Someone Has To Do It: US Elections 2020

[anton pulisov]

Current odds Dem nominee

Sanders 7/5
Bloomberg 11/4
Buttigieg 7/1
Klobuchar 16/1
Biden 16/1
Warren 50/1

Interesting that Bloomberg so high in the list despite having done fuck all.

[Nocturnal Submission]

Interesting that Bloomberg so high in the list despite having done fuck all.

I keep on seeing the comment that Sanders, if he wins the Democrats nomination, would be the party's most left-wing presidential candidate since McGovern. Was McGovern really further left than Sanders?

[Satchmo Distel]

No. As was mentioned above (by Ursus IIRC), you have to go back to the socialist parties of the 1930s. There has never been a Democratic nominee as left as Sanders. He represents a part of the Democratic base that has always existed but not in sufficient numbers to get a nominee.

He's even more exceptional if you define left as relative to where the 'centre' currently lies, which is way to the right of where it was in 1972.

[anton pulisov]

Indeed.

Similarly, one could also argue that Reagan/BushI, Bush II and Trump each were, at their inauguration, the most right-wing president in modern times.

[Satchmo Distel]

Nixon is portrayed as right-wing but that wasn't really true in fiscal and social welfare policies relative to Reagan/BushI, Bush II and Trump. Nixon's right-wingedness was moulded around the Red Scare and the dogwhistling on law and order, the latter being being particularly poisonous as it's been built on by ever POTUS since, including Clinton and only partly suspended under Obama.

[Flynnie]

The 1972 platform was pretty left-wing by modern standards, although the key difference is I'm not sure even McGovern wanted most of it whereas Sanders definitely wants Medicare for All, for example.

[Incandenza]

I think the media will be even stronger in trying to speak Klomentum into existence.

Seems like the polling for Nevada and South Carolina is light right now. I have hopes for Bernie in Nevada based on his ground game--probably will be getting some volunteers from California to go there. I fear that the media will give a lot of good coverage to Klobuchar, resulting in a slight boost in the polls, which will then lead to more coverage about her rising poll numbers. It's a long time between now and Nevada. I can't see the membership of all of the Las Vegas unions going for Buttigieg or Klobuchar, but it seems that the union leadership doesn't like Sanders' M4A plan because they already have what sounds to be very good healthcare and don't want to give that up.

[Bruno]

Well, at least Biden is fucked.

I've heard it said more than once that "Americans will never elect a president who reminds them of their mother." I don't know where that comes from (other than misogyny) but it doesn't seem to be the case everywhere. Fair enough if we're just shittier that way over here. I assume a smart hottie under 50 could walk it,* but Hillary looked awfully inevitable in 2016 up until she wasn't (and did win the popular vote). Warren looked viable if hardly a shoe in. I wouldn't give up yet, but then I also think that no Democratic president is going to undo the damage the right have done to the fabric of government at this point. The DOJ is much in the news lately isn't it? How do you close that barn door I wonder.


* definitely if she were a Republican

[San Bernardhinault]

I think the media will be even stronger in trying to speak Klomentum into existence.

Seems like the polling for Nevada and South Carolina is light right now. I have hopes for Bernie in Nevada based on his ground game--probably will be getting some volunteers from California to go there. I fear that the media will give a lot of good coverage to Klobuchar, resulting in a slight boost in the polls, which will then lead to more coverage about her rising poll numbers. It's a long time between now and Nevada. I can't see the membership of all of the Las Vegas unions going for Buttigieg or Klobuchar, but it seems that the union leadership doesn't like Sanders' M4A plan because they already have what sounds to be very good healthcare and don't want to give that up.

The Nevada unions pushing back against Bernie's version of M4A seems very surprising to me. I wonder if they're getting some very cushy deals and funding from the health insurance industry.

It's apparently a complete arse to poll Nevada because of the relatively transient nature of much of the population, and particularly of the casino workers who disproportionately make up the Democratic electorate. So even if you see polls, don't really trust them. But instinctively I'd think that it's a good state for Sanders - he's moved from being a Buttigieg-like whites-only candidate in 2016 to having much more diverse support now, and in particular doing well with Latinx.

Even if Klobuchar gets a massive fundraising boost out of her third place in NH, she doesn't have time to build a ground game in Nevada, so I can't see her doing *that* well. Buttigieg is better funded and probably in a better place, but his success has been retail politics style, with a lot of physical presence on the ground, and he doesn't have the months and months of build-up that he had in the first two states. For those two it might depend on whether Harry Reid decides to get involved and start working the Nevada Democrat Machine.

The same is probably true of Warren, who might appeal to the Nevada electorate, if they don't see her as a lost cause already.

[San Bernardhinault]

And then there's the question about whether the coalescing of non-Sanders votes matters: because the primaries are all offering (relatively) proportionate delegates I think it's likely that nobody gets close to a majority. Sanders has won the popular vote twice, but only by relatively small margins, and only has 32% of the delegates. If Sanders finishes with a plurality of delegates, but with a number like that, he'll need to work very hard on outreach to less left-wing candidates and delegates to get an overall majority at convention. There aren't many other candidates that are a natural fit with the Sanders politics and approach. There are voters who'll leave Biden (and maybe Bloomberg) for Sanders, but I don't see their delegates doing the same. Warren's might, but she is much more part of the Democratic establishment.

[Hot Pepsi]

This is depressing me. I thought Warren or Klobucher were/are the best chance to actually win.

I like Sanders ok, but there are things that annoy me about him. He opens himself up to the red-baiting by calling himself a socialist and as far as I can tell, he really isn't. He's a Social Democrat. That's fine. I suppose that's what I am too. But then why antagonize so many people and refuse to be part of the Democratic Party? Yeah, they suck, but there's too much at stake here for the left to keep playing these purity games. That's not an original observation and I hope it's not a good one.

[Nefertiti2]

[URL]https://twitter.com/danhancox/status/1227611060217241600?s=21[/URL]

[ursus arctos]

The Nevada unions pushing back against Bernie's version of M4A seems very surprising to me. I wonder if they're getting some very cushy deals and funding from the health insurance industry.

That is of course possible, but I think the more likely explanation is that they see health care as their one real "value proposition" for attracting new members, having negotiated away a lot of wage and hour protection in order to keep what they have.

[ursus arctos]

And then there's the question about whether the coalescing of non-Sanders votes matters: because the primaries are all offering (relatively) proportionate delegates I think it's likely that nobody gets close to a majority.

This is a reasonable conclusion from the data we have so far, but it is way to early to extrapolate that through to the convention, especially given the non-representative nature of the two states who have voted.

I wouldn't revisit this until SuperTuesday at the earliest.

[Flynnie]

Let's see how well Sanders does in South Carolina and Nevada. I think there's a decent chance of a cascading effect. South Carolina would all but finish off Biden and show Bernie can grab enough votes to be a player in Southern primary elections which killed him in 2016.

Also, ursus is 1000% right that some of the more playing-ball-type unions are scared that losing health care as a bargaining chip will lead to the rank-and-file (who by many accounts support Sanders, certainly in the heavily Latino Culinary; Bernie leads among Latinos) asking what they actually do.

Randi Weingarten, who is exactly that type of union leader, once said that health care takes up so much of their time at negotiations that if it stopped being an issue, they would be able to do a ton of other things. Which is one of the reasons Bernie is proposing this type of policy.

[Tactical Genius]

Seems to be the case

Maybe Oprah

It's depressing

Zero Chance, she won't get the black vote. She is pretty toxic in the black community.

[San Bernardhinault]

This is a reasonable conclusion from the data we have so far, but it is way to early to extrapolate that through to the convention, especially given the non-representative nature of the two states who have voted.

I wouldn't revisit this until SuperTuesday at the earliest.

Absolutely. I'm just saying that the anti-Sanders vote doesn't need to coalesce in the way that the anti-Trump one did last time around. The Republican primary is winner takes all, so winning 26%-24% in the Republican Primary gets you all the delegates and makes a massive difference to both "momentum" and the possibility of stopping the insurgent. The comparison as a way of describing how Sanders can win isn't as meaningful as it might appear superficially, despite what the cable talking heads might suggests.

[WOM]

Zero Chance, she won't get the black vote. She is pretty toxic in the black community.

The voice of black America speaks again...

[ursus arctos]

The DOJ is much in the news lately isn't it? How do you close that barn door I wonder.

This is one of those rare cases in which I can be somewhat optimistic.

The meltdown at the DOJ is entirely Barr and a handful of henchmen. Remove them, and the organism will heal itself rather quickly (that of course doesn't mean it will be perfect (it never was), but it can get back to where it was).

Of course, another four years would be catastrophic (though my own view is that impact of another four years on State would be even worse).

[ursus arctos]

Most Republican primaries are at least somewhat proportional, not winner take all

[Bruno]

I'll have a helping of your relative optimism, but I was partly thinking about the long-term precedent in sort of late-Republic way. It's the fact that it can be so easily perverted when there are no checks on the president. We will all see how much of the norm shredding underway sticks.

[ursus arctos]

Yeah, a lot of what passes for my optimism in this particular area is grounded in my knowledge of people who are directly involved.

I actually wouldn't be shocked if we see some form of bi-partisan support for legislating norms should there be a real chance of the Democrats getting control of all three branches in the next four years. There is no way that the Republicans want these tactics to be weaponised against them.

[Tactical Genius]

The voice of black America speaks again...

I get my information from Black America. I guess you have not been following the news lately and how it relates to Oprah and her friends.
I take it you are a big Oprah fan.

[ursus arctos]

Oprah's following is overwhelmingly white

As is the electorate

[Sporting]

Even Trump got 8% of the Black vote.