Joe Biden, Senator from Citibank (oops, DELAWARE), to Run for President

You've figured out that Biden won't care about earning votes

This is a very strange reading of my repeated assertion that Biden is currently bargaining (or trying to appear to bargain) for the votes of Sanders voters.

which is normal?

There's a chance Biden will travel the well-worn path of Gore and Kerry. He's of that generation. But let us hope he hired some people under the age of 50 to give him better advice. Because while most votes are inherited, the final winning margin must be earned. HRC fell closer to that line of thought in her campaign than Gore or Kerry, and just missed out by a few thousand votes in the upper Midwest.

We'll see.

which is normal?

I've never suggested that it wasn't?

My initial statement that Aimless found disagreeable was that my sole power to influence Joe Biden (or any other politician) is the withholding of my vote. Which, uh, just seems to be verified by all the agreements that he's bargaining for them.

imo, you've turned the logic upside down. There are (quickly calculates) 35% of the eligible voting population that withholds their votes in every presidential election and they exert (quickly calculates) just about zero influence over the candidates.

But let us hope he hired some people under the age of 50 to give him better advice.

like Symone Sanders, lol

Aimless, are there policies that a Democratic nominee could support that would cause you to not vote for them?

If there aren't, if it's inconceivable for a Democrat to ever not be worthy of your vote - how do you think you influence their policy direction?

are there policies that a Democratic nominee could support that would cause you to not vote for them?

Gore in 2000 chose to avoid any clear, strong policy positions at all, unless you count the pseudo-meaningful promise of "putting Social Security in a lock box" as a strong policy position. I waited and waited for him to make any overtures to the progressive wing, literally anything at all. He was steadfastly equivocal and vague. His timidity was his salient trait. I finally voted for Nader.

Nader... who btw advocated for taxing the wealthy at much higher rates, putting a tenth of a cent surcharge on all financial transactions, and instituting single-payer national health insurance. Nader's primary mistake was in not leading the insurgency from inside the Democrats, as Sanders finally did.

I ended up voting for Nader too, and in California it didn’t matter at the time but now I’m a little embarrassed by it

I voted for Nader and I'm still quite happy with it

I will still vote for Sanders in the Oregon primary, unless the SOS removes his name from the ballot.

To go to the point, though, the Democratic nominee never offered you anything and you + enough other voters used the only leverage you had and made it actually painful for the Democrats. Maybe you don't think this withholding of votes had any influence on them but Dean 2004 was a pretty big break from what had come before and Obama 2008 a much bigger break.

A vote becomes useful when it is cast, but nothing when it isn't. Reminds me of a bit of foolery from King Lear:

FOOL: Mark it, nuncle:
Have more than thou showest,
Speak less than thou knowest,
Lend less than thou owest,
Ride more than thou goest,
Learn more than thou trowest,
Set less than thou throwest;
Leave thy drink and thy whore,
And keep in-a-door,
And thou shalt have more
Than two tens to a score.

KENT: This is nothing fool.

FOOL: Then ’tis like the breath of an unfee’d lawyer; you gave me nothing for’t. Can you make no use of nothing nuncle?

KING LEAR: Why, no, boy; nothing can be made out of nothing.

I ended up voting for Nader too, and in California it didn’t matter at the time but now I’m a little embarrassed by it

― Dan S, Thursday, April 9, 2020 8:45 PM (fourteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

I don't understand this

t was clear even at the time that Nader was never going to win, realized I was just registering a protest vote

which I will never do again, the stakes are too high

*it* was clear

If you were in California there were literally no stakes.

I don’t think of it that way, I get that other people here do, but it feels personal to me

Nader... who btw advocated for taxing the wealthy at much higher rates, putting a tenth of a cent surcharge on all financial transactions, and instituting single-payer national health insurance. Nader's primary mistake was in not leading the insurgency from inside the Democrats, as Sanders finally did.

― A is for (Aimless), Friday, April 10, 2020 12:42 AM (twenty minutes ago)

i read an interview with nader a while back where the interviewer pressed him about whether he regretted the damage his 2000 campaign had done to his reputation and he did finally say that in retrospect he wished he had run for the democratic nomination. i think it's fair to say that he did end up helping to push the democrats to the left in the long run, but the cost of that ended up being so high that it's very very hard to argue that it was worth it. that said, i doubt any primary candidate would have gotten anywhere running against gore that year.

Nader did not have the advantage of internet-based small donor fund raising, which Dean initiated in 2004 and Sanders took to amazing success. imo Nader's bigger hit to his reputation came in 2004 when he ran a second time.

imo Nader's bigger hit to his reputation came in 2004 when he ran a second time.

2004 was the third time he ran. I was done with Nader when his investment portfolio was made public back then.

I think he's off-the-charts now:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2014/02/24/oprah-for-president-nader-seeks-modestly-enlightened-billionaire-to-run/
https://theweek.com/articles/447342/ralph-nader-wants-liberals-back-rand-paul-dont#axzz33jIdnGQT

imo, you've turned the logic upside down. There are (quickly calculates) 35% of the eligible voting population that withholds their votes in every presidential election and they exert (quickly calculates) just about zero influence over the candidates.

― A is for (Aimless), Thursday, April 9, 2020 8:23 PM (two hours ago)

milo has already proven he's someone whose vote can be had based on the fact that he's turned out for sanders. and he also admitted a couple of weeks ago that he voted for clinton in 2016 because his girlfriend wanted him to, which means he's a big softy, so cut him a break

That was Obama Rd 2. I voted for a Clinton completely of my own volition.

ha! I stand corrected

lol

Millions of people are losing their jobs as the economy collapses in the middle of an election year and the savvy pundits on here will look down on you as an ignorant peasant if you suggest this will have any effect except to make Trump even more popular as he sails to reelection

— Galar Regional Medical Director (@weedlewobble) April 10, 2020

“bimbo joe” biden

— law dog, esq. (@ggooooddddoogg) April 10, 2020

imo, you've turned the logic upside down. There are (quickly calculates) 35% of the eligible voting population that withholds their votes in every presidential election and they exert (quickly calculates) just about zero influence over the candidates.

― A is for (Aimless), Thursday, April 9, 2020 8:23 PM

I think this is because, rightly or wrongly, the people in that 35% are perceived as so checked out of the political process that there's virtually no point in courting them. Sanders's primary voters, on the other hand, have just shown that they're willing to get involved. That's why they (we) might have some leverage that the committed non-voters don't.

This is a bad idea. A really bad one, on multiple levels - for starters, it threatens the integrity of Dem voter data & puts Nov prospects in hands of a shady firm w/ a failed track record.

Plenty of orgs bid for contracts. I hope there is enough good sense to reject this one. https://t.co/8kRIog03YM

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) April 10, 2020

if u missed the link

In modern campaigning, control of voter data and technology is everything. Currently, the Democratic National Committee houses the party data in a tense, underfunded, and inefficient alliance with 50 state parties. But all candidates have equal access to the data, including the voter file. The party does not bar challengers to incumbents, or members of Congress who cross leadership, for instance, from accessing that voter file. But in private hands, the most up-to-date data could be withheld as a disciplinary tool against renegade candidates and lawmakers, or offered as a reward to loyalists. Winning the Biden campaign contract would give Hawkfish an opportunity to dramatically grow its data acquisition operation. Without it, Hawkfish is a big firm with no big client. Hawkfish and its leadership did not respond to multiple requests for comment. The Biden campaign declined to comment.

Waleed Shahid, spokesperson for Justice Democrats, which recruits progressive challengers to incumbents, said that Bloomberg’s firm running the party’s data operation would send the wrong signal and could have long-term, damaging repercussions. “The idea of the Democratic nominee potentially rewarding Bloomberg’s firm with this contract is disturbing,” he said. “We shouldn’t be the party of helping billionaires amass huge amounts of mega-data on voters that allow them to keep accruing obscene amounts of power in our democracy.”

https://theintercept.com/2020/04/10/bloomberg-hawkfish-biden-campaign/

NYT write-up:

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/12/us/politics/joe-biden-tara-reade-sexual-assault-complaint.html

I truly thought the fact that no one really feels personally invested in a Biden presidency would make the timeline a bit less wild this time but it's actually somehow worse because they're already preemptively blaming you for him losing

— 'Weird Alex' Pareene (@pareene) April 13, 2020

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/13/us/politics/aoc-progressives-joe-biden.html

Good stuff from AOC about prospects of working with Biden and bringing the disparate strands of the party together. I especially liked her insistence that Biden's nomination doesn't correspond to a rejection of progressive reforms. And of course she's smart enough to recognize that defeating Trump is top priority (though I did notice she kept saying she'll support "the Democratic nominee" rather than "Joe Biden," perhaps still a bit of wishful thinking that Joe will have to be replaced?

Excellent interview.

perhaps still a bit of wishful thinking

he's an old fuck, 7 months is a long time

small sample size, but the last three presidents who died were 93, 93, and 94. and Carter's still kicking at 95.

that is a small sample size

This will infuriate some people.

NEW: Joe Biden praises Bernie Sanders: "You don't get enough credit, Bernie, for being the voice that forces us to take a hard look in the mirror and ask ourselves: 'Have we done enough?' And we haven't." https://t.co/35Zg7cQ9nU pic.twitter.com/Ebb5UAlTTS

— ABC News (@ABC) April 13, 2020

I can think of one cool thing he could do to reward him

nah, Sanders is too old to be VP.

propose and implement sanders' version of the green new deal?

no wait - better for biden to offer up the 1/10th version of Sanders' GND as a pre-emptive compromise, and then settle for 3/100th in the end as the tough cost of a hard negotiation with our good faith friends across the aisle

commit seppuku for shepherding Clarence Thomas’ ascent to the Supreme Court of the United States of America

Nominating Clarence Fucking Thomas to replace Thurgood Marshall was pure evil. For that we have to thank George H. W. Bush.

nah, Sanders is too old to be VP

I agree completely, I was thinking more like stepping aside entirely, for the lols

aw now I think there’s plenty of thanks to go around on that front

I agree completely, I was thinking more like stepping aside entirely, for the lols

― k*r*n koltrane (Simon H.), Monday, April 13, 2020

I know, I was playing along.

Interesting and at least encouraging:

the former vice president announced that his and Sanders’s teams would convene six joint working groups devoted to various policy areas.