[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.

The best piece of advice I ever got regarding who to vote for.

Elections are not your personal driver. Elections are like public transportation. Sometimes you get a stop that is exactly where you need to be, and that's great. Most of the time though, you have to take the stop closest to where you want to be and walk.

I don't agree with Warren on everything, nor do I agree completely with Sanders, Buttigieg, or Biden. But they take me a lot closer to where I think the country needs to be than Trump, with his tax breaks for the rich, kids in cages, and lies and corruption.

I will vote with the candidate who will take me the closest to where the country needs to be. And when that person is elected, I will walk to make sure the country continues in the right direction.

DSGamer wrote:
Tanglebones wrote:
DSGamer wrote:

Might as well vote from Trump if that's the Democratic message.

And what I hear is "I only agree with 90% of Elizabeth Warren's platform. Might as well vote Trump."

Nah. It's just really demobilizing (and demoralizing) for voters to talk about how nothing can ever change. That because manufacturing military planes will never fly employs a lot of people we have to keep electing presidents who will drop bombs on children in the Middle East.

Let me knock on doors for that message!!

I'm going to vote for whoever runs for Trump, but you have to try to understand why someone might read what OG wrote and just go "Bernie or Bust".

I mean, they would be making a petty and uninformed decision if they were to do so. Tangle is right - all the dem nominees agree with one another far more than with Trump. I mean one hand I get that no one is harder on liberals than other liberals(it's gross), but if you were going to abstain from voting or even worse, vote for Trump if Bernie doesn't get the nod - you are a real sh*t and kind of f*ck you.

To be clear, I know you aren't advocating this Dsg and I am talking to the "you" in general, not directed.

Looks like Mayor Pete is quite a bit closer to winning the Iowa Primary.
He has a slight 2% edge over Sanders with 85% reporting last I saw.
Anyone know if the remaining districts have any anomalous leanings?

I can't find a map, but if you link one I could speculate.

Twitter is aflutter with conspiracy theories that the Democratic Party is stealing Bernie votes to give Pete a boost.

That may turn out to be true, but damn, does everything have to be a conspiracy?

And a conspiracy theory that got started because some genius saw a Federal Election Commission disclosure form that listed Buttigieg's campaign as having paid Shadow for "software rights and subscriptions" and immediately concluded that Buttigieg actually paid Shadow to have the IDP's app throw him the caucus when the money was actually for text-messaging services.

Biden and Gillibrand both paid into Shadow as well. The larger conflict of interest IMO is that the CEO of the company is married to one of Buttigieg’s campaign advisors. I don’t really think there’s any conspiracy here, though, just the usual raging incompetence of the Democratic party.

Re-upping this:

Rat Boy wrote:

We're in a period of our political history warning of the dangerous vulnerabilities of electronic voting and what do they do at the caucuses? Make it more electronic-y!

IMAGE(https://i.postimg.cc/PfRMC37S/lraxzaq438f41.jpg)

Well, this wasn't the right place at all.

Dunno, Jay, maybe ask in the NFL thread.

is Hillary the Jim Kelly of this analogy?

Apparently 4chan is one of the reasons that the phone reporting didn't work:

NBC: 'Clog the lines': Internet trolls deliberately disrupted the Iowa caucuses hotline for reporting results: Several officials at caucuses attended by NBC News reporters struggled with lengthy hold times that made it impossible for them to report results over the phone.

Expect more stuff like this as we get closer to November. There's too many internet trolls who will invent and spread disinformation or cause problems like this merely for their own amusement.

So Iowa dropped Biden SIGNIFICANTLY in 538's primary model. Sanders now has the highest probability to win the nomination.

When your entire campaign is based on electability and you don't win, well, your argument kinda falls flat. South Carolina is supposed to be Biden's great firewall and yet 538 is even giving the advantage to Sanders there. Sanders has a 49% chance to win South Carolina compared to Biden's 36%.

Biden definitely has a chance to recover from his loss in Iowa, but it's going to be an uphill struggle.

Good, that means we're less and less likely to have to vote for a creep to beat an even bigger creep.

Gremlin wrote:

Apparently 4chan is one of the reasons that the phone reporting didn't work:

NBC: 'Clog the lines': Internet trolls deliberately disrupted the Iowa caucuses hotline for reporting results: Several officials at caucuses attended by NBC News reporters struggled with lengthy hold times that made it impossible for them to report results over the phone.

Expect more stuff like this as we get closer to November. There's too many internet trolls who will invent and spread disinformation or cause problems like this merely for their own amusement.

Given what 4chan's /pol/ has been for a LONG time... I seriously doubt this counts anymore as "for the lulz" and is more and more "time for our Nazi sh*t to interfere with our enemies".

garion333 wrote:

Twitter is aflutter with conspiracy theories that the Democratic Party is stealing Bernie votes to give Pete a boost.

That may turn out to be true, but damn, does everything have to be a conspiracy?

It’s a human condition. We are sense making machines. Conspiracy theories allow us to make sense out of things. It’s a super interesting topic (At least I think so) with a lot of behavioral science behind it.

Some interesting Sankey diagrams from data jockeys at The Washington Post and The Center for Public Integrity.

This one is a state delegate equivalent flow diagram for Iowa.

IMAGE(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EQDOxGgXUAAt6WL?format=png&name=small)

And this one is for itemized donations as reported by the campaigns themselves.

IMAGE(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EQEFujqXsAAvl1u?format=jpg&name=900x900)

They need to stop trying to jam more "gotchas!" into this plot. It's becoming hard to believe.

AIR FORCE COLONEL SET TO TAKE COMMAND OF AIR FORCE ONE BASE JAILED FOR FIVE YEARS ON CHILD PORNOGRAPHY CHARGES

(caps theirs, not mine, and I'm too lazy to type it out)

r013nt0 wrote:

They need to stop trying to jam more "gotchas!" into this plot. It's becoming hard to believe.

AIR FORCE COLONEL SET TO TAKE COMMAND OF AIR FORCE ONE BASE JAILED FOR FIVE YEARS ON CHILD PORNOGRAPHY CHARGES

(caps theirs, not mine, and I'm too lazy to type it out)

I guess in a weird way Trump is draining the swamp

There aren’t enough facepalms for how bad an idea this is. All journalists should be required to take some form of internet literacy course.

IMAGE(https://i.postimg.cc/KcDTkymr/57090-B7-E-F427-495-A-A600-9-A9-EE7-D39-C5-E.jpg)

ruhk wrote:

There aren’t enough facepalms for how bad an idea this is. All journalists should be required to take some form of internet literacy course.

IMAGE(https://i.postimg.cc/KcDTkymr/57090-B7-E-F427-495-A-A600-9-A9-EE7-D39-C5-E.jpg)

Journalists who gave their contact info to face-eating lions surprised to have their faces eaten.

Chairman_Mao wrote:
r013nt0 wrote:

They need to stop trying to jam more "gotchas!" into this plot. It's becoming hard to believe.

AIR FORCE COLONEL SET TO TAKE COMMAND OF AIR FORCE ONE BASE JAILED FOR FIVE YEARS ON CHILD PORNOGRAPHY CHARGES

(caps theirs, not mine, and I'm too lazy to type it out)

I guess in a weird way Trump is draining the swamp

So it was a euphemism all along?

Interesting rant from longtime Democratic strategist, James Carville.. Feels like there's a lot of interesting pragmatism in there.

Sean Illing:
So your complaint is basically that the party has tacked too far to the left?

James Carville
They’ve tacked off the damn radar screen. And look, I don’t consider myself a moderate or a centrist. I’m a liberal. But not everything has to be on the left-right continuum. I love Warren’s day care plan just like I love Booker’s baby bonds. That’s the kind of stuff our candidates should explain and define clearly and repeatedly for voters and not get diverted by whatever the hell is in the air that day.

Here’s another stupid thing: Democrats talking about free college tuition or debt forgiveness. I’m not here to debate the idea. What I can tell you is that people all over this country worked their way through school, sent their kids to school, paid off student loans. They don’t want to hear this sh*t. And you saw Warren confronted by an angry voter over this. It’s just not a winning message.

The real argument here is that some people think there’s a real yearning for a left-wing revolution in this country, and if we just appeal to the people who feel that, we’ll grow and excite them and we’ll win. But there’s a word a lot of people hate that I love: politics. It means building coalitions to win elections. It means sometimes having to sit back and listen to what people think and framing your message accordingly.

That’s all I care about. Right now the most important thing is getting this career criminal who’s stealing everything that isn’t nailed down out of the White House. We can’t do anything for anyone if we don’t start there and then acquire more power.

Imagine having such brain worms that you think the Democratic party has moved too far left. The party actively works against leftist candidates and has altered it’s own rules to make it harder for leftist candidates to primary incumbents.

I do like this quote from that piece:

Falling into despair won’t help anyone, though. I mean, you can curse the darkness or you can light a candle. I’m getting a f*cking welding torch. Okay?

Carville’s politics might win you the White House at the expense of the material lives of the people. Eventually leading to Trump.

If we take his advice things will only get worse long term.

He's basically saying Democrats have to continue to appeal to out-of-touch Boomers because they are too large a voting block to ignore. He's not wrong. But it would sure be nice to educate and inspire instead of pander to ignorance.

I love winning elections with center-right politicians as resentment in the country builds to such a boiling point that eventually Americans vote for fascism.

Please tell me more, Mr. Carville.