Your 2020 Presidential Candidate Speculation Thread

I mean she thought Clinton should have resigned as well!

With politicians, it's generally more accurate to say he/she SAID. Their thoughts are unknowable, usually irrelevant, and probably unpleasant.

His life wasn't destroyed. People still have huge hard ons for him.

I was mocking the Franken protectors there.

He was right to resign and it's probably good that he's gone, but I'm on the fence about whether he should have been pressured to do so pre-investigation. Or especially in lieu of an investigation.

The broader question is whether the senate would be better off with him in it, though I suppose the way around that rhetorical is just to support and encourage candidates *like* him. Problem solved.

eg other former SNL writers

The senate would not be better off with him in it, we know that even without the investigation. There were seven allegations when he resigned, and he apologized for a number of them.

Senator Guido Sarducci imo

Has my vote.

he made the best speech at that goofy Jon Stewart rally a few years ago

9/11, Seth Rich, Vince Foster truthers are the worst. I'm sure Franken is overjoyed at having his own batch.

NOTABLE: Gillibrand already talking bipartisanship:

"I would bring people together to start getting things done. If you want to get health care done, you have to bring Ds and Rs to the table on the shared values of this country. We all love our children.”https://t.co/Q5OSCWOWM4

— Shane Goldmacher (@ShaneGoldmacher) January 15, 2019

We all love our children

I don't think they do, actually

let's ask Sting

I mean maybe they love *their* children (or at least some of them) but they sure as shit don't love *our* children.

bleah that is a terrible statement

diving for 'the center' already

seems like the smart thing to do is be one of the last candidates to declare. recency bias and all that. when we hire new people at my office we always have to make a concerted effort not to overrate the last person or two who interviews.

Yup

After having seen most of the potentials speak recently, I am feeling Kamala Harris the most.

gosh i can't wait to see what this great and long-awaited bipartisan health care bill might look like, with all the good-faith ideas the children-loving republicans have brought to the table on this critical issue over the last few years

what a terrible position. just run on M4A for chrissakes.

Any candidate(s) on board with AOC's 70% tax plan?

Harris has praised the proposal and said it is worth considering iirc

Gillibrand knows which way the wind blows, and she’ll cut your throat, but I think Clintonism is in her blood and you’ll see a lot of hair splitting.

— Richard M. Nixon (@dick_nixon) January 15, 2019

This picture of the opportunistic, ice cold, shrewd bish that people are painting Gillibrand as, it must really suck to have your biggest career obstacle be that you tried to hold a man accountable for bad behaviour.

it must really suck to have your biggest career obstacle be that you tried to hold a man accountable for bad behaviour.

The worst thing any woman can ever do.

I think her biggest obstacle is that she was no liberal when appointed to the Senate, but that could just be me

do ppl who aren't Franken's direct friends/colleagues even care about her involvement at all? like....still?

Yeah she is a bit too moderate for me when there are more progressive candidates. I also don't care about the "doing it for the children angle."

xpost one of my friends who is super super liberal calls her Judas because of the Franken thing. i want to slap it out of him.

ugh

i think a lot of boomer Dems and (maybe) Minnesotans are pretty pissed about Franken. or at least what i can surmise from online outrage.

Weird and bad grudge to hold imo

yeah I am...agnostic about whether he should have been pressured to resign but at this point who really cares

Yeah we have bigger problems

Gillibrand would be a perfectly acceptable VP, and she's good in the Senate. She hasn't got a chance of becoming President, though.

i think you can think franken was right to resign when he did and still think it wasn't great that he got taken down by a string of mostly anonymous accusations (which, oddly, seemed to stop as soon as he resigned)

obv blaming that on gillibrand is stupid, schumer had already told franken to resign

i think you can think franken was right to resign when he did and still think it wasn't great that he got taken down by a string of mostly anonymous accusations (which, oddly, seemed to stop as soon as he resigned)

is that really odd?

if he was right to resign when he did, why was it wrong for people to be pushing for him to resign when he did?

b/c i mean the "taking down" wasn't like he was gunned down in the streets, or put through a show trial without due process or whatever. he was called upon to resign from an elected office, and he did.

Getting your ass grabbed is a thing that women have long minimized. One of the women really thought long and hard about coming forward because it's usually more punishing for the woman than it is the man.

Like, do you want to be known for taking down a senator that you like for something as everyday as getting your ass grabbed?

Yeah, coming forward always leads to retribution for women, so if he has already resigned, why come forward?

why was it wrong for people to be pushing for him to resign when he did?

if i remember right (stopped paying attention to this a long time ago), franken had submitted himself to the internal party or senate process, and people were just waiting to see what it found; the push to resign was to do so ahead of that determination. so if you think the process had some kind of legitimacy that a worry about optics or whatever could have abandoned, then that would be a reason.

The process does not have legitimacy, lol.

Sorry for sounding flippant. It's not a laughing matter.

you bastard

http://time.com/5042931/al-franken-accusers/

I mean seriously, how many you "unintentionally" land your hand on someone's ass while taking a picture?

There are four named women in that piece, and one of them had photographic evidence. I've honestly rarely seen these stories be so clear-cut?

XP Ask Poppy Bush.

Yeah, I also didn't give him a pass because he was old. They should've wheeled him out far from arms length of any woman.