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2020 Democratic Presidential Nominees

 
Also, unrelated to the primary, but can we retire this thread and start a new one? It almost breaks my computer when loading, no other thread does that. 670+ pages was a good run, but a new thread moving forward probably would help stuff out and also maybe make discussion a bit easier.
 
David Brooks thinks it's a lost cause for the Dems

How Trump Wins Again
Are Democrats going to give this election away?

David Brooks

As several people have noticed, this was the most politically successful week of the Trump presidency.

First, President Trump’s job approval numbers are rising. When the impeachment inquiry got rolling in October his Gallup approval rating was 39. Now it’s 49. If he can hold this level, he’ll probably be re-elected.

Second, impeachment never became a topic of conversation among rank-and-file Democrats, let alone independents and Republicans, so it was easily defeated in the Senate.

To the extent that it was noticed, impeachment worked for Republicans and against Democrats. Approval of the Republican Party is now at 51 percent, its highest since 2005. More Americans now identify as Republicans than as Democrats. As Gallup dryly observed in announcing these numbers, “Gallup observed similar public opinion shifts when Bill Clinton was impeached.”

Third, there is no Democratic transcender. The Iowa results, though far from final, indicate that there is no obvious candidate who can be quickly embraced by all factions of the party. With Mike Bloomberg now doubling his campaign spending, it looks like the Democratic primary battle is going to go on for a while.

Democrats may wind up in a position in which they can’t nominate Bernie Sanders because he’s too far left, and they can’t not nominate him because his followers would bolt from a Biden/Bloomberg/Buttigieg-led party.

Only 53 percent of Sanders voters say they will certainly support whomever is the Democratic nominee. This is no idle threat. In 2016, in Pennsylvania, 117,000 Sanders primary voters went for Trump in the general, and Trump won the state by 44,292 ballots. In Michigan, 48,000 Sanders voters went for Trump, and Trump won the state by 10,704. In Wisconsin, 51,300 Sanders voters went for Trump, and Trump won the state by 22,748. In short, Sanders voters helped elect Trump.

Fourth, Trump has cleverly reframed the election. I can see why Nancy Pelosi ripped up his State of the Union speech. It was the most effective speech of the Trump presidency.

In 2016, Trump ran a dark, fear-driven “American carnage” campaign. His 2016 convention speech was all about crime, violence and menace. The theme of this week’s speech was mostly upbeat “Morning in America.”

I don’t know if he can keep this tone, because unlike Ronald Reagan, he’s not an optimistic, generous person. But if he can, and he can keep his ideology anodyne, this message can resonate even with people who don’t like him.

Trump’s speech reframes the election around this core question: Is capitalism basically working or is it basically broken?

Trump can run on the proposition that it’s basically working. He has a lot of evidence on his side: The unemployment rate is the lowest in decades. Wages are rising. The typical family income is higher than it has ever been.

Americans seem to accept this position. Confidence in the economy is higher now than at any moment since the Clinton administration. According to Gallup, 59 percent of Americans say they are better off than they were a year ago. Three-quarters of Americans expect to be even better off a year from now.

Democrats, by contrast, have congregated around the message that capitalism is fundamentally broken and that the economy is bad. As Matthew Yglesias noted recently in Vox, when Democrats were asked in the PBS NewsHour/Politico debate if the economy was good, they all gave the same answer.

Joe Biden: “I don’t think [Americans] really do like the economy. Look at the middle-class neighborhoods. The middle class is getting killed. The middle class is getting crushed.” Pete Buttigieg: “This economy is not working for most of us.” Elizabeth Warren: “A rising G.D.P., rise in corporate profits, is not being felt by millions of families across the country.” And so on down the line.

An opposition party can retake the White House in a time of rising economic conditions, but it can’t do it by denouncing capitalism and it can’t do it by denying the felt reality of a majority of Americans.

It’s hard to defeat a president in good times. U.C.L.A. political scientist Lynn Vavreck, the author of “The Message Matters” and a co-author of “Identity Crisis,” has found that the rare candidates who do succeed find issues that voters care about just as much. In 1960, John Kennedy ran on the missile gap. In 1968, Richard Nixon ran on law and order. In 2016, Trump ran on Middle America identity politics.

What would that issue be? Well, in his book “The Moral Consequences of Economic Growth,” Benjamin Friedman argues that in prosperous times voters are more tolerant of diversity, more committed to fairness and expanding opportunity. As he puts it, “Economic growth bears moral benefits.”

That suggests that Democrats should acknowledge that the economy has done well since the Obama recovery in 2009. They should argue that this is the time to take advantage of prosperity to begin a moral and social revival. This is the year to run a values campaign, one that champions policies to make America more socially mobile, caring and interdependent.

In 2020, running on economic gloom or class war probably won’t work.
 
Republicans ran on economic gloom and class warfare in 2016 and won.
 
PhDeac said:
Republicans ran on economic gloom and class warfare in 2016 and won.
Click to expand...

Republicans ran on fear. Fear almost always wins, but Republicans are more willing to go all in on it than Democrats are.
 
There will be at least 14 major Trump scandals between now and the election. Unless his vengeance tour commits something truly outrageous then impeachment will be be long forgotten by then and play little role in anyone's vote. Those morally bankrupt enough to vote for Trump were always going to vote for Trump.
 
Skydog Deac said:
Only 53 percent of Sanders voters say they will certainly support whomever is the Democratic nominee. This is no idle threat. In 2016, in Pennsylvania, 117,000 Sanders primary voters went for Trump in the general, and Trump won the state by 44,292 ballots. In Michigan, 48,000 Sanders voters went for Trump, and Trump won the state by 10,704. In Wisconsin, 51,300 Sanders voters went for Trump, and Trump won the state by 22,748. In short, Sanders voters helped elect Trump.
Click to expand...

This will happen again. Bernie Bros are the worst.
 
 
FWIW I think mankini is just like, a dude who listens to Chapo and spends a lot of time on twitter. I agree with a lot of what he posts but you gotta know your audience man, and this crowd ain’t here for it (gonna guess like 80-90% high earning white men). At least grow a sense of humor or you will end up like rj, a husk of a man who is eternally mad at online people he doesn’t know.
 
Townie's worldview really isn't that far from BSF/ moonz/s2m As long as they're spouting leftist based conspiracy stuff before the Trump pivot.
 
Honest question, say Bernie wins the nomination and is crushed in the general election. Is there any self reflection by the super progressives that the will of the people does not want what they are peddling or is it that we are still right the people just don’t know it.
 
Louis Gossett Jr said:
Honest question, say Bernie wins the nomination and is crushed in the general election. Is there any self reflection by the super progressives that the will of the people does not want what they are peddling or is it that we are still right the people just don’t know it.
Click to expand...

 
Louis Gossett Jr said:
Honest question, say Bernie wins the nomination and is crushed in the general election. Is there any self reflection by the super progressives that the will of the people does not want what they are peddling or is it that we are still right the people just don’t know it.
Click to expand...

1) he won't get crushed- nobody is getting "crushed" by Trump. He might lose 1-2 more states than Clinton, if that.
2) I think we know the answer to that. All of the super-Bernie stans will share the same fate as the McGovern-stans in 1972: they will end up as super-conservative shitbags because nobody listened to their cries.
 
TownieDeac said:
FWIW I think mankini is just like, a dude who listens to Chapo and spends a lot of time on twitter. I agree with a lot of what he posts but you gotta know your audience man, and this crowd ain’t here for it (gonna guess like 80-90% high earning white men). At least grow a sense of humor or you will end up like rj, a husk of a man who is eternally mad at online people he doesn’t know.
Click to expand...

You agree that Pelosi with held the articles of impeachment for 5 weeks in an effort to screw over Bernie and help Biden and that the the DNC is so anti Bernie that they would not so secretly rig the Caucuses count against him? These are the two primary things S2M has posted about over the last 3 weeks.
 
birdman said:
You agree that Pelosi with held the articles of impeachment for 5 weeks in an effort to screw over Bernie and help Biden and that the the DNC is so anti Bernie that they would not so secretly rig the Caucuses count against him? These are the two primary things S2M has posted about over the last 3 weeks.
Click to expand...
Again, you might not remember 2016, but BSF was very popular around here when he was pushing russian-backed anti Hillary Clinton conspiracy theory stuff in favor of Bernie Sanders. It was only when he pivoted to trump in the general election that he became the crazed loon per the boards conventional wisdom
 
nah, we're the assholes because we *checks notes*

"have brain washed themselves into believing that poor people should be grateful for the scraps they throw at them. They’ll become Republicans soon enough."
 
birdman said:
You agree that Pelosi with held the articles of impeachment for 5 weeks in an effort to screw over Bernie and help Biden and that the the DNC is so anti Bernie that they would not so secretly rig the Caucuses count against him? These are the two primary things S2M has posted about over the last 3 weeks.
Click to expand...

I probably don’t agree with everything (I’ve mostly been skimming this thread while traveling lately). It’s pretty clear the party doesn’t want Sanders to win the nomination, and I don’t really see that as conspiratorial at all. The party always has to back someone, and plenty of people don’t like Sanders. I also don’t think it’s risible to say Perez has been pretty terrible.

I’m sure it’s tiresome to read every conspiracy minded tweet or article, hence the source of my caution towards S2M.

I’m trying to take a more positive view lately and say I’m very proud of the coalition Sanders is building and that the progressive message has largely moved the party left this cycle.
 
The leftward movement is striking. Hell even freaking Bloomberg is running on 5 trillion in higher taxes on the rich, a 15 dollar minimum wage, and a public option.
 
ImTheCaptain said:
nah, we're the assholes because we *checks notes*

"have brain washed themselves into believing that poor people should be grateful for the scraps they throw at them. They’ll become Republicans soon enough."
Click to expand...

I thought that’s what Sig and Chris predicted will come of the Bernie Bros.

I can’t keep up anymore. Everybody is triggered.
 
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