Your next 2020 Democratic presidential primary thread: Now we're serious

SF mayors are always a major disappointment.

Not sure why everyone is so mad at her these days, these are great points! pic.twitter.com/J9kvz2vqww

— Will Sloan, the 6ix Dad (@WillSloanEsq) January 24, 2020

dude, we get it, you won't vote for Clinton in 2020.

if she said more of that I would, but...

Sen. Bernie Sanders leads the field of Democratic presidential candidates in Iowa, according to a new poll released Saturday.

The New York Times Upshot/Siena College survey shows one-in-four likely Democratic caucus-goers, 25 percent, pick Sanders as their first choice in next month’s caucuses.

That gives Sanders a 7-point lead over his closest competitor, former South Bend (Ind.) Mayor Pete Buttigieg, who is at 18 percent, roughly tied for second place with former Vice President Joe Biden at 17 percent and Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts at 14 percent. Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota is in fifth place, at 8 percent, the only other candidate above the low single digits.

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/01/25/poll-sanders-leads-field-in-iowa-104204

That Eichenwald piece is totally incoherent. (How did myth 2 cost the Dems the election? I don't follow that at all. If anything, it should have motivated people to vote for a potentially weaker candidate.) Most of the oppo research he lists is trivial, decades-old stuff and is already out there. Comparing any of that to being under FBI investigation is ludicrous.

otm, do better with yr doomsaying Sanpaku

"The other candidate would have had an easier time beating Trump. We might lose this one. I better not vote then."

Went to the Bernie rally today in Cedar Falls, Iowa. AOC was fucking amazing. She engaged and held a woman who’s struggling to afford necessary medical treatment. It was the first rally in my life where I cried. Empathy. Justice. pic.twitter.com/yD6UiqYUrA

— Dennis Perrin (@DennisThePerrin) January 25, 2020

a friend of mine runs a harm reduction org in IA and she also saw AOC today, had very high praise

she could potentially be a huge ally for bernie

https://i.imgur.com/gugXDxZ.png

its happening dot gif

Just a thought about movements vs. coalitions.

Movements are built on foundations made of ideas, and the strongest foundations are well-defined ideas about justice or morality. Movements have political consequences, but are not primarily about politics, but about civil society. Movements can win elections, but are not built expressly for or by elections, because civil society is bigger than and more permanent than elections. Two good examples of movements would be the US civil rights movements and gay rights movements. The US pro-life movement is just as good an example and has enjoyed quite a bit of success, too.

Coalitions are built on shared social purposes. They are mostly political in nature and form around specific common goals among disparate groups. They can be relatively permanent or very ad hoc and temporary. Coalitions often form around parties, platforms and candidates during elections. They form almost as often around passing or blocking specific legislation. It is commonly accepted that members of a coalition will not agree on all points of what civil society should look like.

When thinking about what it takes to build and grow a movement, it is a different question from whether or not to join a political coalition. A coalition that requires working for purposes that undermine a movement's foundational ideas of justice and morality is going to weaken a movement. But never joining a coalition until you are strong enough to dictate terms to the other parts of your coalition means you don't really need a coalition anyway. Toleration of some amount of heterogeneity of ideas among coalition members is always going to be required.

Elections challenge the strength of movements. They may be relatively strong in numbers, but their coalition may be too weak in numbers to win. imo, you're better off to determinedly enlarge your movement between elections, but you should enlarge your coalition during elections.

xp: sleeve

I live in a purplish district of a deep red state. I can't discount the mud that would come after a Sanders nomination, because too many voters are fucking stupid (cf 2016). It may be old news, there may have been excellent reasons for it at the time; but it new to them, and they're itching for excuses to vote for their 401(k), rather than any more general future.

When Hugh Hewitt is advocating party raids, and dubious characters like Joe Rogan are following that lead, its time to ask why the GOP wants to run against Sanders. Maybe Sanders is a better candidate than '72 McGovern. Maybe not.

I live in a purplish district of a deep red state.

The chance that Sanders would ever win a deep red state's electoral votes is functionally nil, so whatever stampede of stupidity happens there, it will not affect the outcome of the election, any more than nominating some other 'moderate' democrat instead would result in your state voting blue.

The questions to answer are whether Sanders would be more vulnerable to those vicious attacks in swing states than some unidentified 'ideal' candidate, and who is that 'ideal' candidate? Biden? Klobuchar? Bloomberg? Buttigieg?

When Hugh Hewitt is advocating party raids, and dubious characters like Joe Rogan are following that lead, its time to ask why the GOP wants to run against Sanders.

That 4D chess that brought us "Donald Trump is the best GOP candidate to run against!"

What if they call him a socialist like they have every Democrat from Jimmy Carter to Hillary?!

The difference with Sanders is they have the video snippets.

It's not unreasonable to think that Sanders-like candidates do well in electoral environments like 1932, or 1976, but not so well when still undecided voters are relatively content. His best chance would have been in 2008.

Thanks captain counterfactual, can’t wait to evaluate your prediction

hard disagree. I know virtually nothing about the electoral environment of ‘32, but I feel like now is better suited for Sanders than ‘76 or ‘08. mostly for the reason that actually its_happening gif

Calls for socialism are much more successful when a larger number of voters are disaffected with capitalism, rather than elements like their health care bills.

xp: 282 days isn't long to wait.

I'll gladly continue my donations (mostly to voter registration drives) after a Bernie nomination. But locally in this purple suburb, he will be a harder sell than Biden, Klobuchar, or even Bloomberg.

I get what Sanpuku is saying, and it applies to Warren and Sanders; but FDR didn't win on socialism. One of his campaign promises was to balance the budget!

The difference with Sanders is they have the video snippets.

Oh no, so Fox News call him a socialist 100 times a day instead of just the 80 times a day they did Al Gore?!

It's the same bullshit every time about nominating the Democrat least likely to get tarred with X - they're gonna fucking do it anyway, who gives a shit? All Democrats are flip-flopping secretly gay baby killing communists who want to fuck a wounded soldier's wife.

despite 60s retrospectives courtesy news mag tv shows and 30+ years of commercial boomer retrophilia in general, millennials & younger are much more amenable to social democracy than their parents and grandparents ever were.

the "GOP wants Sanders to run!" line isn't very convincing when the Dems were salivating and cheering on Trump winning the GOP nom

:-/ yeah I was one of those guys

a lot of people were those guys

i wasn't (i don't think), but that's because i was one of the "um he's not going to WIN the primary in the first place, just wait until voters learn about ___" guys

what can we say. we ran the simulations and 82% of them said we were right

it can be tough to remember that "anything can happen" means that there's the slightest possibility that this might even sometimes include good things

I was big Santorum “supporter” in 2012

Thanks to the Bernie thread, I condensed my wisdom to this post.

I like that post, Alfred

thank you

Calls for socialism are much more successful when a larger number of voters are disaffected with capitalism, rather than elements like their health care bills..

lol at the idea that bernie’s best chance was in 2008

hm I think for some folks not obsessed w politics they may have very well thought they were voting for a Bernie-esquire figure in 2008. the recession was p scary.

but I guess the worst if it didn’t really manifest until a year or so later and by that time the proto-chuds and big $$$ astro-turfing had wrangled control of the narrative

good post Alfred

xp: Everyone's savings accounts and home values were plunging in 2008. That's the sort of environment where calls for fundamental change are more attractive. I'm sure most of us are disappointed that Obama, the most gifted politician of his generation, was in nearly all respects a moderate, and inclined to surround himself with moderates. 2008 was a wasted opportunity.

The 2020 campaign is conducted in the midst of the second major expansion of Federal Reserve shoving money at the financial system. The business cycle has been abrogated, perhaps until economic elites get the electoral outcome they want. Calls for fundamental change are clawing uphill.

awesome, do you have any cool ideas for a way to get these harebrained youngsters excited about incrementalism?

no let's wait for the next fiscal apocalypse to pitch that better things are possible

(I don't think anyone thinks that winning this election will be easy.)

xp: Aim at winning the presidency and 53-56 senate seats.

Whether Warren, Sanders, or the departed Castro or Booker, all have platforms far more progressive than the legislation that any plausible Senate will pass. With respect to what might actually change after an election from within this group, they're more or less equivalent as far as I'm concerned. It's down to who is more electable in the general. So electability concerns are fair game, when we're talking amongst ourselves.

Everyone's savings accounts and home values were plunging in 2008. That's the sort of environment where calls for fundamental change are more attractive.

Rough for everyone with savings accounts and their own homes. The turn in the Democratic Party is being driven by people who have neither because of last 12 years, who saw what an Administration not dedicated to fundamental change has done.

managed to do, that is

sanpaku don't you live in the same "purple suburb" that elected david duke to statewide office

The turn in the Democratic Party is being driven by people who have neither because of last 12 years, who saw what an Administration not dedicated to fundamental change has done.

Exactly. The voters the Democrats are, or should be, chasing are the people who know that they're never going to own a house, they're unlikely to have a four-digit bank balance for longer than a week at a time, and if they get really sick they're going to die in penury. People living in suburban comfort as Sanpaku defines it are a distinct minority, and the Republicans have mostly got them.

otm x1000

wait what? It's suburban women who have abandoned the GOP in droves. Dems own the professional class.

We are talking about white men, Alfred. They’re the only ones that matter, after all.

New CBS/YouGov poll in Iowa this morning:

Sanders 26%
Biden 25%
Buttigieg 22%
Warren 15%
Klobuchar 7%
Everyone else 1% or less

— Ryan Struyk (@ryanstruyk) January 26, 2020

klobmentum can't be stopped