in the interest of trying to slightly curtail the domination of politics in ~news for people who don't care for it while also consolidating discussion for people who potentially do, i think we should try one of those weekly threads that's so hip and popular on the rest of tildes, so here we go: this is a test run of a weekly thread on 2020 presidential news/analysis/etc. it's probably not going to get any lighter from here, news wise, so it might pay to establish a recurring topic like this before the media really gets rolling with election coverage (and potentially before ~news becomes a deluge of 2020 topics).

i think common sense should be able to generally dictate what does and does not get posted in this thread if it works out, so i guess i'll just say: if it's big news or feels like big news, probably make it its own post instead of lobbing it in here. like the other weekly threads, this one is going to try to focus on things that are still discussion worthy, but wouldn't necessarily make good/unique/non-repetitive discussion starters as their own posts.

leading off (and demonstrating that there really is going to be no dearth of 2020 primary and election news about this despite this week being pretty quiet on that front):

from NBC - Why some Democrats say: Don't sleep on 'Mayor Pete' Buttigieg. buttigieg is a pretty small candidate in a field of big names, but that hasn't put the damper on people's optimism for him as this NBC piece shows. i personally don't think he's got the runway necessary for takeoff, but with the debates, who knows. it might be that the debates stratify the field even more than it's already stratified--or it might be that they level it out a bit, to the benefit of people like buttigieg

from Buzzfeed - The Romance Of Mayor Pete In The Season Of Scam. another piece on buttigieg. this one is a bit light on substance and is basically an opinion piece, but if you're curious about buttigieg's qualifications you might be interested in it.

from Heavy - Bernie Sanders’ Los Angeles Rally Draws So Many, Overflow Crowd Fills City Hall Steps Across the Street [PHOTOS]. bernie sanders made the second of three stops in california yesterday, and he drew a pretty major crowd that's currently estimated at around 15k--and could potentially be as high as 20k or 25k, depending on the setup of the venue. his stop the day before was in san diego where he drew a crowd of about 6,400, and today he'll be in san francisco, which could lead to an early messaging and marketing win if he can draw a comparable crowd to kamala harris's kickoff in oakland (which drew 20k).

from The Guardian - The B-Team: are Beto, Biden and Bernie the best Democrats can offer?. i'll let this one present itself: "...But three of the top-polling candidates for 2020 so far are white men: Vermont senator Bernie Sanders, O’Rourke and former vice-president Joe Biden, who has not even declared his candidacy. Does that present a problem?" one of the big criticisms of the democratic party is that, even as it diversifies its slate of candidates across the board, its biggest hitters generally remain white and male, especially in this presidential election. whether or not that's a particularly valid criticism, i'll leave up to you.

from POLITICO - Harris and O'Rourke go straight for each other's strongholds. sanders wasn't the only one buzzing around this week: o'rourke and harris have both been on tours of their own in states that will be pretty instrumental to the path of any democrat that wants to win the nomination. o'rourke, you may remember (tildes discussion), is the current day-one fundraising leader, and it appears we now actually have his individual donor numbers now (112,000, average donation of $55). so far, he doesn't appear to have parlayed that into particularly large crowd sizes (and outside of her campaign launch, harris hasn't really either) but we're still very early on, so i anticipate as their campaigns ramp up they'll start pulling larger numbers.

from NBC - Beto O'Rourke could be a threat — to Biden on his right and Sanders on his left. this article, as you can probably guess by its title, mostly focuses on how beto is trying to position himself in the primary, but also how some of the people he appeals to feel about his candidacy and why they support him.

lastly, from NPR - Small Donors Hold The Key To Campaign Buzz And The Democrats' Debate Stage. this NPR article on push by democrats to incentivize campaigns to build up their small donor bases in the leadup to 2020. the democrats have pretty much always been the undisputed champions of small-donor politics since the internet became a significant player in american politics, mostly on the back of things like actblue. nevertheless, there are still a lot of places they've been looking to improve (and it's really only a matter of time before republicans build infrastructure of their own), so it makes sense that they're really trying to shore up that advantage where they can while they can.

this isn't even every article that i could have tossed on here, but i've already been working on this post for like an hour, so i think that'll suffice for now. feel free to contribute other interesting articles or comment on some of the ones up there.

For those of you not following the NBA too closely you might not be aware but tonight the Magic play the Heat. For about the past month or so the two teams have been battling out for the final seed in the Eastern Conference Playoffs. I'll re-cap why this is so important for the Magic since they're the team I support and maybe some Heat fans can hit back with a reply for why it's so important to them.

1. In the 2011-2012 season the Magic entered a dark period called the "Dwightmare" where their best player who had led them to an NBA final Dwight Howard began stirring up drama within the organisation. Dwight was traded in the offseason to the Lakers giving serious deja vu of Shaq's time in Orlando. Since 2012 the Magic have consistently been cursed to mediocrity and missing the playoffs.

2. Magic star Nikola Vucevic (a player acquired from the Dwight trade) has been constantly underrated and disrespected by people around the NBA. After 7 seasons Vuc has finally made the All Star team and has led this team to exceed the expectations set at the beginning of the season. It is also important to note that Vuc has not made the playoffs either since 2012 when he was playing with the 76ers.

3. The Magic are 0.5 games behind the Heat, whoever wins this match will take the 8th seed from the other and likely bring a lot of motivation and momentum into their next games therefore being more likely to make the playoffs.

There's many more storylines to this match than I've put in here but I feel that this gets the main gist of why it's so important to fans of the Magic.

In 2016, I was an ardent supporter of Bernie. But come the general, I voted 3rd party, because I was "Bernie or Bust." Many people accuse me of indirectly voting for Trump, allowing "the worst thing ever" to happen (esp since I'm in a swing state that went Trump). But here's the truth as I see it: Voting Democrat regardless of candidate, with their only qualification being "Not Trump," will only increase the USA's slide (deeper) into fascism.

The reality I see is that even if Trump had never entered the 2016 race, 90%+ of the policy, judicial appointments, and everything else that he has done since being elected would be identical no matter which "R" candidate won the race, because all of these things are exactly what the GOP has been doing for decades. In that regard, I consider Trump more favorable than any other R candidate, because he is at least failing to do his "real" job: Hiding fascist, imperialist policy behind a charismatic smile and some clever words.

Ultimately, this is the reason why I don't generally support Democrats either. Hillary's policy wouldn't have been as immediately destructive as the GOP agenda, but it also would not have stopped the march towards fascism. I voted my conscious in 2016, and will do so again in 2020. I just hope there are more people willing to do the same this time around.

I like to picture that the government of the USA is digging a hole. With every shovelful, we're sliding ever closer to a fully authoritarian fascist regime, and the destruction of our planet. While Trump (and the GOP as a whole) has been calling in for backhoes and drills to speed the process....as far as I can tell, only two candidates in the 2020 primary are calling to stop the digging: Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders. At best, the other candidates are conveying messages akin to: "We need to compromise with the GOP and maybe slow down the rate at which we allow new backhoes to be brought to the pit."

In my mind then, it makes more sense for 4 more years of Trump, than to allow another center-right candidate for his opposition. Because at least Trump isn't able to pull off the charismatic smile and/or intelligent language that the Regan's, Bush's, Clinton's, and Obama's of the world have that allow terrible things to continue behind a cloak of "incremental change." It wakes up those who would otherwise tolerate these horrendous acts, and perhaps inspires them to become more active. By allowing for the political discourse to end with "Anything is better than Trump", it just permits the overall platform to gradually, but continually shift to the right.

And in my mind, it is the total death of real, dissenting voices in public discourse that is far, far worse than Trump winning another term could ever be.

I would love to hear if anybody else in this community has had feelings akin to what I've described here, as I've only been described as "insane" by most of the people I've discussed this with in person.