2020 Election Thread (formerly: 2020 Presidential Candidates Thread) (Part 1)

I really hope this is click bait. Last thing we need!

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Just saw this on Twitter:

Seriously??? There are only two options here. Either she’s willing to back whoever the Democratic nominee is in order to defeat Trump, or she’s indulging in the usual petty politics, willing to risk the future of this country by withholding her support if it’s somebody she doesn’t like.

Need I say which option I believe she’s taking?

I was wavering between Warren and Bernie. Warren’s got plans, but I’m worried she’ll be too conservative and backpedal on promises if elected. Bernie talks a great game, but IMHO seems weak on intersectionality and I’d like to hear more about how he’s gonna make things happen.

But this garbage move is tipping me toward Bernie, not away from him. Like no other candidate has had staffers go rogue? I seem to recall Hillary had some questionable people on her payroll. But then, what do I know? According to one of her close friends, I’m bound for a special hell for not supporting women, because I didn’t choose her in the primary. And she has the absolute hypocrisy to blast Bernie supporters for being abusive?!?

(Don’t read this as me denying the misogyny inherent in our politics, or in any way a denial of Bernie Bros. They exist, and that’s a problem. Yet every candidate has fervent, misguided supporters. Funny how the one she’s pointing out is the one who opposed her last election, huh.)

This reads to me as petty, vindictive, and a clear attempt to subvert the choice of the voters. We are supposed to choose the nominee through participation in the primaries. Not some arrogant Party movers-and-shakers who think they know it all when they’re as far removed from the general public as it’s possible for them to be, and who seem to think only they should have the deciding vote.

Sorry for the rant, but I am seeing red right now. Our country’s democracy is hanging by the slimmest of threads, and the Powers That Be seem more worried about consolidating their influence and manipulating events only in their own favor.

Fuck that.

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I say this as a Clinton supporter from 2016: Hillary, go back to your Chardonnay.

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Reminder from upthread:

Read your history. The center nearly always opts for fascism when faced with the possibility of a socialist movement towards economic justice. Socialism directly threatens their wealth and privilege; fascism does not.

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This is purely personal and petty. It’s too important to the country and the world that the person who wins the nomination is supported by the entire party.

Feel free to oppose or support whoever you want - but if you’re going to undermine the whoever the nominee is - you’re not needed. Go away.

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We should reserve some anger for the people who asked this question at this time. If you ask someone after the convention (or even before the convention but after the primaries) if they would support Candidate X, they should say “yes”. If you ask them before the primaries, you’re asking them to effectively undermine their support for Candidate Y. It is a journalist “gotcha” trick.

For example, suppose someone asks AOC if she would vote for Bloomberg if he won. If she says “yes” then it weakens the case for Bernie since the case for Bernie is practically exemplified by Bloomberg’s corporate history, and it would likewise feel like a smack in the face to AOC’s constituents, many of whom suffered under Bloomberg’s tenure. If she says “no” then it burns important bridegs with the party. However, if she gives her authentic, unvarnished views and says “I’m not going to go there yet, but you know, he is a major-league arsehole” then that seems reasonable to me. It isn’t as good a reply as simply telling the journalist to go get their clickbait somewhere else.

Clinton could certainly have handled the question better, but if she’s a Warren or Klobuchar supporter this was a way she could signal that support, and maybe vent a little more about how she was treated in 2016, without coming right out and saying “yes” or “no” (especially since she will support Sanders if he gets the nomination).

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Clinton is as pissy and petty as a BernieBro when it comes to re-litigating 2016, with some cowardice about who she really supports thrown in. We don’t need to hear another word from someone so incompetent and entitled that she lost to a deranged and cartoonish reality TV weirdo. She and her privileged neoliberal-lite Boomer apologists need to go away for the next 11 months.

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This incident, in particular, made me very hesitant to vote for her in the general election. I have never paused so long before filling in that bubble - my gut told me to write in Sanders, and if I’d thought a minute more about how Gerrymandered our state is, I would’ve written him in.

I am also seeing red, and who I will vote for in the Primary may have just become a lot more clear. :face_with_symbols_over_mouth:

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Could it get worse? Oh yes…

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However, could it also pave the way for smoother adoption of the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact?

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I personally know a “faithless elector”, an elected Republican, who when they discovered they would have to vote for Trump, refused to cast the vote. This cuts both ways. Personally, I feel that concentrating on this issue is like rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic: the foundational problem is that the Electoral College was set up by brilliant political thinkers who had no way of envisioning a future in which tens of millions of citizens would be disenfranchised by the system. That’s what needs to be addressed, not the very occasional time when an elector votes against the popular vote.

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Alternately, the foundational problem is that the USA was set up by a gang of plutocratic tax-dodging white supremacists who had no intention of ever allowing democracy to threaten the interests of their class.

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I don’t think this cuts both ways.

Imagine in the next election there is a state in which all the electors decide to vote for the major candidate who lost the popular vote in that state (citing some rationale - electoral fraud, their conscience, whatever). Now suppose you are going to bet $20 on which party would be the beneficiary of that outright disenfranchisement of an entire state. Which party would you bet on?

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You make an excellent point!

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I have no idea to what to think about this. Concern? Yeah, it’s concern.

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Um, huh?

Not that I expect much of anything sensical or helpful to come flying out of her mouth.

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Birds of a feather…

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