacking some candidates and implying others are better, possibly as a result of a candidate taunting billionaires, or a candidate experiencing a long "media darling" phase. It's not a "cycle" like phases of the moon. I'm not Nate Silver, though, so my opinion is worth less than a grain.

eta: there was a live blog of a poll studying exactly one candidate. https://www.cnn.com/politics/live-news/cnn-poll-11-16-2019/index.html
This is new stuff, I'm pretty sure.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

It does matter. But what do you think being a Congress critter prepares you to do?

The man has been a Mayor of a fair size city for half a decade. So to suggest he's any less competent than a Senator or a Congress critter is a stretch. I don't think anything quite prepares one to be President.

The problem isn't being he can't run a big department. The problem is he has no experience working with Congress. Even Obama lacked those skills and it showed.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

I think you underestimate the value of that experience. I ABSOLUTELY believe that is better executive experience then what Obama had when he became President.

And look how that worked out. It took Obama a while to get his feet under him even with some Congressional experience.

 

[acbytesla]

The problem isn't being he can't run a big department. The problem is he has no experience working with Congress. Even Obama lacked those skills and it showed.

I think you're going to find every President faces those challenges. How well they do in that department has far more to do with how friendly Congress is than anything else.

 

[kellyb]

I think you're going to find every President faces those challenges. How well they do in that department has far more to do with how friendly Congress is than anything else.

And what role they're going in to fill. You can enter the role to persuade your peers to help you help the American people, as their legitimate party leader, or you can be a wonderful puppet for god knows what economic interests. Or you can...hope people protesting (???) will convince congress to do what you want.