Democratic Party Presidential Candidates for 2020

[Cristiano]

I take it as a smear job by people who want to slam her for quitting her post as Vice Chair of the DNC to support Bernie Sanders in 2016.

It seems like anything that is critical of someone you support is a "smear job" in your estimation.

 

[Cristalle]

It seems like anything that is critical of someone you support is a "smear job" in your estimation.

That's convenient, but no. I can be honest about the failures in people's records or unforced errors - like Tulsi Gabbard's strange defense of Biden last week. She was wrong on that, but since we don't discuss every single issue here, you wouldn't necessarily know what I think on any given subject other than a few.

 

[Bartholomew Gallacher]

I don't see what is problematic about what she said. What she said is entirely reasonable. The reality is that our actions, regardless of intent, create a power vaccum that invites worse powers to come in. WE created a failed state in Libya, where people are openly sold as slaves in markets. Our needless intervention in Iraq not only created ISIS and a huge humanitarian crisis, it ultimately was a major contributing factor to the initiation of the Syrian Civil War. And while ISIS has largely been defeated in Syria, we've been funding rebels that while they may not be friendly to Assad are associated with Al Qaeda. The enemy of my enemy is my friend logic utterly fails in Syria, and we are giving funds and weapons to people who will ultimately turn around and try to kill our troops. This morass of endless war has to end. Military disengagement is not tantamount to isolationism. Bombing and assassination are not the only tools for engagement in the world. It saddens me that educated people are so indoctrinated to this that they cannot see how wrong it is, on top of the wastefulness.

Oh there are also different theories around what the real reasons might be:

Iraq: this was the pre shale oil/gas time - so this was all about securing access on the last known, big oil fields which back then were not extracted much. America didn't want to rely on KSA alone anymore in the region, so Iraq was the best bet.

Libya: Ghaddafi wanted to trade his oil in Euro/introduce an own currency; therefore he had to go, no more camping in Trumps garden for him.

Syria: it's about preventing a pipeline which America dislikes to cut off Russia from Europe. More here: Syria: Ultimate Pipelineistan War

Afghanistan: securing access to one of the biggest Lithium mines and other stuff supposedly worth around 820 billion US$.

 

[Cristalle]

Oh there are also different theories around what the real reasons might be:

Libya: Ghaddafi wanted to trade his oil in Euro/introduce an own currency; therefore he had to go, no more camping in Trumps garden for him.

Except this was done under Obama.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

It is realpolitik.
We have no problem with the fascists in Saudi Arabia and Trump is chilling with Kim Jong Un as we speak. The reality is that the American government is perfectly fine with a very high percentage of dictators and strongmen around the world. Only a certain few seem to have a media campaign against them (Iran in particular).

Let's play a game. Let's say by fate that Assad is deposed the same way Saddam Hussein and Gaddafi were. Who is going to step in to fill that vacuum? History has shown us what happens when you take one strongman out. Iraq became a failed state, Libya became a failed state. Syria will become yet another failed state, no matter our intentions. The Kurds will not be able to maintain what they have, Turkey will step in regardless of when we leave and try to eliminate the Kurds. We cannot stay there forever. We do not have endless resources for endless war. Aside from the immorality of it, we just cannot do this indefinitely, with a waning economy.

We may not like who is in power, but sometimes they are better than the alternative. It costs us trillions of dollars and thousands of lives, it costs the region trillions of dollars and millions of lives either uprooted as refugees, injured or killed.

That's an arguable position, certainly, and a great many of the region's problems have indeed been caused by military intervention with no clear exit plan. However, having involved itself in these military adventures, the US is now there, for better or worse, and needs -- at least to my mind -- first to consider what long term goals it seeks to pursue and, with those in mind, what practical measures it needs to take to achieve them, and what might be the other effects -- some possibly very unwelcome -- of these measures.

To use a cliche I want to resist but it seems so appropriate, getting on the tiger is the easy part. The difficult bit is staying on and, if you decide to get off, working out how best to do it without ending up inside the critter.

I don't know if you've read Timothy Snyder's book, The Road to Unfreedom, in which he lays out in quite some detail the political theory of the avowedly fascist Ivan Ilyin, whom Putin sees as one of the most important political thinkers to have influenced him, and how the last 10 years or so have appeared when viewed from the Ilyinist perspective of the Russian government, as presented by the government controlled Russian mass media. It's very scary.

Even though I live right on the edge of the continent of Europe, I feel somewhat alarmed knowing what Putin thinks of liberal democracy, in particular as exemplified by the EU, and how he hopes to cause the situation to develop. To my mind, the whole international set-up is potentially at least as dangerous as it was during the 1930s, only this time with Charles Lindbergh in the White House.

 

[Jolene Benoir]

News flash for the sixth time: no one here is saying that about the general election.

I may be late to this, I probably am, but Ari did indeed say she might not be able to commit to Biden should he be the general election candidate.

So...it is justified to continue having this conversation, imo.

 

[Beebo Brink]

Joe Biden explained opposition to desegregation busing in 1981 CNN interview

Joe Biden said in a 1981 CNN interview that he opposed busing to desegregate schools and that he supported efforts to cut back on courts' ability to order busing.

www.cnn.com

I'd let those past stances go by if it weren't for two things:

1) Joe is the one who brought them into focus. I mean, seriously, what's up with that?

2) I want some sign that his understanding of race issues has transformed over time

And I'd be a lot more comfortable with him as a candidate if he were capable of thoughtfully saying "What seemed right at the time is no longer our reality. Times have changed for the better and so have I."

 

[Cristalle]

That's an arguable position, certainly, and a great many of the region's problems have indeed been caused by military intervention with no clear exit plan. However, having involved itself in these military adventures, the US is now there, for better or worse, and needs -- at least to my mind -- first to consider what long term goals it seeks to pursue and, with those in mind, what practical measures it needs to take to achieve them, and what might be the other effects -- some possibly very unwelcome -- of these measures.

To use a cliche I want to resist but it seems so appropriate, getting on the tiger is the easy part. The difficult bit is staying on and, if you decide to get off, working out how best to do it without ending up inside the critter.

I don't know if you've read Timothy Snyder's book, The Road to Unfreedom, in which he lays out in quite some detail the political theory of the avowedly fascist Ivan Ilyin, whom Putin sees as one of the most important political thinkers to have influenced him, and how the last 10 years or so have appeared when viewed from the Ilyinist perspective of the Russian government, as presented by the government controlled Russian mass media. It's very scary.

Even though I live right on the edge of the continent of Europe, I feel somewhat alarmed knowing what Putin thinks of liberal democracy, in particular as exemplified by the EU, and how he hopes to cause the situation to develop. To my mind, the whole international set-up is potentially at least as dangerous as it was during the 1930s, only this time with Charles Lindbergh in the White House.

You break it you bought it is something that seems reasonable at first. But we're 18 years into breaking it, with no net progress and no end in sight. Discretion is, as they say, the better part of valor. We do not have endless money, and there isn't any action to take proper care of our veterans returning home. They have these deep scars, mental and physical, and they don't want to pay for it. It's time to stop throwing good money after bad, and good people into horror for nothing.

I have not read the book. And again, I am not saying to discount anything Putin does - but I think it is a bad reflex to just get on the other side of whatever Putin wants. That doesn't make sense from a geopolitical perspective. We have to accept reality in that sometimes interests will align. Obama recognized that, and had hoped to change Russian relations, but then Crimea happened, making that harder. I don't trust Trump doing this because it's all for self-enrichment. But a different administration with a properly staffed State Department is a different thing.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

You break it you bought it is something that seems reasonable at first. But we're 18 years into breaking it, with no net progress and no end in sight. Discretion is, as they say, the better part of valor. We do not have endless money, and there isn't any action to take proper care of our veterans returning home. They have these deep scars, mental and physical, and they don't want to pay for it. It's time to stop throwing good money after bad, and good people into horror for nothing.

Sure, but I'm not saying, "You break it, you bought it."

Rather, I am saying that, having made the mistake of entering the war without a clear objective or exit plan, the USA cannot simply say, "that's it, we're cutting our losses, throwing in our hand and walking away." It doesn't work that way, since the war, politics, economics and history are going to continue anyway, and the participants can't walk away from them as easily as they can walk away from the front line.

Everyone will continue to pursue their different goals by whatever means. The USA may well take the considered decision that its goals, whatever they are, will be best served by disengaging from Syria. But in order to do that, it's necessary first to decide what those goals are (to me, they are shrouded in mystery), consider first the different ways of achieving them, then to consider both the practicability and the likely consequences of each of these possible methods, and only then reach a decision, whether it be to attempt to disengage or to form a joint alliance between Turkey, Russia and Syria to carve out the area between them, or what.

Certainly the USA has blindly blundered into the battlefield that is the Middle East. That was the easy bit. Blundering blindly out of it, though, just isn't possible -- there has to be a goal and a plan that extends further than "get our troops home and worry about the rest later."

I have not read the book. And again, I am not saying to discount anything Putin does - but I think it is a bad reflex to just get on the other side of whatever Putin wants. That doesn't make sense from a geopolitical perspective. We have to accept reality in that sometimes interests will align. Obama recognized that, and had hoped to change Russian relations, but then Crimea happened, making that harder. I don't trust Trump doing this because it's all for self-enrichment. But a different administration with a properly staffed State Department is a different thing.

Yes, I agree that opposing whatever Putin wants simply because he's a bad guy would be stupid, and I am not saying that at all.

What I do say, though, is that Putin is from an environment -- an environment whose edges, at least, were not unfamiliar to me at one time -- that is deeply cynical, amoral and manipulative, completely divorced from any external rules and laws, and where people plot and counterplot several moves further than I could ever imagine.

Examine Putin's policies and motives through that perspective, combined with how they're presented in Russia and how the wider perspective of the Russian version of fascism propounded by Ivan Ilyin, and you see why it's necessary to think very carefully about how long a spoon to use when supping with that particular devil.

Sure, it's often necessary to go along with him but, if after dinner he then invites you for a walk down the path in his garden and you accept, not having read the many descriptions of the destination down which this particular garden path leads, then you really are in trouble. We all are, really -- our right-wing authoritarian populists are just as greedy and as unwilling to read as are yours.

 

[Cristalle]

Sure, but I'm not saying, "You break it, you bought it."

Rather, I am saying that, having made the mistake of entering the war without a clear objective or exit plan, the USA cannot simply say, "that's it, we're cutting our losses, throwing in our hand and walking away." It doesn't work that way, since the war, politics, economics and history are going to continue anyway, and the participants can't walk away from them as easily as they can walk away from the front line.

Yes, it can. After 18 years, with no net movement in any positive direction, yes it can.

Everyone will continue to pursue their different goals by whatever means. The USA may well take the considered decision that its goals, whatever they are, will be best served by disengaging from Syria. But in order to do that, it's necessary first to decide what those goals are (to me, they are shrouded in mystery), consider first the different ways of achieving them, then to consider both the practicability and the likely consequences of each of these possible methods, and only then reach a decision, whether it be to attempt to disengage or to form a joint alliance between Turkey, Russia and Syria to carve out the area between them, or what.

Certainly the USA has blindly blundered into the battlefield that is the Middle East. That was the easy bit. Blundering blindly out of it, though, just isn't possible -- there has to be a goal and a plan that extends further than "get our troops home and worry about the rest later."

The bumbling bit is possible and while it may not be a satisfying answer, it is still an answer. The truth is that not every problem has a military solution, and this is one of them. Afghanistan is known as the graveyard of empires for a reason. What is left is diplomatic engagement, and that's still a viable option. We tend to forget this.

Yes, I agree that opposing whatever Putin wants simply because he's a bad guy would be stupid, and I am not saying that at all.

What I do say, though, is that Putin is from an environment -- an environment whose edges, at least, were not unfamiliar to me at one time -- that is deeply cynical, amoral and manipulative, completely divorced from any external rules and laws, and where people plot and counterplot several moves further than I could ever imagine.

Examine Putin's policies and motives through that perspective, combined with how they're presented in Russia and how the wider perspective of the Russian version of fascism propounded by Ivan Ilyin, and you see why it's necessary to think very carefully about how long a spoon to use when supping with that particular devil.

Sure, it's often necessary to go along with him but, if after dinner he then invites you for a walk down the path in his garden and you accept, not having read the many descriptions of the destination down which this particular garden path leads, then you really are in trouble. We all are, really -- our right-wing authoritarian populists are just as greedy and as unwilling to read as are yours.

I won't disagree with that. He's a dangerous man, a murderous tyrant - but one with enough power to protect himself from us. But what I dislike is the media's current stance of throwing Russia into anything just to shit the bed and turn brains off from analyzing what our interests are, independent of what Russia and Putin want. This is not team sports.

 

[Jolene Benoir]

BTW in 2016, no matter what I thought of Bernie, I would have voted for him and not have been some whiny asshole making protest votes for third party candidates or just not voting. The same is true now. I don't want Bernie or Biden, but would vote for either without hesitation if it came to it.

That would feel really good, rightfully so, for us. What about Bumfuckistan,, Alabama? We'resoChristianWeLikeLockingUpBabies Evangelical Christianville? What about the 40% of the electorate that are stark raving mad? The 15% or so, wild guess, that hate women?

 

[Innula Zenovka]

Sure, but I'm not saying, "You break it, you bought it."

Rather, I am saying that, having made the mistake of entering the war without a clear objective or exit plan, the USA cannot simply say, "that's it, we're cutting our losses, throwing in our hand and walking away." It doesn't work that way, since the war, politics, economics and history are going to continue anyway, and the participants can't walk away from them as easily as they can walk away from the front line.

Sure, but I'm not saying, "You break it, you bought it."

Rather, I am saying that, having made the mistake of entering the war without a clear objective or exit plan, the USA cannot simply say, "that's it, we're cutting our losses, throwing in our hand and walking away." It doesn't work that way, since the war, politics, economics and history are going to continue anyway, and the participants can't walk away from them as easily as they can walk away from the front line.

Yes, it can. After 18 years, with no net movement in any positive direction, yes it can.



The bumbling bit is possible and while it may not be a satisfying answer, it is still an answer. The truth is that not every problem has a military solution, and this is one of them. Afghanistan is known as the graveyard of empires for a reason. What is left is diplomatic engagement, and that's still a viable option. We tend to forget this.

I thought we were talking about Syria, not Afghanistan.

The distinction is significant, in that I think you are talking about the whole general direction of US foreign policy over the last 20 years, and I'm talking about specific military campaigns. If you want to make an argument for disengaging from Afghanistan, then go ahead, but it's logically separate in most significant respects from disengaging from Syria, because they are two different places.

As to the impossibility of simply saying "We've been here long enough. Now we're out," I meant that, while you can, of course, say it, actually doing it is rather more of a challenge -- since you referred to conflicts in "the graveyard of empires," you should maybe recall the outcome of the First Anglo-Afghan War, where General Elphinstone said pretty much that on January 1, 1842, and lost his whole army in the retreat.

That episode, you may recall, was rapidly followed by British reprisals followed, in 1878, by the Second Anglo-Afghan War, which entirely succeeded in its goals (primarily re-establishing a friendly monarch on the throne and signing a treaty which left him in control of Afghanistan's internal affairs but Britain in control of the country's foreign relationships, thus keeping out the Russians -- the original idea -- until 1979.

That's how you're supposed to play a round of "the great game" -- go in with clear strategic objectives and goals and with a good plan for achieving them and then, equally important, a plan for how you intend to leave, what you hope to gain by leaving, and what pitfalls you must avoid during and after your departure.

So, yes, you can say "Now we're out" but, unless you have a clear plan on how to leave, it's going to turn into a disastrous rout.

[Putin is] a dangerous man, a murderous tyrant - but one with enough power to protect himself from us. But what I dislike is the media's current stance of throwing Russia into anything just to shit the bed and turn brains off from analyzing what our interests are, independent of what Russia and Putin want. This is not team sports.

Sure. All I am saying is that, when you're dealing with a ruler like Putin it makes sense to consider his actual goals and objectives as he sees them. If you read the way the Russian media have presented the country's relations with the EU and the USA, and the future that Putin and his ideologues map out for their country and its place in the world, you may find that things are pretty much turning out as he wants them to -- liberal, law-based, democracy and rule-based international trade are being badly destabilised as Russia throws off these shackles imposed on it after the collapse of the Soviet Union and rediscovers its original destiny as a major world power in a world ruled by authoritarian nationalists with a strong streak of mysticism.

 

[Bartholomew Gallacher]

Rather, I am saying that, having made the mistake of entering the war without a clear objective or exit plan, the USA cannot simply say, "that's it, we're cutting our losses, throwing in our hand and walking away." It doesn't work that way, since the war, politics, economics and history are going to continue anyway, and the participants can't walk away from them as easily as they can walk away from the front line.

And here you got it totally wrong; the USA are right now the empire of chaos. The USA are quite aware of that their global power is right now on the decline, not because loosing power per se but due to emerging regional powers which want to gain more influence in their own region again, like they had throughout history, most notably China. China cannot gain power while the USA are loosing some, its as simple as that.

So spreading chaos around the globe is exactly the goal the USA want to achieve; binding the regional&competetive powers to the chaos spots, therefore mitigating their global rise on influence.

And as you can see with Trump the USA can get away with almost everything right now, due to four facts:

1. geographical advantages, it's just really hard to launch a ground attack on them if not being Canada or Mexico, because you would need a big navy which won't go unnoticed and the country is just HUUUGE
2. being the home of the US dollar
3. being the home of the US army with its nuclear arsenal
4. being the biggest economy world wide by GDP.

 

[Eunoli]

And here you got it totally wrong; the USA are right now the empire of chaos. The USA are quite aware of that their global power is right now in the decline, not because loosing power per se but due to emerging regional powers which want to gain more influence in their own region again, like they had throughout history, most notably China. China cannot gain power while the USA are loosing some, its as simple as that.

This is only true due to current political realities. If there is any one person alive to blame for the current decline of the US, it is Mitch McConnell.

The decline doesn't have to be permanent, however. The opportunity to be a leader in the upcoming green economy is still there. We are just currently closing our eyes and pretending it doesn't exist. Much depends on who wins the next election (and the next election actually happening as a free election, which doesn't seem at /all/ a certain thing now).

 

[Bartholomew Gallacher]

The opportunity might be there, but for sure not with Trump, even though we are living in strange times right now, where e.g. Exxon Oil is spending lobbying money to get a federal carbon tax law.

Looking from a global perspective there's China on the rise, which was being fed while being Chimerica by us all. Now China simply doesn't want to be the working bank of the globe any longer, that's not enough for them, they want to become technological leaders in new upcoming areas. There's also India, which becomes more and more powerful as well, and economically the EU.

So after we had a global duality - USSR and USA - and a monopoly afterward with the USA as only superpower, we are now on the path to a multipolar world.

So the real question is would the USA be satisfied with being one big power amongst others, or do they still clutch on the idea of being the most important power world wide?

For the moment it seems to be the second one, which is why e.g. Trump is doing his politics of decoupling from China.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

And here you got it totally wrong; the USA are right now the empire of chaos. The USA are quite aware of that their global power is right now in the decline, not because loosing power per se but due to emerging regional powers which want to gain more influence in their own region again, like they had throughout history, most notably China. China cannot gain power while the USA are loosing some, its as simple as that.

So spreading chaos around the globe is exactly the goal the USA want to achieve; binding the regional&competetive powers to the chaos spots, therefore mitigating their global rise on influence.

And as you can see with Trump the USA can get away with almost everything right now, due to four facts:

1. geographical advantages, it's just really hard to launch a ground attack on them if not being Canada or Mexico and the country is just HUUUGE
2. being the home of the US dollar
3. being the home of the US army with its nuclear arsenal
4. being the biggest economy world wide by GDP.

All very true, but I am sorry that I can't see that all that has much to do with my general point that, one a war has started, getting out of it is far more difficult than was getting involved in it in the first place.

As to the USA's overall strategic role, what you describe is pretty much exactly how Putin's theorists see the world -- as far as they're concerned, the US has been the single economic, military and ideological superpower for too long, and Russia now seeks to redress the balance by having a world of mutually suspicious regional superpowers, each pursuing its own interests in its own sphere of influence, while cooperating on a purely transactional basis with the other regional powers.

As far as Russia is concerned, liberal democracy and rule based international relations -- as exemplified by the EU, and backed up by NATO -- are the ideological enemies, to be replaced by right-wing authoritarian populists.

That seems to be working pretty well on both sides of the Atlantic, at least from the Russian point of view.

 

[Ashiri]

As far as Russia is concerned, liberal democracy and rule based international relations -- as exemplified by the EU, and backed up by NATO -- are the ideological enemies, to be replaced by right-wing authoritarian populists.

The cynic in me says that he's not even that concerned with the replacements being right-wing or populists as long as they are authoritarian and able to work with him.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

The cynic in me says that he's not even that concerned with the replacements being right-wing or populists as long as they are authoritarian and able to work with him.

I'm not so sure, as I understand it, at least on Timothy Snyder's account, the Christo-fascism that Ivan Ilyin advocated and which Putin and his regime have adopted as Russia's national ideology pretty much calls for the overthrow of liberal democratic states and law-based systems as constructs antithetical to Russia's interests and destiny, to be replaced by some sort of performative democracy, where the ruler gains his symbolic mandate as unmediated voice of the people.

This is seriously weird stuff -- Ilyin was clearly a powerful political philosopher, a sort of Russian Orthodox Lenin -- and it's a Christo-fascism infused not in Evangelical Protestant fundamentalism but Russian Orthodox mysticism.

I've just come across this long article, also by Snyder, which people might find interesting, in The New York Review Of Books: Ivan Ilyin, Putin’s Philosopher of Russian Fascism. I've not yet finished it, and find it rather heavy going (or maybe that's because I'm tired) but it's certainly well worth a look. Personally, though, I think Snyder's presentation of the subject in The Road To Unfreedom is a bit more accessible.

 

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

Related, a Twitter thread about Alexandr Dugin

 

[Brenda Archer]

It is realpolitik.
We have no problem with the fascists in Saudi Arabia and Trump is chilling with Kim Jong Un as we speak. The reality is that the American government is perfectly fine with a very high percentage of dictators and strongmen around the world. Only a certain few seem to have a media campaign against them (Iran in particular).

Let's play a game. Let's say by fate that Assad is deposed the same way Saddam Hussein and Gaddafi were. Who is going to step in to fill that vacuum? History has shown us what happens when you take one strongman out. Iraq became a failed state, Libya became a failed state. Syria will become yet another failed state, no matter our intentions. The Kurds will not be able to maintain what they have, Turkey will step in regardless of when we leave and try to eliminate the Kurds. We cannot stay there forever. We do not have endless resources for endless war. Aside from the immorality of it, we just cannot do this indefinitely, with a waning economy.

We may not like who is in power, but sometimes they are better than the alternative. It costs us trillions of dollars and thousands of lives, it costs the region trillions of dollars and millions of lives either uprooted as refugees, injured or killed.

There is no good argument for giving Assad and Putin unchecked power.

We set the stage for this level of a mess by invading Iraq. We definitely should not have done that, but isolationism now will not fix it.

This is not an argument “in favor of war.” Giving Putin what he wants will not protect us and our most traditional allies from more war. He’s proved he will take what he can, because he’s determined to have a sphere of influence surrounding Russia to insulate it. This does not make it okay to abandon these people to losing their sovereignty completely.

If we want the US to stop playing world police, we should support strong international institutions with teeth. But of course our right wing can’t have that (encouraged by Russia).