Democrats 2020

[Jolly_Penguin]

Black or female candidates, it will be less important than being xtian! No way is America ready to embrace an atheist candidate, not for a decade or two at least anyway.

Pretty sure Trump is an atheist.

 

[Patooka]

Black or female candidates, it will be less important than being xtian! No way is America ready to embrace an atheist candidate, not for a decade or two at least anyway.

Pretty sure Trump is an atheist.

The fucker's religion is the Church of Trump.

 

[lpetrich]

Elizabeth Warren on Twitter: "After I became visibly pregnant, I was told that the job I'd been promised for next year would go to someone else. Pregnancy discrimination is real, and it still happens today—but telling our stories is one way we can fight back. Here are some of your stories that I heard today. https://t.co/x1pe2ikzTr" / Twitter

- about a recent controversy about her.

Would Elizabeth Warren Or Bernie Sanders Move To The Center Against Trump? | FiveThirtyEight

If history is any indication, the Democratic candidates will move to the center, but not in the most obvious way. They won’t abandon core liberal policy stands. But they will both speak about themselves and their policy views in more moderate ways and choose a running mate aimed at appealing to voters who are not hardcore liberals.

Something also true of Republicans.

All that said, there are also a couple of reasons to think the Democratic nominee in 2020 might make less of an “etch-a-sketch” effort than past nominees. The previous Democratic presidential nominees were all in some ways following a kind of “median voter’ model, imagining that there was a set of voters whose views were basically in between the positions of the Democrats and the Republicans. But there is a lot of evidence that moderate, swing and independent voters aren’t particularly centrist, but hold a lot of different views, some of which are conservative, some of which are liberal.

AOC expressed it rather colorfully in an August 2018 interview: “[Folks in the political establishment] think that running to the center, moderating our policies, being as close to a saltine cracker as possible is what’s going to make us win elections.”

"Saltine cracker" meaning bland, uninspiring centrism. AOC won by (1) seeking out new voters instead of on-the-fence ones and (2) having a bold progressive platform, and not wringing her hands about how we can't do all these nice things, and that the most that we should ever expect are tiny tweaks here and there. A lesson for the Democratic Party more generally. The Republicans have been doing something similar with their base, so the Democrats ought to do that with their base also.

 

[bilby]

Elizabeth Warren on Twitter: "After I became visibly pregnant, I was told that the job I'd been promised for next year would go to someone else. Pregnancy discrimination is real, and it still happens today—but telling our stories is one way we can fight back. Here are some of your stories that I heard today. https://t.co/x1pe2ikzTr" / Twitter

- about a recent controversy about her.

Would Elizabeth Warren Or Bernie Sanders Move To The Center Against Trump? | FiveThirtyEight

If history is any indication, the Democratic candidates will move to the center, but not in the most obvious way. They won’t abandon core liberal policy stands. But they will both speak about themselves and their policy views in more moderate ways and choose a running mate aimed at appealing to voters who are not hardcore liberals.

Something also true of Republicans.

All that said, there are also a couple of reasons to think the Democratic nominee in 2020 might make less of an “etch-a-sketch” effort than past nominees. The previous Democratic presidential nominees were all in some ways following a kind of “median voter’ model, imagining that there was a set of voters whose views were basically in between the positions of the Democrats and the Republicans. But there is a lot of evidence that moderate, swing and independent voters aren’t particularly centrist, but hold a lot of different views, some of which are conservative, some of which are liberal.

AOC expressed it rather colorfully in an August 2018 interview: “[Folks in the political establishment] think that running to the center, moderating our policies, being as close to a saltine cracker as possible is what’s going to make us win elections.”

"Saltine cracker" meaning bland, uninspiring centrism. AOC won by (1) seeking out new voters instead of on-the-fence ones and (2) having a bold progressive platform, and not wringing her hands about how we can't do all these nice things, and that the most that we should ever expect are tiny tweaks here and there. A lesson for the Democratic Party more generally. The Republicans have been doing something similar with their base, so the Democrats ought to do that with their base also.

Moving to the centre for any US politician, including Warren and Sanders, would entail a leftward move.

 

[Derec]

Elizabeth Warren on Twitter: "After I became visibly pregnant, I was told that the job I'd been promised for next year would go to someone else. Pregnancy discrimination is real, and it still happens today—but telling our stories is one way we can fight back. Here are some of your stories that I heard today. https://t.co/x1pe2ikzTr" / Twitter

It seems that this was a lie.
Elizabeth Warren Is Jussie Smollett

“Does anybody seriously believe it was not as everyday as sunrise that employers made pregnant women leave their jobs 50 years ago?” CNBC’s John Harwood demanded in defense of Warren. Perhaps it has not occurred to Harwood, who purports to be a journalist of a kind, that the relevant question is not whether this sort of thing happened in the past to a great many women but whether this particular thing actually happened to this woman, which does not seem to be the case: The minutes of the local school-board meeting quite clearly document that Warren was offered a contract for further employment, which she declined. She was forthright in her account of the episode at earlier points in her life. She seems to have suddenly remembered the discrimination sometime between when she began advertising herself to the Ivy League as a Cherokee and the day when the Cherokee finally shamed her into knocking it off.

I also did not know that Joe Biden had lied about the circumstances of the accident that killed his wife and daughter.

Joe Biden has a moving — and horrifying — story about his wife and daughter being killed by a drunk driver, a story that similarly could not have been designed more perfectly to bolster his political image as a man who can be counted on to soldier on in the face of adversity.
[..]
Similarly, people are killed by drunk drivers every day in this country. Joe Biden’s wife and daughter were not among them, in spite of his libelous claims that they lost their lives in an accident involving an irresponsible truck driver who, as Biden put it, “drank his lunch.” The man who oversaw that investigation, Delaware Superior Court judge Jerome O. Herlihy, repeatedly has confirmed that there is no evidence alcohol was involved. The survivors of the driver, who has since passed away, have publicly asked Biden to stop telling this lie and besmirching the memory of their father. Investigators at the time determined that the accident was not even the other driver’s fault — Mrs. Biden seems to have driven accidentally into the path of the truck.
But what’s a lie about some nobody in Delaware in the service of the “greater truth,” which is somehow allied to the political ambitions of Joe Biden?

AOC expressed it rather colorfully in an August 2018 interview: “[Folks in the political establishment] think that running to the center, moderating our policies, being as close to a saltine cracker as possible is what’s going to make us win elections.”

I mean how would she feel if people called her a "tortilla"?

AOC won by (1) seeking out new voters instead of on-the-fence ones

No, she won because the primary election in her district had a voter turnout of less than 14%.

and (2) having a bold progressive platform,

That's one way to put it.

and not wringing her hands about how we can't do all these nice things,

Politics is the art of the possible (Otto von Bismarck). Not of building air castles.

and that the most that we should ever expect are tiny tweaks here and there.

Any meaningful change in a society as big and as complex as United States will by necessity be incremental and evolutionary.

A lesson for the Democratic Party more generally. The Republicans have been doing something similar with their base, so the Democrats ought to do that with their base also.

And how is that working out for the Republicans right now? To put it differently: if Republicans jumped off a bridge, should Democrats do the same?

 

[fromderinside]

It seems that this was a lie.
Elizabeth Warren Is Jussie Smollett

Seems like the story is probably as Warren said. It corresponds with what happened to my bride in '72. If you show you have to go.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/elizab...e-stands-by-being-pushed-out-of-teaching-job/

This story provides bits tht seem to indicate she may have lost her job because she was pregnant but was offered future employment. however after taking courses she decided to forgo that offer and go another direction. It appears her story holds up with the difference being that those with axes to grind conflate two separate paths into one for their interpretation.

The following seems to reflect the times.

Two retired teachers who worked at Riverdale Elementary for over 30 years, including the year Warren was there, told CBS News that they don't remember anyone being explicitly fired due to pregnancy during their time at the school. But Trudy Randall and Sharon Ercalano each said that a non-tenured, pregnant employee like Warren would have had little job security at Riverdale in 1971, seven years before the Pregnancy Discrimination Act was passed.

 

[angelo]

Of course it's okay for Biden, but gawd forbid the Trump dealing with Ukraine in any shape or form.

[video]https://www.wsj.com/video/opinion-make-dishwashers-that-clean-again/51C737C3-8A96-4E36-B05A-E5D08ECE28C5.html[/video]

 

[Harry Bosch]

It seems that this was a lie.
Elizabeth Warren Is Jussie Smollett


I also did not know that Joe Biden had lied about the circumstances of the accident that killed his wife and daughter.

Joe Biden has a moving — and horrifying — story about his wife and daughter being killed by a drunk driver, a story that similarly could not have been designed more perfectly to bolster his political image as a man who can be counted on to soldier on in the face of adversity.
[..]
Similarly, people are killed by drunk drivers every day in this country. Joe Biden’s wife and daughter were not among them, in spite of his libelous claims that they lost their lives in an accident involving an irresponsible truck driver who, as Biden put it, “drank his lunch.” The man who oversaw that investigation, Delaware Superior Court judge Jerome O. Herlihy, repeatedly has confirmed that there is no evidence alcohol was involved. The survivors of the driver, who has since passed away, have publicly asked Biden to stop telling this lie and besmirching the memory of their father. Investigators at the time determined that the accident was not even the other driver’s fault — Mrs. Biden seems to have driven accidentally into the path of the truck.
But what’s a lie about some nobody in Delaware in the service of the “greater truth,” which is somehow allied to the political ambitions of Joe Biden?

AOC expressed it rather colorfully in an August 2018 interview: “[Folks in the political establishment] think that running to the center, moderating our policies, being as close to a saltine cracker as possible is what’s going to make us win elections.”

View attachment 24341
I mean how would she feel if people called her a "tortilla"?

AOC won by (1) seeking out new voters instead of on-the-fence ones

No, she won because the primary election in her district had a voter turnout of less than 14%.

and (2) having a bold progressive platform,

That's one way to put it.

and not wringing her hands about how we can't do all these nice things,

Politics is the art of the possible (Otto von Bismarck). Not of building air castles.

and that the most that we should ever expect are tiny tweaks here and there.

Any meaningful change in a society as big and as complex as United States will by necessity be incremental and evolutionary.

A lesson for the Democratic Party more generally. The Republicans have been doing something similar with their base, so the Democrats ought to do that with their base also.

And how is that working out for the Republicans right now? To put it differently: if Republicans jumped off a bridge, should Democrats do the same?

As an aside, it's surprising how many similarities there are between AOC and Trump. Another one: AOC also shows no ability to recognize, understand or show support to the middle. I really wish we could find a politician on the left who was charismatic and who didn't just play to a small base.

 

[southernhybrid]

Black or female candidates, it will be less important than being xtian! No way is America ready to embrace an atheist candidate, not for a decade or two at least anyway.

Pretty sure Trump is an atheist.

I'm pretty sure he's an apatheist. He doesn't have the ability or interest to think hard enough to consider whether or not gods exist. All of the atheists I've ever known, regardless of their faults, were pretty thoughtful. Trump doesn't think about anyone but himself. He probably thinks that he's some sort of god.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Black or female candidates, it will be less important than being xtian! No way is America ready to embrace an atheist candidate, not for a decade or two at least anyway.

Pretty sure Trump is an atheist.

Only in the sense that he is incapable of imagining anything bigger than himself.

It is an interesting point, however. The idea of an atheist running for and winning the Presidency does seem a long shot (impossible). But somehow Trump managed it (though he wasn't open on it) while getting the evangelical vote.

 

[barbos]

Most politicians of both parties are atheists I think.

 

[fromderinside]

barbos you should stop into a reality station to check your think. I don't care whether they believe or not. I do care that they call out His name in vain every time they open their mouths on anything to which they are opposed. Appearances count for a lot among the great unwashed. IOW it doesn't matter that they are actually pragmatists. They appear to be sanctimonious.

 

[lpetrich]

As an aside, it's surprising how many similarities there are between AOC and Trump. Another one: AOC also shows no ability to recognize, understand or show support to the middle. I really wish we could find a politician on the left who was charismatic and who didn't just play to a small base.

How is AOC not supporting "the middle"? What AOC-Trump similarities do you find?

Black or female candidates, it will be less important than being xtian! No way is America ready to embrace an atheist candidate, not for a decade or two at least anyway.

Pretty sure Trump is an atheist.

I'm pretty sure he's an apatheist. He doesn't have the ability or interest to think hard enough to consider whether or not gods exist. All of the atheists I've ever known, regardless of their faults, were pretty thoughtful. Trump doesn't think about anyone but himself. He probably thinks that he's some sort of god.

I wouldn't be surprised. He considers himself a stable genius and the best in what he does.

Most politicians of both parties are atheists I think.

That's an overstatement, I think. But I wouldn't be surprised if many politicians are apatheists or nominal believers who don't place a high priority on religion.

 

[lpetrich]

Elizabeth Warren on Twitter: "We need a government that's on the side of families—not giant corporations polluting our communities. @RashidaTlaib and I walked through 48217, the most polluted zip code in Michigan, and talked with the families living every day with the effects of pollution. https://t.co/LsXlZQza7r" / Twitter

Here Are The Democratic Presidential Candidates With The Most Donations From Billionaires
1. Pete Buttigieg: 23 billionaire donors
2. Cory Booker: 18 billionaire donors
3. Kamala Harris: 17 billionaire donors
4. Michael Bennet: 15 billionaire donors
5. Joe Biden: 13 billionaire donors
6. John Hickenlooper: 11 billionaire donors
7. Beto O’Rourke: 9 billionaire donors
8. Amy Klobuchar: 8 billionaire donors
9. Jay Inslee: 5 billionaire donors
10. Kirsten Gillibrand: 4 billionaire donors
11. Elizabeth Warren and John Delaney: 3 billionaire donors each
12. Steve Bullock: 2 billionaire donors
13. Tulsi Gabbard, Andrew Yang, and Marianne Williamson: 1 billionaire donor each
14. Bernie Sanders, Julian Castro, Bill De Blasio, and Tim Ryan: 0 billionaire donors

More reason to like Elizabeth Warren, and some reason to be disappointed in Kamala Harris. I want to like KH, because she is relatively young, but her acceptance of big money is troubling.

 

[PyramidHead]

Elizabeth Warren on Twitter: "We need a government that's on the side of families—not giant corporations polluting our communities. @RashidaTlaib and I walked through 48217, the most polluted zip code in Michigan, and talked with the families living every day with the effects of pollution. https://t.co/LsXlZQza7r" / Twitter

Here Are The Democratic Presidential Candidates With The Most Donations From Billionaires
1. Pete Buttigieg: 23 billionaire donors
2. Cory Booker: 18 billionaire donors
3. Kamala Harris: 17 billionaire donors
4. Michael Bennet: 15 billionaire donors
5. Joe Biden: 13 billionaire donors
6. John Hickenlooper: 11 billionaire donors
7. Beto O’Rourke: 9 billionaire donors
8. Amy Klobuchar: 8 billionaire donors
9. Jay Inslee: 5 billionaire donors
10. Kirsten Gillibrand: 4 billionaire donors
11. Elizabeth Warren and John Delaney: 3 billionaire donors each
12. Steve Bullock: 2 billionaire donors
13. Tulsi Gabbard, Andrew Yang, and Marianne Williamson: 1 billionaire donor each
14. Bernie Sanders, Julian Castro, Bill De Blasio, and Tim Ryan: 0 billionaire donors

More reason to like Elizabeth Warren, and some reason to be disappointed in Kamala Harris. I want to like KH, because she is relatively young, but her acceptance of big money is troubling.

Warren had said that she'll be taking their money in the general election, just not in the primary. About a week ago, she seemed to indicate otherwise, which is promising, but she's still fine with raising corporate money for the DNC:

Elizabeth Warren's campaign clarifies she'll raise big-dollar money for the party as nominee

None of which is surprising, because her campaign treasurer is Paul "PAC man" Egerman.

 

[lpetrich]

Candidates Grow Bolder on Labor, and Not Just Bernie Sanders - The New York Times - when I first learned about AOC, I found it disappointing that she did not mention labor unions. But she later did so. That's a problem with the Democratic Party more generally, not doing much to stand behind one of its biggest constituencies.

When Bernie Sanders ran for president in 2016, his campaign was strikingly pro-labor. He proposed a $15-an-hour minimum wage, which was much further than most mainstream Democrats, including Hillary Clinton, were willing to go. He denounced a trans-Pacific trade deal that was anathema to many unions. He endorsed an organizing method, known as card check, that would allow workers to unionize without holding a secret-ballot election.

Some of the candidates are now going further.

Several candidates have pledged to ban noncompete agreements, which hold down wages for workers, and mandatory-arbitration clauses, which prohibit lawsuits against employers. They would effectively require many companies to treat independent contractors as employees, making the workers eligible for the minimum wage and unemployment insurance. They would enact a number of measures that would help workers unionize and strike, like allowing them to lead boycotts of an employer’s customers, which is currently illegal.

Some candidates are even proposing something called sectoral bargaining, something that is common in Europe. This is where a labor union represents *all* workers in some sector of the economy.

In recent months, Mr. Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, along with Pete Buttigieg, Cory Booker and Beto O’Rourke, have released labor plans that would either enact sectoral bargaining or take significant strides in that direction by allowing workers to negotiate with multiple employers at once.

Then about economists long being skeptical of labor unions, even those sympathetic to government redistribution of wealth. That has changed in recent years.

And partly this reflects a proliferation of research, which some of the campaigns have specifically cited, showing that employers have considerable power to hold down wages below the level the market would set.

Whatever the case, there appears to be a growing consensus among center-left economists that unions are a critical check on the tendency of capital to vacuum up the gains from economic growth. A recent paper by economists at Princeton and Columbia showed that unions raised wages for low-skilled workers in the decades in which inequality was narrowing and concluded that unions have “had a significant, equalizing effect on the income distribution.” A recent paper by the centrist Hamilton Project concluded that “unions lift wages, reduce inequality, and shape how work is organized.”

So we are seeing labor unions and the Left come together again, after they had become split apart in the Sixties era.

 

[lpetrich]

How that split happened:
When blue-collar pride became identity politics | Salon.com - "Remembering how the white working class got left out of the New Left, and why we're all paying for it today"

The great political failure of the 1960s was the New Left's inability to bring the labor movement into its great liberationist tent. There were lots of reasons for that, one of them being that most big union leaders didn't want to be in that stinky tent with a lot of hippies, feminists, dashiki-wearing black militants and "fags." (That last comes from AFL-CIO leader George Meany's description of the New York delegation to the disastrous 1972 Democratic convention: "They've got six open fags and only three AFL-CIO representatives!") Also, not a small matter: The New Left opposed the Vietnam War; again, most labor leaders supported it.

...
Telling the story of how the New Left clashed with Big Labor to bring about the end of New Deal liberalism, Cowie is impossibly fair. Some accounts stress the conservatism (and racism and sexism) of labor bosses; others emphasize the New Left's contempt for mainly white union members and its preference for what came to be called "identity politics," the struggle of women, minority groups and gays for equal rights. Cowie reveals the extent to which both narratives have some truth.

I find AOC interesting in this context. She admires FDR's New Deal, while criticizing its racially discriminatory parts. She even has proposed that a case for racial reparations ought to include these effects of the New Deal.

Elizabeth Warren Leads Joe Biden by Double Digits in Latest 2020 Poll

The trio of Warren, Sanders and Biden have long stood far ahead of the Democratic field and fellow challengers. California Senator Kamala Harris and South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg each pulled in 5 percent in the poll.

With the others being even farther behind.

 

[Derec]

I find AOC interesting in this context. She admires FDR's New Deal, while criticizing its racially discriminatory parts. She even has proposed that a case for racial reparations ought to include these effects of the New Deal.

So-called "reparations" are "racially discriminatory" by design - it's giving blacks free money because of their skin color. I do not see how pushing the reparations nonsense will help mend the rift identified in that article.

Elizabeth Warren Leads Joe Biden by Double Digits in Latest 2020 Poll

Warren would be a very risky choice. With her being both very left economically and focused on identity politics (reparations, calling justified police shootings "murder", veto power to Indian tribes over energy infrastructure etc.), I do not think she will play well in the mid-West.

This is one poll though, and Biden still leads the national poll average.

The trio of Warren, Sanders and Biden have long stood far ahead of the Democratic field and fellow challengers. California Senator Kamala Harris and South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg each pulled in 5 percent in the poll.

They are behind, but no vote has been cast yet. Obviously all of them hope that Biden or Warren will stumble and that they can take up their mantle.
I think Sanders is effectively done, even if he still polls quite well. He just had a heart attack, is 78 years old, and the campaign pace will be grueling. First test of his post-infarction stamina will be tonight when he will have to stand behind the lectern for three hours.

 

[Angra Mainyu]

Elizabeth Warren on Twitter: "We need a government that's on the side of families—not giant corporations polluting our communities. @RashidaTlaib and I walked through 48217, the most polluted zip code in Michigan, and talked with the families living every day with the effects of pollution. https://t.co/LsXlZQza7r" / Twitter

Here Are The Democratic Presidential Candidates With The Most Donations From Billionaires
1. Pete Buttigieg: 23 billionaire donors
2. Cory Booker: 18 billionaire donors
3. Kamala Harris: 17 billionaire donors
4. Michael Bennet: 15 billionaire donors
5. Joe Biden: 13 billionaire donors
6. John Hickenlooper: 11 billionaire donors
7. Beto O’Rourke: 9 billionaire donors
8. Amy Klobuchar: 8 billionaire donors
9. Jay Inslee: 5 billionaire donors
10. Kirsten Gillibrand: 4 billionaire donors
11. Elizabeth Warren and John Delaney: 3 billionaire donors each
12. Steve Bullock: 2 billionaire donors
13. Tulsi Gabbard, Andrew Yang, and Marianne Williamson: 1 billionaire donor each
14. Bernie Sanders, Julian Castro, Bill De Blasio, and Tim Ryan: 0 billionaire donors

More reason to like Elizabeth Warren, and some reason to be disappointed in Kamala Harris. I want to like KH, because she is relatively young, but her acceptance of big money is troubling.

Why would the fact that fewer billionaires decided to donate to her campaign be a good reason to like her? What does it matter? And how is the 1 billion cutoff point important? Why not 5.95 billions? Or 487.345 millions?

Anyway, Warren does accept donations from billionaires, so she does not seem to think it's unethical or a good reason for people to dislike a candidate that billionaires donate to her campaign.

 

[Rhea]

Billionaires are limited just like everyone else to a cap of $2800 per election, are they not?