The new forums will be named Coin Return (based on the most recent
vote)! You can check on the status and timeline of the transition to the new forums
here.
The Guiding Principles and New Rules
document is now in effect.
Continuing to Discuss the [2020 Primary] and Not Other Stuff
Posts
Running up the scoreboard doesn't matter though! The Democrat is winning California, it's not a question. Getting an extra 50,000 progressive votes in SF and LA are not worth losing 10k in Wisconsin.
That is the reality here. If progressives want a seat at the table of any kind, they need to help win in the Midwest, and that means coming to the center.
No, their policies are progressive. Just not what you consider progressive.
Every candidate is for better immigration, higher taxes, more public spending, expanded healthcare... you don't get your unicorn but you get sat at the table where people at least believe they're real.
How does this translate into real leftwing policy wins when you've elected people who make their opposition to those policies a core part of their campaign?
This seems like a long road to the same short journey where we're told only stuff slightly left of center is possible.
Spools point is what are you going to do if that candidate loses the primary?
Because if you’re going to not vote for the candidate that wins the primary in the general your “vote” doesn’t really mean much regardless of who your primary choice is.
There's a couple things here worth addressing. The first one is this notion of "seats at the table". Left wing voters turned out in 2008, like everyone else, and got Dems elected, with a power base that was decidedly centrist. Our reward when it came time to work on the ACA, the big legislative push that win was going to be spent on, was to have promises broken and be specifically excluded from drafting. We haven't forgotten that. The center left isn't interested in making sure our legislative goals are met any more than we are in theirs and its folly to hope that people invested in your political ostracization will be your path to success. You get seats at the table by making sure its your people in the chairs.
Secondly, the claim that moving to center will win us the Midwest is a claim very much not in evidence and I think is motivated reasoning. Obama ran to the center for most of his time in office and its not like his chosen successor was rewarded.
Sanders is polling right at his national average in Indiana, roughly ties for first in Iowa, is on Biden's heels in Michigan and putting up a strong showing in Wisconsin. If moving to the left cost us these states surely his numbers would be at least notably worse than national yes? I think you're engaging in a kind of binary thinking in which there is left of center policy and right of center policy and the only difference within either side is one of degree, not kind. So you see generically liberal or center left stuff bomb in the region and drag down the party and assume "well that means its a more right wing region and we have to move closer to that until we get a bare electoral majority", but people don't really work like that. The difference between, for instance, the ACA and MfA is one of kind. The electoral failure of the former is not doom for the later. Its no accident Sanders is doing well with working class people.
The last several elections have made it pretty clear that being more to the center doesn't make a candidate any "safer".
You can demand only True Scotsman policy, real left-wing wins, and get Trump, or you can build from a place of strength, i.e. being the party in power. First you win, then you win some more, then you win some more, and then your kids get to see what it looks like when the left starts working today like the Right did in 1980. First you get your Reagan, then you don't shit on him, and five terms from now you get your Trump.
Don't ask me why you can't have your unicorn now - explain where your Moral Majority is. Why your Obama voters didn't stick around. What you're going to do to be part of the winning team, not just the better one.
Blue dogs basically went extinct as soon as they couldn't latch onto 8 years of revulsion at the Bush administration.
Being better isn't really all that difficult here, though. Any candidate that wants to be better simply has to be not as bad as Trump.
I'll thank you to stop being so insulting. Incrementalism is fundamentally based on the idea that the people making the shots want more. Biden and Buttigieg don't want to transition us to single payer. They don't want to forgive student debts or making college free at point. They're not engaged in incrementalist policy. That's where your Reagan comparison falls to shit. Reagan and the jackals who supported him absolutely wanted a single party country run by right wing authoritarians. We know this because a lot of them are still around. In your analogy Sanders is my Reagan, not Biden.
I'm voting for the candidate I think can beat Trump. The question you should answer in your primary vote is "can my value preference win Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania?" and if you believe the answer is No, it's time to compromise your wants in favor of your needs.
The majority votes Democrat so I don't understand you asking where the moral majority is. We didn't get single payer health insurance passed because a centrist dem decided not to vote with the party.
That's why people aren't enthused by a centrist who wants to return to old norms.
{Twitter, Everybody's doing it. }{Writing and Story Blog}
It got Dems the House in 2018, though.
We should nominate the guy who won 2 of those 3 primaries last cycle.
Bush and a collapsing economy go the Dems the house.
It really didn't. It undoubtedly helped, I have a very moderate Dem for the first time in my life. Plenty of others were elected through an extreme negative reaction to Trump that he helped fuel and vastly improved local organization.
She was, is, and will continue to be bemoaned by the GOP as the leftiest lefty that ever left Left Town.
That's forever the message so we might as well go with someone charismatic who actually would be further left than normal.
To elaborate on this, Michigan had an election last year. Moderates won in the two swing districts we took. Stabenow won re-election as a pragmatic Democrat. Whitmer won as a liberal who was not quite as left as El-Sayed (which I do think helped her be perceived as more moderate than she is), Benson won Secretary of State as a liberal, Nessel won AG as a kind of radical who openly campaigned against men holding political office because they can't keep their dicks in their pants. And we never win Secretary of State or AG in this state.
EDIT: the lesson we should take in this is that most people don't vote based on ideology, but the state is super pissed about Trump so elected a ton of Democratic women.
Weigel is the Post's reporter who is somehow at like 30% of all candidate events for all candidates.
That should be the line from all Democrats.
This is the right response
Pretty sure that wasn't the proximate cause in 2018 dude
If only they'll be so lucky as to always vote within two years of the 2016 election. Dems need a better path to victory than hoping people will be sufficiently revolted when the election comes around.
Unfortunately there's a whole lot of them and the media is quick to remind them that they're better than everyone else, the only real americans
Though I'm guessing certain people would be displeased with that strategy.
I’m just going to vote for whom I think will be the best president.
All other considerations are secondary.
Some of you probably disagree with whom I think will be the best president, and that’s fine. We can engage in healthy discussion about why we think so and so would be the best.
But I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone here won over by a candidate because “they’ll do well in the Midwest come the general”.
I'm pretty okay with the notion of voting in the primary for someone i think would make a worse president than other candidates, for tactical reasons
The most electable will by definition be the one that gets the most votes regardless of how we each individually vote. Changing your vote based on that basically results in a logic loop. So just vote for whom you most believe in.
If they win the primary, great! You have their back.
If they don't, that's fine too! If others vote for your candidate but not enough to win the primary, whomever *does* win the primary will (if they're smart) be looking at how many votes the other candidates got and modify their approach appropriately to try and appeal to those voters.
For example, barring any new info, my current plan is to vote Warren. I don't want Biden winning the primary, but if he does, I'm hoping that sufficient votes for Warren or Sanders will convince him to be more liberal-leaning in his subsequent actions. Whereas if I vote for him in the primary just because he seems more "electable", and then he wins the primary, that would signal to him that his centrist policies are just fine and he should stay the course.
And now I'm at the end of this post and I feel like I rambled for far longer than I meant to without quite clearly articulating my point, so someone else better spoken feel free to TL;DR this :~)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-01-03/klobuchar-raised-11-4m-in-2019-fourth-quarter-campaign-update
You realize how classist this is, right?
My county is one of two extremes: The rich, who are mostly involved with State Farm (and are likely foreign workers), and the poor, who are struggling to find jobs or keep their farms running. My city has exploded in the last 20 years, and yet no one my age can find an affordable house.
Trump rode in (like the Tea Party Republicans before him) by blaming everything on the government regulations and the Chicago political machine. They tore us apart. And the wounds are still out there, to the point where I can't talk to some of my family about politics.
I'm personally voting anyone but Trump. The rest of the county is voting to keep themselves alive. And when you live day to day, getting massive hospital debts and choosing between shelter and clothing/food, you tend not to look at the bigger picture! And you especially don't like outsiders coming in and telling you how it's all your own fault -- even if it truly is.
This thread seems extremely vitriolic and toxic to me. It seems a place to say only one path is right, and that people must be shown the light or they don't matter. That's going to lead to people being pissed at politics... and as a result, not paying attention. And guess what, that's exactly what is happening! People aren't paying attention, and it's costing all of us.
So if you'll excuse me, can we please stop treating each other as the enemy and remember that there's less daylight between the candidates than everyone realizes, and that it isn't a sin to express your opinion?
PS - some of us Midwesterners are sticking around purely to help others. My family, my friends, my home... all are here. And I'd prefer not to give that up no matter how much money you offered me -- but I'm also on the comfortable side of that rich/poor divide in the county.
Not so - the most electable in the general may or may not win. If you want to say focusing on electability is stupid because you're only guessing who is electable, or because the candidate will pivot, that's perfectly reasonable. But the logic loop business is wrong, see Barry Goldwater
Your predictions on this are useless is the point. See also: the last two presidents.
Well, I just said that I get that, and that absolutely was not the point of the quoted post but very well, let's talk about it! I think I disagree. I tend to think some candidates are predictably more electable than others, and things like race, gender, campaign style, rhetoric style, and policy play into it. I don't know that electability is very pronounced or important in this race, because I think we're at a point where a black candidate probably isn't much less electable than a white one, and there aren't really any left anyway, and Warren's probably as electable as Biden. I do think Bernie's refusal to pivot or bend most of the time will cost him both the primary and the general, but if it's something that will hurt a candidate as much int he primary in the general then electability doesn't really play into it - either i'm right and it won't hurt him in the general because he won't make it there or i'm wrong and it won't hurt him in the general because i'm wrong. Warren's got plenty of lefty popular policies and when the other guy is trump I'm not convinced moderation makes you more electable.
I'm pretty happy with either Biden or Warren and Buttigieg wouldn't bother me that much. I think Bernie would make a fine president if he could ever get the job. I voted for him in my caucus 2016 just because I wanted to see the party dragged leftward and so I wanted him to lose as narrowly as possible.
Buttigieg is not, IMO, on our team. Buttigieg is on Buttigieg's team. I believe he's shown he'll say and do whatever will get him more money and/or power.
I actually think Biden is likely the most electable. I support Warren because I think she's better, but also still electable.
I think just saying "Biden is the most electable, therefore i'll vote for him" is shortsighted. But I think voting for someone without considering if they have a chance in the general is far more so.
I mean, if you honestly don't think electability is something to consider, you'd still be voting for Inslee. Whether they have a chance is kinda relevant!
If she shows I'm gonna ask her what it's like to be too afraid to vote on impeachment.
All I want is a win. Every single policy goal is secondary to that.
If maybe you have loved ones whose lives could be further directly harmed by the erosion of those safety nets because of who they are, because I know those people are posting in this thread right now, you also need to muster genuine enthusiasm for the person who is not Trump. If you can't do that, if all you can muster is a limp sigh and all you can put out there is antipathy, then maybe you need to take a long hard look at just how badly those lives could be ruined if things continue instead of posturing about economics and talk about holding your nose. On the flip side, if your favorite doesn't make it, if you can only care about your ideal foreign policy and not those people directly affected by our current foreign policy, it might be time to recognize that our current foreign policy is bragging to his friends about trying to start a nuclear war in the middle east, and that damage needs to be mitigated as fast as possible. That you've lost sight of the people who are in danger right now and need some diplomacy to be even marginally safer than they are now. We currently occupy a space where the way forward for actual people here and there alike can be a nebulous ideological argument about our ideal vs another candidate, but the path backward is very clearly the people in office right now.
There are certainly people out there who like Biden, Warren, or Sanders who will very loudly groan if that person doesn't get the nomination. I would like to think that our users here are not that stupid and care about the people they love and advocate for, and that when push comes to shove they will be enthusiastic about preventing further casualties even if they can't be enthusiastic about the economic or foreign policy of the nominee. I would like to think that that's the case whether you like Biden, Warren, or Sanders.
How does that relate back to the Primaries, the actual point of having this thread at all? This needs to be a real discussion where supporters of any candidate are not closed out or written off out of hand. That will mean engaging with ideas you personally think are stupid right now. It will mean not calling people stupid right now. It will mean holding off on belligerence and condescension, because you will need every last one of those people. And if you like Sanders, you will need to be able to personally do all that work. That's why a Sanders nomination, as beautiful as it might be, really scares me. I've not seen an ability from his supporters to engage with people, and the fact is that within the scope of not-GOP, the farther to the right you are, the less work you will need to do to bring people on, and accusations being thrown about here borrow against the work that will need to be done for the general election. You need to be able to think in terms of what "Not Me, Us" really means. It means he says the message and we make sure it gets out there in the most positive and inviting way that we can because he's not going to change it and that's all we've got to work with. People who like the Bidens of the world won't need to do as much to ensure a victory in the general election, but they will need to be willing to make a case for their second or third choice if that's the person who wins. People who like Sanders have a tremendous uphill battle if he wins, and people who don't will need to stop trying to make those who do feel invalid and unheard, and that needs to be taken in. If you can only put forward misanthropy now, you are detracting from these people and their potential for a win if they get the nomination, and you may miss that when it's gone. When the chips fall, smug satisfaction has the shittiest ROI.
It means that people for or against whoever will need to stfu right now about their own sense of smell. Consider this practice. Share news, don't talk down to others, and try to figure out what about each candidate could make them great because you'll need that later to save people in this country from having their rights to exist further stripped from them, and people overseas from a very immediately spiraling nightmare. If the nightmare loses we'll all be lucky if it's not pushing the fucking button 18 times between November and January, let alone if he wins over another four years.