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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
debates being about 60 topics is not good. give five person debates centered on issues that act as ways to organize thinking about american politics. these would be healthcare, housing, criminal justice, foreign policy, worker control of the economy, the structure of u.s democracy, and so on. what does justice organized around the idea of health care require? what does justice organized around the idea of the prison require? and how do everyone's records and policies compare? wide open talking spaces, let em grip it and rip it.

also did not expect biden to come out in favor of "local control" in opposition to federal enforcement of brown v board. but the harris prosecutor stuff is p bad too and he started into that but backed off. hopefully that's a simultaneous KO situation in the next debate.
 
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The biggest surprise was the career wine aunt taking the torch from Gravel and pushing foreign policy discussion.

I really hopes she sticks around for the next few debates. Not only is she the funniest shit to ever take the stage, but she also brought up some really good and underlooked topics like foreign affairs, "sick care" vs "health care", and New Zealand's threat to American superiority (there's a good point buried somewhere in there, I'm sure). She's not a viable candidate, but she's definitely using her voice to shake thing up in an imo positive way. Like Jill Stein's more useful cousin.

Plus, I really appreciate her efforts to end the opioid epidemic by taking all the pills herself.
 
Myzozoa said:
i am just glad that since marianne woowoo we can now criticize a female candidate w/o mike dawg accusing us of sexism
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hey Tulsi Gabbard is garbage! and you know 100% that the last few pages have been filled with a few misogynistic takes from certain users.

Besides, you're wrong anyway. I will EVISCERATE anyone who comes for our sweet Marianne. >:-( Insulting her is insulting love.

:blobwizard:
 
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Definitely think Kamala and Biden dominated discussion of this debate, but I'll go into a little more detail because I'm bored at home and not going out for a couple hours.

Great night:

Kamala Harris - Crushed the frontrunner on race by making him defend his de facto support for school segregation. Biden was beyond flustered by this attack; he couldn't figure out whether he wanted to counter-punch ("I was a public defender, you were a prosecutor) or deny ("I did not support segregationists"). Kamala's making it personal also played really well; you could tell she was being really authentic. Feelings win debates and Kamala flat-out shamed Joe Biden.

Good night:

Bernie Sanders - Bernie does what he always did and pounded his stump speech. Elizabeth Warren flat-out admitted Bernie's shown more leadership than anyone on healthcare and she's following his lead. His ideas like getting rid of private insurance dominated the discussion. He deflected attacks against socialism well, particularly from Hickenlooper who sounded like a Twitter reply guy. Bernie did, however, blow the race question by talking about economics and not race and he needs to improve his messaging on race if he wants to win.

Pretty good night:

Elizabeth Warren - Dominated the debate that nobody cared about. Her biggest challenge is taking Bernie's base, but when asked about healthcare she said "I'm with Bernie". For a candidate trying to position herself as the policy genius, ceding leadership on healthcare policy to her chief progressive rival isn't a good look. On the other hand, no candidate really attacked her and she really shone in a sea on mediocrity on the first night.

Julian Castro - Destroyed Beto O'Rourke on immigration, correctly pointing out how the policy Beto voted for was used to justify family separation. His Spanish speaking also added something to the conversation, unlike Beto who just gave a canned non-answer to a question that had nothing to do with Hispanic issues in Spanish.

Pretty bad night:

Pete Buttigieg - He gave a good answer about the police shooting in South Bend, but anyone that looks up his debate highlights is going to see a video about him talking about his own failures managing race relations in South Bend. I give him credit for taking responsibility on the issue, however; he could have absolutely blown his whole campaign if he dodged the question or if he got attacked any harder over it. The fact that Kamala and Biden overshadowed Buttigieg helped him too.

Beto O'Rourke - Lost an exchange to Julian Castro on immigration, barely offered any policy specifics, just seemed a bit out of his depth.

Awful night:

Joe Biden - The one thing from tonight everyone's going to remember is him getting blasted by Kamala on race. To put it in perspective, on a night where every candidate was hounding for speaking time, Joe Biden cut himself off by saying his time was up ten seconds before it actually was. Black voters are absolutely key to Biden's hopes and Kamala made a power play for them.

Everyone else was unmemorable and gets a "meh".
 
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The funny thing about Marianne is that plenty of public health experts would agree with the assertion that the US has too much sickness care and not enough types of other healthcare.

But when she says it, she talks about ooky spooky cHeMiCaLs and so the overall point is lost and she sounds crazy.

Ex: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4339086/
 
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https://www.harris.senate.gov/news/...bill-to-empower-state-ag-enforcement-of-banks

“As a former attorney general, I know firsthand how vital it is for state law enforcement to have the tools needed to conduct thorough investigations in order to hold bad actors accountable,” said Senator Harris. “Congress must act to restore authority to state attorneys general to conduct oversight of national banks and ensure their compliance under state law. This bill will help put in place an additional layer of accountability for banks, which will protect consumers and prevent the type of illegal behavior that caused the Great Recession.”

This bill fixes the limitations that stopped her from effectively prosecuting Mnuchin, FYI.
 
I think that Marianne could actually end up being the nominee. This is playing out eerily similar to Trump. She was the most searched after candidate after all was said and done and dont underestimate her huge Oprah wine-mom contingent. I think the longer she goes, the stronger she will get.
 
If you're wondering why Bernie didn't have much to say about immigration during the debates, it's probably because he doesn't "know why we need millions of people coming into this country" to lower wages and steal jobs from those disadvantaged working class whites! Not to mention his super brave "unlike my colleagues I don't support open borders!" dog whistle.



A bit less progressive than Kamala telling every sheriff in California to ignore the national directive to report all undocumented immigrants to ICE, imo. It's even less progressive than Beto's less-than-desireable approach tbh.

Tbh, I get why Kamala wouldn't be the first choice for many Bernie fans, but I truly struggle to understand why they haven't moved to Warren/Inslee/Castro depending on priorities.

Also I'm so excited that Biden seems legitimately vulnerable now, both because there are better options and because his inevitability was kind of demoralizing since everyone was basically gunning for second place. Props to Kamala for diving in right off the bat, especially considering the risk of hitting the "I have a black friend" frontrunner on race in America.
 
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MikeDawg said:
If you're wondering why Bernie didn't have much to say about immigration during the debates, it's probably because he doesn't "know why we need millions of people coming into this country" to lower wages and steal jobs from those disadvantaged working class whites! Not to mention his super brave "unlike my colleagues I don't support open borders!" dog whistle.
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He never said that it would steal jobs from disadvantaged whites and lower whites wages, he said it would lower everybodies wages white or black. Whether thats true or not is besides the point - he didnt say it would lower it for just whites so clearly every worker was on his mind when he said that and not just the white ones.

Also not liking open borders isnt a racist dogwhistle, or a dogwhistle to anyone. You could even support an easier way for immigration to happen and not support open borders. You could also even want immigration lowered and not be a racist on the basis of the principle of national sovereignty.

atomicllamas said:
This is like the 3rd time in a row you’ve taken a partial snippet of what someone has said and responded while completely ignoring the actual context. It doesn’t make you look smart, it makes you an idiot.
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If you keep posting stupid shit like this without hard proof, just your own mind reading, well lets just say I know a lot of moderators, MikeDawg.

And that is a dogwhistle.
 
THE_IRON_...KENYAN? said:
Also not liking open borders isnt a racist dogwhistle, or a dogwhistle to anyone.
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No Dems are pushing for open borders, just like nobody votes for someone exclusively because they're a woman. It's not even on the table. Accepting the premise as a legitimate critique of Dem politics is just a disingenuous attempt to frame himself as the "reasonable" person on immigration. The goal is to attract people like Ann Coulter who respond well to the idea of stopping people in "Vietnam and China and Mexico and Latin America" from invading the country.

If you keep posting stupid shit like this without hard proof, just your own mind reading, well lets just say I know a lot of moderators, MikeDawg.
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:fukyu:
 
If the main arguments for reworking the immigration is how immigrants are a net positive for the nation and also how it would be cruel to send them back after having been established in a lifestyle so much superior to where they came from then that effectively can and will be extended for ever, making it effectively open borders.

Heres an example:

The immigration laws are relaxed. Its easier than before to come and stay within the US and become a citizen. People still hop over the border or come by plane and overstay illegally because its still easier than however much we relaxed it. The same argument is then made a couple decades down the road. They are a net positive to the nation, and it would be cruel to send them back where they came from because they are so established here and uprooting them would be very inconvenient for them. Then we relax the immigration laws, again.

This has already happened before, and theres no reason to believe it will happen again if those 2 arguments are the basis for relaxing immigration the first time. It effectively makes it open borders, as I have just illustrated. The Dems effectively want open borders.

I support any theoretical restriction on immigration - stupid or smart - because nations are objectively the property of the people who live there. So they can decide whatever stupid laws or shit they want in the same way if someone has a house they can do whatever they want with it. Barring obvious restrictions of course, like voting for a holocaust or voting to get rid of democracy or voting to tax people at 100% of their income or obviously, universally unacceptable things. I have no problem with immigrants per se, but its completely unacceptable that the people of the United States are not allowed to decide who comes in to their rightful property. And there tons of smart reasons why you might want to restrict immigration, too. Race is one of the dumb and arbitrary reason, but if there were a scenario where you had a neighbor whose people had terrible ideas you might find it smart to restrict immigration from that particular place so that their ideas dont become a part of your democracy. Thats just one of them.

Diversity of ideas is the most important kind of diversity, and if you have an open borders type scenario, then you dont get places where you can experiment with different ideas because you end up always having to compromise with the new citizens in order to get any policy enacted so it ends up being that every nation is pretty much the same thing in the end because all the cultures mix together. It is a lot like that now though, especially in the purple states, but you still have a lot of room even in those places to experiment with new ideas or form a unique culture that you can compare to other cultures to see what ideas youd like to scalp from them. With open borders or relaxed immigration that would be harder to do.
 
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THE_IRON_...KENYAN? said:
If the main arguments for reworking the immigration is how immigrants are a net positive for the nation and also how it would be cruel to send them back after having been established in a lifestyle so much superior to where they came from then that effectively can and will be extended for ever, making it effectively open borders.

Heres an example:

The immigration laws are relaxed. Its easier than before to come and stay within the US and become a citizen. People still hop over the border or come by plane and overstay illegally because its still easier than however much we relaxed it. The same argument is then made a couple decades down the road. They are a net positive to the nation, and it would be cruel to send them back where they came from because they are so established here and uprooting them would be very inconvenient for them. Then we relax the immigration laws, again.

This has already happened before, and theres no reason to believe it will happen again if those 2 arguments are the basis for relaxing immigration the first time. It effectively makes it open borders, as I have just illustrated. The Dems effectively want open borders.
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lol that's a whole lot of words just to say "slippery slope".

I have no problem with immigrants per se, but its completely unacceptable that the people of the United States are not allowed to decide who comes in to their rightful property.
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....you mean like voting?

And there tons of smart reasons why you might want to restrict immigration, too. Race is one of the dumb and arbitrary reason, but if there were a scenario where you had a neighbor whose people had terrible ideas you might find it smart to restrict immigration from that particular place so that their ideas dont become a part of your democracy. Thats just one of them.
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Good thing nobody is advocating for open borders.

Diversity of ideas is the most important kind of diversity, and if you have an open borders type scenario, then you dont get places where you can experiment with different ideas because you end up always having to compromise with the new citizens in order to get any policy enacted so it ends up being that every nation is pretty much the same thing in the end because all the cultures mix together. It is a lot like that now though, especially in the purple states, but you still have a lot of room even in those places to experiment with new ideas or form a unique culture that you can compare to other cultures to see what ideas youd like to scalp from them. With open borders or relaxed immigration that would be harder to do.
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Good thing nobody is advocating for open borders.
 
Its not a slippery slope, MikeDawg, because we can reasonably assume with 100% certainty that people will think the same way about future immigrants the same way they do the current ones.

A slippery slope is something that cannot be reasonably linked as the basis for a future event. A Slippery Slope would be like saying that if we crack down on littering, eventually the government will force everyone to carry their own metal water bottle around by law in order to get rid of plastic and paper waste on the side of the road permanently.

My argument is totally different from that. It rightfully assumes that since attitudes will remain the same, the same arguments will be used for the next batch of illegal immigrants in the same way this one is, unless you expect people and popular economics to do a complete 180. Thats unlikely. Thats why its effectively open borders, and you have to prove why it isnt. You cant quote a fallacy at me, because what I said is not the slippery slope.
 
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THE_IRON_...KENYAN? said:
Its not a slippery slope, MikeDawg, because we can reasonably assume with 100% certainty that people will think the same way about future immigrants the same way they do the current ones.

A slippery slope is something that cannot be reasonably linked as the basis for a future event. A Slippery Slope would be like saying that if we crack down on littering, eventually the government will force everyone to carry their own metal water bottle around by law in order to get rid of plastic and paper waste on the side of the road permanently.

My argument is totally different from that. It rightfully assumes that since attitudes will remain the same, the same arguments will be used for the next batch of illegal immigrants in the same way this one is, unless you expect people and popular economics to do a complete 180. Thats unlikely. Thats why its effectively open borders, and you have to prove why it isnt. You cant quote a fallacy at me, because what I said is not the slippery slope.
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I don't know what's more ridiculous: this argument or the hypocrisy of who's posting it.
 
An open border is a border that enables free movement of people between jurisdictions with few or no restrictions on movement, that is to say lacking substantive border control.
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https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_border

It's okay to admit that you are in favor of open borders instead of going through the whole performative process.

e: I'm saying that by coming out in favor of decriminalizing border policies. Democractic candidates are clearly in favor of open border policies. To the extent of the openness of the open border policies should be is clearly still up for the debate. In addition, it's obviously a leftist and neoliberal goal to have a very open border to further their ideologies.
 
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