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Post by Optimus on Jul 1, 2019 13:24:12 GMT -5
Y'all could just come to Canada. I have a couch.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 1, 2019 14:05:33 GMT -5
Y'all could just come to Canada. I have a couch. Dibs on Opty's couch! I'm very tidy, quiet, fairly handy with a tool box, and I can cook. (Though you're an expert cook yourself, as I recall, so that may not appeal as much as it might for some.) You won't even know I'm there.
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Post by robeiae on Jul 1, 2019 14:24:31 GMT -5
I don't think it's a case of Dems sucking at politics, at all. Repubs have--from my point of view--done things that have cost them elections many, many times, just as often as Dems, including undercutting fellow Repubs. Rather, it's a case of the particulars here: there's a very obvious and stark line in the Dem party right now between the progressive far left and everyone else, and it's so stark that it's leading to candidates trying to draw blood in order to curry favor with that far left (under the mistaken--imo--belief that support from the same is critical).
It's easy enough to draw tea party parallels here. While these aren't wholly analogous events, they are still similar in some respects. And what were the electoral consequences of the tea party movement? Big gains in the House, decent gains in the Senate (for an off year election), but failure in the next Presidential Election (along with small net losses in the House).
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Post by Vince524 on Jul 1, 2019 15:53:59 GMT -5
And republican's don't? They have candidates that put their foot in their mouth so often they should have athlete's tongue.
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Post by Vince524 on Jul 1, 2019 16:02:50 GMT -5
The central theme of Cass's argument is that since right now Biden is in the best position to beat Trump, nothing else matters and Biden, therefore, should be the nominee. She's fine with other people running as long as they don't do any damage to Biden. If another candidate like Harris or Warren manages to usurp Biden than once again the other candidates have a duty to do no harm to the front runner lest they are in a weaker position to defeat Trump.
However, that's never been how politics work, nor should it from here. I don't want to be told I'm stuck with Biden or Trump this far out. I'm rather unsure of who, if any on the D side I'll support in the general. I know I won't cast a vote for Trump unless the nomination went to someone worse than Trump on the D side, and that's not about to happen. My opinion might change if I would move to a swing state before the election, but I don't see that happening. Therefore, a 3rd party candidate is viable for me. (That doesn't mean I plan on voting for a 3rd party at this juncture.) There are a few peeps on the D side I'm open to.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 1, 2019 17:16:17 GMT -5
Gee, thanks for mansplaining my position, Vince. But you don't actually have it right.
(1) I'd like all the Dem candidates to be civil with one another and compete on positions, rather than pulling up and distorting stuff from decades ago, and in fact I am hoping Biden does not answer in kind by attacking Harris's prosecutorial record;
(2) I actually like Harris and would still vote for her happily, but I didn't like the way she handled this and it disappointed me. I wish she'd left this kind of shit to Sanders and Trump. She was kicking ass in that debate and it was really unnecessary, IMO. Up until that point, I was loving her and cheering her on. But, yeah, I didn't like that and she didn't need it.
(3) I do think Biden is our likely best shot at the electoral college for any number of reasons, but will support, vote for and contribute to whoever the Dem nominee its. I like 4 of the top 5 enough that I'll feel good about it, too. (The exception is Sanders-- I'll vote for him, but less happily.)
4) as I said in (1), I hope Biden resists the urge to play nasty, since I don't want things to devolve into a circular firing squad, wherein Dem candidates' attacks in the primaries get played again and again in the general, thus adding to the whole "gee, everyone is bad, I just won't vote/will go third party" factor with independents. That's what I mean when I say it matters HOW the parties compete. If, say, Biden is the nominee, Trump isn't exactly the best person to go calling him a racist. But replay, again and again, attack ads with Harris and Booker doing it...
Since Trump himself is worse on racist, sexist stuff, ads with him accusing the Dem nominee only work on his base. But comments from other Democrats saying it...Well, that will play to swing voters. It's a circular firing squad that helps Trump more than any Dem candidate.
5) Biden is more than just a nominee. He was Obama's VP for 8 years. If Biden is such a terrible racist with a rotten record, that reflects on Obama and the party. Maybe the Dems are not in any position to go throwing rocks, hmmm? Or so the Trump attack ads will go. And gee, look at all the bad things the Obama admin did during Obama's presidency--even the other Dem candidatess think are bad. They said so in the primary. So if Dems are no better than Trump, why put them in charge? Or so the attack ads aimed at swing voters will say. Thus, I think negative primary campaigning hurts the whole party... ESPECIALLY if it's against Biden.
Therefore, I'd like to see the candidates argue about why they are better than the other candidates-- in other words, positive arguments, not negative ones. Save the negative attack stuff for the general against Trump.
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Post by Optimus on Jul 1, 2019 17:52:12 GMT -5
Going back to the debates, the one thing I'd like to see is the elimination of the live audience. It's more of a distraction than anything else and far too many candidates have those "perfectly crafted" but mostly hollow applause lines designed to get a cheap reaction from the live crowd (like Harris' "food fight" line).
If there were no live audience to mine for cheap applause, then the candidates would not be getting immediate positive reinforcement for their pre-planned bullshit and, without that positive reinforcement, they would likely stop doing it and instead have to focus on ensuring that everything they said was intended to convey substance rather than intended to get applause.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 1, 2019 18:12:00 GMT -5
Going back to the debates, the one thing I'd like to see is the elimination of the live audience. It's more of a distraction than anything else and far too many candidates have those "perfectly crafted" but mostly hollow applause lines designed to get a cheap reaction from the live crowd (like Harris' "food fight" line). If there were no live audience to mine for cheap applause, then the candidates would not be getting immediate positive reinforcement for their pre-planned bullshit and, without that positive reinforcement, they would likely stop doing it and instead have to focus on ensuring that everything they said was intended to convey substance rather than intended to get applause. Agree, 150% On a different topic, btw, my lifelong Republican mom is backing Biden.
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Post by Optimus on Jul 1, 2019 18:13:39 GMT -5
Biden is the gateway drug to Buttigieg.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 1, 2019 18:32:35 GMT -5
I suspect Mom would go Buttigieg if he's the nominee. She's not very familiar with him yet but I think she'd like him if she knew more. But like Haggis, his youth and inexperience trouble her a bit. She hates Sanders and doesn't like Warren or Harris. She affirmatively likes Biden and thinks he is a "good man who will try to bring the country together", which is what she cares most about.
She is committed to not voting Trump, which is the most important thing.
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Post by Vince524 on Jul 1, 2019 19:43:24 GMT -5
So whatever I wrote yesterday didn't post. This wasn't my mansplaining what you said, it was my interpetation of it. You want the candidates to aim at Trump, not each other so they don't weaken whoever wins the primaries position to be in the best position to beat Trump. There's nother inherently wrong with wanting that, but there's nothing wrong with my wanting to win a billion dollars. Doesn't mean it's going to happen. The lower candidates know if they don't knock Biden down, they won't be in a position to possibly win. That's the nature of politics, and for those of us who don't know a whole lot about them, this is the part where we see who is who.
The GOP candidates from last election could have done that. All agree not to fight with one another and only aim at Trump, but they didn't. Heck, they could have all dropped out except 1 or 2 early on, so Trump would have been 1 on 1 much earlier. They didn't. They put the chance they could maybe win or increase their political capital before the idea of beating Trump. (In truth, many probably didn't think Trump had a chance.) This is the problem with politics. They're all politicians.
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Post by nighttimer on Jul 1, 2019 19:55:05 GMT -5
I agree with nighttimer that attacking Joe Biden is not only fair, it's how it's supposed to work. I don't want him as my nom, I'd prefer Harris right now. But for sure Biden has no claim to the position, and I don't think the other candidates have any duty to rally around him just because he's the front-runner (right now). The central theme of Cass's argument is that since right now Biden is in the best position to beat Trump, nothing else matters and Biden, therefore, should be the nominee. She's fine with other people running as long as they don't do any damage to Biden. If another candidate like Harris or Warren manages to usurp Biden than once again the other candidates have a duty to do no harm to the front runner lest they are in a weaker position to defeat Trump. However, that's never been how politics work, nor should it from here. I don't want to be told I'm stuck with Biden or Trump this far out. I'm rather unsure of who, if any on the D side I'll support in the general. I know I won't cast a vote for Trump unless the nomination went to someone worse than Trump on the D side, and that's not about to happen. My opinion might change if I would move to a swing state before the election, but I don't see that happening. Therefore, a 3rd party candidate is viable for me. (That doesn't mean I plan on voting for a 3rd party at this juncture.) There are a few peeps on the D side I'm open to. Gee, thanks for mansplaining my position, Vince. But you don't actually have it right. Actually, Vince has it exactly right and dismissing his critique of your position isn't "mansplaining." That's you trying to shut down a point of view you disagree with. Vince is the quintessential swing voter. Not so conservative as to automatically link arm with the Always Trump Republicans as they jump off the cliff, but not so liberal as to throw his support behind just any Democrat who moseys along claiming to be able to beat Trump.
For all your claims of how the Democrats stand no chance if they alienate independent voters, Vince is that guy and backhanding his viewpoint away because it differs from your own is how you push guys like him away from the Dems and into the waiting open arms of the Repubs.
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Post by Optimus on Jul 3, 2019 20:45:49 GMT -5
So, apparently for all her bluster the other night, Harris is actually a hypocrite when it comes to busing: apnews.com/586b1e81cb684654b0cf689b9074c1cbSo, basically, she attacked Biden, accused him of being "on the wrong side of history," intentionally opening him up for accusations of racism, just to score cheap points when the entire time she supports what he said about federally mandated busing. If she didn't have my vote before, she sure as fuck doesn't have it now.
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Post by markesq on Jul 4, 2019 9:28:34 GMT -5
Is that right, though? My understanding of Biden's position was that he thought the federal govt should leave it to local school districts and state govts to make decisions on busing. Harris seems to be saying the same, but for the fed govt to step in if necessary. Local first, federal second. Am I wrong on that? Entirely possible, but if not I don't think she's being inconsistent.
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Post by Optimus on Jul 4, 2019 16:40:09 GMT -5
Is that right, though? My understanding of Biden's position was that he thought the federal govt should leave it to local school districts and state govts to make decisions on busing. Harris seems to be saying the same, but for the fed govt to step in if necessary. Local first, federal second. Am I wrong on that? Entirely possible, but if not I don't think she's being inconsistent. His position, as I understand it, was that he was against federally mandated busing because he believed at the time that the school boards should choose how best to proceed. He didn't want to take the power away from the local school districts to make their own decisions. While in today's context I would definitely disagree with that position, given the cultural thinking at the time ( where nearly 50% of black Americans were AGAINST mandated busing), I can't necessarily fault him for voting against something (within that historical context and zeitgeist) that nearly half of the people it would affect didn't actually want. Her response seems like intentionally vague and slippery doublespeak in that she's saying that federally mandated busing should be a "tool in the toolbox" but that whether it is used should be left up to the school boards (Harris: "I believe that any tool that is in the toolbox should be considered by a school district"). In other words, according to her, busing shouldn't be mandated, it should be "considered." Which is indistinct from Biden's given reason for voting against federally mandated busing. Her bullshit response suggests that she either doesn't understand what "federally mandated" means (which I seriously doubt) or her attack on Biden was as disingenuous as it was pre-planned and when put on the spot, she has to resort to speaking out of both sides of her ass to weasel out of clearly/directly answering the question. By her own words, she essentially agrees with the stance that Biden took, but it's seems she can't admit that, I'm guessing because her playing the race card worked so well on the low-information voters in the base she was trying to get applause from.
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