2020 Democratic Presidential Nominees

RJKarl said:

Anyone voting for a third or alternate party candidate is de facto voting Trump whether they are honest enough to admit it or not.

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Lol no it's not. A vote for third party is a vote to get more exposure to those candidates politics, if enough people start voting for the policies they will be pulled into the mainstream agendas.

I'm not voting for a socialist, if that means 4 more years of Trump so be it. Maybe next time the left will learn and won't nominate someone unelectable. I'm not against voting for democrats and can pretty much guarantee I have voted left more times than "leftist" on here voted for a Republican.

PhDeac said:

Exactly. That’s what I outlined above. Then the gay president appoints a trans cabinet member. Then he says a gay victim of harassment could have been him. Then the gay first couple adopts a kid. And it just keeps snowballing from there.

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Pretty soon, all straight people are going to come to the realization that, “damn, I should just be gay!” Or trans or something.

WFcatamount22 said:

Lol no it's not. A vote for third party is a vote to get more exposure to those candidates politics, if enough people start voting for the policies they will be pulled into the mainstream agendas.

I'm not voting for a socialist, if that means 4 more years of Trump so be it. Maybe next time the left will learn and won't nominate someone unelectable. I'm not against voting for democrats and can pretty much guarantee I have voted left more times than "leftist" on here voted for a Republican.

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You don't understand the premise.

WFcatamount22 said:

Lol no it's not. A vote for third party is a vote to get more exposure to those candidates politics, if enough people start voting for the policies they will be pulled into the mainstream agendas.

I'm not voting for a socialist, if that means 4 more years of Trump so be it. Maybe next time the left will learn and won't nominate someone unelectable. I'm not against voting for democrats and can pretty much guarantee I have voted left more times than "leftist" on here voted for a Republican.

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I was once in this camp but I am vehemently against voting 3rd party unless there is a clear path to victory.

3rd party candidates have plenty of time to educate voters on their platform during the course of a campaign. If a 3rd party candidate consistently polls in low single digits and has no clear path to victory in the week leading up to the election (which is what usually happens), then they should withdraw their candidacy and throw support behind another candidate or an issue that is important to them.

And voters should hold 3rd party candidates accountable as well. If it’s the day before Election Day and your favorite 3rd party candidate is nowhere near striking distance then don’t vote for them. It’s a wasted vote.

And this goes for both sides of the aisle.

WFcatamount22 said:

Lol no it's not. A vote for third party is a vote to get more exposure to those candidates politics, if enough people start voting for the policies they will be pulled into the mainstream agendas.

I'm not voting for a socialist, if that means 4 more years of Trump so be it. Maybe next time the left will learn and won't nominate someone unelectable. I'm not against voting for democrats and can pretty much guarantee I have voted left more times than "leftist" on here voted for a Republican.

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Did you say you would only vote for Bernie, but that you would never for a socialist? Not computing.

Fuck

Fuck

DSA just endorsed. They also passed a motion to call on Sanders to support HR 40, the reparations bill.

LOL. Do you lump us in with DSA?

Ebony article on Pete's chances with black voters in SC.
https://www.ebony.com/exclusive/is-pete-buttigieg-black-voters-2020-presidential-dark-horse/

Good Esquire interview with Pete:
https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a26861236/peter-buttigieg-interview/

When you were in high school in the nineties, were you turned off by Bill Clinton because of his third way, centrist approach to politics?

Yeah, I definitely grew up in a family that was skeptical of that. There was progress overall in the economy, but I think that period also laid the groundwork for where we are now, where we've gotten tremendous growth in the economy and tremendous growth in economic inequality. I think it was also just a function of living in a very conservative era, when even Democrats, when elected, were compelled to do conservative things.

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One of the hallmarks of the campaign so far has been a really rich and detailed debate about policy within the Democratic Party. Is that what's important right now? Or should the Democratic Party simply be organized around the simple premise that Donald Trump is a national emergency and must be defeated above all else and that the policy particulars should take a back seat to that?

So actually I don't agree with either of those approaches. The problem with making it all about him is that's what we did in 2016, and when we make it all about him, then there's a lot of voters in places like the industrial midwest, where I live, who say, "Okay, but who's talking about me?" Part of how we lost our way in 2016 was, first of all, it was all about our own nominee. "I'm with her," was literally the button.


Then when we realized who the Republican nominee was going to be, the message became, "Don't vote for him." And we just left a lot of people out because it didn't seem like we were talking about the lived experience of Americans.


For the same reason I don't think that we should do the usual Democratic thing, which is experiencing your competition through competing policy proposals. I think that policy matters, I'm a policy guy. But I think that you need our altitude to be both higher and lower. Higher in the sense that I think we need to talk about values and principles, that's why I'm out there talking about what freedom and democracy and security mean before we get into the depth of any policy idea. And at the same time also be talking in terms that are nearer to the ground, really explaining what we believe in in terms of everyday lived experience and how different under us it will be than under them. And that's how good political narrative works.
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It shows that there's nothing kind of wild-eyed or exotic about updating our constitution. [Birch Bayh] was as level-headed and common-sensical a political figure as you'll see. And offered all kinds of constitutional amendments. Title IX was a consequence of realizing that the Equal Rights Amendment wasn’t going to pass. He tried to do away with the Electoral College and then he also successfully authored the 25th Amendment [presidential succession and disability] and the change in voting age [the 26th Amendment].

It’s a reminder that now we've become accustomed to tinkering but just one political lifetime ago, we knew that part of shoring up our democracy was tuning up our Constitution with amendments.

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On the flip side, is there anything that is considered right now a progressive idea and that the Democrats are associated with that you wish the Democrats would ditch?
I think a lot of it is tonal. You just gotta make sure that even as we demonstrate we can fight those in power right now—stand up to them and reject everything that's wrong and correct everything that's false—but we don't have to be assholes about it.

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Great story about Mayor Pete:

That is a good story. Thanks for sharing. From my perspective it seems a little incongruent that the guy who is turned off by third way, centrist politics, is at the same time pushing third way, centrist healthcare policy. Just support Medicare for All Mayor Pete.

MHBDemon said:

That is a good story. Thanks for sharing. From my perspective it seems a little incongruent that the guy who is turned off by third way, centrist politics, is at the same time pushing third way, centrist healthcare policy. Just support Medicare for All Mayor Pete.

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Just as I feared, the far left is moving the goalposts instead of taking the W for moving Dems way to the left on health care over the last three years. Pete has a method for getting to M4A. It’s in no way centrist. Patching up ACA is centrist. Reducing the Medicare age is centrist. Medicare for all who want it is not centrist.

I don’t really care about taking a W. I want everyone to have healthcare.

So does Pete and most of the primary candidates. The argument is about how to get there.

How to get there is to have the political courage of the guy you wrote an essay about, and support single payer healthcare.

It's Bernie or bust for these guys. And by bust, I mean Trump.

You’re right. I should just “take the W.”