11 votes

This Week in Election Night, 2020 (Week 5)

week five begins with another page worth of links, a big presidential announcement, and the long creep of this cycle that will make us all go fucking crazy by the end of it. the [LONGFORM] tag continues, but i don't think there's any longform this week either, so c'est la vie.

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.

Week 1 threadWeek 2 threadWeek 3 threadWeek 4 thread


News

General Stuff

  • from FiveThirtyEight: What The Potential 2020 Candidates Are Doing And Saying, Vol. 15. if you're curious what candidates have been up to, FiveThirtyEight has you covered with this week's roundup.

  • from FiveThirtyEight: Who Might Make The Democratic Debate Stage?. this is probably the most important question now that the field is basically set: how many people will qualify for the debate stage? the DNC has said the cap is 20 candidates, and we have at least 21 running with potentially more on the way. a lot of them meet at least one criterion for being included. the DNC seems to have prepared extensively for that possibility, so it's not like they're on the backfoot here, but i suspect the politicking surrounding this for some of the smaller candidates is going to be pretty wacky.

  • from The Atlantic: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Race: A Cheat Sheet, like CBS News's roundup, this extensive piece covers every candidate currently declared, why they're running, and what they're running on. pretty good resource for those of you needing to cite something.

  • from The Atlantic: The Strategic Move That Gave Bernie Sanders a Fundraising Edge. despite its title, this article mostly focuses on fundraising and how it's been either lackluster for democrats or not been, depending on who you ask and under what criteria, and whether or not that even matters in the grand scheme of things. it's an interesting discussion.

Joe Biden

we begin with two words: HE'S RUNNING. The Atlantic first reported this in a piece on the 19th called Joe Biden Is Running for President, and he was expected to announce yesterday but curiously, something (Biden's team was warned about announcing 2020 bid on same day as forum focused on women of color) seems to have interfered with that master plan that joe biden should have known about, so he announced this morning instead.

here is his announcement video:

The core values of this nation… our standing in the world… our very democracy...everything that has made America -- America --is at stake. That’s why today I’m announcing my candidacy for President of the United States.

and nobody was really surprised. anyways, onto articles covering his announcement. take your pick of source:


moving on to analysis:

Bernie Sanders

  • from Buzzfeed News: Bernie Sanders Isn’t Fighting The Wars Of 2016, His Campaign Says — The Democratic Establishment Is. in case you haven't noticed, we're still religitating the bullshit that characterized the 2016 primary because nobody can drop it. nowhere is this more clear than with the sanders campaign, who feel like they're still having to defend themselves from the same lines of attack they did back then. whether or not this is accurate is probably debatable, but it's pretty obvious that this isn't going to just go away, so expect it to continue to be a fracture point this year.

  • from The Guardian: Sanders dares Democrats to stop him – but is he the man to beat Trump?. in a similar vein, the sanders campaign seems to be contending with the prospect of the democratic party trying to meddle in the primary and anoit a non-sanders winner, as they were accused of doing in 2016. this is going to also likely remain a fracture point, because the democratic party no doubt feels it has reasons to step in here--but also, it would absolutely be inviting trouble if sanders is the leading candidate when everything is said and done at the convention and they step in, given 2016.

  • from Vox: Republican strategist Karl Rove says Bernie Sanders could beat Donald Trump in 2020. whether realpolitik or genuine concern (and in contrast to rick wilson in the above piece), karl rove seems to think that sanders is the exact sort of candidate who would beat donald in 2020.

Beto O'Rourke

In a statement about her and Malitz’s departure to BuzzFeed News, Bond said it was “time for us to move on to other challenges.”
“Launching a presidential campaign without a big staff or even a campaign manager was no easy feat and it took everyone pitching in,” she said. “We’re proud to have been part of the team of deeply dedicated staff and volunteers who nearly pulled off a historic upset in the 2018 Texas Senate race and broke records launching Beto’s campaign for the presidency.”

  • from the Huffington Post: Beto O’Rourke’s Non-Media Strategy. on a more strategy-driven note for beto, his campaign has interestingly been one of the only thus far to not have a nationally televised town hall. this seems to be intentional. as the article notes:

O’Rourke ... sa[id] he preferred interacting with voters “eyeball to eyeball” rather than by doing TV, as evidenced by his dozens of events where he regularly takes questions from the audience and reporters alike. But he acknowledged “at some point, I may have to give in” to doing cable television.

it's a bold strategy for certain, but i do suspect that he's going to have to at some point get his voice out nationally. he's been slightly slipping in recent polls, mostly to candidates like buttigieg, and it suggests that he's lost a bit of his lustre with democratic voters.

Elizabeth Warren

Pete Buttigieg

  • from Buzzfeed News: Pete Buttigieg’s Presidential Run Has Many LGBT Democrats Eager For Their Obama Moment. buzzfeed has a piece on the significance of pete buttigieg to LGBT americans and how he's been able to leverage that to tap into a donor network that's usually pretty splintered. it's unclear to me that he's going to be able to parlay that untapped base into success, though, and more recent polling seems to have buttigieg sorta stalling out around 10% with the logjam of other sorta-kinda-frontrunner candidates.

  • from CBS News: Pete Buttigieg on the presidency as a "moral office". this is mostly a personality piece on buttigieg and both his history in afghanistan and his electoral history, and how that has influenced his current candidacy and what he views as priorities. it's kinda straightforward and the title sorta speaks for itself, so there's not actually that much to be said for it.

Kamala Harris

Harris said she would mandate universal background checks on anyone selling more than five guns a year, ending a loophole that allows private gun sellers to bypass background checks on 1 in 5 gun sales nationwide, bar people classified as fugitives from buying guns. She would also, her campaign said, close a loophole in federal law that allows perpetrators of domestic violence to keep their guns if they are not married to their partner.

  • from POLITICO: Kamala Harris says she supports adding third gender option to federal IDs. she also supports the fairly small idea of adding a third gender option to federal IDs. i guess you gotta have some tiny policies in there too with the big ones for maximum efficiency. it is possible this raises questions about her history of LGBT policy, though, which is probably not something that she wants to litigate because it's not the best.

Everybody else


Opinion/Ideology-driven

For voters, Booker's Wall Street ties and his T-Bone stories are part of the same problem: Authenticity. Can you be a liberal Democratic willing to take on billionaires, entrenched corporations and the deregulation unleashed by the Trump Administration after years of cozying up to Wall Street and pharmaceutical donors? Can you address the racial divides in America — not just what's in people's hearts, but the problems of differential education, mass incarceration and inequality of opportunity — if you can't bring yourself to call Trump a racist? And can you be trusted to tell the truth of why you've arrived at your liberal politics if you made up a T-Bone to explain to white people a cartoon version of black intergenerational trauma?


anyways, feel free to as always contribute other interesting articles you stumble across, or comment on some of the ones up there.

6 comments

  1. [2]
    alyaza
    Link
    oh, i also missed this, but Vox has a very useful meta-article which links to all their other articles on candidate policy, which is super useful if you want a roundup on where candidates stand on...

    oh, i also missed this, but Vox has a very useful meta-article which links to all their other articles on candidate policy, which is super useful if you want a roundup on where candidates stand on what.

    you can find that here. it's super neat.

    3 votes
    1. alyaza
      Link Parent
      POLITICO also seems to have a useful scrolling interactive (which i should note seems to work in a finicky way that doesn't render 100% properly on firefox) which does the same thing as Vox does...

      POLITICO also seems to have a useful scrolling interactive (which i should note seems to work in a finicky way that doesn't render 100% properly on firefox) which does the same thing as Vox does for major issues without the needing to click through a bunch of pieces aspect. thankfully they summarize it all further down in the piece with tables that do render correctly, though, so it's not 100% messed up if you're using firefox. you may also find that useful to give out to people.

      2 votes
  2. [3]
    Comment deleted by author
    Link
    1. cfabbro
      (edited )
      Link Parent
      Yeah, as sad as it is, I think Warren being the VP of a more "likeable", "charismatic" and "exciting" male candidate with reasonably progressive views is probably the best that Democrats can hope...

      Yeah, as sad as it is, I think Warren being the VP of a more "likeable", "charismatic" and "exciting" male candidate with reasonably progressive views is probably the best that Democrats can hope for if they want to beat Trump. I would love for that not to be the case and be proven wrong... but given the fact that a not insignificant portion of the US population happily voted for an openly misogynistic President, I just don't see Warren or any other female candidate as Pres. happening yet.

      And as for how to normalize female candidates, I think that is are already well under way in the US despite the Hillary Clinton setback... and finally having a female VP would also definitely be a step in the right direction.

      p.s. BTW I'm Canadian and have no skin in the game, so this is just my outside perspective on the matter.

      1 vote
    2. [2]
      Comment deleted by author
      Link Parent
      1. alyaza
        Link Parent
        you're correct, but in general i would say there is a distinction between what most democrats ran on in 2018 (the vague ideas of medicare for all or protecting and preserving the PPACA which can...

        you're correct, but in general i would say there is a distinction between what most democrats ran on in 2018 (the vague ideas of medicare for all or protecting and preserving the PPACA which can be approached in many different ways and result in many different outcomes) and what warren is running on (actually fleshed out policies that tell people exactly what they're getting). most democrats in 2018 didn't have to actually present any sort of bill to back up their words like warren would presumably have to if she were to win the primary and the general election.

        2 votes
  3. alyaza
    Link
    cory booker apparently has a plan on environmental justice now: Cory Booker makes "environmental justice" central to his White House bid. i believe he expounds on this (and most of his other...

    cory booker apparently has a plan on environmental justice now: Cory Booker makes "environmental justice" central to his White House bid.

    Booker's plan calls for companies to pay for the pollution they cause, an increase in staffing at various departments of the EPA, doubling the fees on coal mine operators to fund the cleanup of abandoned mines, and "safeguarding the basic human right of safe drinking water" by better enforcing standards set forth in the Safe Drinking Water Act.

    i believe he expounds on this (and most of his other policy views) in his Face the Nation interview (about 25 minutes long), for anyone curious. curious also if other candidates end up rolling out plans like this. the idea of "environmental justice" is still pretty esoteric as far as i'm aware.

    1 vote
  4. alyaza
    Link
    we have biden's first day fundraising numbers now and they're... kinda mediocre, to be honest? 6.3 million on less than 100,000 donors seems pretty low, given biden's credentials and the fact that...

    we have biden's first day fundraising numbers now and they're... kinda mediocre, to be honest? 6.3 million on less than 100,000 donors seems pretty low, given biden's credentials and the fact that he's been teasing a run and organizing support for months (and presumably has some leftover from his aborted 2016 run). even yang has more donors than that on less money, and yang is languishing at like 2% in the polls. a lot of biden's money also seems to be coming from people who are maxing out their donations, and he's using superPACs so that's probably not about to endear him to the base either.

    1 vote