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

Well, it makes it tough to report to FEC.

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Posts with the video surfaced across social media platforms on Wednesday.

I think I can guess the initial platforms.

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The attempts to carve away our ability to describe in plain language what the government is doing continue ever onwars onward. (I originally typo’d that and felt it was appropriate enough to keep in some capacity.) And of course it’s a centrist weenie like Bloomberg who feels the need to express just how uncomfortable he is with people calling things what they very clearly and obviously are.

Dear Michael Bloomberg, since you decided to invoke the dictionary:

assassinate (v.)
murder (an important person) in a surprise attack for political or religious reasons.

Seems to fit the bill to me, dipwad.

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BUTTIGEIG

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This is not about candidates specifically, but I had no idea where to put this.

Rural counties around the country have depopulated to the point where quite a few states are set to lose a House seat…this will categorically affect areas that have been voting Republican rather than Democratic. In fact, in my state (Illinois), they’ll probably eliminate one (red, rural) district downstate in response.

If cities are so awful, than why do so many people move there? /rhetorical

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(Great news. I found a place for it. :slight_smile: )

Edit: And some related good news:

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In the one sense it’s tragic: more people left behind. In another sense, they’ve been voting for GOP grifters for so long that they’re responsible in part for the misfortune that has anyone who wants a future or anyone who’s “unacceptably” different leaving as quickly as possible.

Of course, the GOP isn’t going to allow the loss of a reliable district for them without a dirty, cheating fight.

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And in the intervening time after posting that, I read a (Red State? some drivel like that…oppo research) piece about how liberals are going to cry because the Republicans are going to pick up 6 more Electoral College votes after the census because NY, CA, and IL will all drop one (no understanding that it will be R districts dropped) and the states that increased the most were ones that voted for Trump in 2016 (again, not understanding that WHERE the population increase is located matters, and no sense that quite a few of the people who either laughed or held their nose to vote for Trump in 2016 are not necessarily going to do it again this year).

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I’m okay with the 18th district going bye bye:

Basically, NY/CA/IL will drop three electoral votes from their combined total of eleventy billion, and the states that will get an extra electoral vote will be tipped Democratic by the insurgence of Democratic voters into their state.

Yeah, I’m all for an exodus of liberals into states that need them. I’m more supporting of liberals not leaving their (red) home states to begin with, but red states don’t really have the jobs.

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I represent that concept!

Yup, which is why I can only do it because I mostly work from a home office when I’m not at meetings.

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Virginia is the poster child for that concept. NC may be as well. We shall see how things play out. The events of last week will take a while to sort out, though.

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But the term, “enhanced removal-from-office techniques” isn’t in the dictionary.

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It’s a good thing that CNBC didn’t have any stock pictures at hand for Keegan Michael Key.

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Also, did they leave out Sanders or is he just off to the left of Biden there?

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Here’s a pretty good summary from summer 2019:

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Apparently the “Squawkbox” story also had Trump, Sanders, and Buttigieg.

To me this looks like just another example of a sloppy or incompetent intern, but whenever I suggest such things here I’m derided for underestimating the evil genius of the major networks, who are cleverly manipulating the election by nefariously making small errors in 0.1% of the news images they present.

Quit whinging. I check cnn.com frequently. They go out of their way to ignore and delete Sanders. It’s glaringly obvious.

ETA: It doesn’t have to be evil genius. Hanlon’s Razor would suggest basic incompetence allowing personal bias to show through in coverage that is supposed to be unbiased.

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Yes. Other corporate media too.

Sanders has been treated as a second-class candidate since his first presidential run in 2015. Margaret Sullivan, then the New York Times ’ public editor, admitted that the Times had been “regrettably dismissive, even mocking” of Sanders’ White House bid during the primary season, and pointed out how Trump, by contrast, received wall-to-wall coverage. As The Intercept has pointed out, Clinton got twice as much coverage on TV networks during the primaries as Sanders. A 2016 study from Harvard’s Shorenstein Center found that Clinton garnered triple the amount of overall news coverage that Sanders did.

This dynamic has re-emerged in 2019. Throughout this race, even after Sanders has shown himself to be a serious contender, the media has either given Sanders less coverage than he deserves given his polling numbers, or dealt him disproportionate criticism. In These Times conducted an analysis of presidential race coverage on MSNBC in August and September, and found that in its coverage of Biden, Warren, and Sanders, it was Sanders who received the least coverage and the most negative coverage. (During this time period, Biden was an unsteady frontrunner and Sanders and Warren were neck and neck in national polls until the last two weeks of September, but Sanders was continually shunned during electability-centered discussions.) Katie Halper reported in June for Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting that MSNBC frequently and inexplicably ranks Sanders lower than he actually stands in infographics or makes basic polling reporting errors which are “always to his detriment, and never with any official correction.”

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