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Serious 2020 Democratic Primary Thread
- Thread starter MikeDawg
- Start date
So I know which candidates are in my top picks and where my cut off is to writing in Bernie’s name in the general— but I thought it would be cool to not just stop there but keep going through a more extensive ranking. And not just order, but also degree of difference.
So I tried to come up with a number scale— a single number to reflect a number of things: Good policy, ability to realize a transformative agenda, political courage, honest conviction, moral compass, the things that matter to me.
But I wanted it to be a scale without a set range; just showing proportionately how I felt about those candidates. I actually needed to include Republicans and past candidates to give me bearing. So this is completely subjective and instinct-based— but I felt really good about how it looked laid out so sharing.
*I have to do more research on Marianne Williamson
2300 Bernie Sanders
1800 Tulsi Gabbard
1600 Mike Gravel
850 Elizabeth Warren
820 Andrew Yang
750 Jill Stein
600 Marianne Williamson
500 Ron Paul
300 Rand Paul
290 Kamala Harris
250 Julian Castro
230 Barack Obama
210 Kirsten Gillibrand
200 Pete Buttigieg
170 Amy Klobuchar
170 John Kasich
140 Gary Johnson
120 Donald Trump
100 Hillary Clinton
90 John McCain
80 Beto O’Rourke
70 Cory Booker
45 Bill Clinton
40 Ted Cruz
30 Mitt Romney
25 Joe Biden
22 Marco Rubio
20 Jeb Bush
10 George HW Bush
Would be interested in seeing lists done by others :)
So I tried to come up with a number scale— a single number to reflect a number of things: Good policy, ability to realize a transformative agenda, political courage, honest conviction, moral compass, the things that matter to me.
But I wanted it to be a scale without a set range; just showing proportionately how I felt about those candidates. I actually needed to include Republicans and past candidates to give me bearing. So this is completely subjective and instinct-based— but I felt really good about how it looked laid out so sharing.
*I have to do more research on Marianne Williamson
2300 Bernie Sanders
1800 Tulsi Gabbard
1600 Mike Gravel
850 Elizabeth Warren
820 Andrew Yang
750 Jill Stein
600 Marianne Williamson
500 Ron Paul
300 Rand Paul
290 Kamala Harris
250 Julian Castro
230 Barack Obama
210 Kirsten Gillibrand
200 Pete Buttigieg
170 Amy Klobuchar
170 John Kasich
140 Gary Johnson
120 Donald Trump
100 Hillary Clinton
90 John McCain
80 Beto O’Rourke
70 Cory Booker
45 Bill Clinton
40 Ted Cruz
30 Mitt Romney
25 Joe Biden
22 Marco Rubio
20 Jeb Bush
10 George HW Bush
Would be interested in seeing lists done by others :)
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Yup.
At least Trump called for people to drain the swamp and and pointed the people’s fury at some actually bad shit— the Iraq war, NAFTA, cutting social security; notice all things Joe actually did. And between Joe and Trump, while both ARE the swamp at least one identifies that it is in need of draining. “Why is Bernie attacking the elite? The elite are every bit as patriotic as the poor.”— Joe Biden
Fuck you Joe.
Ted Cruz is a corporate sleeze but at least he doesn’t hide it; he wears his Ayn Randerism on his sleeve and preaches it proudly. At least the guy has a consistent ideology and abides by it the majority of the time-- which is definitely a good thing.
Example: Ted Cruz ideologically believes in Free Trade. Joe believes in Free Trade because the donors want him to.
When Bernie Sanders proposes legislation to import drugs from Canada, Ted Cruz supported that legislation. I am all but sure Joe wouldn't.
That illustrates why I respect Cruz more than handsy Joe who’s even more servantile to the elite while having the gall to say he’s progressive while shitting on real ones.
Cruz can go to Liberty College and get massive applause. Handsy Joe proudly says he doesn’t give a fuck about young people.
More importantly though you’ll notice that all of these people are at the bottom of the barrel with scores so low that the difference is unnoticeable— which was the point of scaling it this way. These people are all awful, and it's less important to quibble over the differences-- but I also do have reasoning for my order if you have to put a microscope on it.
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THE_IRON_...KENYAN?
Banned deucer.
So the second article does not prove your point. It describes Richard Ojeda as one of the most progressive candidates that lost, Richard Ojeda is a conservative Democrat that voted for Trump. The vox article is better but it also says exactly what I assumed. “Moderate Democratic candidates were the big winners of swing congressional districts in the 2018 midterm elections, flipping most of the 28 key House districts from Republicans’ control”. Which is obvious? Democrats are more likely to run moderates in purple and red-purple districts. They do give 4 examples of progressives losing in red-purple districts, but it’s independent of district context (is the incumbent popular? Virginia 5 isn’t really that weird that dems lost it given the wave percentage and its lean were almost identical etc.). Also doesn’t define progressive at all, ie it calls Beto a progressive. It also talks about progressive wins in Blue districts and mentions where it did work, such as flipping Orange County. Democrats running candidates that are representative of their district is obviously the smart choice. But neither of the articles actually makes the argument that a moderate is a better choice for a presidential candidate (if they were trying it wasn’t coherent). And thus we go back to the point I was making, I don’t think electability has much to do with policy, 2016 tells us that.
MikeDawg
Banned deucer.
Don't get me wrong; I don't disagree with what you're saying, and I apologize if I misrepresented my point. I was responding to the claim that we shouldn't run moderates because the country overwhelmingly wants progressives. While the midterms weren't a total failure for progressives, almost all of the candidates that were hailed by Bernie fans (including Beto) lost. Meanwhile, moderates and conservative dems were mostly successful in both maintaining and fllipping districts. That isn't proof that a moderate candidate would have won over Abrams, for example, but it definitely doesn't support the claim that running Biden over Bernie (or Bernie over Hillary) is a bad idea. If we were to draw a definite conclusion from the 2018 results (which, like you said, we really can't), that conclusion would contradict the online narrative that running a leftist would boost our chances against Trump (nonetheless that it would be the only way to beat Trump lmao).
Joe Biden isn’t a centrist.. so the conversation is moot. Democrat centrists are Bloomberg (economic right, social left) or Joe Manchin (economic left, social right). Joe Biden is a mainstream left of center Democrat. Democrats that are more conservative than Bernie Sanders are not centrists by default.
And I’m pretty much done arguing seriously against someone who says they like Warren but only makes arguments completely serving of the ruling class and completely devoid of substance for the American people.
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Quick note on Richard Ojeda, I wouldn't call him a conservative by any stretch. I would classify him as an old-school labor Democrat, the kind who is a Democrat and who's always been a Democrat because of the legacy of FDR.
Ojeda is a sincere fighter for the salt-of-the-Earth, the kind of Democrat who was at home in a party that fought for blue collar labor and unions, and estranged from the modern party of country club fundraising-- and that's why the progressives absolutely love Ojeda.
The only conservative things about Ojeda are 1) he voted for Trump, 2) he has far too much faith in the military and our military leaders. But let's examine those two things.
1) First off Ojeda voted for Sanders in the primary and supported him aggressively. He's said he never liked Trump, and was disgusted by the bigoted rhetoric, but he genuinely saw the general as a choice between two evils-- and Richard is very much of the mindset of the rural town Democratic voters who flipped to Trump. The kind of voter that remembers what Bill Clinton did with NAFTA and deregulation, and Hillary's vote for the Iraq war, etc. If you take Money from Big Pharma (and their opioid blood money) and joke about coal miners going out of work, you're not going to get a vote from Ojeda...
He is the kind of Democratic voter to whom Hillary was completely unacceptable. Ojeda voted Trump in the general because he voted with his neighbors/constituents in West Virginia-- and was willing to take Trump's promises on NAFTA, healthcare, jobs, Opiod crisis at face value as being worth more than Hillary's obviously empty promises and political agenda historically disastrous for "my people."
With Trump having betrayed all his promises, Ojeda is totally livid over him, and totally railing against Trump now. (though I doubt you could get him to vote for any of the corporate Democrats)
2) This faith in military and its leadership is really a product of his career and Ojeda just being a simple man. He is the salt of the Earth, and listening to him talk you can't expect him to follow all the subtle ins-and-outs of policy or have a revolutionary socialist's critical view and understanding of critical theory.
But really, you can't show Richard a policy that looks to favor the working people that he won't get super excited about. Anything Bernie puts forth, anything Elizabeth Warren puts forth, Ojeda is all about it. He also put a video on TYT recently about how much he's for Yang's UBI plan-- and I think that's another example of not being especially sophisticated (listen to the vid and you'll tell he's not really getting the nuances of it) but he's just a true dedicated fighter for "his people" (the American working class), and desperate for anything that will help what he sees as a desperate situation.
He's just a simple man of honesty, caring, and courage.
If you want to be touched deep down in your heart, find a vid of Richard ranting about broken communities, about economic insecurity, about the opioid crisis and the desperation of Appalachia and the working class broadly. I think Richard can get anyone crying. <3<3<3
Ojeda is a sincere fighter for the salt-of-the-Earth, the kind of Democrat who was at home in a party that fought for blue collar labor and unions, and estranged from the modern party of country club fundraising-- and that's why the progressives absolutely love Ojeda.
The only conservative things about Ojeda are 1) he voted for Trump, 2) he has far too much faith in the military and our military leaders. But let's examine those two things.
1) First off Ojeda voted for Sanders in the primary and supported him aggressively. He's said he never liked Trump, and was disgusted by the bigoted rhetoric, but he genuinely saw the general as a choice between two evils-- and Richard is very much of the mindset of the rural town Democratic voters who flipped to Trump. The kind of voter that remembers what Bill Clinton did with NAFTA and deregulation, and Hillary's vote for the Iraq war, etc. If you take Money from Big Pharma (and their opioid blood money) and joke about coal miners going out of work, you're not going to get a vote from Ojeda...
He is the kind of Democratic voter to whom Hillary was completely unacceptable. Ojeda voted Trump in the general because he voted with his neighbors/constituents in West Virginia-- and was willing to take Trump's promises on NAFTA, healthcare, jobs, Opiod crisis at face value as being worth more than Hillary's obviously empty promises and political agenda historically disastrous for "my people."
With Trump having betrayed all his promises, Ojeda is totally livid over him, and totally railing against Trump now. (though I doubt you could get him to vote for any of the corporate Democrats)
2) This faith in military and its leadership is really a product of his career and Ojeda just being a simple man. He is the salt of the Earth, and listening to him talk you can't expect him to follow all the subtle ins-and-outs of policy or have a revolutionary socialist's critical view and understanding of critical theory.
But really, you can't show Richard a policy that looks to favor the working people that he won't get super excited about. Anything Bernie puts forth, anything Elizabeth Warren puts forth, Ojeda is all about it. He also put a video on TYT recently about how much he's for Yang's UBI plan-- and I think that's another example of not being especially sophisticated (listen to the vid and you'll tell he's not really getting the nuances of it) but he's just a true dedicated fighter for "his people" (the American working class), and desperate for anything that will help what he sees as a desperate situation.
He's just a simple man of honesty, caring, and courage.
If you want to be touched deep down in your heart, find a vid of Richard ranting about broken communities, about economic insecurity, about the opioid crisis and the desperation of Appalachia and the working class broadly. I think Richard can get anyone crying. <3<3<3
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@ The topic of who did better in 2018, my general impression is that Progressives broke all expectations. They made some massive wins no one was expecting, and even where they lost they out performed. They came super close to winning some of the reddest of red districts that the Dem party totally gave up on, and this means they did it without any party backing or any $$ in the pocket (but I mean, progressives-- the whole point is that they are underfunded across the board)
The point is though that even with that disadvantage that Our Revolution, Justice Dems and co. are making headway, and they're only going to get more momentum not less. They're only going to get better at what they're doing, not worse.
Obviously the whole election coverage and district-by-district fights are super complicated, and they're just complicated enough that every side could declare victory for their own ideology very easily. That's why I don't really want to debate each and every part of it or angle of it-- I'll just leave Kyle Kulinski's overall analysis here as representative of my views of the results:
The point is though that even with that disadvantage that Our Revolution, Justice Dems and co. are making headway, and they're only going to get more momentum not less. They're only going to get better at what they're doing, not worse.
Obviously the whole election coverage and district-by-district fights are super complicated, and they're just complicated enough that every side could declare victory for their own ideology very easily. That's why I don't really want to debate each and every part of it or angle of it-- I'll just leave Kyle Kulinski's overall analysis here as representative of my views of the results:
LIIIIIIIZZZZZZZ!!~!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! <3<3<3<3<3<3<3
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unless ppl rly think chou is seriously gonna vote for trump or jill stein over biden, including you chou, since i hope thats not where ur mind is at, it is really unhelpful to call ppl russians mainly because any person in America taking a stance against militarism or who just wants to cut the military budget, could be taken as a russian sympathizer or w.e. which brings me to Tulsi Gabbard, chou, she is working for russia by way of Modi, if no other way, and if she wins Trump will declare martial law while having her investigated and thrown in jail, it will be so ez after the Mueller charade. so lets stop grouping her w actual progressive candidates imo shes a disaster of a sleeper.
MikeDawg
Banned deucer.
idk i'd say Joe is pretty much definition of centrist at this point. It's absurdly stupid and misinformed when people try to say Harris/Warren are anything but far (American) left-wing, or that Pete/Kirsten/Hillary are anywhere near (American) centrists, but iirc (correct me if I'm wrong), Biden has a solid amount of views that are antithical to even the standard dem platform
Based on what evidence Myzozoa?
I’ve looked but ties between her and Modi seem extremely unsubstantive.
Also I will write in Bernie before voting Biden. No doubt.
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https://www.thenation.com/article/tulsi-gabbard-president-foreign-islam/
Gabbard’s defenders have argued that she rightly seeks to “get out” of the Middle East and focus on greater threats, like terrorism and China. But that’s not where Gabbard’s policies would actually lead. The indefinite war against “extremist Islam” requires the United States to be very much “in” the Middle East, working hand in glove with some of the region’s worst actors. Gabbard’s strategy simply transfers the cost from our citizens to theirs.
In a perceptive 2017 article for Jacobin, Branko Marcetic wrote that Gabbard’s worldview “is nationalism in antiwar garb, reinforcing instead of undercutting the toxic rhetoric that treats foreigners as less deserving of dignity than Americans.”
It seems clear, she has adopted all of Russia's new left propaganda positions from the past few years, and was only against escalation in Syria because of 'ISIS'. The rest is simply geopolitically obvious.
btw, why would you expect biden supporters to vote for Sanders in the general if you wont even lie and say you'll vote for Biden in the general? where is the tit-for-tat supposed to start, because you can't really think that Trump loses that way lol
Can you name one
His candidacy is just Barack Obama’s policies as pushed by a 95 yo white dude
Thanks dude. Tulsi refutes most of the claims in this and The Intercept article in her interview with TYT. I was pretty satisfied with her answers overall, but will look into the citations of the article you sent when I have time.
I don’t think that’s a legitimate concern when you have significant constituency groups like what Ojeda represents, like in the rust belt who flipped Obama to Trump for entirely legitimate reasons. They remembered Bill Clinton’s legacy and life for labor after NAFTA. They took honest stock of what Obama did with Dem majorities in both houses and decided that the Democrats did not deserve the right to govern. Those votes are in the right.
It’s also important to realize that such voters are a key part of what enabled the last Trump victory, along with Progressives who stayed home.
This is no longer the era when Bill Clinton could turn to Union leaders and progressives and tell them “Y’all gots no where elsts ta go.” And run to the right. Many of the progressives left the party. Many many more of those working class voters DID find somewhere elst ta go— and they made Trump President.
For “mainstream liberal” or Democratic voters who genuinely believe in beating Trump as a priority, it’s much much more valuable to pop the bubble and make them confront that they aren’t entitled to people’s votes. That there ARE many DEMOCRATIC voters who WILL stay home or vote Trump should the candidate be corporate— for very legitimate reasons. That there are legitimate problems with the “run to the right” strategy when even the GOP isn’t winning votes by serving the GOP donor class— the GOP only wins working people that the Dems have decided not to serve.
CNN Obama to Trump Rust Belt Voters:
“We built the bombs that won this country’s wars. We would rather have anyone but her.”
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You have no leg to stand on. People who support Senator Warren don’t have to be at war with Democrats like Biden. Please continue your stupid pro-Russia comments.
Exactly, Barack Obama is not a centrist.
Are you sure about that?
https://www.ontheissues.org/Joe_Biden.htm
Stop pushing right wing propaganda. Try researching voting their records.
maybe you shud explain the sources you link RaikouLover how do you infer he is anything but a centrist career politician from that bullet point list of mixed political positions?