This Week in Election Night, 2020 (Week 3)
week three brings a deluge of essays and pieces long enough that i'm going to break this week down by the candidate. news today is sorted by candidate, while opinion will remain unsorted for now since there's not much going on there worth talking about. i've also, for clarity's sake, added a [LONGFORM] note to the longer pieces in this slate for those of you on a time crunch.
the usual note: common sense should be able to generally dictate what does and does not get posted in this thread. 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.
News
Bernie Sanders
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from the Huffington Post: Bernie Sanders Says Felons Should Be Able To Vote While In Prison. bernie sanders called for the end of felony disenfranchisement over the week, which is a thing that almost all states do currently in some form. iowa in particular has possibly the most severe such law, something that the republican governor kim reynolds has been (unsuccessfully) trying to change, making it a fairly large issue there. this currently is not a litmus test for the Democratic Party, but don't expect it to go away, because the ACLU is pushing for candidates to adopt it as a plank.
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from Jacobin: Votes For All. for a leftist take on the above, Jacobin has you covered. this article mostly focuses on the historical push by socialist and socialist-adjacent movements in america to do away with felony disenfranchisement and achieve universal suffrage, and sanders in that broader context.
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from Slate: The Favorite: Can Bernie Sanders finally start acting like the one thing he’s never been?. slate mostly focuses on sanders's curious status as a genuine goliath in this race here, in contrast to the underdog status which has characterized basically the entirety of his political career previously. in many respects, this is unprecedented territory for sanders, and it is a genuine question whether he'll be able to adapt to that fact (or if he'll need to at all).
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from TIME: Sen. Bernie Sanders Unveils New 'Medicare for All' Plan With Support From Some 2020 Rivals. policy wise, sanders unveiled his idea of what medicare for all looks like. this appears to have the support of gillibrand, warren, booker, and harris, who signed on to it (although they've also signed on to less things like a public option), so at least for now, you could probably say it's the leading healthcare reform option on the table.
Pete Buttigieg
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from CBS News and TIME: Buttigieg challenges Pence on LGBTQ rights: "Your quarrel is with my creator"; Pete Buttigieg Criticizes Vice President Pence in Speech About LGBTQ Rights: 'Your Quarrel, Sir, Is With My Creator'. buttigieg is the first person i'm aware of to take shots at either of trump or pence besides sanders, who has led with it the whole of his campaign so far. it's not surprising that the inflection point here is LGBT rights--buttigieg is gay, obviously--but for a presidential campaign, this is fairly unprecedented.
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from NBC News: Pence: Buttigieg is attacking my faith to stand out in 2020 crowd. pence responded to buttigieg's remarks this morning by the way and basically called it a political ploy. i suspect this is not the last we will hear of this particular issue between the two.
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from Slate: How Astonishing Is Mayor Pete’s Rise?. slate has an article on the meteoric rise of buttigieg--although it does note that it's not all roses for buttigieg, who is still only polling about as well as cory booker and amy klobuchar despite basically becoming a media golden boy in the past few weeks. still, buttigieg is doing an order of magnitude better than you'd expect of someone whose mayorship presided over a city of a little over 100,000 people. (compare this guardian article which i highlighted in the last thread).
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from Buzzfeed News: [LONGFORM] What Happened When Pete Buttigieg Tore Down Houses In Black And Latino South Bend. of course, pete also has skeletons which are bound to come out, and his redevelopment plans in south bend probably count as those. officially they were successful, but some people do (understandably) contend that came at the cost of people and essentially led to gentrification in parts of south bend. whether that's a knock on him or just the cost of doing business as mayor of a rust belt city, i leave to you.
Kamala Harris
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from The Atlantic: [LONGFORM] Kamala Harris Takes Her Shot. this is a pretty comprehensive piece on harris, who made a big splash early but is now mostly trying to tread water without losing further ground to bernie and biden or giving up position to warren, buttigieg, or o'rourke. it's humanizing, but it also covers a lot of the criticisms and contradictions of harris's political history, and some of the nagging questions surrounding her political positions as she bids for the white house. if you're curious about or unfamiliar of what some of those criticisms people often launch at her are, this piece is probably for you.
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from Buzzfeed News: Kamala Harris Wants Her Teacher Pay Raise Proposal To Bring Young Black Americans To The Profession — And To Her Campaign. as far as policy, harris has been staking her wagon to teachers in the form of pay raises. those of you who pay attention to the news might have heard her bring this up previously, as it's been an early feature of her campaign so far. it'll be interesting to see if other people take up the beat if she finds success with this issue--so far nobody really has, explicitly speaking, which might be because it's gotten relatively little attention.
Everybody else
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from TIME: California Rep. Eric Swalwell Announces Candidacy for the 2020 Presidential Race. just in case the race wasn't crowded enough for you, eric swalwell decided to become "significant" candidate number 19 in the clowncar of a race that this is. i have no idea what he's running on or what he's angling himself to be, i'm afraid, but i'm sure CBS has it over at the 2020 contenders page.
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from Dissent Magazine: [LONGFORM] Yang Gang Education: If Andrew Yang’s fans are this excited about UBI, imagine how they’ll feel when they learn what socialism can do for them.. this piece is a fairly straightforward critique from the left of andrew yang's UBI proposal and some of the problems that will likely inhibit it from doing what yang wants it to do; however, it's also a general discussion of yang's supporter base and how their support for him is perhaps indicative of receptiveness to more leftist ideas than just UBI.
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from NBC News: Warren targets big business with $1 trillion 'profits' tax. warren has remained mostly on the policy beat so far in her campaign, and this is just the latest of the big sweeping policies she's seeking to sell to the american public. in case you've missed out on her other big policies, see her WaPo op-ed on her proposed Corporate Executive Accountability Act, and her Medium post on her proposed farming policy.
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from Vox: Kirsten Gillibrand used to have moderate positions on immigration and guns. Voters want to know why she’s changed.. kirsten gillibrand is running a pretty sleepy campaign so far, of which this might be the biggest recent headline. she's repositioned herself a bit in the trump era, and she's currently the senator who votes with him least often according to 538, but previously she's been a more moderate voice in congress. people haven't let that slide, and it does suggest her efforts to sell herself as the "resistance" candidate probably aren't helping her campaign much. maybe things will change, but things aren't looking great for her so far.
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from the Huffington Post: Senator Cory Booker Announces He’ll Offer Bill To Study Potential Reparations. cory booker is pushing the reparations litmus test into some form of actual legislative action, signalling that we're probably going to have that become a wedge issue in this primary on top of some of the other stuff. that'll be a fun conversation.
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from the Huffington Post: Amy Klobuchar Says She’s Raised More Than $5.2 Million For Her Presidential Campaign. amy klobuchar's fundraising numbers are about where booker was, so behind beto, sanders, harris, and buttigieg. given where she's polling, that's probably about what you'd expect. there will definitely no shortage of money in this primary.
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finally, from The Atlantic: Mike Gravel’s Plan to Rock the Democratic Primary. those of you who read the first week of this may remember the Buzzfeed News piece on mike gravel's then newly-launched campaign to make the democratic primary stage. he might not make it, but so far it's not for lack of trying--his campaign has 8,000 donors, and the american left is putting a decent amount of weight behind him so far. i think most of us can at least agree it'd be pretty entertaining to see him on stage, so on some level i do hope he makes it.
Opinion/Ideology-driven
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from In These Times: The Case for Using Ranked Choice Voting in the 2020 Democratic Presidential Primaries. this article makes the case for the primaries using ranked choice voting which, to be honest, would probably really help when there are literally going to be like sixteen people in iowa next year (especially given the fact that the democratic party has a 15% popular vote threshold for attaining any delegates in a state). this will definitely not happen this year, but maybe we'll see movement in the future toward something like RCV being used.
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from The Week: The Democratic Party Is Not Going Nuts. It's Coming to Its Senses.. this piece by The Week puts foward the argument that the lurch to the left by the Democratic Party isn't some sort of weird mirroring of the lurch to the right in the GOP, but rather the Democratic Party realizing that centrism isn't really what people want. whether or not that's an accurate assessment, i'll leave to you.
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finally, from The Guardian: Barack Obama is stuck in the past. He represents the old Democratic party. this piece is by bhaskar sunkara, who you may know as one of the figureheads of Jacobin. his case here is mostly that obama's remarks last week about cautioning the party to not become a circular firing squad are motivated more by his desire to continue to hold power within the party than by genuine desire to see the party succeed. again, whether or not that's an accurate assessment, i'll leave to you.
anyways, feel free to as always contribute other interesting articles you stumble across, or comment on some of the ones up there.
edit: some minor grammar stuff
this week has been quite bad for joe biden. let's laugh as it gets worse for him: Letters from Joe Biden reveal how he sought support of segregationists in fight against busing
he really should have just stayed on the sidelines, i think.
Right now I'm skeptical of all of these policy objectives that all of the candidates have. I hope that these will be implemented in American society today, but if there is anything I've found is that primary season is generally where candidates make big claims like this, but the presidential race leads to them backing down a bit.
The primary and the general are aimed at different audiences, so you'd expect different tones to them. By the time someone has won the primary they don't have to market to the people who got them that far nearly as much. They then have to appeal to a broader audience for the general, and what polls well to their wing won't do as well across the nation.
Something tells me that Bernie isn't going to dial it back much. He's consistent and likeable. To be fair, Trump also powered his campaign with that, depending on those who liked him. I see Biden marching in at the last possible minute, with a machine behind him.
But then that begs the question of whether or not they will actually try to enact what they are promising?
Oh, yeah. I'm not making any statement about their likelihood of enacting anything, purely the marketing of themselves while they try to get elected.
Feel you. Regardless, I really hope that this cycle brings in a group of people who will actually try to make some improvements, not just talk.
i mean, yeah. realistically, most of the policy proposals democrats have going on are less about upon taking office actually implementing the policies and more about pushing them into the public conscious. democrats are unlikely to take the senate in 2020 (and a divided congress isn't going to pass most of them), and so it's probably better to think of a lot of these proposals as a wishlist for the two years after the 2022 elections and the time before that point as the period to have the public discussion on them.
But do you think the Democrats can take the senate by 2022?
yeah. the map is actually pretty straightforward. they could arguably do so in 2020, if they're lucky enough: carry four of five of colorado, maine, arizona, north carolina, and alabama while winning the presidential election which would make a 50-50 split. (stretch alternative/additional seats that might be lobbed in there are iowa, montana, and texas).
even if they only carry three of five, though, that's still 51-49, which is very makeable given the 2022 map. from there, it's a matter of taking literally two (or 3, if they lose arizona) of wisconsin, pennsylvania, florida, north carolina, iowa, and ohio, all of which are states they've had success in previously.
So if I'm correct, what we're looking at is that they need to win at least 3 states to have a majority in the senate? (The States of Colorado, Maine, Arizona, North Carolina, Alabama, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Florida, Iowa, or Ohio)
If that's so I'll give you that looks like a pretty optimistic scenario. I'm not sure how that will be affected if a democrat was to take the White House, as generally midterms almost always go to the opposing party and I am expecting the Republicans to put up a serious fight in 2020 and 2022.
Still, generally so far this race I'm trying to expect the unexpected, as the Republicans have seemingly beat the official expectations in the past two elections (Winning big in 2016, and big but not as big as expected Blue Wave in 2018). Obviously it's a little early to determine what will happen, still I think that this election will be at the least a great yardstick to see how America has changed politically since 2016 (and I think most people can agree A LOT has happened since then). I'm especially interested to see how the changes in culture and demographics affect the election. To see how the ever increasing latin influence in places like Southern Texas tips towards one party or another. Or to even see how the culture that has created MAGA has changed in the past four years (as I admit I do not spend very much time in that part of the internet/society). There is a lot in play with this one, and it's interesting to think of how all these pieces will affect each other in so many different ways.
yes, over the course of the next two sets of senate elections, although really it's more like holding what they have now (or making up what they lose if they don't) + three of colorado, maine, arizona x2, north carolina x2, wisconsin, pennsylvania, florida, iowa x2, ohio, or some other off-the-radar states.
this is mildly revisionist, though. in 2016 donald outperformed pundit expectations, but polling (which is what matters) was pretty on the mark about his chances, and in 2018 democrats basically hit the midway point of what most modeling expected (virtually every major model had them picking up somewhere between 15 and 60 seats in the process of flipping the house with the midpoint being around 40 most of the time, and they ended up picking up 40--possibly 41, depending on the outcome of the rerun of the outstanding north carolina house race).
I'll give you that, it's probably a bit revisionist. All I'm trying to say is that I'm trying to be cautiously optimistic, especially this early in the election. Regardless, I'll watching closely with my bag of popcorn and ballot in hand.
here's something you don't see especially often: the media focusing on logo branding. The 2020 Democrats' campaign logos, in graphic detail. my take is that most of these are acceptable (with maybe the exception of inslee's which looks like something straight out of 1997; he should probably hire another graphic designer) but that of all of them castro probably has the best, which kinda shows you that branding only does so much for you.