2020 Democratic Primary Thread: Focus on House & Senate races

[King Kreole]

Are we? I think Warren and you are being too smart/cute. You are getting to the governing/compromise with your opposition before it happens which is a bad negotiating tactic. We are currently in the primary of the Democratic nomination. In this space you need to be as full throated as possible about your goals. The ultimate goal is M4A and you as a candidate need to let the electorate and your opposition know you will fight for that shyt, the end. All the compromising and meeting in the middle comes later. But Warren is already putting the negotiations and ground you will have to give up governing on the table while running. That's dumb, you are letting your opposition and electorate know you will fold before you have to. Only reveal that when absolutely necessary. That's negotiating 101 and she seems unaware of it.

I'm very sympathetic to the idea of going into negotiations with your strongest position, but the degree to which the Bernie left is disassociating from reality is disturbing. Whether or not M4A will have the votes to pass in 2021 isn't unknown. It will be dead on arrival. Literally, the best-case scenario is it only suffers a slightly embarrassing loss as opposed to an overwhelming loss, which is much more likely. The anti-M4A forces know that. So what happens in the aftermath of that? This is the question Ady Barkan was asking. It's ok to argue about differences in strategy and why a doomed M4A vote needing Republican support to pass is better than a possible public option vote needing only Democratic votes to pass, or vice-versa, but let's actually game it out:

Week 1 of his Presidency, Bernie pushes congress to vote on his M4A bill. It gets crushed. Is the idea that in the wake of an overwhelming loss he is now in a better position to make demands and extract concessions for the actual healthcare bill that will pass? It seems possible to me that a devastating loss would erode credibility for his Presidency and put him in a worse position than if he didn't test the congressional popularity for what we know is a very congressionally unpopular bill.

 

[dora_da_destroyer]

because below is my point



I'm not confused because I don't understand them.

don't know what you mean as not being confused because you don't understand them...but that tweet seems to be speaking of democrat politicians, and likely analysts/lobbyists, etc...basically the political elite, not the average dem voter. so unless you weren't speaking about the average joe either, his point and your comment still don't make sense in terms of the average voting person

 

[AnonymityX1000]

I'm very sympathetic to the idea of going into negotiations with your strongest position, but the degree to which the Bernie left is disassociating from reality is disturbing. Whether or not M4A will have the votes to pass in 2021 isn't unknown. It will be dead on arrival. Literally, the best-case scenario is it only suffers a slightly embarrassing loss as opposed to an overwhelming loss, which is much more likely. The anti-M4A forces know that. So what happens in the aftermath of that? This is the question Ady Barkan was asking. It's ok to argue about differences in strategy and why a doomed M4A vote needing Republican support to pass is better than a possible public option vote needing only Democratic votes to pass, or vice-versa, but let's actually game it out:

Week 1 of his Presidency, Bernie pushes congress to vote on his M4A bill. It gets crushed. Is the idea that in the wake of an overwhelming loss he is now in a better position to make demands and extract concessions for the actual healthcare bill that will pass? It seems possible to me that a devastating loss would erode credibility for his Presidency and put him in a worse position than if he didn't test the congressional popularity for what we know is a very congressionally unpopular bill.

So what you are saying is Warren played herself earlier acting like she was down for Bernie's bill and supported Medicare for all like he does? And she should have agreed with John Delaney at that debate instead of poo pooing his call for restraint when talking policy?
See this is where she messed up, she staked out the far left position first and is now pivoting? Why? If you stake out Bernie's position early you got to stick to it and if you are on some John Delaney shyt be on that shyt from jump street. Now you are caught being disingenuous and no one knows where you truly have conviction on the issue. She messed up and overreacted to criticism.

 

[King Kreole]

@mastermind @jayshiggs @King Kreole @storyteller
@tru_m.a.c

I'm becoming convinced that there was nothing Warren could have possibly done to avoid being in this position. It's larger than her. Bernie's most ardent, loud supporters were never going to leave him regardless of what she did. They dinged her when she said she was with Bernie on M4A, they're dinging her now that she has a different transition plan. I think Stoller is right when he says this is about trust. These people just fundamentally only trust Bernie. Their political knowledge doesn't really extend past 2016, so to them, Warren is some random Johnny Come Lately whose origin story is not endorsing Bernie in the 2016 primary. They don't see the work she put in for the years before the 2016 election, so they don't trust her. Dayen is right that Warren's attempts to court these voters has been misguided. She has been trying to be the unifying figure guiding the center to the left, but that just ended in both sides attacking her. All of the candidates are being swept along by the waves of history, where they ultimately land will be neither earned or unearned.

 

[FAH1223]

Everyone going at Mayor Fukkboy



lmaoooo

 

[storyteller]

I'll just address this one point. The American left has not been critical of Obama. The left has. The American left is still trying to count votes on the ACA bill. The American left believes that all of Obama's drone strikes, deportations, yadda yadda yadda, happened because the Republicans held him over the ledge. Everything is always the republicans fault.

Define American left, because I watched plenty of activists actually come at Obama for deportations specifically (yall know immigration is one of my biggies, that's not new). Same with the drone strikes. The left that I come from was plenty critical of this and just didn't get the coverage. I'm assuming you mean the main stream definition of the left, but that's not what Stoller was alluding to. He literally called it the Jacobin Left when he made his comments. I consider that to be the OWS side of things and they were critical of certain Obama Administration decisions for sure.

I found a nice example of what the Jacobin Left was saying about Obama from 2011...that left wasn't happy with his execution.

Dancing on Liberalism’s Grave

 

[King Kreole]

So what you are saying is Warren played herself earlier acting like she was down for Bernie's bill and supported Medicare for all like he does? And she should have agreed with John Delaney at that debate instead of poo pooing his call for restraint when talking policy?
See this is where she messed up, she staked out the far left position first and is now pivoting? Why? If you stake out Bernie's position early you got to stick to it and if you are on some John Delaney shyt be on that shyt from jump street. Now you are caught being disingenuous and no one knows where you truly have conviction on the issue. She messed up and overreacted to criticism.

Warren played herself by believing that the criticisms she was getting were honest or to be taken at face value, when in fact they weren't actually about her or her plans, they were about her basic existence as an impediment to Bernie. It never mattered to these people whether she actually supports M4A or not. They don't trust her for reasons out of her control. So when she responds in earnest by releasing a transition plan that gets to M4A in a shorter timeframe than Bernie's, or releasing a funding plan that gets to M4A without directly hitting the pockets of the working class, we see objectively false counter-arguments that her plan doesn't cover mental healthcare or she wants a 10-year transition plan, or we see Republican talking points about how taxing businesses is the same as taxing workers. What Liz has not understood is that this isn't about what's objective or real, it's about how people feel. She messed up because she tried to do the work to earn trust when we're past that time. There's nothing she could have done to escape this predicament.

 

[tru_m.a.c]

don't know what you mean as not being confused because you don't understand them...but that tweet seems to be speaking of democrat politicians, and likely analysts/lobbyists, etc...basically the political elite, not the average dem voter. so unless you weren't speaking about the average joe either, his point and your comment still don't make sense in terms of the average voting person

That tweet is talking about the average democratic voter. Obama's approval rating is like in the 90s with Democrats. Matt even says that, "This is a real political problem and it's not a few donors or people in DC."

"I hate hillary" voters who like Obama, and vice versa, are confusing as fukk because they hate the other candidate but are forced to acknowledge that the policies, staffing assignments, and nominations between the 2 would be the same. Yet despite these similarities actually believe that there is enough of a gap to justify stanning one and hating the other. That is the myth and the internalized lie. That buffer they craft because they "incorporate things other than policy" is the con that elevates Biden for decades, or boosts a Mayor who only received 8000 votes into the Presidential debates.

 

[Warren Moon]

I'm becoming convinced that there was nothing Warren could have possibly done to avoid being in this position. It's larger than her. Bernie's most ardent, loud supporters were never going to leave him regardless of what she did. They dinged her when she said she was with Bernie on M4A, they're dinging her now that she has a different transition plan. I think Stoller is right when he says this is about trust. These people just fundamentally only trust Bernie. Their political knowledge doesn't really extend past 2016, so to them, Warren is some random Johnny Come Lately whose origin story is not endorsing Bernie in the 2016 primary. They don't see the work she put in for the years before the 2016 election, so they don't trust her. Dayen is right that Warren's attempts to court these voters has been misguided. She has been trying to be the unifying figure guiding the center to the left, but that just ended in both sides attacking her. All of the candidates are being swept along by the waves of history, where they ultimately land will be neither earned or unearned.

If this is what you're looking for. Biden has put in ten times more work than Warren. Its not even close.

I do agree she's trying to bring in the center and the left. It's a bold strategy and can be a winning one. But people haven't seen that strategy for almost 2 decades now. Its very unfamiliar to the electorate.

 

[King Kreole]

Stoller in here doing god's work and cutting through Krystal's superficial sloganeering bullshyt

 

[Warren Moon]

That tweet is talking about the average democratic voter. Obama's approval rating is like in the 90s with Democrats. Matt even says that, "This is a real political problem and it's not a few donors or people in DC."

"I hate hillary" voters who like Obama, and vice versa, are confusing as fukk because they hate the other candidate but are forced to acknowledge that the policies, staffing assignments, and nominations between the 2 would be the same. Yet despite these similarities actually believe that there is enough of a gap to justify stanning one and hating the other. That is the myth and the internalized lie. That buffer they craft because they "incorporate things other than policy" is the con that elevates Biden for decades, or boosts a Mayor who only received 8000 votes into the Presidential debates.

Your right. But ppl like people. You can't remove the human aspect out of the equation. People like Obama because he's likeable. Same for Trump voters.

Whoever gets Obama get's a gigantic boost and we all know who that's going to be.

 

[AnonymityX1000]

Warren played herself by believing that the criticisms she was getting were honest or to be taken at face value, when in fact they weren't actually about her or her plans, they were about her basic existence as an impediment to Bernie. It never mattered to these people whether she actually supports M4A or not. They don't trust her for reasons out of her control. So when she responds in earnest by releasing a transition plan that gets to M4A in a shorter timeframe than Bernie's, or releasing a funding plan that gets to M4A without directly hitting the pockets of the working class, we see objectively false counter-arguments that her plan doesn't cover mental healthcare or she wants a 10-year transition plan, or we see Republican talking points about how taxing businesses is the same as taxing workers. What Liz has not understood is that this isn't about what's objective or real, it's about how people feel. She messed up because she tried to do the work to earn trust when we're past that time. There's nothing she could have done to escape this predicament.

Or she could have endorsed Bernie instead of Hillary in 2016. lol That was actually completely in her control. Now after that you act like Progressives have no reason to not trust her? That disingenuous, sorry.
Now Elizabeth wants to be on the Progressive team in 2020 and act like you and Bernie are on the same page? We need proof since you betrayed Bernie in 2016. And backing off M4A and acting like your Amy Klobuchar now isn't it Elizabeth.

 

[tru_m.a.c]

Define American left, because I watched plenty of activists actually come at Obama for deportations specifically (yall know immigration is one of my biggies, that's not new). Same with the drone strikes. The left that I come from was plenty critical of this and just didn't get the coverage. I'm assuming you mean the main stream definition of the left, but that's not what Stoller was alluding to. He literally called it the Jacobin Left when he made his comments. I consider that to be the OWS side of things and they were critical of certain Obama Administration decisions for sure.

Maybe I'm having a brain fart but where does he say Jacobin left?

But yes, the American left is simply the mainstream, MSNBC, New York Times, Democratic voter. It's not based on any level of class, gender, race, international solidarity. It's not a theory of politics. It's just a party identifier.

 

[King Kreole]

If this is what you're looking for. Biden has put in ten times more work than Warren. Its not even close.

Biden has some real fukking stinkers on his record (crime bill, protecting corporations over voters re: bankruptcy, oh uhh the fukkING WAR IN IRAQ, etc). His batting average is way worse than hers.

 

[wire28]

Bernie bros would save themselves a lot of key strokes by just saying yet again just like 2016 if the candidate is not their lord and savior the infallible mr sanders, the candidate is a threat to democracy, a fraud and a neoliberal shill.