Ready The Clown Car: The First Batch of Democrats Are Ready To Announce Their 2020 Bids

You know, that thought occurred to me as I was writing the post. I think it's entirely possible. He seems aligned with what used to be centrist Democratic philosophy. But, realistically, he would have to get through the Democratic primaries -- and I don't think he would, since he was a Republican.

 

It's sad that you think Warren's work and experience in the Senate and what she advocates for is "virtue signaling" .

Out of all the DNC candidates, she's most concerned with systemic economic issues and doesn't use identity poltpoli as a crutch.

There are posters here who I disagree with vehemently on social issues who are applauding Trump for his immigration policies and rhetoric who acknowledge that Warren probably has the best and nuanced economic platform.

 

And for completeness...

 

Great post overall, but at least Beta was honest here:

Really, there is no good answer on this. If an immigrant overstays their visa, there's not much the federal government can do about it, at least in the short and near term. In the long term.....maybe.

Thus, maybe the best answer is to cut down on visas. I don't necessarily like that solution, but it's a nearly insoluble problem.

 

Yes, Kasich is a Rino/pseudo Democrat, and his time as a media pundit has revealed that.

 

Perhaps a new candidate in the mix: Pete Buttigieg. (Yeah, I know, that name will never work )

https://www.apnews.com/13708fb844264d2fbaf4a2181418ac4d

 

Yes. Didn't you see the Gillette ad?

 

I'd like to announce that I will not be seeking the Democratic party nomination for president in 2020.

 

You guys seriously overestimate the mistake-in-chief (if he is still in office) in the next election. The Democrats could run the reanimated corpse of Teddy Kennedy and win.

 

That's exactly the mentality that led to him winning the presidency in the first place, I would suggest Democrats learn from their mistakes.

 

not to break the flow of conversation, but this one should go in the eventual Kamala Harris for President thread. Author claims Harris was not a "progressive prosecutor" when she worked in California: "The senator was often on the wrong side of history when she served as California’s attorney general."

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/17/opinion/kamala-harris-criminal-justice.html

 

Wouldn't her not being "progressive" make her better?

 

I don't know:

"Ms. Harris was criticized in 2010 for withholding information about a police laboratory technician who had been accused of “intentionally sabotaging” her work and stealing drugs from the lab. After a memo surfaced showing that Ms. Harris’s deputies knew about the technician’s wrongdoing and recent conviction, but failed to alert defense lawyers, a judge condemned Ms. Harris’s indifference to the systemic violation of the defendants’ constitutional rights."
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also

"Ms. Harris was similarly regressive as the state’s attorney general. When a federal judge in Orange County ruled that the death penalty was unconstitutional in 2014, Ms. Harris appealed. In a public statement, she made the bizarre argument that the decision “undermines important protections that our courts provide to defendants.” (The approximately 740 men and women awaiting execution in California might disagree)."
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as well as:

"In 2015, she opposed a bill requiring her office to investigate shootings involving officers. And she refused to support statewide standards regulating the use of body-worn cameras by police officers. For this, she incurred criticism from an array of left-leaning reformers, including Democratic state senators, the A.C.L.U. and San Francisco’s elected public defender. The activist Phelicia Jones, who had supported Ms. Harris for years, asked, 'How many more people need to die before she steps in?'"​

 

but wait, apparently there's more!

"Worst of all, though, is Ms. Harris’s record in wrongful conviction cases. Consider George Gage, an electrician with no criminal record who was charged in 1999 with sexually abusing his stepdaughter, who reported the allegations years later. The case largely hinged on the stepdaughter’s testimony and Mr. Gage was convicted.

"Afterward, the judge discovered that the prosecutor had unlawfully held back potentially exculpatory evidence, including medical reports indicating that the stepdaughter had been repeatedly untruthful with law enforcement. Her mother even described her as “a pathological liar” who “lives her lies.”

"In 2015, when the case reached the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in San Francisco, Ms. Harris’s prosecutors defended the conviction. They pointed out that Mr. Gage, while forced to act as his own lawyer, had not properly raised the legal issue in the lower court, as the law required.

"The appellate judges acknowledged this impediment and sent the case to mediation, a clear signal for Ms. Harris to dismiss the case. When she refused to budge, the court upheld the conviction on that technicality. Mr. Gage is still in prison serving a 70-year sentence."
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and more

"That case is not an outlier. Ms. Harris also fought to keep Daniel Larsen in prison on a 28-year-to-life sentence for possession of a concealed weapon even though his trial lawyer was incompetent and there was compelling evidence of his innocence. Relying on a technicality again, Ms. Harris argued that Mr. Larsen failed to raise his legal arguments in a timely fashion. (This time, she lost.)

"She also defended Johnny Baca’s conviction for murder even though judges found a prosecutor presented false testimony at the trial. She relented only after a video of the oral argument received national attention and embarrassed her office.

"And then there’s Kevin Cooper, the death row inmate whose trial was infected by racism and corruption. He sought advanced DNA testing to prove his innocence, but Ms. Harris opposed it. (After The New York Times’s exposé of the case went viral, she reversed her position.)"​

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I wonder how many times a prosecutor (or, for that matter, a defense attorney) win a case on a "technicality." I also wonder how many times those "technicalities" are simply the technical application of laws. Again, I am not a lawyer, so the technical aspects of laws are outside my expertise, and for all I know the two people being discussed have legitimate complaints. But, again, I don't know how many total cases Harris and her office handles over time. And how many cases she won, versus how many she lost. I don't know much about Harris since I moved away from CA years ago, but it appears she was successful and respected both as district attorney and attorney general.

Folks already poking at her must mean she is a serious candidate though. Just like folks poking at O'Rourke. And its always good to read the good and bad about people...