buttigieg is probably(?) to the left of the center in this pack of candidates, but i dunno if i'd even call him a social democrat type candidate considering that he plays himself up as a...
I'm hoping when it comes down to it Buttigieg and Sanders end up as the two primary choices for Democrats as (relatively) "more" socialist vs center left soc dem. This primary will be integral in deciding the future of the party and it will be better if it doesn't come down to just Bernie and a bunch of Dems trying to ape him.
buttigieg is probably(?) to the left of the center in this pack of candidates, but i dunno if i'd even call him a social democrat type candidate considering that he plays himself up as a "democratic capitalist" (and we should also asterisk all of this as "in the american sense" since he certainly isn't a socdem to a european). i think the jury is out in general where he stands politically as of now, though. he hasn't defined himself very much yet, and his brief political experience in a fairly small polity with a relatively unique set of issues is very hard to map to a national election where there are much broader, sweeping issues to run on and address.
i'm mostly curious at this point if buttigieg is going to eventually slip in polling like beto did, considering that he's very similar to beto (both young, charismatic white dudes from pretty...
i'm mostly curious at this point if buttigieg is going to eventually slip in polling like beto did, considering that he's very similar to beto (both young, charismatic white dudes from pretty small polities with hard-to-map political views) and seems to basically be angling for the same lane that beto has been. his rise has been meteoric, but i'm not sure it's exactly sustainable in the long term even if he actually starts talking about what he believes because there are just so many other candidates who sorta overlap with where he seems to be and beto, who seems nearly identical to him.
you're presenting these like they're distinguishing, but honestly if anything this... sorta proves my point in another way? he's smart, but you're overplaying the value of his education relative...
you're presenting these like they're distinguishing, but honestly if anything this... sorta proves my point in another way?
He went to Harvard and was a Rhodes Scholar receiving first-class honors in philosophy, politics and economics. His parents aren't alum from Harvard, nor are they particularly rich, he got in on his own accord. This is a very intelligent man. He was the president of some political student advisory committee at Harvard and wrote his thesis on American foreign policy. He has a mind for politics.
he's smart, but you're overplaying the value of his education relative to other people in the race here. most of these people got into very prestigious schools without being grandfathered in or getting in because of their socioeconomics:
cory booker (parents were executives at IBM) is a rhodes scholar who went to Oxford and then to Yale
jay inslee (working class parents) went to Stanford
bernie sanders (immigrant family, basically working poor) went to UChicago which is generally considered a top 20 university in the world
kamala harris (father was an econ professor at stanford, mother was an immigrant) went to Howard which is a top 100 university in the world and usually considered the second best HBCU in america
julian castro (working class parents; second gen immigrant) went to Stanford and then Harvard
amy klobuchar (working class parents) was magna cum laude at Yale
john delaney (father was a construction worker, paid his tuition on scholarships) went to Columbia
even andrew yang, who has like no shot, still went to Brown and then Columbia Law
ironically, two of the front runners of the race, biden and warren, are actually pretty average like you describe of beto. biden went to UDelaware which is a good school but by far the weakest of the lot and yet he has been a politician for literally close to fifty years; warren straight up has no prestigious schools on her resume, and yet she's a policy machine not comparable to really anyone else in the race. education means pretty much fuck all, honestly, and it's not necessarily a good bar by which to judge candidates.
He was a naval intelligence officer in the Navy Reserve since 2009, and deployed to Afghanistan in 2014. Theres a lot we don't need to say about U.S. deployment to the middle east and the unjustness of those wars, however, there are skills and traits that deployment can instill in someone that I don't think we should discount. Responsibility, service, adaptability/resourcefulness, perseverance, dealing with adversity, leadership. Most importantly, he has experience dealing with the military that I would consider an invaluable skill for the commander in chief. Not to mention he has a grounds eye view of the deployment (albeit only 7 months).
this is really the only thing he has exclusively going for him, but only as far as the viable candidates. gabbard was deployed and is also still active military.
edit: this is also like, the entire point of military advisers and, to an extent, the secretary of state position.
He has a successful career at McKinsey, which I hate because it's fucking McKinsey, but I am listing as a pro because (assuming he's not a Manchurian Candidate) management consulting is great for developing skills important to the managerial role of a President, as well as giving insight to modern analytical managerial techniques.
unless we're about to consider senator tom cotton and former governor bobby jindal (or, if you would prefer, chelsea clinton) as great managers of their respective positions, i don't think this logically follows from being a former employee of a major consulting firm. (being in managerial positions is also probably something just about every politician in human history has ever done at one point or another in their life, too, so i don't think this is particularly meaningful even if we ignore that).
He is gay. And while he's the most bog-standard, straight-acting gay possible, it puts him in a position that is invaluable to the LGBTQ community. We are going through an incredibly important time for queer rights, and having someone that is, at least, on the periphery of the culture, with some experience in it would be invaluable to moving LGBTQ civil rights forward. It also acts as more of a catalyst for the acceptance of the community.
i know you mean this in an endearing way but (1) this comes off as casually insulting and reeks of all the wrong forms of identity politics; (2) what is "straight-acting gay" supposed to mean, exactly?; and (3) there are no less than thirteen openly LGBT members of congress (2 senators, 11 representatives), so buttigieg isn't exactly breaking some untrodden ground in government here. he wouldn't even be the first, second, or third current openly gay head of state either if he was elected--he'd be fourth, and the sixth overall. also, while it'd be nice if an LGBT person was elected president, him being gay is literally one of the last reasons why people should be voting for him--his sexuality has almost no bearing on how he's going to govern, just as obama's skin color had next to no bearing on how he governed. there are times where identity politics are good and make sense, but buttigieg's candidacy is really not one of those times.
with respect to beto:
His business career was mostly a failure.
this clearly doesn't mean a lot considering who is currently president, so...
And to finish it off he couldn't even beat quite possibly the most disliked and repulsive Senator in the United States.
yes, by 2%, in only the closest downballot race of any kind in texas since 1994, in a state that voted for donald trump by 9%, against a senator who had decent approval ratings and was wildly popular with the people who liked him. this is genuinely the dumbest criticism of beto possible. he did absurdly well for a democrat, and literally singlehandedly made the state competitive while being one of the best fundraisers in recent political history. he outright won a majority of the state legislative districts despite losing the state by 2%, and his campaign will most likely be the model for future democratic races in the state at all levels.
to be honest, it's mostly because of people like yourself treating him like the big hit the democratic party needs when he has literally only held elective office for a mayorship of a city of...
I'll be honest with you, I don't fully "get it". Socialists are treating his rise something akin to Fox News and Ocasio-Cortez. There's a weird level of fear when the guy has zero chance at unseating Bernie. I was especially confused to see Nathan Robinson wrote 15,000 words dissecting the guys airy autobiography, by picking and choosing lines out of the book.
to be honest, it's mostly because of people like yourself treating him like the big hit the democratic party needs when he has literally only held elective office for a mayorship of a city of 100,000 people. he is--outside of minor candidates like messiam and non-politicians like yang--basically the least experienced "major" candidate in the race, and exacerbating that is the fact that nobody knows what the fuck he stands for. i've been following him literally since he announced because i'm into politics and i have no idea what the fuck he stands for. hell, you admitted as much up thread, lol. maybe we should learn what he thinks is the right course for america before people start treating him like they were treating beto "white obama" o'rourke a month ago and pushing for him to be president.
Now to see you, a poster I hold in relatively high regard, insinuate that going to Harvard (#1 in the world) and being a Rhodes Scholar (0.7% acceptance rate) at Oxford (#5 in the world) doesn't mean much, certainly flummoxes me. How can I argue with that? That's anti-intellectualism.
well, it literally doesn't, not least because he shares a field with cory booker--who like i said is also a rhodes scholar who got into yale and oxford--and a bunch of other people who have gone to some of the most prestigious institutions in the world, but also because, once again, education is a largely useless metric by which to evaluate candidates. that's not an anti-intellectual stance by any stretch of the word, and calling it such is really fucking weird because being well educated and going to prestigious schools doesn't mean you know how to run a political campaign, win a presidential election, or govern effectively. i mean, i literally pointed out biden and warren as examples of this--two front runners with comparatively pretty bleh education, but incredibly significant political careers and decent shots at winning the presidency.
And of course most of the candidates have gone to good schools, however it is the mix of qualities and not the single quality that makes the candidate. To insinuate that Brown (#99 worldwide) and Howard (#400 worldwide, not top 100) can even compare to being a Rhode Scholar and Harvard alum is ridiculous. Even insinuating attending UChicago, as prestigious at it is, is equivalent to a Rhodes Scholarship is astounding.
i like that you cherrypicked those two low hanging fruit and ignored the qualifications of booker, inslee, castro, klobuchar, and delaney, and also ignored yang also going to columbia law on top of being a howard alumni, but that's fine i guess. oh and no, howard is literally a top 100 school by pretty much every metric we bother to use to rank schools:
Howard is classified as a Tier 1 national university (No. 89) and ranks second among HBCUs by U.S. News & World Report.[4] Howard is the only HBCU ranked in the top 40 on the Bloomberg Businessweek college rankings.[5] The Princeton Review ranked the school of business first in opportunities for minority students and in the top five for most competitive students.[6] The National Law Journal ranked the law school among the top 25 in the nation for placing graduates at the most successful law firms.[7] Howard has produced four Rhodes Scholars between 1986 and 2017.[8] Between 1998 and 2018, Howard University produced two Marshall Scholars, eleven Truman Scholars, seventy Fulbright Scholars, a Schwarzman Scholar and twenty-two Pickering Fellows.[9] Howard produces the most black doctorate recipients of any university.[10][11]
so yeah, dunno where you got that number from, but it's bunk.
Again, let's not treat "being in a managerial position" as the same thing as working at fucking McKinsey. That is the best (or worst depending on your political stance) and most prestigious consulting company on the planet. It is not just a "major" consulting firm, it is the major consulting firm. They are kept on retainer by 80% of the world's top companies, whole national governments (including authoritarians, which is where the "worst" caveat comes in) and the worlds top non-profits.
okay, then do you genuinely consider tom cotton and bobby jindal to be good managers, or what? both of them are mckinsey alumni, which is why i brought them up, but both of them are widely regarded as pretty shitty people and jindal in particular fucked louisiana badly during his time in office. you're conflating this idea of having credentials with meaning those credentials actually qualify you in any way--those are not necessarily the same thing, and people are not necessarily qualified just because they have connections. you're also doing this with the education piece of this conversation, incidentally.
There were hundreds of black senators and representatives in American history before Barack Obama came along. Does that change what Obama represented to the black community? Does that change the symbolism of his election? Does that change what having the most intelligent well-spoken President in decades meant to black representation in America?
well, speaking as both a black person and a gay person: being black in america is nowhere near the same experience as being gay in america, and obama's symbolism will literally never compare to buttigieg's if he were to win. black people got the shit end of the stick and were literal second class citizens for almost four centuries and the system still systematically fucks them over because of that history; gay people, while they have been historically repressed and discriminated against, do not have nearly that kind of historical or current baggage stacked on them. moreover though, obama's symbolism is somewhat muted by the whole "the person who followed him is systematically erasing his achievements and also is basically a direct response by all the mad, racist white people that still live in this country to his two terms" thing that's kinda going on, so.
Senators and House Reps are not the President. The President of the United States stands alone in its symbolism and importance. The prestige and the meaning behind the position is unparalleled. You're going out of your way on this point especially in trying to discredit Buttigieg. A gay President would be enormously important to the community.
speaking as a gay person: no, it probably wouldn't be at this point. the gay community has already been pretty vindicated by the supreme court, most of the gay rights fight nowadays is at the state level where the law hasn't caught up with the sentiments of the land, and the whole LGBT struggle has basically entirely shifted to trans people at this point because conservatives know they've lost on gay issues. it'd be cool to have a gay president, sure, but it's not going to be a fucking coup or something because while, again, discrimination against gays is a thing that goes on, it's basically a political loser to fuck with them now.
As for "straight-acting", I don't know what your exposure to the gay community is but it's a very common term for those gay men that don't seem to carry any of the stereotypical qualities are cultural quirks of the lifestyle/community. Pretty widely used terminology.
i surround myself with gay people pretty much constantly and i have literally never heard this term, so i don't think it's quite as common as you think it is.
Can we not have an oppression competition, please? It's not helpful to anyone.
black people got the shit end of the stick and were literal second class citizens for almost four centuries and the system still systematically fucks them over because of that history; gay people, while they have been historically repressed and discriminated against, do not have nearly that kind of historical or current baggage stacked on them
Can we not have an oppression competition, please? It's not helpful to anyone.
i don't think it's really an oppression contest to point out that the gay oppressive experience is different from and less severe than the black oppressive experience, but go off.
i don't think it's really an oppression contest to point out that the gay oppressive experience is different from and less severe than the black oppressive experience, but go off.
They are certainly different, but the severity is a matter of perspective, environment, and metric. For example, it's still legal to fire someone for their orientation in my state and gay marriage...
They are certainly different, but the severity is a matter of perspective, environment, and metric.
For example, it's still legal to fire someone for their orientation in my state and gay marriage equality in the US is only a few years old as opposed to over half a century old for racial marriage equality. In some countries, you can get jailed or killed for being gay.
In some families, churches, schools, and other communities, being gay has severe social and moral implications. In other situations, it's not a big deal at all.
I don't think it makes sense to say one oppressive experience is more severe than another in this discussion as it paints with a broad brush and is dismissive of situations where the reverse is true. Your experience is not universal and unless you are talking about specific people or specific situations or specific measures, then the comparison doesn't even make sense.
...just to be clear, i literally do this every week for all of the candidates. it's called the this week in election night thread, lol.
If you are so worried about people supporting Buttigieg perhaps you should be posting informative posts on Sanders/Warren/Whomever. We don't get many of those on tildes.
...just to be clear, i literally do this every week for all of the candidates. it's called the this week in election night thread, lol.
As a resident of Texas, I would certainly have to agree with @Alyaza Beto losing to Texas by a mere 2 points was monumental. He took Cruz down to the wire in a state that went to Trump by nine...
As a resident of Texas, I would certainly have to agree with @Alyaza
Beto losing to Texas by a mere 2 points was monumental. He took Cruz down to the wire in a state that went to Trump by nine points, re-elected Greg Abbott as governor by 13 points(Abbott initially defeated Wendy Davis by a whopping 20 points in 2014 so Dems actually had a stronger showing in 2018), hasn't had a Democrat hold any major state wide office in 20 years, and Democrats hold less than half of the states US House Reps, Texas Senate, and Texas House of Reps seats along with not having elected a Democratic Senator since Bob Krueger left in 1993.
To say Beto faced an uphill climb is an understatement and it would've been a monumental upset if he had managed to pull it off. The fact that he made it as close as he did should be a point in his favor rather than used against him. Even if Ted Cruz is the most disliked Senator, Texans, by and large, are stubborn. We embrace our states heritage and individualism but that also means change is slow. But Beto very nearly pulled it off
The signs, however, are encouraging. He won all the major population centers, almost overwhelmingly so, (Dallas, Harris, Travis, and Bexar Counties with a narrow win in Tarrant Co) and most of the border counties.
There's too much of Texas that's still mired in the "Old South" way of thinking and life. Beto's message just wasn't going to resonate with much of rural Texas where "God, Guns, and Football" still reign supreme
Not OP here. I applaud your research but I think you missed the boat on Warren. She's famously a prestigious professor at Harvard. The Obama's took her class...I can't find a citation for that...
Not OP here.
I applaud your research but I think you missed the boat on Warren. She's famously a prestigious professor at Harvard. The Obama's took her class...I can't find a citation for that because of all the silly Native American stuff, but I recall Michelle talking about it in an interview. Maybe someone else can dig that up.
From wikipedia about Warren's academic career:
Warren joined the University of Pennsylvania Law School as a full professor in 1987 and obtained an endowed chair in 1990, becoming the William A. Schnader Professor of Commercial Law. In 1992 she taught for a year at Harvard Law School as Robert Braucher Visiting Professor of Commercial Law. In 1995 Warren left Penn to become Leo Gottlieb Professor of Law at Harvard Law School.[43] As of 2011 she was Harvard's only tenured law professor who had attended law school at an American public university.[46] Warren was a highly influential law professor. Although she published in many fields, her expertise was in bankruptcy and commercial law. In that field, only Bob Scott of Columbia and Alan Schwartz of Yale were cited more often than Warren.
she has an impressive career as an academic, yes, but my point there isn't about her academic chops, it's about where she got her education (and how it means almost nothing with respect to...
she has an impressive career as an academic, yes, but my point there isn't about her academic chops, it's about where she got her education (and how it means almost nothing with respect to candidate quality).
Your reply seems to imply that you were aware of this when you wrote your original comment. However, this feels like one of those things where if you were aware of it you would have mentioned it...
Your reply seems to imply that you were aware of this when you wrote your original comment.
However, this feels like one of those things where if you were aware of it you would have mentioned it to bolster your point that the college one attends doesn't necessarily determine their quality as a candidate, i.e. "As a further example, Warren didn't attend a prestigious school but went on to become a famous Harvard professor, showing how little one's initial formal education matters in predicting their cognitive ability" That's an example of how you could have used that fact to your advantage in the argument you presented. If you were aware of that, why not include it?
Instead, you're falling back on a very narrow presentation of one's education to prove that your argument is correct. When discussing one's academic background (such as where they went to school), it seems disingenuous not to mention that the person is a well-respected Harvard professor. And doubling-down on that being an intentional omission is only going to lead others to wonder what else you have left out from your post.
However, this feels like one of those things where if you were aware of it you would have mentioned it to bolster your point that the college one attends doesn't necessarily determine their quality as a candidate
i literally did. please actually read my comment.
warren straight up has no prestigious schools on her resume, and yet she's a policy machine not comparable to really anyone else in the race.
I read your comments thoroughly. What you wrote doesn't indicate you were aware of her prestigious academic career - only that she's good at generating policy ideas. Your prior reply tried to...
I read your comments thoroughly. What you wrote doesn't indicate you were aware of her prestigious academic career - only that she's good at generating policy ideas.
Your prior reply tried to narrow your original argument to exclude any consideration of that career, insinuating that you knew about it but didn't mention her career because it didn't pertain to your argument. Now you're saying you were aware of that career and did mention it. So which was it? It can't be both.
I'm sure you can find many ways to dismiss this questioning for a number of reasons, but I think you'd be doing yourself a disservice if you do. Please take some time to consider our exchange and let me know if I've misunderstood anything.
these are the sorts of annoying, pedantic arguments that make me very much dislike the people on this site and make me want to not contribute at all. what you're arguing has absolutely nothing to...
Your prior reply tried to narrow your original argument to exclude any consideration of that career, insinuating that you knew about it but didn't mention her career because it didn't pertain to your argument. Now you're saying you were aware of that career and did mention it. So which was it? It can't be both.
these are the sorts of annoying, pedantic arguments that make me very much dislike the people on this site and make me want to not contribute at all. what you're arguing has absolutely nothing to do with the point i made, which always pertained specifically to educational background. if you read the context of what i was replying to, this is quite clear. i am aware of warren's career in academia--it has literally no bearing on my original point, and no relevance either since the whole point of contention was buttigieg's educational background specifically with respect to other candidates in the race. you are arguing entirely against something i never said and which isn't the point i made at all, and acting like it somehow invalidates my point, and that's beyond dumb.
If the initial reply would have been "Good point. I was aware of that and should have included it in my write-up as it's a great example of how Buttigieg's academic chops are not noteworthy" then...
If the initial reply would have been "Good point. I was aware of that and should have included it in my write-up as it's a great example of how Buttigieg's academic chops are not noteworthy" then we would be having a different, much shorter, side-bar to your main discussion.
I think that the comment about how a Presidential candidate being a Harvard professor is not relevant to a discussion about the educational background of candidates invites just the sort of "annoying, pedantic" discussion that you're seeking to avoid.
I appreciate your contributions and your weekly politics write-ups. Best of luck.
As a former management consultant who has worked in places staffed largely by former management consultants I'm a bit ehhh on this. There is a definite tendency to fall into analysis paralysis, to...
He has a successful career at McKinsey, which I hate because it's fucking McKinsey, but I am listing as a pro because (assuming he's not a Manchurian Candidate) management consulting is great for developing skills important to the managerial role of a President, as well as giving insight to modern analytical managerial techniques.
As a former management consultant who has worked in places staffed largely by former management consultants I'm a bit ehhh on this. There is a definite tendency to fall into analysis paralysis, to overengineer solutions to problems, to shoehorn solutions onto problems that are an awkward fit, and to do a lot of backsolving conclusions into standard "methodology" instead of using a methodology to get to a conclusion.
But these are all dysfunctions that the government already has, just with people who are less smart or driven that a top consultancy, so it'll probably be a wash at the end of the day.
None of these guys are particularly "socialist" except in the right-wing "socialism is when the government does stuff" framing. Sanders is the only who is socialist in name, but in practice his...
None of these guys are particularly "socialist" except in the right-wing "socialism is when the government does stuff" framing. Sanders is the only who is socialist in name, but in practice his proposals are all pretty capitalism friendly frameworks.
This time around the Sanders campaign has been kind of making me embarrassed that I ever took him seriously TBH. They're leaning into stirring up the extremely online crowd and falling into some kind of vague class-reductionism instead of going out with bold and unique policy proposals like he did last time.
When he was a long-shot it was okay to have the policies be vague and aspirational and to be throwing bombs from the sidelines. But when you're a front-runner you need to have this stuff fleshed out more. He had a chance to actually build a campaign with intention this time and instead of going with a focus on how he's going to get the shit he wants done he's decided to go railing against the establishment again, which is so last election's fight. The guy doesn't seem to know how to play from a position of strength. The tendencies that work well when you're an insurgent stop working when you're in the lead and he doesn't seem to get it.
When Warren in the race I'm not sure what Sanders brings to the table. Dude is super old (and so is Warren but less so). She supports the end-goal on most of his policies and then puts out a bunch more ambitious proposals on top of it, all while having a way more thoughtful and well articulated strategy for actually getting from here to there. The genetic testing gaffe is really the only downside.
Socialism isn't just "more left than the Democrats" though. It's an actual political philosophy that's defined by a desire for societal control over the means of production. You can have systems...
Socialism isn't just "more left than the Democrats" though. It's an actual political philosophy that's defined by a desire for societal control over the means of production. You can have systems for universal coverage that are socialist or not socialist depending.
A system like the NHS, where the government directly administers healthcare is socialist. In the US, the Department of Veteran's Affairs and the Defense Health Agency are the same way. A system like Canada's, where the government has a series of publicly funded insurance programs with defined payouts, is also socialist but more a socialization of health insurance rather than socialization of healthcare. In America we also have this, in the form of Medicare/Medicaid.
A proposal that aims for something like Obamacare (but better) where we have private insurers, but strict regulations on them and generous tax subsidies to defray the costs of buying it, isn't socialist because it's animating purpose and goal is to preserve ownership/control over the means of production (in this case, health insurance and health care) in the hands of private entities.
All of these are aiming for universal healthcare, but the socialist ones and the capitalist ones have very different approaches to get there. FWIW, I think the Canada model has been the most successful and resilient in the face of political opposition. The British model works fine as long as you never get a Margaret Thatcher, but as soon as you do you're fucked for what seems to be a generation or more. The American model doesn't work well at all.
I dunno, I think people are sleeping on Biden. As much as I'd rather see Buttigieg or O'Rourke win the primary, Biden has a strong base of support among older and more conservatively minded...
I dunno, I think people are sleeping on Biden. As much as I'd rather see Buttigieg or O'Rourke win the primary, Biden has a strong base of support among older and more conservatively minded Democrats, and I think that'll be a huge asset in the south-eastern races especially. Hillary Clinton got a huge boost through strong showings there, and I wonder if Biden can do the same, especially if Buttigieg and O'Rourke, and Warren and Sanders, siphon votes off each other.
no, he's basically a right-winger at this point in the democratic party. not a genuinely conservative democrat necessarily like you could use to describe joe manchin, but someone who clearly falls...
He's a very moderate Democrat, arguably a centrist, in a political atmosphere in which The People want to move forwards from the past into the new world Washington has been comfortable to ignore.
no, he's basically a right-winger at this point in the democratic party. not a genuinely conservative democrat necessarily like you could use to describe joe manchin, but someone who clearly falls to the right of the center just based on what are popular policies this time around. i'd be shocked if he stood for really any of the things you just listed.
i mean it's honestly hard to tell with most candidates since most of them haven't stood on a national platform or are still fleshing out where they stand (or both). in general you can pretty...
i mean it's honestly hard to tell with most candidates since most of them haven't stood on a national platform or are still fleshing out where they stand (or both). in general you can pretty clearly divide warren and sanders to the left of the center line, but beyond that and maybe biden it's mostly just "you can make a case for this" and not much more. like, booker and castro and probably klobuchar you can put somewhere toward the center, but you probably could just as easily make a case for most of those people being to the left of where i describe them, and depending on how you see beto or kamala or buttigieg you might be inclined to put them just about anywhere on the spectrum of candidates.
You're right, he is a terrible candidate, and I really hope he doesn't win this nomination. But to count him out simply because he's old and has moderate positions on his topics is a fatal...
You're right, he is a terrible candidate, and I really hope he doesn't win this nomination. But to count him out simply because he's old and has moderate positions on his topics is a fatal mistake, one that gives him the opening he needs to pull the race. There are a lot of Democratic voters that vote based on name recognition and name recognition alone, and no candidate at the moment can match Biden in that. If can can sustain is substantial lead, he can legit win this nomination.
yang would probably be better if he had (1) literally any form of political experience to supplement his campaign (you can kinda tell he hasn't put that much thought into the overwhelming majority...
yang would probably be better if he had (1) literally any form of political experience to supplement his campaign (you can kinda tell he hasn't put that much thought into the overwhelming majority of his proposals or how he'd get them passed with no political connections); (2) wasn't basically a venture capitalist prior to running for president; and (3) didn't come off as targeting the extremely online almost exclusively as opposed to people who are actually, definitely going to vote in the primary.
What do you think of Jay Insley? I like him putting climate change at the forefront of his campaign. I think it is the single most important issue for us to tackle these days. But I doubt he has...
What do you think of Jay Insley? I like him putting climate change at the forefront of his campaign. I think it is the single most important issue for us to tackle these days. But I doubt he has enough clout or name recognition to pull through. Hopefully he'll be able to push that subject to the front and center
I am a straight white man. There are a significant number of conservatives out here that don't like Trump, but will a 100% choose him over Sanders or Warren. Fox News has made those candidates...
I am a straight white man. There are a significant number of conservatives out here that don't like Trump, but will a 100% choose him over Sanders or Warren. Fox News has made those candidates anathema to "Conservative values". I don't see them as having a legitimate chance at winning closely-divided states. Buttigieg has a chance. He has a real chance of winning over conservatives for two main reasons. One, he hasn't been attacked by the Fox News propaganda machine for years, and is even willing to host a debate on their channel. Two, he stated that he is Christian, which means ALOT to conservatives. Personally, he wouldn't be me preferred choice, but I will happily support him because he has a real chance at beating Trump.
Won't Fox News give that treatment to any nominee? I don't see how it's possible to avoid that. And Obama said he was a Christian all the time; it didn't stop a lot of people from thinking he was...
Won't Fox News give that treatment to any nominee? I don't see how it's possible to avoid that. And Obama said he was a Christian all the time; it didn't stop a lot of people from thinking he was a Muslim.
It's not just about beating Trump though. If someone beats Trump, but is still a mediocre president, that doesn't help anyone. I can't support someone who has no experience in DC, and would face...
It's not just about beating Trump though. If someone beats Trump, but is still a mediocre president, that doesn't help anyone. I can't support someone who has no experience in DC, and would face the same problems Trump has getting things done.
We need a president who has experience and knows how to fulfill their promises.
I will take mediocre over malicious any day. It all depends on how the election is going. If Sanders or Warren are doing well and the Republican party splits, sure I will happily support the more...
I will take mediocre over malicious any day. It all depends on how the election is going. If Sanders or Warren are doing well and the Republican party splits, sure I will happily support the more extreme candidates that better represent my own beliefs. If I have to choose between Trump or Biden, I will choose Biden. The US voting system is dumb because it makes me choose between two candidates I would never willingly vote for, but its where we are at today. I proudly didn't vote in the last election, but I can't make that same decision today.
i think @cosmos's point here is that yeah, if the democrats get a mediocre candidate then that's still better than trump--but people shouldn't be settling for mediocre candidates in the first...
I will take mediocre over malicious any day.
i think @cosmos's point here is that yeah, if the democrats get a mediocre candidate then that's still better than trump--but people shouldn't be settling for mediocre candidates in the first place given the massive number of candidates to choose from here. it's not like 2016, where the options were basically hillary (who had the backing of basically the entire democratic party) and bernie (who jumped in late and had next to no party support the whole way). there are definitely frontrunners--but there is also no singularly dominant candidate here, and just about anybody polling better than 3% has a genuine chance at winning the primary if the people rally behind them. there is really no excuse for the democrats coming out of the primaries with a mediocre person as the nominee this time around.
I agree; I was talking about post-primary elections. I am planning on voting for Bernie in the primary, especially after his townhall last night. I think it is important that the Democratic party...
I agree; I was talking about post-primary elections. I am planning on voting for Bernie in the primary, especially after his townhall last night. I think it is important that the Democratic party doesn't sabotage itself like the last election. I will vote for the candidate that has the best chance against Trump in the election.
I strongly believe that the Democratic Party will be sorely mistaken if they nominate a white guy. Even if he’s gay, I just think that a white male is not going to unite the factions on the left...
I strongly believe that the Democratic Party will be sorely mistaken if they nominate a white guy. Even if he’s gay, I just think that a white male is not going to unite the factions on the left of the spectrum into the kind of unified force that we need. I’m really hoping Kamala Harris succeeds. I think her background as both a minority and as a prosecutor, is ideal.
You’re talking about demographics in a non-useful way. What if a significant number of women, Hispanics, and blacks stay home on general Election Day because they don’t feel enthusiastic enough...
You’re talking about demographics in a non-useful way. What if a significant number of women, Hispanics, and blacks stay home on general Election Day because they don’t feel enthusiastic enough about the Dem candidate?
You and I may be content to vote against Trump (whoever the Dems nominate). But, for a lot of people, esp. younger folks and first-time voters, who may not be as jaded, they may end up totally...
You and I may be content to vote against Trump (whoever the Dems nominate). But, for a lot of people, esp. younger folks and first-time voters, who may not be as jaded, they may end up totally disenchanted with our political process if the candidate who they actually like is basically just a token in the primaries. You could sense the deflation of so many Sanders supporters in the 2016 cycle when they realized that he was just a token trying to pull Clinton left and the DNC had predetermined Clinton’s nomination as if it were a divine right. I know a lot of people my age were totally turned off of politics after the recounts in Florida in 2000 were stopped and the SC gave Bush the win. When our government is so clearly not even enacting the will of the majority, but rather, special interest groups, minorities feel especially hopeless. And hopeless people don’t show up at the booth in high numbers.
@nothis already stated this, but honestly, they won't, and democrats will most likely do better with them in 2020 than on 2016 anyways even if it's on lower turnout. they did markedly better with...
What if a significant number of women, Hispanics, and blacks stay home on general Election Day because they don’t feel enthusiastic enough about the Dem candidate?
@nothis already stated this, but honestly, they won't, and democrats will most likely do better with them in 2020 than on 2016 anyways even if it's on lower turnout. they did markedly better with basically every group in 2018 and while they likely won't do that well in some of these groups in 2020 as in 2018, the outlook is pretty good for them as of now.
buttigieg is probably(?) to the left of the center in this pack of candidates, but i dunno if i'd even call him a social democrat type candidate considering that he plays himself up as a "democratic capitalist" (and we should also asterisk all of this as "in the american sense" since he certainly isn't a socdem to a european). i think the jury is out in general where he stands politically as of now, though. he hasn't defined himself very much yet, and his brief political experience in a fairly small polity with a relatively unique set of issues is very hard to map to a national election where there are much broader, sweeping issues to run on and address.
i'm mostly curious at this point if buttigieg is going to eventually slip in polling like beto did, considering that he's very similar to beto (both young, charismatic white dudes from pretty small polities with hard-to-map political views) and seems to basically be angling for the same lane that beto has been. his rise has been meteoric, but i'm not sure it's exactly sustainable in the long term even if he actually starts talking about what he believes because there are just so many other candidates who sorta overlap with where he seems to be and beto, who seems nearly identical to him.
you're presenting these like they're distinguishing, but honestly if anything this... sorta proves my point in another way?
he's smart, but you're overplaying the value of his education relative to other people in the race here. most of these people got into very prestigious schools without being grandfathered in or getting in because of their socioeconomics:
ironically, two of the front runners of the race, biden and warren, are actually pretty average like you describe of beto. biden went to UDelaware which is a good school but by far the weakest of the lot and yet he has been a politician for literally close to fifty years; warren straight up has no prestigious schools on her resume, and yet she's a policy machine not comparable to really anyone else in the race. education means pretty much fuck all, honestly, and it's not necessarily a good bar by which to judge candidates.
this is really the only thing he has exclusively going for him, but only as far as the viable candidates. gabbard was deployed and is also still active military.
edit: this is also like, the entire point of military advisers and, to an extent, the secretary of state position.
unless we're about to consider senator tom cotton and former governor bobby jindal (or, if you would prefer, chelsea clinton) as great managers of their respective positions, i don't think this logically follows from being a former employee of a major consulting firm. (being in managerial positions is also probably something just about every politician in human history has ever done at one point or another in their life, too, so i don't think this is particularly meaningful even if we ignore that).
i know you mean this in an endearing way but (1) this comes off as casually insulting and reeks of all the wrong forms of identity politics; (2) what is "straight-acting gay" supposed to mean, exactly?; and (3) there are no less than thirteen openly LGBT members of congress (2 senators, 11 representatives), so buttigieg isn't exactly breaking some untrodden ground in government here. he wouldn't even be the first, second, or third current openly gay head of state either if he was elected--he'd be fourth, and the sixth overall. also, while it'd be nice if an LGBT person was elected president, him being gay is literally one of the last reasons why people should be voting for him--his sexuality has almost no bearing on how he's going to govern, just as obama's skin color had next to no bearing on how he governed. there are times where identity politics are good and make sense, but buttigieg's candidacy is really not one of those times.
with respect to beto:
this clearly doesn't mean a lot considering who is currently president, so...
yes, by 2%, in only the closest downballot race of any kind in texas since 1994, in a state that voted for donald trump by 9%, against a senator who had decent approval ratings and was wildly popular with the people who liked him. this is genuinely the dumbest criticism of beto possible. he did absurdly well for a democrat, and literally singlehandedly made the state competitive while being one of the best fundraisers in recent political history. he outright won a majority of the state legislative districts despite losing the state by 2%, and his campaign will most likely be the model for future democratic races in the state at all levels.
to be honest, it's mostly because of people like yourself treating him like the big hit the democratic party needs when he has literally only held elective office for a mayorship of a city of 100,000 people. he is--outside of minor candidates like messiam and non-politicians like yang--basically the least experienced "major" candidate in the race, and exacerbating that is the fact that nobody knows what the fuck he stands for. i've been following him literally since he announced because i'm into politics and i have no idea what the fuck he stands for. hell, you admitted as much up thread, lol. maybe we should learn what he thinks is the right course for america before people start treating him like they were treating beto "white obama" o'rourke a month ago and pushing for him to be president.
well, it literally doesn't, not least because he shares a field with cory booker--who like i said is also a rhodes scholar who got into yale and oxford--and a bunch of other people who have gone to some of the most prestigious institutions in the world, but also because, once again, education is a largely useless metric by which to evaluate candidates. that's not an anti-intellectual stance by any stretch of the word, and calling it such is really fucking weird because being well educated and going to prestigious schools doesn't mean you know how to run a political campaign, win a presidential election, or govern effectively. i mean, i literally pointed out biden and warren as examples of this--two front runners with comparatively pretty bleh education, but incredibly significant political careers and decent shots at winning the presidency.
i like that you cherrypicked those two low hanging fruit and ignored the qualifications of booker, inslee, castro, klobuchar, and delaney, and also ignored yang also going to columbia law on top of being a howard alumni, but that's fine i guess. oh and no, howard is literally a top 100 school by pretty much every metric we bother to use to rank schools:
so yeah, dunno where you got that number from, but it's bunk.
okay, then do you genuinely consider tom cotton and bobby jindal to be good managers, or what? both of them are mckinsey alumni, which is why i brought them up, but both of them are widely regarded as pretty shitty people and jindal in particular fucked louisiana badly during his time in office. you're conflating this idea of having credentials with meaning those credentials actually qualify you in any way--those are not necessarily the same thing, and people are not necessarily qualified just because they have connections. you're also doing this with the education piece of this conversation, incidentally.
well, speaking as both a black person and a gay person: being black in america is nowhere near the same experience as being gay in america, and obama's symbolism will literally never compare to buttigieg's if he were to win. black people got the shit end of the stick and were literal second class citizens for almost four centuries and the system still systematically fucks them over because of that history; gay people, while they have been historically repressed and discriminated against, do not have nearly that kind of historical or current baggage stacked on them. moreover though, obama's symbolism is somewhat muted by the whole "the person who followed him is systematically erasing his achievements and also is basically a direct response by all the mad, racist white people that still live in this country to his two terms" thing that's kinda going on, so.
speaking as a gay person: no, it probably wouldn't be at this point. the gay community has already been pretty vindicated by the supreme court, most of the gay rights fight nowadays is at the state level where the law hasn't caught up with the sentiments of the land, and the whole LGBT struggle has basically entirely shifted to trans people at this point because conservatives know they've lost on gay issues. it'd be cool to have a gay president, sure, but it's not going to be a fucking coup or something because while, again, discrimination against gays is a thing that goes on, it's basically a political loser to fuck with them now.
i surround myself with gay people pretty much constantly and i have literally never heard this term, so i don't think it's quite as common as you think it is.
Can we not have an oppression competition, please? It's not helpful to anyone.
i don't think it's really an oppression contest to point out that the gay oppressive experience is different from and less severe than the black oppressive experience, but go off.
They are certainly different, but the severity is a matter of perspective, environment, and metric.
For example, it's still legal to fire someone for their orientation in my state and gay marriage equality in the US is only a few years old as opposed to over half a century old for racial marriage equality. In some countries, you can get jailed or killed for being gay.
In some families, churches, schools, and other communities, being gay has severe social and moral implications. In other situations, it's not a big deal at all.
I don't think it makes sense to say one oppressive experience is more severe than another in this discussion as it paints with a broad brush and is dismissive of situations where the reverse is true. Your experience is not universal and unless you are talking about specific people or specific situations or specific measures, then the comparison doesn't even make sense.
...just to be clear, i literally do this every week for all of the candidates. it's called the this week in election night thread, lol.
As a resident of Texas, I would certainly have to agree with @Alyaza
Beto losing to Texas by a mere 2 points was monumental. He took Cruz down to the wire in a state that went to Trump by nine points, re-elected Greg Abbott as governor by 13 points(Abbott initially defeated Wendy Davis by a whopping 20 points in 2014 so Dems actually had a stronger showing in 2018), hasn't had a Democrat hold any major state wide office in 20 years, and Democrats hold less than half of the states US House Reps, Texas Senate, and Texas House of Reps seats along with not having elected a Democratic Senator since Bob Krueger left in 1993.
To say Beto faced an uphill climb is an understatement and it would've been a monumental upset if he had managed to pull it off. The fact that he made it as close as he did should be a point in his favor rather than used against him. Even if Ted Cruz is the most disliked Senator, Texans, by and large, are stubborn. We embrace our states heritage and individualism but that also means change is slow. But Beto very nearly pulled it off
The signs, however, are encouraging. He won all the major population centers, almost overwhelmingly so, (Dallas, Harris, Travis, and Bexar Counties with a narrow win in Tarrant Co) and most of the border counties.
There's too much of Texas that's still mired in the "Old South" way of thinking and life. Beto's message just wasn't going to resonate with much of rural Texas where "God, Guns, and Football" still reign supreme
Not OP here.
I applaud your research but I think you missed the boat on Warren. She's famously a prestigious professor at Harvard. The Obama's took her class...I can't find a citation for that because of all the silly Native American stuff, but I recall Michelle talking about it in an interview. Maybe someone else can dig that up.
From wikipedia about Warren's academic career:
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Warren#Academic
Source: https://hls.harvard.edu/faculty/directory/10935/Warren
she has an impressive career as an academic, yes, but my point there isn't about her academic chops, it's about where she got her education (and how it means almost nothing with respect to candidate quality).
Your reply seems to imply that you were aware of this when you wrote your original comment.
However, this feels like one of those things where if you were aware of it you would have mentioned it to bolster your point that the college one attends doesn't necessarily determine their quality as a candidate, i.e. "As a further example, Warren didn't attend a prestigious school but went on to become a famous Harvard professor, showing how little one's initial formal education matters in predicting their cognitive ability" That's an example of how you could have used that fact to your advantage in the argument you presented. If you were aware of that, why not include it?
Instead, you're falling back on a very narrow presentation of one's education to prove that your argument is correct. When discussing one's academic background (such as where they went to school), it seems disingenuous not to mention that the person is a well-respected Harvard professor. And doubling-down on that being an intentional omission is only going to lead others to wonder what else you have left out from your post.
i literally did. please actually read my comment.
I read your comments thoroughly. What you wrote doesn't indicate you were aware of her prestigious academic career - only that she's good at generating policy ideas.
Your prior reply tried to narrow your original argument to exclude any consideration of that career, insinuating that you knew about it but didn't mention her career because it didn't pertain to your argument. Now you're saying you were aware of that career and did mention it. So which was it? It can't be both.
I'm sure you can find many ways to dismiss this questioning for a number of reasons, but I think you'd be doing yourself a disservice if you do. Please take some time to consider our exchange and let me know if I've misunderstood anything.
these are the sorts of annoying, pedantic arguments that make me very much dislike the people on this site and make me want to not contribute at all. what you're arguing has absolutely nothing to do with the point i made, which always pertained specifically to educational background. if you read the context of what i was replying to, this is quite clear. i am aware of warren's career in academia--it has literally no bearing on my original point, and no relevance either since the whole point of contention was buttigieg's educational background specifically with respect to other candidates in the race. you are arguing entirely against something i never said and which isn't the point i made at all, and acting like it somehow invalidates my point, and that's beyond dumb.
If the initial reply would have been "Good point. I was aware of that and should have included it in my write-up as it's a great example of how Buttigieg's academic chops are not noteworthy" then we would be having a different, much shorter, side-bar to your main discussion.
I think that the comment about how a Presidential candidate being a Harvard professor is not relevant to a discussion about the educational background of candidates invites just the sort of "annoying, pedantic" discussion that you're seeking to avoid.
I appreciate your contributions and your weekly politics write-ups. Best of luck.
As a former management consultant who has worked in places staffed largely by former management consultants I'm a bit ehhh on this. There is a definite tendency to fall into analysis paralysis, to overengineer solutions to problems, to shoehorn solutions onto problems that are an awkward fit, and to do a lot of backsolving conclusions into standard "methodology" instead of using a methodology to get to a conclusion.
But these are all dysfunctions that the government already has, just with people who are less smart or driven that a top consultancy, so it'll probably be a wash at the end of the day.
None of these guys are particularly "socialist" except in the right-wing "socialism is when the government does stuff" framing. Sanders is the only who is socialist in name, but in practice his proposals are all pretty capitalism friendly frameworks.
This time around the Sanders campaign has been kind of making me embarrassed that I ever took him seriously TBH. They're leaning into stirring up the extremely online crowd and falling into some kind of vague class-reductionism instead of going out with bold and unique policy proposals like he did last time.
When he was a long-shot it was okay to have the policies be vague and aspirational and to be throwing bombs from the sidelines. But when you're a front-runner you need to have this stuff fleshed out more. He had a chance to actually build a campaign with intention this time and instead of going with a focus on how he's going to get the shit he wants done he's decided to go railing against the establishment again, which is so last election's fight. The guy doesn't seem to know how to play from a position of strength. The tendencies that work well when you're an insurgent stop working when you're in the lead and he doesn't seem to get it.
When Warren in the race I'm not sure what Sanders brings to the table. Dude is super old (and so is Warren but less so). She supports the end-goal on most of his policies and then puts out a bunch more ambitious proposals on top of it, all while having a way more thoughtful and well articulated strategy for actually getting from here to there. The genetic testing gaffe is really the only downside.
Socialism isn't just "more left than the Democrats" though. It's an actual political philosophy that's defined by a desire for societal control over the means of production. You can have systems for universal coverage that are socialist or not socialist depending.
A system like the NHS, where the government directly administers healthcare is socialist. In the US, the Department of Veteran's Affairs and the Defense Health Agency are the same way. A system like Canada's, where the government has a series of publicly funded insurance programs with defined payouts, is also socialist but more a socialization of health insurance rather than socialization of healthcare. In America we also have this, in the form of Medicare/Medicaid.
A proposal that aims for something like Obamacare (but better) where we have private insurers, but strict regulations on them and generous tax subsidies to defray the costs of buying it, isn't socialist because it's animating purpose and goal is to preserve ownership/control over the means of production (in this case, health insurance and health care) in the hands of private entities.
All of these are aiming for universal healthcare, but the socialist ones and the capitalist ones have very different approaches to get there. FWIW, I think the Canada model has been the most successful and resilient in the face of political opposition. The British model works fine as long as you never get a Margaret Thatcher, but as soon as you do you're fucked for what seems to be a generation or more. The American model doesn't work well at all.
I dunno, I think people are sleeping on Biden. As much as I'd rather see Buttigieg or O'Rourke win the primary, Biden has a strong base of support among older and more conservatively minded Democrats, and I think that'll be a huge asset in the south-eastern races especially. Hillary Clinton got a huge boost through strong showings there, and I wonder if Biden can do the same, especially if Buttigieg and O'Rourke, and Warren and Sanders, siphon votes off each other.
no, he's basically a right-winger at this point in the democratic party. not a genuinely conservative democrat necessarily like you could use to describe joe manchin, but someone who clearly falls to the right of the center just based on what are popular policies this time around. i'd be shocked if he stood for really any of the things you just listed.
i mean it's honestly hard to tell with most candidates since most of them haven't stood on a national platform or are still fleshing out where they stand (or both). in general you can pretty clearly divide warren and sanders to the left of the center line, but beyond that and maybe biden it's mostly just "you can make a case for this" and not much more. like, booker and castro and probably klobuchar you can put somewhere toward the center, but you probably could just as easily make a case for most of those people being to the left of where i describe them, and depending on how you see beto or kamala or buttigieg you might be inclined to put them just about anywhere on the spectrum of candidates.
You're right, he is a terrible candidate, and I really hope he doesn't win this nomination. But to count him out simply because he's old and has moderate positions on his topics is a fatal mistake, one that gives him the opening he needs to pull the race. There are a lot of Democratic voters that vote based on name recognition and name recognition alone, and no candidate at the moment can match Biden in that. If can can sustain is substantial lead, he can legit win this nomination.
Yang seems like a good choice, though I doubt he has much of a chance.
yang would probably be better if he had (1) literally any form of political experience to supplement his campaign (you can kinda tell he hasn't put that much thought into the overwhelming majority of his proposals or how he'd get them passed with no political connections); (2) wasn't basically a venture capitalist prior to running for president; and (3) didn't come off as targeting the extremely online almost exclusively as opposed to people who are actually, definitely going to vote in the primary.
What do you think of Jay Insley? I like him putting climate change at the forefront of his campaign. I think it is the single most important issue for us to tackle these days. But I doubt he has enough clout or name recognition to pull through. Hopefully he'll be able to push that subject to the front and center
I am a straight white man. There are a significant number of conservatives out here that don't like Trump, but will a 100% choose him over Sanders or Warren. Fox News has made those candidates anathema to "Conservative values". I don't see them as having a legitimate chance at winning closely-divided states. Buttigieg has a chance. He has a real chance of winning over conservatives for two main reasons. One, he hasn't been attacked by the Fox News propaganda machine for years, and is even willing to host a debate on their channel. Two, he stated that he is Christian, which means ALOT to conservatives. Personally, he wouldn't be me preferred choice, but I will happily support him because he has a real chance at beating Trump.
Won't Fox News give that treatment to any nominee? I don't see how it's possible to avoid that. And Obama said he was a Christian all the time; it didn't stop a lot of people from thinking he was a Muslim.
Yes, but I more meant that both Sanders and Warren have been getting the Fox news treatment for years, and they can only start on Buttigieg now.
It's not just about beating Trump though. If someone beats Trump, but is still a mediocre president, that doesn't help anyone. I can't support someone who has no experience in DC, and would face the same problems Trump has getting things done.
We need a president who has experience and knows how to fulfill their promises.
I will take mediocre over malicious any day. It all depends on how the election is going. If Sanders or Warren are doing well and the Republican party splits, sure I will happily support the more extreme candidates that better represent my own beliefs. If I have to choose between Trump or Biden, I will choose Biden. The US voting system is dumb because it makes me choose between two candidates I would never willingly vote for, but its where we are at today. I proudly didn't vote in the last election, but I can't make that same decision today.
i think @cosmos's point here is that yeah, if the democrats get a mediocre candidate then that's still better than trump--but people shouldn't be settling for mediocre candidates in the first place given the massive number of candidates to choose from here. it's not like 2016, where the options were basically hillary (who had the backing of basically the entire democratic party) and bernie (who jumped in late and had next to no party support the whole way). there are definitely frontrunners--but there is also no singularly dominant candidate here, and just about anybody polling better than 3% has a genuine chance at winning the primary if the people rally behind them. there is really no excuse for the democrats coming out of the primaries with a mediocre person as the nominee this time around.
I agree; I was talking about post-primary elections. I am planning on voting for Bernie in the primary, especially after his townhall last night. I think it is important that the Democratic party doesn't sabotage itself like the last election. I will vote for the candidate that has the best chance against Trump in the election.
I strongly believe that the Democratic Party will be sorely mistaken if they nominate a white guy. Even if he’s gay, I just think that a white male is not going to unite the factions on the left of the spectrum into the kind of unified force that we need. I’m really hoping Kamala Harris succeeds. I think her background as both a minority and as a prosecutor, is ideal.
You’re talking about demographics in a non-useful way. What if a significant number of women, Hispanics, and blacks stay home on general Election Day because they don’t feel enthusiastic enough about the Dem candidate?
Because they know the alternative is Trump?
You and I may be content to vote against Trump (whoever the Dems nominate). But, for a lot of people, esp. younger folks and first-time voters, who may not be as jaded, they may end up totally disenchanted with our political process if the candidate who they actually like is basically just a token in the primaries. You could sense the deflation of so many Sanders supporters in the 2016 cycle when they realized that he was just a token trying to pull Clinton left and the DNC had predetermined Clinton’s nomination as if it were a divine right. I know a lot of people my age were totally turned off of politics after the recounts in Florida in 2000 were stopped and the SC gave Bush the win. When our government is so clearly not even enacting the will of the majority, but rather, special interest groups, minorities feel especially hopeless. And hopeless people don’t show up at the booth in high numbers.
@nothis already stated this, but honestly, they won't, and democrats will most likely do better with them in 2020 than on 2016 anyways even if it's on lower turnout. they did markedly better with basically every group in 2018 and while they likely won't do that well in some of these groups in 2020 as in 2018, the outlook is pretty good for them as of now.
I'm just happy that there are so many good people who are worth discussing.