Democratic Party Presidential Candidates for 2020

[Brenda Archer]

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What we're discussing now is temporary. By 2040, if not sooner, the entire political landscape will have changed due to the disruptions and stresses of climate change. There's no use even trying to extrapolate from current events, because there's no template for what is coming, especially since it will be on a global scale. The current power structure will be upended for something different that doesn't exist now.

In spite of their public climate denial, I think the hard Right is trying to plan for this by getting as much influence in police departments and the military as it can. This is the notion weapons will save them. If supply chains are damaged as badly as I think they will be, this kind of thinking will be out of date.

The hard Right will still have some younger voters in very religious areas, but not enough to counterbalance the growing population of young Latinx. So I expect a leftward shift, but not necessarily with the priorities we have now.

Buttigieg could be read as an establishment candidate for a Millennial voting bloc. I don't think the establishment itself thinks of the hard Right as anything but disposable. Business as usual people can be pushed toward a degree of democratic socialism in order to keep markets from collapsing.

I have a hard time seeing how multinational corporations and far flung supply chains are supposed to survive climate change unless the old system simply contracts into enclaves where local good luck temporarily protects them from the high costs of chaos and then what?

It seems to me that we should rebuild to favor technologies that can be sourced over short distances. Not necessarily by going low tech, but by giving serious thought to materials and energy inputs and keeping things as small scale and as distributed as possible.

If the worst case scenario you talk about happens, all efforts to stop change are pointless. But for people to be free to really innovate and not be attacked for it, requires more desperation than we have now. This is because established power attacks change, as they are not usually farsighted enough to leverage it.

We are basically controlled right now by mafias, including corporations, with just enough pushback from the rule of law to keep markets alive. Mafias tend to operate with a view that personal gain outweighs the damage done - psychopathy and NPD writ large. When normal people have to interact too much with systems like this, it inspires a sense of rage. We're seeing the start of this and I expect it to be a source of creativity.

 

[Anya Ristow]

Top comment:

Mainstream Media: "Bernie Sanders makes my skin crawl, I don't know why"
Mainstream Media: "Kamala was ready for this her whole life, she handles business"

Pretty much.

The media (six corporations) shouldn't be choosing presidents.

Here it is in its cringe-worthy whole:

How Kamala Harris' courtroom experience prepared her for the debate stage

If that had a "paid for by Kamala Harris for president" disclaimer at the end, it would be unusual only in its length. But it's not by Kamala Harris for president. It's by CNN.

 

[Cristalle]

The smear machine works overtime for Sanders, and they are vacillating between promoting Harris and Warren. One CNN anchor went so far as to ask Bernie to say something nice about Elizabeth Warren instead of focusing on his policy or where they differ in meaningful ways. They're ridiculous.

 

[Kara Spengler]

I follow several independent media peeps on youtube. A complaint there is youtube keeps directing people to the big media companies and demonetizing (removing adds) the independents.

 

[Aeon Jiminy]

 

[Romana]

The Marianne Williamson New Age woo brigade (true believers and probably bots mixed in) are out in force on Twitter. I don't even know what Orb Power is, and after reading her blather about depression I don't think I want to.
I'd have to hear her acknowledge that clinical depression is real and that it can't just be cured by love and orbs or whatever before I did begin to take her seriously. That's after reading this:

Marianne Williamson Said Antidepressants Are Overprescribed For “Normal Human Despair”

“The twenties can be very hard. They’re not a mental illness. Divorce can be very difficult, losing a loved one, someone that you know died, someone left in a relationship and you’re heartbroken — that’s very painful, but it’s not a mental illness,” Williamson said.

www.buzzfeednews.com

And I'm sure she's said a lot more I'd take issue with. Oh, I'd hold my nose and vote for her if by fine chance she was the candidate, but anybody who says it implies that something I struggle with isn't real or I don't try hard enough just makes my blood boil.

 

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

Orb Power

?

 

[Romana]

?

That would explain a lot....

 

[Free]

 

[Kara Spengler]

I actually missed the debate last night. I had plans to watch avengers endgame before it (the digital release was yesterday) since I missed it in the theatre but that got delayed until an hour before the debate started.

Like anybody else here would stop endgame, on a first viewing, to watch the debate. No matter how high our wonk ratio is.

 

[Aeon Jiminy]

Backup plan: DHS takes control of election infrastructure. Blame it on the Russians.

BTW, Anya, I completely agree with your other points in your post. I admire your courage to bring up DHS taking control of election infrastructure. I see this as pretty much as an endgame. This was quietly slid into place a long time ago and discussion was relocated to the underbelly of "conspiracy crazyland", you know, that place where Jeffrey Epstein and detention camps lived long before Trump ever existed as an appropriate vehicle to deliver them for mass consumption.

When election infrastructure is completely digital and we have a non-transparent government agency controlling the information, what do we really have for democracy? There is no need to worry about the Russians this time. It's now all safely in Trump's hands, just like Epstein and the detention camps.

 

[Markubis]

Isn't that a Ben and Jerry's ice cream flavor?

 

[Cindy Claveau]

John Delaney's Wikipedia vandalized to say he died at the Democratic debate

 

[Brenda Archer]

The Marianne Williamson New Age woo brigade (true believers and probably bots mixed in) are out in force on Twitter. I don't even know what Orb Power is, and after reading her blather about depression I don't think I want to.
I'd have to hear her acknowledge that conical depression is real and that it can't just be cured by love and orbs or whatever before I did begin to take her seriously. That's after reading this:

Marianne Williamson Said Antidepressants Are Overprescribed For “Normal Human Despair”

“The twenties can be very hard. They’re not a mental illness. Divorce can be very difficult, losing a loved one, someone that you know died, someone left in a relationship and you’re heartbroken — that’s very painful, but it’s not a mental illness,” Williamson said.

www.buzzfeednews.com

And I'm sure she's said a lot more I'd take issue with. Oh, I'd hold my nose and vote for her if by fine chance she was the candidate, but anybody who says it implies that something I struggle with isn't real or I don't try hard enough just makes my blood boil.

Disability Twitter has come out strongly against Williamson, for example under #CripTheVote. She’s just as dangerous for people with “physical” illness and/or visible disabilities as she is for people with “mental” illness. I’m using scare quotes here because brains are physical organs too, but admitting that would put both fundagelical and newage grifters out of business.

It’s very convenient for corporations and fascists to push eugenics by subtle means. I basically had a nightmare about this today. The eugenics arguments almost always take the form of blaming the victims for some combination of bad attitude, bad character or bad behavior and are wholly unscientific, but most people have been talked into one or more of these arguments, even doctors.

Williamson is therefore the perfect tool of the very pharmaceutical-insurance complex she claims to hate.

 

[Romana]

Disability Twitter has come out strongly against Williamson, for example under #CripTheVote. She’s just as dangerous for people with “physical” illness and/or visible disabilities as she is for people with “mental” illness. I’m using scare quotes here because brains are physical organs too, but admitting that would put both fundagelical and newage grifters out of business.

It’s very convenient for corporations and fascists to push eugenics by subtle means. I basically had a nightmare about this today. The eugenics arguments almost always take the form of blaming the victims for some combination of bad attitude, bad character or bad behavior and are wholly unscientific, but most people have been talked into one or more of these arguments, even doctors.

Williamson is therefore the perfect tool of the very pharmaceutical-insurance complex she claims to hate.

From what I'm seeing she has something of a cult herself. They charge in with receipts from her books purporting to combat accusations against her. Like this:

I linked to the tweet because it's faster than saving and posting the image somewhere.
She says it's OK to take meds for depression, but then in the next sentence she says they're all placebos because what really cures you is prayer. That's for everything, including cancer!
So, still bullshit.

 

[Galen McGinnis]

 

[Kara Spengler]

She says it's OK to take meds for depression, but then in the next sentence she says they're all placebos because what really cures you is prayer. That's for everything, including cancer!
So, still bullshit.

Grr, she obviously has that bloody backwards!

When I was studying reiki our first lesson (and it was repeated often) was that it was basically a placebo. If a reasonable person thought there was a medical issue our ethical responsibility was to get the client to see a doctor instead.

Of course with our "health care" system I am guessing people have already spotted the problem. What do you do if it is your ethical responsibility to make sure someone sees a doctor but they can not afford to do so? Although that gets WAY off topic.

 

[Brenda Archer]

Grr, she obviously has that bloody backwards!

When I was studying reiki our first lesson (and it was repeated often) was that it was basically a placebo. If a reasonable person thought there was a medical issue our ethical responsibility was to get the client to see a doctor instead.

Of course with our "health care" system I am guessing people have already spotted the problem. What do you do if it is your ethical responsibility to make sure someone sees a doctor but they can not afford to do so? Although that gets WAY off topic.

I feel it’s quite on topic if we’re talking health care candidates, though. The belief in faith cures and alternative cures allows hard Right people to think they can go without healthcare. It’s part of why they didn’t complain when Republicans treated the ACA mandate as a burden instead of an opportunity. Basically, science and scientific medicine are being treated as dangers to faith. Disease is still being treated as a moral punishment.

That picture with a page from Williamson’s book - if I didn’t know who the author was, I would have suspected some evangelical prepper had written it. Williamson is no leftist, she’s a warmed-over snake handler.

And of course, this newage stuff also goes against what scientific herbalists believe, which is that herbs that work (like cannabis and St. John’s Wort) do so for reasons that are eventually scientifically demonstrated. So she’s also no friend of the sensible faction among Pagans.

 

[Eunoli]

I have to say tonight's debate was depressing. Watching the attacks against each other that were obviously just to gain points was off putting. Most of them did it and it went back and forth - both ways. Lots of hate against the Obama administration. Trump must have been gleeful watching.

That said, I loved Bennett's speech about segregation and bussing. I loved Governer Inslee's climate change remarks. Tulsi Gabbard surprised me a few times. Corey Booker almost impressed me, but for his continued attacks against Biden: enough with the circular firing squad - tell me what you believe and will do.

Who lost? All of us. Not a one of them spent significant time pushing for public action to push the Senate to protect the election from hacking and foreign interference. If we don't do that, all this is just academic and will be remembered as our last election before the Great Leader showed us the way.

 

[Dakota Tebaldi]