2020 Democratic Candidates Tracker

[varwoche]

Are you not on twitter?

Not per se. But your question is irrelevant. I don't trust unreliable sources, e.g. you, no matter who/what the source is. Twitter doesn't excuse unsupported claims.

To be clear though: I believe that every whacked out opinion on Odin's green earth can be found on twitter/internet.

But without a citation, readers don't know if it was really a "Bernie bro". Readers don't know if you've characterized the comments accurately. For that matter, readers don't know if you made it all up. (I suspect not, but I wouldn't place a wager on it.)

Seriously just look at the tweets in any major story about her and someone will come up with some line of reasoning that goes "Kamala was a cop that kept slaves."

Perhaps so.

 

[Delphic Oracle]

No. I don't go looking for people to get angry at. Do you honestly think that makes you a better person than me?

Yes Travis you go looking for any random anonymous online who says whatever you need to justify your rage. We know.

[qimg]https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/bad_opinions.png[/qimg]

Alt Text: "I thought of another bad opinion! I couldn't find anyone who expressed it specifically, but still, the fact that I can so easily imagine it is infuriating! I'm gonna tell everyone about it!"

Not to mention that this quite widespread phenomenon is precisely the thing certain countries interfering in U.S. elections are designing their bots to post comments for.

Remember, the goal is not a particular policy outcome or candidate elected. The goal is disunity and political paralysis. Look across the whole OECD, moderates are evaporating from elected offices. Everyone is polarizing. Everyone has examples of "just the worst kind of people" they've run into on "the other side" that harden them further towards their own extreme.

If you read for another kind of sign, you'll see it. Read for comments from "your own side" that, even if you seem to agree with the motive you think "yeah, but that's not the way to say it that really wins people over." Those are the ones that make your opponents feel like you do when you read the ones that piss you off.

 

[Mumbles]

And this supposedly comes from Sanders supporters?

The stuff Travis mentioned usually does. Much of the rest comes from the I-don't-vote, holier than thou sort of people. It won't amount to much of anything in the end, especially outside of the caucus states.

Well, the right doesn't have a monopoly on crazy people.

Oh, definitely not. And on both sides, there are people that know exactly what they're doing, and just want the attention to sell something - Tariq falls into this category when you get down to it.

ETA: Like the Gillette ad or the Black Hebrew Israelites' routine, some of these guys work so that the people in their markets cheer them on, and the people who aren't in their target market get angry (Travis, this is you, quit falling for it), which makes the people in their target market even happier.

 

[Foolmewunz]

The Dems would rather have a... whatever the opposite of a "Great White Hope" is lose to Trump then have an old white male Democrat beat him.

Wrong. Just on these forums more than half of the Hillary Clinton supporters voted for her in spite of her baggage. And by that I am not referring to the Great Right Wing Noise Machine and its two decades of slander. I'm referring to her cozy corporatist Democrat background. Clinton and Obama both moved the Democratic Party back towards the banking/financing/corporate camps.

I think Joe Biden is fun. I don't think for a second he'd spearhead progressive plans or programs. I'd vote for him, though, for the same reasons I voted for Hillary; to unseat the GOP. Unfortunately, it's become important to think like a Republican now. Support the party because the other guys have gone beyond the pale. The current GOP are a mixture of bigots and fundies and the members who look the other way just to get a tax break or a more conservative judiciary. They are spineless and while they may wriggle a bit after the 2020 election, cutting off the head of the snake will hopefully get the Silent Majority back to being silent, because they are far too emboldened by the current misanthropic regime.

 

[Firestone]

LA Mayor Garcetti has decided to stay out of the race.

Two-term Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti ended months of speculation Tuesday evening about his 2020 intentions by announcing he won’t enter the ever-growing field of Democratic presidential candidates.
...
“I feel even more secure in my decision watching the field of candidates who are jumping into the race in 2020,” Garcetti said. He called them “friends, colleagues, even fellow mayors.”

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/01/30/la-...against-2020-democratic-presidential-run.html

 

[Travis]

Alt Text: "I thought of another bad opinion! I couldn't find anyone who expressed it specifically, but still, the fact that I can so easily imagine it is infuriating! I'm gonna tell everyone about it!"

Believe it or not I'm not going out and searching for these things. I follow a mixture of mainstream pundits (Chris Hayes, Natasha Bertrand, etc) and some feminist activists. The comments I've referred to were all left on the most base middle of the road accounts just reporting stuff.



Seriously, find any twitter post about Kamala. Just about any from any major news outlet or major figure and read down the comments below. It isn't even hard to run into the things I'm talking about.

Travis. Dude. Get the hell off social media. It isn't representative of reality, and it's making you miserable.

Considering all the relatives I have under age 22 spend about five hours a day on social media on phones....I think it is way more like the reality of the future than you may want to admit.

Although, now that you mention it, isn’t there something in the idea that penal slave labour, especially given the way it tends to be performed by minority groups is something worth condemning and those who participate in the system?

Maybe the “nosiness” of the Bernie Bros, if you mean those who investigate candidates’ background, is warranted.

There definitely is a discussion worth having. But, honestly, she was a progressive prosecutor that designed huge programs intended to keep people out of prison. People that ignore that because they desire some radical that just goes "throw the whole thing out, release all the prisoners!" is not realistic at all. And I'm tired of how they act as if her putting anyone in prison is the same as Stalin running huge gulag systems of political prisoners.

None of my black friends trust Harris, and none are hoteps. LOL None are Bernie Bros, either.

Also, those criticisms you mentioned aren't saying Harris kept slaves.

The actual Bernie Bros aren't really weighing in on any of the dem candidates much yet as far as I can see. A couple have said Warren is "just like Clinton", but they don't seem to really care much either way.

You keep with better Bernie Bros than I do it seems. I have a guy on facebook who, in 2019, is still posting anti-Hillary memes. I mean just this week he posted something about Hillary being the most pro-Wall Street candidate in history.



Weirdly I met that guy in a dating group and friended him because he was at-the-time sharing some hilarious anti-Trump stuff. Then the convention happened, the Podesta emails were leaked and it was like he lost his mind and never came back down to reality.

 

[dudalb]

https://www.politico.com/amp/story/...20-election-1134055?__twitter_impression=true

Who will the Maduro supporters vote for now?

I admit my first though when I read about her candidacy was "Tulsi Who?"
Let's face it, you need a certain amount of national public recongnition to have a realistic shot at a presendential nomination. Tulsi had almost none outside of Hawaii,
That her campaign is already melting down is proof she is a long way from being ready for prime time.

 

[dudalb]

LA Mayor Garcetti has decided to stay out of the race.

Smart guy. He knows he needs to get a better national profile before having a realisitic chance of the nominatation.

 

[dudalb]

And whoever winds the nomination will do the classic shuffle: Go to the left in the primaries to win the hard core base,but once you got the nouminatin head to the center as quickly as possible.

 

[Dr. Keith]

And whoever winds the nomination will do the classic shuffle: Go to the left in the primaries to win the hard core base,but once you got the nouminatin head to the center as quickly as possible.

What to do about the spontaneous chants breaking out of "Lock him up!"

 

[dudalb]

IMHO worst thing Dems could do is try to imitate the Trump Campaign.

 

[angrysoba]

IMHO worst thing Dems could do is try to imitate the Trump Campaign.

It worked for him.

 

[Belz...]

Believe it or not I'm not going out and searching for these things.

I don't believe you.

 

[kellyb]

And whoever winds the nomination will do the classic shuffle: Go to the left in the primaries to win the hard core base,but once you got the nouminatin head to the center as quickly as possible.

Neither Warren nor Sanders would do that. But yeah, I'd expect something like that out of most/all of the others. The party "establishment" is still center-right.

This is why democrats will keep on losing, by the way, until the fake-progressives are gone. A majority of self-identifying moderates don't exactly love voting for the team who's obviously full of poo.

Things are no different today than they were back when...
https://www.trumanlibrary.org/publicpapers/index.php?pid=1296

You can always count on the Republicans, in an election year, to remind the people of what the Republican Party really stands for. You can always count on them to make it perfectly clear before the campaign is over that the Republican Party is the party of big business, and that they would like to turn the country back to the big corporations and the big bankers in New York to run it as they see fit.

The people don't want a phony Democrat. If it's a choice between a genuine Republican, and a Republican in Democratic clothing, the people will choose the genuine article, every time; that is, they will take a Republican before they will a phony Democrat, and I don't want any phony Democratic candidates in this campaign.

 

[Firestone]

Smart guy. He knows he needs to get a better national profile before having a realisitic chance of the nominatation.

Yep.

Clearly he had better (or more honest) advisers than Schultz.

Neither Warren nor Sanders would do that. But yeah, I'd expect something like that out of most/all of the others. The party "establishment" is still center-right.

This is why democrats will keep on losing, by the way, until the fake-progressives are gone. A majority of self-identifying moderates don't exactly love voting for the team who's obviously full of poo.

Things are no different today than they were back when...
https://www.trumanlibrary.org/publicpapers/index.php?pid=1296

Fun fact: the three last elected Democratic presidents (and the five last Democratic candidates who won the popular vote) were moderates.

 

[kellyb]

Fun fact: the three last elected Democratic presidents (and the five last Democratic candidates who won the popular vote) were moderates.

In 2008, Obama ran as a "far left" progressive, tho. He said he was a fan of single payer, and even said "when you spread the wealth around, it's good for everybody."

 

[Parsman]

Same in the UK historically. Labour runs left then governs centre-right. Trick the voters then cosy up to business in London and the South East. Perhaps the only surprise is that people keep falling for it so that we effectively have a one party system with two branches.

 

[Foolmewunz]

Same in the UK historically. Labour runs left then governs centre-right. Trick the voters then cosy up to business in London and the South East. Perhaps the only surprise is that people keep falling for it so that we effectively have a one party system with two branches.

We had that in the US when there was a moderate wing to the GOP. Names that many are familiar with for their liberal if not progressive policies were all Republicans. John Lindsay, George(Mitt's dad) Romney, Bill Scranton, Jake Javits, Nelson Rockefeller, Charles Percy, Mark Hatfield, .... amongst others.

Those names are mostly gone but the few moderate names in the party show up only when there's discussion of the few possible Senate votes that might go against the administration. They are not a force and have no leader. From 1950 to even the Nixon/Carter elections there wasn't that much difference between the two parties. They gussied up their campaign promises but they were basically both following the same agenda with minor bumps in the road (the Vietnam War was originally a Democratic war and the GOP didn't say a thing about it; when the public sentiment changed and a large segment of the Dems got behind the anti-war movement, the GOP stepped up to be the Warrior Party.

All of that changed with the advent of the right wing coalition of fundies, money grubbers (tax cuts) and right to lifers. It didn't happen overnight, but by dribs and drabs from the late Nixon years through to present day.

In short, I used to joke about voting with Mark Twain's possibly apocryphal quote: "Oh, I don't vote. It only encourages them." The Dems may have very little substance worth voting for but the Dems as foils to the totally reprehensible current GOP? They get my vote.

 

[Delphic Oracle]

IMHO worst thing Dems could do is try to imitate the Trump Campaign.

No, but it's a close second to doing the same ho-hum of running away from every policy the Republicans cast shade on while spouting a forgettable series of cites from the most recent Harvard study about whatever it is we were talking about at the time.

 

[kellyb]

We had that in the US when there was a moderate wing to the GOP. Names that many are familiar with for their liberal if not progressive policies were all Republicans. John Lindsay, George(Mitt's dad) Romney, Bill Scranton, Jake Javits, Nelson Rockefeller, Charles Percy, Mark Hatfield, .... amongst others.

Those names are mostly gone but the few moderate names in the party show up only when there's discussion of the few possible Senate votes that might go against the administration. They are not a force and have no leader. From 1950 to even the Nixon/Carter elections there wasn't that much difference between the two parties. They gussied up their campaign promises but they were basically both following the same agenda with minor bumps in the road (the Vietnam War was originally a Democratic war and the GOP didn't say a thing about it; when the public sentiment changed and a large segment of the Dems got behind the anti-war movement, the GOP stepped up to be the Warrior Party.

All of that changed with the advent of the right wing coalition of fundies, money grubbers (tax cuts) and right to lifers. It didn't happen overnight, but by dribs and drabs from the late Nixon years through to present day.

In short, I used to joke about voting with Mark Twain's possibly apocryphal quote: "Oh, I don't vote. It only encourages them." The Dems may have very little substance worth voting for but the Dems as foils to the totally reprehensible current GOP? They get my vote.

Ha! I hadn't really thought of it like that before, but I guess you're right. Now that the GOP has morphed into a Peoples Temple-Cthulhu chimera entity, we do, in fact, have a 2 party system again!