JRP3
Hyperactive Member
Your inaction is to blame, not those of us actually supporting people trying to change things.
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@JRP3, can you link to a video that shows why you believe Gabbard would destroy Trump in a debate? Thanks.
JRP3
Hyperactive Member
I'd say pretty much any video of her speaking should make it obvious she's much smarter than he is and has an actual grasp of issues.
Examples:
I think @neroden was talking more about the Republican movers and shakers and not Republican voters. For the Republicans, currently there is a big difference between those in the center of power and those who just vote Republican. That isn't so true for the Democrats. There are people in power in the Democratic party who are a bit out of touch, but the gap in beliefs between those in power and those voting Democratic is much smaller.
A lot boils down to how the two parties work. Democrats want to fall in love with their candidates. Buttigeig knows this and that's why he's doing what he's doing. He did articulate some actual ideas on the Daily Show last night, but he's mostly trying to get people to fall in love with him. Democratic voters are not going to be all that happy with elected politicians who don't at least make an attempt to do what they elected them to do.
On the other hand, the Republicans fall in line. Trump got a huge chunk of the Republican vote not because he was well liked, but because Republicans follow orders. Once the primaries were over, people rallied around the nominee, even though he reflected 0 of the values the party claims to hold.
In 2016 my father who is a lifelong Republican was really struggling with whether to vote for Trump or not. He won't talk politics anymore, but back then he was thinking of voting Democrat for president for the first time in his long life. The fact it was even a struggle for him was telling how strong a hold Republicans have on their voters.
Republicans at the center of power can get away with saying one thing and doing another far more than Democrats can. Democrats do it, but usually pay heavily for it, while Republicans just keep voting for their guy or gal regardless of what they do.
I also don't see the Russians as another side of a three sided thing here. The Russians are to a certain extent agitators. They want to cause as much disruption as possible in American politics, as well as other countries. But they favor the Republicans more because they have some pretty good allies, wittingly and unwittingly in the Republican camp. Democrats can be fooled, but I don't know of any Democrats who would embrace help from any foreign power to get elected or to do any dirty tricks in office.
I think the entire Democratic field knows they will have to deal with Trump's slime to get elected and are prepared for it. Different candidates will handle him differently. Biden pokes the bear until it does something stupid. That's what he's been doing right out of the gate and it's working. I think Harris, Gillibrand, and Klobachar would all wait for attacks and react, but I think all three in their own way would use his attacks to demonstrate what a terrible person he is.
I'm not sure how Buttigeig or Beto would respond, but both have cut their teeth in the political world of very red states. They haven't dealt with any politicians as far gone as Trump, but they know GOP slime well.
Forrest Gump is smarter than Trump.
I think Gabbard is too socially conservative to make it in the Democratic primaries. I suspect she'll be one of the first out of the running.
fivethirtyeight had an analysis of the polls at this point in the process going back to 1972. As of a couple of days ago it was Biden and Bernie who had the best shot, both polling in the 20s, but as of today Biden's chances went to around 75% for getting the nomination.
We Analyzed 40 Years Of Primary Polls. Even Early On, They’re Fairly Predictive.
My SO and I were talking about Biden. Politically Biden is right of her politics (she's fairly liberal, but also a pragmatist), but she's like Biden all along because he's a safe bet. He sticks his foot in his mouth, and he makes some people uncomfortable being too handsy, but he is probably the candidate who can draw votes from the right. Notably Fox News ran one of his rallies last night live with no commentary. Combined with Nepolitano's op ed last week, I think Fox is signalling that they are done with Trump and Biden would be acceptable.
My SO thinks Kamala Harris would be the best bet for VP. She's a woman of color, acceptable to Millennials, and has enough of the progressive firebrand to get the extreme progressives on board.
JRP3
Hyperactive Member
My uncle, a lifelong Republican, voted for Hillary in 2016, and has now left the Republican party. As a businessman in the NY/NJ area he's long known the truth about Trump.
Biden might be a complete disaster. He has a truly appalling track record:
-- opposing busing in the 1960s (pro-segregation)
-- major author of the "crime bill" which threw people in prison for minor offenses
-- massive drug war supporter
-- primary backer of the "bankruptcy bill" which forced middle-class Americans into debt slavery by making it impossible to get a fresh start in bankruptcy (instead requiring that wages be paid out to the lenders indefinitely
-- generally a lackey of the worst of the banking industry, opposing all consumer protection and supporting anything which let them engage in predatory banking practices
-- and of course, in charge of the appalling mistreatment of Anita Hill during the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings
-- and has a record of inappropriate touching.
Now, maybe he's totally changed on all of these topics... but I wouldn't bet on it.
Here's the problem. If he gets elected and proceeds to govern along these lines, which are EXTREMELY UNPOPULAR, more people will completely give up on the Democratic Party (even though Biden is TOTALLY non-representative of the Democratic party, and almost everyone else is far better). Out of desperation, people will vote for fascists.
And the Republicans will definitely nominate fascists. Recent news was that Twitter tried to develop an algorithm to identify white supremacist accounts -- they succeeded -- but they were unwilling to use it because it identifed a bunch of Republican politicians as white supremacists. (This was of course accurate, but they won't admit that...)
Twitter reportedly won't use an algorithm to crack down on white supremacists because some GOP politicians could end up getting barred too
Twitter Won't Treat White Supremacy Like ISIS Because It'd Have to Ban Some GOP Politicians Too
We got lucky with Trump: he's a fascist but he's also a complete idiot, so dumb he's unable to actually have much effect.
The next Republican fascist candidate is likely to be much more competent.
Anyone but Biden, please. ANYONE in the Democratic primary other than Biden is OK; they all have track records which are progressive enough that people will feel that they got what they voted for. Biden? People will feel hoodwinked if he lives up to his track record!
And I say this as someone who likes Biden on some issues, such as his support of passenger rail. But he's the absolute worst candidate the Democrats could put up in terms of policy history. Even Trump, who is happy to be inconsistent, could make mincemeat of Biden's past support for the big banks.
We can't afford to put up another Democratic candidate who will continue the failed right-wing policies of the past. That was the way the Weimar Republic got Hitler -- the Social Democrats kept pushing failed right-wing economic policies, so people got disillusioned and out of desperation started voting for the right-wing extremists.
Wdolson -- I really hope you can convince everyone you know to vote for Anyone But Biden.
This is a situation where approval voting in the primary would really help a lot. The anti-Biden vote is split far too much right now. It's critical that it coalesce to stop Biden.
-- opposing busing in the 1960s (pro-segregation)
-- major author of the "crime bill" which threw people in prison for minor offenses
-- massive drug war supporter
-- primary backer of the "bankruptcy bill" which forced middle-class Americans into debt slavery by making it impossible to get a fresh start in bankruptcy (instead requiring that wages be paid out to the lenders indefinitely
-- generally a lackey of the worst of the banking industry, opposing all consumer protection and supporting anything which let them engage in predatory banking practices
-- and of course, in charge of the appalling mistreatment of Anita Hill during the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings
-- and has a record of inappropriate touching.
Now, maybe he's totally changed on all of these topics... but I wouldn't bet on it.
Here's the problem. If he gets elected and proceeds to govern along these lines, which are EXTREMELY UNPOPULAR, more people will completely give up on the Democratic Party (even though Biden is TOTALLY non-representative of the Democratic party, and almost everyone else is far better). Out of desperation, people will vote for fascists.
And the Republicans will definitely nominate fascists. Recent news was that Twitter tried to develop an algorithm to identify white supremacist accounts -- they succeeded -- but they were unwilling to use it because it identifed a bunch of Republican politicians as white supremacists. (This was of course accurate, but they won't admit that...)
Twitter reportedly won't use an algorithm to crack down on white supremacists because some GOP politicians could end up getting barred too
Twitter Won't Treat White Supremacy Like ISIS Because It'd Have to Ban Some GOP Politicians Too
We got lucky with Trump: he's a fascist but he's also a complete idiot, so dumb he's unable to actually have much effect.
The next Republican fascist candidate is likely to be much more competent.
Anyone but Biden, please. ANYONE in the Democratic primary other than Biden is OK; they all have track records which are progressive enough that people will feel that they got what they voted for. Biden? People will feel hoodwinked if he lives up to his track record!
And I say this as someone who likes Biden on some issues, such as his support of passenger rail. But he's the absolute worst candidate the Democrats could put up in terms of policy history. Even Trump, who is happy to be inconsistent, could make mincemeat of Biden's past support for the big banks.
We can't afford to put up another Democratic candidate who will continue the failed right-wing policies of the past. That was the way the Weimar Republic got Hitler -- the Social Democrats kept pushing failed right-wing economic policies, so people got disillusioned and out of desperation started voting for the right-wing extremists.
Wdolson -- I really hope you can convince everyone you know to vote for Anyone But Biden.
This is a situation where approval voting in the primary would really help a lot. The anti-Biden vote is split far too much right now. It's critical that it coalesce to stop Biden.
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My family has never listened to me so ringing the alarm about anything falls on deaf ears. Most people find it hard to believe, but I've always been considered the family idiot by the rest of my family.
If Trump was the least bit competent he would be much more dangerous.
I see a big split about Biden between people older than about 40-45 and those younger. Many of those younger have a lot more problems with him than those older.
Biden has evolved through his career and if the Democrats win big, he'll be presiding over a government very different from what we see today. Biden also is the Democrat least likely to scare the horses with ideas that are too radical for the center and right of center.
I posted an article a couple of weeks back about the difference between the Democrats on social media and the actual Democratic party. The electorate in the party is more conservative than Democrats on Twitter. Biden is also not scary to the never Trump Republicans. That could result in a considerable number of Republicans who don't like Trump voting Democrat possibly for the first time. By election day that number could get pretty big.
Biden also was a sponsor of the Violence Against Women's Act among other good legislation.
Wikipedia has a page on his positions:
Political positions of Joe Biden - Wikipedia
A lot will depend on who is left by the time the primaries get to Washington state, but I would probably put some others in the race ahead of Biden at this point. If Biden is the nominee, I will definitely vote for him. Even if Bill Weld is the nominee for the Republicans, he will likely bring with him a lot of disgusting Republicans into his cabinet.
Obviously, if it comes down to the general election, I'm voting for the Democrat. What I'm worried about is that a Biden presidency could lead to a truly nasty Republican Presidency in 2024. Obama's constant sellouts to Republicans on policy matters where the Republican position is deeply unpopular (Why is the NSA still spying on Americans? Why do we have soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan? Why were the Bush tax cuts for billionaires made permanent? Why didn't the DEA reschedule cannabis like they're legally obligated to?) are part of what gave us Trump.
I hope Biden's learned his lessons. *cross fingers*. I just don't believe it.
Couldn't we have, oh, a Cory Booker instead? Or a Kamala Harris? Or an Amy Kloubuchar? Or a Pete Buttegieg? Or a Beto O'Rourke? Or a Jay Inslee? None of them are particularly left-wing in policy or in speeches, and at least one of them should seem comfortable enough to grassroots ex-Republicans, but their track records are solidly sane, unlike Biden.
And of course the fact is that Sanders, despite his rhetoric, is a pretty conservative "pothole populist" in practice and wins far more independent votes than bankster lackeys like Biden.
Bill Weld is not going to be the Republican nominee -- the people who would vote for him have mostly abandoned the Republican Party already, and on top of that, the RNC is deliberately trying to force him out with crazy anti-democratic ideas like cancelling the South Carolina primary. I respect him a lot for being willing to take a stand against Trump though. Hopefully he will endorse the Democratic candidate when he loses the nomination.
I hope Biden's learned his lessons. *cross fingers*. I just don't believe it.
Couldn't we have, oh, a Cory Booker instead? Or a Kamala Harris? Or an Amy Kloubuchar? Or a Pete Buttegieg? Or a Beto O'Rourke? Or a Jay Inslee? None of them are particularly left-wing in policy or in speeches, and at least one of them should seem comfortable enough to grassroots ex-Republicans, but their track records are solidly sane, unlike Biden.
And of course the fact is that Sanders, despite his rhetoric, is a pretty conservative "pothole populist" in practice and wins far more independent votes than bankster lackeys like Biden.
Bill Weld is not going to be the Republican nominee -- the people who would vote for him have mostly abandoned the Republican Party already, and on top of that, the RNC is deliberately trying to force him out with crazy anti-democratic ideas like cancelling the South Carolina primary. I respect him a lot for being willing to take a stand against Trump though. Hopefully he will endorse the Democratic candidate when he loses the nomination.
STARR X
Member
Whomever gets elected president from the Democratic Party should also be looking at a second term. That places Biden as too old to run imo.
JRP3
Hyperactive Member
JRP3
Hyperactive Member
Willful ignorance of Congresswoman on display
Isn't it done concurrently? 1/3 of the senate, and all of the house of reps are being voted on aren't they? I'm just asking for some attention to be brought onto congress as well, because there's only so much progress that the presidency can do (damaging and destroying is easy, but rebuilding is much harder to do it alone).
JRP3
Hyperactive Member
I misinterpreted your post to mean we need to fix Congress before the election. My mistake.
Political junkies are likely already on board with much of the talk about the Mueller report. Here's a readable analysis by a reputable legal source. He pretty much supports the report's conclusions about criminal behavior and conspiracy and the Russians but concludes using a "patriotic lense" that Trump and the campaign were dead wrong and did commit criminal behavior, especially on obstruction of justice. Also he goes through impeachable conduct that is self-evident.
He ends and is shocked to find there is a possibility there is no national security breach probe going on.
Five Things I Learned From the Mueller Report
"It would be the deepest of ironies if the Mueller investigation showed evidence that the president had committed crimes and had committed impeachable offenses, and if he had painted a remarkable historical portrait of the relationship between Trumpworld and the Russian government, but if at the same time, the core counterintelligence concerns that gave rise to it and that have haunted the Trump presidency from the beginning went unaddressed."
Today and tomorrow, if Barr shows up at the House hearing, we may again have sufficient evidence the DOJ is in the middle of the coverup as Mueller's pushback on Barr's behavior hits the fan. As an investor I am worried as said before that eventually markets will drop as Trump's criminality is alleged more concretely.
He ends and is shocked to find there is a possibility there is no national security breach probe going on.
Five Things I Learned From the Mueller Report
"It would be the deepest of ironies if the Mueller investigation showed evidence that the president had committed crimes and had committed impeachable offenses, and if he had painted a remarkable historical portrait of the relationship between Trumpworld and the Russian government, but if at the same time, the core counterintelligence concerns that gave rise to it and that have haunted the Trump presidency from the beginning went unaddressed."
Today and tomorrow, if Barr shows up at the House hearing, we may again have sufficient evidence the DOJ is in the middle of the coverup as Mueller's pushback on Barr's behavior hits the fan. As an investor I am worried as said before that eventually markets will drop as Trump's criminality is alleged more concretely.
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Wooloomooloo
Member
Bernie can speak the same language to his base, as he proved when he went on Fox. Warren was rattled by him once and made the mistake of doing the DNA test, but I think she could stand up to him again. Harris is no pushover, although she's lagging in the polls.
Anyway, the problem with facing Trump isn't his bullying - the best defense against that is to simply ignore it. The problem with facing Trump is that he can say and do anything, and his base will believe it and support it. The "anti-Trump" alliance is more discerning and won't necessarily vote for anyone who opposes him. You saw that when Hillary failed to pick up all the Bernie supporters in '16
Biden's biggest issue is that he's promising to go back to 2008... well, the fact is, many people are not doing well and haven't been now for a decade or more. Just having someone in the white house who's not a drooling moron, or a fascist, isn't a particularly high bar, and isn't going to bring jobs and growth to West Virginia, PA or MI.
Goddamn malapportioned Senate.
Here's the thing: it is pretty much guaranteed that a large majority of voters will vote to put Democrats into the Senate. And because of Wyoming voters having 58 times as much power as California voters, the Senate may still be controlled by Republicans.
If we can get a nice big wave election, we have an outside chance of shoving McConnell out of the Senate, but it's infuriating that we have to get well over 60% of the votes to have a chance of having 51% of the Senate. It's undemocratic.
Abolish the Senate. I want that to be a meme.
it absolutely amazes me that I have heard how Trump is causing a "constitutional crisis" over and over again for the last year. However, as we approach the next election, I hear the other side preaching to eliminate the electoral college system, abolish the senate, and pack the supreme court. So if you lose the game, change the rules. Sorry, but no. Things that have worked for a couple centuries don't need to be changed, this is the constitutional crisis! Please stop trying to rip apart our country because you lost an election.
Bill Weld is almost certainly just running as a spoiler, but there is a chance Trump won't be there in November 2020 and the GOP will need someone else. Pence has the personality of a plant.
When the GOP hate machine gears up, they throw things against the wall on a Democrat until something begins to get traction, then they push it. For Bill Clinton, it was his infidelity and the fact that when Hillary is accused of something, her first reaction is to act like a guilty person covering her crimes. A friend of my SO's is the same way, she's been arrested three times because she acted guilty when approached by the police. One time she was out walking her dog late at night when the cops were investigating a prowler call.
For Obama, I saw them try and throw everything against the wall until they found racism and the fact his father was not American. The racism had to be mostly played on the down low, but the GOP heard the dog whistles and reacted.
Regardless of who the next Democratic president is, the GOP will work to tear the person apart. The next Democratic president could tick all the boxes for the Evangelical's idea of the second coming of Jesus and they would still succeed in convincing the base that the Democrat's guy is terrible. They have convinced many Evangelicals that someone who ticks off every box for their anti-Christ is their guy.
If the Democrats nominate someone non-white, we'll see more of the racism. A woman will get misogyny. Biden will be cast as a sex predator. Bernie as a Communist and/or a Venezuelan style socialist. Buttigeig will get a heap of homophobia. It really doesn't matter, whatever sticks, they will use it, no matter how horrible.
The odds of the Democrats winning the White House are better than the Senate and that does concern me, though the Republicans are playing defense this time around. This time the Republicans are defending 22 seats and the Democrats only 12. Only one Democratic seat is really in play, that would be Doug Jones' seat in Alabama.
Most of the Republicans are in red states, but there are some possible pick ups with the right candidates. Maine and Colorado are the most vulnerable, but I think Arizona, Alaska, Montana, Iowa, and even Kentucky and Georgia might be possible pick ups. Arizona and Montana are in the process of turning purple, Trump's popularity in Iowa has fallen off a cliff and Jodi Ernst is a nutter. Alaska has an independent spirit and if Mark Begich ran again, he has a shot at retaking the seat. Kentucky has a very popular ex-governor who is a Democrat and McConnell is the lowest rated senator in his home state. Georgia is another state that is turning more purple and there are rumors Stacey Abrahms might run for the senate. I wish Beto would drop his presidential bid and run for Cornyn's seat in Texas. If GOP fortunes slide further in the next year, he'd have a shot at taking that seat.
These is a lot of attention being given to the Senate by the insiders, but the media is ignoring it. Organizations like Indivisible are getting attention for their efforts with the presidential campaign, but they are also working down ballot too.
Not only does Congress need to change, but so do more state legislatures. That takes a lot of down ballot work.
We don't know what is going on deep down in the FBI and other agencies. My SO read a blog written by a career DOJ lawyer who personally knows Mueller and Rosenstein. Both came up through the ranks at DOJ. Rosenstein both interns for Mueller and his first job at the DOJ after passing the bar was working for Mueller. Barr came in as a political appointee. He knows the top tiers of the DOJ, but not all the lower levels.
Mueller did quite a few things to ensure the investigation continued even if he was fired. The blogger pointed out that Rosenstein and Mueller knew how to bury an investigation in the DOJ without the top tiers knowing what was going on. They had personal connections to people they knew could be trusted and the probably used them.
A counter-intelligence investigation might be going on and nobody in the top tiers of the DOJ or the government know about it.
As for the Atlantic story. To charge someone with a crime, you need 90% certainty they did it and you can prove it in court. Mueller may have only been able to get to 80%, so he didn't accuse Trump of a crime he couldn't prove. He couldn't prove Trump had directly conspired with the Russians, so he didn't say he did. Just like organized crime bosses, the cops may know who is guilty at the top, but they can't prove it, so they get the kingpin on something else they can prove like tax fraud. That's why those tax fraud laws were passed in the first place.
Hillary tried to ignore the bullying and it didn't work well. At that level in politics, you need to take the bullying and turn it on the bully. Make them look like an idiot. At his best, Obama was good at that.
The number of Bernie supporters who didn't vote for Hillary was very small. The media makes a big deal about them, but it's a tiny slice of the electorate. There were a number of factors that helped Trump win:
1) African American vote was down - in part because there was not a black person on the ballot, but the Republicans have also been effective at turning away potential Democratic voters. The Republican governments in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania were very good at this. The vote in the Detroit area was down dramatically compared to past presidential elections.
2) Hillary Clinton was one of the worst candidates the Democrats had put up in decades.
3) Trump got disaffected white men who had given up voting to turn out. Since the early 1980s the percentage of the white vote in every presidential election has gone down by around 2% (0.5% a year). That has slowly favored Democrats more and more as it has become the party for non-whites. But Trump reduced the decrease from 2012 to 2016 to only about 0.2%. His allies in the above mentioned states helped suppress the non-white vote, but he also got some white people to vote for the first time or the first time in many years.
Even with all that Hillary Clinton won a healthy majority of the popular vote. Because of the way the electoral college works, she didn't win the votes she needed in certain states and lost the election. This time around, there is no complacency about the upper Midwest, the three key states in the upper Midwest she lost in surprise squeakers all have Democratic governors now. Iowa is also back in the Democratic camp. Florida has a number of factors that is going to make it tougher for the GOP to win, though the new governor is going to try everything.
Any of the candidates running for the nomination that have gotten any TV coverage are better campaigners than Hillary. She was an awful candidate and the nomination process had more of the tone of a coronation than an actual campaign.
2020 is a completely different world from 2016. Trump won a squeaker despite his claims. Several unlikely things lined up in his favor (many with nefarious help). Most of the advantages he had in 2016 are completely gone now.
But 2020 can't just be another edge election with mixed results. The Republican cancer has to be removed and that can only be done with a rout across the country. There is no scenario where they lose every contested seat, but there needs to be a big loss, not just the presidency but the Senate as well as state houses to really have an impact. If we're going to return to normality, the current Republican party needs to be forced out and a new conservative movement build a new, sane right leaning party.
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