The “Who is running in 2020?” tea leaves thread, Part 3

[Beet]

Harris was in Iowa today stumping for Democrats and the crowds were quite impressive for a candidate this early in the stage...

https://twitter.com/ZachWahls/status/1054830482314137600

https://twitter.com/caseytolan/status/1054830090188742656

LOL I knew it. Might as well cancel the primaries now; it's going to be a Kamala coronation. Only Bernie could challenge her if he runs.

[Beet]

Harris was in Iowa today stumping for Democrats and the crowds were quite impressive for a candidate this early in the stage...

https://twitter.com/ZachWahls/status/1054830482314137600

https://twitter.com/caseytolan/status/1054830090188742656

LOL I knew it. Might as well cancel the primaries now; it's going to be a Kamala coronation. Only Bernie could challenge her if he runs.

No poll (albeit not many) has Kamala ahead of Biden, Bernie, or Warren. Ofc she has far less name recognition rn, but I think you're being premature/hyperbolic here. Also, I fail to see how it's a "coronation" considering she's getting grassroots support if those tweets are to be believed.

Beet, in all of his avatars iterations, has an odd fixation on hating Kamala Harris and blaming her for what he sees as an inevitable ethnopolitical party system.

No, I don't blame Harris personally for that, and it's not the reason I dislike her.

However, African Americans (about 20-30% of whom are social/temperamental conservatives) desperately need breathing room to enter the Republican Party. What Kanye and people like Candice Owens are doing, no matter what you think of Trump, is healthy for our democracy and healthy for Black Americans. As long as black people are clustered in one party, the other one (which in a two party system guaranteed a share of power in the long run -- will never be forced to confront its own racism.

[Beet]

The WaPo says Warren 2020 isn’t a done deal:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/as-her-dna-test-still-reverberates-sen-elizabeth-warrens-political-operation-shows-fissures/2018/12/07/8fb44aac-fa35-11e8-8c9a-860ce2a8148f_story.html

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One potential fissure within Team Warren:

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I really hope Warren runs. She has the right message, record, and achievements, and if she focuses on sticks to it for the next 12 months, I think she'd gain traction.

[Beet]

Harris prepares for a campaign launch that may come in mid-to-late January:

https://www.usnews.com/news/the-run/articles/2018-12-17/kamala-harris-expected-to-move-quickly-on-2020-race-in-january

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So Harris will be our first major announcement, this will put pressure on everyone else to declare by April

YES! QUEEN KAMALA, the first female President of the United States!

I have no idea why people love her. At first I just thought she was just overhyped, but she' actually terrible. Her office:

- Defended a prosecutor caught making up a transcript of a fake confession

- Hid massive abuses in the state crime lab

- Argued that a guy ruled not guilty should still be in prison because he didn't prove his innocent fast enough

- Supported a bill that would have locked up poor parents of color for kids' truancy

- Argued that people should be kept in prison longer because of cheap labor

- One of her top advisors was involved in a years-long MeToo scandal involving retaliation

- Started her career with nepotism

- Sent out a tweet purporting to raise money for Stacey Abrams last month, when half the money actually went to herself

That's on top of all the Mnuchin stuff that always gets attention. I mean whatever, if people don't want to care about any of that, that's their choice. But any time Harris becomes really controversial (which WILL happen, especially if she does well) there will be plenty of material to get her with.

[Beet]

Inslee planning two more visits to New Hampshire in the near future:

https://www.king5.com/article/news/politics/what-does-gov-jay-inslee-need-to-know-before-deciding-to-run-for-president/281-6cb9868d-eac9-4696-ad37-9339eaab348d

He also says he'll make a decision on a presidential run by April.

Jerry Brown 2.0

If Inslee does as well as Jerry Brown, who got nearly 600 delegates to come in 2nd, that would be amazing for him.

[Beet]

Gillum is a failure. I roll my eyes every time he is coupled with Beto and Stacey. He lost to someone who ran a Neo-Nazi facebook page and refused to return the donation of someone who called Obama a Muslim N____r in a swing state that Obama won twice (!) so I don't want to hear about the Bradley effect.

Gwen would have won *ducks*

After her piss poor performance in the primary I disagree- she had a complete monopoly on the state party, and all the backing iirc of the usual special interests groups.

While being outspent 3-1 by Levine and 3-1 by Greene, with a ton of that money was spent attacking her, as she was perceived as the frontrunner, and relatively little against Gillum; and still she came in a close 2nd in a crowded field. The primary is also a very different election than the GE.

[Beet]

Gillum is a failure. I roll my eyes every time he is coupled with Beto and Stacey. He lost to someone who ran a Neo-Nazi facebook page and refused to return the donation of someone who called Obama a Muslim N____r in a swing state that Obama won twice (!) so I don't want to hear about the Bradley effect.

Gwen would have won *ducks*

After her piss poor performance in the primary I disagree- she had a complete monopoly on the state party, and all the backing iirc of the usual special interests groups.

While being outspent 3-1 by Levine and 3-1 by Greene, with a ton of that money was spent attacking her, as she was perceived as the frontrunner, and relatively little against Gillum; and still she came in a close 2nd in a crowded field. The primary is also a very different election than the GE.

Then she should have raised more money... but she was a boring, one term congresswoman who had nothing going for her other than her surname (and I say that as someone who would have voted for her in the primary!)

She far outraised everyone in the race who wasn't self-funding... she was boring to you, but not to others, and a one term congresswoman running for higher office is not unusual, again claiming she had nothing going for her is subjective, the groups that endorsed her obviously thought she did. It sounds like you just didn't like her... but it doesn't matter as you are from the UK and can't vote anyway.

[Beet]

Bloomberg, Biden and TMac now reconsidering and less likely to run due to Dem leftward shift.

It's not 1996 anymore. Thank god.

1996 was more "left" than today. A 6-3 center-left supreme court majority, more progressive tax structure, more financial regulations in place, ICE didn't exist, no Patriot Act, housing more affordable, less debt, lower deficit, no Fox News, etc.

[Beet]

Bloomberg, Biden and TMac now reconsidering and less likely to run due to Dem leftward shift.

The Democratic Party is racing at breakneck pace toward George McGovern territory.

This isn't a bad thing.

And the GOP pole-vaulting past Barry Goldwater and shacking it with Jesse Helms to great reward is evidence of that. It's not like the old trajectory towards Joe Lieberman or '80's Mondale did anything useful anyway.

Political polarization is bad for democracy.

You get things like government shutdowns. You get gridlock and the inability for Congress to solve problems. That opens the door to dictatorship. If the U.S. becomes a dictatorship it will not have any better claim to lead the world than China or Russia. The founders didn't design the Constitution with partisan politics in mind. When people become more loyal to their partisan factions than what brings us together, including respect for rule of law, in spirit as well as letter, America is dead. When that happens, YOUR rights will be dead.

[Beet]

Bloomberg, Biden and TMac now reconsidering and less likely to run due to Dem leftward shift.

The Democratic Party is racing at breakneck pace toward George McGovern territory.

This isn't a bad thing.

And the GOP pole-vaulting past Barry Goldwater and shacking it with Jesse Helms to great reward is evidence of that. It's not like the old trajectory towards Joe Lieberman or '80's Mondale did anything useful anyway.

Political polarization is bad for democracy.

You get things like government shutdowns. You get gridlock and the inability for Congress to solve problems. That opens the door to dictatorship. If the U.S. becomes a dictatorship it will not have any better claim to lead the world than China or Russia. The founders didn't design the Constitution with partisan politics in mind. When people become more loyal to their partisan factions than what brings us together, including respect for rule of law, in spirit as well as letter, America is dead. When that happens, YOUR rights will be dead.

Got a lot of problems with this. You talk about loyalty to partisan faction, but a more accurate way of thinking about it is loyalty to a coherent set of social and economic values. Should we abandon our values because in some abstract sense "polarization is bad"?

 

The social and economic values of the Republican Party have become nothing but ethnic nationalism, one of the worst possible if not the most deplorable "social and economic value" there is, while the social and economic values of the Democratic Party, while not as bad (most of the time), are anything but coherent. Is that a good thing? I don't think so.

Further, even if these "social and economic values" were worth loyalty, it still tears the country apart. Would you support authoritarian measures to implement your "social and economic values"? Would you support undermining the Constitution, representative government, freedom of speech, due process, or support a dictatorship?

I like the United States system of government. Trump talks about Nationalism, but what I am arguing is actual Nationalism here. The Chinese are not going to come marching through Washington D.C. Neither are the Russians. The only people who can destroy this country are ourselves. The Soviet Union collapsed because by the end, no one believed in it any more. No one would lift a finger to save it. I like living in a country where people have rights. I like living in a country where the highest civic religion is the Constitution, human rights, and liberty. That is how America has thrived for over 200 years. I am not a fan of the worldwide authoritarian resurgence.

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Sure, save the Civil War, any other time but now. Political polarization of course always exists in some corners of every society, but it is usually disorganized and so does not prevent the operation of government. The difference is that today the most divided elements of society have their divisions reflected in political parties.

For hundreds of years, political parties existed as a matter of necessity: it made sense to organize into coalitions because you could logroll. John gives Michael X and Michael gives John Y and together they can form a majority coalition and so on.

But parties did not exist at a spiritual level. Today they do. This is bad, because when political parties are no longer practical organizations but religious organizations, the worst divisions in society are given expression. Democrats start to care more abut the Democratic Party than the good of the United States, and Republicans care more about the Republican Party than the good of the United States. This is toxic. It means too much is at stake in elections. It's okay to have disagreements, but there has to be a limit or else society falls apart because the two sides no longer have any common ground, no reason to respect the other.

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That illustrates my point, however. To effectively reform the system you would need broad agreement on how to reform it, and that is impossible, just like every other effective action, when there is sharp polarization. Because each side only cares about how it is going to benefit their side, and not whether the change makes sense on its merits.

[Beet]

This is such a straw man--no one is arguing in favor of authoritarianism here.  Just the opposite, really.  The critique is that the American political system, from the signing of the Constitution to the present, has been too authoritarian, too antidemocratic.  And it's not because we've suddenly become politically polarized as a society--our system of governance has always been this way.  If anything, our system has gotten far less authoritarian and dictatorial since around 1968, the start of our current politically polarized era.

You don't have to explicitly argue in favor of authoritarianism -- the logic of Party over all else inevitably leads to it. Why do you think China has an authoritarian government? Before the PRC there was the CPC. The CPC was in WWII and the Civil War and it was everything. Once the PRC was established, why have a multiparty system? Everyone agrees the CPC should be in power. And if Party is what matters, why not use authoritarian means to achieve the Party's ends? I'm not saying it's going to happen overnight- but it is moving in this direction.

Already you have a Court system that has become another political arm, and it is losing its legitimacy. John Roberts is trying to keep it alive, but it is already at the point where both parties simply see the Courts as another means of achieving their policy goals or blocking the opposing party's. Tell me, in a normal society, would you think a judge is a fair judge if you can predict how that judge will rule on certain cases years before it is even brought up to trial? Yet this is what we have today. Both parties believe that judges are "theirs" or their opponents. That is why they fight so hard for certain judges and against others to begin with.

Already you have both Republicans and Democrats arguing in favor of the President using National Emergencies to enact policy goals, running around Congress. And they can say that it is necessary because Congress is so gridlocked that it can't get anything done - due to polarization. Eventually if this continues people will conclude Congress is useless, and start supporting the President doing things unilaterally through National Emergency, because stuff needs to get done. And that will further remove pressure from Congress to act. And eventually, if Congress is not doing its job, what will be the point of even having a Congress? Let's do everything through the President...

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The solution to racial segregation did not occur because of political partisanship. Republicans overwhelmingly supported the civil rights bills of the 1960s. If anything, it was relatively non-partisan and when Barry Goldwater tried to make it partisan, he was abandoned by members of his own party and got blown out. That is why it was successful. If the Republican Party had continued to reject civil rights, it would not have been successful.

The civil war, on the other hand, did begin when political partisanship suddenly aligned with sectional polarization, that is true. But it just underscores that when Party divisions begin to align with the most divisive problems of society, it exacerbates those divisions. It should not be up to political parties to solve these problems, because by nature they require consensus to solve. If the Democratic Party had continued to support slavery into the 1870s, that problem would not have been solved either.

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You are taking the victories of a less polarized time, the mid-twentieth century, which saw a decline in lawless violence, terror, and corruption, but which was a relatively non-partisan time, and trying to assign it to the early twenty-first century, where we are seeing a reversal of the positive trends we saw then. That is stealing the achievements of a good era and trying to give it to a bad era.

In the mid-twentieth century, there was strong support for democratic norms on a bipartisan basis, but this was not applied to all people. Liberals argued for these principles to be applied more consistently, and they were expanded. But the principles themselves were safe, and both parties' leaders supported them. Today you have a President, with record high approval ratings from his own party, who openly says things like, "it'd be nice to be president for life [like Xi Jinping]" and acts in a way that never respects America's political culture.

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Well that requires getting a Democratic majority in Congress. That will require you to pick up five Senate seats in 2020. Will you achieve that? Maybe, but maybe not. And even if you do achieve it, to actually pass legislation you will have to agree to get every Democratic Senator to agree to end the legislative filibuster. Will they all agree? Maybe, but maybe not. And even if they all agree, your legislation has to survive a challenge at the Supreme Court. Will it survive? Maybe, but maybe not. And even if it survives all that, you will have to hope the Republicans don't repeal or gut your legislation when they get back into power. Will they refrain? Maybe. But maybe not.

Any probability teacher will tell you that the chance of any X number of independent events happening is the multiplication of each of the probabilities of those events.

Don't you see? You are giving yourself, if not mission impossible, mission extremely improbable. Every lasting achievement is lasting because it became bipartisan. Medicare is safe today only to the extent that it is bipartisan. Roe is not safe because it is not quite as bipartisan. The NHS is in the UK is only safe because both the Tories and Labour accept it. If the Tories didn't accept it, Maggie Thatcher would have repealed it. You can't get what you want with only one Party, you need broad agreement. The same is true of society in general.

[Beet]

Not to be rude, but can we keep this thread on topic?  It's for news about potential candidates. 

Apologies. MormDem made a comment that was worth responding to because his view is rather widely shared in both parties and has been for quite some time. Perhaps a mod should split this discussion out to a different thread.

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So what are you arguing, to oppose authoritarianism or that authoritarianism is good because it makes the masses better off? Get your story straight. I don't think many people would agree with you that the CPC is some good organization.

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Politicized yes, that is the nature of courts- but not polarized in a partisan manner. The test of a good judge should be that the people who are invested in that judge's appointment do not fall into a predictable pattern that aligns with major cleavages in society. If all white people loved a certain judge and all black people hated him, or vice versa, would you think they are a non-racist judge? If all Democrats love a judge and all Republicans hate him, or vice versa, would you think they are not a partisan judge?

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And how are you going to do that? You would need to win the Senate, convince all Democratic Senators to end the filibuster, get the Supreme Court to rule against gerrymandering, which means winning successive presidential elections and waiting for judges to die. And even if you achieve all that, you still won't have achieved a majoritarian body because one vote in bum, Idaho will still be worth 50 Californians in the Senate. In other words, good luck. You're gonna need it. You are like a guy who insists he is going to climb Mount Everest and keeps insisting he can do it without a guide or proper equipment.

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Yes, they were northerners, but they were also Republicans. The Republican party has had a somewhat, ah, friendly relationship with the north. And it wasn't all northerners either. The guy who signed the dang thing and got it through the Senate was a southerner.

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So now you're advocating solving things by civil war? That's just my point. The logic of ultrapartisanship ultimately leads to authoritarian solutions to problems, including violence. That's just how dictators think. When a dictator has a problem, he just shoots a guy. Is that how you want things to be run? Once you've endorsed that, you have endorsed dictatorship.

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Jim Crow was dismantled during that era. Jim Crow was established in the late 19th century-- a time when there was high political polarization and partisanship.

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The question is why achievements last, not why they are bipartisan. There's nothing intrinsically valuable about an achievement being bipartisan. So saying "it lasts because it lasts" is circular reasoning. History shows that policies last when both parties agree on them and they have broad consensus in society. Policies that don't have that don't last. Because in a free, democratic society, power by its very nature shifts from one hand to another. Opposition parties win. And if one of those parties disagrees with a policy, it will have a chance to repeal it.

Why are you so against bipartisanship? It seems as if the very idea of broad agreement in society is offensive to you.

[Beet]

Bad move. Cornyn will be much tougher to defeat to Cruz. Beto should not waste his profile on this and become known as the guy from Texas who lost twice while trying to run for Senate.

Nah.  If he wants to hold higher office, he should run now, even if he is likely to lose.  At the very least he would make the state competitive, which means Republicans would have to invest tens of millions more keeping Texas than they otherwise would, draining resources from other competitive states.  That's the kind of thing that can build a lot of good will with the party establishment, and it wouldn't be unreasonable for Beto to expect a prominent job with the next Democratic administration if he gave it his all.

Having said all that, I think Beto is hugely overrated as a politician and some other candidate, Kim Olson maybe, would probably do just as well.

I don't know why everyone gets the idea that Cornyn is titanically more popular than Cruz. Polls don't reflect it, and Cruz, not Cornyn, is the guy who overwhelmingly beat Trump in a Texas presidential primary.

[Beet]

Biden's implosion is going to be biblical. He'll lead every poll after he announces. The honeymoon period will be real. But what comes after -- the POP. The collapse.

I can't wait to see him drop out.

Remind me of what Atlas was saying about Trump in 2015. "Yeah he's leading in the polls now, but he'll collapse any minute now! I can't believe X scandal hasn't ended his campaign already."

[Beet]

Michael Dukakis 2020? He's a proven winner in West Virginia.