Someone Has To Do It: US Elections 2020

[ursus arctos]

Why should anyone care what Manchin thinks?

West Virginia is a completely lost cause.

[Satchmo Distel]

Bloomberg needs to do better than "those words don't reflect Michael Bloomberg", putting himself in the third person. He said the words and he has to explain them. Hopefully they will sink him. This is not the GOP primary where you can use a racist past (of only 5 years ago) as an asset. Dems should have learned this in 2016 when their airbrushing of the Clintons' race record did not prevent the depression of AA turnout that fucked them in, e.g. Pennsylvania and Florida; and maybe Biden sinking is partly due to the memory of that.

[San Bernardhinault]

Manchin's utterly horrible - I saw an interview with him the other day where he was desperately trying as hard as possible to not criticise Trump. I can't remember what the subject was, perhaps judicial retaliation against impeachment witnesses. He kept saying things like "I think he probably phrased it in a way that I am not comfortable with," or some other flim flam bollocks. It was embarrassing.

On the other hand, Manchin is as left wing as any Senator from West Virginia is ever going to be. Any alternative is bound to be much, much worse.

[Bruno]

I don't "care" what he thinks, I just think it's hilarious that you can vote guilty on impeachment and then say "Eh maybe I'll vote to reelect him."

[ursus arctos]

You have a weird sense of humour

[Flynnie]

Manchin's utterly horrible - I saw an interview with him the other day where he was desperately trying as hard as possible to not criticise Trump. I can't remember what the subject was, perhaps judicial retaliation against impeachment witnesses. He kept saying things like "I think he probably phrased it in a way that I am not comfortable with," or some other flim flam bollocks. It was embarrassing.

On the other hand, Manchin is as left wing as any Senator from West Virginia is ever going to be. Any alternative is bound to be much, much worse.

I don't know, Manchin's vote keeps going down the more and more he panders to Trump. WV turning into a deeply Republican state is a pretty recent development (like, within the last 5-10 years), the perception of being anti-coal and I think the crowding out of pro-life Democrats has contributed to that. It's a fine needle to thread, but re-emphasising class politics in a state with a deep union tradition could help.

There's a Sanders-inspired candidate running against Capito this year. She ran against Manchin a few years ago and got routed in the primary, but that was always going to happen. I don't expect she'll win but now that she has some name recognition and it's a presidential election year, if she's not blown out (Capito beat her previous challenger, a former WV Secretary of State so a real challenger, by 2-1) that could be a sign on where to go in the future.

[San Bernardhinault]

I did always find the crowding out of pro-life Democrats to be counter-productive. Pro-life Democrats are wrong, of course, but you need to have candidates who can win where they're running. Pro-life, pro-union, class-politics candidates are probably the right ones for West Virginia (and elsewhere in Appalachia). If you're running in the suburbs, probably a more socially liberal but a bit more capitalist-with-regulation, might be the right way to go. The "purity test" approach to candidates bothers me in a country like the US that's so diverse but only has two parties.

[Nefertiti2]

The healthy state of US Democracy

[URL]https://twitter.com/jkbloodtreasure/status/1228056868754513930?s=21[/URL]

[Nefertiti2]

https://twitter.com/J_ManPrime21/status/1228027506407755776?s=20

[Incandenza]

One of the interesting ministories of the election has been Justin Jackson becoming a Bernie supporter.

Meanwhile, more fun graphics from CNN. It's Cilizza's rankings, which shouldn't be taken seriously since he is one of the dumbest people in media, but they decided to list top to bottom in the opposite direction that someone would read a graphic, and Biden moved down 2 spots from #1, and Bernie is now #1, but he doesn't get a green arrow showing that he's moved up. Just all normal ways to visually convey information.

[URL]https://twitter.com/MikePrysner/status/1228055850129846272[/URL]

[San Bernardhinault]

The (generally Sanders supporting) people on my Facebook who were reposting anti-Warren content two months ago and anti-Buttigieg^* content last week are now fully focused on anti-Bloomberg content and, I'll admit, it's much less grating. Partly because I don't want Bloomberg to be candidate, and partly because they stuff he's getting attacked for has a whole lot more substance to it.

* - It felt odd that they never seemed like they felt any need to have any anti-Biden content, but it looks like it wasn't needed

[anton pulisov]

It really is a fuckin joke that the Dems would change their rules at the last minute to allow a Republican billionaire to run in their primary.

[San Bernardhinault]

It really is a fuckin joke that the Dems would change their rules at the last minute to allow a Republican billionaire to run in their primary.

Erm. They've always allowed non-party members to run in the primary. The current popular vote leader is testament to that.

They changed the rules to (possibly) allow him into the next debate - and I think they screwed up that because they should have made the requirement of having won delegates (technically, I think exceeded 15% in at least one district) in one of the previous primaries and caucuses rather than have it based purely on polling. My suspicion is that getting him in a debate will kill him stone dead among Democratic voters. Everyone is going to be gunning for him (Pete and Amy are going to be very happy to have the fire drawn away from them; and Bernie's going to be pretty happy that he's going to have yet another debate where he gets a relatively free ride: at some point the centrists are going to realise he's the main threat and are going to stop trying to cannibalise themselves, but that hasn't really happened yet).

[anton pulisov]

Non-party members yeah, but I read somewhere that one of the rules they changed was that a candidate needed to have enough individual donors to get into the race. In the case of Bloomberg they just decided to waive that rule, because he had enough individual dollars. Which is odd, because the whole reason the rule existed was to stop the likes of him getting into the race.

[caja-dglh]

Non-party members yeah, but I read somewhere that one of the rules they changed was that a candidate needed to have enough individual donors to get into the race. In the case of Bloomberg they just decided to waive that rule, because he had enough individual dollars. Which is odd, because the whole reason the rule existed was to stop the likes of him getting into the race.

But when a candidate refuses donors, is that in any way worse than asking people for money? I don't think that was the reason at all - it was to try and ensure some level of public support. Is it better to set his own money on fire or other peoples?

I put forward my thoughts on this pages ago - the real issue is campaign finance as a whole, not Bloomberg. But there is no way that will get addressed.

[ursus arctos]

As SB noted, it was never about eligibility to run (which is a matter of state law in primary states or state party rules in caucus states), but eligibility to participate in official debates.

dglh is of course correct in every respect w/r/t campaign finance.

[San Bernardhinault]

Non-party members yeah, but I read somewhere that one of the rules they changed was that a candidate needed to have enough individual donors to get into the race. In the case of Bloomberg they just decided to waive that rule, because he had enough individual dollars. Which is odd, because the whole reason the rule existed was to stop the likes of him getting into the race.

Not to get in the race. Literally anyone can be in the race. All kinds of ridiculous people are nominally in the race.

It's to qualify for the next debate in Nevada, having missed the first 50 or so debates. The question is whether they're giving him legitimacy as a candidate that he hasn't earned through grass-roots support. But the actual material value of being on the debate stage watched by 5 million people who've already heard all the answers before having watched all the previous debates is not necessarily huge.

Also, I think Bloomberg hasn't qualified yet - I think he still needs one or two good polls from reliable pollsters. And it's not clear he'd even participate in a debate because it might open him up to all kinds of attacks that he's avoided so far by just flooding the airwaves but remaining out of range.

[Flynnie]

Sanders has mentioned public financing of elections, he did so in the last debate.

Bloomberg will wilt under any kind of serious scrutiny. He's a complete fucking asshole, he's easily the most right-wing candidate in the debate and he has no intrinsic base of support. Stuff like the war on soda is only going to make him look worse, not better.

[Flynnie]

Also, I posted my California ballot today. I am very happy, although I asked for a postal voting guide by mistake which means I will have a useless book (and they are books in CA) to recycle.

[ursus arctos]

You could pass it around to amaze and confound your British mates

[Incandenza]

I need to start reading about the statewide propositions and to try to find leftist voting guides so I can be told which judges are evil and which ones are less bad.

[Amor de Cosmos]

A resident of Point Roberts WA, has got a local proposition on the ballot requesting that the community be allowed to negotiate an agreement to join Canada.

[Nefertiti2]

That nice mr Bloomberg

[URL]https://twitter.com/kimletgordon/status/1228152233209946113?s=21[/URL]

[San Bernardhinault]

I need to start checking the propositions, too. I don't get to vote but can advise my wife. I do have a friend who's running for Democratic Central Committee for the 77th district - he'd get my vote, but also usually gives good advice on the props.

[ursus arctos]

Do you have a bunch of local ones as well?

One of the joys of voting in San Francisco is that the City Charter parallels the State Constitution in terms of what is submitted to the voters. There were always multiple questions on minor changes in what qualified as eligible investments for the fire fighters' pension fund and the like.