Democratic Party Presidential Candidates for 2020

[Innula Zenovka]

Spoiler: Found you a Secretary of Defense

I've just been looking at her Twitter stream. She's truly odd.


I mean, I know the Declaration of Independence is truly great document of unique cultural, historical and political importance not just to the USA but to the world, but this is the first time I've ever seen it called a "Mission Statement," which as far as I remember is something no one had heard of before the 1990s and suddenly any company with any pretensions at all suddenly had to have a few platitudinous bullet points (supplied, I always assume, at enormous expense by whatever PR company charged them an arm and a leg for telling them they needed one in the first place).

Anyway, it's a Mission Statement, to be hung in Reception and the Board Room and otherwise ignored, but then in the next half of the sentence Americans are taken to task for failing to bond emotionally and psychologically with it, which I had always thought was something mammals do, to a greater or lesser extent, with their immediate family. Anyway, in this case, Americans are to blame for failing to establish an adequate psychological and emotional bond with the Mission Statement, which is probably why it's complaining they never phone it, and when was the last time they visited it?

I cannot really make anything out of the next sentence, even though it looks like English at first sight. Anyway, it's apparently got Schrodinger's principles, in that they are either dead or they are alive in Americans' hearts, but we don't know which until we open Americans' hearts to find out, thus causing the wave function to collapse into a state (as, presumably, would the American on whom we were experimenting).

Be that as it may, in the next sentence it's become a best-selling self-help book she's trying to promote to Oprah's book club or something. "It will change you!"???

Hmm.

 

[Free]

I've just been looking at her Twitter stream. She's truly odd.

 

[detrius]

If your highest ambitions are defined by a piece of poetry written two and a half centuries ago by members of the elite class ruling a pre-industrial, agrarian society where owning people was legal, then you're just intentionally scaling down the expectations for your job performance.

In my experience, people who want to go this far back in time are just unhappy with the lessons learned since then and want a do-over.

 

[Aeon Jiminy]

I actually watched Marianne Williamson's 4th of July address which was an in-depth discussion of The Declaration of Independence. I agree that it is "odd" that a presidential candidate would want to dissect the document that began what we now call the United States, but I found it thought provoking. It also addressed hypocrisy. Her address is available on YouTube, but I get the feeling that providing a link in this forum would be tantamount to linking to porn.

 

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

lol

 

[Brenda Archer]

After the CNN debate, time to thin the herd dramatically
by Blog for Arizona

 

[Katheryne Helendale]

Her address is available on YouTube, but I get the feeling that providing a link in this forum would be tantamount to linking to porn.

Got any links to some good porn? Asking for a friend.

 

[Cristalle]

 

[Free]

 

[Kara Spengler]

I actually watched Marianne Williamson's 4th of July address which was an in-depth discussion of The Declaration of Independence. I agree that it is "odd" that a presidential candidate would want to dissect the document that began what we now call the United States, but I found it thought provoking. It also addressed hypocrisy. Her address is available on YouTube, but I get the feeling that providing a link in this forum would be tantamount to linking to porn.

Well, we do not dissect porn. It gets messy.

Unlike many other forums this particular subforum has a pretty high ratio of people that know the minutae of the subject. Political leanings aside, a board filled with wonks, lawyers, and probably politicians is like a duckshoot if someone walks in not being 100% sure of what they state as a fact.

It is not just this subforum either that does that, this whole board has a pretty high level of 'know your stuff or be careful where you step'. On another one a few of us got on a tangent-to-a-tangent-to-a-tangent about typography, fonts, and machines used for printing through the ages.

 

[Spirits Rising]

In addition to Kara's point above I would like to state that this entire forum (VVO) does have its fair share of people who have varied degrees of negative reaction to starry eyed dreamed and idealists.

Hi.

Reality is harsh - some of us live day to day because of that one, simple fact.

 

[Kara Spengler]

In addition to Kara's point above I would like to state that this entire forum (VVO) does have its fair share of people who have varied degrees of negative reaction to starry eyed dreamed and idealists.

Hi.

Reality is harsh - some of us live day to day because of that one, simple fact.

I consider dreams and ideals sort of like mission statements. Fine for goals (depending on what they are) but as soon as you want to make them something more than that expect to get called out on them. Any movement needs dreamers but it also needs people who will get stuff done. Want to get law xyz passed? Ok, but that is not enough, you also need people engaged in the topic who can walk the halls of congress blindfolded with a contact list full of people in various offices.

 

[Aeon Jiminy]

I consider dreams and ideals sort of like mission statements. Fine for goals (depending on what they are) but as soon as you want to make them something more than that expect to get called out on them. Any movement needs dreamers but it also needs people who will get stuff done. Want to get law xyz passed? Ok, but that is not enough, you also need people engaged in the topic who can walk the halls of congress blindfolded with a contact list full of people in various offices.

I would answer you by saying that the person who was touted as "the most qualified candidate ever" delivered this country to the feet of Donald Trump. Our Constitution doesn't require a President to be the things you're requiring. If we're not willing to simply collect and explore other ideas and other possibilities at this very early stage of the race, then we're never going to be aware of the shortcomings of the prescribed standard ones who get all of the media attention and all of the big money. Bernie Sanders didn't get the nomination, but his ideas are now everywhere in the party. Contrast that to "the most qualified candidate ever".

 

[Kara Spengler]

I would answer you by saying that the person who was touted as "the most qualified candidate ever" delivered this country to the feet of Donald Trump. Our Constitution doesn't require a President to be the things you're requiring. If we're not willing to simply collect and explore other ideas and other possibilities at this very early stage of the race, then we're never going to be aware of the shortcomings of the prescribed standard ones who get all of the media attention and all of the big money. Bernie Sanders didn't get the nomination, but his ideas are now everywhere in the party. Contrast that to "the most qualified candidate ever".

Hey, if you want to get something done with just ideals best of luck. I have seen WAY too many organisations with just ideals crash and burn, no matter how good their ideals were.

As to Bernie, he was not just going with ideals. He has been working in politics for ages, specialising in what he was talking about on the trail. So an example of him is really an example of you can not do the stuff he wanted with just ideals but you need to know the logistics as well.

Movements are great for the energy. However by themselves they do not get much done, they need people who know the logistics (or at least the relevant laws).

Even though it is going in the opposite direction donnie is the perfect example. He technically fits the constitutional requirements but would anyone argue he has accomplished most of what he said he would do? The wall? The swamp? Well, appointing SC judges, where the biggest challenge is waiting for someone else to retire or die and next up is reading the next name on a list someone else wrote.

 

[Aeon Jiminy]

Movements are great for the energy. However by themselves they do not get much done, they need people who know the logistics (or at least the relevant laws).

I'm feeling that movements are everything. The American Revolution, The Abolitionists, The Suffragette Movement, The Civil Rights Movement, Gay Rights, didn't start within the system or the human tools of the system. They didn't ask for permission from the law that says no. The system has to be reminded that there can be no other answer than "yes".

 

[Brenda Archer]

I'm feeling that movements are everything. The American Revolution, The Abolitionists, The Suffragette Movement, The Civil Rights Movement, Gay Rights, didn't start within the system or the human tools of the system. They didn't ask for permission from the law that says no. The system has to be reminded that there can be no other answer than "yes".

All of these movements had both an action wing and a wing of wonks and lawyers pursuing specific policy goals. They all had people in the streets and people working connections.

It can also be argued that at some point all successful movements get incorporated into the society they were trying to change. That’s just the way it goes. So if you want to set the tone for a movement, you have to communicate well and get in early.

 

[Bartholomew Gallacher]

If your highest ambitions are defined by a piece of poetry written two and a half centuries ago by members of the elite class ruling a pre-industrial, agrarian society where owning people was legal, then you're just intentionally scaling down the expectations for your job performance.

In my experience, people who want to go this far back in time are just unhappy with the lessons learned since then and want a do-over.

Wrong. It's not like 200 years of political development and jurisdiction, therefore also corrections and changes to the constitution, haven't happened in the mean time, but this is exactly what you are implying. The constitution is the foundation of a country, and also always some kind of utopy how a society should work. And it doesn't matter when this piece of text was written, or by whom, as long as the underlying values are still considered to be of good value and as important today.

The problem with the US constitution nowadays is more that it is so hard to change at all, it became stagnant, it's like an old corset which you cannot escape any more because it's broken; other countries, like the UK, don't have a written constitution in just one document, but still have a constitution and are perfectly fine with that as well.

While you can consider the US constitution as a mission statement, it was originally up and foremost a propaganda document to unite the colonists behind the founding fathers and win the war against the UK.

 

[Brenda Archer]

Wrong. It's not like 200 years of political development and jurisdiction, therefore also corrections and changes to the constitution, haven't happened in the mean time, but this is exactly what you are implying. The constitution is the foundation of a country, and also always some kind of utopy how a society should work. And it doesn't matter when this piece of text was written, or by whom, as long as the underlying values are still considered to be of good value and as important today.

The problem with the US constitution nowadays is more that it is so hard to change at all, it became stagnant, it's like an old corset which you cannot escape any more because it's broken; other countries, like the UK, don't have a written constitution in just one document, but still have a constitution and are perfectly fine with that as well.

While you can consider the US constitution as a mission statement, it was originally up and foremost a propaganda document to unite the colonists behind the founding fathers and win the war against the UK.

I can see saying this about the Declaration of Inddpendence, but not the Constitution. It was meant to be a long-term compromise among sovereign states.

The hard Right is now the faction most likely to try to get a Constitutional Convention, which means no one else is willing to, we are too far in the direction of a minority government already.

The different factions in the country are angry enough with each other already. We cling to the Constitution because we’re trying to rein in the hard Right with the rule of law. Once enough people are convinced this doesn’t work anymore, I expect some chaos.

 

[Kara Spengler]

I'm feeling that movements are everything. The American Revolution, The Abolitionists, The Suffragette Movement, The Civil Rights Movement, Gay Rights, didn't start within the system or the human tools of the system. They didn't ask for permission from the law that says no. The system has to be reminded that there can be no other answer than "yes".

The revolution did not have a system in washington to work within. The relevant system was in London which, given the technology at the time, was pretty much irrelevant, so it did not really get going until it seceded.

If you think the rest did not have a political component I feel sorry for how you are fooling yourself. Control before, oh, Reagan may have been laxer but what did things like Occupy do?

 

[Kara Spengler]

BTW, if you think LGBT rights do not work within the system I have a bridge to sell you. Maybe not right at first but HRC and such have lobbyists (I used to be a citizen lobbyist for trans issues and we were constantly calling each other as to what the HRC lobbyists were doing as they were rarely on our side).