The Politics Thread

[alphanguy74]

I'm sorry... I was having a brain fart, and somehow I didn't realize you were speaking strictly in terms of the primaries.  That's my fault. So maybe he would have difficulty in the primaries, but then again, he might not. The fact that he is so supportive of the middle class working American is the thing that might bridge all gaps. And when it comes to a general election, Trump would have a hell of a time going after a MAJOR. 

[Max]

 

Alphanguy, I agree that Ojeda would make a very formidable general election candidate, but he unfortunately has zero chance of winning the nomination. And there would likely be a revolt at the Democratic Convention if Kasich were ever named as a VP selection.

 

2020 probably represents the best chance in a very long time for an independent candidate to challenge the two-party duopoly. If Kasich wants to have any chance of making an impact, he should skip the GOP Primary (since the Republican base despises him) and go the independent route. However, I very much like your idea of a moderate Democrat and a moderate Republican running together in an attempt at a "unity" ticket, and I could see either individual (Ojeda or Kasich) choosing the other as a running made as a way to offer voters an alternative to both major parties. Even if such an effort fails, I strongly believe that a third major political party is long overdue, and such a presidential campaign would help to lay the groundwork for that.

 

I believe this was mentioned before, but Michael Bloomberg is also a complete non-starter in a Democratic Primary. If he wants to run--and 2020 really is his last chance--he should launch an independent bid:

 

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2018/11/17/bloomberg_eyes_2020_but_would_dems_warm_to_him_138681.html

 

[marceline]

 

Which would be led by me because John Kasich is my governor.

 

Any candidate like Ojeda or Bloomberg will not be allowed to run as a Democrat. Especially after the shitshow of letting Bernie use the party.  If they want to run, they will have to run as independents.

[JaneAusten]

After democrats won a wave election due to healthcare and the flop of a taxcut, anyone who believes John Kasich would have any kind of place on a democratic ticket is - I don't have any words for it. Republicans like him are the reason many in the GOP in 2016 voted for Trump. He has no new ideas - the same policies that lost 16 GOP establishment candidates the primary to Trump. and he certainly has his hands in place in terms of voter suppression in Ohio. I wonder what demographic the majority of those 2 million voters dropped off the Ohio voter rolls were.

Edited November 17, 2018 by JaneAusten

[alphanguy74]

This video give a lot of insight as to why people voted for Trump. It shows that a great deal of Americans are kind of dim bulbs, and it also shows that Americans are too damn lazy to milk a cow. 

 

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[alphanguy74]

But the problem is... if Bernie had gotten the nomination, Trump would not be in the white house today. Polls showed Bernie over Trump by 15 -18 points! People are thirsty for someone different, anybody different. That's one of the reasons Obama won, this country will just bounce back and forth, crashing against walls to get away from the establishment. That's why I think Ojeda has the best chance against Trump. No candidate is going to give you everything you want,  and voters have to get over this idea that if "My guy doesn't get the nomination, then I just won't vote".  OF course, the most crucial mistake of all, was Hillary and Bernie not making a pact to be the other's running mate, thus consolidating their power. Ego on both their parts caused us to have a raving lunatic for a President. 

Max, do you truly think he has no chance of getting the nomination? You don't see that they might have learned their lesson with what happened with Bernie? It cost them the white house.  One thing that might work is a populist like him, and a more establishment running mate like Elizabeth Warren. But having a woman running mate was poison for John McCain... maybe a woman on the ticket is just plain poison PERIOD. 

[DramatistDreamer]

John McCain's problem wasn't having a woman as a running mate, it was the particular woman that he selected, who was clearly out of her depth in all matters political.

 

Proposing that had Bernie won the nomination, he would've won the WH is asking for an awful LOT of hypotheticals to be put into place and JMO, but I don't see any of that happening. 

The fact that Bernie couldn't get out of the nomination is where the argument ends for me but  let's entertain the far-fetched notion that he could have somehow secured the nomination-- Trump Inc. would've certainly dredged up every vote, every questionable word uttered by Bernie since he entered public office in the 1980s. 

Remember those very distasteful and shady articles that Bernie wrote when he was around 33 years old?  Those would've most certainly been brought to the fore, instead of existing on marginalized blogs.  Trust that every untoward thing that Bernie had written or said (and he has a record of this that stretches back decades) would've been dredged up.  And lest, anyone believe that Bernie's questionable writings would be no match for Trump's history-- Trump Inc. would make sure to tilt the focus on how it reflects on Bernie's history in public service, meanwhile casting Trump's indiscretions as purely personal (as he had no history in public service before getting elected), much like how the Trump campaign used the l'affaire Lewinsky and Paula Jones to re-litigate Bill Clinton's fitness for public office and by association, HRC.  Bernie's deviant essays from the 1980s would've been cast as perverted and warped, and unworthy of support from those evangelicals that the Trump campaign courted so assiduously.

I could go on and on, point by point and show you how anyone could've magnified Bernie's perceived weaknesses in a general election because anyone could do it, even the most novice of political novices.  And if a political novice could thoroughly deconstruct Bernie's general election campaign, imagine what people as cunning and ruthless as Kellyanne Conway and Roger Stone could do?

 

I think the magical thinking about Bernie needs to come to a close.

 

 

Speaking of magical thinking,

 

I wonder how many Brits still labour under the illusion that there is any scenario in which an exit from the E.U. could produce a favourable outcome?  Theresa May has failed to secure what the Tories promised but can anyone secure what the Tories promised?  Sure doesn't look so from here.

 

Also, this 1922 Committee is unlike anything I've ever read, seen or heard of in politics.  Leave it to the Brits to dust off a little used rule that few people are familiar with and are confounded by and introduce it as a mechanism to add to an already tangled and complicated process.

 

Edited November 18, 2018 by DramatistDreamer

[alphanguy74]

All good points.  That's one reason I think Ojeda would be so good, because as we all know, a career military man is basically sacred in this country, although that never stopped Trump from dragging McCain through the mud. However, we all know he'd call Mother Theresa a bitch if it suited his purpose. The political climate among low information voters (Trump voters) is so different than it was in the 70's and 80's when I was learning about politics.... it could be that I'm so freakin out of touch, that I don't know what to think today. When people who voted for Bill Clinton TWICE then turn around and call Obamacare SOCIALISM, when  Tricky Dick is the one who came up with the idea... I'm just at a loss. Maybe it's not about policy at all, and the force of the man's personality. It might really be that shallow. 

Edited November 18, 2018 by alphanguy74

[I Am A Swede]

 

I'm not even sure they had that illusion in the first place. From what I gather many people just voted against the E.U. without any thought to what a British exit would lead to. I think it's quite revealing that so many of the younger people voted to stay while many older voted for Brexit. Sadly it seems that a lot of people in Britain still live in the past when their island empire ruled the world. Now that the actual ramifications of Brexit are beginning to dawn on people many regret their Brexit vote.

[DramatistDreamer]

 

But believing that they could extract themselves from a decades long socio-economic pact with minimal complications is a form of illusion, no?  The younger people had no such illusions, they knew that their futures were tied to access to a global marketplace where they were permitted the right to travel across Europe without a tangle of bureaucracy. Many who work in the corporate sector probably work for multinationals.  They knew what they stood to lose.

 

As I understood, those (like Boris Johnson) who had been extolling the 'virtues' of an exit from the EU hadn't been doing it for 2+ years but for 20+ years!  That's quite a long period of indoctrination, which could partially explain why older people were more likely to believe the Brexit mythology--they've been absorbing it for so long. 

To paraphrase on that old adage of 'a lie can become like the truth if repeated often enough'.   

 

 

[Max]

 

Alphanguy, I would be very surprised if Ojeda got the Democratic nomination. However, I've been wrong before in my predictions, and the fact that the 2020 Democratic field is likely to be very large increases the odds for longshot candidates like Ojeda.

 

Regarding the whole Bernie/Hillary feud, I hold opinions that are going to be unpopular with those who are die-hard supporters of either of them. I think that Bernie would have done even worse than Hillary in the general election, for all the reasons that DramatistDreamer mentioned. (I know that polls showed Bernie handily defeating Trump, but such polls are meaningless because Bernie never went through the grind of a general election campaign. This is an extreme example, but many people forget that Michael Dukakis once led George H. W. Bush by 17 points, only to get crushed on Election Day.)

 

At the same time, I am very sympathetic with the Bernie people when they express their views that the 2016 nomination was not a fair fight. Some in the Bernie wing of the party, such as Elizabeth Warren (who granted didn't formally endorse Bernie but shares most of his ideology), claim that the nomination was rigged:

 

https://www.businessinsider.com/elizabeth-warren-dnc-rigged-2016-primary-clinton-sanders-2017-11

 

I would not go so far as to say that the 2016 Democratic primary was rigged, but it's evident that the scales were heavily tipped in Hillary's favor. Here's just one article that elaborates on this:

 

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/11/14/16640082/donna-brazile-warren-bernie-sanders-democratic-primary-rigged

 

"It’s easy to imagine Democrats who might have run in 2016. There’s Biden and Warren and Hickenlooper, but there was also New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear, Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick, New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker, and Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar, to name just a few. But all of these candidates, and all the other candidates like them, ultimately passed on the race. Why?"

 

"But part of it was the way elected officials, donors, and interest groups coalesced behind Clinton early, making it clear that alternative candidates would struggle to find money and staff and endorsements and media coverage. Clinton had the explicit support of the Clinton wing of the Democratic Party and the implicit support of the Obama wing. She had spent decades building relationships in the party, and she leveraged them all in 2016. “Hillary had a lot of friends, and so did Bill,” says Elaine Kamarck, author of Primary Politics. This, in reality, is why Biden didn’t run: President Obama and his top staffers made quietly clear that they supported Clinton’s candidacy, and so she entered the field with the imprimatur that usually only accords to vice presidents."

 

"The 2016 Democratic primary wasn’t rigged by the DNC, and it certainly wasn’t rigged against Sanders. But Democratic elites did try to make Clinton’s nomination as inevitable, as preordained, as possible. And the party is still managing the resentment that engendered in voters."

 

IMO, immense pressure was placed on Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren, and others not to challenge Hillary for the nomination. This pressure most likely wasn't explicit (e.g., party bosses advising other prominent Democrats not to run), but rather implicit (e.g., big money donors solely giving to Hillary, top talent choosing to only work for Hillary, etc.). The other candidates who did run weren't viewed as serious threats to Hillary. That was certainly the case with Martin O'Malley, Jim Webb, and Lincoln Chafee. And I believe that it was the case with Bernie as well, because--keep in mind--that few people outside Vermont even knew who he was four years ago at this point. As the Vox article pointed out, the fact that the field was essentially cleared for Clinton ironically ended up helping Bernie, as there was a large appetite among a segment of the Democratic base that wanted someone to the left of Hillary. Had Warren run, it's very likely that Bernie would never have caught fire, as she was (at the time) the most prominent figure in that wing of the Democratic Party. In fact, I suspect that Warren would have beaten Hillary for the nomination had she run, since Warren would have had a considerably easier time than Bernie attracting support among minorities and the Democratic Party elite (such as superdelegates). Warren made a mistake not running in 2016, because that was the year when her prospects were the brightest. Of course, Warren isn't alone in missing her big moment: I'm sure that Chris Christie deeply regrets not running in 2012, and I believe that Hillary's best chance of becoming POTUS was in 2004. To his credit, Obama understood that 2008 represented a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for him, and that he would not be viewed as the hot new political phenomenon had he waited to run for president at a later time.

Edited November 18, 2018 by Max

[JaneAusten]

@max  That is a completely reasonably position to take and you'd be surprised to find out I think how many people actually agree with the fact that the democratic party cleared the table in a sense for Hilary. We won't ever know how competitive a race it might have been had Warren, Biden, and perhaps a couple of others like IMO more serious contenders like Deval Patrick or Beshear would faired.

[alphanguy74]

Well... now he's attempting to throw Admiral McRaven under the bus... but I imagine all these "patriots" will just love him all the more.  Chris Wallace should have said "I'm sorry, did the end of my sentence interrupt the beginning of yours? " and when he repeated "HILLARY CLINTON FAN", he should have shot back, "I'm not deaf, I heard you the first time".

 

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Edited November 18, 2018 by alphanguy74

[Vee]

@Errol, are our fuckin' blocks ever coming back?

 

Meanwhile:

 

 

[alphanguy74]

The question would be this... if a third party or an independent won enough states that NOBODY got to 270 electoral votes, then what then?