Your 2020 Presidential Candidate Speculation Thread

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.

who ta fuck said it was "unfair to bring up a politician's past"?

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

Since you seem to be directly quoting me, I expect this question is directed to me. Except I've already stated quite a bit in answer to this question, which I could cut-and-paste here. Is that really necessary?

please don't, tbh

maybe you could try expressing yourself more clearly instead of constantly whining that everyone is grossly misunderstanding everything you say here

@aimless: if you really don't mean to be telling anyone with beef with harris's record that they shouldn't be pressing on it, then there's not really a disagreement, i think?

it just felt to me like you were telling people not to press on it, but that this sentiment was getting kind of buried and clouded by all the russian troll stuff, the dictation of exactly how past record should be talked about, and the argument you're advancing about how grievance should be channeled into accomplishing political change and gaining redress etc..

as far as the last one goes, i mean... it seems like in the context of a presidential primary, with regard to a grievance that has to do with the conduct and views of a candidate in that primary, one way of channeling a grievance into political change is to bring it up, write about it, argue for its significance, etc., so that the person in question gets fewer votes in the primary. right?

it’s telling that instead of engaging substantively with pretty serious questions about the record of a DA and AG of what should be pretty progressive jurisdictions, the conversation is about optics and politics

it’s fair to say that there are certain expectations of the job, and perhaps some itt find her record as DA and AG par for the course or even exemplary. but again, we are choosing a person to represent our party, and we have options that aren’t cops with this sort of record. we can do better

Did she?

Yeah, she was an organizer (whatever that means).

I feel pretty safe concluding from that op-ed, which presents no real new information (we have discussed all this before) that harris’s record shows she is not the kind of person I want leading the party. her she’s a decent senator and I hope she continues to evolve there

Xpost maybe it’s okay if the best option for beating the fascist president (and good or great on enough policy positions) happens to be a “cop”

Aimless wasn’t stifling discourse, just added context in pretty clear terms.

big if there NP

Agreed! No joke.

it's the primary (or pre-primary) thread --- the whole thing is vetting and evaluating candidates. i take it as granted that the majority here will not be voting for donald trump in november 2020. fwiw a reread of this thread circa november may help illuminate this conversation, folks were posting good links and so on. also worth bearing in mind that many folks raising these issues may well also be living by some version of:

will not vote for her in primary if possible, would vote for her in general because of course duh

― sleeve, Friday, November 9, 2018 12:55 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

although of course some are also:

not votin' for no cop

― a Mets fan who gave up on everything in the mid '80s (Dr Morbius), Thursday, November 8, 2018 11:26 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah I really bristle at the whole "we shouldn't discuss our issues with candidates" position (or the even more disingenuous "all criticism is from Russia" position, which is just laughable), this is literally what the primaries are for. just don't hold any grudges after they're over, and vote smart.

yeah I think sleeve’s position is pretty much the same as everyone else’s here

I think people itt could stand to just discuss these sorts of things on their merits rather than worrying about the optics or russian trolls (??) or all that extra stuff. leave that to party leaders and even journalists with a wide reach who feel like they might need to keep the masses’ eyes on the prize/enthusiasm up. we’re taking to like 15 people here, all of whom are going to vote dem in the general election.