# Hee-haw, y'all. The 2020 Democratic Presidential Primary **URL:** \ **Category:** Politics & Elections\ **Created:** [November 12, 2018, 5:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hee-haw-yall-the-2020-democratic-presidential-primary/824415 "2018-11-12T17:52:36Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 96
**Author:** ![NetTrekker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/nettrekker/32/2909_2.png) [@NetTrekker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NetTrekker)\ **Post date:** [July 19, 2019, 1:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hee-haw-yall-the-2020-democratic-presidential-primary/824415/1901 "2019-07-19T01:11:12Z")
Someone should seed the candidates and set up a tournament bracket and let them do 30 minute mano a mano debates. Then everyone gets more than 3 minutes of talk time and winner advances. 32 candidates could be whittled to 1 in 4 rounds - Boom! ---
**Author:** ![DinoR](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dinor/32/2821_2.png) [@DinoR](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DinoR)\ **Post date:** [July 19, 2019, 1:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hee-haw-yall-the-2020-democratic-presidential-primary/824415/1902 "2019-07-19T01:47:54Z")
> [@SlackerInc](#): > > Florida. I should have caught that one but DSeid hit an important distinction. That Cuban population is more Republican than the Hispanic population in aggregate. Florida as a whole was 62% Clinton, 35% for Trump because of their influence. Trump actually won among Cubans with 54% of the total vote compared to Clinton getting 41%. ([cite](https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/11/15/unlike-other-latinos-about-half-of-cuban-voters-in-florida-backed-trump/)) The uptick in Puerto Rican population that’s angry about hurricane response probably helps the eventual Democratic nominee. Still itt takes a detailed and specific strategy to get Cuban votes. It isn’t the same as targeting Hispanic concerns nationwide or focusing on generic GOTV efforts for Hispanics. Florida by itself makes the 2016 contest closer but still a win for Trump. > [@DSeid](#): > > Do not target racists. _And_ do not ignore the real issues and problems of the demographics that include racists just because the demographic includes them, and because of that you will not get a majority of those votes in any case. I’d add dont over-identify racists. I’ve spent most of my life in areas dominated by the midwest union vote that Clinton took a bath with. They’ve always had an undercurrent of labor market protectionism IME. Some of that is domestic. They are willing to use their market power to focus on their personal benefit over nonunion and even other unions. Some of that also plays out in immigration. We have an immigration system that has taken us from record low percentages of the population being foreign born in 1970 to closing in on record highs. The bulk of the system doesn’t prioritize education of skilled labor in anyway. That’s real competition for them. Wanting to adjust immigration policy to restrict numbers overall or just skew the numbers towards more college graduates isn’t in and of itself a bigoted position. Trump’s approach to addressing their concerns is bigoted. They haven’t really had any non-bigoted alternatives to achieve what they want from immigration policy, though. Those midwest union household votes are regionally important. In a lot of the states that swung to Trump they constitute 20-25% of voters because they already vote pretty reliably. The union takes care of GOTV. There have been ongoing efforts by the party to address them since 2016. ISTR many returned to the fold in 2018. It’s a difficult needle to thread for the primaries. Immigration is a point of conflict between the regionally important union voters and national Hispanic voters. Its an important needle, though. There’s a lot of electoral votes at stake if union voters who didn’t vote for Clinton don’t return. Ohio shows us what can happen if more of them get pushed away by a candidate who ignores their concerns. Trump won the union household vote and took the state easily. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [July 19, 2019, 2:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hee-haw-yall-the-2020-democratic-presidential-primary/824415/1903 "2019-07-19T02:42:53Z")
> [@DinoR](#): > > … > I’d add dont over-identify racists. I’ve spent most of my life in areas dominated by the midwest union vote that Clinton took a bath with. They’ve always had an undercurrent of labor market protectionism IME. Some of that is domestic. … > Those midwest union household votes are regionally important. In a lot of the states that swung to Trump they constitute 20-25% of voters because they already vote pretty reliably. The union takes care of GOTV. There have been ongoing efforts by the party to address them since 2016. ISTR many returned to the fold in 2018. It’s a difficult needle to thread for the primaries. Immigration is a point of conflict between the regionally important union voters and national Hispanic voters. > > Its an important needle, though. There’s a lot of electoral votes at stake if union voters who didn’t vote for Clinton don’t return. Ohio shows us what can happen if more of them get pushed away by a candidate who ignores their concerns. Trump won the union household vote and took the state easily. Yes, trump lied to them, he said he’d personally get them their factory jobs back. But he didn’t. They arent stupid, just desperate in many cases. They wont believe those lies again. But the Dems have to reach out to them, not ignore them. ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [July 19, 2019, 6:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hee-haw-yall-the-2020-democratic-presidential-primary/824415/1904 "2019-07-19T06:56:12Z")
Bernie vs. Warren, Harris vs. Biden? So rigged! 😉 ---
**Author:** ![ElvisL1ves](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5daacb/32.png) [@ElvisL1ves](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ElvisL1ves)\ **Post date:** [July 19, 2019, 12:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hee-haw-yall-the-2020-democratic-presidential-primary/824415/1905 "2019-07-19T12:43:45Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > They arent stupid, just desperate in many cases. They wont believe those lies again. So they’ll believe other ones instead, and they \*will \*get fed them. They may not be stupid as such, but they \*are \*gullible. > [@](#): > > But the Dems have to reach out to them, not ignore them. Once they’re governing all of the country. But it’s strategically futile to try to out-lie the GOP in an election, and you don’t even \*have \*to. ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [July 19, 2019, 2:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hee-haw-yall-the-2020-democratic-presidential-primary/824415/1906 "2019-07-19T14:26:03Z")
> [@ElvisL1ves](#): > > So they’ll believe other ones instead, and they \*will \*get fed them. They may not be stupid as such, but they \*are \*gullible. > > Once they’re governing all of the country. But it’s strategically futile to try to out-lie the GOP in an election, and you don’t even \*have \*to. How the _hell_ do you interpret “have to reach out to them, not ignore them” as “out-lie”?!? Gullibility is pretty endemic across all political stripes honestly. Those who believe the load that the other side is full of contemptible idiots and that their side is all oh so enlightened may be among the most gullible of all. I have argued the pragmatic perspective long and hard here - winning is easier if some of the other side’s strength is undercut some, and winning in the electorally key states virtually requires it. I also however believe a greater truth: this country’s well-being is better served by at least attempting to be a government of all the people and is ill-served by the othering that some seem to do of rural and less highly educated working class white voters. Dismissiveness of them is not only bad politics, it is bad governance and bad for the whole country, as much as is ignoring and disrespecting the real problems of other groups. ---
**Author:** ![ElvisL1ves](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5daacb/32.png) [@ElvisL1ves](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ElvisL1ves)\ **Post date:** [July 19, 2019, 2:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hee-haw-yall-the-2020-democratic-presidential-primary/824415/1907 "2019-07-19T14:39:56Z")
> [@DSeid](#): > > How the _hell_ do you interpret “have to reach out to them, not ignore them” as “out-lie”?!? I don’t. I said you don’t have to reach out to them _during a campaign_, and said why not. You _don’t_ have get every vote. You can’t. Some are not available to you. ---
**Author:** ![CaptMurdock](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/captmurdock/32/11736_2.png) [@CaptMurdock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CaptMurdock)\ **Post date:** [July 19, 2019, 2:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hee-haw-yall-the-2020-democratic-presidential-primary/824415/1908 "2019-07-19T14:55:53Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > Yes, trump lied to them, he said he’d personally get them their factory jobs back. But he didn’t. They arent stupid, just desperate in many cases. They wont believe those lies again. But the Dems have to reach out to them, not ignore them. The Dems did. They offered plans for re-education and vocational training, and the response was pretty much spit in the face. “We don’t want your lousy new jobs, we want our old factory/coal-mining/horse & buggy jobs back! WAAAAAGHH!” :rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [July 19, 2019, 3:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hee-haw-yall-the-2020-democratic-presidential-primary/824415/1909 "2019-07-19T15:01:11Z")
You literally just said “out-lie” is response to a comment for reaching out. Really WTF? You _don’t_ have to get every vote. You don’t need to get a majority of the white working class vote. You don’t have to get even 40% of 'em. But if you are getting less than 30% of them you are hard-pressed to pull off an electoral win and would be harder pressed yet to govern very effectively for anyone afterwards. And doing significantly better than 30% of 'em is “available to you” … without trying to out-lie the GOP. **YWTF** ’s argument that how you do that is not by presenting very centrist and establishment but with more passion and a promise to shake things up more is worth consideration and has some evidence to support it, depending on what the shake it up is. But not reaching out to them during a campaign, not fighting for a _less dismal_ share of their votes\*, would both be stupid from a winning the election POV and idiotic from the perspective of being able to accomplish anything with that win if achieved POV. Please note - I am not arguing that Clinton did not at all reach out. She just did so completely ineptly and at key junctures completely disrespected them. \*And with that more lower ticket and local wins. ---
**Author:** ![Gyrate](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gyrate/32/3588_2.png) [@Gyrate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gyrate)\ **Post date:** [July 19, 2019, 3:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hee-haw-yall-the-2020-democratic-presidential-primary/824415/1910 "2019-07-19T15:04:49Z")
> [@CaptMurdock](#): > > The Dems did. They offered plans for re-education and vocational training, and the response was pretty much spit in the face. “We don’t want your lousy new jobs, we want our old factory/coal-mining/horse & buggy jobs back! WAAAAAGHH!” :rolleyes: And then the Republicans defunded all the retraining programs, cut safety standards and provided exactly zero more jobs (unless you count replacing the people who died in mining accidents due to the cut in safety standards). Boy, they really showed those libtards. ---
**Author:** ![Bijou\_Drains](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bijou_drains/32/2814_2.png) [@Bijou\_Drains](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bijou_Drains)\ **Post date:** [July 19, 2019, 3:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hee-haw-yall-the-2020-democratic-presidential-primary/824415/1911 "2019-07-19T15:04:50Z")
the vast majority of training programs for out of work people like coal miners to get new jobs fail. It sounds good but it’s very hard to get it to work. ---
**Author:** ![ElvisL1ves](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5daacb/32.png) [@ElvisL1ves](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ElvisL1ves)\ **Post date:** [July 19, 2019, 3:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hee-haw-yall-the-2020-democratic-presidential-primary/824415/1912 "2019-07-19T15:18:31Z")
> [@DSeid](#): > > You literally just said “out-lie” is response to a comment for reaching out. Really WTF? When you’re ready to discuss what I \*actually \*said, please let me know. :rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [July 19, 2019, 3:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hee-haw-yall-the-2020-democratic-presidential-primary/824415/1913 "2019-07-19T15:57:19Z")
Well when you want to stop being so Trumpian and stop acting as if you didn’t say what is clearly what you said, let me know. Or really don’t bother. Not worth it. And emojis don’t begin to do justice to the WTF of this crap. Moving past your worthless pile of post, frustrated that it won’t all scrape off my shoe … it may be that job retraining is, especially in isolation, hard to get to work … you need to have the demand for jobs that are being retrained for if nothing else … and coal workers among others who _had_ had lower middle class jobs that did not need higher education but now don’t, understand that, understand that even if they get new jobs they will not be, with their level of education in their communities, middle class new jobs, and are … not so excited … about that. But that is not lying. It is though, by itself, an inadequate plan, not a real “ladder of opportunity”, and as marketed a complete failure on reaching out, a messaging miss. ---
**Author:** ![ElvisL1ves](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5daacb/32.png) [@ElvisL1ves](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ElvisL1ves)\ **Post date:** [July 19, 2019, 5:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hee-haw-yall-the-2020-democratic-presidential-primary/824415/1914 "2019-07-19T17:15:02Z")
I do so enjoy reading a good flounce. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [July 19, 2019, 5:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hee-haw-yall-the-2020-democratic-presidential-primary/824415/1915 "2019-07-19T17:46:13Z")
> [@](#): > > Quoth **Bijou Drains** : > > the vast majority of training programs for out of work people like coal miners to get new jobs fail. It sounds good but it’s very hard to get it to work. But mostly, the way in which they fail is that very few people attempt to take advantage of them. ---
**Author:** ![CarnalK](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnalk/32/486_2.png) [@CarnalK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CarnalK)\ **Post date:** [July 19, 2019, 5:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hee-haw-yall-the-2020-democratic-presidential-primary/824415/1916 "2019-07-19T17:58:26Z")
> [@Bijou\_Drains](#): > > the vast majority of training programs for out of work people like coal miners to get new jobs fail. It sounds good but it’s very hard to get it to work. > [@Chronos](#): > > But mostly, the way in which they fail is that very few people attempt to take advantage of them. Do either of you have cites for that? ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [July 19, 2019, 6:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hee-haw-yall-the-2020-democratic-presidential-primary/824415/1917 "2019-07-19T18:31:56Z")
> [@Bijou\_Drains](#): > > the vast majority of training programs for out of work people like coal miners to get new jobs fail. It sounds good but it’s very hard to get it to work. They work better than hoping the American economy returns to what it was after ww2 where everyone else was bombed to shit and America was the manufacturing king of the world. Those old factory jobs are never coming back. They cant. ---
**Author:** ![ElvisL1ves](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5daacb/32.png) [@ElvisL1ves](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ElvisL1ves)\ **Post date:** [July 19, 2019, 6:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hee-haw-yall-the-2020-democratic-presidential-primary/824415/1918 "2019-07-19T18:41:52Z")
Of course. But candidates who try to point that out \*lose \*to those who tell reassuring lies about it instead. So should the Democrats try copying those lies? It wouldn’t matter if Appalachia had ever diversified its economy so that there’d be jobs in new industries for people leaving obsolete ones like coal, or if the Rust Belt had renewed its own economy away from heavy manufacturing, but this is where we are. ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [July 19, 2019, 6:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hee-haw-yall-the-2020-democratic-presidential-primary/824415/1919 "2019-07-19T18:55:17Z")
> [@CarnalK](#): > > Do either of you have cites for that? Not either of them but [an article](https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2018/01/the-false-promises-of-worker-retraining/549398/) that helps expand on why they are difficult to pull off. > [@The Atlantic](#): > > … Worker retraining is a classic chicken-or-egg dilemma. Employers don’t want to expand or relocate without the availability of an already-skilled workforce. Workers who have been laid off through corporate downsizing or because their jobs were shipped to a foreign country don’t want to dedicate the time and effort needed to go through retraining without the pledge of a sure-fire job with the same or a better paycheck. > > So when you plug real people into the easy fixes designed by policy wonks, the situation suddenly becomes more complicated: Older workers who haven’t seen the inside of a classroom for decades are frightened by going back to school. Men don’t want to train for the jobs that are left in town, particularly in health care, because of the stigma of being employed in occupations traditionally filled by women—a phenomena that Lawrence Katz, a Harvard University labor economist, has frequently called an “identity mismatch,” rather than a skills mismatch. And in a country founded by people on the move, unemployed workers are unwilling to relocate to find work … > > …But even as members of the administration pay lip service to job training, it has joined other politicians in making cuts to the programs. Dollars delivered to the states through the federal government’s primary workforce-retraining program have been slashed by 22 percent since 2009, and in his first budget earlier this year, President Trump proposed further cuts. Despite decades of investments by the federal government in a patchwork of job-retraining efforts, most have been found to be ineffective according to numerous studies over the years, and it remains unclear to experts whether the programs are even up to the task of preparing workers for the new economy. > > Take the program aimed at workers whose jobs have moved overseas: the Labor Department’s Trade Adjustment Assistance fund. It has been around since the early 1960s, and in recent years has paid upwards of $11,500 per eligible person for training. But a 2012 assessment of the program found that, four years after completing training, only 37 percent of its employed participants were working in their targeted industries. Women and younger workers were more likely than other workers to undertake training through the fund, and the incomes of older participants, in particular, never caught back up to their earlier wages. … ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [July 20, 2019, 1:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hee-haw-yall-the-2020-democratic-presidential-primary/824415/1920 "2019-07-20T01:04:59Z")
I’m not impressed by the inflexibility of those older male workers. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hee-haw-yall-the-2020-democratic-presidential-primary/824415.md?page=95) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hee-haw-yall-the-2020-democratic-presidential-primary/824415.md?page=97)