U.S. Politics: 22 Trillion Problems But An Unsecured Border Ain’t One

[IheartIheartTesla]

19 minutes ago, DMC said:

In the last Iowa poll I saw, Harris was beating Sanders for second.  If you've seen one more recent please link me.

Your's is more recent, the one I was quoting was from mid-December of last year: https://www.cnn.com/2018/12/15/politics/cnn-poll-iowa-2020-caucus/index.html.

Looking through I few more polls (including one from Feb 7 out of Iowa by Firehouse Strategies that has Harris in 2nd as well), it does look as if she may have made significant inroads in that state.

[DMC]

10 minutes ago, Mlle. Zabzie said:

I do think the next few months will give those with the benefit of elected office a lot of huge (but potentially risky) ways to get more name recognition.

Meh, there's not going to be anything too interesting to come up legislatively that will make a difference with MCs that are running.  Even if something salient does come up, which I doubt other than the obvious emergency vote, they'll all almost certainly vote the same way.

11 minutes ago, Fez said:

I'm 100% on board with Biden when he says the primary season is too long and there's no need for candidates to declare this early

This is true in principle, but in practice?  No, it's better to start, or at least decide and wait to 'start,' earlier.  Otherwise you're just unnecessarily narrowing the field of campaign talent and fundraisers.

14 minutes ago, Fez said:

If a candidate who didn't win anything but has a big money-bomb donation drive after Super Tuesday citing success in delegates won, that'll blow up any media narrative about how their campaign is finished. And I think a few of the candidates, especially Sanders, could pull that off.

A candidate that hasn't won any of the four contests before Super Tuesday is not going to win the nomination.

15 minutes ago, Fez said:

Also, because Super Tuesday has states that play well to specific candidates that may otherwise be tier 2 if things go badly for them, I'm specifically of MA for Warren, AL for Booker (he made a lot of friends down there campaigning for Doug Jones), CA for Harris, and VT for Sanders, the four of them could point to wins there as reason to hang around even if it's a different group of 3 or 4 candidates that has won everything else.

If those four candidates are still around by Super Tuesday to win those states, then there's only two others that possibly will be in it - Beto and Biden.  In which case, yes, the delegate count immediately after Super Tuesday would be the primary way the media would decide which 1-3 are in and which 4-6 "are" but, ya know, aren't worth mentioning much.  I'm saying three to be generous.  It'll probably be only two that the media focuses on.  Anyway, I don't even agree with this hypothetical.  I don't think there will be more than 4 candidates - tops - left that are actually viable by the time Super Tuesday comes around.

[Maithanet]

1 minute ago, DMC said:

A candidate that hasn't won any of the four contests before Super Tuesday is not going to win the nomination. 

 

If those four candidates are still around by Super Tuesday to win those states, then there's only two others that possibly will be in it - Beto and Biden.  In which case, yes, the delegate count immediately after Super Tuesday would be the primary way the media would decide which 1-3 are in and which 4-6 "are" but, ya know, aren't worth mentioning much.  I'm saying three to be generous.  It'll probably be only two that the media focuses on.  Anyway, I don't even agree with this hypothetical.  I don't think there will be more than 4 candidates - tops - left that are actually viable by the time Super Tuesday comes around.

I'm with you on this one.  If a candidate doesn't win one of the first four, I think they're finished.  I mean, those four states are pretty different, and if you can't win any of them, how could you possibly be the winner?  You would be gauaranteed to lose at least 20% of your support in other states just because you look like a "loser", and losing that kind of support is fatal.

Hell, I can easily imagine a scenario where a candidate like Warren wins NH and then MA on Super Tuesday and still is more or less dead in the water.  Or Booker winning SC and AL but nothing else. 

[Zorral]

The only prediction I'd dare to make with any percentage of certainty is that the Dems will screw up their 2019 presidential election opportunity early and soon, and do it through refusal to admit they are the party of non-whites, younger people, diversity, etc.  They really really really want to believe they are the party that represents old white rich people.

In the meantime the orange nazi gives away the nation and national security to Russia and Saudi and ... North Korea! and is determined to put people who tell the truth about him in jail, by law.

 

[Jace, Extat]

Isn't Super Tuesday like a calendar year away?

[DMC]

2 minutes ago, Jace, Basilissa said:

Isn't Super Tuesday like a calendar year away?

MORE THAN!

But fuck what else are we gonna talk about?  Trump?  Are you that mean?

[Jace, Extat]

Just now, DMC said:

MORE THAN!

But fuck you what else are we gonna talk about?  Trump?  Are you that mean?

Fuck me? Fuck ME!?! I mean I wouldn't. But some people don't have standards. Can't be helped.

Pretend the Meuller report is going to matter. It's supposedly coming out soon or something according to the Fake News CNN alert I didn't read. You delusional bobble heads should get a solid 30 pages of frothing at the mouth out of that.

And the Saudi nuclear armament stuff was waaaaaay to brief. I think y'all should revisit that one.

[Fez]

8 minutes ago, Maithanet said:

Hell, I can easily imagine a scenario where a candidate like Warren wins NH and then MA on Super Tuesday and still is more or less dead in the water.  Or Booker winning SC and AL but nothing else. 

But I think, depending on who the other candidates are remaining at the time, that may be enough to last at least through the end of March. If the other candidates are Biden, Booker, and Klobuchar, I think a Warren that only won NH and MA would have enough of a lane as being more liberal than them. Likewise for a Booker that only won SC and AL if the other candidates are Warren, Sanders, and Harris.

The problem is, it's been so long since there's been a Democratic primary with this many competitive candidates this early that we don't know how things will shake out. In 2004 Kerry basically had things wrapped up by mid-February with most candidates dropping out quickly after NH and Edwards never becoming a threat. On the other hand, in 1992, Harkin won IA, Tsongas won NH, Brown won ME, and Kerrey won SD. Clinton only won GA on Super Tuesday, with Harkin, Tsongas, and Brown splitting the rest. The immediate races after Super Tuesday suggested a four-candidate race that would last a while, but Clinton got a huge boost when all the southern states voted on the second super Tuesday and he became an enormous frontrunner. However, there's no similar geographic clustering in 2020, so if the early states split the way they did in 1992, things could on for quite a while. Or not; 1992 was a while ago after all.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

5 minutes ago, Jace, Basilissa said:

Fuck me? Fuck ME!?! I mean I wouldn't. But some people don't have standards. Can't be helped.

Pretend the Meuller report is going to matter. It's supposedly coming out soon or something according to the Fake News CNN alert I didn't read. You delusional bobble heads should get a solid 30 pages of frothing at the mouth out of that.

And the Saudi nuclear armament stuff was waaaaaay to brief. I think y'all should revisit that one.

We could always just drop our standards and speculate recklessly about the candidate’s personal lives. Here’s two to open the gate:

Swalwell with have his college sex tape leaked.

People will find out that Booker is asexual.  

[DMC]

3 minutes ago, Jace, Basilissa said:

Pretend the Meuller report is going to matter. It's supposedly coming out soon or something according to the Fake News CNN alert I didn't read. You delusional bobble heads should get a solid 30 pages of frothing at the mouth out of that.

Wait, so instead of speculating about the primaries we should speculate about the Mueller report?  The former is pretty much what political geeks speculate about, all the time.  The latter is something I don't get to involved with in terms of the tea leave reports, because there's just no basis to go off of.

5 minutes ago, Jace, Basilissa said:

And the Saudi nuclear armament stuff was waaaaaay to brief. I think y'all should revisit that one.

Totally cool talking about that.  Thing is, think everyone's in agreement on that one.  Even Cas!

[DMC]

2 minutes ago, Fez said:

The problem is, it's been so long since there's been a Democratic primary with this many competitive candidates this early that we don't know how things will shake out. In 2004 Kerry basically had things wrapped up by mid-February with most candidates dropping out quickly after NH and Edwards never becoming a threat.

The first sentence contradicts the second.  In 2004 there WERE many candidates throwing their hat in.  Obviously not this many, but it still got to the point that Wesley Clark though he had a chance.  That's actually pretty similar to the Rick Perry announcement in 2012.  Kerry did have things wrapped up early - in spite of the fact the field was very fluid before the primaries actually started.  That's my point.

[Jace, Extat]

7 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

We could always just drop our standards and speculate recklessly about the candidate’s personal lives. Here’s two to open the gate:

Swalwell with have his college sex tape leaked.

People will find out that Booker is asexual.  

Now I can get on board with this. 

Dance for me monkeys! DANCE!!!

7 minutes ago, DMC said:

Wait, so instead of speculating about the primaries we should speculate about the Mueller report?  The former is pretty much what political geeks speculate about, all the time.  The latter is something I don't get to involved with in terms of the tea leave reports, because there's just no basis to go off of.

Totally cool talking about that.  Thing is, think everyone's in agreement on that one.  Even Cas!

I can't believe I wrote "to brief". I feel to ashamed to edit it now that you quoted me. 

I think I'm just gonna walk into the desert now and never come back.

[Fez]

2 minutes ago, DMC said:

The first sentence contradicts the second.  In 2004 there WERE many candidates throwing their hat in.  Obviously not this many, but it still got to the point that Wesley Clark though he had a chance.  That's actually pretty similar to the Rick Perry announcement in 2012.  Kerry did have things wrapped up early - in spite of the fact the field was very fluid before the primaries actually started.  That's my point.

2004 is 16 years ago, or will be by the time voting starts, I think that qualifies as "so long" when it comes to electoral politics. Were the electoral dynamics of the 1960 primaries relevant to 1976? I'd say not never much.

[Jace, Extat]

3 minutes ago, Jace, Basilissa said:

Now I can get on board with this. 

Dance for me monkeys! DANCE!!!

I can't believe I wrote "to brief". I feel to ashamed to edit it now that you quoted me. 

I think I'm just gonna walk into the desert now and never come back.

WHATTHEFUCK!!!!

NO NO NO NO!!!

StupidFuckingPhone!

It was the phone! The fucking phone did it to ME! THE PHONE! IT WAS THE PHONE! 

I knew I was above such mortal shortcomings! A failure to edit, NOT a failure to communicate.

VINDICATION!!!!

A very select group of people understood when I used the wrong homophone.

[Kalbear]

In other awesome news, Russian trolling has already started targeting Harris and been attempting to divide Sanders/Harris voters. Largely along the lines of the prosecutorial record bullshit. 

(Russian bullshit is also targeting antivaxxers with big videos that result in people being scared, including a huge amount of Russian immigrants in the Southwest Washington area - which just had that nice outbreak of measles. Whoever predicted the future had a huge massive miss on the horribleness of social media reach)

[Guest]

1 hour ago, Mlle. Zabzie said:

No one is asking the important question:  for the candidates who have not yet been assigned, who will spoof them on SNL?

Oooh... way more fun anyway.

So we have Larry David for Sanders, Kate McKinnon for Warren, and Jason Sudeikis coming back to play Biden.

Then I think Maya Rudolph, as mentioned, could be good for Harris, or maybe Leslie Jones, depending on the direction they go in spoofing her. Cicely Tyson for Tulsi Gabbard or Klobuchar and Kenan Thompson for Booker. Maybe Mikey Day for O'Rourke? I'm having trouble thinking of someone to play him.

[Jace, Extat]

4 minutes ago, The Great Unwashed said:

Oooh... way more fun anyway.

So we have Larry David for Sanders, Kate McKinnon for Warren, and Jason Sudeikis coming back to play Biden.

Then I think Maya Rudolph, as mentioned, could be good for Harris, or maybe Leslie Jones, depending on the direction they go in spoofing her. Cicely Tyson for Tulsi Gabbard or Klobuchar and Kenan Thompson for Booker. Maybe Mikey Day for O'Rourke? I'm having trouble thinking of someone to play him.

Beck Bennett for O'Rourke

[Mexal]

9 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

In other awesome news, Russian trolling has already started targeting Harris and been attempting to divide Sanders/Harris voters. Largely along the lines of the prosecutorial record bullshit. 

(Russian bullshit is also targeting antivaxxers with big videos that result in people being scared, including a huge amount of Russian immigrants in the Southwest Washington area - which just had that nice outbreak of measles. Whoever predicted the future had a huge massive miss on the horribleness of social media reach)

Been saying for ages that social media will be the downfall of society.

[Mlle. Zabzie]

7 minutes ago, The Great Unwashed said:

Oooh... way more fun anyway.

So we have Larry David for Sanders, Kate McKinnon for Warren, and Jason Sudeikis coming back to play Biden.

Then I think Maya Rudolph, as mentioned, could be good for Harris, or maybe Leslie Jones, depending on the direction they go in spoofing her. Cicely Tyson for Tulsi Gabbard or Klobuchar and Kenan Thompson for Booker. Maybe Mikey Day for O'Rourke? I'm having trouble thinking of someone to play him.

Would Mindy Kaling come in for Harris?

[Kalbear]

Here's the article on disinformation campaigns.  

https://www.politico.com/story/2019/02/20/2020-candidates-social-media-attack-1176018

In general, I'm going to start doing something this cycle I didn't before - which is simply promoting the candidate I want. As much as I am pissed at Sanders, berating him for his incessant idiocies isn't going to help things. Going in on the candidates I do like is going to be better, and will hopefully avoid the whataboutism that kills democrats from voting.