In order to move away from partisan hackumentary, I though I'd create a new thread for reasoned discussion among Dem supporters reluctant to enter the existing mojolog thread. Politico has a very good primer for starters... The Issues The most comprehensive guide anywhere to the issues shaping the 2020 Democratic presidential primary. Search by candidate, issue or category. Endorsements Polls
I know Biden has the lead in the polls but damn he looks like a lateral move to me from the Obama corporate Dems. I really hope Warren can take him down in the end. We need bold leadership right now, big changes need to be made to the way we operate as a country. We're just falling behind in so many areas.
Biden is a significantly worse candidate than Hillary when you do a deep dove into his voting record and the policies he's advocated for in the past. He inspires zero enthusiasm and I'm afraid voter turnout will be even more suppress if he gets the nomination. No one except Trump cultists would be exited between chosing between Trump and Biden. People genuinely support candidates like Warren and Bernie while Biden is clinging on to name recognition of being Obama's VP.
Agreed. Except that 40% of America is ok with a historically flawed candidate and is perfectly content with re-electing him as he brings down all of our alliances and institutions with him. I prefer Warren, because we need someone who can repair the institutional damage that the dotard has wrought. But, if it's Biden, so be it.
for those that like quick ref summary in basic charts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polit...ocratic_Party_presidential_primary_candidates
This guy... I don't think pandering to the homeless and illegals is much of a winning strategy. What reality does this guy live in?
We wont. Trump will not be the Republican nominee in 2020. The more coverage I see from the G20 trip, the more convincing are the assertions of his advancing dementia. Time to study up on Bill Weld.
Biden's reputation as a gaff machine is biting him in the ass. Biden's 'gay waiter' comment on LGBTQ rights falls flat in Seattle https://www.cnn.com/2019/06/30/poli...-gay-rights-waiter-comment-seattle/index.html People gathered at a 2020 presidential fundraiser for Joe Biden Saturday pushed back against the former vice president's claim that just a few years ago people in Washington state would have let a homophobic comment slide, saying "Not in Seattle!" The presidential hopeful suggested public sentiment toward gay rights issues has come far in a short period of time, saying five years ago if someone at a business meeting in Seattle "made fun of a gay waiter" people would just let it go, according to a pool report of the event. The audience vocally responded to the remark and some in the crowd said homophobic comments would not have gone unchallenged even before five years ago, according to the report.
No one has sold me at all, yet. I’m no closer to making a decision as I was when the process began. I’d like to see the field get thinned out but it doesn’t appear that’s going to happen before the end of the year. For now, we have to live with everyone trying to be louder than the others. Those debates were worthless...interrupting each other even when they agreed.
Democrats have a once in a generation opportunity to take a solid step to the left and pay almost no political price for it. It is not common a president is this unpopular. I hope they don't blow it.
+1 for Butti Pete Buttigieg has a new plan to increase national service https://www.cnn.com/2019/07/03/politics/pete-buttigieg-national-service-plan/index.html Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg on Wednesday unveiled his campaign's plan to boost national service, rolling out a proposal in Iowa that aims to increase service opportunities and tie that service to incentives. Buttigieg told an audience in a sweltering gym here in Sioux City that his plan to boost the prevalence of service is meant to help the country and to provide a way to knit people together in a time when politics seems to be pulling them apart. "I don't think you ought to have to go to war to have that experience," Buttigieg said, referencing his own service in the US Naval Reserve and the way it helped bond him with people he barely knew. "So today, I am proud to announce a new call to service." The South Bend, Indiana, mayor said that the plan, which intends to increase service opportunities to 250,000 a year and to "quadruple the number of service opportunities to 1 million high school graduates" by 2026, is aimed at "repairing the fabric of our nation." "I think when we do that," Buttigieg said, "we will find not only a lot of work gets done but that America was closer together." The plan is broken up into three policy pillars: expanding service opportunities, building networks around service and increasing the scale of service opportunities by 2026. To achieve those goals, Buttigieg says, if elected president he will "immediately increase national service opportunities to 250,000 positions through the existing federal and AmeriCorps grantee organizations" and "create competitive grant funding for communities, cities, and regions to create service ecosystems tailored to regional and local issues." These programs will particularly target students in high school or at community colleges, vocational schools or historically black college and universities. Buttigieg also would create new "corps" for service, including a Climate Corps, Community Health Corps and Intergenerational Service Corps, all of which would be overseen by a new chief service officer within the White House. All of this aims to "quadruple the number of service opportunities to 1 million high school graduates" by 2026, according to the plan. Buttigieg's own service -- he took a leave of absence from his job in 2014 to serve in Afghanistan -- is central to his story and his rise in the Democratic primary. Buttigieg, who's 37, leaned on the fact that he is a young mayor who served in the military to set himself apart from others in the field on Wednesday, too, warning that if Democrats nominate a traditional candidate in 2020, the party could lose again to President Donald Trump. "He is deservedly unpopular but he could win again," Buttigieg said. "And I think he wins again if we look like we're offering more of the same. I think the way he wins again is if we look like we're the defenders of a system that hasn't worked. And what that means is, surprisingly, the riskiest thing we could do is try so hard to play it safe that we continue to walk down an establishment path that has Americans believing that we're not speaking to them." Buttigieg, after noting that they need someone unlike Trump to beat Trump, said, "That is where I come in." "What could be more different than this President? Laid-back, middle-class millennial mayor from the industrial Midwest. It is not traditional," he said. Buttigieg is not the first Democratic candidate to roll out a national service plan. Rep. Seth Moulton of Massachusetts, who served as a captain in the US Marine Corps in Iraq, unveiled a proposal earlier this year that would pay 100% of in-state college tuition or $24,000 in job training for three years of commitment to a service organization. "If you invest in America, then America will invest in you," Moulton said to ABC in May. Buttigieg has long said he believes the country would be in a better place -- socially and politically -- if more people spent time working on national service projects. "I believe that national service is something we need to create more opportunities for here at home and we need to learn from all of the ways for prior generations military service was a leveler and equalizer, something that made it possible for people like a young John F. Kennedy or George H.W. Bush to learn how to relate on more or less equal terms of factory workers in places like Indiana," Buttigieg told CNN in March. "It's unfortunate we lost that." Buttigieg later told MSNBC's Rachel Maddow that he would like to create a county where the social norm was that everybody "spends a year in national service" after they turn 18. "Whether it's civilian or military, it's the first question on your college application if you're applying for college or it's the first question when you are being interviewed for a job if you go right into the work force," he said. "Now, to do that, we're going to have to create more service opportunities and we're going to find a way to fund it. But I think it's worth approaching."
Shifting my post out of the toilet thread. ____ https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/08/02/us/politics/2020-democratic-fundraising.html?action=click&module=Top Stories&pgtype=Homepagev Very interesting interactive data about where each candidate's donors are from geographically. A few takeaways: 1) Bernie, Yang, Gabbard have a lot of equity geographically. They appeal broadly. Warren's support is also noticeably broad, although not as much as that group. 2) Buttigieg, O'Rouke, and Klobuchar are highly regional/localized to their home states 3) Harris and Biden are almost mirror images of each other geographically, both relying on urban areas on either coast Looking at the city maps is also interesting. For example, in DC the breakdown is (based on what I know about these neighborhoods)... younger and urban white upperclass = Pete older white upperclass = Warren suburban and rural white = Bernie urban and suburban black = Harris rural black = Biden
This is pretty cool. Yang has mentioned a time or two that he's a big fan of Time Banks. I had to Google them to figure out what they are, but it's a neat concept that could be national under the right circumstances. I went to the main Time Bank registry and there was an active one near me, even. Getting people involved in non profit or civic work, especially the young, is a great idea that will boost outcomes for everyone.
Cool graphics. Mayor Pete confuses me. He consistently polls at 5%-ish, yet raises almost as much as Bernie without being dominant anywhere? I don't get where his donations are coming from or why his donations are so out of line with his polling.
He raises almost as much as Bernie, but yet his individual donations are nearly only half of Bernies. I think that could answer your question of why he isn't polling as high. I think Pete is the DNC's Biden backup, and I think the DNC has already accepted that Biden is likely going to fail.
I think this explains it. His donor map is South Bend, Silicon Valley, and NYC... with not a whole lot in between. He seems to be far and away the candidate of big tech and big media.
But even ignoring the industries and the "where", it just seems strange. You have: Liz Warren: 421,000 donors / $25MM / avg donation = $59 Pete: 390,000 donors / $32MM / avg donation = $82 Warren 15-20% Pete 5% Everyone else's polling at least seems somewhat correlated to donations (with progressives raising more money relative to moderates). But with Pete, it's like all of his voters donate to him or people donate to him but don't vote for him. Ignoring the size of the donations, how does he have more donors than Harris and Biden, but poll way below them?
Sadly, with many voters (from either party) his sexuality will be a non-starter. It is an unfortunate reality. We have made great strides in our cultural acceptance of a multitude of things but we are not there yet.
