2020 Democratic Candidates Tracker - Part II

[Aridas]

If the mods move the past discussion there, yes. Otherwise, no. I've done what I can to talk sense to Cabbage. With some luck the conversation with Aridas will be more productive here.

Honestly, I think that it's a fair request and that this particular tangent is something of a derail for here. So... my response will be over there.

No, credibility during the primary is a zero sum game for the purposes of securing the nomination.

There's also a strong argument to be made that to whatever extent a candidate can be "discredited" during the primary, the Republicans will do the same thing times 10 during the general, so it's better that any and all weaknesses are exposed during the primary process and become "yesterday's news" by the time the general comes around.

I think it may also be worth repeating that the Republicans (and their allies, foreign and domestic) are continually trying to push out hit pieces on all the viable Democratic candidates anyways already. The only real difference compared to the general election is that they'll be able to focus their attention on one person more. As it is, their main focus has pretty obviously been on hurting Biden, because he's the front-runner.

Also the use of victim mode is so overused. They see he's gotten nothing but bad press. Let me wander over to the Our Revolution and Justice Democrats posts where they claim victim status and point out all the stories gushing with praise for Biden, but dismissive references to anyone else.

Going past that... if they're really trying to claim that he's getting nothing but bad press, I'd be tempted to remind them of... Trump, and how all that bad press totally hurt him so much in that Republican primary.

Yes, this situation is different in a number of important ways, but there are also distinct similarities.

 

[kellyb]

https://www.vox.com/2019/9/12/20860985/poll-democratic-primary-ranked-choice-warren-biden

Elizabeth Warren leads Joe Biden in ranked-choice poll
The YouGov/FairVote poll let national Democratic voters rank several of their top candidates rather than picking just one.

...under a “ranked-choice” system designed to suss out the majority’s ultimate preference, Sen. Elizabeth Warren would top Biden, 53 percent to 47 percent, according to a new poll exclusively provided in advance to Vox.

 

[Delvo]

So she's not only a competitive number of people's #1, but also enough other people's #2. That makes sense, given that she not only has apparently put out the most policy proposals to judge her by, and has a slight age advantage and the chromosomal advantage over the other two, but also has taken positions that generally put her somewhere between the other two (although closer to Bernie), so whichever other candidate you're starting from, you're closer to her than you are to the third one (the other guy).

 

[JoeMorgue]

Well yeah and if we had a snowball's chance in hell of getting ranked voting on a nationwide scale in our lifetime, to say nothing of before November 2020, that would mean something.

 

[Delvo]

It does mean something in a process of whittling down from 3 to 1; it tells us how much support the remaining candidate(s) will get when one or two go.

 

[kellyb]

It does mean something in a process of whittling down from 3 to 1; it tells us how much support the remaining candidate(s) will get when one or two go.

It also demonstrates where the broadest support lies.

 

[kellyb]

So she's not only a competitive number of people's #1, but also enough other people's #2. .

And she's basically nobody's last choice (unlike both Biden and Sanders, who have they share of haters.)

Biden and Sanders have twice the "unfavorable" rate among Democrats as Warren does:

https://www.npr.org/2019/09/11/7595...ggU_rVDT3c0CX2v2My4qyIwP_yWn00cGxxj2yqWuVOyH0

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

And from the dark side of campaigning (pun not intended) we have the bots and trolls stirring:

BOTS IN BLACKFACE – THE RISE OF FAKE BLACK PEOPLE ON SOCIAL MEDIA PROMOTING POLITICAL AGENDAS

If you follow Donald Trump’s Twitter feed, you may have noticed several prominent accounts that appear to be profiles belonging to black people–high up on his Twitter feed of responses. Some of these accounts have thousands and thousands of followers. Others even have the blue Twitter check mark next to their account names. Yet, exactly who is behind these accounts is ambiguous. The rise of bots in the guise of black people on social media remains a worrisome issue heading into the 2020 elections.

Take for instance, the Twitter account @RyanHillMI, aka Ryan Hill. This account has a blue check mark which, supposedly, means it was vetted by Twitter and confirmed to be an actual person. Yet, a Google (or Bing) search on ‘Ryan Hill Michigan’ only yields results of a white, male lawyer in Michigan, and nothing about a young, black man in the Michigan area—which the @RyanHillMI’s avatar depicts.

I reached out to the Ryan Hill account on Twitter. I asked him (it?) about doing an interview and providing some background information. The conversation turned bizarre as you can see from the below screenshot (these are his remarks to my inquiries):

And just like in 2016:

Mitchell says the activity behind these fake accounts boils down to “getting people not to vote for Democrats.” She points out that social media is the ultimate affordable platform for white supremacists.

 

[Delvo]

And she's basically nobody's last choice (unlike both Biden and Sanders, who have they share of hates.)

Biden and Sanders have twice the "unfavorable" rate among Democrats as Warren does:

https://www.npr.org/2019/09/11/7595...ggU_rVDT3c0CX2v2My4qyIwP_yWn00cGxxj2yqWuVOyH0

In other words, when people say that being "centrist" or "moderate" is the winning position, Warren is what they're talking about. Biden is not; he's a right-winger.

 

[Venom]

And from the dark side of campaigning (pun not intended) we have the bots and trolls stirring:

BOTS IN BLACKFACE – THE RISE OF FAKE BLACK PEOPLE ON SOCIAL MEDIA PROMOTING POLITICAL AGENDAS

And just like in 2016:

Interesting.

If what the author suggests is true, these are some sick sociopaths.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Sanders and Warren stepped on Biden's toes right out of the gate.

Biden's opening attacked Warren, "she's for Biden, I'm for Barack" or something like it. Warren attacked right back.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Well, Booker, Klobuchar, Harris, and Buttigieg are making more sense on health care than the top three.

Biden really doesn't get it that he needs to stop claiming he got stuff done and that he knows what he's doing, the others don't.

Forgot to mention, Bernie has a sore throat.

And the crowd is lovin' the gotchas, including from the debate questioners.

 

[angrysoba]

Bloody eye Biden seems to be getting a bit of flak.

 

[angrysoba]

Moderator to Sanders: "What's the difference between your views and those implemented in Venezuala, Cuba and Nicaragua?"

FFS!

 

[angrysoba]

Moderator to Booker: (paraphrased) "cutting down the Amazon for meat is supposed to be bad, but you're a weirdo vegan! That can't be good for the Brazilian economy! Do you expect Americans to follow your weirdo diet?"

 

[angrysoba]

I don't know if Yang has just been very savvy at getting his supporters to the debates but he seems to get a lot of enthusiastic applause to his points.

 

[angrysoba]

Hmmm...maybe there is just a lot of enthusiastic applause in general.

"I believe in good policies"

WoooooOOOOoooo!

"I don't believe in bad policies!"

WooooooooooooooooooooooooOOOOOOoooo!

"I am better than Donald Trump!"

****Crowd rips off clothes and attempts to hump the candidate****

 

[angrysoba]

Oh dear...! Someone, somehow managed to stop the audience from whooping at every line.

Moderator points out something Biden said in the previous millenium: "I'll be damned if I pay reparations!"

Biden rambles on and audience gets impatient.

Wow! This is the easiest crowd to please and Biden just bored them.

 

[Brainster]

Interesting article slamming the donors who gave to Mayor Pete's campaign:

In Phase One, Buttigieg milked $32 million from 390,000 donors, most of whom knew next to nothing about his record, but were bowled over by a guy under 40 who can speak in complete paragraphs, sometimes in Norwegian. Phase Two was learning that Buttigieg has no strong and unique governing vision. We also learned his South Bend record on race relations as mayor, however well intentioned, is checkered. Phase Three, which so far has been a series of boasts about the campaign’s field operation, does nothing to solve the problems of Phase Two.

I liked this bit:

You may have seen Democratic presidential candidates categorized as “wine track” and “beer track.” Political analyst Ron Brownstein popularized those labels, observing that the “brainy liberals with cool, detached personas and messages of political reform” on the wine track tend to lose in Democratic presidential primaries to candidates with support “rooted in the blue-collar and minority communities” on the beer track.

The sort of folk, in other words, who aren't impressed that Ulysses is his favorite book, because they've never heard of it.

Candidates with better résumés—such as the forgotten governors Steve Bullock, John Hickenlooper and Jay Inslee—made their own mistakes and maybe are inherently limp performers. But they didn’t get the same opportunities as Buttigieg to prove themselves because the whims of a very small, disproportionately white, disproportionately wealthy faction of Democrats can determine who gets critical early attention.

And as a result, the race seems down to three candidates (Biden, Warren or Sanders), of course, pending the imminent arrival of the greatest political army the world has never seen in support of Tom Steyer.

 

[BobTheCoward]

The sort of folk, in other words, who aren't impressed that Ulysses is his favorite book, because they've never heard of it.

I have a line from a James Joyce novel tattooed on my body.