Democratic Party Presidential Candidates for 2020

[Pamela]

Just a reminder: Trump has the presidency, all cabinet positions except DI, the AG, the entire Senate, a good chunk of the SC and federal judges, a propaganda news station,, billionaire funding, the entire military, and Russian thumbs on the scale. And so much more.

We the people have House of Reps, some judges, the free press. Plus broad grassroots funding.

I love Warren, Harris, Bernie, and Pete, but I am voting for whoever has the likliest chsnce to get rid of Trump. Because if he wins again — a distinct possibility — nothing else matters.

And right now his base is as big if not bigger than the Dems Base.

 

[Brenda Archer]

Biden calling Millennials a bunch of whiners, as if these full-fledged adults were still the spoiled teenagers of the Boomers’ imagination.

This is a way to keep Trump and/or the Republican Senate in charge, and by extension Russian oligarchy.

Biden is a spoiler.

I will be voting Dem while holding my nose.

 

[Anya Ristow]

This amounts to straight up propaganda then, to make the preferences of younger voters invisible to themselves.

We have a political system devoted to making sure only rural white Boomers have a full vote.

This gives me despair. They can do a lot of damage before enough of them finally kick the can.

Millennials already outnumber boomers. It will be a bigger and bigger challenge to disenfranchise them.

The Big Number: Millennials to overtake boomers in 2019 as largest U.S. population group

Money and control of the media matters way more than numbers, but the numbers will eventually kick in.

Not in my lifetime.

But eventually.

I'm a boomer, BTW.

 

[Anya Ristow]

...free press..

We don't have that. We have six corporations who control 90% of the media Americans consume. They don't report the news. They represent the oligarchs. It's not even about advertising and viewership and revenue anymore. Control is way more valuable.

Here's an illustration:

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos signed the $250 million Washington Post deal with no due diligence

FWIW that represented 1/400th his net worth at the time. Do you think he needed it to earn money?

...Russian thumbs on the scale...

That you still think this is a thing is a symptom of the free press thing.

The Russians have always meddled. The Americans are way more successful at it. Orders of magnitude better.

I encourage you to read the original 13 indictments. All of it. It contains the actual motivation for a Russian company to spend $100K creating ridiculous facebook ads. The "free press" never mentions it. The "free press" also never puts that $100K in perspective.

"but they targeted key states"

No, they didn't. They spent more on safe, blue New York than they did on Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, combined.

I encourage you to watch the Google testimony before congress on the Russian meddling. He, too, put a number to the Russian spending "across all google platforms". It's an even more laughable number. Really laughable.

I encourage you to look up the ads the Russians created. That you think they were persuasive is not taken as a kindness. Let's just say that if it was the work of the GRU (hint: it isn't), it isn't their best effort.

Oh, yeah. Did you see this?

Secret Experiment in Alabama Senate Race Imitated Russian Tactics

An American firm, the same one that provided intelligence to congress on the Russian meddling, spent the same budget the Russians spent on fake twitter bots made to look like Russian meddling, and they did it in a much smaller election (i.e. greater impact), and when they were caught the media called it an experiment, characterized it as too small to have an effect, and nobody gives a crap.

 

[Dakota Tebaldi]

I encourage you to watch the Google testimony before congress on the Russian meddling. He, too, put a number to the Russian spending "across all google platforms". It's an even more laughable number. Really laughable.

I encourage you to look up the ads the Russians created. That you think they were persuasive is not taken as a kindness. Let's just say that if it was the work of the GRU (hint: it isn't), it isn't their best effort.

But it turns out that's a little specious, isn't it? Regardless of how little money they spent, or how poor you think the ads were, they were demonstrably effective: just for one example, a popular use of these ads was to create and promote dozens of pro-Trump, anti-Clinton, and (after the election) anti-Trump rallies. The Russian ads, and later Russian posters, in Russia, posing as American activists, would "organize" rallies in the United States, some of which thousands of people attended, including celebrities and occasional politicians. Not all fake-rally attempts successfully spawned real-world events; but some were quite wildly successful indeed. Genuine American-based activist groups would sign up to "help", thinking they were coordinating with other actual American activists.

Notice that that work only required spending a small amount of money on a few ads, while the rest required nothing but in-character social media posts....a significant volume of them, too; but social media posts are free for anyone to create, so a number like "the amount of money they spent on ads" doesn't really reflect the scope or the amount of effort they put into their campaign.

 

[Kara Spengler]

Yup, that's Biden off my list.

I think that lost him a lot of support, although I would suspect most people younger than him had another fave anyway.

 

[Kara Spengler]

I won't post the NYT article about the secret "stop bernie" dinners again, but I'll note again that Mayor Pete is an attendee.

I don't think Biden wanted to run. I think he's running only because Harris isn't killin it. I think he'll make a grand effort of it, though, and so will she. One of the two is expected to win the second round of delegate voting. The others just need to win enough delegates to be sure there is a second round of voting. That part of the plan probably won't work, but probably won't be necessary, either. Hence, Biden.

Was that too cynical?

If Pete is that is REALLY stupid. He has a lot of crossover with Bernie supporters so his best play is to say how they will work together.

 

[Anya Ristow]

a popular use of these ads was to create and promote dozens of pro-Trump, anti-Clinton, and (after the election) anti-Trump rallies.

Here are some examples, for anyone interested.

A Russian Facebook page organized a protest in Texas. A different Russian page launched the counterprotest.

Russian-linked BlackMattersUS organizes an anti-Trump protest in NYC.

Facebook removes an event listing for a Russia-organized anti-rightwing "Rersist" rally.

Yes, this is how they worked. They played both sides of issues. For financial gain. It was about building a following, for advertising revenue.

They also had a noteworthy twitter success when Kushner? retweeted one of their missives.

 

[Anya Ristow]

If Pete is that is REALLY stupid. He has a lot of crossover with Bernie supporters so his best play is to say how they will work together.

Pete's campaign exists to confuse people what Medicare For All means. By the time you figure out that he doesn't support it, the hope is that you'll be attached to the candidate, and to avoid cognitive dissonance, you'll question whether you ever wanted M4A at all.

Kamala's strategy is to feign support for M4A, and then bargain it away when it is opposed. She started to do that within 24 hours of launching her campaign.

You'll know a candidate really supports a policy by their long-time championing of it, and by their willingness to fight for it when it is challenged.

 

[Kaimi Kyomoon]

We are so screwed.

 

[Aribeth Zelin]

Russia wants to destroy us - so of course its playing us against ourselves.

 

[Beebo Brink]

Russia wants to destroy us - so of course its playing us against ourselves.

At the same time, it's important to remember that Russia is an autocratic society and they see debate about political issues in a negative light. We, in a democratic society, must keep in mind that we see debate -- even vigorous debate -- as a strength of our system, not a weakness.

I'm not going to stop questioning and critiquing our system and our candidates, precisely because I do not equate that debate with divisiveness. Too much hand-wringing about differences of opinion is just as damaging as the rough-and-tumble can be. I have significant misgivings, for example, with Joe Biden and I'll be damned if I'm going to shut up about them because it gives some Dems the vapors. If he loses to Trump, it's not because we mentioned his shortfalls in public. If anything, it will be because of those shortfalls that no one wanted to acknowledge.

 

[Kaimi Kyomoon]

To me it seems that we are poised to go either way. The plutocrats are poised to win for good and take us right back to feudalism. But at the same time the revolution that I've been hoping for since the 60's seems to be stirring too. More people than ever before seem to be calling bullshit on the "winners" and demanding a fair shake for the losers. All the super-rich people rallying supporters for "our country first" don't care about that for themselves, their friends are the super-rich of any country.

 

[Cristalle]

 

[Bartholomew Gallacher]

Russia wants to destroy us - so of course its playing us against ourselves.

Do you really believe that? First: POTUS thinks otherwise.


Second: nobody is so dumb to really want to attack the USA by whatever means, including Russia. The rest of the world just wants that America would start minding their own business again, and to stop their openly aggressive foreign politics, like they are doing in Venezuela, and interfering unasked with internal affairs just because its America.

But since the track record of America on interfering in other states internal affairs is so high, America had it coming that some countries are going to pay back that favor. It just reveals the double standards again of the foreign policy.

 

[Ashiri]

Do you really believe that? First: POTUS thinks otherwise.

Second: nobody is so dumb to really want to attack the USA by whatever means, including Russia. The rest of the world just wants that America would start minding their own business again, and to stop their openly aggressive foreign politics, like they are doing in Venezuela, and interfering unasked with internal affairs just because its America.

But since the track record of America on interfering in other states internal affairs is so high, America had it coming that some countries are going to pay back that favor. It just reveals the double standards again of the foreign policy.

What Trump thinks? Really? Putin continues to outplay Trump.

Causing division within a country is one of the oldest power plays in the book. Why overtly attack when covert operations can attain the desired goals.

Have to agree the the last point. Munroe Doctrine et. al.

 

[Aribeth Zelin]

Do you really believe that? First: POTUS thinks otherwise.


Second: nobody is so dumb to really want to attack the USA by whatever means, including Russia. The rest of the world just wants that America would start minding their own business again, and to stop their openly aggressive foreign politics, like they are doing in Venezuela, and interfering unasked with internal affairs just because its America.

But since the track record of America on interfering in other states internal affairs is so high, America had it coming that some countries are going to pay back that favor. It just reveals the double standards again of the foreign policy.

I won't argue that our government in general deserves to be meddled with, but evidence indicates that there is outside interference, that this is connected to Russia, and that its aimed at making us tear ourselves apart.

And Twitler is dumber then a box of rocks, and is so obviously compromised that how anyone misses it is amazing [and makes me think its just being ignored, or that those who should be doing something about it are purposefully ignoring it.

 

[Kara Spengler]

Still trying to figure out who to support. So far nobody that looks great does not come with a negative or two as well.

 

[Eunoli]

To me, it only matters that they can beat Trump.

At this point, I see democracy itself in danger. Yes, there's a lot of issues I think are important. Yes, there's lots of things I like and lots of things I dislike in most of the candidates. There's a few that I would be over the moon with, but they have very slight chances at this point. My only big worry right now is that since we are doing very little to protect ourselves, Russia is going to interfere again and do so in a more sophisticated way.

I am worried that if Trump wins /or/ if Trump loses to a small margin, we are in danger as a nation. I don't think everything just goes back to normal in 2024. We have already changed too many norms without anyone really protesting them where it matters. Trump is already making noise about deserving two more years before the election due to the "witchhunt". I don't see him stepping down peacefully. We need to beat him this time and we need to do it decisively.

Support whoever your heart and head tell you to now. But, if you care about democracy and the US, get behind whoever they nominate without reservation. This time we can't afford people sitting it out because they don't like either (especially once the Russians get done demonizing whoever the Dems pick - and they will). This time we can't afford protest votes. This time we need to act like we might never have another chance - because we might not.

 

[Aribeth Zelin]

I agree, Eunoli, except democracy has already been in danger, Twitler and the GOP are just symptoms. That's why to me, its as important to not elect a corporate owned democrat, as it is to get the GOP out of power. The only real difference is that with one we get to keep the trappings of a democracy while being an oligarchy [which we already are], or not.