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2020 Democratic Presidential Nominees

Bernie is the most charismatic of the Dems, and he is not very charismatic at all to anyone over the age of 40.

Trump is going to kill any of these candidates unless the economy tanks between now and then (decently likely), or unless Bolton comes with THE HEAT (very unlikely), or unless Trump has a stroke (probably the most likely of these three options).

Keep spending, Bloomberg. You are our only hope.
 
Guess I'm the only one who thinks Biden is a charismatic, personable guy.
 
bym051d said:
Guess I'm the only one who thinks Biden is a charismatic, personable guy.
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What do you find charismatic about him?

Here’s my thoughts about why I don’t find him charismatic. He rarely stays on message (when there is a message) and he’s allergic to responding to what people actually say. I’ve been waiting for a good stump speech from the guy because he did a great job for Obama (especially in 2012), but he hasn’t really had that moment yet, at least publicly. He is handsome and has a great smile, but it just hasn’t come together yet in any meaningful way.
 
Strickland33 said:
What do you find charismatic about him?

Here’s my thoughts about why I don’t find him charismatic. He rarely stays on message (when there is a message) and he’s allergic to responding to what people actually say. I’ve been waiting for a good stump speech from the guy because he did a great job for Obama (especially in 2012), but he hasn’t really had that moment yet, at least publicly. He is handsome and has a great smile, but it just hasn’t come together yet in any meaningful way.
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Where I come from, handsome with a great smile goes a long way especially with respect to charisma.

I talked to a friend who used to be a staffer for Senator Biden. She said she really liked him and doesn’t think he’s a great policy guy but she trusted him to put together a knowledgeable diverse team.

Democrats tend to prefer fresh and new candidates who haven’t run before. Mondale, Gore, and Hillary are the only two time candidates to win the nomination in my lifetime. I’m fearful that Bernie or Biden will get the nomination and lose.
 
I'm down.

Meanwhile, in South Bend:

In January 2012, Pete Buttigieg stepped into the South Bend, Ind., mayor’s office after winning the city’s first open mayoral election in 24 years. South Bend had three African Americans in visible high level and public leadership positions: Mayor’s Assistant Lynn Coleman; Fire Chief Howard Buchanon and Police Chief Darryl Boykins.
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Within three months, all three would be gone.

Boykins had served as a police officer in South Bend for 27 years before he was appointed as the city’s first (and to date, only) black police chief in 2007. In 2011, after the city’s police telephone recording system crashed, SBPD Communications Director Karen DePaepe discovered recordings of white officers allegedly using racist rhetoric and concocting a way to get rid of Boykins with the help of top donors to Buttigieg’s then-ongoing mayoral campaign. DePaepe made five cassette tapes of the most egregious remarks and described them in legal documents the city has had for years. One officer allegedly said: “It will be a fun time when all white people are in charge.”

Soon after Buttigieg took office, word got out about the tapes and the officers complained that the recordings violated the Federal Wiretap Act. Even though the recording system had been in place for more than a decade, its existence somehow became the black guy’s fault.

According to Boykins’ eventual racial-discrimination lawsuit, Buttigieg’s chief of staff, Mike Schmuhl, “with Buttigieg’s full and conspiratorial agreement,” told Boykins the feds were investigating him and the only way for Boykins to avoid prosecution was to resign as South Bend police chief.

That was not true.

Two months after Buttigieg demoted Boykins, the U.S. attorney wrote to the city, explaining that before Boykins was demoted, “We advised [the city] that our primary concern was that the SBPD practices comply with federal law.” The phone calls, the top prosecutor wrote, were “mistakenly recorded.”
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In testimony that did not become public until this past September, Schmuhl later admitted the feds never directly threatened to indict Boykins. Rather, he testified that “the strong impression the [U.S. Attorney] left with me was that our policies as it relates to telephone recording in the South Bend Police Department were out of compliance with federal law and their guidelines and that there were two people who were responsible for that, and that the impression was to end the investigation, that these policies needed to be adjusted and put in compliance and that personnel actions needed to be taken.”

At the time, according to Boykins’ suit, he believed his three decades of service could possibly end with a conviction on federal wiretapping charges. Boykins would later say in a sworn deposition that he felt “threatened and intimidated” by Buttigieg. After contemplating his decision, Boykins rescinded his resignation and was subsequently demoted by Buttigieg. Buttigieg fired DePaepe for her role in the scandal.

So what happened to the white officers who were heard on the recordings?

Captain Brian Young went on to lead the county’s Special Victims Unit.
Dave Wells became the commander of the County’s drug unit.
Tim Corbett, the county’s homicide commander, ran for Sheriff.
Steve Richmond retired and moved to Michigan.

Buttigieg claims he has never listened to the tapes because that would be illegal. More recently, in response to a question at an April 2019 CNN Town Hall, Buttigieg not only insisted that he has never listened to the tapes, but he claimed that he doesn’t know what’s on the tapes.
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Buttigieg eventually settled Boykins’ discrimination suit against him, Schmuhl, and the city for $50,000. The city paid DePaepe $235,000. The officers who were allegedly captured on the recordings also filed claims alleging that they were recorded without their knowledge. The city settled with the white officers for $500,000 and agreed that they were not “aware of any evidence of illegal activity by the Plaintiffs or any evidence that reveals that the Plaintiffs used any racist word against former Chief of Police, Darryl Boykins.”

Buttigieg repeatedly says he demoted Boykins because Boykins was the “subject” or “target” of an FBI investigation—but the U.S. attorney has never confirmed that Boykins was the “subject” or “target” of their investigation. Pete’s chief of staff confirmed that the U.S. attorney never said it in a deposition.

He also insists that Boykins’ demotion had nothing to do with race and he has yet to comment publicly on the fact that DePaepe’s secret legal documents quote police as saying he agreed to get rid of Boykins before he even became mayor.

No one knows why Buttigieg pressured Boykins to resign and subsequently demoted him. The only thing we know is Buttigieg’s explanation that Boykins was the target of a federal investigation is not true. It was never true. Still, Buttigieg—or proxies from his campaign—continue to repeat it.

This would not be the last time Buttigieg and the city of South Bend would be accused of discriminating against a black police officer.

Over the course of the last month, The Root and The Young Turks have received internal documents, examined formal complaints, and interviewed former officers who outlined a pattern of racial discrimination against black police officers in South Bend. The alleged discrimination spanned the course of multiple police chiefs, captains, and supervisors. The only common denominator is that every black complainant mentions one name: Pete Buttigieg.
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When Buttigieg became mayor in 2012, the SBPD was 11 percent black (29 of 244 officers). There were 28 black officers in 2013; 26 in 2014, and by the time Buttigieg announced his run for president, the South Bend police force was six percent black, with 15 black officers.

Officially, Pete Buttigieg can’t hire black police officers or fire racist cops.

The mayor invoked this legalistic defense during an interview with The Root when he was asked about Aaron Knepper, a white police officer accused of police brutality in at least four incidents since Buttigieg took office. Buttigieg repeated this claim at a contentious June 23 town hall in response to the fatal shooting of a black man by a South Bend police officer.

It’s true that the five-person Board of Public Safety (BOPS) has disciplinary oversight of the SBPD and the fire department—not the mayor. But, as Buttigieg pointed out in his conversation with The Root, the mayor appoints the BOPS members. The mayor appoints the chief of police. The mayor controls the board that controls the chief who controls the police. The ultimate leverage is in the mayor’s hands.

So, why were black police officers leaving the South Bend Police Department en masse?

Racism.

That is not an opinion. It’s what black officers specifically, repeatedly, told the South Bend Common Council, the BOPS and Mayor Pete in memos, emails and complaints obtained by The Root and TYT. The claim is reflected in at least five discrimination lawsuits filed in federal courts. The accusations were leveled in our conversations with current and former SBPD officers. Included in the documents were letters signed by 10 black SBPD officers—a significant cohort of the force’s black members—in which they describe several problems within the department. The letters were sent in 2014 to the BOPS, the mayor’s office and the city’s legislature.

Two other black officers who had not signed the letter filed Equal Employment Opportunity Commission complaints around the same time (both cases were subsequently dismissed)—meaning half of all black SBPD officers were raising their voices and risking retaliation to call attention to the problems.

Since that time, all but five of those dozen have left. And most of the ones who left didn’t leave law enforcement—they just left South Bend law enforcement.
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South Bend’s black officers had five basic complaints:

White officers regularly received promotions, transfers and positions that were not publicly advertised to black officers.
Black officers were rarely promoted.
White officers were selected to fill temporary positions. When the department’s black candidates applied for the permanent positions, the white ones would already have an advantage because they had already done the job.
White officers would not back up black officers when they were in danger or needed help.
White officers were rarely disciplined while black officers were disciplined very harshly.

Not only is there a mountain of evidence showing that the city’s black officers felt marginalized, but we could not find a single black complainant who said Buttigieg responded to their concerns personally or in writing.

When The Root asked Buttigieg if he was aware black officers had raised issues of racism and discrimination, his campaign would only say that Buttigieg was aware “that some officers had filed complaints with the EEOC, and those were ultimately dismissed.” They also claimed they couldn’t respond because “doing so in the middle of a legal process would’ve been inappropriate.”

To be fair, maybe the black cops were invisible to Mayor Pete.
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After Boykins was demoted, Buttigieg replaced him with a white interim chief, Chuck Hurley. Having served as chief before back in the ‘80s, Hurley had ties to some of the officers tied to Boykins’ ouster. After Hurley’s appointment, Theodore Robert, a black officer who would later send some of the letters detailing SBPD’s racism, wrote to Buttigieg, pointing out that Hurley had been embroiled in yet another scandal—having been fired in 2005 from his job as the University of Notre Dame’s assistant director of security for an alleged coverup. Robert also raised questions about whether Boykins’ white replacement was even a certified police officer (pdf). Luckily, according to Pete for America, Hurley had received a “grace period” from the Indiana State Police, to give him time to get certified.

To find a permanent replacement for Boykins, Buttigieg reportedly interviewed 60 candidates in what his campaign calls a “collective community process” before settling on Ron Teachman, a 34-year veteran officer of New Bedford, Mass. Besides a history of clashing with his former city council over transparency issues; having never having stepped foot in South Bend; not working as a police officer when he was hired, and admitting that he could be a little “authoritarian,” the new chief had a lot going for him.

Ron Teachman was white.

On April 22, 2013, four months into his tenure, Teachman was at the Martin Luther King Jr. Center with Lt. David Newton—who is black and would later be a signatory to the letters we obtained—when a fight broke out in the parking lot. Someone said there was a gun. Newton rushed outside.

“[T]here were approximately 50 people in the parking lot engaged in a fight,” Newton told the Common Council (South Bend’s version of a city council). “And I didn’t know if they had weapons or not.”

Newton called for backup but other officers were dispatched on calls. So Newton pulled out his gun and broke up the fight without hurting a single soul. Chief Teachman never came outside to back Newton up. In South Bend’s police department, this isn’t simply a dereliction of duty, it is a violation of the duty manual.

Because they knew how South Bend worked, Newton and his fellow officers didn’t say a word. Newton didn’t file a complaint. But a black pastor who witnessed the event did speak up; he said he spoke to Buttigieg about it. However, according to the witness, Buttigieg “had no answers and did not want to hear what I asked or had to say.” It ended up in front of the Board of Public Safety, which voted to ask the Indiana State Police (ISP) to look into the matter.

Then, according to then-Board of Public Safety President Pat Cottrell and his handwritten journal from that time, Buttigieg fired a city attorney for failing to “deep-six” the ISP investigation into Teachman; a claim Buttigieg denies. When the Indiana State Police handed its results to Buttigieg, the mayor decided not to discipline his new white chief.

Buttigieg refused to release the ISP report, citing personnel matters and claiming the investigation was instigated by people who “want to take a molehill and make it into a mountain,” WSBT reports. Indiana state law only requires cops’ records to be released when they are fired, suspended or disciplined. So, because nothing happened to Teachman, thanks to Pete Buttigieg, we may never see that report.

But South Bend’s black officers had finally had enough.

“I can no longer sit by and watch the flip characterization by Mayor Buttigieg that this incident was ‘a molehill being made a mountain,’” Newton said in a statement asking the Common Council to pressure Buttigieg to release the report. “This statement shows that the mayor has no idea [of] the danger we face daily.”
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A few weeks after Teachman was cleared, Theodore Robert wrote to Buttigieg, warning him that an officer had begun an unauthorized investigation into the Teachman incident. Apparently, one of Teachman’s officers was trying to clear Teachman’s name by intimidating officers and tampering with evidence, including confiscating the surveillance tapes from the King Center. Robert (who was suspended by Teachman) and his fellow officers didn’t know just how damaging the ISP report really was. Cottrell, one of the few people who read the report, immediately resigned from the city’s Public Safety Board over Buttigieg’s handling of the case. So what was in the ISP report?

No one but Pete Buttigieg knows.

Until now.According to an excerpt obtained by TYT, including a summary of its findings, the ISP’s report to Buttigieg found the following:

Teachman used the excuse that he didn’t back up Newton because he had to pee.
Not a single witness corroborated Teachman’s account.
Witnesses alleged that Teachman stood idly by while Newton was outside.
Confirmation of the unauthorized investigation
The possibility of evidence tampering or destruction
Evidence that suggests Teachman tried to get Newton to change his story.

Newton said he wrote to Buttigieg to report retaliation for not playing ball. Newton eventually left the SBPD to become the county prosecutor’s chief investigator. To this day, Buttigieg has never responded to him.

Newton’s fellow black officers would remain invisible.
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In its response to questions about racism in the police department, the Buttigieg campaign pointed to this ruling, conveniently leaving out the fact that the city agreed to an out-of-court settlement with Wright. Pete For America also failed to mention a separate discrimination lawsuit filed by Officer Davin Hackett, another signatory of the letters. His suit is still in court. Officer Joy Phillips, who is white, filed a gender discrimination suit against the SBPD and she prevailed in court.

Discussing the cultural shift in the department’s promotions process, one black officer who would later sign a letter alleging discrimination told us, “Pete Buttigieg, by the demotion of Darryl Boykins, set the department back years.”

In his defense, Pete for America also explained to The Root that Buttigieg only became aware of the concerns of black officers after some of the officers filed EEOC complaints which, the campaign notes, were ultimately dismissed.

Pete Buttigieg is a lying…

Wait.

Maybe Pete Buttigieg can’t see. Perhaps the black officers were not loud enough for Buttigieg to hear. Or maybe he’s deaf. There is ample evidence proving the black cops complained loudly about racism on the force before anyone filed an EEOC complaint. TYT and The Root have examined a slew of court records, memos, and emails, which revealed that the SBPD’s dwindling supply of black cops alerted every available resource to them of the discrimination in Mayor Pete’s police force.
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It's a long article, so I'll stop quoting. Harriot definitely isn't the biggest Mayor Pete fan (remember the "lying mf" article?), but the article is well sourced and Pete's time as mayor is a lot more complicated and controversial than he oftentimes suggests that it was.
 
I think Biden and Warren come across as more charismatic than Bernie. I think a lot of "charisma" is just a subjective view of how you feel about the candidate.
 
Strickland33 said:
So, how do you define charisma, then?
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I think the dictionary definitions are good.

a special power that some people have naturally that makes them able to influence other people and attract their attention and admiration

a special magnetic charm or appeal

Synonyms help: allure, animal magnetism, appeal, attractiveness, captivation, charm, duende, enchantment, fascination, force field, glamour (also glamor), magic, magnetism, oomph, pizzazz (or pizazz), seductiveness, witchery
 
I find bernie to have an animal magnetism that is... if this mic on?
 
Biden is personable, relates well with people and comes across as earnest and caring.
 
bym051d said:
Biden is personable, relates well with people and comes across as earnest and caring.
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Which is why all the “Biden is a closet racist” and “Biden is super creepy” stuff didn’t stick.
 
Ph, you don't think Biden has earned his "closet racist" reputation legitimately? I mean, dude was the architect of a lot of bad shit that really fucked up POC communities. It's possible to evolve and move on, but it's also part of history and has had devastating consequences for POC in the US.

"Super creepy," sure, that's definitely media hype, but his name is on a lot of fairly overtly racist legislation.
 
Was he THE architect or just a well-meaning yet naive white guy who thought he was doing the right thing for those communities?

I'm not a big fan of calling anybody "a racist." I find it to be antithetical to a sociological understanding of racism.
 
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