Announcement

Collapse
No announcement yet.

Someone Has To Do It: US Elections 2020

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

    #51
    Originally posted by Snake Plissken View Post

    1. In the show, it was the fourth.
    2. The writer said that the real life character he based Omar on, plus corraborating statements say it actually happened, except it was done from the sixth floor.
    haha. That's brilliant. I should have had more faith in david Simon. The truth is far stranger than fiction. (I should make it clear that it was my paraphrase rather than a direct quote. He's a first cousin of the mam of a friend of mine, and this friend was having his baby baptized while your man was in the country on holiday. ) I think perhaps a more accurate description is that he's as unrealistic in his own way as the character of Gus in the last season. A gobshite like carcetti doesn't get to be mayor of baltimore. TBH i would suspect that a lot of that side of things will have been based substantially on true events. I would blame Aidan Gillen.

    Comment


      #52
      Originally posted by San Bernardhinault View Post
      Literally whoever gets chosen from the massive field is going to be described by some people as an uninspiring turn-off who's not sufficiently left-wing/radical.
      And even if they are, inspiring, they will probably be dealing with a nightmarish financial disaster, with the Nation teetering on a precipice, and will be punished for saving the day and gifted a republican congress. Then people will start to blame you for not delivering change, so they all go and vote for a Proper Nazi, because Swing voters in american presidential elections are fucking idiots.

      Comment


        #53
        Richard Ojeda interests me. Military background, populist tendencies. Insanely, he voted for Trump in 2016 (!) which might give him leverage with some 'problem demographics' (angry old white guys); or it might lead to him being crucified. Probably the latter.

        Comment


          #54
          President Hickenlooper, played by Groucho Marx, with Chico as his chief of staff and Harpo as his spokesman.

          Comment


            #55
            Originally posted by ursus arctos View Post
            No one who would inspire you is electable in this country at the moment.
            To be fair, I suspect there is nobody who exists that would inspire Lang Spoon (other than to inspire loathing with the fire of a thousand suns)

            Comment


              #56
              Originally posted by The Awesome Berbaslug!!! View Post
              Then people will start to blame you for not delivering change, so they all go and vote for a Proper Nazi, because Swing voters in american presidential elections are fucking idiots.
              There was nothing stopping the Democrats from driving through universal healthcare in 2008-2010.

              It would have given them an electoral majority for a generation.

              Instead they went for Romneycare.

              Comment


                #57
                Well, there was something stopping them, which was Obama's desire to have bipartisan support for it, which led to Romneycare even though not a single Republican supported it.

                Comment


                  #58
                  Yes, Obama refused to kill the filibuster, because that wouldn't have been playing nice.

                  You know what FDR would have done.

                  Comment


                    #59
                    From Taibbi:

                    The metric pundits usually employ is, “Which Democrat could most easily pass for a Republican?” and vice-versa.

                    “Electability” tends to come up most in election seasons when the incumbent president is violently unpopular with minority-party voters. This is why people should be cautious now. With Democratic voters so anguished by Trump’s presidency they’ll pick anyone they think is the best bet to win, be on the lookout for experts pretending to know the unknowable — how the broad mean of voters will behave nearly two years from now.
                    Spot on, and this is the game that Democrats play most of all.

                    "Sure, I like Bernie's [or Kucinich, or any other left-wing candidate's] policies, but they just can't win in a general election."

                    The rules have been torn up. "Realistic" doesn't matter anymore. Respectability/civility politics don't matter anymore. The future of the fucking world is in the balance, and we'll probably all die horrible deaths in our lifetime anyway, but let's try to do something about it now so we have a chance of stopping that, and fuck with David Gergen thinks about it.

                    No establishment Democrat would have dared to suggest a 70% tax on income over $10 million. AOC said it, and guess what? 59% of people agree with her. 57% of Southerners, and even 45% of Republicans!

                    Ideas that would be considered "unrealistic" and too radical by the establishment Democratic party consistently poll well (including universal healthcare, long before Obama was president). The party just never has the guts to ever run on them. Instead they roll out their big policy ideas from a pre-negotiated, dull position. Look at Castro calling for free college--for two years only. I'm sure that would even have to be means tested with some godawful idea like you must take at least one coding class and you'll have to submit all of your essays to the Dept. of Education via turnitin.com so they make sure that you aren't plagiarizing your work. And we'll still see Democratic candidates who won't call for Medicare for All, but will talk about wanting to make "healthcare affordable and accesible to everyone."
                    Last edited by Incandenza; 16-01-2019, 14:12.

                    Comment


                      #60
                      That's all true, but there is still a difference in applying the "electability" test to someone like Warren (aka "erm, have you noticed that she is a woman?") and the inability of this country to elect anyone who would inspire Lang Spoon to national office.

                      Comment


                        #61
                        Haha.

                        To me, the "electability" test that Warren fails is her idiotic and offensive doubling down on her Native American heritage with the 23 and Me test, and falling for Trump trolling her about it.

                        Comment


                          #62
                          That's just something dumb that she did which we will all get over in an instant if she wins the nomination. Kamala is going to have similar issues with some of her prosecutorial decisions, methinks.

                          Comment


                            #63
                            I think Kamala's past decisions are far more serious than Warren's DNA test, and a big hurdle for me.

                            Comment


                              #64
                              Same here, though it is striking to me how much more is said about such things when the candidate is female (see, e.g., Sanders on Guns, Biden on Anita Hill, etc.)

                              Comment


                                #65
                                Originally posted by Incandenza View Post
                                we'll probably all die horrible deaths in our lifetime
                                This statement is making my head hurt.

                                Comment


                                  #66
                                  Look at Castro calling for free college--for two years only.
                                  His exact quote: "We’ll work to make the first two years of college, a certification program or an apprenticeship accessible and affordable, so millions more people get the skills they need to get a good job without drowning in debt."

                                  So that's not even free for the first two years. The first two years should be "accessible and affordable". Does that mean he wants the final years to be inaccessible and unaffordable?

                                  Comment


                                    #67
                                    Originally posted by Wouter D View Post

                                    This statement is making my head hurt.
                                    That is because You are Dutch. If You were Irish you recognize it as the poetry that it is.

                                    Comment


                                      #68
                                      The electability thing means different things to different people, of course. But I get pretty animated when people try and fight the last election, and try and fight it on the Republicans' terms. When the sole focus becomes finding ways to win white, working class, non-college educated people in 4 rust-belt states who moved from Democrat to Republican in 2016. The idea that we have to find a candidate that appeals to this group of perhaps a million people at the expense of everyone else is an idea that drives me nuts.

                                      So when I see Ojeda's name out there purely because he's a rust-belt populist who came close-ish in a West Virginia house election, it bothers me. Fortunately, Ojeda's going nowhere. The same for Buttegieg. Sherrod Brown's hypothetical candidacy (and he's on a tour of New Hampshire, Iowa, South Carolina and Nevada, so it's not really that hypothetical) is based on exactly that metric, too: "He talks about workers, and he won in a rusty-belt state".

                                      And, to a large extent, that's what's driving support for Biden, despite him being ancient, and despite the Anita Hill stuff. Uncle Joe Is From Scranton And Used To Get The Train remains the Biden pitch. He is supposedly the White Working Class Whisperer.

                                      I've even heard a lot of Sanders talk based on the same thing. I think that's unfair on Sanders, whose pitch is much wider. But the media still focus on him as being able to win those working class whites, even though his support seems to come much more from millennials and the college educated.

                                      I find this whole thing grating, and patronising, and impractical, and stupid.

                                      Comment


                                        #69
                                        Originally posted by Wouter D View Post

                                        This statement is making my head hurt.
                                        Haha, that's what trying to sound halfway smart before 6:30am does to you. Just in case you couldn't guess what I meant, I meant that we'll all probably die of an ecological disaster (or something related to that) before we would have been expected to die a natural death.

                                        Comment


                                          #70
                                          The electability thing means different things to different people, of course. But I get pretty animated when people try and fight the last election, and try and fight it on the Republicans' terms. When the sole focus becomes finding ways to win white, working class, non-college educated people in 4 rust-belt states who moved from Democrat to Republican in 2016. The idea that we have to find a candidate that appeals to this group of perhaps a million people at the expense of everyone else is an idea that drives me nuts.
                                          How about just trying to win over all races of working class people everywhere?

                                          Comment


                                            #71
                                            How about just having good policies rather than creating policies (or having candidates) theoretically aimed at one demographic. Why not assume that they're actually smart enough to support good policy, rather than assuming we have to pander to them in one way or another.

                                            Comment


                                              #72
                                              Originally posted by San Bernardhinault View Post
                                              How about just having good policies rather than creating policies (or having candidates) theoretically aimed at one demographic. Why not assume that they're actually smart enough to support good policy, rather than assuming we have to pander to them in one way or another.
                                              Indeed, the very reason for political polarisation is that the major parties globally have concentrated on increasingly narrow voter sets, driving policies to the extremes as a result.

                                              Comment


                                                #73
                                                There's also the fact that a significant majority of the Americans who anyone from the rest of the world would identify as "working class" a) would never self-identify as such and b) have been voting against their economic interests for decades.

                                                The first half of that is even true for people of colour, who comprise a majority of that population.

                                                And what SB said in each of his last two posts.

                                                Comment


                                                  #74
                                                  Originally posted by San Bernardhinault View Post
                                                  How about just having good policies rather than creating policies (or having candidates) theoretically aimed at one demographic. Why not assume that they're actually smart enough to support good policy, rather than assuming we have to pander to them in one way or another.
                                                  Sometimes when that does happen, liberals who like to punch left attack these policies because they aren't narrow enough. A criticism from liberals for Sanders' free college plan was "oh, so you're going to give a handout to wealthy children?" Nevermind that the people who would benefit the most would be working class people, but the argument was used to say that Sanders didn't care about poor POC.

                                                  Comment


                                                    #75
                                                    That one from Hawai'i is not going to win.

                                                    (And this, and the other thread is back to normal. Thanks. Where's the thread for minor glitches?)

                                                    *Found it.
                                                    Last edited by Gerontophile; 16-01-2019, 17:13.

                                                    Comment

                                                    Working...
                                                    X