[Discussion] The (likely) Depressing Road to the 2020 Election Thread

It's going to be a circus.

Will 45 get impeached or step down or challenged? All 3? MAYBE.

Will the democrats eat themselves alive and hobble literally every potential candidate before the primaries are done? PROBABLY.

Talk about that junk here.

Zona wrote:

Based on my understanding of the candidates I'll agree outright with one of those examples, see sort of where you're coming from with another, and just be perplexed by the third. I mean I think Biden's history with desegregation should be disqualifying.

Aside from her 'tough on crime' stance that periodically proved a little too tough, during her career Harris tried to force trans prisoners be jailed according to their assigned gender and fought to restrict their access to medical care. Buttigieg has covered for racists in his police department multiple times and spearheaded a gentrification campaign that was originally meant to demolish decrepit abandoned homes, but ended up evicting many low income families and/or leveraging them with heavy fines and forcing renovations on them.

Zona wrote:

But if you are a f*cking 9/11 truther you don't deserve to be near power. Yes, heaven forbid someone who has such of a lack of critical thinking skills that they buy into conspiracy bullsh*t end up a contender for President. God only knows what else is lurking in the wings, I've yet to meet a conspiracy theorist who stops at just ONE. Worse then potato chips.

9/11 conspiracies in particular are something of a instant point of rage for me, so god knows I'm bias. Bad enough that Marianne Williamson is up there astral projecting anti-vax beliefs.

Fair enough.

ruhk wrote:

I'm willing to try anything to shake things up.

Trump hasn't shaken things up enough for you?

PiP wrote:
ruhk wrote:

I'm willing to try anything to shake things up.

Trump hasn't shaken things up enough for you?

Trump is the reason things need to be shaken up. Much of the DNC seems to think that “not being Trump” is enough to beat Trump, despite continued mobilization by the GOP to disenfranchise voters.

Well keep shaking things up. The pieces are bound to land in a favorable position sooner or later.

Democrats seems wildly in disagreement on what kind of candidate will be able to beat Trump, not that anyone can do it.

Shadout wrote:

Democrats seems wildly in disagreement on what kind of candidate will be able to beat Trump, not that anyone can do it.

Democratic Party leadership, not Democrats in general. Pelosi in particular seems pretty satisfied that all we need to do is sit back and bathe in the votes, which is presumably why she keeps threatening any reps that actually try to take substantive steps towards anything, afraid that they’ll rock the boat and we’ll miss the vote wave. It’s shortsighted.

I admit I jumped the gun on Gravel a bit. I honestly didn’t know he was a sincere truther, I had heard it before but it was always spun in the sense of “America did 9/11 through our rampant imperialism” which is a statement I agree with. I also just now found out that he plans on endorsing Gabbard. I still support like 3/4 of his policies (which places him third of all candidates behind Warren/Sanders for me) but Gabbard? No.

Still looking forward to seeing him in the debates though. It should be entertaining.

He qualified, btw.

ruhk wrote:

Still looking forward to seeing him in the debates though. It should be entertaining.

He qualified, btw.

Ugh.

I think it’s important to remember that Russia is still running active PsyOps on us. So there’s nothing good about someone like Gravel getting into the debate. No silver lining.

ruhk wrote:

Still looking forward to seeing him in the debates though. It should be entertaining.

He qualified, btw.

Nope

Former Sen. Mike Gravel (D-Alaska) announced Friday he had reached the donor threshold to appear in the Democratic presidential primary debates later this month in Detroit, though he still is below the polling threshold for the debates.

Gravel's campaign said it received donations from 65,000 unique donors, reaching the threshold set by the Democratic National Committee (DNC). However, Gravel has not polled at 1 percent or above in three DNC-approved polls, the other debate qualification.

He’s apparently in talks with the DNC about the polling issue. Supposedly he wasn’t included as an option in over half of the party-approved polls.

EDIT: which is apparently mentioned in the article, now that I’ve read it.

I appreciate your optimism. The deadline is July 16th.

September debates are going to be much smaller

At the moment, just five candidates have qualified for the third debate, according to our research, and while it’s early yet (candidates have until late August to improve their donor numbers and gain more support in the polls), the debate’s higher thresholds will probably result in far fewer than 20 candidates making the stage.

To qualify, candidates must have at least 2 percent support in four qualifying national or early-state polls released after the first debate on June 26-27 through two weeks before the third debate on Sept. 12-13 and 130,000 unique donors (including at least 400 individual donors in at least 20 states).1 And while those thresholds might not sound that difficult to meet, it’s definitely raising the ante from the first two debates, in which candidates needed to hit only 1 percent support in three qualifying polls or 65,000 unique donors (including at least 200 individual donors in at least 20 states).

Oh well. Another boring round of debates then.
They should at least get some 90’s era Nicklodeon slime up in there to dump when a candidate dodges a question.

ruhk wrote:

Oh well. Another boring round of debates then.
They should at least get some 90’s era Nicklodeon slime up in there to dump when a candidate dodges a question.

Now I like this

Hopefully it stays at five. The faster they winnow the field the sooner we'll get debates with actual substance.

ruhk wrote:
PiP wrote:
ruhk wrote:

I'm willing to try anything to shake things up.

Trump hasn't shaken things up enough for you?

Trump is the reason things need to be shaken up. Much of the DNC seems to think that “not being Trump” is enough to beat Trump, despite continued mobilization by the GOP to disenfranchise voters.

Except most people don't want things shaken up even more. They want a return to normality where the president isn't making a buffon of himself and actively f*cking up the country every five minutes.

"Not being Trump" *is* enough to be beat Trump. Trump's approval among Democrats is 5%. Among independents its 34%. That's loads of people willing to cast a vote against Trump provided the Democrats don't nominate a candidate who comes across as someone whose going to continue the craziness, only from the left.

This isn't a call for revolution situation. It's a "bird in the hand" situation. The goal is to elect someone who isn't Trump and any of the current Democratic front runners would fit that bill suitably enough.

Any candidate who gets nominated is going to have to overcome GOP attempts at disenfranchisement. And the key to overcoming that is going to be channeling people's anger and outrage over Trump and not nominating a mythical candidate who is somehow going to fire up all parts of the Democratic base.

The problem with that is this is what normal is now. There is no going back to how things were pre-Trump, at least not in the short term, probably not for decades or even generations if we keep settling for “good enough.” The neocons and neoliberals have been unwittingly working hand in hand to poison the political stage since the 80’s, and Trump is a byproduct of this, a symptom, not the cause. The only thing Trump did was finally prove to the rest of the GOP that the boundary of what is possible is WAY further right than where they thought it was, and now that he has shown them this there is no going back without some sort of massive sea change that can only be accomplished through policy. Even if Trump loses next year, the 2024 elections will be filled with Republicans cribbing directly from his playbook. Many will be even more vile than he is because they likely won’t be as stupid or egocentric.
And the solution to this? We need to show everyone else what is possible by trying to make life better for everyone. Give people unfettered access to healthcare, education, housing. Fight climate change. Hold corporations accountable. Etc. It won’t be easy but we need to undermine the fabric of what makes demagogues attractive to voters. If we don’t fight what made Trump we will only keep getting more Trumps.

NOT A 'FIND-A-FRIEND' CONTEST: BERNIE SANDERS' CAMP SOUNDS OFF OVER 2020 CANDIDATES TRYING TO BE APPROACHABLE

Sanders — once a frontrunner in the election, polling behind only former Vice President Biden — has slipped in the polls since the first Democratic primary debate in late June. He's now tied with Senator Kamala Harris in third place with 13 percent of the vote. The Independent senator has also had trouble raising money, bringing in $18 million in Q2 and pacing behind fellow candidates Pete Buttigieg, Biden and Elizabeth Warren.

Jeff Weaver, Bernie Sanders' closest adviser, derided others in the Democratic field, saying in an interview with The New York Times, that the other candidates are trying too hard to be "personable" and that Sanders is not running for president to be a "friend."

"Let's be clear about this point: If somebody wants a candidate who is going to make health care a right, raise wages, deal with climate change, deal with immigration reform and criminal justice reform, Bernie Sanders is your candidate," said Weaver in the interview. "If you want somebody who's going to talk about their cooking, their dog, their wardrobe, travel habits, or favorite books, Bernie Sanders is not your candidate."

Weaver continued that "This is not a popularity contest or a find-a-friend contest."

Yeah, still not interested in being lectured by Bernie Bros about how to win an election.

ruhk wrote:

The problem with that is this is what normal is now. There is no going back to how things were pre-Trump, at least not in the short term, probably not for decades or even generations if we keep settling for “good enough.” The neocons and neoliberals have been unwittingly working hand in hand to poison the political stage since the 80’s, and Trump is a byproduct of this, a symptom, not the cause. The only thing Trump did was finally prove to the rest of the GOP that the boundary of what is possible is WAY further right than where they thought it was, and now that he has shown them this there is no going back without some sort of massive sea change that can only be accomplished through policy. Even if Trump loses next year, the 2024 elections will be filled with Republicans cribbing directly from his playbook. Many will be even more vile than he is because they likely won’t be as stupid or egocentric.
And the solution to this? We need to show everyone else what is possible by trying to make life better for everyone. Give people unfettered access to healthcare, education, housing. Fight climate change. Hold corporations accountable. Etc. It won’t be easy but we need to undermine the fabric of what makes demagogues attractive to voters. If we don’t fight what made Trump we will only keep getting more Trumps.

If there's no going back to how things were pre-Trump then we'd best just get a big ole can of gasoline and set the entire country on fire because this little experiment is over.

But that's not the case. Trump has exposed some tremendous weaknesses in our system of government, especially in today's hyper-partisan environment. He blew through rules, traditions, and norms of behavior that, up until now, have served to keep extreme behaviors in check. Now we know those things need to be codified into laws that have serious teeth.

Trump is the product of decades of GOP thought and policies that have gotten more and more extreme over the years thanks to conservative media stoking the fires of white nationalism. And the way to get back doesn't rely on a massive sea change. It just requires Republicans not to control Congress or the White House.

If Trump loses in 2020 you're probably right that they'll be loads of Republicans cribbing from his playbook. But they won't be successful because, as sh*tty as he is, Trump's unique. He's a charismatic (to some) demagogue who had skyhigh name recognition and branding because of his real estate and reality TV career. It's not like there's a deep bench of people like that the GOP can tap.

Oh, I'm sure they'll try. But those attempts will most likely fail because that candidate will come across as being manufactured...of being political and not being "real" like Trump. Demagogue's are relatively rare things and we should be very thankful for that. And the good thing about demagogues is that when they implode, they implode spectacularly and quickly and leave behind a lot of demoralized followers who will be less likely to pick up the banner for the next guy claiming to be their messiah.

And if copying Trump was a viable path forward for the GOP then the 2108 midterms should have gone a very different direction than they did. Instead, they showed that most people rejected Trump, his version of democracy, and his America. Hell, the man endorsed 75 House and Senate candidates in 2018--and did so in districts that favored Republicans by 7.6 points--and only slightly more than half of them won. That doesn't show a lot of power for the Trump model if it means you can win about half the time *in districts that are deep red.*

The solution to Trump is to show Americans that one idiot narcissist can't destroy our entire system of government.

The rest is going to be made easier by the fact that every year the country is getting more diverse and more progressive and we'll soon hit the tipping point where we won't even have to worry about what high-school educated white men in bassackward states think because there just won't be enough of them to matter during elections.

But we are most definitely not quite there now. Nor are we at the point where all of those diverse and progressive young people who could change America are going to bother to vote. And, again, that's not a slam on them because *every* generational group had sh*t turnout when they were young. Sure, there might be a Democratic candidate that will inspire young people and boost turnout a few more percent (Obama's 2008 election boosted 18-29 voting by 3.4%), but that doesn't quite matter when the 50 and 60+ crowd is turning out to vote at a rate that's 30-35 points higher.

America isn't quite as ready for a progressive revolution as some people think. Nor do a lot of Democrats and Independents want a Democratic version of Trump. They want normality back. They want to not have to worry about politics everyday.

You know, I struggled against people wanting to go back to when they didn't have to worry about politics again. I could only see the danger of that and how it contributed to where we are now.

But the key to that is not having to worry about it every minute of every day. I can get on board with having to stay involved only once a month or two versus being glued to twitter and cable news. I figure if any political activity happens in between that, it is more than likely going to be to refute or call out Russian propaganda online and on TV.

Immigration is clearly going to be a key issue in the next election. I am a bit confused as to the top candidates positions (I know Warren has posted a position piece). Trump and the GOP will clearly paint them as favoring open borders.

I guess my question is - why don’t we just open our borders?

I think all agree that asylum should be provided to any fleeing economic hardship or violence. I’d say that would apply to the vast majority of individuals from third world countries. I think all agree that coming in to the US should be decriminalized or should be the equivalent of a parking ticket so a very small fine. I think we agree that undocumented residents of the US should have the right to free health care, education, shelter and financial support necessary to feed their families.

So in reality, doesn’t the most sane policy allow open immigration with an easy path to rapid citizenship to all residents of Central America, Africa and most of the Middle East? I think those who would not be allowed in would be those from Western Europe as there would not be clear argument for asylum outside of unique situations. And violent criminals would not be welcome although I think it would be appropriate to just let our law enforcement system deal with this. Oh wait, I forgot, our cops are the violent criminals who should be deported!

We would save vast amounts of money by dismantling ICE and most of Homeland Security. And we would have a vibrant, eager work force to fuel our economy.

Now we just need a candidate to voice it. Or wait for 6 years when AOC becomes President.

If climate change goes the way scientists think it will then eventually we’ll have to either open borders and cooperate with each other (humanity) or we’ll have to erect Trump’s wall and mow down refugees at the border with automatic weapons.

I’d rather we tacked towards finding humanitarian solutions to dealing with refugees sooner rather than later.

That's the thing... after 9/11 open borders isn't really an ideal situation. The lies or misinformation that have been perpetuated by both sides is annoying as f*ck. Because of that and the idea of it being huge political capital no one is paying attention to the reality of the situation and that's how we end up with essentially a new wave of concentration camps in the good ole US of A.

DSGamer wrote:

erect Trump’s wall and mow down refugees at the border with automatic weapons.

Sadly, in the future, when push comes to shove, and the real suffering due to climate change begins, I think this is what a high percentage of the population will opt for. I’m not even sure it will be overcome by changing demographics.

gewy wrote:
DSGamer wrote:

erect Trump’s wall and mow down refugees at the border with automatic weapons.

Sadly, in the future, when push comes to shove, and the real suffering due to climate change begins, I think this is what a high percentage of the population will opt for. I’m not even sure it will be overcome by changing demographics.

That’s been my fear since the rise of the alt-right. That their trafficking in eliminationist and zero-sum ideas was going to be attractive to mainstream Republicans if we ever did actually experience true zero-sum politics.

gewy wrote:
DSGamer wrote:

erect Trump’s wall and mow down refugees at the border with automatic weapons.

Sadly, in the future, when push comes to shove, and the real suffering due to climate change begins, I think this is what a high percentage of the population will opt for. I’m not even sure it will be overcome by changing demographics.

The Supreme Court legalized Gerrymandering, demographics don't matter anymore. All that matters now is which side will cheat the hardest.

Mixolyde wrote:
gewy wrote:
DSGamer wrote:

erect Trump’s wall and mow down refugees at the border with automatic weapons.

Sadly, in the future, when push comes to shove, and the real suffering due to climate change begins, I think this is what a high percentage of the population will opt for. I’m not even sure it will be overcome by changing demographics.

The Supreme Court legalized Gerrymandering, demographics don't matter anymore. All that matters now is which side will cheat the hardest.

Definitely true, and this prevents us from working toward solutions before the problem spirals out of control. But my bigger fear is that when people start experiencing serious pain themselves, and the true, desperate scope of the crisis becomes apparent, "us vs. them" thinking will become progressively more prevalent, even bleeding into those who are fairly liberal-minded now.

Could be I've consumed too much post-apocalyptic media though (Walking Dead, Fallout, Mad Max, etc).

OG_slinger wrote:

America isn't quite as ready for a progressive revolution as some people think. Nor do a lot of Democrats and Independents want a Democratic version of Trump. They want normality back. They want to not have to worry about politics everyday.

I agree and it's sad. Things were garbage before Trump (there is no Trump if they hadn't been), but there was a veneer of 'civility' over everything that made it easy enough for ~middle-class people to ignore it, everyone below was and is kept in check by the precarity of their existence.
I'm no accelerationist, but I had a degree of hope that people would recognize that he was a symptom and not the cause. It seems that hope was misplaced.

Mixolyde wrote:
gewy wrote:
DSGamer wrote:

erect Trump’s wall and mow down refugees at the border with automatic weapons.

Sadly, in the future, when push comes to shove, and the real suffering due to climate change begins, I think this is what a high percentage of the population will opt for. I’m not even sure it will be overcome by changing demographics.

The Supreme Court legalized Gerrymandering, demographics don't matter anymore. All that matters now is which side will cheat the hardest.

Gerrymandering is building a levee against demographics, when levees fail the flooding can end up worse than if they didn’t exist in the first place.

Zona wrote:
Mixolyde wrote:
gewy wrote:
DSGamer wrote:

erect Trump’s wall and mow down refugees at the border with automatic weapons.

Sadly, in the future, when push comes to shove, and the real suffering due to climate change begins, I think this is what a high percentage of the population will opt for. I’m not even sure it will be overcome by changing demographics.

The Supreme Court legalized Gerrymandering, demographics don't matter anymore. All that matters now is which side will cheat the hardest.

Gerrymandering is building a levee against demographics, when levees fail the flooding can end up worse than if they didn’t exist in the first place.

Yes, and then the experiment will really be over. Whatever rises from the ashes, won't be America anymore.

Mixolyde wrote:
Zona wrote:
Mixolyde wrote:
gewy wrote:
DSGamer wrote:

erect Trump’s wall and mow down refugees at the border with automatic weapons.

Sadly, in the future, when push comes to shove, and the real suffering due to climate change begins, I think this is what a high percentage of the population will opt for. I’m not even sure it will be overcome by changing demographics.

The Supreme Court legalized Gerrymandering, demographics don't matter anymore. All that matters now is which side will cheat the hardest.

Gerrymandering is building a levee against demographics, when levees fail the flooding can end up worse than if they didn’t exist in the first place.

Yes, and then the experiment will really be over. Whatever rises from the ashes, won't be America anymore.

I have a terrible feeling it will be a vestige if the same party that really enjoys twisting the Bible to justify their actions; they’ll do the same to the ‘Constitution’ as well. Welcome to Animal Farm. I feel like Boxer.

BlackSheep wrote:
Mixolyde wrote:

Yes, and then the experiment will really be over. Whatever rises from the ashes, won't be America anymore.

I have a terrible feeling it will be a vestige if the same party that really enjoys twisting the Bible to justify their actions; they’ll do the same to the ‘Constitution’ as well. Welcome to Animal Farm. I feel like Boxer.

All men are created equal, but the white ones are more equal than others. (And women aren't equal at all.)