2020 Democratic Candidates Tracker Part III

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DNC changing debate rules so that Bloomberg can participate. Billionaire literally buying his way into the primary. Super cool.

Corporate Democrats are going to do everything possible to rat-**** Bernie out of this win, then they are going to lose this thing to Trump again.
 
SezMe said:
No it wasn't. You mentioned the cost of his travel, not his carbon footprint. If you meant us to view his travel in terms of climate change, you would have said so. This is just after-being-called-on-it excuse making.
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Plus the carbon footprint angle was preemptively addressed before the goalposts even moved to that.
 
The Des Moines Register cancels its quadrennial poll that is considered the gold standard for the Iowa caucuses because apparently one of the people polled was not given Pete Buttigieg as an option. Lots of suspicion out there that the poll would have shown Bernie Sanders consolidating his lead and/or Biden sinking and thus it had to be deep-sixed.

Sanders is now at 39% to win the nomination, according to the bookies. That's the highest anybody has been other than Elizabeth Warren back before the wheels fell off her campaign. Warren was actually above 50% back in October, and now she's at 8.6%.
 
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Belz... said:
I've always liked Bernie Sanders but this myth that he necessarily would have won in 2016 and also in 2020 is puzzling.
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I don't think he got cheated out of 2016. I mean, the party definitely put a thumb on the scale for Hilary, but she would have won even in a straight fight.

The DNC is absolutely opposed to Bernie winning this primary, and Bernie is competitive enough this time around that their skullduggery could cheat him out of the win.
 
JoeMorgue said:
Because I've seen what happens when I give my answer.
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I don’t understand why you won’t answer a very simple question. You keep ranting about electability and effectiveness, but you refuse to say who is most electable and who is the most effective campaigner?

You wag your finger at the forum and tell everyone that unlike them you (and dudalb) have two files in your head: one for who you want to win and one for who stands a chance of winning, with the implication being that the second is the most relevant to this election, and yet you won’t tell us what is on these files as though they are secret.

Why the coyness? I have already told you what is on my files. Why not stand by your convictions and tell us what you think?
 
Belz... said:
I've always liked Bernie Sanders but this myth that he necessarily would have won in 2016 and also in 2020 is puzzling.
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I think the most relevant statistic is how popular he is in the primary and comparing it to the popularity of the other candidates.
 
angrysoba said:
I don’t understand why you won’t answer a very simple question.
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*Sighs* Fine. I will give this one, and one only, chance. Do not make me regret it.

I am well aware that no candidate is perfect, they all involve compromises, trade off, and the risk of alienating one group to court another. This is true of all politics and I will not entertain being forced to explain that I understand this every other breathe.

Also, for the record, none of these people particularly wow me on a personal level. Also, again so I don't have to spend this entire discussion stopping to remind everyone of who's side I am on I will vote for any candidate the Democrats put up as when all is said and done that person will have the best chance of beating Trump. And I actually live in a swing county in a battleground swing state so my vote actually counts for something.

Biden has been constantly and for extended periods of time stayed well ahead in polling, both generally, and in key battleground states both in general voter preference and perceived ability to beat Trump. For all his...many, many, many faults nothing overrides those two factors.

And he doesn't have as many of the "Lookit me adopting the stupidest possible far left Third Rail Buzzword to appeal to Twitter" moments as the other candidates with a reasonable chance of winning the nomination have.

We can all rant and rave and bemoan how things like Socialism are dirty words, but they are to much of the American public. I can't make that not so.

Long story short Biden is strongest Democratic candidate. Sanders is the strongest Progressive candidate. But it's the Democratic Party, not the Progressive Party.

Biden is the candidate the most potential, probable voters say they want. Sanders is the candidate that him and his supporters are telling us is what we want we want we just don't realize it.

Given those numbers, my "support" such as it is (hopefully the preceding few paragraphs have made a clear distinction between support and personal passion towards) goes to Biden.
 
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JoeMorgue said:
*Sighs* Fine. I will give this one, and one only, chance. Do not make me regret it.

I am well aware that no candidate is perfect, they all involve compromises, trade off, and the risk of alienating one group to court another. This is true of all politics and I will not entertain being forced to explain that I understand this every other breathe.

Also, for the record, none of these people particularly wow me on a personal level. Also, again so I don't have to spend this entire discussion stopping to remind everyone of who's side I am on I will vote for any candidate the Democratics put up as when all is said and done that person will have the best chance of beating Trump.

Biden has been constantly for extended periods of time stayed well ahead in polling, both generally, and in key battleground states both in general voter preference and perceived ability to beat Trump. For all his...many, many, many faults nothing overrides those two factors.

And he doesn't have as many of the "Lookit me adopting the stupidest possible far left Third Rail Buzzword to appeal to Twitter" moments as the other candidates with a reasonable chance of winning.

We can all rant and rave and bemoan how things like Socialism are dirty words, but they are to much of the American public. I can't make that not so.

Long story short Biden is strongest Democratic candidate. Sanders is the strongest Progressive candidate. But it's the Democratic Party, not the Progressive Party.

Biden is the candidate the most potential, probable voters say they want. Sanders is the candidate that him and his supporters are telling us is what we want.

Given those numbers, my "support" such as it is (hopefully the preceding few paragraphs have made a clear distinction between support and personal passion towards) goes to Biden.
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Thank you.

Then, let me shock you and agree with you. Yes, Biden is currently the front runner and therefore has to be considered the most electable. If he is also doing the best in all the key battleground states then that also makes him most electable. That said, things are looking more like a toss-up between him and Sanders from what I can see. If Sanders pulls ahead, then the extended periods of time Biden was ahead for will be for nothing.

Yes, I agree that all the candidates are vulnerable to the type of attacks we know Trump likes to make. I really fear that Biden may be more so. He seems slow on his feet, gaffe-prone, and long-winded. Much of the time I don’t even know what point he is making when I hear him speak. He looks like the type of candidate that Trump at for breakfast in the Republican primary.

And I turns out that despite Trumo being a huge (sorry, yuge!) turn-off for so many people, he had something more important. Fanatical supporters. Dudalb has also been talking about how Sanders also seems to have a crazily enthusiastic following, a rabid one almost, saying these people are just like Trump supporters and yet, here we are with Trump as president. It turns out that having enthusiastic supporters is a good thing. It’s also something that Clinton lacked, and Biden lacks.

Finally, I don’t see Sanders using third-rail buzzwords if by that you mean “woke” language. What some people (again, I will use dudalb) have complained about Sanders is that he is stuck in the 60s. Great! We don’t see him scaring off the bread-and-butter voters with his declaration of pronouns, or his opinions on Greta Gerwig being snubbed by the Oscars. As Bill Maher said recently, for Sanders is it is always about economic issues. And for all elections, it is always about the economy. I see Sanders as being (or at least becoming) more appealing to voters on those grounds.
 
Belz... said:
You do understand that calling a single question a "maze" of questions especially after I pointed it out, will not make it look like you're being honest with me, right?

I don't care if you think the question is flawed. I think it runs to the heart of the matter, and since it's the only thing I'm interested about in this discussion, you calling it a maze of questions is simply a lie.
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Hahhahahna
 
I have to repost this four months old six minute lecture on the term "electability" for obvious reasons (cash from Moscow arrived):

 
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Sideroxylon said:
Hahhahahna
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One question, Sid. A single, simple question. If you had any sort of integrity you'd answer it, but you know full well that the answer would contradict what a lot of people, including yourself, have said in this thread about principled voting. Hence the deflections of the discussion towards me.

Nobody dodges comfortable questions.
 
Belz... said:
One question, Sid. A single, simple question. If you had any sort of integrity you'd answer it, but you know full well that the answer would contradict what a lot of people, including yourself, have said in this thread about principled voting. Hence the deflections of the discussion towards me.

Nobody dodges comfortable questions.
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You are delusional in this chessboard fantasy taking place between your ears. Maybe your gotcha set ups are not as clever as you think they are?

And “if you had any sort of integrity.” Listen to yourself.

Lol maybe throw in a *sigh* for dramatic condescension.
 
SuburbanTurkey said:
DNC changing debate rules so that Bloomberg can participate. Billionaire literally buying his way into the primary. Super cool.

Corporate Democrats are going to do everything possible to rat-**** Bernie out of this win, then they are going to lose this thing to Trump again.
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Individual donors made sense when all candidates were using it as a measure of their own campaign. When a candidate eschews that standard, and has a reason to do it, it makes sense to change the standard.

The purpose is to be a proxy. If it no longer is an effective proxy, then it can be scrapped.
 
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Belz... said:
Well the primaries are for party members, are they not? What do those numbers tell us about the general?
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I think they are usually for registered Democrats (not necessarily party members). Some of them are open primaries.

If not, then presumably we have to rely on head-to-head polling. My understanding is that Sanders does really well in those polls as well. In recent weeks I seem to remember that Sanders has been shown to do the best in head-to-heads and in some of the battleground states.

I’ll have to look into that again.
 
Sideroxylon said:
You are delusional in this chessboard fantasy taking place between your ears. Maybe your gotcha set ups are not as clever as you think they are?

And “if you had any sort of integrity.” Listen to yourself.

Lol maybe throw in a *sigh* for dramatic condescension.
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*Yawn* Would you two go get a room.
 
angrysoba said:
I think they are usually for registered Democrats (not necessarily party members).
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If you are registered as a Democrat or Republican, then you are a party member.

Some of them are open primaries.
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True, particularly in New Hampshire. IIRC, Democrats and independents can vote in the Democratic primary while Republicans and independents can vote in the GOP primary.

If not, then presumably we have to rely on head-to-head polling. My understanding is that Sanders does really well in those polls as well. In recent weeks I seem to remember that Sanders has been shown to do the best in head-to-heads and in some of the battleground states.

I’ll have to look into that again.
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There are huge issues with head-to-head polling numbers particularly this far out. For starters almost all polls will use registered voters instead of likely voters; this results in a slight edge to Democrats that they will lose at the polls since Republicans are more likely to vote.

Second, Bernie is currently facing friendly fire. The other Democratic candidates don't want to attack him too hard because they want his supporters to rally behind them if they win the nomination. So it's mostly the kid gloves treatment; arguing about minor policy differences. That's not going to happen in the general; Trump couldn't care less about Bernie's base; he's going to isolate him. If one of the first ads isn't about Bernie's Moscow honeymoon, I will be surprised.
 
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