Serious 2020 Democratic Primary Thread

Who are your favorite candidates?

  • Kamala Harris

    Votes: 43 8.0%
  • Elizabeth Warren

    Votes: 99 18.4%
  • Julián Castro

    Votes: 16 3.0%
  • Pete Buttigieg

    Votes: 51 9.5%
  • Kirsten Gillibrand

    Votes: 7 1.3%
  • John Delaney

    Votes: 9 1.7%
  • Tulsi Gabbard

    Votes: 63 11.7%
  • Bernie Sanders

    Votes: 338 62.9%
  • Amy Klobuchar

    Votes: 12 2.2%
  • Joe Biden

    Votes: 45 8.4%
  • Andrew Yang

    Votes: 112 20.9%
  • Cory Booker

    Votes: 7 1.3%
  • Marianne Williamson

    Votes: 19 3.5%
  • Mike Bloomberg

    Votes: 12 2.2%

  • Total voters
    537
Few thoughts:

About me - late 20s black male.

My heart and vote will go to Elizabeth Warren, but I sincerely hope and think she doesn’t win the nomination. Why? She’s amazing on policy but has terrible political instincts. She will lose to Trump. But her ideas will find their way into the 2020 Dem platform.

The winning ticket is Biden / Harris. If we want to beat Trump it’s a slam dunk.

Bernie will never win a Dem primary. Bernie supporters need to get past that idea.

The only serious candidates are Biden, Beto, Mayor Pete, Kamala Harris, and unnamed establishment white male Democrat in the event Biden doesn’t run (think Terry McAuliffe).

EDIT: Terry McAuliffe officially announced he's not running. IMO, that puts Biden's odds at 95% he's in.

EDIT 2 - Prediction:

Bernie retains his 25% base in the primary, while the 4 other serious contenders mention remain relevant through the first few states. Harris has underwhelming support in early states with the exception of California, which causes her support among black voters in the South to tip towards Biden. Mayor Pete has a surprisingly strong showing through the primary. Beto, despite fundraising never catches enough fire and drops out early. That leaves Biden, Sanders, Harris, and Mayor Pete. Harris sees no path to victory, cuts a deal with Biden for an endorsement and promise of VP slot and drops out. Biden runs the table with 40%, eventually climbing towards a solid majority. Bernie refuses to concede without more concessions in the party platform and primary process.
 
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Chou Toshio

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Few thoughts:

About me - late 20s black male.

My heart and vote will go to Elizabeth Warren, but I sincerely hope and think she doesn’t win the nomination. Why? She’s amazing on policy but has terrible political instincts. She will lose to Trump. But her ideas will find their way into the 2020 Dem platform.

The winning ticket is Biden / Harris. If we want to beat Trump it’s a slam dunk.

Bernie will never win a Dem primary. Bernie supporters need to get past that idea.

The only serious candidates are Biden, Beto, Mayor Pete, Kamala Harris, and unnamed establishment white male Democrat in the event Biden doesn’t run (think Terry McAuliffe).

EDIT: Terry McAuliffe officially announced he's not running. IMO, that puts Biden's odds at 95% he's in.

EDIT 2 - Prediction:

Bernie retains his 25% base in the primary, while the 4 other serious contenders mention remain relevant through the first few states. Harris has underwhelming support in early states with the exception of California, which causes her support among black voters in the South to tip towards Biden. Mayor Pete has a surprisingly strong showing through the primary. Beto, despite fundraising never catches enough fire and drops out early. That leaves Biden, Sanders, Harris, and Mayor Pete. Harris sees no path to victory, cuts a deal with Biden for an endorsement and promise of VP slot and drops out. Biden runs the table with 40%, eventually climbing towards a solid majority. Bernie refuses to concede without more concessions in the party platform and primary process.
Here’s a prediction: Biden continues to stumble as he has been stumbling. His record gets raked through more finely than ever by an increasingly engaged electorate. His campaign is starting with apology after apology, and that will never end because he has so much to apologize for.

Wait, he opposed busing desegregation and sought the support of anti-desegregationists? WTF...?

Wait, he defeated Elizabeth Warren to pass the bankruptcy bill that has exploded our credit card and student loan crises? WTF...?

Wait, he wrote the crime bill that has helped fill our prisons and made our criminal justice system more tyrannical?

Wait, he drafted the patriot act that has stamped on our civil liberties?

He supported NAFTA? Supported eliminating Glass Steagall? Voted for the Iraq War? How is one man’s record so intrinsically connected to our biggest societal problems— the ones that got Trump elected?


If Biden is the candidate I will write in Bernie, but this is the only Democrat where you have to genuinely measure if he’s actually the greater evil than Trump.

Biden cannot beat Trump because he is weaker as a candidate and less liberal than Hillary Clinton in almost every measurable way.

Hillary flip-flopped on Elizabeth Warren’s advice, ultimately siding with the finance industry. Biden never wavered in being the champion of the credit card companies and relished in stamping on the interests of the people.
 
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Here’s a prediction: Biden continues to stumble as he has been stumbling. His record gets raked through more finely than ever by an increasingly engaged electorate. His campaign is starting with apology after apology, and that will never end because he has so much to apologize for.

Wait, he opposed busing desegregation and sought the support of anti-desegregationists? WTF...?

Wait, he defeated Elizabeth Warren to pass the bankruptcy bill that has exploded our credit card and student loan crises? WTF...?

Wait, he wrote the crime bill that has helped fill our prisons and made our criminal justice system more tyrannical?

Wait, he drafted the patriot act that has stamped on our civil liberties?

He supported NAFTA? Supported eliminating Glass Steagall? Voted for the Iraq War? How is one man’s record so intrinsically connected to our biggest societal problems— the ones that got Trump elected?


If Biden is the candidate I will write in Bernie, but this is the only Democrat where you have to genuinely measure if he’s actually the greater evil than Trump.

Biden cannot beat Trump because he is weaker as a candidate and less liberal than Hillary Clinton in almost every measurable way.

Hillary flip-flopped on Elizabeth Warren’s advice, ultimately siding with the finance industry. Biden never wavered in being the champion of the credit card companies and relished in stamping on the interests of the people.
You're clearly a newbie to politics. Your arguments are perfectly logical.

However, politics are not logical.

Biden enjoys loyal approval among the Democratic establishment, black voters, and working class white union Democrats. That's the coalition needed to win a Democratic primary.

Liberals do not decide the Democratic primary.'

In fact, even in deep blue states such as New York and California, liberal candidates consistently lose to establishment Democrats. If you're a liberal, your best bet is a center-left Democrat like Kamala Harris or Barack Obama.
 

Chou Toshio

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You're clearly a newbie to politics. Your arguments are perfectly logical.

However, politics are not logical.

Biden enjoys loyal approval among the Democratic establishment, black voters, and working class white union Democrats. That's the coalition needed to win a Democratic primary.

Liberals do not decide the Democratic primary.'

In fact, even in deep blue states such as New York and California, liberal candidates consistently lose to establishment Democrats. If you're a liberal, your best bet is a center-left Democrat like Kamala Harris or Barack Obama.
Fair enough, and we shall see-- I am making predictions based on an expectation of mine that frustrations of the voters will cause them to act more logically. If the electorate was as stupid and uncritical as you describe, an unknown socialist from Vermont would not have won 23 states, and Trump would not be the President.

My theory is that the experts and veterans really don't see how much the years of betrayal are uniting the grievances of the political landscape.

You cannot fool all of the people all of the time.

Even on the level of accurate forecasting-- the entire Republican and Democratic political class predicted the outcome of 2016 wrong. Much of the progressive media and communities predicted it right-- they predicted Trump would win. Times, they are a changin'

Regardless, I don't think a candidate with so many easily attackable weaknesses can beat Trump while constantly having to show that weakness by apologizing to an energized left flank. That is truly impossible. Joe cannot get through this primary in a way that leaves him with a route to victory against Trump.
 
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I don't think that it's charitable to claim that it's misogynisy that's responsible for Warren's unpopularity. Warren has a long history of pretending to be someone that she isn't. She claimed to be native American. She supported occupy wall street for few weeks then got off the train when it was politically expident. I think that's the reason that Berners aren't a fan of her.
 
I wouldn't weigh too much on polls and so on. Both sides have partial truths. It's just numbers that's prone to methodology errors. It's impossible to conduct a perfectly unbiased polls, and even then it's merely probabilistic over many hypothetical elections. It's a snapshot of current political climate and nothing more than that.
 

Myzozoa

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i agree w most of ur sentiment RaikouLover , but I feel there is a contradiction when one asserts that a non-white man can't win based on 2016 and then suggest running a centrist candidate. The main thing I learned from 2016, is that progressives don't need to move centre if they're willing to run a white man. Beto, Buttigieg, Biden are all useless drones that are politically outmoded, relics still pushing on with a DOA campaign strategy, their effort is almost Sisyphus-ian . A fake progressive coalition of architects of mass incarceration and avatars of ivy league incompetence is not gonna beat incumbent trump in 2020 just like it lost to outsider trump in 2016.
 
My point was that “progressives” and “liberals” are not a winning coalition. Even if voters like progressive policies, they don’t like to self-identify as such. It’s a pretty simple calculus. Run too far left or right and you lose.

There were a few lessons of 2016. One was that the average voter (mistakenly) thought Donald Trump was closer to the center than Hillary Clinton.
 

Chou Toshio

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He gave Donald trump a 30% chance of winning and got the popular vote margin exactly correct. Calling that “wrong” is pretty disingenuous.
I know. He got the margin right (that’s the easy part to foresee though); the 70/30 seemed ridiculous to me at the time even if the outcome is well within the statistical possibility he gave.

He’s salty he was wrong.
 

Chou Toshio

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My point was that “progressives” and “liberals” are not a winning coalition. Even if voters like progressive policies, they don’t like to self-identify as such. It’s a pretty simple calculus. Run too far left or right and you lose.

There were a few lessons of 2016. One was that the average voter (mistakenly) thought Donald Trump was closer to the center than Hillary Clinton.
You can’t blame them for their assessment of Trump considering Hillary had zero trustworthiness and Trump was campaigning to her left on all the important populist issues— and she couldn’t change her historic relationship to NAFTA, or to Wallstreet or to the Iraq war. Trump decimated her in the debates on those issues in irreparable ways.

...and Biden would get it even worse; because his record is worse.

Your analysis of identity vs policy is totally right— it’s what progressives will have to overcome. The era of McCarthyism has still left a deep trauma in the American people; a deep fear of the violence that was met out in that witch hunt to the socialists and communists that made the New Deal possible.
It will be the project of the Bernie Sanders campaign to see if their modern progressive movement can overcome that trauma and the handicap of the destruction and demonization of the socialists.

My lesson from 2016 is that the people are in pain, and both parties have lost tremendous political capital and are responsive to someone they think will change the rules of the game. The media too has lost tremendous standing. The biggest impediment to Sanders last year outside the people’s fear of socialism was getting blacked out by media.

They can’t ignore him anymore. It’s impossible to guess what will happen but the idea that progressives shouldn’t try to change minds is absurd, as is the idea that Bernie has no chance.
 

MikeDawg

Banned deucer.
Hes done before he started, sorry. Pete Buttigieg is the self styled American Emmanuel Macron and obvious media horse they are pushing their chips behind, and Bernie and Biden have name recognition and lots of momentum, and Bernie has a huge grass roots backing also. Nobody else besides those 3 will become the nominee. Not Harris because she lacks charisma and her track record as a prosecutor will sink her, and Warren because she lacks any political instincts, as evidenced by getting baited into a fight with Donald Trump and ending up the loser when she had literally nothing to gain from trying to prove how Native American she was.
Beto and Pete also have massive grassroots support. In fact, Pete's launch from unknown to likely frontrunner is happening much more quickly than Bernie's in 2016. For reference, Bernie was polling at 2% in Iowa in April 2015, and there was only one main candidate at that point. Pete's momentum is unprecedented considering his competition.

Harris has plenty of charisma, and contrary to what you read on internet forums, respect for police is currently quite high overall, and it is still at a decent level among democrats (ignoring the fact that Kamala is a lawyer and she has a great record as DA and AG, etc etc). Plus, with Trump in office, "justice" is a theme that heavily resonates with the dem electorate right now, and Kamala's history makes her the candidate who represents that. At the very least, it definitely won't "sink" her lmao. She will do great at the debates, and her campaign has been practically flawless so far, even if she isn't getting as much shallow media attention as the 4 white guys who currently dominate the news. She will probably win, tbh, especially if Pete starts to plateau or Biden doesn't live up to expectations.

I agree with Warren, but her campaign team is outstanding, so maybe she'll be able to pull out a miracle.

Bernie has no chance. He can only go down from here considering his universal name recognition and the fact that his popularity peaked a while ago. Maybe he'll finally get scrutinized properly. He isn't even in first place right now, and I can assure you Biden's massive base isn't going to flock to Bernie if he decides to not run. Moreover, he's one of the few candidates who has a very real chance of losing against trump, imo.
 

GatoDelFuego

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Harris has plenty of charisma, and contrary to what you read on internet forums, respect for police is currently quite high overall, and it is still at a decent level among democrats (ignoring the fact that Kamala is a lawyer and she has a great record as DA and AG, etc etc). Plus, with Trump in office, "justice" is a theme that heavily resonates with the dem electorate right now, and Kamala's history makes her the candidate who represents that.
err....has public opinion of police been worse at literally any point in time in the county's history?
 

Chou Toshio

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Beto and Pete also have massive grassroots support. In fact, Pete's launch from unknown to likely frontrunner is happening much more quickly than Bernie's in 2016. For reference, Bernie was polling at 2% in Iowa in April 2015, and there was only one main candidate at that point. Pete's momentum is unprecedented considering his competition.

Harris has plenty of charisma, and contrary to what you read on internet forums, respect for police is currently quite high overall, and it is still at a decent level among democrats (ignoring the fact that Kamala is a lawyer and she has a great record as DA and AG, etc etc). Plus, with Trump in office, "justice" is a theme that heavily resonates with the dem electorate right now, and Kamala's history makes her the candidate who represents that. At the very least, it definitely won't "sink" her lmao. She will do great at the debates, and her campaign has been practically flawless so far, even if she isn't getting as much shallow media attention as the 4 white guys who currently dominate the news. She will probably win, tbh, especially if Pete starts to plateau or Biden doesn't live up to expectations.

I agree with Warren, but her campaign team is outstanding, so maybe she'll be able to pull out a miracle.

Bernie has no chance. He can only go down from here considering his universal name recognition and the fact that his popularity peaked a while ago. Maybe he'll finally get scrutinized properly. He isn't even in first place right now, and I can assure you Biden's massive base isn't going to flock to Bernie if he decides to not run. Moreover, he's one of the few candidates who has a very real chance of losing against trump, imo.
Every major poll shown Bernie as the major second choice of Biden voters, and visa versa. (Odd, but as RaikouLover said, politics is not logical)

Bernie was shut out of the media. Beto and Buttigieg are propped up by the media.

But the media can bury Bernie no more.
 

PDC

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the saddest part of the mainstream liberal voter pool is that people crave a "return to civility" more than achieving justice or actually beneficial policies. most would rather see a handshake than an aggressive pursuit of decreasing pollution or cops being imprisoned. seeing people praise bush for being a model leader is disgusting.
 

Chou Toshio

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the saddest part of the mainstream liberal voter pool is that people crave a "return to civility" more than achieving justice or actually beneficial policies. most would rather see a handshake than an aggressive pursuit of decreasing pollution or cops being imprisoned. seeing people praise bush for being a model leader is disgusting.
So basically we got to register all the Fox viewers to vote in the Democratic primary for Bernie to win is what you’re saying.

Fox News Townhall Closing Statement

... xD

Man that Fox News audience loved him so much! He got them chanting so hard... Bernie should have just kept going!!

B: ...should we give free college to everyone?

YES!!

B: ...Should we nationalize the banks?

YES!!

B: ...should we make half of all boards of directors labor elected and give workers a right of First Refusal?

YES!!

B: ...Should we change our national anthem to “The Banks of Marble”?

YES!!


B: See, that’s how most people feel. We’re all basically socialists.

XD
 
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You can’t blame them for their assessment of Trump considering Hillary had zero trustworthiness and Trump was campaigning to her left on all the important populist issues— and she couldn’t change her historic relationship to NAFTA, or to Wallstreet or to the Iraq war. Trump decimated her in the debates on those issues in irreparable ways.
Trump never had any credibility. The difference is his 40% base doesn't care and never will. He can lie 5,000 times a day. Why? Trump's base is authoritarian followers. Assuming you aren't one of them, to single out Hillary over issues of "trustworthiness" is not credible.

...and Biden would get it even worse; because his record is worse.
Once again, you're assuming that voters actually care about record.

Your analysis of identity vs policy is totally right— it’s what progressives will have to overcome. The era of McCarthyism has still left a deep trauma in the American people; a deep fear of the violence that was met out in that witch hunt to the socialists and communists that made the New Deal possible.
It will be the project of the Bernie Sanders campaign to see if their modern progressive movement can overcome that trauma and the handicap of the destruction and demonization of the socialists.
Bernie's messaging is actually pretty good, he's just to the left of mainstream America. That's not his fault (I agree with his policies). It just doesn't bode well for winning elections.

My lesson from 2016 is that the people are in pain, and both parties have lost tremendous political capital and are responsive to someone they think will change the rules of the game. The media too has lost tremendous standing. The biggest impediment to Sanders last year outside the people’s fear of socialism was getting blacked out by media.

They can’t ignore him anymore. It’s impossible to guess what will happen but the idea that progressives shouldn’t try to change minds is absurd, as is the idea that Bernie has no chance.
Bernie has no chance at all. 40% of the country has their head's up Trump's ass. The majority of the Democratic base either doesn't like Bernie, or likes his policies but have other loyalties. For example, black voters actually like Bernie Sanders. They just had more loyalty to the Clintons. It will be the same when he has to face Joe Biden and Kamala Harris in all the states where large percentages of the Democratic party are African American.
 

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