“This woman… COMM-UH-LA? KAM-UH-LA? COMMALLA? Whatever her name is, I wouldn’t take her to dinner anyways.”
I did just think of something that is proper awful and might show up in a bus conversation caught on tape.
He probably thinks she is/is related to the wrestler.
Idiot right wingers on reddit use Horizontal Harris. I wouldn’t put it past trump to use that - and for the media to start focusing on Willie Brown in response.
Important to remember that those Reddit guys are almost certainly incels. They wouldn’t know Horizontal if they had to define it.
You might want to look at the background of the Supreme court justices. All or near all that were nominated this century were former prosecutors. Their job is to put people in jail. Most people who go to jail are poor and black are over represented. The same demographics is true about most criminals.
Which is an issue imo, but such is the world we live in.
Oh I agree, which is why I rather not have a President who spent most of their career as prosecutor. But I don’t think somebody doing their job should be a disqualifier. I’d love to see the Democrats nominate somebody more moderate than Harris, because I think the top 5 goals of the Democrat candidate should be to beat Trump. Gaining an extra 500K votes in California, like Harris will generate is useless toward that goal.
I’m still months away from thinking he’ll be a big factor…but let’s not dismiss Cory Booker either. He’s doing some very Obama-esque things in Iowa and New Hampshire, where he’s basically talking in terms of optimistic policy goals without really telling anyone about specifics–which sets him apart in that regard from Harris, Warren, and other serious contenders in the field. And he’s blending that with a deft hand in Town Halls and 1:1 meet and greets. He comes off as more manufactured than Obama did (and at times that I’ve seen his events online, it’s like he’s auditioning to play the part of Obama, which feels cynical of him)…but he’s pulling crowds.
See and here is where we disagree. I am of the persuasion that pursuing moderation is a more losing scenario. You win the presidency by exciting voters. By vision. And a more progressive platform would increase excitement and engagement.
Remember that in the primary the more radical platform won those upper Midwest states that ultimately cost Clinton the election. Driving enthusiasm is a route to victory. Moderation and triangulation will not get you there. There needs to be an animating force, which can be based on a moderated platform if you have generational charisma and speaking ability like Obama.
I used to share Strollen’s perspective but my views having shifted over the past few years. I think you’re right on the enthusiasm front. I think for any true moderate (i.e. not a Republican-only voter who calls themselves a moderate), they’re already going to be in the camp against Trump. What is needed is excitement and enthusiasm to drive people to the polls.
Do you disagree that top 5 goals should be to beat Trump. Or that moderate candidate is less electable than a progressive because of a lack of enthusiasm? If it is the former, I think you are crazy. If it is the latter, then that’s been a debate as long as we’ve had parties.
I think both the “excite the base” crowd and the “try and pick up swing voters” crowd cherry pick data to support their case. I expect Trigger will be along shortly to educate us :-).
BTW, out on the campaign trail, the one candidate who’s pulling bigger and more enthusiastic crowds than Booker is Harris.
Politico reporting that Sanders has recorded his 2020 campaign announcement video.
I agree on the goal, what I disagree in on how to achieve it.
The reason I take the stance that a progressive candidate platform is preferable is because the way of the political winds. For too long has the Overton window been allowed to be pulled right, and the immoderate policies of the GOP have not been electorally punished. There is clearly a populist trend, for many reasons, and in reality pursuing an actual liberal populist package would be able to drive far more support.
If Trump won by promising a false and shallow populist notion, what would an actual populist package do? A progressive platform that speaks to the issues of the working class, rather than pays lip service while pandering to the wealthy, would be able to deliver actual gains for the people being squeezed out today.
I’m not up to date on the american polls in all 50 states and how that effects eligibility with the electoral college, but moderate centrism (whatever that means) in Europe is either a recipe for losing hard or for being ineffectual and being questioned at every decision.
I don’t think historical records are of much use for current times, with a recession coming and all that.
It will be difficult to guess who is more electable until we start to see polling in the dozen or so states that actually matter in the general.
One thing to be a little bit watchful of, I think, for 2020: more “radical” (quotes intentional) platforms played very well in 2016. And our country has had a nice little streak with “outsider” candidates winning for at least 12 years now.
But American political history has typically been a pendulum that swings between opposites; after four years of Trump, what we may discover in 2020 is that what an awful lot of voters want is stability and a sense of political establishment again. That’s certainly what Biden is hoping for, if he gets in. It’s probably a bit of what Gillibrand and Booker are going to try to tap into. Maybe Harris a bit, too.
But…it’s possible that polling is still showing a hunger for more “radical” policy and outsider candidates. Sanders polls incredibly well, even with his age. So perhaps the pendulum is still yet to swing, or is in motion but not there.
What I do know, though, is that it’s a standard maxim among successful political strategists that the quickest way to lose this year’s election is to run it with the strategy that would’ve won last year’s.
All decent enough things to consider, which is why you need to look at the fundamentals of why populist outsider was the ‘winning’ combo.
And many of the economic fundamentals that drove people towards that platform have not changed. Wage stagnation is still a thing, increasing wealth inequality is still ongoing. Healthcare costs are a millstone around the working class. Trump may have superficially appealed to some of that (ignoring for now how Hillary actually tackled those topics, but wasn’t ever covered in the media), and people will still be looking for answers for those in 2020.
Which is why I think aiming to actually get the message about those topics would be winning.
This . Even when we get polls with the first primary a year away and the election 20 months away, the value of the early polls is pretty useless. In May 2015, the poll leader for the GOP nomination were
Jeb Bush, Ben Carson, Mike Huckabee, Marco Rubio and Scott Walker. a year later only Rubio was left.
And what’s really interesting from a horserace standpoint is that a candidate like Joe Biden might really have this in his wheelhouse. If people are thinking “We need an established governing person running,” he can get into that suit. But he can definitely play the game on the continuing issues of income and wealth inequality very well.
There’s this weird tone to the way a lot of pundits cover the advance, big tent debates before primary season. It’s a kind of exasperated, dismissive tone. And I guess I get that a little. It’s so far before election day; there are so many debates. But…
I think you can make a very good case that pre-primary debates basically shaped the elections of the last two presidents. Clinton looked like she’s still manage to win Iowa, win New Hampshire, and win Nevada while running a strong second in South Carolina maybe. And then in one of the later debates on Halloween night in 2007, she gaffed badly on driver’s licenses to undocumented aliens. She was for it, but then against it, and all over the map, and it was Chris Dodd who really nailed her on it. (In hindsight, Clinton probably had the right answer the first time, but it’s an answer that played better in 2016 than in 2008.)
Anyway, that answer killed her in Iowa. Her numbers plunged there (Iowans were already skeptical of her), and she all of a sudden seemed way less inevitable.
And on the GOP side, it was really a series of debates where Trump made his business brand translate into his political brand, tattooing his rivals with goofy nicknames and showing that a candidate could essentially run a content-less, reality show style campaign and win the nomination.