Probably impossible but I hope all of them are unviable and Bernie gets all the delegates. lol
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Serious 2020 Democratic Primary Thread
- Thread starter MikeDawg
- Start date
Yeah Bloomberg sucks. Also, if Democratic voters really cared about not being racist I doubt they’d have voted for Northam in Virginia. That was pretty damning.
Agithos I’m fairly certain everyone on this thread is vote blue no matter who, unless they were to vote independent. Like everyone who’s posted here would probably sooner drink bleach than vote for a Republican, since this thread makes r/politics look conservative by comparison.
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Bernie expanding his national lead to 31% in new poll (how about that ceiling?).
No other candidate cracks 20%.
Poor sleepy Joe falls to 15%.
Racist Bloomberg qualifies for the debate— will he show up, or will he cower?
(If I were Bloomburg’s strategist I would keep mini mike at home)
No other candidate cracks 20%.
Poor sleepy Joe falls to 15%.
Racist Bloomberg qualifies for the debate— will he show up, or will he cower?
(If I were Bloomburg’s strategist I would keep mini mike at home)
Attachments
Dang… well never mind 1 poll… today a literal WATERFALL of polls:
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/e..._democratic_presidential_nomination-6730.html
All pretty much say the same thing though— Biden plummeting, Bloomberg rising into the same orbit mid-teens, Klob/Buttegieg making some minuscule gains, and Bernie absolutely dominant. The RCP average went from Bernie +4 to Bernie +10.
Also a California poll out today that showed Bernie as the only viable candidate above 15%… with a score of 32%.
BEAST.
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/e..._democratic_presidential_nomination-6730.html
All pretty much say the same thing though— Biden plummeting, Bloomberg rising into the same orbit mid-teens, Klob/Buttegieg making some minuscule gains, and Bernie absolutely dominant. The RCP average went from Bernie +4 to Bernie +10.
Also a California poll out today that showed Bernie as the only viable candidate above 15%… with a score of 32%.
BEAST.
I’ll reiterate an earlier point; we vote for the platform not the candidate. Whether it’s Sanders, Bloomberg, or Buttigieg, they are still signing legislation from the Pelosi-led House.
“Vote Blue No Matter Who” is about political power. Until you win elections, policy discussions are just rhetorical posturing.
I posed the question earlier regarding Northam:
Liberals: oh my god he’s racist!! He needs to resign!
Black Democrats in Virginia: (eye roll) you mean a white southern male was racist 40 years ago...? He has good policies in 2018.
Bloomberg will likely consolidate the black vote rather easily if Biden drops out. Similar rationale - can he win and what are his policies today? (See: Greenwood initiative)
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Did trump not alter the Republican platform? The Democrat president can do the same. They are not a puppet for the Congress, it's not 1804 any more
That’s a fair point. I haven’t heard anyone comment about Northam’s scandal since it surfaced but that would be an understandable response to it by voters. Still fairly surprising to me through since the “forgive and forget” approach doesn’t seem to be popular these days; most public figures seem to be much more constrained by their past mistakes by comparison.
The governor election may have played a role. Even if a large amount of people viewed Northam as a racist or similar, they may have reluctantly voted for him since they still disliked the other candidate more. Case in point: Trump.
Trumps only win over the Republican platform has been trade. He famously gloated about being the only Republican preserving social security and Medicare but has openly reneged on that idea. He has been lockstep on everything else - taxes, judges, abortion (Trump was vocally pro-choice before 2016), gun rights. His imprint on the Republican Party has been mostly normalization of naked corruption.
I think as progressives we do ourselves a huge disservice in purity tests. The race always for Democrats always seems like a “gotcha” search followed by an apology. Since the nature of progress is to change for the better, a perfect or even almost perfect candidate with an experienced political career is an oxymoron. Think, how many left leaning candidates were for gay marriage 30 years ago?
So I ask the question: what are the candidate platforms today? From a black agenda, only Bloomberg and Buttigieg have published detailed plans to help the black community. Steyer and Warren are pro-reparation but have no specifics on what that even looks like. Sanders vehemently disagrees with reparations and tries to equivocate a black agenda with anti-poverty legislation. That’s actually insulting, as the overwhelming majority of black people are not poor. Poverty programs won’t help a black person overcoming roadblocks to discriminatory lending for example.
I wish you would stop with this "people reluctantly voted for him" narrative. Northam was elected in 2017. His "blackface scandal" happened in 2019. People didn't give a shit in VA about it because it was 1) an incident over 30 years ago and 2) clearly a ploy by people to replace him as governor. In particular in my area most people really could have cared less. If anything people in Fairfax area, Midlothian, and other country areas in VA probably liked him even more, whereas I'd wager only people in NOVA or Richmond (and by Richmond I mean the really snooty parts of Richmond like Scott's Addition) cared about the incident.
Re: the purity tests for liberals. Cancel culture doesn't work for things that are decades old. It's frankly laughable and no one actually gives a shit enough to use it for anything other than a litmus test to say why you shouldn't support X candidate. It's why "Hillary Clinton called blacks superpredators" didn't work, because it was decades old, or why bringing up things Bernie Sanders said in 1982 about the Soviet Union makes you look like a fool. You are absolutely right that what should matter is a candidate's current philosophy, however there is an element of recency attached to prevent an expedient bandwagoning and radical shift of ideals.
To that reason I think it is insane to suggest Bloomberg is some savior to the black community. I also think it's insane to suggest now Sanders is really the racist one for associating pro-black legislation to combatting poverty in the United States. In particular the percentage of Black people in poverty is 1 in 10 nationally, with Black people comprising a quarter of the overall percentage not including mixed race individuals. In contrast white people are 9% of the poverty percentage. Minorities are overwhelmingly the victims of poverty and it is not racist to point that out. Bloomberg, meanwhile, was mayor of New York as recent as 2013, only 6 years and some change ago, and proliferated racist policies such as stop and frisk. That is not something that can just be bygones and swept under the rug, and nor is it something that can just be excused as "the culture of the times" (as in the case of "racist" tendencies in 1980). This was the tenure of Obama and the introduction of a radical social shift to black culture, when Bloomberg was spouting about how it is important to frisk the blacks because that reduces the crime rate, or with Pete, from 2012 to 2017, increasing the marijuana arrests and non violent black crime in his state exponentially.
Forgive me if I don't actually believe the lip service that these candidates, and previous candidates like Kamala Harris or Hillary Clinton, want to say to garner minority votes. There is a reason that Pete's approval among black voters is almost non-existent. People are more than just skin deep and Sanders is the only candidate who wants radical economic reform affecting the actual working class citizens instead of just appealing to shallow identifying traits.
Thanks for clarifying, tcr. I wasn’t aware how people perceived decades-old comments in relation to recent ones, since I haven’t established a clear pattern. Makes more sense now.
Shifting gears to my own thoughts about race-centric policy, honestly I’m not sure how relevant it should be in politics.
From what I can observe, it seems that the problem facing racial and ethnic groups in the United States are laws and policies that promote de facto biased actions. For example, there’s no law saying “officers must stop and frisk black people” (de jure) but it’s enforced in a way that disproportionately affects them. This generally amounts to discrimination.
Aside from de facto discriminatory actions, are there any other issues that affect people strictly due to racial and ethnic factors? It’s true that poverty is more common among minority groups, but is there any reason to structure poverty as a race/ethnic-specific issue? Personally I think addressing poverty is better explained as a socioeconomic symptom rather than emphasizing how it’s meant for [x] group. Part of that is my own preference towards race relations; that is to say that I find them largely irrelevant. As long as de facto injustices are removed I don’t think any other race/ethnicity-specific problems will exist, at least from a legal standpoint. I could be completely wrong so please don’t hesitate to explain otherwise.
tl;dr aside from specific legal biases, race isn’t that relevant and in all other situations politicians would probably be better off addressing groups like “impoverished” or “disabled” than “black” or “hispanic”
Shifting gears to my own thoughts about race-centric policy, honestly I’m not sure how relevant it should be in politics.
From what I can observe, it seems that the problem facing racial and ethnic groups in the United States are laws and policies that promote de facto biased actions. For example, there’s no law saying “officers must stop and frisk black people” (de jure) but it’s enforced in a way that disproportionately affects them. This generally amounts to discrimination.
Aside from de facto discriminatory actions, are there any other issues that affect people strictly due to racial and ethnic factors? It’s true that poverty is more common among minority groups, but is there any reason to structure poverty as a race/ethnic-specific issue? Personally I think addressing poverty is better explained as a socioeconomic symptom rather than emphasizing how it’s meant for [x] group. Part of that is my own preference towards race relations; that is to say that I find them largely irrelevant. As long as de facto injustices are removed I don’t think any other race/ethnicity-specific problems will exist, at least from a legal standpoint. I could be completely wrong so please don’t hesitate to explain otherwise.
tl;dr aside from specific legal biases, race isn’t that relevant and in all other situations politicians would probably be better off addressing groups like “impoverished” or “disabled” than “black” or “hispanic”
The point is - all candidates (and all people) not working to dismantle the system of racism are racists. One doesn’t have to overtly dislike black and brown folks to be racists. That’s why this conversation of who is “less racist” among a group of old white (mostly male) candidates is a circle jerk.
Bernie Sanders’ anti-poverty initiatives are insufficient in dismantling or even addressing m racism. They are just thinly veiled band aids. It’s one of the reasons why he performs poorly among black voters relative to his standing among other demographics in the Democratic Party. Black voters want specific policies to address their concerns.
400 years of slavery and Jim Crow in the United States has so perverted the wealth gaps and consciousness against blacks. Race-neutral policies are simply insufficient in addressing these discrepancies. That’s chief gripe against Sanders movement from black people.
The trump administration has been far, farther right than what *shuffles cards* ted cruz would have given us. See: middle east troop malarky, the border wall, etc. He is not a vassal of the mcconnel-led Congress, so any sufficiently left wing president can accomplish the same
political power for whom exactly? who do mainstream dems actually represent? considering how little mainstream dems do to tackle systemic injustice, i don't think they give a whole lot of political power to the poor and marginalized people in society. sure, theyre better than the republicans, but so what? we can play the "lesser of two evils" game until we have to choose between hitler and mussolini. the point is simple: if you have a mediocre platform that inspires little enthusiasm among most people, don't expect them to think you're fighting for their cause just because you're not as bad as the other guy. i also dont see how lesser-of-two-evils philosophy is supposed to change the democratic party for the better, since they sure as hell will keep running neoliberal candidates and a neoliberal platform for as long as they can get away with it
im not sure what u want dude, on the one hand u say ppl gotta vote for the dems to wrestle back political power but on the other hand u keep going "well yeah but these old white dudes are all kinda racist and it's a pelosi-led house so dont really expect too much out of a dem victory" so like how do u think any systemic injustices are ever gonna be seriously challenged by the dems? if ur trying to tell me they never really will do that with the way things are going rn im all ears but it seems u have a lot of faith in the american political system (somehow) so i doubt it
Could you provide me some solid paragraphs as to why Bloomberg is a facist. At this point my favorite candidate is gone so I'm reading this to be convinced as to who I should vote.
I live in New York where Bloomberg is loved.
You’re actually dead wrong here. “Mainstream Dems do little to tackle injustices.” Are you not familiar with H.R.1 - the first piece of legislation the Dem House passed this session? Have you read any of the 400 bills sitting on Mitch McConnell’s graveyard? It sounds like that talking point is directing misplaced grievances at Democrats for the institutional roadblocks in our government.
Has it? There as been no border wall. He’s accomplished nothing legislatively other than a $1.5 trillion tax cut for the Republican donors that Ted Cruz or any other GOP President would have passed.
I'm really curious is Biden will crumble further in South Carolina if he does poorly in Nevada (which I really think he will). If Bernie gets first in South Carolina I think that's it. He'll have too much momentum imo. I hope that happens.
Were they push polling?
Also check out the shit that comes flying when Sander's in the lead.
They changed the title, but the contents are every bit as bad rofl.
Given the current occupant of the White House, is that a far fetched statement?
Democracy sucks. It is merely “less bad” than other forms of government. I’m not sure if the mass of human population is equipped to consistently make sound character judgements. Bolsonaro, Putin, Trump, Orban, Duterte, Johnson... all elected.
deeply conservative understanding of politics and human nature, you hate to see it (but im not particularly surprised lol)
Funny that you should mention Bolsonaro given that Bloomberg's communications director was an adviser to Bolsonaro's campaign.
Only the finest people.
democracy is easily captured by elites. the mainstream view in political science is that american democracy is functionally an oligarchy so the distinction between 'democratic' preference and 'elite' preference is inaccurate, further, such a distinction doesn't account for the ways in which Trump, Orban, etc all carry out policies primarily meant to benefit elites.
also: no they were not push polling in any obvious way
also: no they were not push polling in any obvious way
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What’s your point?
The point was Trump actually is the “people’s” candidate. He’s an effective puppet. The cognitive science seems to imply that humans on average cannot make sound judgements when it comes to politics. This is happening all over the world in liberal democracies.
idk what's more ironic, the "democracy dies in darkness" displayed over the article or a self-identified (but clearly not actual) progressive coming in and saying the equivalent of "well, said darkness isn't so bad actually-"
anyways no elites should not have more power in the electoral process and I'm kinda appalled that we need to have this convo in 2020 lmao.
might as well be like "voter suppression is good cuz some of them might like Trump!" or whatever jaded and backwards talking points centrists think are better than actually having good policies and grassroots leftist movements moving forward.
anyways no elites should not have more power in the electoral process and I'm kinda appalled that we need to have this convo in 2020 lmao.
might as well be like "voter suppression is good cuz some of them might like Trump!" or whatever jaded and backwards talking points centrists think are better than actually having good policies and grassroots leftist movements moving forward.