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Ongoing Dem Debacle Thread: Commander will kill us all

myDeaconmyhand said:
Thats a good article. I very much agree with the theory, but I don't need necessarily agree with the implication that Beto is the better choice. I think his popularity is being overblown right now by Democrats desperate for a candidate with charisma and energy. It's a seemingly neverending cycle of establishment Dems convincing themselves that candidates are more important than progressive promises. The focus is always on finding the next JFK rock star, instead of the party breaking from corporate control and actually giving people the things they want and need.
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I agree with this line of thinking. Instead of looking for the next rock star, go with someone who gets things done and is not intimidated in the least by Trump or any of his minions. I tend to think Amy Klobuchar is that person. Below is what EV.com thinks.


  • Name: Sen. Amy Klobuchar (DFL-MN)
  • Age on January 20, 2021: 60
  • Background: A lifelong Minnesotan, Klobuchar's mother was a teacher and her father was a sportswriter. Her home life was not always great, however, particularly in her teen years due to her father being an alcoholic (as Justice Brett Kavanaugh reminded us during his confirmation hearings), and was often absent (either due to work, or drunkenness, or both), eventually culminating in a divorce. The resulting trauma took a major toll on Klobuchar's sister, who dropped out of high school and spent much of the next decade drifting and directionless. Klobuchar managed to persevere, however, and was valedictorian of her high school class before matriculating at Yale, where she received a B.A. in political science, and then at the University of Chicago law school, where she took her J.D. in 1985. She then spent the next decade in private practice while also marrying and starting a family.
  • Political Experience: Klobuchar's first involvement with politics was somewhat inadvertent. When she gave birth to her daughter, she was forced to leave the hospital within 24 hours, despite the fact that there were complications that meant the infant could not swallow properly. She appeared before the Minnesota state legislature to lobby (successfully) for a bill establishing a 48-hour minimum. This, in turn, led Bill Clinton to impose that requirement nationally.

    In her first actual election, in 1994, Klobuchar ran for County Attorney of Hennepin County (Minnesota's largest county by population; it includes Minneapolis). However, she dropped out when incumbent Michael Freeman pulled a Marco Rubio and decided to stand for reelection at the last minute after having announced he would not do so. Four years later, however, Freeman stepped down and stuck with it, and so Klobuchar was elected. She served two terms in that job before running for, and winning, her seat in the U.S. Senate in 2006, thus becoming the first woman elected to represent Minnesota in the upper chamber of Congress. She has since been twice reelected, both times in landslides (35 points in 2012, 25 points in 2018).
  • Signature Issue(s): Klobuchar is a remarkably effective Senator, and in several of her years in the Senate, she has gotten more bills passed into law than any of her colleagues. Her committee memberships also speak to the diversity of her interests and expertise: She's served on the Senate committees on the Judiciary; Commerce, Science and Transportation; Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry; and Rules and Administration; and on the Joint Committees on Economics, on Printing, and on the Library. That said, the issue that she is most identified with in her home state is probably infrastructure. That has been an area of interest since her college days, when she wrote her undergraduate thesis about the construction of the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome. She has been remarkably successful at rallying support and funding for improvements and repairs to infrastructure in the Gopher State, perhaps most obviously when the I-35W bridge collapsed into the Mississippi River. Her website lays out her views on this issue, which the Senator describes as "the bipartisan job creator rural America needs."
  • Instructive Quote: "Courage means standing next to someone you don't always agree with for the betterment of the country."
  • Completely Trivial Fact: Although Klobuchar's former colleague Al Franken is the Minnesota politician famous for his career in comedy, she's no slouch in this area, having been a very well reviewed member of the improv group "Suddenly Susan" during her undergrad years.
  • Recent News: Doing what she does best, Klobuchar got a bill passed by Congress this week—unanimously in both chambers. This one overhauls the legislature's policies regarding sexual harassment among its own ranks, and now heads to Donald Trump for his signature. Assuming he signs it, it will be the 99th Klobuchar-sponsored bill to become law. That's a very impressive total, a rate of about eight bills-turned-laws per year in a body where two or three a year is considered a pretty good clip.
  • Three Biggest Pros: (1) Coming from Minnesota, she's focused a lot on rural voters' issues—that is to say, the folks who feel the Democratic Party has left them behind; (2) If voters want a politician who reaches across the aisle and gets things done, that describes Klobuchar better than just about anyone in the Democratic field; and (3) She's one of the most likable people in Washington, by all accounts.
  • Three Biggest Cons: (1) The young and urban voters that make up the bulk of the modern Democratic Party may struggle to get excited about Klobuchar and the issues that matter most to her; (2) She's been a very effective campaigner in Minnesota, but her hands-on approach may not be scalable; and (3) Some worry that she is a little too nice, given how ugly 2020 figures to be.
  • Is She Actually Running?: She says she's "thinking about it," which is politician-speak for "yes."
  • Betting Odds: She's got a wider spread than just about anyone, with some books at 20-to-1, others as low as 7-to-2. That implies a 5%-23% chance of claiming the nomination.
  • The Bottom Line: She is one of the Democrats' stronger candidates, and has the advantage of flying under the radar at the moment. That means she's not being put under a microscope right now in the way that, say, Beto O'Rourke is. In other words, she's well-positioned to peak at the right moment, if she can heighten her national profile just a bit more.
 
The Presidential election is a popularity contest. Wonks don’t win. People like to like their President especially liberals.
 
PhDeac said:
The Presidential election is a popularity contest. Wonks don’t win. People like to like their President especially liberals.
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Well count me out then on Harris, Sanders, Booker, Warren, etc.. None of those clowns are remotely likeable, nor do they have much of a chance to win. If Harris is the front runner, prepare for 4 more years of Trump. The chance of a coastal elite carrying the heartland is laughable.
 
DeacWatcher said:
Well count me out then on Harris, Sanders, Booker, Warren, etc.. None of those clowns are remotely likeable, nor do they have much of a chance to win. If Harris is the front runner, prepare for 4 more years of Trump. The chance of a coastal elite carrying the heartland is laughable.
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a billionaire New Yorker is their idol
 
DeacWatcher said:
Well count me out then on Harris, Sanders, Booker, Warren, etc.. None of those clowns are remotely likeable, nor do they have much of a chance to win. If Harris is the front runner, prepare for 4 more years of Trump. The chance of a coastal elite carrying the heartland is laughable.
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Among the potential candidates, doesn’t Bernie rank pretty well on popularity?
 
PhDeac said:
The Presidential election is a popularity contest. Wonks don’t win. People like to like their President especially liberals.
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Sure, but a debate limited to "wonks" and popular liberals, is a false dichotomy. Hillary was commonly considered a wonk, yet she dominated the popular vote. Democrat party decision makers are self obsessed and seem most concerned with winning their own primary, rather than focusing on candidates most likely to win the electoral college.
 
Hillary got fewer votes than Obama.
 
 
Also, I disagree not just with her salty attitude towards people like AOC, I disagree with her premise that there needs to be different Democrats for different states. As has been said on here by multiple people, given the choice between a Republican and a Democrat that is trying to lean conservative on some issues, voters will go for the genuine article nearly every time. And the progressive Democratic platform already has plenty of appeal for all Americans (except maybe the uber-rich): raising the minimum wage to a livable amount, giving everyone equitable access to healthcare, improving infrastructure, improving education standards and school infrastructure, cleaning up the environment, the list can go on for a while. Show me a moderate Democrat and I'll show you someone that will vote for a Republican in a heartbeat given a half a reason. The focus should not be on trying to target an ultra-specific subset of voters, it should be trying to demonstrate that a modern, progressive, fully-adopted Democratic platform can improve all American lives, regardless if you believe that gay marriage or abortion should be legal/illegal.

TL;DR: moderate Democrats are just as bad a parasite on American politics as Republicans so long as they go out of their way to cause divides in the Democratic Party. If you want to be Republicans so badly, go be Republicans.
 
ImTheCaptain said:
either you believe in representative government or you believe in a party.
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Exactly. Most people are low income, its about time their interests were truly represented in government, rather than a national party of elitists steered by corporate interests.
 
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