Your 2020 Presidential Candidate Speculation Thread

what the fuck ever happens i hope internecine squabbling doesn't somehow inadvertently clear a path for that asshole Booker

i just read a national review article about how harris' prosecutorial record is not as hardline as it seems (they obv meant that to be a bad thing)

surely Booker has no natural constituency outside the tri-state area

....that is not where I was going with that lol

I know. But the issues raised by Harris being a prosecutor cannot be settled by examining her past record, because the past is only of interest insofar as it predicts the future. What needs to be done is to isolate the broad policy implications embedded in those past details and testing whether her current positions reflect a deep allegiance to continuing those policies as president.

The approach that simply drums away at "look what Harris did back then; she's awful" is the oversimplified wedge approach. It takes a person, labels them, then dismisses them. The more the left adopts that approach, the more easily they can be manipulated by forces like Russian socks.

often people's past behaviour predicts their future behaviour.

the itchiest of all the socks

If its not warren or bernie, all i care about is who would be best against trump. Harris might fit the bill here—she has the composure of a champion poker player but still doesn’t seem cold.

Beto gets compared to obama but i don’t see it. Obama is actually a remarkable speaker, not just a good one.

There may be some appeal in running the prosecutor against the criminal.

xp. Obama is a once in a lifetime charismatic American politician

she's much younger than trump too that'll stand out in debates

Best against Trump is easy: Sherrod Brown. I don't like it either, but he's got a decisive advantage over other potential nominees in Midwest swing states.

often people's past behaviour predicts their future behaviour.

how a person does their job is often heavily constrained by the particular demands of that job. one's political philosophy may not always play a very conspicuous role in determining the details of doing one's job. being a senator is a very different job than being a prosecutor. I would think her record there would be more indicative of how she'd behave as president.

xp: Problem with Beto is the resume. It's been a long time since someone who's highest office is House rep won. But that's true of senators as well.

Best against Trump is easy: Sherrod Brown. I don't like it either, but he's got a decisive advantage over other potential nominees in Midwest swing states.

― Sanpaku, Thursday, January 17, 2019 1:11 PM (four minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

The domestic violence thing will destroy him. It would suppress too much of the liberal base.

Trump got away with this stuff bc he was courting different voters

Senator Obama vs. Senator McCain ensured a senator would win in 2008. But, in general, the senate has proved to be a very wobbly stepping stone to the presidency.

I don't think anyone cares about that sort of predecent anymore

All that old wisdom is out the window imo. Trump had never held office.

Aimless making the points I would be making here re: Harris, much appreciated

xp

taking a drink every time i see "purity test"

will be in rehab by summer

if Obama's charisma is once in a lifetime, what a barren era this is

His charisma is separate from how he ended up governing. It was obvious to me when I first saw him speak that he was a special guy. He stood out.

if Obama's charisma is once in a lifetime, what a barren era this is

― a Mets fan who gave up on everything in the mid '80s (Dr Morbius), Thursday, January 17, 2019 10:24 AM (three minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

uhh, let me be clear, he's no... [checks notes of the kind of thing that morbs likes] Soupy Sales

I would think DA Krasner in Philly would be a good rebuke to the "prosecutors are inherently conservative/regressive" line though I know there's been some controversy on him semi-recently

aimless's russian-troll angle doesn't wash for me and feels like well-poisoning... if everything that the left might take issue with is just them unwittingly taking potential russian troll bait in advance, then we might as well just say "things the left cares about are dumb distractions" or whatever, it amounts to the same thing.

I agree. Harris’s record should be scrutinized because prosecutors in general should be scrutinized. There are other priorities beyond partisan politics

if everything that the left might take issue with is just them unwittingly taking potential russian troll bait in advance, then we might as well just say "things the left cares about are dumb distractions"

damn, Doc. what I wrote is sitting just above on this thread. You might at last consult it before characterizing it so badly.

Me, quoted accurately:

the issues raised by Harris being a prosecutor cannot be settled by examining her past record, because the past is only of interest insofar as it predicts the future. What needs to be done is to isolate the broad policy implications embedded in those past details and testing whether her current positions reflect a deep allegiance to continuing those policies as president.

The approach that simply drums away at "look what Harris did back then; she's awful" is the oversimplified wedge approach. It takes a person, labels them, then dismisses them. The more the left adopts that approach, the more easily they can be manipulated by forces like Russian socks.

I agree with Simon. Attacks on Harris based on her prosecutorial record will not come from other candidates. I could see Russian socks using it to stir up dissent within the left and some lefties taking the bait, because Russian socks use wedges to split apart coalitions.

also you

suggesting that objecting to her record would have to be because of russian socks

This is what might be bad for youngish people to run for president, they may have another recent career outside of politics that lends to more scrutiny. Will people also examine Inslee's prosecutorial record or likely not since he did it forever ago.

Inslee won’t get far enough to face scrutiny

Yeah, i wouldn't think so either but someone mentioned him above today.

I see. In your world saying "I could see Russian socks using it" is the same as my saying that "objecting to her record would have to be because of russian socks" (bolding mine). We live in different linguistic worlds, you and I.

aimless, i was responding more to that first post that jim just requoted. that said i do take your point. but I think it depends on how seriously one takes the past thing she's being criticized for.

like, say a candidate had murdered someone in the past. we all agree that murder is really unforgiveable, just red-line bad, so suggesting the murder story should only matter if we isolate the broad policy implications of this past action (etc.) becomes absurd. but if you're talking to someone for whom her prosecutorial record is unforgiveable in that kind of way, and you tell them that they really shouldn't worry that much about it, and anybody who does is "oversimplifying" and "drumming away" .... even before we get into the predictions about how russians might try to use their objections as openings with which to drive wedges, they might reasonably conclude that you're (perhaps inadvertently) suppressing an actual disagreement about what's important. and, basically, sidelining their grievances as unimportant. so again i think it'd be better to just say "i don't think this grievance is important."

House members, governors, mayors, vice presidents, and generals also dot presidential resumes, but Inslee, Swalwell, Gabbard or Landrieu or whoever else isn't going anywhere in a field this top heavy with senators.

Is it weird that it already seems to late, in January 2019, for a Stacey Abrams or Andrew Gillum to get in? Beto seems to have never stopped campaigning since November, but the other two are keeping a low profile (though I know Abrams is doing a lot of work on her voting project and likely planning to challenge Purdue for his senate seat in 2020). So Gillum? Is he in a wait-and-see holding pattern?

Yeah, I have been waiting for more noise about Abrams or Gillum, but only have seen that Abrams might run for Senator.

the funny thing about Doc's hypothetical is that you could credibly argue that having murdered someone in the past was actually a good prerequisite for being President, where you will inevitably be responsible for murdering people.

i'd submit that carrying out a murder is a different skill than managing and directing a murder bureaucracy but we'd be splitting hairs and it's clear enough that some segments of the dem coalition are into both. nate silver should add another edge to his dumb schematic polygons.

the funny thing about Doc's hypothetical is that you could credibly argue that having murdered someone in the past was actually a good prerequisite for being President, where you will inevitably be responsible for murdering people.

― Οὖτις, Th

If you've been a senator and are running for president, you have voted for legislation that murders people.

the issues raised by Harris being a prosecutor cannot be settled by examining her past record,
the issues raised by Harris being a prosecutor cannot be settled by examining her past record,
the issues raised by Harris being a prosecutor cannot be settled by examining her past record,
the issues raised by Harris being a prosecutor cannot be settled by examining her past record,
the issues raised by Harris being a prosecutor cannot be settled by examining her past record,

Doc, people are gonna vote the way they vote. If someone hears about some aspect of Harris's prosecutorial record and find that her action was as the moral equivalent of her personally murdering another human being, then they won't pay any attention to my opinion and will be repulsed by the thought of Harris holding any kind of political power at all.

It seems important to me to at least understand the methods by which the Russian trolls seek to manipulate the terms of our political engagement. On the whole, they do not care about the resolution of any of the issues they co-opt for their purposes. They only care whether those issues can be used to fragment society, split coalitions, sharpen bitter resentments and prevent productive engagement, because strengthening these divisions and creating barriers to their resolution undermines democratic societies and weakens them. For that matter, these same political dynamics are just as harmful when they are self-inflicted, rather than introduced by foreign agents.

You see what I am suggesting as an attempt to de-legitimize grievances as unimportant before they can even be addressed. If what I've said so far can only be interpreted in that way, then I have expressed myself badly and repudiate my own words.

What I am seeking to express is more that politics should be about seeking effective redress of grievances and that is much more complicated and difficult than identifying and expressing grievances. People naturally feel their grievances without much assistance from outside. There's not much chance anyone with a grievance is going to let go of it because they are told it is unimportant. But identifying and expressing grievance is where politics begin, not where they end.

Politics consists of taking the raw material, the existing sense of grievance/anger, and moving it into channels that will eventually produce desired changes. The trolling process seeks to heighten the anger, but misdirect it away from anything productive, and make the anger into the entire contents of the politics. This creates a negative feedback loop, as the failure of that politics to produce results feeds back more anger into the system. This works as well for conservative grievances as for left/progressive grievances. The trolls are happy to work either side of that street.

k3v, the key words there is "settled"

this is ILX, I think we can have a conversation about someone’s fitness for presidential office without worrying about russian trolls

also, there was a tad more context to that, such as the rest of the fucking sentence

Yes, I 100 times agree with concurrence, friends

Beto voting for Thin Blue Line Act is also picking up all over the internet.

Voters are looking for someone who will complain about something called the murder bureaucracy

how exactly are we supposed to evaluate a candidate if not by "examining their past record"?

like, some ppl have criticized gillibrand's record and it seems entirely fair to me to respond to that by arguing that she's gotten better, changed her views on some issues -- but that argument is based on referring to her more *recent* record, not on the idea that it's somehow unfair to bring up a politician's past.