2020 Democratic Candidates Tracker

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applecorped said:
No offense but that is idiotic.

That is how you end up with evil.

If neither candidate is one you want to vote for then don't vote.
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Actually, that is the idiotic position: That's exactly how you wind up with the greater of two evils.

Like Trump.

And I don't care if you take offense or not.
 
TragicMonkey said:
What a barrage of certainty! Change will not result if the current behavior is encouraged and supported. Change may result if enough people vote for other candidates or don't vote at all, and the parties are therefore motivated to pick up those votes by adapting to those voters' preferences. Or risk losing them to another party that does. If the Democrats keep shifting right and shedding votes as they do so they will either have to move left or they risk independent candidates or even a new party getting those votes.
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You're dreaming of a world that not only doesn't exist but probably couldn't exist. The primaries provide people with the opportunity to choose a specific candidate. But if you think voting for a candidate that is polling at 2 or 5 percent while the leaders are at 35 percent will make a difference you're living in la la land.

I live in the real world not some imaginary "wouldn't it be nice" world. This is the same problem I experience with anti--nuclear environmentalists. They want to fight global warming, but they're not realistic. They don't get that there are no perfect, no risk choices. That a little bit better is better. It may not be ideal. But it is better.
 
TragicMonkey said:
What a barrage of certainty! Change will not result if the current behavior is encouraged and supported. Change may result if enough people vote for other candidates or don't vote at all, and the parties are therefore motivated to pick up those votes by adapting to those voters' preferences. Or risk losing them to another party that does. If the Democrats keep shifting right and shedding votes as they do so they will either have to move left or they risk independent candidates or even a new party getting those votes.
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Might be a bit hard to change human nature.
 
Cabbage said:
Actually, that is the idiotic position: That's exactly how you wind up with the greater of two evils.

Like Trump.

And I don't care if you take offense or not.
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I can only think of a few people I wouldn't vote for over Trump. Hitler, Pol Pot, Mussolini, Idi Amin, Usama bin Laden. But I'm voting for anyone the Democrats nominate. That is unless they select one of those individuals. Trump needs to be sent packing. So no way in hell am I going to waste...yes waste my vote on some candidate that while I think is the best candidate still has less than zero chance of winning.

It would be like I was writing my own name because of course I'm the best. And January 20th 2021 while Trump is again repeating an oath to uphold the Constitution that he has no intention of doing, I'll think I had my principles. :(
 
acbytesla said:
You're dreaming of a world that not only doesn't exist but probably couldn't exist.
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That's what some people said about getting rid of monarchs and having a democracy instead. Yet here we are. Ideals are put into practice as best they can be all the time. It's a thing humans do.


I live in the real world not some imaginary "wouldn't it be nice" world. This is the same problem I experience with anti--nuclear environmentalists. They want to fight global warming, but they're not realistic. They don't get that there are no perfect, no risk choices. That a little bit better is better. It may not be ideal. But it is better.
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I'm uninterested in your nuclear hobbyhorse, it's getting plenty of exercise in another thread. And I'm not the one being unrealistic: one of us thinks he can go forward by moving slightly fewer steps backwards than the maximum number of steps possible. A slower retreat is not an advance.
 
TragicMonkey said:
That's what some people said about getting rid of monarchs and having a democracy instead. Yet here we are. Ideals are put into practice as best they can be all the time. It's a thing humans do.
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Perhaps, but if you want to change the world by voting for the underdog, are you prepared to lose for 20 election cycles before getting your way? And in the meantime, being stuck with the opposition rather than someone not perfect but more aligned with you?
 
Belz... said:
Perhaps, but if you want to change the world by voting for the underdog, are you prepared to lose for 20 election cycles before getting your way? And in the meantime, being stuck with the opposition rather than someone not perfect but more aligned with you?
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As a certain lady once said 'you may not like the medicine but it's the only way the patient will get better'. The spiral into crapitude needs to be stopped, even if it means waiting for the geriatric Democrats to die out and leadership to pass to the next generation. Or for that next generation to split into a new party and trounce the obsolete old guard.
 
Yeah, but the voting booth is the wrong time and place to break the cycle.
It's what you do in between elections that can change politics the way you want.
 
TragicMonkey said:
As a certain lady once said 'you may not like the medicine but it's the only way the patient will get better'. The spiral into crapitude needs to be stopped, even if it means waiting for the geriatric Democrats to die out and leadership to pass to the next generation. Or for that next generation to split into a new party and trounce the obsolete old guard.
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But you didn't answer my question. Sure, it sounds great when you post it like that, but voting the less popular canditates in the general election means it might take decades to remove the Republicans from power. By the time you get your wish the courts are going to be stacked with ultra-conservatives. How do you deal with the interim period?
 
TragicMonkey said:
That's what some people said about getting rid of monarchs and having a democracy instead. Yet here we are. Ideals are put into practice as best they can be all the time. It's a thing humans do.
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If you think that's how we got rid of monarchs you weren't paying attention in political science class. And btw, we don't have a democracy. It's a republic.

Feel free to point out a successful 3rd party candidate that has won in ANY Presidential system ever in any country. You might be successful in developing a third party into one of the two main parties. But guess what? It's the same problem, just different parties.
 
varwoche said:
Moreover, it's not as if the discussions here are DNC strategy sessions. I wish to assure theprestige and other Trump apologists that if and when I become a Democratic strategist, I will moderate my presentation; tailor it for the dimwitted, fact-challenged, precious snowflake demographic.
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:thumbsup:

yeah. Me too.
 
The Great Zaganza said:
Yeah, but the voting booth is the wrong time and place to break the cycle.
It's what you do in between elections that can change politics the way you want.
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I believe it's the only time and place to break the cycle. Nothing else matters to politicians, the parties will say anything they think you want to hear when you talk to them.
 
TragicMonkey said:
I believe it's the only time and place to break the cycle. Nothing else matters to politicians, the parties will say anything they think you want to hear when you talk to them.
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You are wrong.
At the booth, you are a static.

During the year, organized pressure on Representatives can have huge effects, not just to get a yes or no, but to actually shape how decisions are made.
And, of course, local politics are extremely important.
 
Belz... said:
But you didn't answer my question. Sure, it sounds great when you post it like that, but voting the less popular canditates in the general election means it might take decades to remove the Republicans from power. By the time you get your wish the courts are going to be stacked with ultra-conservatives. How do you deal with the interim period?
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I thought I did answer your question. It was a yes. How to deal with the 'interim'? Same way we deal with the present and the past: live our lives and endure. I'm not a Democrat. In my lifetime we've never had a president or a legislature that actually worked for what I want. For much of my life the government (under both parties) was actively hostile to me. I endured. Things change over time. I don't imagine voting for third party candidates will fix everything quickly and forever. I also know that voting for mainstream candidates won't fix things quickly and forever. We make do with what happens, just like every other human who's ever lived.
 
TragicMonkey said:
I believe it's the only time and place to break the cycle. Nothing else matters to politicians, the parties will say anything they think you want to hear when you talk to them.
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I bet you believe in fairy tales and God too. You might replace the system with a dictatorship and a single party system or just maybe turn this into a parliamentary system. But even that isn't accomplished from the fringes.
 
Toontown said:
I guess I just don't understand what you think is wrong with engaging Trump on his many weaknesses, penetrating his thin skin, putting him on defense, and thereby causing him to repeatedly demonstrate his (counterproductive) buffoonery himself, on his own dime.

Which, if you study my infamous posts carefully and take them at face value without reconstructing them into grotesque strawmen, is what I already said. Long time and many posts ago.
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Ah, gotcha. No, I don't think there's anything wrong with engaging Trump on his many weaknesses, etc. I had understood you to mean calling it out more. Which again I don't think there's anything wrong with that. It just may not be such a great strategy is all.

I'm sure there would be plenty of time left over to present one's own positive ideas for the future, if that's your concern. And that's where you're going to lose the Trumpkins even if you refrain from being mean to the Trump. Presenting ideas appropriate for what is certain to be a very different future will alienate them, just like always.
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I think it's more a question of how many other voters you end up alienating, in your efforts to kick Trumpkins to the curb.

And I still think that your quest to expose Trump's unsuitability to swing voters is probably not the best way to approach the problem. I think that most swing voters are already well informed by the ongoing, daily process in the media of engaging Trump's many weaknesses, etc. Swinging them around to your side is probably more a question of understanding why they're willing to consider Trump in spite of his many weaknesses. All that stuff was right out in the open already, in 2016, and we know how that turned out. The idea that swing voters chose Trump because they didn't have enough information about what kind of a person he really is? I'm not sure that's such a great idea. It's definitely a 2016 idea, though.

For 2020, you're probably going to have to move beyond that and look into what else is going on, that modifies swing voters' assessment of Trump.
 
acbytesla said:
If you think that's how we got rid of monarchs you weren't paying attention in political science class. And btw, we don't have a democracy. It's a republic.

Feel free to point out a successful 3rd party candidate that has won in ANY Presidential system ever in any country. You might be successful in developing a third party into one of the two main parties. But guess what? It's the same problem, just different parties.
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History class, not poliitical science. What were the Founding Fathers if not oligarchs ennacting ideals? At least as best they practically could. The results speak for themselves: no monarchs. Which is what a republic is.

A democracy isn't incompatible with a republic. The US is both: a republic because we don't have a monarch, and a representative democracy because the populace elects representatives to office. Perhaps you confused the general term 'democracy' for the specific subset 'pure or direct democracy' where every voter votes on every action directly, and not via representatives. But that would be silly to infer that from context of a modern political discussion, as that subset of democracy is rare indeed in national governance.

As for historical examples I concede the US hasn't any, although we have seen parties dissolve when they lost voter support. The Whigs were supplanted by the Republicans. The mechanics of our electoral process make third parties very difficult; if we didn't do first-past-the-post voting and electoral colleges we might be more like other countries with several parties. Then the voters, having more choice, would be better able to pick a candidate they actually prefer, and political change result.
 
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