Trump will run against Sleepy Joe Biden (which is a great attack line because holy shit is he sleepy) and just run against Obama… who his base hates with a burning passion.
Meanwhile Biden will be out there doing a spectacular job of demotivating everyone under the age of 50.
We could actually lose that matchup. It’s not as bad as HRC vs Trump but Trump having any chance at all is lolbad politics after the first term he’s had.
Nor are Biden’s bad debates a problem, stable genius lost all 3 debates to Hillary, meant nothing.
Some people have a lot more of a record and it would be much more astonishing if they didn’t continue to fight for the things they have fought for since back when Mayor Pete was winning national essay contests for saying how great Bernie is.
So aside from seeming genuine, what makes you have faith in Mayor Pete? He’s been a mayor for 7 years. What has he done and fought for that makes you confident?
Trump didn’t lose the GOP debates. Not in the eyes of GOP primary voters at least. They ate that shit up with a spoon.
Biden can absolutely appeal to conservatives. He can just talk about his record on law and order and military intervention.
THAT is the problem with Biden.
I actually chuckled. Pretty good. You might be right, but that’d be suicide with the Democratic base, which definitely matters more than peeling off a few rando conservatives who don’t like Trump’s foreign policy choices.
Kind of want to pop in here with a little meta-commentary and say good job team for being able to have a spirited debate with some direct disagreement and not having any name-calling, crying, or rage-quitting. 
Yeah I’ve been impressed by this chatroom style forum format. I definitely like it. Hence my posting continuously for a few hours when I probably should have been prospecting on linkedin lol.
Yup. My top two are Warren and then Yang. That’s because neither one is accepting any dirty money. That really matters in 2019. Being able to say you didn’t helps you win the election more than the money helps weirdly.
The smartest thing Trump did was ‘self fund’ the primary. That was the thing that got a lot of primary voters to look at him harder. Being able to say ‘I haven’t been bought’ is a very powerful thing.
Uh, right–but that’s what they did. This is an actual quote from their report: “If our Party is not welcoming and inclusive, young people and increasingly other voters will continue to tune us out.”
They had their introspective moment, and now the entire party has embraced Trumpism.
They never even attempted to go in the other direction. By 2014, they were headed down the Trump path.
In other words, they thought about it and decided more racism was better than less racism.
Yes, we agree–I and others will argue that they were headed down that path loooooooong before 2014. My point is that introspection will not save them–they tried it and it failed, because the GOP was always the party of Trump, and always will be until they splinter. But I doubt they will splinter before 2024, if they ever do, and there are plenty of young white racists waiting in the wing to keep their message going.
Edit: I don’t want it to seem like we are taking opposite stances here–you and I are in 99% agreement on this. I just wanted to push back at the notion that any sort of introspection will pull the GOP back from the brink of full-on fascism and white supremacy. I completely agree with you that this motivation will still be in full force in 2024 and that there will be a very real risk of a Dem 2020 winner being a one-term president.
It’s mainly just that I think they will have to face two drubbings in a row (Senate, House, prez) before there’s any serious chance at them changing. But by then it will be too late. Womp womp.
They read the tea leaves correctly… and that report was accurate. It just assumed that the party gave a shit about its own long term future. IRL it was run then and now by a cabal of REALLY old men who are now holding a going out of business sale for their donors.
This is like when a private equity firm decides that the best way to make money off a corporation is to buy it, loot its pension fund, load it up with debt, give themselves a massive dividend with the results from the looting and borrowing, and then go public with it again for something close to what they originally purchased it for.
Is it the best option for the corporation? Fuck no. But it’s very definitely the best option for the shareholders who sell to the private equity company, and it’s the best option for the investors and principals at the private equity firm. They don’t care about the corporation at all, it’s just the corpse they are currently feeding on.
Mitch McConnell is the principal at the PE firm calling the shots just so we’re all really clear.
I mean long term those Central American immigrants should have been their future GOP voters. They are highly religious, poorly educated, and hold much more conservative values than the typical suburban US citizen. Mobilizing them around right wing christian stuff wouldn’t have been super difficult. But instead they sold that future to gin up turnout with old white people who don’t like brown people. Good choice in the short term… and they don’t care about the long term 10+ year perspective at all because they plan to have got theirs by then.
Are you saying Yang is a billionaire?
Echoing thin slicing here… I think you might be heavily overestimating Yang’s net worth. He’s maybe worth 2-3MM. Tops. Could be less after 7 years of running a nonprofit and living in NYC.
Completely agree that we’re approaching a guillotine moment. Yang is actually the candidate looking to swing the axe the hardest weirdly. A 10% tax on gross profits taken at the point of sale that’s almost impossible to avoid to fund a 1000 dollar a month UBI for every adult over 18? That’s a BIG redistribution. Also it would be very very popular and would help drive momentum into the 2022-2024 cycle.
A lot of you have said things like ‘Yang has no shot’ without actually doing any scouting on the guy. I’ve looked at him REALLY hard. That dude is going the distance. If anyone is filling the Trump slot in this election cycle (rando outsider who comes in and does something seemingly impossibly unlikely) it’s Andrew Yang. Thankfully he’s got the substance to back it up. The only candidate with anywhere near his level of policy capability (and the ability to communicate it to normies) is Warren. She’s easily the most likely nominee right now, but Yang has waaaay more equity than most of you are giving him credit for.
I’m pretty sure Bernie is worth more than Yang. Not that I really care about that. It’s just funny how people perceive AW. I saw someone in one of these threads call him a VC con artist.
He qualified for the next round of debates. Hopefully they will be able to get into more nuanced conversations with less people but that’s not really the purpose of the debates.
The War on Normal People is a great book. I’m going to check out Petes next.
They will splinter only after 2-3 cycles of being absolutely curb stomped in elections. The way that happens is riding a 2020 wave to democracy reform. This is a big selling point of Pete’s. My hope is that he stays in long enough to make that a popular message regardless of who wins.
I think Trumpism can win the presidency and hold the House only with rampant voter suppression/gerrymandering/worse. 2020 is our last chance to win in a semi-fair environment, if it’s not already too late. We’ve gotta use that power to make sure that 2022 and beyond are fair. If they are, Trumpism cannot win long-term.
At the time I thought Joe handily beat Paul Ryan and I was much less of a libtard back then.