[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.

karmajay wrote:

Yeah, no more old white men for now, thanks.

Agreed. I will not consider one unless it comes to that or a soggy cheeto.

cheeze_pavilion wrote:

Tim Kane

who?

ruhk wrote:

I think Kamala Harris’ chances during the primaries largely depend upon how far she can run from the extremely problematic stuff she did as prosecutor and attorney general.

Alternatively if enough people do or do not find it problematic.

Btw, first debate is just a few months away in June:
https://www.npr.org/2018/12/20/67867...

thrawn82 wrote:
cheeze_pavilion wrote:

Tim Kane

who?

I guess you could say I made a mistake.

cheeze_pavilion wrote:
thrawn82 wrote:
cheeze_pavilion wrote:

Tim Kane

who?

I guess you could say I made a mistake.

No to be honest I didn't notice the spelling mistake, I was making a joke about the forgetable-ness of Tim Kaine, reinforced by the fact I didn't remember how his name is properly spelled.

Kamala Harris is getting attacked by opponents of the prison industrial complex and victims rights groups for her history as a prosecutor and her time fighting in favor of the death penalty. From my safe comfortable privileged perspective it seems a bit overblown but then I haven’t had my family ripped apart by the racist prison system.

What are people’s thoughts when they say she’s the worst democratic candidate yet because of her history supporting 3 strikes laws?

Seth wrote:

Kamala Harris is getting attacked by opponents of the prison industrial complex and victims rights groups for her history as a prosecutor and her time fighting in favor of the death penalty. From my safe comfortable privileged perspective it seems a bit overblown but then I haven’t had my family ripped apart by the racist prison system.

What are people’s thoughts when they say she’s the worst democratic candidate yet because of her history supporting 3 strikes laws?

I think the slogan "Harris is a Cop" used against her sum up the complaint and leads me to think the people lobbying that complaint can't really be brought to support her, shes tainted in their minds by being associated with law enforcement. I actually think her support or lack of support for particular practices while a prosecutor is incidental. Its the fact of being involved with law enforcement at all that people object to.

I dunno, she (or those reporting to her) took some pretty eye-raising stances. Upon reading some of the things she did, it seemed more about her record and reputation than it did about seeing actual justice done.

thrawn82 wrote:
cheeze_pavilion wrote:
thrawn82 wrote:
cheeze_pavilion wrote:

Tim Kane

who?

I guess you could say I made a mistake.

No to be honest I didn't notice the spelling mistake, I was making a joke about the forgetable-ness of Tim Kaine, reinforced by the fact I didn't remember how his name is properly spelled.

Yeah--should have been a VP, now only slightly better remembered than Martin O'Malley's banjo.

I saw him go on Fox News I think, and he did *really* well pushing back on them. Plus stuff like this.

Also, while I *know* it's better for the majority in the long term that things worked out the way they did, recently I can't help but wish these two years had him and Hillary in the White House instead.

thrawn82 wrote:
cheeze_pavilion wrote:

Tim Kane

who?

IMAGE(https://media.tenor.com/images/1022ac0392ea82515170d9ca68e8fdb2/tenor.gif)

Who, ironically, is actually a mayor in a small town in Tennessee. ;(

Seth wrote:

What are people’s thoughts when they say she’s the worst democratic candidate yet because of her history supporting 3 strikes laws?

I think that 3 strikes laws are similar to "Don't Ask Don't Tell" in that people view them from the lens of the current day and don't recall that the reasons for supporting the policy earlier on. (The reasons for the shift are different, where DADT was a absolute step up from the "Tell me and then you're fired", but society thankfully progressed to need another step up after that, 3 Strikes Law was more of a "Hey lets try this thing that may work out" and then it didn't.

My understanding is that early on a heck of a lot of liberals were proponents of 3 Strikes, which is one reason why California adhered to it so heavily. One idea was that it would let more resources be provided for rehabilitation and retraining, because after 3 strikes those resources could be shifted to other inmates. This didn't particularly work out, I'm not sure if it was because the increased resources weren't followed through on, or because they weren't enough to overcome the other substantial hurdles this country puts in the path of former inmates.

Another draw for liberals was similar to the draw that had gotten many of them onboard for creating or increasing mandatory minimums: the idea that creating such rigid sentencing guidelines reduces the space for discrimination. A Judge can't give a white man 6 months and a black man 3 years if he's forced to give both of them 3 years. In practice, however, that thinking was incomplete and doesn't consider that there are multiple places in the justice system for that sort of flexibility. Police or the DA can choose to let people off with a warning, or charge them with a lesser offense if an action could fall under multiple laws, etc.

So for me the amount that I would penalize past support for 3 strikes would depend entirely on when that support ended. How much evidence/pressure did it take the person to realize that they had backed a bad policy?

I haven't actually started looking into all of these candidates yet so I don't know when Harris's support of 3 strikes ended, so I don't know where she falls on the scale for me.

cheeze_pavilion wrote:

Also, while I *know* it's better for the majority in the long term that things worked out the way they did, recently I can't help but wish these two years had him and Hillary in the White House instead.

Me too, not least because of The Onion's assigned persona for Kaine.

Yonder wrote:
Seth wrote:

What are people’s thoughts when they say she’s the worst democratic candidate yet because of her history supporting 3 strikes laws?

I think that 3 strikes laws are similar to "Don't Ask Don't Tell" in that people view them from the lens of the current day and don't recall that the reasons for supporting the policy earlier on.

Yup. Three strike laws came into vogue at the peak of crack epidemic when the violent crime and murder rate was nearly double what it is today.

Keep in mind that it was largely supported by the “New Democrats,” the intentional movement that started in the mid-80’s to move the official Dem stance sharply to the right on a lot of issues in response to the Reagan Administration and featured such luminaries as Bill Clinton, Al Gore, and Joe Biden. There was pushback on a lot of the “Third Way” issues like Three Strikes but since the official party stance was changing the pushback tended to be scattered and marginalized.

ruhk wrote:

Keep in mind that it was largely supported by the “New Democrats,” the intentional movement that started in the mid-80’s to move the official Dem stance sharply to the right on a lot of issues in response to the Reagan Administration and featured such luminaries as Bill Clinton, Al Gore, and Joe Biden. There was pushback on a lot of the “Third Way” issues like Three Strikes but since the official party stance was changing the pushback tended to be scattered and marginalized.

Part of the "in response to the Reagan Administration" was Reagan carrying 44 states to Carter's 6 in the '80 election (and losing the Senate to the Republicans) and Mondale losing the '84 election 525 electoral votes to 13.

Getting spanked that hard in back-to-back elections tends to make you question if what you're doing is in line with what the electorate wants.

I get that, but “hey let’s try to be more like our political opponents” is an extremely lazy and cynical way of going about things. It ended up working in the short term, but at the cost of causing a lot of long term damage to the country.

I mean, I'm with you on the end result. But if people trying to get elected keep getting blown out of the water for multiple decades I'm not sure what else they WOULD do. "Be more like our political opponents" seems like a rational strategy when the voting public keeps electing your opponents.

ruhk wrote:

I get that, but “hey let’s try to be more like our political opponents” is an extremely lazy and cynical way of going about things. It ended up working in the short term, but at the cost of causing a lot of long term damage to the country.

It wasn't "hey, let's try to be more like our political opponents?" It was "hey, how do we woo back the Reagan Democrats so we can win elections?"

The Democratic primary has barely begun and I am already exhausted. Please just call me in August 2020 and let me know who I'm reluctantly voting for.

OG_slinger wrote:
ruhk wrote:

I get that, but “hey let’s try to be more like our political opponents” is an extremely lazy and cynical way of going about things. It ended up working in the short term, but at the cost of causing a lot of long term damage to the country.

It wasn't "hey, let's try to be more like our political opponents?" It was "hey, how do we woo back the Reagan Democrats so we can win elections?"

They didn't need to- Reagan was a unicorn. Bush 1’s record unpopularity was already causing the pendulum to swing back while the New Dems were still in the early stages.

ruhk wrote:

They didn't need to- Reagan was a unicorn. The pendulum was already swinging back during Bush 1's term.

Reagan wasn't a unicorn, though. He defined the GOP and conservatism pretty much until Republicans lost their goddamn minds in the mid-2000s.

Bush was Reagan's heir. There was no reason for Democrats to think that voters would turn on him.

What happened to Bush was that he failed to understand how much Reagan conservatism had taken over the party and that the new, unforgiving Republican ideology on things like taxes trumped doing what was good for the country.

But no Democratic campaign manager in the 80s would have said "we can sit back on our asses because the pendulum is swinging back our way." Like generals fighting the last war, campaign managers run the last campaign. And the biggest takeaways from the last three campaigns for the Democrats was that the white, slightly conservative working class had abandoned the party.

OG_slinger wrote:

And the biggest takeaways from the last three campaigns for the Democrats was that the white, slightly conservative working class had abandoned the party.

Oh, how times change. /s

I, for one, am glad we're reliving the '80s elections now. So much more riveting than rehashing 2016 Bernie VS Hillary once again.

dejanzie wrote:

I, for one, am glad we're reliving the '80s elections now. So much more riveting than rehashing 2016 Bernie VS Hillary once again.

Oh, don’t worry, we’ll be reminded of it every couple of days.

ruhk wrote:
dejanzie wrote:

I, for one, am glad we're reliving the '80s elections now. So much more riveting than rehashing 2016 Bernie VS Hillary once again.

Oh, don’t worry, we’ll be reminded of it every couple of days.

IMAGE(https://media.giphy.com/media/PzQvWAhgfUipW/giphy.gif)

(edit)

I'd also call Reagan a unicorn, in that he's a lot like Trump: he had a dark gift for speaking and connecting with voters that few in the Republican (or really any) party do.

(double edit) oh, and I'd say Reagan was very much part of the process of the Republican Party losing its mind.

ruhk wrote:
OG_slinger wrote:

And the biggest takeaways from the last three campaigns for the Democrats was that the white, slightly conservative working class had abandoned the party.

Oh, how times change. /s ;)

I lol'ed.

OG_slinger wrote:
ruhk wrote:

I get that, but “hey let’s try to be more like our political opponents” is an extremely lazy and cynical way of going about things. It ended up working in the short term, but at the cost of causing a lot of long term damage to the country.

It wasn't "hey, let's try to be more like our political opponents?" It was "hey, how do we woo back the Reagan Democrats so we can win elections?"

I think the former was their answer to the latter, though, so yeah--it was.

Basically. Like I said, they did the lazy, cynical thing rather than actually putting the work in to get the base engaged while staying true to the values of the party. Luckily we don’t seem to be making that same mistake now. Or yet, at least.

EDIT: lol you edited out what I was replying to. Well, I’m leaving what I’ve already typed.