2020 Democratic Candidates Tracker Part III

[Skeptic Ginger]

While Elizabeth Warren just gets smarter and prettier with each passing day!

Maybe its Maybelline or a painting in the attic.

Haven't seen any evidence of brain deterioration. Have you?

 

[Sideroxylon]

Haven't seen any evidence of brain deterioration. Have you?

None at all. Was a reaction to your smear on Sanders. Will you be getting behind the progressive front runner or the establishment choice?

 

[Brainster]

You have a link to that?

My bad, here's the link.

 

[Aridas]

Mmm. This ended up longer than I like, but... I also don't feel like responding to all these individually.

Looks to me like he's trying to build a coalition of voters.

While generally ignoring those that they've chosen to represent them.

And I'm still pointing out that McConnell and the GOP have engaged in an unprecedented level of obstructionism. You can't just hand wave that away and pretend it's Sanders fault for overcoming that obstruction; place the blame where it clearly lies.

Sure. McConnell's to blame for a lot. With that said, though, going by his record, Sanders frequently doesn't even really try to make things happen in the first place. Rather, it seems more like he frequently gives up preemptively, without even seriously trying to actually make things happen. Compare this to Warren, who has apparently got about a dozen bills passed recently, despite McConnell and the general obstructionism of the Republicans.

I continue to claim he has.

Personally, I agree with you that Sanders has created a nationwide coalition of voters. With that said, there's not much evidence that it's strong enough to win many legislature spots to directly help him enact his agenda or usable enough to pressure current lawmakers into supporting his agenda... and that somewhat gets to one of the hearts of how unrealistic it is when he claims that his approach to getting things done will be to get the constituents of legislators to effectively force the legislators to give in.

...and that's not Bernie's fault.

It... sorta is, pretty much by definition? He's chosen a particular tactic to accomplish things and he's failed to reach success with it over and over. That IS his responsibility, for better or worse.

That implies he cheated or something.

Not necessarily. In games, for example, there are frequently bugs or exploits that can be abused to effectively break the system/designed gameplay. Is that cheating? Yes and no, depending on what considerations you're taking into account. Devs frequently act to fix those bugs/exploits, either way. With that said, I'm very much in agreement with Cabbage that McConnell's abusing the system in much the same sense as that.

I've got to step in at this point. The constitution says that the President shall have Power, .... and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint ... Judges of the Supreme Court, McConnell's Senate did not do this. Thus, I would argue what he did was unconstitutional. If not, then it was at the very least cheating. That is not simply competing.

It was certainly a destructive abuse of the rules, at very least, rather, and is not even remotely a good faith move.

Which brings us around to "is altruism even real"?

I hold that the only people who do their stern duty do so either because doing so gratifies them in some way, or they've been given a value proposition where doing their duty is the most profitable compromise.

Very few people say to themselves, "I hate doing this, and I'd rather have the consequences of not doing it, but I'm going to do it anyway." Even people who engage in self-harm do so because they think or feel that the overall trade-off will be gratifying in some way.

There's two things here to note. First, stern duty =/= altruism. You're wrong to conflate them.

Second, rather than starting with the question of whether altruism even real, it's likely better to first specifically define what is supposed to constitute altruism and compare that to the actual usage of such. I'm fairly sure that you can easily define it out of existence by requiring a philosophical stance that it can't benefit the giver in any way, shape, or form - while completely ignoring that, in practice, that's pretty much empty semantics, because it's almost never actually used that way in the first place.

Not a flaw in this election when one considers why Biden has a better shot than Sanders.

When Sanders' charisma is getting the Liberals in CA, and TX all happy (without doing a damn thing that will change the outcome of the election WRT those two States) it is also getting the moderates and fence-sitting conservatives in MI, PA, and WI riled up in the opposite direction, possibly costing us those States n the General- and by extension, the General itself.

Biden camp - For all his many flaws, he can get moderates to vote for liberal policies.
Sanders camp - Revolution! Let's take down the Democratic party and make it do what we want it to!

At a very fundamental level, Biden's campaign is more uniting than Sanders. Worse than Warren, certainly, but more than Sanders. Biden's wins on Super Tuesday are very likely largely because of backlash to how Sander is handling things. Sanders is running a great campaign, but not necessarily so great for what he's actually running for, in other words.

SO Charisma is the only thing that counts in elections?

It does count for a lot, to be fair.

I think that Biden probably has a few more delegates then the official Super Tuesday results will show; I think he has most of Mayor Pete and Klobucher's delagates pretty much in his pocket.

I've read that as part of their endorsement of Biden, they functionally ceded their delegates to him? I think that there's probably still the chance to change that, but...

The thing about Joe's recent "gaffes" is that they're different than they used to be. Earlier in his career he'd just lie or say something stupid or offensive. But now he's regularly losing his train of thought and getting confused. These are signs of a serious cognitive decline. And no other candidate in the race, including Trump and Sanders, is showing anything like this sort of decline. It's sad, really.

Which would mean that we have to choose between two people who are suffering from significant cognitive decline if Biden wins. Of course, that may be giving too much credit to how great Trump's cognitive state ever was.

Still, that it looks like they're declining is just one of the numerous reasons that I don't really want either Biden or Trump.

Well, yes. Trump is much the same as he always was. Biden isn't what he used to be. You don't have to like Trump or hate Biden to be able to see that.

I disagree. It is again true that Trump was never not an idiot in the first place, so it doesn't show quite as blatantly, though.

Trump is a classic case study for the phenomenon of psychological projection. He certainly can and does attack people for things that he himself is weak on. There was ammo last time too; it just didn't affect enough voters in a couple of swing states.

Yeah... there's also the open question of how much of it's actually projection versus a case of a thief loudly yelling that the thief's victim is actually the thief. Either way, Trump being weak on something frequently wouldn't even come into the equation when what the listener craves is validation and is plenty happy to accept it when it comes from putting others down (even falsely).

Surely you are kidding me with this. Now that Biden is back in the limelight, the political prosecution of Hunter Biden will resume without a lost step.

Has. Within hours of Biden's win, again leaving no doubt at all that it's politically motivated and nothing else.

Re Biden versus Trump in the gaffe department:
Biden puts his foot in his mouth on occasion. Trump keeps it there 24/7.

Mmm. Here's a video for you from the Lincoln Project.

yeah, replacing the Market with a Command economy worked so damn well in the Soviet Union.
I think if Bernie had been elected President you would have been bitterly disspaointed because he seems to be nowhere as far to the left as you are.

Mmm. You're skipping all the way to a Command economy, despite that having nearly no relation to what even Democratic Socialism actually is pushing for and the comment you quoted not even remotely supporting a Command Economy?

I note a couple of Bernie's overseas Bros here seem never to have really grasped some facts about American voters and the American Political system.

That's true across the spectrum, honestly. I've had a couple Brit conservatives, for example, trying to tell me that the Trump shutdown because he was having a temper tantrum over not getting his wall would easily be solvable if Democrats would say that they're willing to give Trump his wall in return for M4A. Therefore, the Democrats were at fault at least as much as Trump. It was genuinely shocking to them, for example, when I pointed out that Democrats are a big tent party and a lot of Democrats likely wouldn't support M4A in the first place for a few reasons.

You make it sound like it was a resounding defeat for Bernie.

This is very much a close, contested race.

Sure. The bang for the buck should probably be taken into account, too, though. Biden won states that he didn't campaign in or barely campaigned in.

Oof, same. Except my state's is in April I think.

I've never had a candidate I actually agreed with both policy and temperament wise as her. It was great to be able to actually see not only what policies she supported, but why, and what it would take for her to change. On top of that, she was willing to be pragmatic. Her answer on if she would have signed the ACA if it were her choice at the time seriously impressed me.

As is mine. If Warren drops out, there's honestly a decent chance I just won't vote for a Democratic Presidential candidate at all in the primary and just vote blue in the general, either way. Neither Biden nor Bernie is particularly appealing to me, albeit for very different reasons, and there isn't a strong candidate to vote against.

The voters too. That's been her running tragedy this election: Warren was everyone's first pick, but everyone felt they needed to support someone else to make sure some third group voted against Trump.

A strong plurality, at least. Either way, IIRC Warren's "surge" pretty much was ended when CNN pulled that "Warren says Bernie said" crap that was exploded sooooo far out of proportion to the actual content, accompanied with all that #Warrenisasnake BS.

 

[Sideroxylon]

Elizabeth Warren will be VP to Biden. Staying in the race to continue to shaft Sanders’ chances against the sundowning Biden.

 

[The Great Zaganza]

Elizabeth Warren will be VP to Biden. Staying in the race to continue to shaft Sanders’ chances against the sundowning Biden.

That might be ideal, but I wonder if the chemistry can work.

 

[Aridas]

Elizabeth Warren will be VP to Biden. Staying in the race to continue to shaft Sanders’ chances against the sundowning Biden.

 

[angrysoba]

Elizabeth Warren will be VP to Biden. Staying in the race to continue to shaft Sanders’ chances against the sundowning Biden.

That might have been the idea. But I think Warren staying in the race is demonstrating her limited appeal.

 

[Robin]

I can't see how Warren is taking votes from Sanders.

I would have thought she was closer to Biden, so would take votes from him.

Also, would Biden really want a VP who is much smarter than him?

 

[Sideroxylon]

I can't see how Warren is taking votes from Sanders.

I would have thought she was closer to Biden, so would take votes from him.

Also, would Biden really want a VP who is much smarter than him?

Is that a guess or are you going by polls on this question?

Again and again Sanders supporters have been told that Warren is just a younger and brighter progressive choice. Some feminists were adding that the only reason for choosing Sanders is sexism.

On the having a smarter VP is Biden a narcissist/sexist who couldn’t handle having a smarter woman in that position?

 

[Sideroxylon]

That might have been the idea. But I think Warren staying in the race is demonstrating her limited appeal.

The demonstrated limited appeal plus staying in the race might be well explained by being happy to take away from Sanders’ count.

 

[Puppycow]

Personally I think she's about to drop out. Before the weekend probably. She's just coming to terms with it.

 

[Sideroxylon]

Personally I think she's about to drop out. Before the weekend probably. She's just coming to terms with it.

I hope you are right and she endorses Sanders.

 

[Puppycow]

There's really no reason for her to stay in other than pride or stubbornness at this point. All the other also-rans have seen the writing on the wall and dropped out. Unless you count fringe candidates. There's nothing more to be gained by staying in. Unless to spite Bernie.

 

[TurkeysGhost]

Deleted, Double post

 

[TurkeysGhost]

There's really no reason for her to stay in other than pride or stubbornness at this point. All the other also-rans have seen the writing on the wall and dropped out. Unless you count fringe candidates. There's nothing more to be gained by staying in. Unless to spite Bernie.

Her staying in the race only damages the party and makes the prospects of beating Trump worse.

A brokered convention is the scenario that maximizes inter-party enmity. Warren dropping out increases the likelihood that either Biden or Bernie reaches the majority threshold and avoids the brokered nightmare.

I don't say this as a Bernie partisan. It's not clear where her supporters would go, and she could probably sway some of her supporters by endorsing. The way she has run her campaign, I wouldn't be surprised if she endorsed Biden.

A Biden majority win is a much, much better outcome than a Biden plurality and brokered convention win.

 

[Belz...]

As stupid and selfish among the boomers as I thought though. Will laugh mercilessly if you re-elect Trump.

What do you even mean by "boomer"? Someone who doesn't agree with you?

 

[Belz...]

Some people think Trump is declining. I can only say he appears worse than he was several years ago.

It might also be a feedback loop. He gets adulation by saying nonsense and being a dick, and he's internalised that by becoming more nonsensical and more offensive. It doesn't help.

 

[Sideroxylon]

What do you even mean by "boomer"? Someone who doesn't agree with you?

Yes, that’s right.

 

[Belz...]

Yes, that’s right.

I would've prefered a serious answer to sarcasm, but I shouldn't expect more, I guess.

Surely you don't mean "baby boomer", as the label doesn't match your use of it. So what is it?