2020 Democratic presidential primary

Well...it’s not at all surprising that among these 24 or however many candidates there seem to be only two whose stated priorities give a “strong indication of direction.”

this is depressing

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/31/us/politics/elizabeth-warren-fundraising.html

But as the first fund-raising deadline arrives at midnight on Sunday, Ms. Warren — who last year was widely considered a would-be front-runner — finds herself in a political vise. Her rivals on either ideological flank will raise substantially more money in the first quarter than she does, and her focus on policy has not yet translated in the polls.

I never donate this early, even if I already know who my favorites are, but I just threw her a few bucks.

This early on the polls mean nothing, unless it is name recognition. The media is searching for storylines so they know what to say about candidates. Counting money raised is a cheap, easy story to write - let's hope it doesn't get twisted into the storyline that Warren is a struggling, failing candidate. Still, I may throw a few dollars into the kitty, so she can pay campaign staff and build an organization.

I just threw in for her.

Ms. Warren’s most immediate challenge, though, may be money. She raised only $299,000 in the first day of her candidacy, far below the $5.9 million and $6.1 million Mr. Sanders and Mr. O’Rourke brought in for the same period and also less than Ms. Harris. In emails to supporters, asking for as little as $3, her campaign flatly says her rivals will post “fund-raising figures we won’t be able to match.”

And after demonstrating little capacity to raise cash online, Ms. Warren effectively doubled down on small-dollar contributions, announcing last month that she would no longer hold big-money fund-raisers or seek wealthy donors to bundle hundreds of thousands of dollars in checks.

She cast it as a decision long in the making that will offer her more time with voters. In truth, she made the choice only after a robust debate inside her campaign that led to the resignation of her finance director, Michael Pratt, who strenuously objected to the idea.

At a Valentine’s Day meeting at Ms. Warren’s Washington condominium that began with a heart-shaped cake but soon grew heated, Mr. Pratt noted that campaigns often collapse when they run out of money and pleaded with her not to cut off a significant cash stream, according to Democrats briefed on the conversation. He pointed out that winning over wealthy fund-raisers across the country helped build networks that could translate into political support, not just checks.

But Mr. Pratt lost the argument to two of Ms. Warren’s closest advisers, Dan Geldon and Joe Rospars, who made the case about standing apart from the field and freeing up her schedule.

this is the depressing part, imo. it's not that she's not doing better at raising money, it's that winning candidates are forced to suck up to rich douchebags as a litmus test

If your fundraising approach is fundamentally inconsistent with your political message, then you are undermining yourself in both directions. I think Warren made the right choice, but would have been better off making that choice much earlier, so it could have been a keynote of her campaign from the start. This way it looks more like an afterthought.

I contributed $25 to Warren. She needs to stay viable at least up to Super Tuesday and the Great Winnowing.

...which feels like 20 years away at this point.

The fact that all this shit is going on at the border at El Paso and Beto has not become a clear voice/leader re: all this shit going on at the border at El Paso is imo the biggest strike against him as a presidential candidate.

He apparently visited the bridge detainment center this weekend and has been talking about immigration...stuff at his recent rallies.

we need leadership in this country. the time for fear is over, the time for bold action on immigration has arrived. and that is that action? it's you, all of you out there, speaking together and being heard. and we hear you loud and clear, and we will hear you even louder and clearer tomorrow, if that is the path that you choose. but that path is up to you - and all of us.

https://i.imgur.com/QFy9l1Q.gif

Pretty much.

Sorry for amp: https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.elpasotimes.com/amp/3314197002

"Let's remember that every single one of us — including those who are just three or four blocks from here, detained under the international bridge that connects us with Mexico, behind chain-link fence and barbed wire — that they are our fellow human beings and deserve to be treated like our fellow human beings."

https://www.gannett-cdn.com/presto/2019/03/30/PTX1/d6628c32-6af7-47f9-9ef8-931c9f8fb61f-A_couple_of_hundred_Trump_supporters_held_a_counter-Beto_Rally_in_front_of_the_Plaza_Theater_a_block_from_Betos_kickoff_campaign_event_-_1.jpg?width=1280

https://www.gannett-cdn.com/presto/2019/03/30/PTX1/2999595c-e1c2-4ad0-94ec-ba7a57b811c3-A_couple_of_hundred_Trump_supporters_held_a_counter-Beto_Rally_in_front_of_the_Plaza_Theater_a_block_from_Betos_kickoff_campaign_event_-_2.jpg?width=1280

No man’s land: How Trump Tower became Chicago retail’s biggest failure

About a year before the 2005 groundbreaking for Trump International Hotel & Tower, Trump Organization executive Charles Reiss met the late Chicago real estate broker Bruce Kaplan and his colleague, Leslie Karr. The Trump family, Reiss said, wanted advice on how to market the retail space that would face the Chicago River at the tower’s base.

“The way it’s designed now, it’s never going to lease up,” Karr recalls telling Reiss. The roughly 70,000-square-foot deck’s 10-foot ceilings, undulating facade and sunken location would be too awkward to attract customers, she said.

...

“It’s a dreadful space,” said Karr, who is now senior vice president for retail at SVN Chicago Commercial. “You could have some kind of luxury call center there, or maybe a high-end med spa, but not at the prices they were asking.”

A decade after the tower opened in 2009, it has just one retail tenant, a salon that occupies an enclosed 3,400-square-foot suite above the hotel lobby. The entire deck-level space remains empty, its blank beige walls on full display for the millions of tourists who stroll along the river each year. No part of it has ever been leased, according to Trump Organization tax appeal documents filed in Cook County and analyzed by The Real Deal.

Whoops - wrong thread.

Did we get to the fact that Warren was convinced by the Pod Save guys to do the DNA test?

All the Dem candidates as Michael Scott is the most accurate thing I have ever seen. pic.twitter.com/ZHE45KHMvR

— Will Dammann (@WillDammann) March 22, 2019

Did we get to the fact that Warren was convinced by the Pod Save guys to do the DNA test?

Where in the world did you hear that? If they ever mentioned it, it was probably a throwaway joke. They roundly said it was a boneheaded thing to do after she made a big deal about the results.

pic.twitter.com/w2h8k8zBAA

— Dollars Horton Official (@crushingbort) March 31, 2019

Doesn't scan as a joke to me.

if Elizabeth Warren can be "convinced" to do something based on a throwaway comment on a podcast then maybe she shouldn't be president after all.

pod save is a russian psyop i will not be reading replies to this post

I mean, they worked for Obama and have a rep among establishment Dems (deserved or not) as canny political operatives, so it's not a huge surprise. xp

She would be a great president. This is fucking dumb.

I don't disagree!

I don't remember that interview, though I probably listened to it at the time, but being Jon Lovett it would be pretty hard to believe Warren was convinced to do it by one sarcastic not-thought-out question.

I like PSA, and several of the other shows on Crooked, but Lovett is the comic relief—the sidekick—and if EW acted on one of his interjections, then wtf.

ironically, just from having listened to way each of them addresses issues for the past (oh god) four years, Lovett definitely seems like the furthest left of the main four PSA dudes.

These Pod Save people might want to do a Learning Annex class on their highly skilled methods of persuasion. I mean, this is fucking amazing if true. To completely rewire a highly intelligent adult's thinking like that?

i think it's good that warren isn't a "canny politician.' it makes me like her more. trump was saying she was a liar so she decided to illustrate that she was not a liar.

she was upfront that this was a distant part of her heritage that she learned of through family lore. she didn't claim tribal membership or anything like that. i respect the fact that members of the cherokee nation are uncomfortable with DNA tests and, in hindsight, warren should have sought their advice. however, i am much more uncomfortable with the fact that trump calls warren "pocahantas" like wtf

I undid my like of that Michael Scott tweet just bc dude seems like a conservative, but it was p inspired.

Warren is fine being Warren. She doesn't need to live up to being the traditional total piece of shit politician.

yeah the Office supercut def came from conservative circles. but it was pretty harmless really iirc

Also Treeship OTM. Whether Warren responded to Trump's baiting in the best possible way bothers me less than the baiting.

I'm listening to the segment in question now, and Lovett's question seems borderline sincere, but Warren's answer to him is firmly and resoundingly no. So it'd be pretty hard to pin this on him, since she told him why she's not gonna do it right to his face.

https://crooked.com/podcast/taking-gavel-paul-ryans-hand/

Starts at about the 59:30 mark.

lol that interview was from last March and she did the test in October?

Yeah, this was her campaign planning crew that talked her into this. Not some ex-Obama staffers on a podcast.

god it sucks knowing that if Warren did somehow win the nomination, there would be zero good faith effort by the right (and especially Trump) to counter her policy proposals and ideas, it would just be 24/7 non-stop POCAHONTASPOCAHONTASPOCAHONTASPOCAHONTASPOCAHONTASPOCAHONTASPOCAHONTASPOCAHONTASPOCAHONTASPOCAHONTASPOCAHONTASPOCAHONTASPOCAHONTASPOCAHONTASPOCAHONTASPOCAHONTASPOCAHONTASPOCAHONTAS

She might be a better bet than Bernie. I haven’t decided who I am going to vote for—by the time they’re in NY I’m assuming it will be clear which one has the best shot of winning.

There is going to be zero good faith from the right about anyone. Who cares.

True.

I can get with most of these candidates with my head if need be, but Liz Warren is the one in my <3. I wish America didn't suck so much.

The right doesn't operate in good faith with their own candidates, let alone opposition candidates. Yerac OTM.

I can get with most of these candidates with my head if need be

true but if the candidate ends up Biden or O'Rourke that puts me at risk of accidentally ticking the wrong box on my GE ballot due to uncontrollable eyerolling

tbc I like Warren a lot, I just found the Pod Save connection amusing. The fact that she's so far behind in funding and (currently) polling sucks shit.

god it sucks knowing that if Warren did somehow win the nomination, there would be zero good faith effort by the right (and especially Trump) to counter her policy proposals and ideas, it would just be 24/7 non-stop POCAHONTASPOCAHONTASPOCAHONTASPOCAHONTASPOCAHONTASPOCAHONTASPOCAHONTASPOCAHONTASPOCAHONTASPOCAHONTASPOCAHONTASPOCAHONTASPOCAHONTASPOCAHONTASPOCAHONTASPOCAHONTASPOCAHONTASPOCAHONTAS

― Evans on Hammond (evol j), 1. april 2019 16:00 (twenty-nine minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

But I thought purely negative campaigns can't work, and it's only possible to win by running on popular issues. So wouldn't this make Warren the most electable?

It still doesn't make the idea of subjecting the entire country to that campaign desirable or enjoyable.

I wish it weren't so, but I feel like Warren's best + most possible destiny is to be a really strong cabinet member

yeah the Office supercut def came from conservative circles. but it was pretty harmless really iirc

― Simon H., Monday, April 1, 2019 8:41 AM (three hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

the original had a michael moment for trump too, but the fair-and-balanced washington free beacon seems to have omitted that particular scene.