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The 2020 Presidential Election - Convention & General Election


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5 hours ago, Landlord said:

I'll vote for Biden if need be, but I'll do it through clenched teeth and with a pretty somber outlook.

 

Reason being is that Biden won't DO anything. We won't make any real substantitve change or progress. We'll just maybe stop the bleeding a little for another few years, then open up another opportunity for someone on either side to take over and keep gifting away our country to corporate and wealthy elite interests. 

 

Some progressives won't vote for the dem nominee because the Democratic party is crooked, self-serving and calcified. Because they're desperate for any chance at actually taking some desperately needed radical steps forward. Because they'd rather hold on to their integrity and their vote than violate their conscience by participating at all if anyone else (read, anyone sold out to the tried and true Political Machinery™)‬. I don't agree with them, but it's not hard to understand.

 

I get the urge to think he's a useless centrist and doesn't represent anything appealing to leftists, but Diamond Joe actually offers a fairly robust center-left agenda with some areas of overlap with Bernie.

 

Shamelessly cribbed from Reddit because I'm lazy, but it's all on his website as well:

 

Quote
  • raise taxes on the rich,
  • raise the minimum wage to $15,
  • let anyone enroll in public health insurance,
  • put a fee on carbon & return it to citizens as a dividend,
  • fight climate change by getting back in the Paris agreement,
  • support NUCLEAR POWER,
  • eliminate private prisons,
  • eliminate sentencing disparities,
  • eliminate cash bail,
  • eliminate mandatory minimums,
  • expand paid family and sick leave,
  • overturn Citizen's United and limit campaign spending,
  • end new oil and gas leases,
  • let Medicare negotiate with pharmaceutical companies,
  • give citizenship to Dreamers,
  • rebuild our infrastructure,
  • scrap ALL federal possession convictions from the failed drug war,
  • eliminate the death penalty,
  • remove Trump's tariffs,
  • rebuild our alliances, strengthening NATO and the San Francisco system.

 

He also talks about eliminating private dollars from financing elections, barring dark money groups, keeping foreign money out of our elections, stricter rules for Super PACs, creation of a website listing ads donors and targeting techniques for public consumption, barring lobbyists from donating to those they lobby & stricter disclosure rules for them... some really interesting stuff. I included that stuff because i know you're pretty interested in reforms to our democratic process.

 

Whether or not you trust Biden to follow through on this stuff is up to you. But there's no doubt the party has drifted leftward and Biden's stated agenda reflects that.

 

Interesting because the same thing happened in 2016: Dems came out of their convention with the most robustly progressive agenda the party had ever offered. But a lot of people felt it was inadequate because Clinton won and Bernie lost.

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1 hour ago, Danny Bateman said:

 

What a sh#tshow.

 

I feel for these guys and respect their service. War sucks. But this is the wrong way to go about things if you're trying to have an honest conversation with someone and understand their decisions better.

 

Seems to me these guys just wanted to shame Biden. I thought he handled it exceedingly well. There's nothing he could've said that would've pleased them.

Exactly. You said it exceedingly better than I did.

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Anyone else annoyed that we've got a (presumptive) center-left candidate against a insanely right candidate in the general election? Why do we have to skew everything right? Best case scenario in 2020 is we get a geriatric slightly left of center president who enacts no change.

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It really doesn't matter who gets elected, Biden or Bernie. They're not going to be able to implement any of their policy for at minimum a couple of years. They're going to be spending all their time rebuilding the structure of the Fed that Trump is destroying.

 

I get the whole Bernie/Biden preference, but let's face reality.

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22 minutes ago, knapplc said:

It really doesn't matter who gets elected, Biden or Bernie. They're not going to be able to implement any of their policy for at minimum a couple of years. They're going to be spending all their time rebuilding the structure of the Fed that Trump is destroying.

 

I get the whole Bernie/Biden preference, but let's face reality.

 

 

Yep. Step one is putting out all the fires. Luckily a lot of them don't require legislation and can be handled solely with good presidential leadership.

 

But, to speak to @mrandyk's concerns, earlier today somewhere, I read that the only way the country ever moves left is we start winning elections. Hard to make progress when the barbarians are at the gates. (I kid, kind of).

 

I think the country is becoming more progressive over time. But it won't matter if we don't expand our representation that wants to do something about it.

 

The best way to make real progress is winning elections for Congress and state & local races in addition to the presidency. I tend towards Biden because I think he'd be better to that end. I respect others who feel differently. But in the end either one of them needs to claw back more seats for any lasting change to happen. Especially given how conservative Trump has rendered the judiciary branch.

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1 minute ago, Danny Bateman said:

The best way to make real progress is winning elections for Congress and state & local races in addition to the presidency. I tend towards Biden because I think he'd be better to that end.

Well, he can't possibly be worse than when the Dems got slaughtered under Obama.

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7 minutes ago, RedDenver said:

Well, he can't possibly be worse than when the Dems got slaughtered under Obama.

 

I agree. One of the most damning critiques of Obama is how top-down everything became with him at the helm. He had decent coattails but the party did a terrible job putting an emphasis on protecting downballot candidates and growing things from the ground up.

 

I worry about Sanders in this regard as well.

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23 minutes ago, Landlord said:

 

Sanders is the most ground up candidate of my lifetime. 

 

Howso?

 

He's always struck me as a one-man band in the sense that all his most devoted supporters are pouring money into him and not necessarily downballot candidates. And he critiques other liberals so much that he generally only endorses the most progressive candidates who in general do not have a great track record of winning.

 

I can't see him being comfortable going out there and trying to get a bunch of blue dog Democrats elected.

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9 hours ago, FrantzHardySwag said:

 

That list pretty much all wrong.  More objectively the DNC has changed most of their policy positions even in the last decade.  But when you ask a rank and file You used to say that illegal immigration lowered wages by importing cheap labor.  Why do you now vote for open borders and sanctuary cities  the D generally gets a blank look.  He's aware of the cognitive dissonance, after I point it out to him, but he doesn't want to admit that he  

8 hours ago, JJ Husker said:

Well, to be fair, that guy attacking him, yelling “disqualified” was a bit of a jerk. He may want to seek some help.
 

 

His days as Minority Leader are numbered.

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15 hours ago, knapplc said:

 

Maybe, if Trump really wants to do something constructive, he should take the Wall money he stole from the military budget and put it toward combating the plague.  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Now that is a good idea.  Maybe hire some 'EXPERTS'

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5 hours ago, Notre Dame Joe said:

 

That list pretty much all wrong.  More objectively the DNC has changed most of their policy positions even in the last decade.  But when you ask a rank and file You used to say that illegal immigration lowered wages by importing cheap labor.  Why do you now vote for open borders and sanctuary cities  the D generally gets a blank look. 

So much falsehood here. First of all the list isnt wrong at all. Feel free to actually prove it wrong instead of just declaring. Unfortunately you can't do that. Secondly show me one instance of Democrats calling for open borders. I'll wait. 

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4 minutes ago, Nebfanatic said:

So much falsehood here. First of all the list isnt wrong at all. Feel free to actually prove it wrong instead of just declaring. Unfortunately you can't do that. Secondly show me one instance of Democrats calling for open borders. I'll wait. 

I shouldn’t have used fake news sources like NPR and The Boston Globe haha. 

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