2020 Democratic Candidates Tracker

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Delphic Oracle said:
My mistake for not following the flow.

That said, I don't see Trump as a catalyst for our problems, he's just a really obvious symptom.

This would be like blaming chicken pox on the pimples that form on your skin.
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I do think Trump is ultimately more of a symptom, but I don't think that's mutually exclusive from being a catalyst. For example, when there is a cultural trend towards more and more xenophobia and hateful stupidity and, as a result, a person who enables xenophobia and hateful stupidity gets elected to the presidency (and is therefore a symptom), having that voice in the White House can absolutely be a catalyst for even more xenophobia and hateful stupidity than would have been present with a more moderate president.
 
Aridas said:
On this, I'll disagree with you. That Trump is in power is a symptom of our problems is a pretty straightforward thing. Your comparison of him to the pimples from chicken pox, though, is not relevant to the question of whether he's also a catalyst or not. The underlying relevant questions for that are "What is he actually doing?" and "What effects does adding him to the mix cause?"

To be clear, he's doing a bunch of things that empower and embolden the some of the worst parts of human nature and the people who had a tendency to want to indulge such are seeing opportunity at hand to do so. That's just not reasonably comparable to what chicken pox pimples actually do.
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That's probably better said than just what I said. I think a more apt analogy (more apt than chicken pox) would be where a person suffering from depression turns to drugs to deal with the depression but in turn the addiction ultimately just makes the depression worse.
 
theprestige said:
I think the antifa riots in Berkeley were going to happen regardless. Occupy Wall Street happened in the middle of the Obama administration, after all.
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I see absolutely no comparison between people protesting wealth disparity and people protesting fascism. One protest is not the same as another in general
 
The Atheist said:
He's harmed the idea that the left is a valid alternative.
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Trump has harmed the idea that the right is a valid alternative.

Instead of leading, he's just a corrupt little pretty boy out for self-aggrandisement.
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Instead of leading, he's just a petulant little narcissist out for self-aggrandisement.

Like I said, when you add that to Ardern, Shorten & Corbyn's abject failures, the left becomes a less-viable alternative and people turn away from them and move right.
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When you add that to May, Le Pen & Orban's abject failures, the right becomes a less-viable alternative and people turn away from them and move left.

It isn't a coincidence that the right is rising in the 21st century.
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"It isn't a coincidence" is a phrase people use to make what they're about to say sound more profound than it is. Parties rise and fall several times over a century. You want to superimpose this moment right now as being representative of an entire century we are barely 20% of the way into.

Yeah, how about no. How about put that statement right back into the nether regions you pulled it from.

Both wings are rising, actually. Even more pronounced are moves away from established/entrenched parties (of both stripes) and towards minor/new parties.

P.S. maybe do an honest self-inventory and find out what's feeding your embrace of authoritarianism.
 
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Delphic Oracle said:
Trump has harmed the idea that the right is a valid alternative.

Instead of leading, he's just a petulant little narcissist out for self-aggrandisement.

When you add that to May, Le Pen & Orban's abject failures, the right becomes a less-viable alternative and people turn away from them and move left.

"It isn't a coincidence" is a phrase people use to make what they're about to say sound more profound than it is. Parties rise and fall several times over a century. You want to superimpose this moment right now as being representative of an entire century we are barely 20% of the way into.

Yeah, how about no. How about put that statement right back into the nether regions you pulled it from.

Both wings are rising, actually. Even more pronounced are moves away from established/entrenched parties (of both stripes) and towards minor/new parties.

P.S. maybe do an honest self-inventory and find out what's feeding your embrace of authoritarianism.
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Nice post. :thumbsup:
 
The Atheist said:
So yes, please list what harm Trump has actually caused so far. And don't get on the illegal migrant bandwagon - America has been on that case since before Trump's first bankruptcy.
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Bogus, for at least two reasons: (1) If the harm is required to be unique, then no answer will pass muster and (2) the "bandwagon" never separated thousands of children from their parents, some never to be reunited.

Other harms he has caused:

- the cause of reversing global warming
- US election system, by failing to stand up to Russia and actually encouraging foreign interference
- LGBT*.* rights
- people who were victimized by his encouraging political violence

I could go on at length but I'll leave it at that for now.
 
Lambchops said:
Funny how you don't just answer the question.

I wonder why (I don't, really).
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Rules of engagement:

> Your slippery slopes are logical fallacies, mine are clever argumentation.

> Your analogies are the worst form of argument, evah! Mine are clever re-parsing of the issue under discussion.
 
Foolmewunz said:
Rules of engagement:

> Your slippery slopes are logical fallacies, mine are clever argumentation.

> Your analogies are the worst form of argument, evah! Mine are clever re-parsing of the issue under discussion.
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I have been owned by lOgIc and rEaSoN. :D
 
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Aridas said:
Of course. Even if it were completely accurate, regardless, it's for one state, so not even remotely close to definitive.
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They come in as anomalous in various polls. I think they had Beto leading in Texas last week or a couple of weeks ago. No one else has him doing anywhere near as well.
 
Travis said:
I am uninterested in the whole "_____ drove people to vote for Trump" exercises. There is no point. Everyone that voted Trump are scum and I hope they never vote for a Democrat ever again because I don't want their support. I'm open to any strategy that captures people that didn't vote in 2016 but Trump voters are out. They had their chance and chose to vote for absolute evil. They are dead to me and I'd rather lose than ever treat Trump voters as people.
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Politics is religion, complete with belief the other side is mislead by, if not actively participating with, the devil, and the need for tsk tsk and out of hand rejection of the other side's words.

Poltics completed this, ironically, by recognizing the power of religion in motivating the masses to follow leaders, and so banned its use by politicians in legislation. This left politics, memeplexes as giganic as any religion, the sole memeplexes wielding the ability to legally force itself on unwilling meme instantiation units AKA humans.

In other words, politics is wielding the power of government for the exact same reason this was denied to religion.

Both "sides", enjoy your anger worldviews as you bend the knee to a handful of the power hungry at the top, who want you angry for their own advancement as surely as any religious fraud.

Yeah, you're woke, alright.
 
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Beerina said:
Politics is religion, complete with belief the other side is mislead by, if not actively participating with, the devil, and the need for tsk tsk and out of hand rejection of the other side's words.

Poltics completed this, ironically, by recognizing the power of religion in motivating the masses to follow leaders, and so banned its use by politicians in legislation. This left politics, memeplexes as giganic as any religion, the sole memeplexes wielding the ability to legally force itself on unwilling meme instantiation units AKA humans.

In other words, politics is wielding the power of government for the exact same reason this was denied to religion.

Both "sides", enjoy your anger worldviews as you bend the knee to a handful of the power hungry at the top, who want you angry for their own advancement as surely as any religious fraud.

Yeah, you're woke, alright.
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What do you have to defend your claims? How does one decide if a decision of a certain group does or not cross the unacceptable threshold?
 
JoeMorgue said:
I think Democrats can at least ask the question "Why did so many people consider the system so broken that they turned to the first person who obviously wasn't going to work within it?"

This doesn't mean kowtowing to Trump's base, but at least ask the question.

Even after Trump is gone one way or another, the hows and whys of how Trump happened are still questions we need to ask or this won't be the last time we do this dance.
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There's a rather severe problem with one assumption you made. The system i most "broken" for people who are younger, for racial minority groups, and for rural small towns - and yet the first two leaned strongly towards Clinton. In fact, there's only one real predictor for who would vote for Dolt 45 - being white.
 
Mumbles said:
There's a rather severe problem with one assumption you made. The system i most "broken" for people who are younger, for racial minority groups, and for rural small towns - and yet the first two leaned strongly towards Clinton. In fact, there's only one real predictor for who would vote for Dolt 45 - being white.
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Are we expecting a massive die off in white people between 2016 and 2020? If not... what's your point?

The Dems have got to get over this. At least looking into the whys of as to why certain demographics didn't vote for you isn't the same as validating their irrational fears or otherwise selling yourself out.

"Those votes are gone forever, there's no point in even trying to get them back... no scratch that those people are so horrible we don't even want their votes!" is a horrible mentality for the losing side to have.

Or you can just all be Travis.
 
Mumbles said:
There's a rather severe problem with one assumption you made. The system i most "broken" for people who are younger, for racial minority groups, and for rural small towns - and yet the first two leaned strongly towards Clinton. In fact, there's only one real predictor for who would vote for Dolt 45 - being white.
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Damned evil white people!
 
theprestige said:
I think the rally in Charlottesville, and the violence there, was encouraged more by the antifa antics in Berkeley and elsewhere the year before, than anything Trump said or did.
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That's an asinine attempt to blame the victims. Every single time you talk to someone who gets out of that white supremacist garbage, it's never "Oh, I saw these leftists acting up, and I said 'Oh no, it's a race war!'" and go rushing off to find the local Nazi group.

Almost every time, they discuss how they felt depressed and isolated, and then either some local white supremacist group found them and gave them a sense of belonging and of family, or they started listening to Ben Shapiro (strangely, since he's jewish), Stephan Molyneux, and the like, and they got pulled into it.

Also, it's remarkable how people don't know that during one of Milo's previous college talks (in which he outed a transgender student for absolutely no reason - he should be banned from speaking at college campuses for this alone), two of his followers intentionally provoked someone into an argument and then shot him out of "fear". It's also worth noting that Milo had promised to explain how to find and target undocumented immigrants (mostly Dreamers) to have them deported during his UC Berkley talk. In other words, Milo's only purpose was to disrupt the educations of as many people as possible, so if anarchists (not "antifa") got rowdy...I don't approve of the vandalism, but the other protestors had a very strong point. Universities have a duty to protect students from menaces like Milo.
 
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