Democrats

[mimekiller]

lmao

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/liv ... s-politics

[mimekiller]

Beto knows he lost to Ted Cruz, right

[mimekiller]

As far as beards go you can do a lot worse.

https://www.tmz.com/2019/03/14/rosario- ... president/

[mimekiller]

Cool

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions ... ca93d0804e

[Mike]

The DCCC has sucked for a long time. This is not the first time their pro-incumbent stance has been on display, but it's certainly an ugly example.

[mimekiller]

Have you read much from Elizabeth Bruenig? I truly do find her one of the more compelling and interesting voices in media right now even tho she leans farther left then I do by a great deal. Just always a interesting perspective.

[mimekiller]

Joe Biden is a creep

[buckett]

Stop stealing tweets to post here. Fraudulent.

[mimekiller]

lmao called out and accepted, this is such a insular group I thought I could get away with it

[mimekiller]

lmao at anyone who thinks Democrats are good people and will lift a finger to help anyone outside of corporate interests. what a complete joke of a country.

https://www.businessinsider.com/taxpaye ... win-2019-4

[Mike]

Sensationalist headline speculates on what this COULD mean for taxpayers with dire warnings that make good headlines. The article states that there isn't agreement yet one exactly what this will mean, but repeatedly says, "here's what it COULD mean." Carefully chosen weasel words.

The essential complaint is that the bill strengthens protections for taxpayers, but DOESN'T GO FAR ENOUGH (probably)!

I personally believe that politicians should fight for their ideals, and in general, they should vote for anything that brings current law closer to those ideals, even if it is not perfect. Rejecting anything that is not 100% of what you want is almost always non-productive.

So the question with this bill or any bill is: If this bill becomes law, is the country closer to my ideals than if we did nothing? At first glance, it would seem so, but I haven't done enough research to know for sure, and I guarantee that the person who wrote that article doesn't know either, because they're clearly working from a summary of the bill, and I doubt that they've actually read the entire thing, much less spent any time analyzing it personally, before writing this particular piece of clickbait.

And either you bought into it because it fit your personal narrative and you chose not to apply critical thought to it, OR you don't care and you're just trolling.

[Mike]

On the other hand, I do resent it when they choose to do a voice vote. I know that often it is done for the sake of expediency, but I always feel like they just don't want their votes on record.

[Phoebe]

Just hoping we hold on to democracy at this point. Everything else seems like trivia that we can work out later. And then climate change will happen (is currently happening today) so.... Very hard not to be defeatist right now.

[mimekiller]

lets check in on what this dusty old bag of shit and dust has to say for herself today.

https://www.cnn.com/2019/04/15/politics ... index.html

[Phoebe]

I suppose many bags of dust are dusty, unless well sealed and non-porous.

[mimekiller]

I would bet that Warren(who has been a recent voice calling for impeachment) knew that Pelosi would be saying this before she said anything. Gives her some street cred without actually to ya know, do anything.

https://www.politico.com/story/2019/04/ ... rt-1284600

[Bonefish]

IIt's really sad watching democrats tear themselves apart with abandon.

[Phoebe]

AGREED! WTF people it's only spring 2019 and the stench of horrid doom hangs heavy in the air.

[Mike]

I've been listening to the candidates, and in an hour long interview format, I find all of them (so far) to be smart and engaging. They have a general agreement on most issues, and where they do differ, it's normally a matter of degree. We all agree we need to address climate change... just how aggressively. We all want to address student loan debt... but do we go to completely debt-free college? Do we forgive prior debt? We all want to take healthcare beyond ACA... but how far beyond and how gradual is the transition? Etc etc.

Many of them are (or come off as) single-issue candidates: Julian Castro is immigration; Gillibrand is the #metoo candidate; Inslee is running purely on climate change. None of them have a serious chance of winning the nomination, and I'm not interested in them as candidates, but I like what they bring to the table. I appreciate their take on their big issue and generally agree with them.

Ultimately, given the candidates available right now, I will vote for whoever the Democratic nominee is over Trump. I have my preferences, but I generally like everyone here and have no problem giving them my vote.

I was going to go through the timeline and discuss all the candidates one by one in order of their official announcements (did you know Delaney and Yang both declared back in 2017?), but once I started on it, I realized it was a lot of wasted typing on people I didn't really care much about and who weren't important to the race. So I'm going to just talk about the top 10 (according to the last month of polling data):
1. Biden
2. Sanders
3. Harris
4. O'Rourke
5. Warren
6. Booker
7. Buttigieg
8. Klobuchar
9. Castro
10. Gillibrand

I don't see the last three as having a serious chance. Like I say, I've listened to Julian Castro and Kirsten Gillibrand talk about issues, Castro leaning strongly on immigration issues, Gillibrand with her focus on "women's issues" (I don't like that term, but it is how the media often refers to her policy discussions). I like what they have to say. I haven't heard Amy Klobuchar. All I know about her is that she's supposed to be a moderate and that she's supposed to be mean to her staff. I don't put much weight into the latter--rumors like that went around about Hillary. I do find it telling that the Crooked Media guys, who have all worked directly for Obama and would know Klobuchar, deliberately avoided giving a straight answer when talking about Klobuchar's meanness. They don't want to say anything bad about any Democrat nominee, but it was clear they didn't like something about her. But that's neither here nor there--she ain't winning.

Mayor Pete Buttigieg. Man, I like this guy. He probably isn't getting the nomination this time around, and probably shouldn't anyway, but I still really like him. The problem is that he's only given general policy leanings without getting too specific. So he seems generally liberal--but not TOO liberal--and he seems super smart and super driven and super confident. Right now he's about telling stories and establishing identity. And he's just vague enough that everyone on the left can imagine that this extremely smart man believes exactly what they believe. (And they're wrong. He obviously believes exactly what I believe). I think he could make a great president in 8 years, but he's still making a name for himself. Although a lot of the same was said about Obama in 2008, and look what happened there.

Cory Booker. A focus on racial equality. Addressing poverty. Prison reform. It's a message of radical love. I like what he's saying, and he seems like a good guy, but I'm not overwhelmed by him or anything. In the long form interview I heard, several times he made a point of redefining terms that the interviewer used. The interviewer said something about people being angry, and Booker latched onto that to give us a statement about how anger is is good and justified, and how anger drives people, and it felt like he was (repeatedly) trying to be intentionally profound. I would have liked less profundity and more actual policy details.

I've been an Elizabeth Warren fan for a long time. I think her message of fighting for the common people against the corruption of big monied interests is noble and relatable. That's a winning message. She's extra liberal, and she's a policy wonk. She's dumping policy out there left and right with all sorts of specifics. I dig that. On the other hand, I don't know that she can beat Trump. She plays his game and takes his bait. She's this awesome intellectual nerd who, I think, gets caught in the details and can't help but respond to things. If I were running for office, I'd be the exact same way. Just ask Kyle--I can't win a game of rock, paper, scissors with him, because I always take the bait and he's always up in my head. I think Warren has that same flaw. She responded to the whole Pocahontas thing and it hurt her. Somewhere along the line, she got defensive about the "socialist" label, so now she has to label herself a capitalist. But when asked directly, "You and Bernie Sanders share a lot of policy opinions, but you're a capitalist while he's a socialist. Can you give some examples of where, as a capitalist, you would differ from Bernie?" She couldn't. She spent 10 minutes on a long roundabout speech until the interviewer forgot the question. I like Warren, and I think she'd be good as president, but I worry that she'd have trouble running against Trump. Even still, she's in my top 2.

Beto O'Rourke. Beto. Another everyman you can project your own opinions on. I appreciate all the enthusiasm around him. I wish he'd beaten Cruz. But he's in way over his head. He's still more qualified than Trump, but he's another one who needs more time and experience. He needs to develop as a politician and show us who he really is.

The other half of my top 2 is Kamala Harris. She's not quite as liberal as I'd like, but she has lots of specifics on education and criminal justice reform and ways of addressing poverty that I think are right on. Fixing poverty fixes so many of the social ills of our country. But also, she's a very powerful woman and a polished politician. I didn't have much of an opinion of her until I heard her talk, and through the whole interview, I just found myself being more and more impressed with her. If I were to vote for Harris over Warren, it would be me compromising a bit on policy in favor of “electability”. I don’t know if I like that, but I may do it anyway.

Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders. They're both old white guys who are slightly problematic, and one of them will probably be the nominee. I love so much about Bernie. The man's been doing this for decades, and he has never been anyone but Bernie. Not only was he a socialist before it was cool... he's the guy who MADE it cool. But c'mon... taking office at 78? Reagan was younger than that when he LEFT office. And I like Biden well enough, but he's too moderate and also too old. And personally, I think having handsy Uncle Joe running against misogynist sexual assaulter Trump is just a bad look for the nation.

But leaving that aside, Biden’s the front-runner, and he was already vice-president for eight years. Former vice-presidents who run get the party nod about two-thirds of the time, so chances are that Joe Biden will be the nominee. Which is not horrible. He has experience. He has good ideas, but I don’t know that he will be aggressive enough in pursuing them. On the other hand, I think Harris is probably one of his top picks (if not THE top pick for VP), so that would be a good thing if she decided to accept. Cuz even if he gets the nomination and wins, Uncle Joe may not be up for running again at 82.

[Mike]

Huh. Elizabeth Warren ranks as the most anti-Trump Senator, based on voting record, but her ideology score on GovTrack puts her as less liberal than Sanders, Gillibrand, Harris, and Booker. It's a matter of degrees, I suppose, but interesting.