Democratic Party Presidential Candidates for 2020

[Lady Darnk Juniorette]

I give it a month.

 

[Brenda Archer]

I have valid reasons for not voting for Hillary Clinton, all of us know that you and "the forum mob" don't want to hear them or try to understand them, so let's not go there this time. My vote was not part of a conspiracy, I wasn't a victim of mind control, and I did pay close attention to what was happening to me and my right to have a voice of consent and dissent. There's one thing that we can work together on next time to beat Trump. "Blue No Matter Who" and "Stronger Together" is a two-way street. It's not an order to fall in line with those who carry the biggest sticks or wag their fingers the most. Be willing to make the hard sacrifices before you demand others to do the same. That's how you beat Trump.

This answer is content free.

You say you have reasons, but evidently we’re not good enough to hear them.

 

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

I give it a month.

Dude, this place is a lulzcow for fingerwagging bros who just wanna antagonize. And I recognize the irony of it being me saying that.

 

[Anya Ristow]

You say you have reasons, but evidently we’re not good enough to hear them.

I hope we don't hear them. Hillary Clinton is not running. I no longer give a crap about Hillary Clinton. Arguing against her will be even less successful than it was last time.

Yes, there are lessons that have been lost, and yes, that helps Trump. But this is argument that has already been lost.

 

[Aeon Jiminy]

And your "valid" reasons are ... ?

This the the part you should be responding to: "There's one thing that we can work together on next time to beat Trump. "Blue No Matter Who" and "Stronger Together" is a two-way street. "

There is a chance to build coalition. There is a chance beat Trump. I fear the Democratic Party has learned absolutely nothing and is doomed to make the same mistakes over again and get the same results. Voicing reasons of the past, right now, is just throwing gasoline on a fire. My reasons of today is that I see a coordinated effort of media to divide progressive support, build establishment momentum, and eventually herd all of this to a second vote slaughterhouse of establishment superdelegates. Yes, it's a conspiracy theory of media and establishment, but the DNC has done next to nothing to atone for their last conspiracy which turned out to be absolutely true. Burned once, twice shy. There needs to be more change than just blaming their victims.

 

[Brenda Archer]

I hope we don't hear them. Hillary Clinton is not running. I no longer give a crap about Hillary Clinton. Arguing against her will be even less successful than it was last time.

Yes, there are lessons that have been lost, and yes, that helps Trump. But this is argument that has already been lost.

Three things are quite clear now, that weren’t to many Dems a few years ago:

1) The hard Right has all the features of an authoritarian cult, is mostly made up of people who are older than average, and is losing the demographic war.

2) The hard Right leadership is cynical and is willing to subvert our laws and traditions to have a minority government interested in funneling wealth upward for as long as they can.

3) Politically active Dems “didn’t understand” the hard Right, not because they lack empathy or any such jazz, but because as upper-middle class people they *don't know them* and have been trying to understand the movement as a temporary psychological/sociological problem instead of as the international movement that it *openly* is.

It’s not divisive or fear-mongering when people who *know* these people describe them for what they are.

We need to forget about persuading them with merely political arguments and instead do what we can to get out the growing Dem vote.

 

[Cristalle]

I voted for her, despite valid reasons not to. Please don't act as if that woman was a saint. She wasn't. She has some positive traits, but there are a lot of negatives. Soft corruption aside, unlike many, I don't think her foreign policy was any good. We have Libya as a failed state. She would have been even more hawkish about attacking Syria when they "crossed the red line" and we would be more fully embroiled in that conflict. Trump actually ran to her left on this issue. I also think that she would have rubber stamped the TPP once she got into office, with its big pharma giveaways and removing rights to sue. Despite these things, I voted for her because I suspected Trump was lying and I live in a swing state. Were I someplace else, I would have voted my conscience.

And this is supposed to be a democracy, right? He could write in Mickey Mouse if he wanted to and it's his prerogative. If Hillary Clinton didn't earn the vote, then that's her fault. It wasn't a coronation.

 

[Eunoli]

This the the part you should be responding to: "There's one thing that we can work together on next time to beat Trump. "Blue No Matter Who" and "Stronger Together" is a two-way street. "

There is a chance to build coalition. There is a chance beat Trump. I fear the Democratic Party has learned absolutely nothing and is doomed to make the same mistakes over again and get the same results. Voicing reasons of the past, right now, is just throwing gasoline on a fire. My reasons of today is that I see a coordinated effort of media to divide progressive support, build establishment momentum, and eventually herd all of this to a second vote slaughterhouse of establishment superdelegates. Yes, it's a conspiracy theory of media and establishment, but the DNC has done next to nothing to atone for their last conspiracy which turned out to be absolutely true. Burned once, twice shy. There needs to be more change than just blaming their victims.

You have that choice. And if you take it, you may never have that choice in any meaningful way again.

 

[Anya Ristow]

2) The hard Right leadership is cynical and is willing to subvert our laws and traditions to have a minority government interested in funneling wealth upward for as long as they can.

A government that is "elected" based on information that only comes from six corporations, funded by the donor class, represented by the ruling class, is also a minority government that funnels wealth upward. Some see this as even more insidious that wearing more obvious signs of scumbaggery on their sleeves.

 

[Aeon Jiminy]

Three things are quite clear now, that weren’t to many Dems a few years ago:

1) The hard Right has all the features of an authoritarian cult, is mostly made up of people who are older than average, and is losing the demographic war.

2) The hard Right leadership is cynical and is willing to subvert our laws and traditions to have a minority government interested in funneling wealth upward for as long as they can.

You're pretty much describing what it feels like for a progressive to stand outside of the Democratic Party. I am trying to tell you that the Democrats coming after you feels exactly the same as Republicans coming after you. I said the same things. "I don't want your wars, your inflated military budgets, and I don't believe in your tax cuts for the wealthy, your Patriot Act, your torture, your love of the bankers, your invasion of privacy, your private prisons, your lack of real Healthcare solutions, your election fraud, and your willingness to just turn a blind eye to the real economic suffering of the vast majority of your country and offer them only cheap slogans and fear of the other".

 

[Spirits Rising]

... Seriously? You're going to try that shit? Don't ant to talk about it or hav anyone ask then don't fucking include it into your post.

 

[Brenda Archer]

I voted for her, despite valid reasons not to. Please don't act as if that woman was a saint. She wasn't. She has some positive traits, but there are a lot of negatives. Soft corruption aside, unlike many, I don't think her foreign policy was any good. We have Libya as a failed state. She would have been even more hawkish about attacking Syria when they "crossed the red line" and we would be more fully embroiled in that conflict. Trump actually ran to her left on this issue. I also think that she would have rubber stamped the TPP once she got into office, with its big pharma giveaways and removing rights to sue. Despite these things, I voted for her because I suspected Trump was lying and I live in a swing state. Were I someplace else, I would have voted my conscience.

And this is supposed to be a democracy, right? He could write in Mickey Mouse if he wanted to and it's his prerogative. If Hillary Clinton didn't earn the vote, then that's her fault. It wasn't a coronation.

I don't think anybody here is calling Clinton a "saint" and she's way to the right of many of us.

But it was clear to me that Trump was mobbed up and the mob in question is Russian, New Yorkers had been saying this for a long time. And the Manafort problem was being reported on in the mainstream press long before the election.

If the Republicans had chosen their own standard corporate candidate like Romney I'd be all "vote your conscience," but to me there's still a difference between the usual obnoxious corporate corruption and the actual damn Russian mob.

I voted against the Russian mob.

 

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

Reminder these guys still exist: Indivisible Lots of signposts to point you to places to act locally from there.

 

[Brenda Archer]

A government that is "elected" based on information that only comes from six corporations, funded by the donor class, represented by the ruling class, is also a minority government that funnels wealth upward. Some see this as even more insidious that wearing more obvious signs of scumbaggery on their sleeves.

I don't have enough economic privilege to be idealistic. If the center-right is still funneling wealth upward, at least they are not trying to kill me openly for being a disabled person with chronic illness.

My choice is between the obnoxious corporate status quo and frank eugenicists.

If a Left party wants me to take them seriously, they need to field local and state candidates where I live. They don't, so for my survival I'm better off supporting the Left side of the Dems, who *do* run actual candidates where I live. These people influence state level politics concretely.

I would love a real, Left party. The closest viable example I can think of is Bernie's machine, and as someone who has lived and worked in VT, he is absolutely locally viable in the way I require.

The rest of the presumably Left candidates look like narcissistic line jumpers if they can't be arsed to build or co-opt an actual party.

 

[Aeon Jiminy]

I voted for her, despite valid reasons not to. Please don't act as if that woman was a saint. She wasn't. She has some positive traits, but there are a lot of negatives. Soft corruption aside, unlike many, I don't think her foreign policy was any good. We have Libya as a failed state. She would have been even more hawkish about attacking Syria when they "crossed the red line" and we would be more fully embroiled in that conflict. Trump actually ran to her left on this issue. I also think that she would have rubber stamped the TPP once she got into office, with its big pharma giveaways and removing rights to sue. Despite these things, I voted for her because I suspected Trump was lying and I live in a swing state. Were I someplace else, I would have voted my conscience.

And this is supposed to be a democracy, right? He could write in Mickey Mouse if he wanted to and it's his prerogative. If Hillary Clinton didn't earn the vote, then that's her fault. It wasn't a coronation.

LOL. Just for the record, Hillary Clinton got 61% of the popular vote in my state and all of the electoral votes. Gary Johnson earned over twice as many votes as Putin Puppet Jill Stein who earned 1.2%.

 

[Jolene Benoir]

"the forum mob"

Fuck off. No, seriously. Fuck, right off.

Fuck your valid reasons. YOU helped deliver us Trump on a silver plate. I don't give a flying fuck what your reasons were. I really, really don't. Trump was a known quantity. He was a known evil. Anyone with a functioning brain cell could see what kind of president he would be and he's turned out to be even worse than our worse predictions. You DO understand FPTP right? That's how it works in this country. I don't see you posting a goddamn thing about what Trump is doing right now. Not about internment camps (you know, children in cages), not about a single thing he is doing to tear this country right apart, not to mention the lawlessness, the cruelty, the graft, the racism, the attacks upon anyone. You have had NOTHING to say about that.

Instead, you come in here wanting to keep fighting the last election for your own idiotic purposes. You refuse to see truth in front of your eyes, while giving credence to insane conspiracy theories. You will be the same this election. You will refuse to support whomever wins the primary unless it is your favorite (I'm guessing Bernie). You will deliver us Trump, AGAIN.

You can take your oh-so-high-minded feeble thoughts on the presidency and go suck on a dick. You don't need to be coddled for your vote. You need to learn some empathy for the people who are being hurt by your choice.

 

[Anya Ristow]

Can you tell me what exactly Clinton is guilty of, besides bad email security (which most nontechnical people do all the time)

Yeah, most nontechnical people set up a mail server in their bathroom. Who hasn't made that mistake?

 

[Jolene Benoir]

Yeah, most nontechnical people set up a mail server in their bathroom. Who hasn't made that mistake?

Here's another one who hasn't had much to say about Trump's abuse of power and who delights in being "a voice from the other side". Yes, Anya, I remember you and your posts well from SLU. I also vaguely remember a departure because "evil hive mind".

 

[Anya Ristow]

Are there any Dems running that any significant number of Dems will refuse to vote for? Are there any Dems running that Aeon will refuse to vote for?

 

[Aeon Jiminy]

I don't have enough economic privilege to be idealistic. If the center-right is still funneling wealth upward, at least they are not trying to kill me openly for being a disabled person with chronic illness...

I appreciate and respect your frankness. I'm going to try to consider your viewpoint in interacting with you in the future. I think you have more at stake in all of this than I do.

I recently met and spent about an hour with a gentleman from Ethiopia who was brought to the US in 1993 to be part of Hillary Clinton's Task Force on National Health Care Reform. It sounded like they put together a pretty enlightened plan for Universal Health Care. It's a little ironic that she was shot down for being unqualified when it was probably the most qualified solution the country had seen to it's health care problem. Hillary picked this doctor. He was brilliant and had a compassionate charisma that's hard to describe. I wish we could extinguish whatever forces that are at work in our system that can start with a woman with a brilliant vision. like Hillary Clinton, and turn her into someone that says "It's never going to happen". It's so unfair.

I don't blame you one bit for not liking people, like me, who seem to be advocating for political roulette. If Hillary Clinton would have won in 1993, both of us would probably have different perspectives. We probably wouldn't be as desperate in such different ways.