More like them introducing their next Congressperson.
I’d recommend mentioning Unstuck Politics twice (once can be random, twice connotes hidden meaning)!
I’ve been driving a ton all week or I’d be tempted to go down. I could hold an Unstuck Politics sign.
Warren can fuck off too. What a fraud. I might move Pete above her, ironically. If we’re going to have a sellout we might as well have the one who will fight hard on democracy reform so President Ocasio-Cortez can crush it in a fair system.
But I basically am voting for Bernie now almost 100% of the time. I guess if it’s clearly Biden vs Warren/Pete/other I vote for the alternative to Joe. Otherwise it’s Bernie or Bust.
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Man, giphy.com requires a sign in now? Fuck that.
AfterGeneSmashesLittlePaulieInTheHeadWithASnappleBottleVitoSays"IKnewThatWasComing".gif
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What’s astounding to me about Warren’s move here is that it is purely an electoral move to attempt to improve her odds of becoming president, and yet it is likely to blow up in her face in that regard. She has two obvious weaknesses as a candidate. One is her liberal creds - she was originally a Republican, she did some questionable work, she moved to the left later in life than many would consider acceptable - ie after she had staked out her major political beliefs… and of course if she had political ambitions, she would more or less have to be a liberal given her location. The other is her honesty/authenticity given the Native American stuff, which doesn’t land in and of itself but if you start flip flopping and taking convenient positions, all of a sudden that one starts to stick.
Meanwhile, there is some valid criticism of her campaign decision making and strategy with regard to the Native American DNA test… But then after that she was just killing it and absolutely crushing, so we figured it was a one-off mistake. Now I’m not so sure. Like, what’s her end game with this play? To try to battle Biden and Buttigieg for the middle lane and hope that she can keep some of the liberal wing in her pocket? Silly and unnecessary.
She was in the driver’s seat in the liberal lane, she had passed Bernie, she had won a lot of people over and it seemed pretty clear that she had a lane there. She rose to the top of the polls, she was crushing it in Iowa and New Hampshire, and now this? Why? Because Buttigieg had a couple of good polls in Iowa? Fuck that, it’s short term noise for now. That’s no cause for a shakeup.
And she had already released the additional information about her original plan, and had not yet shared a debate stage with Pete again to battle over it again. And they just scrap it instead. Horrible strategically. So now Pete gets to still bash her over the head for her original stance on the grounds that she was being deceptive over not being able to pay for it and this shift proves she knew it, and then he gets to hit her with like, “I thought your whole thing was, ‘I have a plan for that,’ but from where I’m sitting it looks an awful lot like you stole my plan.”
So the moderates will still be leery of her from her original position, and they’ll view this as political calculus and a lack of authenticity… Meanwhile the liberals will be livid at her for moving to the center on healthcare. So she’s going to lose liberal support and it’s very unclear whether she’s going to gain any. I guess she’s going to try to snatch up Biden voters before Pete can get to them?
It all just seems stupid, and worst of all it’s going to play into a comparison to Hillary that’s going to register with a lot of people… A lot of people didn’t trust HRC on her political positions because she shifted around sometimes, she’d try not to stake out a position and then wait to see where the voters were and take the position that polled the best or had the best focus groups. She was inauthentic. Now Warren falls into the same mold, and the degree of sexism in this country is going to make that comparison to HRC stick even more than it should.
Which brings me back to this: I can only assume Warren’s true position, at least in this chapter of her life, is to believe in single payer healthcare being the best policy. But this reveals two things:
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She wants to be president more than she wants to fight for the working class and get the best policies in place.
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She’s getting shitty political advice.
And, whaddayaknow, she’s met with HRC a few times, she’s hired some of her staffers… She is getting establishment advice, and she thinks it’s good advice electorally so she’s taking it because she cares more about her own political ambitions than anything else.
So we can assume a few things if she becomes president:
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She’ll be more pragmatic than most of us would like.
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She’ll be more concerned with getting re-elected than having a successful first term.
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She’ll likely owe favors to the establishment of the party and likely moderate some of her positions quite a bit.
Ironically, as much as she is known to have pissed off Obama by battling him on stuff, her trajectory from campaign → presidency now looks much more like his than a lot of us would have thought a couple months ago.
What I’m now curious to see is whether Bernie goes in on her in the next debate. She’s left the door wide open, and if he goes at her I think he will just absolutely destroy her on healthcare and grab back a lot of the liberal wing of the party. They clearly have been trying not to go at each other and have been sort of taking turns fending of attacks from the moderates, but if he views this as a betrayal (and I imagine he does), he might take the gloves off.
I’m a great case study in how much support she could lose to him. I don’t think my political positions on issues have changed much since like 2015. However, I was always a bit leery of Bernie because of the socialist label. I viewed him as clearly better than Hillary, and I was in favor of some of his positions, but I thought some others were too much too fast. So my vote in 2016 was easy and I was rooting for him, but once the 2020 field was set, I knew I liked Warren more. I had been a huge fan of hers for several years, I really believed she was a fighter for the poor and middle class, and I thought she was the perfect balance of a liberal fighter and a pragmatic - she knew we had to roll up our sleeves and battle, but she was cunning and not too idealistic to get stuff done. Also I felt like her exact positions were closer to me than Bernie’s, although obviously they’re all pretty close together. But with the financial crash, the bailouts, etc, I thought she was just an absolute beast in terms of taking the fight to the 1%.
So when I’m at the point where I’m saying she can fuck off and I’m a near-lock to vote for Bernie, I have to imagine she’s got some problems. And she’s dug her own political grave at this point, because even if she shifts back later on the damage is done.
I don’t know when the eDems are going to figure this out (likely never), but most people would prefer to vote for someone they have some policy disagreements with who they believe is authentic and telling it the way they see it, rather than someone who’s trying to do focus groups and polling to pick the most popular position on every issue. Give me the person with principles, and I’ll at least know they’re doing what they truly believe is best. This is also why you see very few character attacks on Bernie, or why you’ll hear some moderates or right-center folks say they hate a lot of his policy but they think he’s a likable person who believes in what he’s pushing.
Not so coincidentally this is what Beto fucked up this time around too. Loved him in the Texas senate race, and whether it was honest or not you really got the impression he was like, “Fuck it, this is what I believe in, this is what I think is best, this is who I am, this is what I want to do, vote for me or don’t.” He was authentic in that campaign, or at least he felt it.
Then he ran for president and all of a sudden DGAF Beto was like Beto Bot 2.0. Roll up your sleeves 7.5 inches, stand on a table in each stop, talk in platitudes, don’t steak out any positions because you’ve got to wait until later to see what’s polling best, etc… Then El Paso happens, he goes full DGAF mode and all of a sudden he’s making a little noise again, then reverts back.
This campaign season is like watching a bunch of untested golfers in a major on Sunday. It’s all fine and dandy until they make the turn and look up at the leaderboard, then it’s like OH MY GOD I’M LEADING A MAJOR and they panic and self-destruct. Then the next guy does the same, and so on, and the cream stays at the top and a couple elites battle it out.
The problem is, we lack authentic elites. The obvious one is Bernie, but he’s old, just had a heart attack and has the socialist label. Pete has the charisma and talent and ability to sell the authentic vibe, but you start looking at some of his positions and they’ve shifted over time. Castro has had his moments, but I’m sure if he was at the forefront being vetted we’d be ripping him on some of this stuff too.
I mean, it is what it is. We all know we have to vote for whoever wins the primary, and I’m sure a lot of us will be knocking on some doors for Bernie during the primary, so we’ll see what happens.
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QFT
I would take someone I often agree with, think is a good and honest person over someone who seems pandering and seems to agree with me 100%.
I don’t think Liz is in HRC’s pandering league here by any means, but she’s no Bernie or AOC either.
Right, which is kind of what I was getting into in terms of opening herself up to an unfair comparison to HRC that now will begin to stick due to this issue and sexism.
And yeah like Bernie and AOC leave no doubts where they stand and what they’re going to try to do about it. They ooze authenticity. If I felt like Pete was authentic on everything, I’d be way more likely to overlook some of my policy disagreements with him.
Hopefully this helps Bernie out a ton now that he’s far and away the most authentic Dem candidate.
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This is where I’m at too. I don’t know why Warren released that plan. I can think of about a half dozen reasons, and they are all really bad.
After sleeping on it, I think Pete fucked up big time with his response. He came at Warren from the right like he has been the last 1.5 months or so when he should have said “Hey, that sounds a lot like MFAWWI.”
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Yeah, I’m still pretty mad at Warren.
SMH really Bernie is the only honest person in the entire field who isn’t just running for power.
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This is great and hot fire except for your use of “liberal wing.” Warren is and always has been a part of the “liberal wing,” as far as that exists. She just fooled people into thinking she was part of the progressive wing.
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pops head up
“told ya so”
disappears
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This is not as convincing as you think, I have a feeling.
Anyone know how many more young people will have turned voting age since the 2016 election? They will tend to be the most progressive and I predict a record turnout for 18-21 who usually don’t bother voting. I’m not sure this calculus is being properly considered in polling. Even if you just take the number of kids enraged about having risked their lives showing up for school because the current establishment seems unwilling or unable to pass any meaningful gun legislation, not to mention climate change, I think it’s enough to get them into the voting both.
I’m off the Liz train, but I represent a laughably small fraction of the primary voting pool.
As much as we hate it, I think Biden is still a big favorite. The appetite for a flamethrower, astoundingly and to my infinite rage, just isn’t there.
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I think that it IS there, but 18 months of concern trolling in the media about electability and whether the party is ready to elect a progressive dampens it and really wears people down.
But I agree that Biden is probably the favorite, not over 50% though imo.
The fact that anyone prefers the plan on the right to the plan on the left may be a political reality but saying you personally prefer a vague unrealistic one liner to a detailed description of things we might be able to accomplish if the stars align doesn’t reflect positively on this forum as a home of high reasoned political thought. Everyone jumping off the Warren train because of a misrepresentation of her actual plan even less so.
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She apparently misrepresented her actual plan for a while to appeal to liberals… or she’s misrepresenting it now to appeal to moderates. I’m not interested in gambling with my vote on which is which. It’s not like Warren was pressed in a debate or in an interview for what she’d do if the Senate is against her or 50-50 and she doesn’t have the votes for true M4A, she just decided to water down her position on her own.