US Politics: Dead Pimps Need Not Apply

[Morpheus]

The other side of Beto’s performance is that Ted Cruz is uniquely loathed by all sides, establishment Republicans, Trumpists and Dems. A less personally reviled Conservative may have had a more impressive victory instead of barely turning out enough people to vote for the party status quo.

[Ormond]

11 minutes ago, lokisnow said:

.

And the third reason is we are currently enduring the worst and most divisive president since Franklin pierce, Pierce was denied a second term by a candidate with the following resume: one time congressman, failed senate campaign, presidential campaign. Betos resume: one time congressman, failed senate campaign, ???

 

What are you drinking?   Franklin Pierce was followed in office by James Buchanan, who was a member of the same political party and who denied Pierce renomination in a party convention (the only time that happened to a sitting President). Buchanan was a member of the US House for ten years, from 1821-1831, was a U.S. Senator from 1834 to 1845, and was the Secretary of State between 1845 and 1849. That resume doesn't fit what you are describing at all.

[mormont]

3 hours ago, Let's Get Kraken said:

Then you need to take another look at where the star power is in the DNC these days. In another decade or so I could see Ocasio-Cortez being like a young, brown, female JFK.

I think that's both over- and under-selling Ocasio-Cortez. She has zero experience as yet, so you may be premature: but I don't see any reason to think she needs a full decade of seasoning, either.

2 hours ago, The Great Unwashed said:

Jesus Christ, can people seriously not be excited about Beto without there being an insinuation of racial bias?

I mean, yeah: if racial bias didn't play any part in people getting excited about candidates in the first place. That's kind of a chicken-and-egg question. Is Beto's greater media coverage wholly down to his race, or wholly down to his charisma? Neither is likely to be true, is it?

17 minutes ago, lokisnow said:

Several reasons, within the young democrat social media bubble abrams gets zero shares, Gillum gets like 2%, Bernie gets 10%, the obamas get about 15% and Beto gets ALL of the remaining amount  of social media awareness and shares. Literally everyone politically active in the young democrat social media bubble knows who he is and loves him.

I'm taking it that these aren't supposed to be stats from somewhere, but a way of indicating your impressions from within that bubble? I'm certainly not in it, so I'll take your word for that.

17 minutes ago, lokisnow said:

the second reason is that he would have  a strong base in the democrat establishment, because the kennedys have already tacitly gone public with their support of Beto.

[nitpick] You can't 'tacitly' go public. [/nitpick] :p

[Guy Kilmore]

Just now, mormont said:

I think that's both over- and under-selling Ocasio-Cortez. She has zero experience as yet, so you may be premature: but I don't see any reason to think she needs a full decade of seasoning, either.

There is a minimum age requirement for president. It's 35, she is like 28.

[mormont]

1 minute ago, Guy Kilmore said:

There is a minimum age requirement for president. It's 35, she is like 28.

I thought she was 29? Which would make her eligible from 2024?

[Datepalm]

After catching up on the midterm results (flights, conference), my gut feeling is now that Trump will take 2020 (if he runs). The rot in the right runs to the bone. That 40% of trumpists is rock solid, enthusiastic, and holding steady if not growing. The left will continue to eat itself in internecine battles that conflate coolness and self-satisfaction with ideology and solidarity.

[denstorebog]

1 minute ago, Datepalm said:

After catching up on the midterm results (flights, conference), my gut feeling is now that Trump will take 2020 (if he runs). The rot in the right runs to the bone. That 40% of trumpists is rock solid, enthusiastic, and holding steady if not growing. The left will continue to eat itself in internecine battles that conflate coolness and self-satisfaction with ideology and solidarity.

Agreed. Hence ... Beto.

[Ser Reptitious]

4 hours ago, denstorebog said:

Personally, I think Beto is by far the best shot the Dems have at 2020 right now. If he wants to go for it, and they play it right, he could be the second coming of Obama at the time when the nation needs it the most.

Which could be a mixed blessing, when you consider

(1) how long it took Obama to wake up to the fact that the Republicans weren't interested in doing the kumbaya thing; and

(2) how the Democrats fared up and down the ballot (including at the state level) during his tenure post-2008 election...

Don't get me wrong, I loved Obama and I loave the Republicans for the scorched earth approach they took towards his presidency, but I'm worried that Beto might once again try to play the "let's reach out across the isle" card, despite the fact that by now it's crystal clear that the Republicans are in no way even remotely interested.

Also, Obama decided to forego criminal prosecution of the individuals responsible for the 2008 financial crash in the name of 'starting fresh'. With all the crimes that this administration is committing, from family separations on downwards, this cannot happen a second time!

[Datepalm]

7 minutes ago, denstorebog said:

Agreed. Hence ... Beto.

I don't think so. Or rather, don't feel so. Like I said, this is a gut feeling, an impressionistic reaction to midterm results that were far worse than I expected in complicated and varied ways across swaths of geographies. I don't have an analysis here. But I'm not saying I think Trump will win if democrats don't find the right candidate. I'm saying I think Trump will win, and democrats are not sufficiently what I can recognize as a political party to have what I can recognize as a candidate in a democratic election to the leadership of a nation state. It doesn't matter who it is - the vortex of celebrity, identity, mutable policy, personal representation and posturing this role IS makes anyone who fills it devolve into a nonsensical loathsomeness. It is my current working theory that Barack Obama was the last president of America.

[denstorebog]

23 minutes ago, Datepalm said:

I don't think so. Or rather, don't feel so. Like I said, this is a gut feeling, an impressionistic reaction to midterm results that were far worse than I expected in complicated and varied ways across swaths of geographies. I don't have an analysis here. But I'm not saying I think Trump will win if democrats don't find the right candidate. I'm saying I think Trump will win, and democrats are not sufficiently what I can recognize as a political party to have what I can recognize as a candidate in a democratic election to the leadership of a nation state. It doesn't matter who it is - the vortex of celebrity, identity, mutable policy, personal representation and posturing this role IS makes anyone who fills it devolve into a nonsensical loathsomeness. It is my current working theory that Barack Obama was the last president of America.

I don't disagree with any particular point about the democratic party as an institution. But it's worth noting that Donald Trump is paying a tremendous price for his popularity among his own. He is the most hated president, probably most hated individual, in the U.S. in modern times. People who didn't much care for politics up until now have been given a real-life antagonist that'll get them to the polls, a Satan made flesh that even the most apolitical 18 year old, self-ascribed 'moderate' knows how to loathe. Democrats don't necessarily need to present a coherent platform in 2020; they just need to present someone who doesn't fracture the anti-Trump coalition. Which, unfortunately, is exactly what will happen with 90% of the currently proposed candidates, given a little push from the Russian haymakers.

So I'm cynically hopeful that loathing can win the day in 2020. As for anything beyond that - Democrats' ability to be an actual party going forward, or anyone's ability to stop the cultural war on the horizon - I'm not particularly optimistic either.

[Gone and Quite Forgotten]

46 minutes ago, mormont said:

I thought she was 29? Which would make her eligible from 2024?

Well ideally there'd be a Democratic incumbent by that point...but really it's way too early to speculate. We've seen people come in bright and burn out fast before. And you get my point, most of the new Democrat "stars" are young people, women, people of color, or a combination thereof. Bernie Sanders is a socialist Jew, and he's the Democrat darling the past few years.

[DMC]

1 hour ago, Ormond said:

I don't get the idea that here in November 2018 that we know O'Rourke is uniquely charismatic for 2020. If Bullock or Kamala Harris or Amy Klobuchar or probably any one of several other people who aren't on anyone's radar screens right now manage to do fairly well in Iowa, New Hampshire, and the initial debates of 2020, I see no reason why they couldn't generate just as much enthusiasm as Beto. 

Yup.  I actually really look forward to these primaries because it's the first time I'll be completely agnostic - outside of the strong preference against Biden/Sanders/Warren - since 2004.  Be on board with almost anybody outside those three, but this sudden insistence that Beto should be the frontrunner right after he lost in Texas by two points is ass-backwards - and very emblematic of a certain caricature of Democrats/liberals.

1 hour ago, lokisnow said:

as for Kamala Harris she’s great, but vulnerable, she BARELY won her first statewide campaign in California

She barely won in 2010.  She's significantly improved her margins each time since, which is a good indicator for a campaigner (not to mention much more tangible than most of Beto's apparent bona fides.

43 minutes ago, mormont said:

[nitpick] You can't 'tacitly' go public. [/nitpick] :p

Great nitpick.

[Martell Spy]

Rouda defeats Rohrabacher in Southern California

https://www.politico.com/story/2018/11/10/rouda-defeats-rohrabacher-in-southern-california-race-982946

Quote

 

Democrat Harley Rouda on Saturday claimed victory in the race for California’s 48th Congressional District, unseating 15-term incumbent Republican Rep. Dana Rohrabacher in one of the most anticipated House contests of the 2018 election cycle.

Rouda’s victory is sure to energize Democrats, who've galvanized to flip several House seats in the traditionally heavily Republican enclave of Orange County in Southern California since 2016.

His win adds further padding to Democrats’ majority in the chamber after the party picked up 30 seats on Election Day, and it brings to a close the nearly three-decade tenure of the pro-Russia representative often referred to by critics as “Putin’s favorite congressman.”

 

 

[DMC]

47 minutes ago, mormont said:

I thought she was 29? Which would make her eligible from 2024?

Yeah she's turns 35 on October 13 2024, so she'd be eligible.

[Guest]

6 minutes ago, DMC said:

Yeah she's turns 35 on October 13 2024, so she'd be eligible.

If Democrats are pinning their hopes on an Ocasio-Cortez win in 2024, then we'll be in a lot worse shape than arguing that thinking Beto would be a good candidate in 2020 means you're racially biased, or sexist, or whatever; namely, the 6 more years of Trump's presidency we'll have had to deal with.

[Gone and Quite Forgotten]

2 minutes ago, The Great Unwashed said:

If Democrats are pinning their hopes on an Ocasio-Cortez win in 2024, then we'll be in a lot worse shape than arguing that thinking Beto would be a good candidate in 2020 means you're racially biased, or sexist, or whatever; namely, the 6 more years of Trump's presidency we'll have had to deal with.

We all do realize how absurd it is to be calling candidates for 2024, right?

[Guest]

7 minutes ago, Let's Get Kraken said:

We all do realize how absurd it is to be calling candidates for 2024, right?

I would say yeah, it's fucking absurd, but apparently even handicapping 2020 candidates without first consulting your Intersectionality Chart makes you bigoted, or something, so why the fuck not?

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

4 hours ago, Jace, Basilissa said:

I'm not dismissing the guy, lots of politicians have lost. But by god there are winners! Look at some of the people who actually won. Those are the folks you need to hinge your hopes on.

If they are winning in places where Democrats usually win... how is that helpful?

[DMC]

13 minutes ago, The Great Unwashed said:

If Democrats are pinning their hopes on an Ocasio-Cortez win in 2024

I don't think anyone's doing that, at least in this thread.

1 minute ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

If they are winning in places where Democrats usually win... how is that helpful?

Definitely more helpful that losing in places Democrats usually lose.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

20 minutes ago, DMC said:

I don't think anyone's doing that, at least in this thread.

Definitely more helpful that losing in places Democrats usually lose.

By that logic Nancy Pelosi is a better candidate for President than Beto.  Is that what you are trying to say?  Nominate someone who undercuts Trumps cross-overs not someone who drives his cross-overs to the polls to vote for him again.