Who will run in 2020?

Warren will be VERY popular in 2024 if elected in 2020. She speaks conservative (which I agree strongly with skydiver is extremely important. It’s the thing I like the absolute most about Pete honestly) and gets stuff done. I think it’s going to take longer to recover from Trump than 4 years. Remember that the demographics are strongly on the blue side of things from here on out, and after Trump the GOP brand is going to need a complete tear down and rebuild.

I mean I look at our situation and think that we have friendly allies to our north and south and the worlds largest oceans to our east and west. My version of the military would probably spend 1% of GDP about half of which would go to the coast guard. I’m not talking about cutting inefficiencies. I’m talking about selling the Pentagon to a private real estate company and consolidating the military down to one branch that has maybe 50,000 employees… most of whom are in the coast guard or cyber. The VA of course must continue until the needs of this generation of veterans have been met of course.

This won’t happen, but you can see why I’m not going to be happy with a former military officer at the helm who might think a 10% cut is big.

Considering stuff is good for sure, but there’s plenty of reason to suspect politicians generally of saying “consider stuff” during the campaign and not really considering it in office.

And sure a lot of stuff should be considered, but before you get to be POTUS you should have had plenty of time to have considered something like what you think are good tax rates and maybe even have a history that reflects that. Just being smart and being a Rhodes Scholar doesn’t mean you’re not going to speak about helping the needy and then and then cut the hell out of welfare.

I like Mayor Pete and he seems cool, but he’s extremely inexperienced and unproven. Being uncertain is certainly understandable in that position, but maybe he’s not ready to be POTUS.

GOP has to lose two straight elections (House, Senate, prez) before they will have the kind of introspection needed, and they don’t ever think that will happen. My expectation is that whoever wins on the Dem side in 2020 will be a one term president. I’ll be happy to be wrong, obviously.

Until they get to the point where their leaders tell people like Gaetz, Jordan, and Gohmert to sit down and shut up, I don’t have a lot of confidence that introspection will ever happen. There are eight (!) QAnon followers on the GOP side of the House Intelligence Committee. The 9th member just retired. Every GOP on the Intelligence Committee in the House that’s still going to be there (unless they lose) is a QAnon follower. That’s effing horrifying.

There’s a real chance they don’t win the WH again until I’m a very old man, and that party will have very little resemblance to Trump’s GOP. The millennials do not like them at all. Why would we?

As we get older our turnout % will go up and we’ll become the dominant voter group in the country. The political parties will pander to us and our views or they won’t get elected period.

Every single year they face an uphill battle to suppress our voters and get their increasingly decrepit base to the polls. So far they’ve managed to do that with a considerable amount of cheating. Our first priority in 2020 should be dealing with systemic corruption and part of that is… their cheating through voter suppression.

In 2024 we’ll have 4 more years of Boomer mortality and a lot less voter suppression. It’s going to be almost impossible for the GOP candidate to win. Let’s be very clear, getting this right is why I think this next term is SO important.

They actually did have some accurate introspection post-2012–even writing a report about they had to be less racist and be more attractive to minorities IIRC. Introspection won’t change things–as most on this board are aware, they have been heading down this path for decades. They have always been the party of Trump, now they’re just saying the quiet parts out loud. Demographics don’t appear to be in their favor, but they clearly recognize that maintaining their power depends on suppressing the vote and appealing to racism. I think more members of our generation are susceptible to that than you realize, and don’t think anything in 2024+ can be treated as a given.

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I don’t think Pete has ever tried to hide the fact that he’s been interested in politics from a young age. I wanted to be an astronaut. I chose to drive 45 minutes every day to a private high school so I could get the honors classes and extracurriculars I needed to get into the Air Force Academy. I worked hard to graduate summa cum laude from there so I could eventually apply for test pilot school as a test engineer. Because this was the path to being an astronaut. (obviously life didn’t work out that way for me) How is that different? Or do you just perceive it to be different because astronaut is more noble than public servant in some way?

I’m willing to make you a deal, if you have a little bit of time. I will read a political book of your choice if you will read Pete’s book. Or listen to it on audible, whatever. I’m a big believer in primary sources, and one of the most frustrating things to me is discussing things like this with people who have fully formed their opinions through the lens of someone else. So point me to a book. You can get Pete’s for free if you do a free trial of Audible, so he won’t even get any money from you ;)

This deal is open to anyone on here, BTW.

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Yeah, they used introspection and decided to double down on hate. I meant the type of introspection that says they would go in the opposite direction. I can’t see that happening until they’re pounded into an absolutely endless minority.

I’ll go back to listening to Pete’s book in scribd as my main workout companion. You don’t have to read anything, it’s been on my list for a while.

That being said anyone who hasn’t read Yang’s ‘The War on Normal People’ should do so. It’s not really about him, which is kind of interesting on its own. I’m interested in what people think he’s actually wrong about.

I am also a fan of primary sources.

That one is on my list. I’ll move it up to the top.

I should be very clear… I like Pete (which is more than I can say for Bernie… who I read as the kind of impractical idealist who actually damages the things he’s for by refusing to “compromise his principles” when he’s just wrong about something) personally and would probably be supporting him vs a weaker field.

This field is crazy strong though. Crazy strong. I’d feel sorry for Trump if I didn’t hate his guts so much.

In all honesty, I would love to see a Warren/Pete or Pete/Warren ticket. I know picking primary opponents as running mates hasn’t been popular lately, but in this case, i think it would check all the boxes.

Also, the bullshit idea that we should vote for whoever would be the best at debates against trump needs to die. I say the chances of Trump even showing up to a debate are about 15%, and that could be high.

I can get on board with a lot of that. And what you’ve laid out here would be great if that’s the person we get.

My fear is that we don’t get that version of Pete. The reason people are skeptical of “we should consider” is that it could be code for “I will not fight for this very hard”, which can turn into those issues getting dismissed very quickly.

Yeah agreed that debate doesn’t really matter. Trump is going to get rolled by any front runner but Biden anyway so it’s kind of moot. Agree that he very likely just won’t show up.

can’t that be said for every candidate for anything?

To some extent, yes. But Bernie and Warren have a definite track record over the years. We know exactly what we’re getting.

On the other hand, Biden is openly telling everyone that he sucks. We know what we’re getting here too, and it’s bad.

Pete has much more variance.

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I wish people would remember that every time we Dems go with the perceived “sure thing”, we fucking lose.

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I’m really scared of Joe Biden. He’s a really bad candidate. He’s 0/2 in debates, has a lot of dirt/blood on his hands from a long career thriving in this political environment, and just sucks all around. The only reason he’s even still in the race is that the only people who care about the primary this early are political nerds like us.

Seriously the guy has no positives other than a general association with Obama which basically means he can’t appeal to conservatives ever (which is a massive massive problem). He’s polling where he’s polling because when you ask someone who hasn’t tuned in at all yet who they support they know his name. That’s why so many of his supporters second choice is Bernie lol. That’s the second name most rando old Dems know when they are trying to not look stupid when you call them up on their landline.

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This is not the problem with Biden.