11 votes

This Week in Election Night, 2020 (Week 8)

week eight graces us with a particularly large edition of This Week in Election Night, 2020. a lot of candidates have been in the news, for good reasons and bad, and there's a bunch of stuff to go through. no opinion pieces this week, since i didn't end up compiling any particularly good ones and this is going to be pretty long already.

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 threadWeek 5 threadWeek 6 threadWeek 7 thread


News

General Stuff

Joe Biden

  • from Reuters: Exclusive: Presidential hopeful Biden looking for ‘middle ground’ climate policy. we begin on a high note, with joe biden deciding... well... this: "Democratic presidential hopeful Joe Biden is crafting a climate change policy he hopes will appeal to both environmentalists and the blue-collar voters who elected Donald Trump, according to two sources, carving out a middle ground approach that will likely face heavy resistance from green activists." as far as details, this appears to be the most we have so far:

The backbone of the policy will likely include the United States re-joining the Paris Climate Agreement and preserving U.S. regulations on emissions and vehicle fuel efficiency that Trump has sought to undo...
The second source, a former energy department official advising Biden’s campaign who asked not to be named, said the policy could also be supportive of nuclear energy and fossil fuel options like natural gas and carbon capture technology, which limit emissions from coal plants and other industrial facilities.

  • from VICE: A Biden Presidency Would Be a 'Death Sentence,' Climate Activists Warn. to put it lightly, biden's plan is getting fucking obliterated by climate activists. activists are unsurprisingly worried that biden, by trying to seek a middle ground, is basically just going to bring us into hellworld--a likely prospect, honestly, just going off what we have. VICE also expounds on just how unhelpful and non-specific biden's climate policy is so far with this detail:

Biden’s campaign website contains only three sentences about the greatest crisis ever to face humankind, and these are located midway down a secondary page. “We must turbocharge our efforts to address climate change and ensure that every American has access to clean drinking water, clean air, and an environment free from pollutants,” the site reads.

  • from Mother Jones: The Planet Is Heading to Catastrophe and Joe Biden Apparently Wants to Take the “Middle Ground”. Mother Jones also has some other reporting which expounds on the amazing fact that biden somehow was the first person to really introduce climate change into the political arena, and yet his policy on it is borderline regressive nowadays. not the best look, although i doubt it'll change votes

  • from POLITICO: Bernie Sanders: Biden’s reported climate plan ‘will doom future generations’. if you thought this criticism stopped at voters though, you'd be wrong, because sanders is just as unimpressed with this plan, and i'd imagine he is not the only candidate like this. this is probably about as strong of a rebuke as you'll ever see this early on: “There is no ‘middle ground’ when it comes to climate policy,” Sanders tweeted Friday. “If we don't commit to fully transforming our energy system away from fossil fuels, we will doom future generations.”

  • from POLITICO: Florida takes shape as Joe Biden’s firewall. on a lighter note for biden, he is--for now anyways--the solid frontrunning candidate. florida in particular looks like a key state for him to win, which would be good news for him since it'll give him an advantage in the later half of the primaries (it will, in 2020, be one of the last large states to vote on account of not being a super tuesday state). given its demography, if he's on track to lose in this state, don't count on him realistically winning the primary.

Bernie Sanders

Elizabeth Warren

  • [LONGFORM] from TIME: 'I Have a Plan for That.' Elizabeth Warren Is Betting That Americans Are Ready for Her Big Ideas. i don't have a whole lot to say here. we have a tildes discussion on this piece, as it was posted earlier this week, so i would encourage you to post there if you have thoughts on this one like i did.

  • from POLITICO: Trump backers applaud Warren in heart of MAGA country. warren's been hustling around a bit in the past week and change, even stopping over in rural west virginia on friday to talk about the opioid crisis and other socioeconomic factors which have been massively fucking over the region. pitstops like these presumably aren't going to be swinging things blue in west virginia again anytime soon, but as the article notes: "...Warren was here to try to send a message that she’s serious about tackling the problems of remote communities like this one." also, in case you're curious, you can find her policy on the opioid crisis here.

  • from Reuters: Democrat Warren confronts 2020 electability question head-on in Ohio. she was also over in ohio this weekend, where she barnstormed on similar issues of tackling income inequality and the likes of that.

  • from Slate: Warren Has Earned Her Wonk Reputation. this article from Slate is mostly an overview of the many, many policies that elizabeth warren has proposed just over the course of the campaign so far. it's a lot! the article does note that currently she seems to lack detailed policies on many of the big issues prioritized by democratic voters, but we're still pretty early in the campaign so i assume she'll roll those out in the future.

Kamala Harris

Harris pulled in at least $1 million from ZIP codes where most residents are not white, about two-and-a-half times the total of former Rep. Beto O'Rourke of Texas, who was second to Harris, raising more than $408,000 from the same set of neighborhoods, the analysis showed. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., was third, about $1,400 behind O'Rourke, and Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., was fourth, with at least $391,000.

  • from CNN: Kamala Harris eyes black voters, women in campaign tour to win over Midwest. aside from fundraising, harris spend most of last week swinging through the midwest barnstorming in minority communities; her current angle seems to mostly run through women and minorities, and while she's doing relatively poorly in polling, people do seem to have interest in her campaign. CNN's most recent polling found "...Harris at 5% but leading the field at 23% among those polled when asked which candidate they'd most like to hear more about."

  • from Reuters: Kamala Harris stood up to big banks, with mixed results for consumers in crisis. one of harris's signature points on which she's been campaigning is, in Reuters's words, "the $20 billion relief settlement she secured as California attorney general for homeowners hit hard by the foreclosure crisis"; this article proceeds to pour a bit of cold water on how this played out in practice, though, as harris's actions didn't prevent significant damage to many people's livelihoods.

Amy Klobuchar

  • from The Guardian: 'Iowa slingshot': Amy Klobuchar plots midwest route to victory in 2020. klobuchar has also been pretty quiet (and been polling quite badly), but she's also gotten some attention this week. as this article talks about, her path to the presidency has always been basically the same: win over midwestern voters which democrats have been collapsing with since obama cleaned house in 2008. she has the electoral history to back this up: despite relatively close races up-ballot being pretty regular in minnesota since 2000, klobuchar has regularly destroyed her republican opponents statewide and won otherwise-republican-voting white people.

  • from Politico: Klobuchar says she isn't worried that older white men are leading the 2020 race. she's also pretty optimistic about her chances. she notes that her campaign is still in the early stages and that despite the dominance of white men, there's still harris and warren in the top-eight, which suggests that she too could have capital as her campaign continues.

  • from the Huffington Post: Amy Klobuchar On Female Presidential Candidates: ‘Discount Them At Your Own Peril’. and of course, she notes that discounting female candidates is something to be done at your own peril--female candidates have been particularly successful in recent electoral cycles.

  • from Reuters: Klobuchar pitches pragmatism as she seeks to carve identity in Democratic presidential field. klobuchar's main ideological approach so far has been to be the "pragmatic" female candidate, advocating for a more incremental tackling of the issues instead of sweeping progressivism as advocated by people like warren. no signs of this changing, although she does openly consider herself to be a progressive in the same vein as people like warren and sanders.

Pete Buttigieg

  • from POLITICO: Mayor Pete blindsides Kamala Harris in California. california has been a state targeted by just about every candidate so far, but the one with probably the biggest impact relative to how they poll has been buttigieg, who is putting a lot of people who might otherwise be donating to or endorsing harris in an interesting position with where they're going to place their support. LA mayor eric garcetti, who appeared at an event with buttigieg on thursday, might summarize this best:

“We have a lot of people who are very candidate curious,” Garcetti notes. “Kamala has a ton of love up and down the state, but people might say, ‘That doesn’t mean I’m not going to shop around … Maybe I’ll keep her as my senator and go with somebody else as president.’”

  • from CBS News: Could Pete Buttigieg make history in LGBTQ-friendly Nevada?. buttigieg is also, obviously, hoping to make history with his candidacy, and he's been making overtures toward LGBT organizations accordingly. on saturday he was a headliner at the human rights campaign gala in nevada--nevada it should also be noted has a pretty large LGBT population, which is likely to help him significantly in the state.

  • from NBC News: Buttigieg is the only top 2020 candidate not offering staffers health care yet. however, buttigieg hasn't had all good headlines this week. NBC news highlighted his campaign's failure to offer healthcare to staffers, an ignominious feat for him and something which stands in contrast to the rhetoric he's espoused on the campaign trail so far. NBC reports:

Buttigieg’s campaign currently has 49 workers, but has been staffing up rapidly, and plans to hit the 50 mark imminently.
“Crossing this threshold will put us in a position to get a good multi-state group plan, which we are currently negotiating,” said Buttigieg press secretary Chris Meagher.
In the meantime, the campaign is giving salaried staffers a $400 monthly stipend to buy health care themselves. That’s just enough for a single adult with no children to cover a “silver plan” through the Obamacare exchanges, according to national cost data analyzed by the Kaiser Family Foundation.

Everybody Else


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

22 comments

  1. [14]
    stephen
    Link
    Uhg I am already so sick of hearing about Joe Biden. Are the Democrats not going to learn the lesson of anointing a candidate? Are they not going to learn the lesson of developing a tepid,...

    Uhg I am already so sick of hearing about Joe Biden. Are the Democrats not going to learn the lesson of anointing a candidate? Are they not going to learn the lesson of developing a tepid, uninspiring "middle-ground" platform which corresponds to exactly no one's real political desires? When are these idiots gonna start appealing to non-voters instead of this idiotic drift to the right?

    Also Cory Booker. Lol. Why would you come out swinging on gun control? Not even all democrats are into that proposal? How does he plan to get through the general being so wrong on something that is so important to so many? When are Democrats going to stop insisting on expanding the powers of the federal government on the insistence they know what's good for the little people?

    14 votes
    1. [12]
      cfabbro
      (edited )
      Link Parent
      Democrats, once again snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. Snide comment aside, I am not American and don't really know much about Joe Biden outside of International press coverage on him,...

      Democrats, once again snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

      Snide comment aside, I am not American and don't really know much about Joe Biden outside of International press coverage on him, which is generally favorable from what I have seen, so I thought he was supposedly fairly well liked and assumed he would make a decent candidate. Is that not true, in your opinion?

      2 votes
      1. [11]
        alyaza
        Link Parent
        he is fairly well liked, particularly among people who are within the party. he actually has some of the highest favorability ratings of any democrat running both within the party and outside the...

        which is generally favorable from what I have seen, so I thought he was supposedly fairly well liked and assumed he would make a decent candidate. Is that not true, in your opinion?

        he is fairly well liked, particularly among people who are within the party. he actually has some of the highest favorability ratings of any democrat running both within the party and outside the party--he's just also kind of an old white asshole, a dude with a ton of political history and baggage that sucks, and his priorities aren't with the youth of the party or most minorities (although paradoxically, he does quite well with minorities) and so electing him would essentially status quo ante us instead of advancing us like a lot of younger people want (but which a lot of older people do not).

        4 votes
        1. stephen
          Link Parent
          It's even worse than that though. He's one of these career politicians who write stump speeches like focus-group madlibs. Its just a bunch of vague feelgood bullshit sprinkled with...

          his priorities aren't with the youth of the party or most minorities

          It's even worse than that though. He's one of these career politicians who write stump speeches like focus-group madlibs. Its just a bunch of vague feelgood bullshit sprinkled with "high-favorability" platform planks. The dude doesn't stand for anything except advancing his career.

          But you hit the nail on the head why he's never gonna get elected. If you can't make voters out of young people who have yet to have a candidate to rally behind it's gonna be Trump 2020. And then that's game over for planet earth basically.

          4 votes
        2. [4]
          cfabbro
          Link Parent
          So he is basically Bill Clinton v2.0 (or v0.5 perhaps, based on the fact he is apparently older than Bill)? That's not the worst thing in the world, and it certainly beats Trump IMO. But I guess...

          So he is basically Bill Clinton v2.0 (or v0.5 perhaps, based on the fact he is apparently older than Bill)? That's not the worst thing in the world, and it certainly beats Trump IMO. But I guess the real question is, can he actually beat Trump?

          1. [2]
            spctrvl
            Link Parent
            I'm sure he could, but the issue is that Biden's campaign is presenting him as a return to normalcy, as if Trump is just some once in a lifetime aberration and not the symptom of deep societal...

            I'm sure he could, but the issue is that Biden's campaign is presenting him as a return to normalcy, as if Trump is just some once in a lifetime aberration and not the symptom of deep societal ills resulting from decades of poor policy. While he wouldn't necessarily be a bad president, he's not really set on addressing the issues that gave us Trump in the first place, and eight years down the road we could be seeing a Trump v2 (or Dubya v3 or Reagan v4 if you prefer).

            3 votes
            1. alyaza
              Link Parent
              if you want my take on this, i think doing that would make him a bad president even if he's not going to actively fuck people over. obama could get away with this despite what he ran on because...

              While he wouldn't necessarily be a bad president, he's not really set on addressing the issues that gave us Trump in the first place, and eight years down the road we could be seeing a Trump v2 (or Dubya v3 or Reagan v4 if you prefer).

              if you want my take on this, i think doing that would make him a bad president even if he's not going to actively fuck people over. obama could get away with this despite what he ran on because literally half his years in office were washes (great job, democratic party!), and despite ultimately underdelivering he did still improve millions of people's lives and set the country on a whole lot better of a track than either mccain or romney would have. but like you said, biden's not really set on actually addressing many of the issues that trump used to win (nor is he really set on addressing a lot of issues in general)--and at this point, reverting to the status quo of obama like he seems to be angling himself to do isn't realistically going to cut it because the status quo for a lot of people is getting worse and has gotten worse since obama left office.

              on climate change alone for example, we basically need one of the most radical turnarounds in american history to start minimizing the catastrophe coming our way, to say nothing of other issues like wealth inequality, healthcare, racial issues, social issues, etc, none of which obama had to handle on such a time crunch as a future president will. just in general, i think revert to the status quo before trump would if anything just lock in the degradation in the quality of many people's lives that's occurred under trump instead of halting it or actively reversing it, especially since the status quo already wasn't addressing many of the issues those people had and still have. and that's just... really not acceptable, at this point, either domestically or internationally.

          2. alyaza
            Link Parent
            clinton was probably more conservative, honestly, being from arkansas, but yeah. they're both third way new democrats, and biden is one of the few major figures from that line in the party which...

            clinton was probably more conservative, honestly, being from arkansas, but yeah. they're both third way new democrats, and biden is one of the few major figures from that line in the party which is still in or will be in a position to win the presidency for the foreseeable future (beto o'rourke is really the only other as of now, and he's both not-particularly-clintonesque and seems unlikely to get over the hump anytime soon)

            2 votes
        3. [6]
          Comment deleted by author
          Link Parent
          1. stephen
            Link Parent
            Being an old white man is important thing to point out. He has basically no idea what it's like to be a person that gets othered by society. That's not a bad thing. It's a great thing for Joe...

            Being an old white man is important thing to point out. He has basically no idea what it's like to be a person that gets othered by society. That's not a bad thing. It's a great thing for Joe Biden and other white men. The struggle for representation is to get trans people, and people of color, and disabled people and first peoples to that point. But he's not coming from that place and it's important to elect more people who have that experience.

            3 votes
          2. [3]
            alyaza
            Link Parent
            ...you're talking to someone who wants bernie to win the nomination, lol.

            I don't want Joe Biden to win the nomination anymore than you do but this general belief that the Democrats can't ever again nominate a white male is becoming utterly tiresome.

            ...you're talking to someone who wants bernie to win the nomination, lol.

            2 votes
            1. [3]
              Comment deleted by author
              Link Parent
              1. alyaza
                Link Parent
                i don't really see what that has to do with anything--most people would probably consider bernie white and ethnically jewish (like i do) if anything, since the two really aren't mutually exclusive.

                Ah yes the Shrödinger Jew. White and male when needed to be white and male, but a minority when needed as a minority.

                i don't really see what that has to do with anything--most people would probably consider bernie white and ethnically jewish (like i do) if anything, since the two really aren't mutually exclusive.

                3 votes
              2. stephen
                Link Parent
                Dude is like 80 and from Vermont. But we still love Bernie cuz he's been down with the struggle for civil right and equal representation for decades. Joe Biden and Billary on the other hand....

                Dude is like 80 and from Vermont. But we still love Bernie cuz he's been down with the struggle for civil right and equal representation for decades. Joe Biden and Billary on the other hand....

                3 votes
          3. DearDeer
            Link Parent
            beto doesn't seem like an old white asshole but biden does, Its a descriptor used for him because of his actions.

            beto doesn't seem like an old white asshole but biden does, Its a descriptor used for him because of his actions.

    2. [2]
      Comment deleted by author
      Link Parent
      1. alyaza
        Link Parent
        honestly this far out, i still think even running the literal, actual hillary clinton again would manage to score a win for the democrat over trump. obviously a lot can change between election day...

        If we ran another Clinton with a bit more focus on Midwest/Rust belt states so they don't lose a bevy of electors by 100k votes, then it's an easy Democratic victory. Biden isn't my pick but if we end up with "Clinton 2.0", he can easily win by learning from the mistakes of Clinton assuming Trump performs similarly to before.

        honestly this far out, i still think even running the literal, actual hillary clinton again would manage to score a win for the democrat over trump. obviously a lot can change between election day and now, but given:

        • trump's relatively poor record in delivering results economically and socially in the heartlands and rust belt
        • the fact that turnout among minority groups will almost certainly go up from where they fell for the 2016 clinton campaign and minorities are likely to vote significantly more democratic than they have in any other election like they did in 2018
        • the continually, consistently shitty approval ratings donald has despite an economy that would make most presidents queasy with jealousy
        • the increasingly favorable demographics in a number of states like georgia, arizona, and texas for democrats, plus them holding their own in most of the large swing states like florida and north carolina
        • the path demonstrated by the 2018 midterms in general for successful appeals to the states they lost in 2016

        among other things, i just don't see where he scrounges up enough people to make up what he's likely to lose against even the worst democrat for the job (which amusingly is probably still hillary clinton). his margins were narrow in all the states that swung him the election, and i just can't see that holding up in 2020, much less him putting other states on the board to replace them (with maybe the exception of minnesota? minnesota was very close, although it actually always has been in this millennium outside of obama's two wins) or holding his margins in some of the other less close swing states. i honestly think we're likely to see the inverse, if anything: any democrat will probably put ohio and iowa back on the board to swing states in at least the short term, make arizona a swing in the long term, and i'd imagine pennsylvania and michigan are likely to return to their priors of being "competitive" but mostly fool's gold for republicans. maybe not wisconsin, since wisconsin is a bit wacky but who knows.

  2. [3]
    Deimos
    (edited )
    Link
    Kind of an interesting article from a former editor at The Onion that regrets how they helped frame Joe Biden as a harmless, fun guy (and probably contributed to the existence of things like...

    Kind of an interesting article from a former editor at The Onion that regrets how they helped frame Joe Biden as a harmless, fun guy (and probably contributed to the existence of things like /r/BidenBro): Area Man Regrets Helping Turn Joe Biden Into a Meme

    4 votes
    1. [2]
      alyaza
      Link Parent
      honestly, it's incredibly interesting to me that the onion's framing of biden is how a decent number of (mostly online) people have come to legitimately see biden, and in some cases it was/is...

      honestly, it's incredibly interesting to me that the onion's framing of biden is how a decent number of (mostly online) people have come to legitimately see biden, and in some cases it was/is their only real exposure to him as a person. i imagine that it didn't have an outsized impact on how people see him across the board since the onion is but a small drop in the media bucket, but in a lot of circles of the internet it's absolutely changed how people discuss him or if they discuss him in the first place (probably under the influence of /r/bidenbro and reddit as a whole).

      2 votes
      1. Deimos
        Link Parent
        We don't like to admit it, but propaganda works very, very well. It's the same reason so many people think Trump is an incredibly successful businessman - they really only know him as "that super...

        We don't like to admit it, but propaganda works very, very well. It's the same reason so many people think Trump is an incredibly successful businessman - they really only know him as "that super rich guy from TV", largely because of The Apprentice framing him that way.

        2 votes
  3. alyaza
    Link
    side shoutout to this article by Intelligencer that i originally had in here but truncated because it felt too tangential to write up in the main topic: Will the Mountain West Become Pivotal in...

    side shoutout to this article by Intelligencer that i originally had in here but truncated because it felt too tangential to write up in the main topic: Will the Mountain West Become Pivotal in Future Elections?

    long story short of the headline: don't count on it.

    2 votes
  4. alyaza
    Link
    in these times has a pretty good piece on reparations and 2020 that i missed which came out today: The 2020 Candidates Are Dodging the Reparations Question. this is, as some of you may recall,...

    in these times has a pretty good piece on reparations and 2020 that i missed which came out today: The 2020 Candidates Are Dodging the Reparations Question. this is, as some of you may recall, something that has been broached before this year in congress by cory booker and which has come up in a couple of places since, like at 2020 town halls. in particular bernie sanders has been criticized for not really having a definitive stance on it (the article goes into this); but honestly, most candidates don't really seem to have a genuine "reparations" policy. depending on how you view things, this could be the correct approach or the wrong one.

    2 votes
  5. alyaza
    Link
    some smaller stories from today and yesterday: Montana Gov. Bullock joins crowded Democratic presidential race - steve bullock decided to enter the race for some reason. expect him to be a...

    some smaller stories from today and yesterday:

    • Montana Gov. Bullock joins crowded Democratic presidential race - steve bullock decided to enter the race for some reason. expect him to be a perennial 1% candidate, because any constituencies he could represent he's been beaten to the punch by already.

    • Sanders backs calls to break up Facebook - sanders becomes the third candidate after warren and gabbard to call for this. kinda surprised that this is actually something of a democratic litmus test so far; most of the major candidates have had to make statements on it and have been open to the idea. even biden(!!) has expressed at least looking at the possibility.

    • Joe Biden's early state polling looks more like those of past winners than losers - biden is, not shockingly, polling like a winner in the early states so far. this tracks with his national polling, of course, so it's not super duper helpful in determining how well he'll do after things like the debates necessarily--however if he does keep a polling lead through the first few debates, that would suggest he's going to coast to a victory either by taking a majority of the delegates or by taking so close to a majority that it won't matter.

    2 votes
  6. alyaza
    Link
    biden's kickoff rally is today and... his crowd is awful. looks like he's struggling to draw even 1,000: Here’s the crowd for the Joe Biden Rally in Philadelphia. Rally is supposed to start in 12...