Cont: 2020 Democratic Candidates Tracker Part IV

[theprestige]

You're watching incompetrump mishandle this crisis in real time and you'd be OK risking another 4 years?

Pretty much, yeah. Every week for the past three years, TDS has coughed up a fresh new definitive gotcha, The One Thing That Will Finish Trump. The One Thing #157 doesn't seem any more definitive than TOTs 1 - 156.

 

[theprestige]

First, McConnell's reelection is not certain. And even if he's reelected, the GOP holding the Senate majority is not certain either.

Irrelevant to the point under discussion.

Second, McConnell does not have the power he once had. He tied his fortunes to Trump and Trump is falling flat on his face right now.

Irrelevant to the point under discussion.

Third, Biden has 8 years of hindsight to draw on.

Biden's been in the Senate since 1971. That's almost fifty years. Shouldn't the first forty have counted for something? Did Biden really need another eight years of observation, plus three years and counting of contemplation, to come up with a game plan?

It seems like Obama would have been better served if Biden had figured out a game plan for the McConnell Senate during his running mate's first term, and they'd put it into action in the second term.

If Biden and Obama together couldn't figure it out in four, five, six years, what makes you think Biden can figure it out on his own in eight, nine, ten years? Don't you think maybe if he had a game plan for McConnell, we would have seen it by now?

I think you better hope McConnell's out of the picture after November. Because there's no indication Biden is up to the task of working around him.

 

[sir drinks-a-lot]

Pretty much, yeah. Every week for the past three years, TDS has coughed up a fresh new definitive gotcha, The One Thing That Will Finish Trump. The One Thing #157 doesn't seem any more definitive than TOTs 1 - 156.

TDS did at least give me one of my favorite CNN headlines yesterday: The 30 most troubling things about Trump's corona virus address.

 

[SezMe]

And as soon as he wins he'll do what all politicians like that do. Drop the act and pursue what they intended to all along. I actually hate that aspect of politics. I'd much rather they all ran on what they actually believe and therefore what they will actually fight for. At least that way you know what you're getting and can vote accordingly.

Does thsi complaint apply equally to Sanders?

 

[Minoosh]

I'm talking about 40 years of economic anxiety being experienced by most of us.

Congratulations on being insulated from it sufficiently such that aspects of the "culture war" apparently strikes you as the notable examples of hardships in our history.

That first sentence really stops me. If you've been economically anxious for 40 years, think about the easily billion or so people on the planet who are just trying to survive from meal to meal. That is not economic reality for most Americans. The U.S. boomer population has lived better than any generation ever. Maybe the more you have, the more insecure you feel. I know wealth inequality happens, is real and it is IMO a drag on progress, but whatever is going on in the U.S. pales against what happens globally.

In the second sentence I just don't understand what you're trying to say.

 

[d4m10n]

The U.S. boomer population has lived better than any generation ever.

Not all of them, of course, but on average this checks out.

https://twitter.com/graykimbrough/status/1198703644721524744

 

[TurkeysGhost]

If you want stupid, here it is....


https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/elec...t-to-vote-for-joe/ar-BB118psS?ocid=spartandhp

Talk is cheap. Primaries bring out some hotheads, but when the time comes to vote in the general, people tend to be more pragmatic. This excludes 25% of Hillary supporters that voted for McCain.

 

[Minoosh]

Amplified for you by your friendly neighborhood trolls and bots farm.

From that link:

Paul Maslin, a top Democratic pollster who worked on the presidential campaigns of Jimmy Carter and Howard Dean, said that in their overtures to Sanders’ supporters, Democrats have “time, Trump and hopefully Bernie himself on our side.”

After reading the first part of that sentence, I really wondered if there was any point to reading what he had to say. This isn't "fake news," but it is an example of grist-for-the-mill journalism. I guess I could describe that as constructing a narrative out of a factoid. I'm not sure exactly what bugs me about this, but I do wonder what makes him a top "Democratic" pollster. The qualifications presented aren't impressive.

 

[SezMe]

But second, there was no mess that led to Trump.

I'm talking about 40 years of economic anxiety being experienced by most of us.

BINGO! EXACTLY! SPOT-ON!

SG, you're not missing the forest for the trees, you're missing the whole planet. The "mess" is decades of American corporate kleptocracy. We live in a plutocracy now and Trump, despite being a plutocrat himself, was able to convince large numbers of people that he was an advocate the the "little guy". That "mess is real and needs to be cleaned up.

The Democrats, while claiming to be supporters of the middle class, have done almost as much as the GOP in contributing to this mess. Until their rhetoric and policies reflect a recognition of the fact of our plutocracy, they will remain in trouble.

That is why I am a Warren man. She explicitly recognizes the problem and knows what to do about it. The others, not so much.

 

[SezMe]

I'm not particularly anxious or enthusiastic about it, if that's what you mean. If we get Sanders or Biden instead, that's okay too.

That last word says to me that a second Trump term is "OK" by you. How incredibly sad - and I mean that seriously.

 

[TurkeysGhost]

BINGO! EXACTLY! SPOT-ON!

SG, you're not missing the forest for the trees, you're missing the whole planet. The "mess" is decades of American corporate kleptocracy. We live in a plutocracy now and Trump, despite being a plutocrat himself, was able to convince large numbers of people that he was an advocate the the "little guy". That "mess is real and needs to be cleaned up.

The Democrats, while claiming to be supporters of the middle class, have done almost as much as the GOP in contributing to this mess. Until their rhetoric and policies reflect a recognition of the fact of our plutocracy, they will remain in trouble.

That is why I am a Warren man. She explicitly recognizes the problem and knows what to do about it. The others, not so much.

Indeed. The decline of American society has been a bipartisan effort.

In 2016, pissed off people were made to choose between a hated technocrat that hardly deigned to acknowledge the problem and a charlatan that promised to poke the system in the eye.

When real relief is not possible, spite seems pretty attractive.

 

[Cabbage]

Pretty much, yeah. Every week for the past three years, TDS has coughed up a fresh new definitive gotcha, The One Thing That Will Finish Trump. The One Thing #157 doesn't seem any more definitive than TOTs 1 - 156.

Actually, for three years you (and others) have been absolving him of responsibility for things he F's up.

But, like you said, I have no reason to expect that to ever change.

Many people are resistant to learning from their mistakes.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Irrelevant to the point under discussion.
Irrelevant to the point under discussion.

Riight, forget about facts, just make the hypothesis that McConnell will walk all over Biden fit your assertions.

Biden's been in the Senate since 1971. That's almost fifty years. Shouldn't the first forty have counted for something? Did Biden really need another eight years of observation, plus three years and counting of contemplation, to come up with a game plan?

It seems like Obama would have been better served if Biden had figured out a game plan for the McConnell Senate during his running mate's first term, and they'd put it into action in the second term.

If Biden and Obama together couldn't figure it out in four, five, six years, what makes you think Biden can figure it out on his own in eight, nine, ten years? Don't you think maybe if he had a game plan for McConnell, we would have seen it by now?

Irrelevant to the point under discussion.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

BINGO! EXACTLY! SPOT-ON!

SG, you're not missing the forest for the trees, you're missing the whole planet. The "mess" is decades of American corporate kleptocracy. We live in a plutocracy now and Trump, despite being a plutocrat himself, was able to convince large numbers of people that he was an advocate the the "little guy". That "mess is real and needs to be cleaned up.

The Democrats, while claiming to be supporters of the middle class, have done almost as much as the GOP in contributing to this mess. Until their rhetoric and policies reflect a recognition of the fact of our plutocracy, they will remain in trouble.

That is why I am a Warren man. She explicitly recognizes the problem and knows what to do about it. The others, not so much.

If this is your rationale for why Trump was elected, we live on different planets. Yes, much of that is true. No, it is not why Trump got elected. If anything it's the opposite, corporate interference is exactly how we got incompetrump.
To me, this is the Sanders' supporters' POV that the revolution which obviously ain't happening is the answer.

Warren is out of the race in case you missed that memo.

Biden is all we have.

Time to suck it up and stop promoting the belief Biden and Trump are the same.

 

[theprestige]

Riight, forget about facts, just make the hypothesis that McConnell will walk all over Biden fit your assertions.


Irrelevant to the point under discussion.

The question was, how will Biden respond, if McConnell does walk all over him. Imagining scenarios where that doesn't happen doesn't address the scenario where it does happen..

If McConnell does happen to stay in power after November, do you think Biden's got a good game plan for dealing with him?

 

[Delphic Oracle]

That first sentence really stops me. If you've been economically anxious for 40 years, think about the easily billion or so people on the planet who are just trying to survive from meal to meal. That is not economic reality for most Americans. The U.S. boomer population has lived better than any generation ever. Maybe the more you have, the more insecure you feel. I know wealth inequality happens, is real and it is IMO a drag on progress, but whatever is going on in the U.S. pales against what happens globally.



In the second sentence I just don't understand what you're trying to say.

I see nobody is even going to pretend like I made those comments in the context of pushing back against the idea the Return to Normal might not be as appealing to everyone as its proponents imagine.

I'm aware it's worse across most of the planet.

That has nothing to do with whether people have anything to be angry about in America.

 

[The_Animus]

I see nobody is even going to pretend like I made those comments in the context of pushing back against the idea the Return to Normal might not be as appealing to everyone as its proponents imagine.

I'm aware it's worse across most of the planet.

That has nothing to do with whether people have anything to be angry about in America.

Nah man. Other people have it worse, so the bad things about America don't matter apparently. Injustice is fine so long as others suffer even more!

 

[Aridas]

Clinton once signed the "defense of Marriage act". Now, gay marriage is something that widely accepted within the Democratic party.

Hmm. To poke at this - When it comes to DOMA, I admit to not being particularly attentive to politics at the time, but... I've heard, recently, that DOMA was an unpleasant compromise for the Democrats as they worked to derail Republican plans of a Constitutional Amendment to completely rule out gay marriage. Thus, that might not be the best example.

Biden's been in the Senate since 1971. That's almost fifty years. Shouldn't the first forty have counted for something? Did Biden really need another eight years of observation, plus three years and counting of contemplation, to come up with a game plan?

To chip in a little... I'm largely in agreement with theprestige here. Going further, Biden has addressed this issue directly and repeated... with a pattern in his responses. A pattern that inspires no confidence from me, given that it's basically just... "If I'm elected, the Republicans will be a tiny bit easier to work with and McConnell won't be quite as bad" and without any specifics. I have no problem with calling that magical thinking. Naturally, Biden could surprise me in a good way on that front and if he becomes President, I really, really hope he does.

Free trade, what a resounding success. The people in the rust belt are sure glad they could make such a noble sacrifice for the good of the economy.

More specifically, more trade is good, overall, even if it's not great for every industry everywhere. Things change, though, regardless. The phonograph makers have long been out of business, for example. With that said, though, there certainly are a number of measures that could have been used to reduce the damage, increase worker protections, and help with transitioning that weren't done, I think. One of the things that Warren called for, for example, was making it mandatory that part of the board of directors for big companies be composed of the workers - a measure that has apparently done quite a lot elsewhere to reduce damages caused by adherents to shareholder theory and profits are the only thing that matter philosophies.

 

[TragicMonkey]

Nah man. Other people have it worse, so the bad things about America don't matter apparently. Injustice is fine so long as others suffer even more!

Somewhere out there is a cancer-ridden AIDS-having limbless blind dwarf baby who is the only person allowed to complain about anything, ever. And then just when he's feeling pretty full of himself out pops his smaller, sicker conjoined twin, who has all of that plus a cleft palate.

If you think about it, out of the seven whatever billion people on the planet, if you rank them all in terms of how bad they have it someone has to be on the bottom. Life must really, really suck for that one. But on the bright side you could also rank every human by how attractive they are. Can you imagine how incandescently hot the top 10 must be? They must appear as gods amongst barnyard animals! Just think of it, think of the hottest person you've ever met: the odds are very good that compared to the real Top Ten, that hot person looks like a termite queen that got stepped on and busted open. It really puts things into perspective, eh? I'm going to go up to that really hot guy I've been too shy to ask out and say, just right to his face, "hey, you may be really gorgeous but somewhere out there are people who make your face look like a big insect leaking pus. Wanna go out?"

Oh, also, to stay on topic, Biden needs to do something about his eye sockets. Whether it's real or fake tan he's got to put something on those white circles. It looks bad by itself, but it's magnified when he's running against Trump. That last thing he needs is another point of similarity with that orange dotard.

 

[Tsukasa Buddha]

Hmm. To poke at this - When it comes to DOMA, I admit to not being particularly attentive to politics at the time, but... I've heard, recently, that DOMA was an unpleasant compromise for the Democrats as they worked to derail Republican plans of a Constitutional Amendment to completely rule out gay marriage. Thus, that might not be the best example.

That might be recent revisionism.