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2020 Democratic Presidential Nominees

PhDeac said:
What? That's ridiculous. What on earth do you mean? Nobody knew about him at the beginning of the race.
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and yet somehow the billionaire donors and establishment found him pretty quick, huh
 
TownieDeac said:
It's clearly a smokescreen for her candidate's time at McKinsey. Lis is banking on the idea that Warren's people won't go nearly as hard punching down at Pete.
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I'm sure that figuring out how to jack up premiums and knock folks off healthcare for BCBS in Michigan is going to play really well to Pete's base.











I'm not kidding. It will play well to Pete's base.

And I hope Warren knocks this dude the fuck out.
 
Strickland33 said:
and yet somehow the billionaire donors and establishment found him pretty quick, huh
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Because he quickly moved up the polls. Go back and look at the facts. The donations and media attention follow his polling. He got the polling bump and it drew attention. That's how campaigns are supposed to work. You're engaging in ridiculous conspiracy theories to make sense of what has happened.

This is what you posted about Pete over 8 months ago:

Strickland33 said:
I was joking, man. That’s an Onion setup.

ETA: unrelated, but I wanted to post it somewhere: You’re a good booster for Mayor Pete. If not for your advocacy, I probably would never consider him as a legitimate candidate. I doubt I will consider vote for him in a primary, but I have no problem voting for him in the general.
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Doesn't seem like he was born on third base if you needed some guy on a message board to convince you he was legit.
 
I think acting like pete had some huge leg up in this race is pretty laughable. c'mon, being a big money donor recipient doesn't automatically translate into connecting with enough people to poll even with Biden. look at Beto
 
How about you just go back and look at the facts. If I'm wrong, then I'll own it. I'm almost certain that I'm not, but I'm just kind of sick of arguing with you about Pete at this point.
 
But how did he rise in the polls if people don’t care about wading through all the candidates policy differences?
 
b/c most voters only pay attention to soundbites and which candidate the media is saying is "hot right now"
 
I'll just give a disclaimer that this post is gonna suck for 99% of posters here and you can feel free to skip it.

MHB (and maybe other leftists here), I've been working on an idea about class in America. It seems to me our class consciousness is tied up in a bunch of cultural signifiers rather than any real sense of our contribution to the production behind capital. I've been struggling with this idea for a while, whether culture is downstream of politics or politics is downstream of culture.

Thinking about Brexit and the LibDems, they're probably the party that has the most cohesive and easiest to digest message: No Brexit. Then Tories are promising a way to Leave and Labour is stuck with a muddled message. There's a leftist Brexit policy that is about trade protection and a right Brexit policy that's about immigration. And Corbin wants to argue for stronger labor protections (and respect the will of the people's vote or go for a new referendum) but he's stuck with this weird anti-semitism label and he mostly just wants to nationalize rail and fund NHS anyway. But when it comes to the people thinking over this election, there are a lot of places in the UK that look a lot like the post-industrial midwest, where the right has generally won the culture war in spite of the reality of Austerity killing the social safety net. And Boris has done a half decent job convincing that part of the electorate that the EU doesn't understand them but he does. That the cultural elites in Brussels wouldn't understand daily life in Dagenham. This in spite of who Boris is or who the Tories in Parliament are. They've managed to do that with cultural arguments, generally speaking. These weird nationalist signifiers, xenophobia, glorifying the Thatcher years, etc.

All of that sounds terrifyingly familiar. The right has a relatively easier story to tell than the left, and the center is pushing an even easier story than that. This in spite of the clear facts of rampant inequality and corruption. I guess my question for good Marxists out there is how we build a revolution of class consciousness in America and the West today about our place as labor. Is it lost now that we're an individualist society? Is it too manifest in culture? There simply won't be another Bernie Sanders in the next or any foreseeable generation. People are only getting more and more beat down.

For me, I've put significant stock in the idea that Warren is sort of the next best thing, the cynic's answer to Bernie. But there's something about Pete that utterly breaks my brain, that smart people have this cognitive dissonance about him and what he represents. He to me is more like a Dem Trump than anyone, not because he's a demagogue but because he's a Harvard/Oxford/McKinsey guy talking about corruption and a Douglass Plan. And seemingly people buy it because of either meritocracy or because they actually think his policy is good! Or they're charmed by him or some such thing. I don't begrudge a Klob voter because Klob tells you exactly who she is, she's quite literally the "no we can't" candidate. I don't begrudge most Biden voters because they're just grilling grandpas having backyard barbecues at their retirement communities. They couldn't tell you who Neera Tanden was to save their lives. I envy that. I don't begrudge Yang voters because more than any other candidate, I think his supporters really like his ideas more than who he is or what he represents. But who is Pete for? Seemingly just the managerial class or some similar hyperspecific group.

IDK there's too much rambling there, but I didn't want to argue, just wanted to brain dump.
 
Strick, if you're tired of arguing with me about Pete then don't. You're starting these arguments.

ImTheCaptain said:
b/c most voters only pay attention to soundbites and which candidate the media is saying is "hot right now"
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Pretty much especially this early in a long process. It's still 2 months until Iowa. I'm not sure how exactly what MHB is saying, but if he's trying to claim that policy is THE key in elections, there's plenty of evidence he's wrong. We haven't had a policy wonk president in my lifetime. If you gave most people a quiz about policy differences between primary candidates, I doubt most would pass it. People are looking for candidates who can express sympathy and understanding and exude confidence.
 
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Strickland33 said:
I'm sure that figuring out how to jack up premiums and knock folks off healthcare for BCBS in Michigan is going to play really well to Pete's base.

I'm not kidding. It will play well to Pete's base.

And I hope Warren knocks this dude the fuck out.
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price fixing at grocery stores is...hear me out...Actually Good
 
"It seems to me our class consciousness is tied up in a bunch of cultural signifiers rather than any real sense of our contribution to the production behind capital."

This is why you're branding the guy with a net worth of $100K gave up lucrative job opportunities to go back home and be a mayor who married to a school teacher as Harvard/Oxford/McKinsey.

Obviously SES is made up of a variety of factors including parents' education and educational attainment, but it seems disingenuous to paint Pete is Richie Rich, born on third base, etc.
 
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PhDeac said:
Strick, if you're tired of arguing with me about Pete then don't. You're starting these arguments.
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As long as you'll stop claiming that Pete is anywhere close to being a progressive, then I'll knock it off.

The guy is now basically running right of Biden and everything in his background (always courting moderates and Republicans over progressives, attempting to covering up the state sanctioned murder of black people, attempting to bulldoze black peoples' homes to facilitate redevelopment, his record at McKinsey, and his attacks on the other candidates) suggests that he just doesn't give a shit about progressive issues.
 
PhDeac said:
"It seems to me our class consciousness is tied up in a bunch of cultural signifiers rather than any real sense of our contribution to the production behind capital."

This is why you're branding the guy with a net worth of $100K who married to a school teacher as Harvard/Oxford/McKinsey.
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If you're trying to say that Pete isn't particularly well off, then you're forgetting the fact that he was raised by one of the more influential political philosophers of the 20th century at a very wealthy private university. Dude was born on third base.
 
Pete is running in the wide lane between Biden and Warren.

Whoever wins the nomination will have run the most Progressive primary campaign ever except for Bernie 2016.
 
Strickland33 said:
If you're trying to say that Pete isn't particularly well off, then you're forgetting the fact that he was raised by one of the more influential political philosophers of the 20th century at a very wealthy private university. Dude was born on third base.
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Well off compared to regular Americans? Obviously. Well off compared to most politicians and candidates? No.
 
PhDeac said:
Pete is running in the wide lane between Biden and Warren.
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You keep saying this, but it's not true. He's running to the right of Biden. So, I suppose that Biden is running in the wide lane between Buttigieg and Warren.

You also continue to claim that Pete is a progressive without providing a shred of evidence that exists suggests that this isn't the case.
 
PhDeac said:
Well off compared to regular Americans? Obviously. Well off compared to most politicians and candidates? No.
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A distinguished college professor in South Bend, Indiana is probably at the top of the income distribution in South Bend, Indiana. You're in academia. You know this.
 
PhDeac said:
"It seems to me our class consciousness is tied up in a bunch of cultural signifiers rather than any real sense of our contribution to the production behind capital."

This is why you're branding the guy with a net worth of $100K gave up lucrative job opportunities to go back home and be a mayor who married to a school teacher as Harvard/Oxford/McKinsey.

Obviously SES is made up of a variety of factors including parents' education and educational attainment, but it seems disingenuous to paint Pete is Richie Rich, born on third base, etc.
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I don't think net worth is a good measure, but I think using Pete as an example is probably instructive. He left a $150k/year job at McKinsey to go do public service. You can look at that as "this guy has seen what the business consultant class lifestyle and the corporatist global ethos looks like and decided he'd rather try and make the world better" or you can be a bit more cynical. In either case, Pete has taken what he's learned from his journey and decided that the Sanders/Warren path is not the best direction for the country. That's where he and I see differently on policy, and I don't want to draw too many class conclusions about that either way. Just asking some questions; I think yours was a good response.
 
Strickland33 said:
A distinguished college professor in South Bend, Indiana is probably at the top of the income distribution in South Bend, Indiana. You're in academia. You know this.
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ziggy says that base for pay an experienced prof. is somewhere slightly under $100k, which tracks for most of academia. they might make a bit more on grants and or book sales but top end of the distribution?
 
The People's Champion at work:

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/5dmmmz/inside-the-financial-relationship-between-pete-buttigieg-and-charter-school-backers

On Saturday, surging Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg released his plan for K-12 education, a wide-ranging 20-page document that offers just one paragraph on charter schools.

Up to this point, Buttigieg's comments on charters, the publicly-funded, privately-managed schools that educate about 7 percent of public school students, have been minimal. He didn't respond to the Washington Post's candidate questionnaire on the topic, and he missed an NEA-sponsored public education forum that ten candidates participated in in July. In April, at a Northeastern University event in Boston, he reportedly dodged a charter school question, but then responded to a follow-up by saying they "have a place" as "a laboratory for techniques that can be replicated." In May, he said on the trail that he supported Sen. Bernie Sanders' call to ban for-profit charters.

The problem is that charter schools have become something of a flashpoint in the 2020 primary, as many candidates have criticized them for things like taking resources away from traditional public schools and privatizing education. In doing so, these candidates have been largely distancing themselves from the pro-charter school policies embraced by the Obama administration. The media has not pressed Buttigieg much on charters, or even on public education, perhaps because he was polling relatively low for much of the race.

But Buttigieg, who is now leading in some Iowa caucus surveys, has been holding private fundraisers with a number of prominent charter school supporters, according to invitations reviewed by VICE. While his education plan was enthusiastically endorsed by American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten, who has praised all the leading candidates' education platforms, Buttigieg's financial ties with the charter school community raise questions about what policy positions he might adopt if ultimately elected president.

Buttigieg's plan for charters itself is relatively uncontroversial, which is to say vague. For example, he calls for "equal accountability" between charter schools and traditional public schools, though a few lines later he softens this to a more non-specific standard of "comparable levels" of accountability. While the South Bend mayor says he would "take action" against authorizing entities that produce low-quality charter schools, and that he would work with states to ensure charter school innovations "can be subsequently shared to strengthen the traditional public school system," he doesn't provide details on how he would do either of those things.

Notably, his plan steers clear of the Charter Schools Program (CSP), an annual pot of federal money that finances the growth of new charters across the country. Elizabeth Warren has called for an end to funding that program under her administration, and Bernie Sanders said he would put a moratorium on federal funds for new charters until a national audit could assess the impact of charter growth in each state.

(A campaign spokesperson told Chalkbeat this weekend that Buttigieg would stop CSP dollars from going directly to for-profit schools, though a 2014 federal guidance already prohibits this. The spokesperson declined to tell Chalkbeat who advised Buttigieg on his education plan, and did not respond to VICE on that question either.)

While Buttigeig's standing in the polls has recently improved, especially in the early states of Iowa and New Hampshire, his ability to win over black voters remains a daunting stumbling block between him and the Democratic nomination. Black voters favor charters at higher rates than white voters, though still only 47 percent of black Democrats support them, according to an annual education opinion survey.

There aren't many charter schools currently in South Bend, though that might be changing soon. Enrollment in the city's public schools dropped by almost 700 students in the last year, and the South Bend superintendent is considering the adoption of a so-called "innovation school" strategy—where the traditional school district would run charter schools but those teachers couldn't join the citywide teacher union. Two other Indiana cities use this strategy: Indianapolis, where 28 percent of students attended charters in 2015-16 and Gary, where 43 percent did, according to a report by the State Department of Education. The National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, a prominent pro-charter advocacy group, has ranked Indiana as having the best state law for charter schools in the country for the last four years in a row.

Linda Lucy, who has served as the president of the South Bend teachers union since June 2018, told VICE she had never met with Pete Buttigieg, and had "nothing to add" about the union’s relationship with the mayor. "Politicians have hijacked the teaching profession in our public schools," she said.

Buttigieg does appear to have made time for Heather Willey, one of Indiana's top charter school lobbyists, who co-hosted a fundraiser for Buttigieg in Indianapolis on October 4, according to an invitation obtained by VICE.

Willey served on the board of the Institute for Quality Education, an Indiana school choice advocacy group, for years, and co-chairs her law firm's "Charter School and School Innovation" group. In 2019, the Institute for Quality Education, Teach for America Indianapolis, and Charter Schools USA, Inc., a for-profit charter company, all listed Willey's firm, Barnes & Thornburg LLP, as a hired lobbyist. According to her professional biography, Willey "has been intimately involved in the charter school and school reform movements since the inception of the laws in Indiana in 2001." She did not return repeated requests for comment.

In Silicon Valley, meanwhile, Buttigieg has also had fundraisers with several prominent charter school supporters.

Satya Patel, a venture capitalist who formerly worked as a vice president of product at Twitter, co-hosted an event for Buttigieg in the Bay Area in late August. Between 2007 and 2017, Patel served on the board of KIPP Bay Area Schools, part of the nation's largest charter school network, which has received tens of millions of dollars in federal grants. He did not return requests for comment.

Reed Hastings, the CEO of Netflix and one of the nation’s most prominent charter school funders, co-hosted a Menlo Park fundraiser for Buttigieg in late July and maxxed out to his campaign in April.

In an email, Hastings told VICE that he had not spoken with Buttigieg about charter schools, saying, " don't know where he stands." The federal role for charter schools and education generally, Hastings added, "is quite small." In 2018, Hastings spent millions of dollars to unsuccessfully elect a pro-charter state superintendent in California, and this past year he donated $143,000 to 73 Republicans in Missouri to build more support for charter schools in that state.

Camilo Acosta, another San Francisco tech executive, held two fundraisers for Buttigieg—one on October 17, and another on July 24. According to his Crunchbase profile, when Acosta is not working at his start-up, he "does fundraising and advocacy work for education reform efforts, a cause" he "fervently support." Another online bio for an appearance on the Bright Ideas podcast says he "hosts fundraisers for education reform organizations such as KIPP, and political candidates that support the cause."

Acosta told VICE that he had talked to Buttigieg personally about charters at fundraisers, adding, "The reason I got involved with the campaign and started going to fundraisers and hosting them is because I'm a Latino immigrant and I wanted to be a voice for those inner-city kids and parents who can't be in those rooms." Acosta praised Buttigieg's newly-released K12 plan, saying, "It's what I had hoped to see, I think it took a very nuanced approach."

In recent weeks Buttigieg faced criticism over his campaign's lack of transparency around donors and fundraisers—before the campaign reversed course on Monday and indicated it would open high-dollar fundraisers to the press. (At least until that announcement, the Buttigieg campaign had stopped listing the names of hosts on its fundraiser invitations, making it more difficult to learn who was organizing those events.)

The Buttigieg campaign declined a request for an interview on his approach to charter-school policy. When asked if the campaign wanted to comment on the charter backers who have hosted fundraisers—and whether Buttigieg has spoken about charters at any of these fundraisers—spokesperson Sean Savett referred VICE to a June article published in NBC. That piece quoted Buttigieg saying, "I think the expansion of charter schools in general is something that we need to really draw back on until we've corrected what needs to be corrected in terms of underfunded public education."

His rivals aren't having as much success laying low on the issue. Warren, whose education plan calls for limiting charter school expansion and holding charters to the same transparency and accountability standards as traditional public schools, was protested by charter school activists at a November campaign event in Atlanta, as the New York Times reported. This past weekend in New Hampshire, Warren who has sworn off high-dollar fundraisers, called on Buttigieg to open his three upcoming fundraisers in New York to the press and said she was concerned about presidential candidates who "sell access to their time to the highest bidder."

Buttigieg, Warren, and at least six other presidential candidates are expected to appear at a public education town hall hosted by MSNBC in Pittsburgh next weekend.
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Pete is like Obama, but without actually believing in any of it.
 
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