It's time to have a 2020 Presidential Election thread

A notable difference between the parties is that Republican voters will absolutely vote for any of their candidates. The same does not historically hold true for the left (which is IMO a major failing.) trump loathing might overcome that this election - but yeah that’s a definite worry.

Is this borne out by data, other than Nader and the mini-Nader effect of Sanders? It strikes me as one of those things that everyone “knows” but looking at least at raw vote totals in general elections, it doesn’t really seem to be the case.

I haven’t looked recently, I thought i read something a bit ago that made this claim with data but I’ve looked at a lot of things so I may well be wrong.:)

1968 (McCarthy and RFK primarying Johnson) and 1980 (Ted Kennedy primarying Carter) are burned deep into the national narrative of how the Dem party works, even though 1980 was 40 years ago.

You can post it after Iowa, I think. If she’s not top 3 there, I’m not sure where her campaign finds any purchase.

Damn, I’m old.

Anyway; Klobuchar is interesting and I certainly see a path to victory if she won the nomination, but I just don’t see her picking up the nomination.

As an aside, I’d vote for a garden slug over Trump at this point, but I know there’s a sliver of potential voters who haven’t made up their minds, yet. I wonder if a more aspirational or a more pragmatic candidate would be a bigger draw to them.

But who are these people? It may be oversimplifying it, but there are three main buckets of potential voters at this point, those who: 1) will vote for anyone other than Trump 2) will vote for anyone with a R after their name 3) have their heads so far up their ass they have no clue when the next election is.

I don’t think the nuanced positions of a centrist-leaning Democrat vs a progressive Democrat is going to sway the votes of bucket 3. The notion there is a substantive voting bloc that will pull the lever for Trump unless only a less progressive candidate is put forward is silly. And even if that were the case - fuck them! This is the opportunity needed to pull the pendulum back to the left, the opportunity to not allow the radical right to set the conversation. The midterms showed progressive candidates can win and work to get things accomplished. That shouldn’t be abandoned by a few pant-wetters.

The issue is we haven’t identified that third bucket, yet, so we can’t really know how big it is nor what they’re looking for. As far as we know, they could be looking for the reincarnation of Chairman Mao; this wasn’t some backwards argument for pragmatism I was making. But at the same time, ignoring a potentially decisive sliver of the electorate (because apparently the US is collectively stupid enough there’s a chance Trump could win a second term) is perhaps a little overconfident.

I don’t see why you can’t be both aspirational and pragmatic. Starting with “we can’t do this” concedes ground before even starting.

These are the big issues for me (not ranked ordered, except climate change since we’re on an imposed deadline)

  • Aggressive action on climate change and biodiversity loss
  • Corruption/campaign finance
  • Criminal justice reform
  • Codifying ethics previously considered as ‘norms’
  • Fixing all the stuff the trump regime broke
  • Rolling back the Imperial presidency
  • Social policies that meaningfully help with the costs of health care, tuition and child care
  • Robust anti-trust legislation
  • Closing corporate tax loopholes
  • Gun safety
  • Infrastructure
  • Legalize marijuana
  • Trimming a bloated defense budget

Now, there’s a near certainty these all cannot be addressed in one term, and absent a 60 seat Senate (impossible) or removing the filibuster (unlikely) there’s a decent chance almost none get done. Is it pragmatic or defeatist for me to say “We can’t have any of these things so we’re not going to bother, instead we’re only going to advance legislation that Republicans can support?”

(To be fair, that list is so far left it’s only a hop, skip and jump to collectives and gulags! just in case obligatory /s)

I guess I’m not explaining myself well; I was aiming for just a simple question of which would be more compelling to this weird group of undecideds; someone who tended to reach for the stars or someone who stayed more grounded. You can’t be both (“more A” + “more B” > 100%) but you could be neither (50/50), I suppose; half the time being aspirational, half the time being grounded. Anyway, I could see arguments for any kind of candidate being more likely to draw from the undecideds/non-voters, but I don’t understand those people so I can’t make an educated assessment.

But yes, ceding ground before any fight will just set you further and further back.

Well the American electorate generally doesn’t tend to vote for policies but rather personality. So me nitpicking pragmatic vs aspirational might be besides the point. There are political science papers that posit who people like this vote for is random - it goes back to the ‘likability’ thing, which I’d guess Klobuchar probably has (not for me mind.)

That really isn’t a very simple question as we would be just as well served to ask what would appeal to the tooth fairy, bigfoot and DB Cooper.

On the issues? Absolutely. But that doesn’t really matter, since the center of the country is very far to the left of Donald Trump.

Nothing will break the Republican hold on the Senate except breaking up the conservative coalition by separating poor and lower middle class whites from the wealthy. To do that, you need to propose programs that can actually make their lives better. And tax-advantaged savings accounts don’t really cut it.

My name is Dan, you know … lol

Is there not value to that, though? Overton window-shifting and all that.

So far twenty years of “reasonable, moderate” policy on climate change has produced jack squat.

My beef with the GND is that, as least insofar as I understand it, it ties climate change reduction to lots of happy social/economic stuff. All worthy goals but it continues to rankle me that “keep earth habitable” is not an adequate policy goal all by its lonesome.

Just me being cranky, I suppose.

Understandable, but it’s never going to move fast if you can’t mobilize resources because you’re too worried about “paying” for it and crowding out business. It would also be a good way to shame the EU into walking the talk, and just not with regards to climate change.

That’s the New Deal part of Green New Deal.

Sure. But that’s not in Klobuchar’s political DNA. She’s not really wired that way. She’s a policy wonk in the most mechanical of ways–she’s all about the moving levers of legislation and policy outcomes and impacts. Her reaction to the GND is about the same reaction you’d get if you asked a math major to explain philosophy, or vice versa. For those that like her, that policy focus is a plus. For those that don’t, it’s a major weakness.