For some reason old people love Mayor Pete. Especially women over 65.
My grandmother’s entire retirement community in North Carolina is Mayor Pete crazy.
Grandma is very confused by this.
But given cable new’s audience. And CNN’s general commitment to false balance, and I wish moderateswere still a thing. It doesn’t surprise me, they seem to be the primary reason he’s getting any attention at all.
They really can’t state law sets a lot of this stuff and the party has little legal standing to supplant state law.
And they really shouldn’t the more you remove the parties from these systems the higher participation and the more Democratic the process. There needs to be a multi state push, and likely federal involvement to nuke caucuses and hold all primaries on the same day.
And there’s been a hell of a lot of analysis showing that putting a single primary day within 6 months of the general would shorten our multi year election season immensely. Reducing the expense of running and thus the influence of money.
Its also how the US ended up with Warren G Harding and shit like the Teapot dome scandal.
And we had a 2 party system at the time anyway.
Uh, can’t the people in charge of the whole Primary tell two states to cool their jets? Or say ‘Go ahead, have whatever you want - but we’ll ignore it and have our own primary on the same damn day as everyone else?’
As I understand it, the floor was raised from the first debate, and the third debate will raise the floor again. That said, I think the DNC underestimated how easy it would be to clear these floors and will be making upward adjustments for the 2024 cycle. This year they seemed to be built around the idea of a 2016-esque field, where there would be a huge clear front-runner favorite and a small handful of others to pick at the scraps, leaving a small tail to the number of candidates who even could get themselves into a poll.
Multi-participant debates are a real challenge to orchestrate, and everyone does it badly. What we get is essentially a really shitty version of a high school debate club debate with everyone shouting over each other all the time and nothing actually happening. But, I think that hand-raising to certain questions (provided they’re well-written) is a useful way to show a potentially large audience where each candidate stands on an issue without chewing up a lot of time. It obviously can’t work for every kind of question or issue, but it can be a useful shorthand to get a broad look, and good fodder for follow-ups.
Maybe at the end of the day, we do need to go full on with publicly funded election (both to shorten them, and to keep the dark money out)… who is running on that? Is it Kloubechar or Gillebrand?
Regrettably? Williamson.
No… I mean, maybe her, too, but someone else has that in their platform, and it’s one of those two more normal white ladies… I just can’t remember which and am too lazy to go look.
can someone honestly explain to me why Biden has such insane support from minority voters?
I mean Elizabeth Warren was also part of Obama’s administration, arguably did far more for everyone via the consumer protection division
Biden would have to fight with the senate for at least four years, maybe more. This is a man who probably had to surrender his drivers license years ago because he just does not have the reaction time anymore.
Every single time a party choose a moderate boring candidate, they lose. It doesn’t drive voter turnout.
Not surprised. He’s a fresh-faced, well-spoken, Bible-quotin’, charismatic young man. Old people love that shit. 
Also has broad appeal (I know, I know), military and executive experience, seems smart, and seems like a good guy. I think he could make a great VP or Cabinet member.
That’s a scandal I’ve not heard of in a long time…now that you’ve made me google it, straightforward bribery seems almost quaint.
New Hampshire’s state law can’t require they go first. It sets a date and allows the SOS to reschedule it so they go first. Nothing in the law requires a party to seat any such delegates. They could simply set dates to not go before and if New Hapmshire wants to disobey that, they can enjoy nonvoting delegates. Instead the parties have gone out of their way to stop other, more representative, states from going first.
The people in charge of the whole primary are the states. At least in terms of dates, voter registration, standards for running and format etc. Since at least the 70’s the primary process has been nested under normal electoral law administered by state election boards.
Saying cool your jets doesn’t preempt state laws, state constitutions, and the US Constitution which gives power to administer elections to the states.
The national parties could negotiate a change to the state laws, but they’d have to do so in concert and they’d probably be fighting the state parties who want early separate primaries cause it raises the influence a state has. Particularly small ones.
Putting the inter party selection process into the frame work of election law is something we did is something we did over the last 50-75 years to defuse the old “smoke filled room” caucus model that drove the last major period of endemic corruption, and political stalemates. During America’s “Golden Age” in the lead up to the Great Depression. And was used to suppress minority votes and exclude whole sections of the population. It gave us a whole lotta fucked up.
When you see changes like this made. Like the super Tuesday Primary block, and that interstate agreement to preempt the electoral college. It tends to be big states that are wholly controlled by one party. Recently almost exclusively Democrats. The parties do not have any authority to unilaterally dictate election policy to states, they gotta get elected in those states and pass a law.
Ideally speaking you don’t want to put private organizations in control of critical democratic apparatus. But like wise it seems important to avoid embedding the parties in the fabric of our government by giving them official standing. And the government only has so much role in dictating the actions of private organizations. So there’s a big ole catch 22 about how you keep them separated enough, but still maintain a democratic process. Part of the reason the Founding Fathers were so anti-politcal party even as they immediately sorted into a couple.
The complete lack of voting rights and election reform as a major issue for 2016, 2018, and apparently 2020 is absolutely bonkers. Its at the root of all the bullshit that’s going on and it provides one hell of a pitch.
He’s such a nice boy. And he looks good in a sailor suit.
I keep expecting CNN to try and set my sister up with him.
Not saying they couldn’t apply pressure. But its not their process to set. And you might have noticed there’s another political party involved (that tends to be in control of these states). If the GOP apply pressure in the opposite direction, what’s an Iowa to do?
Which does not answer my question, but thanks!
We can’t. As long as Warren and Sanders are front runners, the factotums of the Democratic Party will throw anyone and everyone at them in the hopes of finding SOMEONE who can beat them. The Democratic Money does NOT want Warren or Sanders to be the nominee.
I think that’s just perception; they cut him off as well. One difference though is that he spoke quickly so could usually get through 2/3 of his point before cutoff rather than the 1/3 that others (or 1/5 for Klobuchar, who seemed to be on valium, or 0 for Hickenlooper, who just seemed confused) could master.
The debate was essentially a test of (a) how animated the candidates could be, and (b) how quickly they could formulate a soundbite response to an opponent. This isn’t the worst thing in the world, as these will both be useful skills in the general against Trump.
I don’t think having Governor Bollocks in there was a good replacement for Swalwell.
Which leaves me picturing Sanders and Warren fending off all comers, back-to-back, until they are the only ones standing, at which point they offer the American people a choice:
I’m thinking Harris would be a great AG - love to see her DOJ put trump in jail.
That’s exactly what is happening now. If you’re not a registered Democrat you don’t get to participate in the process. Or do you mean “we should exclude the vast majority of party members from having a say in who is the nominee?”
