2020 Democratic presidential primary thread, pt 3: life is very long

If I could I'd vote for Bernie, but he just died.

good luck usanders

La Riva/Peltier 2020

Ahem we have unfinished business leftover from prev thread
_-------------------
Milo has herpes?

― a bevy of supermodels, musicians and Lena Dunham (C. Grisso/McCain), Friday, March 6, 2020 5:10 PM bookmarkflaglink

HPV like Michael Douglas

/lost beastie boys lyrics

I was prepared to vote for Bernie in the CA primary but if I were faced with this choice now I honestly don't know... kinda glad I'm not tbh. Abstaining.

shocked u arent taking the hardbitten strategic sure-loser route

you wrong person you

I think they both suck for very different reasons tbh

🐍 🐍 🐍 🐍 🐍 🐍 🐍 🐍 🐍 🐍 🐍 🐍 🐍 🐍

https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/486393-trump-calls-inslee-a-snake-amid-coronavirus-outbreak-in-washington

🐍 👏 🐍 👏 🐍 👏 🐍 👏 🐍 👏 🐍 👏 🐍 👏 🐍 👏 🐍 👏 🐍 👏 🐍 👏 🐍 👏 🐍 👏 🐍

I appreciate Trump revitalizing the snake discourse!

Did he make a hissing sound?

the hissing of summer pawns

I forgot Inslee was in the damn primary, this shit goes on waaaaaayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy too long

Holy shit, is that the snake icon?! I swear to god I thought it was a green swan, and I was all, green swan? What's up with that? Green swan event?

over the course of today I went from distant optimism for sanders' prospects to total and complete doom. which is good in a sense cause now I can ~let goooo~

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yU1knfz15xI

green swan deal

swan green deal

https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-J-Ctu8lBc-g/UHB0PPr41mI/AAAAAAAAMZs/LEs7V2BswOU/s320/Paul+Williams+as+Swan.jpg

giant swan deal

https://youtu.be/dQm4mxRJgtU

write-in vote for jeb!

Would that it were Inslee!

So what stunt can Bernie pull to get some good vibes at least going again? Cuz he needs one right about now.

This is some pretty good calculus:

https://theintercept.com/2020/03/06/elizabeth-warren-should-endorse-bernie-sanders/

Warren’s longterm threat to Biden and the party establishment is only as strong as her ties to the progressive movement, and the same is true of an eventual endorsement of Biden. Her value in a general election to Biden is her ability to bring Biden the progressive vote and help him unite the disparate wings of the party. Clearly, then, Warren is more valuable to Biden as an eventual endorser if she can actually bring progressives with her, and the most effective way she can do that is if she has endorsed and campaigned for Sanders. The same calculation was true in 2016. Warren’s endorsement of Clinton would have been more valuable to Clinton had Warren originally endorsed Sanders, and would have had more of a unifying effect than it ultimately did. Had Warren endorsed Sanders first, she’d likely have been able to bring more Sanders people with her when she switched to Clinton.

The other possibility — that with Warren’s endorsement, Sanders might surge back and claim the nomination — would also be a boon to Warren, who could name her position(s) in the new administration. And, indeed, with an unstable president and an unpredictable pandemic, any outcome is possible. But given the possible head-to-heads in the general election, and Biden’s demonstrated inability to campaign effectively, there’s more likely to be an administration for Warren to serve with Sanders as the nominee.

But, again, if Sanders falls short, and Warren and Sanders both endorse Biden, she will, paradoxically, have done Biden a significant favor by previously endorsing against him.

I would be delighted to be proven wrong but I really, really don't think that endorsement is on the way.

I was about to read that but the intercept

Ugh. Same here on both counts

Xp

if you can read the NYT/WaPo or watch MSNBC clips you can read the intercept ffs, the bullshit ratio is similar if not better

why in the name of all that’s holy would I watch MSNBC clips?

Did The Nation endorsing Bernie make waves... anywhere? (obv. not in results but it's weird to think about how little anyone pays attention to the only lefty media you could find in most places in the '90s)

I had no idea so I'm gonna say no

https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/endorsement-2020-bernie-sanders/

I don't think a Warren endorsement would be that valuable at this point, enough time has passed that anyone who pays enough attention to her to care about her endorsement knows it would be grudging.

I appreciate the 5D CHESS!! of “Warren should def endorse Bernie to make her Biden endorsement more meaningful.”

idk why anyone in Bernie’s camp wants her endorsement. they’ve spent the past couple of months convincing me she’s Not A Real Progressive.

by "his camp" do you mean snotty young supporters or the actual campaign

I was an Inslee stan till last August. Wish it gave me a warmer feeling to see him back in the news.

One of 10 candidates I'd prefer to the current options.

That describes only 5% of the Bernie camp folks I know, but whatever, I feel like we’ve flogged this horse to a pulp in the previous thread

Xp to roger

I don't think a Warren endorsement would be that valuable at this point, enough time has passed that anyone who pays enough attention to her to care about her endorsement knows it would be grudging.

I think a well-timed Warren endorsement could have done a lot to make the Sanders campaign seem less ideologically isolated, which in turn might have helped with the credibility issue, the sense that he's promising outlandish ideas no one else thinks is worth pursuing, that he's not really "serious." It wouldn't just be about bringing her (whatever) % into the fold, it would be to help say, "hey, these views are representative of a certain wing of the party." And most people aren't really paying a ton of attention to the insider beef shit.

by "his camp" do you mean snotty young supporters or the actual campaign

Yeah and also more simplistically sometimes just that shot of juice / endorphins that a symbolic act like an endorsement provides can do wonders for the whole spirit around a campaign . Right now Bernie-land is pretty morose.

Xp again

otm

I almost want AOC to unendorse Bernie so she could re-endorse him again

She should unendorse him go to endorse Biden and then do the "too slow" handshake thing.

why are Sanders supporters so poisonous on twitter

https://twitter.com/i/broadcasts/1PlJQmrlRMzJE

(that's Obama endorsing Biden)

Why is Obama so much better at looking into a camera and saying stuff than anybody else is?

he borrowed some equipment from Netflix

He's the only person who has ever used a teleprompter

Meanwhile, poor Trump is forced by the deep state to wing it for two hours every night.

I assumed he was instrumental in the near-simultaneous Buttigieg/Klobuchar drop-out.

I kept seeing people -- mostly Sanders supporters -- saying this, and I never understood it. Not saying there weren't backroom phone calls and nudges, but it was 100 percent in Buttigieg and Klobuchar's own self-interest to do that. They knew they were both going to have to drop out right after Super Tuesday (whatever they were saying to their rallies at the time, they had polling, they knew where it was going). By dropping out and endorsing before Super Tuesday, they maximized their leverage to get whatever they got for it, even if it was just prime speaking spots at the convention or consideration for Cabinet posts or whatever. It was smart politics all the way around, and the motivations for everyone were perfectly clear. There didn't need to be anything sinister about it.

Their endorsements were way more valuable -- to them, as much as Biden -- on March 2 than they would have been on March 4.

discussed a little in this piece last week:

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/04/09/barack-obama-joe-biden-2020-campaign-178115

But some of his aides now concede that behind the scenes Obama played a role in nudging things in Biden’s direction at the crucial moment when the Biden team was organizing former candidates to coalesce around Biden.

“I know he did a few things,” said one longtime close adviser to Obama. “He was talking to Biden regularly in that period. I don’t know exactly what he said, but you can speculate! It’s noteworthy that he called Klobuchar and the others right when they got out.”

A person with knowledge of Obama’s conversation with Buttigieg after the former Indiana mayor exited the race explained it this way: “Obama talked to Pete the night that Pete dropped out. When Pete told Obama that he was 99.9 percent of the way there in terms of endorsing Biden, I would say that Obama was encouraging. But I would also say that Obama was very careful not to be seen as putting a thumb on the scale. He and the people close to him are very careful about the optics — the 2016-style optics. Sanders and his supporters had reason to believe the party put the thumb on the scale for Hillary in 2016 and he wanted to avoid that. Obama wasn’t the driving force, but he was encouraging of people who had those instincts to rally around Biden. But he was very cautious and discreet in how he operated.”

A Democratic strategist added, “The truth is, he’d rather be on David Geffen’s yacht than dealing with internal Democratic party bullshit.”

also no need to get excited, but an oil collapse on topic of covid recession is not good for republicans in texas

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/04/13/economic-meltdown-democrats-hope-texas-184613

Trump was talking to Mohammed bin Salman just last week trying to get oil prices back up to the level where fracking makes a profit, mainly because all the states where fossil fuels are a big component of the economy (except CA) are in Trumpland.

“The truth is, he’d rather be on David Geffen’s yacht than dealing with internal Democratic party bullshit.”

Now that's the Obama we know and love.

He long stopped impressing me but it's rare to see a recently retired president acknowledge his policies wouldn't work anymore; he even tipped his hat to Elizabeth Warren.

Political rags teasing liberals with the hope of a purple Texas is just cruel at this point.

Orgasm denial BDSM for former DailyKOS readers.

uh the geffen “quote” is from a “dem strategist.”

Orgasm denial BDSM for former DailyKOS readers.

politics thread title for May

is this good

"It may have taken a once-in-a-century pandemic, but the Democrats are not in disarray," writes @jmartnyt. "Not since 2004 has the Democratic Party rallied behind its nominee this early." https://t.co/939UenM2Ys

— NYT Politics (@nytpolitics) April 14, 2020

The John Kerry Presidential Library is a good place to stop if you're visiting Boston.

luv 2 not be in disarray

it's like I always say if you want to gauge the health of a party you look at how arrayed it is

array of hope

And I see, that these are the eyes of disarray
Would you even care?

quicker than array of light!

everybody loves arrayment

it's a shame about array

voodoo array

new phone, who disarray

I wanna know, have you ever seen array

a hard arrayn's gonna fall

here comes array again

stil I wonder, who'll stop array

https://www.thenation.com/article/activism/letter-new-left-biden/

if anyone's running low on tp

"An Open Letter to the New New Left From the Old New Left"

“work hard to elect him” lol as if, that’s definitely too much to ask

Doesnt @JoeBiden already have that white suburban female vote covered https://t.co/T8t9ntIVkj

— Kim Gordon (@KimletGordon) April 17, 2020

Kim Gordon keeping the torch burning

pfft everyone knows the intercept is in the tank for putin

Oops, meant that for the Bernie bro thread

they're all the Bernie bro thread

“work hard to elect him” lol as if, that’s definitely too much to ask

and here I thought Dems didn't know how to open a negotiation by asking for more than they think they'll get. turns out some of them must have figured it out.

I was searching for an analog in my experience to this Sanders/Biden situation. I rejected my first thought, which tried to compare it to McCarthy/Humphrey, because Humphrey was to deeply a part of the war administration that McCarthy supporters were trying to overthrow.

The nearest I could come was the counterfactual of Ed Muskie having beat out McGovern and asking McGovern supporters to help him beat Nixon. It would have been a hard sell, but we all had had a good dose of Nixon's war policy by then and I am sure that our hatred of Nixon would have sealed the deal. But to "work hard" for Muskie would have been a bridge too far for most anti-war youth.

the analog is every primary ever

if the current state of the US, both domestically and internationally, has not already put you in a position to determine if you plan to vote against or for Donald Trump, a call from a phone bank ain't gonna do it.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EV2HSSuX0AYxb_u?format=jpg&name=medium

lol

goddamn, coronavirus is rotting the brains of america's pundit class

if the current state of the US, both domestically and internationally, has not already put you in a position to determine if you plan to vote against or for Donald Trump, a call from a phone bank ain't gonna do it.

This is a helpful balm on the off-chance you were feeling guilty about not phone-banking, or if you are phone-banking and you don't feel like you're doing ENOUGH phone-banking.

Surely there is a demographic for whom a landline phone call from a stranger will make a difference in what they do or don't do. I know I am not in this demographic. Happy to be educated on who they are.

the analog is every primary ever

What makes this primary unusual is the size of the progressive movement's vote share, which must be courted by the colorless, lifeless moderate. No one as progressive as Sanders has come this close to the nomination in a very long time, except... Sanders in 2016. And in this case the occupant of the White House isn't Obama, but Trump, whose policies, corruption and incompetence make him as hated by progressives as Nixon was.

it's a shame Jay Inslee died and so couldn't be finagled into the Democratic nominee, or put on national TV every night like the governor of New York

The president’s statements this morning encourage illegal and dangerous acts. He is putting millions of people in danger of contracting COVID-19.

His unhinged rantings and calls for people to “liberate” states could also lead to violence. We’ve seen it before.

The president is fomenting domestic rebellion and spreading lies - even while his own administration says the virus is real, it is deadly and that we have a long way to go before restrictions can be lifted.

Just yesterday, the president told the nation science would guide his plan for easing restrictions. The White House released a sensible plan laying out many of the guidelines that I agree are essential to follow, as we work to resume economic activity.

Less than 24 hrs later, Trump is off the rails, ignoring his own plan and spewing dangerous, anti-democratic rhetoric.

The president’s actions threaten his own goal of recovery. His words will likely cause a spike in infections where distancing is working.

That will further postpose the 14 days of decline his own guidance says is necessary to ease restrictions.

We appreciate our continued relationship with the vice president, Dr. Birx, Admiral Polowczyk, Admiral Giroir and others in the federal government. But their work is undermined by the president's irresponsible statements.

I hope someday we can look at today’s meltdown as something to be pitied, rather than condemned. But we don’t have that luxury today. There is too much at stake.

I encourage political leaders of all sorts to speak out firmly against the president’s calls for rebellion.

Americans need to work together to protect each other. It’s the only way to slow the spread of this deadly virus and get us on the road to recovery.

btw NY has CANCELED its prez primary while there are still local contests that will be held... so what is the prince up to?

Strong suspicion that the cancellation of the Dem primary, while it has the side effect of harming this bid to get Bernie delegates to the convention, is really about protecting threatened Dem incumbents challenged from the left by giving voters less reason to turn out https://t.co/Hcm9jqzf78

— David Dayen (@ddayen) April 27, 2020

NY has CANCELED its prez primary

I think it would have to be the NY Democratic Central Committee who decided that, not the NY state elections authorities. But, yeah, NY party politics have long been played from the bottom of the deck as much as the top. Machine politics were practically invented in NY.

democracy briefly returns to NY

https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/politics/judge-restores-ny-democratic-presidential-primary-on-june-23/2403840/

hope this inspiring figure can get back in the game :(

Black lives depend on whether America can be what we want to believe it is. What we need it to be. What it could be. Systemic racism is so woven into the fabric of this country, facing it will take action, honesty, listening, and deep, deep change. And for many of us, humility.

— Pete Buttigieg (@PeteButtigieg) May 29, 2020

white noise of the softest kind