• Welcome to OGBoards 10.0, keep in mind that we will be making LOTS of changes to smooth out the experience here and make it as close as possible functionally to the old software, but feel free to drop suggestions or requests in the Tech Support subforum!

2020 Democratic Presidential Nominees

Pete's good looking and impresses most who listen to him. You white dudes with a problem with him are way over thinking things.

This, he also has the ability to communicate policy in a digestible that average Americans understand and get behind.
 
Biden still promised he'd be able to "work things out" with Graham if they both wound up together again in Washington, DC, after the election. "Nothing's gonna snap back; we're in a totally different world," Biden added. But he said he believed there will be "serious consequences" for the Republican Party as Americans reckon with Trump.

"It’s not like there’s going to be some great epiphany and people are going to wake up and go, 'Oh my god, I'm now a Democrat.' And if you hear people on the rope line saying, ‘I'm a Republican,’ I say, ‘Stay a Republican.’ Vote for me but stay a Republican, because we need a Republican Party."

He later added that he's concerned about what would happen if the Republican Party were totally "clobbered."

"I'm really worried that no party should have too much power," he said. "You need a countervailing force."

That's a pretty solid thing to say that Americans need to hear, whether or not the progressive wing of the democratic party likes it or not.

Biden is not as polished as I was hoping he could pull together, but I have no question he would be a decent president.
 
Michael Bennet is the most underrated Dem candidate.

 
That's a pretty solid thing to say that Americans need to hear, whether or not the progressive wing of the democratic party likes it or not.

Biden is not as polished as I was hoping he could pull together, but I have no question he would be a decent president.

Counterpoint: Republicans are very bad.
 
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/10/opinion/bernie-sanders-multiracial-workers.html

Keeanga-Yahmatta Taylor on Bernie Sanders and the multiracial working class:

The spirited endorsements of three-quarters of the so-called squad illustrates how Mr. Sanders’s campaign has grown from 2016 when it was criticized for being too white, too male and for underestimating the salience of race and gender oppression. Some of that criticism was overstated. Indeed Mr. Sanders won 52 percent of the black millennial vote in 2016 and was supported by Black Lives Matter activists like Erica Garner, who passed away in 2017. But Mr. Sanders took the criticisms seriously anyway.

Much of the media, though, has been stuck in 2016 and has missed the ways that the Sanders campaign has transformed into a tribune of the oppressed and marginalized. We can also measure this change in the endorsement of Philip Agnew, the former head of the Florida-based Dream Defenders and a leader in the Black Lives Matter movement who has become a campaign surrogate. These developments defy the caricature of his campaign as impossibly sexist and implicitly racist.

Under normal circumstances, the multiracial working class is invisible. This has meant its support for Mr. Sanders’s candidacy has been hard to register in the mainstream coverage of the Democratic race. But these voters are crucial to understanding the resilience of the Sanders campaign, which has been fueled by small dollar donations from more than one million people, a feat none of his opponents has matched. Remarkably, he also has at least 130,000 recurring donors, some of whom make monthly contributions.

Adding to that, Mr. Sanders is the top recipient for donations by teachers, farmers, servers, social workers, retail workers, construction workers, truckers, nurses and drivers as of September. He claims that his donors’ most common employers are Starbucks, Amazon and Walmart, and the most common profession is teaching. Mr. Sanders is also the leading recipient of donations from Latinos as well as the most popular Democrat among registered Latinos who plan to vote in the Nevada and California primaries. According to Essence magazine, Mr. Sanders is the favorite candidate among black women aged 18 to 34. Only 49 percent of his supporters are white, compared with 71 percent of Warren supporters. Perhaps most surprising, more women under 45 support him than men under 45.

Mr. Sanders’s popularity among these voters may be what alienates him within the political establishment and mainstream media. The leadership of the Democratic Party regularly preaches that moderation and pragmatism can appeal to “centrist” Democrats as well as Republicans skeptical of Mr. Trump. It is remarkable that this strategy still has legs after its spectacular failure for Hillary Clinton in 2016.

Mrs. Clinton’s rejoinder to Mr. Trump that “America never stopped being great” was tone deaf to millions of ordinary Americans struggling with debt, police brutality and pervasive inequality. Simply focusing on the boorishness of Mr. Trump or offering watered-down versions of what has made Mr. Sanders a household name will not motivate those who do not typically vote or angry voters who recoil at the cynicism of calculating politicians.

In many respects, Bernie Sanders’s standing in the Democratic Party field is shocking. After all, the United States government spent more than half of the 20th century locked in a Cold War against Soviet Communism. That an open and proud socialist is tied with Ms. Warren for second place in the race speaks to the mounting failures of free market capitalism to produce a decent life for a growing number of people. There was a time in America when being called a socialist could end a political career, but Bernie Sanders may ride that label all the way to the White House.
 
oh man, you guys are gonna be proud. i finally got around to start reading Zinn's People's History.
 
Looking forward to ITC the abolitionist. Juice have you read Race for Profit yet?
 

Yeah, saw that, and it confirms what I've been thinking about Pete. He doesn't poll well in the south but will be competitive in the midwest and AZ & NV.

Tilt, agree about Bennet. But like Booker and Klobuchar, he just hasn't moved the needle. I don't have an explanation for Bennet or Booker. With Klobuchar, I think it's more her lack of a charismatic personality, and we appear to be harder on female candidates than male candidates for president (as opposed to members of congress). 538 had a piece on this earlier today.
 
Yeah, saw that, and it confirms what I've been thinking about Pete. He doesn't poll well in the south but will be competitive in the midwest and AZ & NV.

Tilt, agree about Bennet. But like Booker and Klobuchar, he just hasn't moved the needle. I don't have an explanation for Bennet or Booker. With Klobuchar, I think it's more her lack of a charismatic personality, and we appear to be harder on female candidates than male candidates for president (as opposed to members of congress). 538 had a piece on this earlier today.

I don’t think we need much of an explanation why Bennett, Booker, or Klob or whoever isn’t performing stronger. There are four top candidates. Three were easily the biggest national names before the election began. Only one other candidate broke through and he was one of the least known people.

It’s not about why those candidates didn’t rise to the top. It’s why Pete did. Everybody else was pretty much doomed from the start by the size of the field and the length of the process.

I also think Democrats didn’t understand that although there is a huge desire to get rid of Trump and plenty of excitement after 2018, the base was also fatigued by politics and not eager to immediately jump into a long race. I think people just want to know who will face Trump but they aren’t trying to sift through 20+ candidates.
 
Last edited:
Oh look, another “policy doesn’t matter” take.

My post?

If you want to make the point that Pete's policies are superior to the 20+ candidates he left in the dust, go right ahead.
 
Back
Top