What do the PUMAs have to do with this thread? This thread is about Democrats. The PUMAs are and always were Republicans, marching to the tune of Rush Limbaugh.
Apparently, Buttigieg is hiring his political team based upon if they have earned Mark Zuckerberg’s endorsement:
Given my antipathy for Facebook, this does not bode well for me voting for Pete
Please note: Neither Stein nor Gabbard need be allied with or cooperating with Russia in order to qualify as “Russian assets” in this context. And of course Russia doesn’t expect either to become President; they just want to weaken the Democratic candidate and therefore increase the chance that their puppet gets re-elected.
I’ve pointed it out in the Gabbard thread, “asset” is not the same as “agent” and many are confused about that.
Clearly the Russian machine continues to try to mess with our process and to develop assets in that goal. There is reasonable evidence that they are in fact doing what they can to give Gabbard as much amplification as their machinations can make possible. They’d be satisfied with just getting her message (which is mostly the same as theirs) on the debate stage like it is. And they will do what they can to have third party candidate running who can poach a percent or so from a D candidate. That shouldn’t be a controversial position.
OK, Hillary got 19M votes in the primaries. 25% of that is 4.75M. Add those to Obama’s vote share, and subtract them from McCain’s, and you’re saying that absent this, Obama would have won 57.4% of the two-party vote share.
Just saying this seems improbable, given that no Dem has managed that feat since LBJ.
Damn, the primary just got 60% less funny.
May 2nd, 9:28am. Really, it’s all there, except for Trump’s direct involvement, which was occurring at this time, but no evidence until the whistleblower report 4+ months later.
The analysts on PBS Newshour last night gave a pithy explanation as to why we’re getting late entrants like Bloomberg: “Biden can’t win the nomination, and Warren can’t win the general.”
That doesn’t address the dozen other candidates already in the race, who are waving their arms and yelling “what am I…chopped liver?”
For those who didn’t catch it, Biden did a live town hall on CNN last night and you know he had a good night when the only negative his opponents have to say after the event is he was given a longer event than the others.
I think Mayor Pete would have a very good chance against Trump if he wins the nomination. I’m not so sure about Biden being able to win the general. The problem with Biden is that Trump would use the Ukraine issue to paint Biden as hiding something, the same way he did against Clinton with the e-mails. It will probably resonate with just enough people in the swing states to make a difference. These are the voters who the saying “if there’s smoke there’s fire” doesn’t matter. Even if it’s just smoke, that’s enough for them. As far as Warren goes, the question is does she pick up more voters on the left than she would lose in the center in the swing states. I don’t think the upper midwest swing states have enough far left types to make up the difference, even if they all come out on election day. Given all that, I think that as things stand right now Mayor Pete is the way to go.
My concern is that Pete will simply be that “fag” candidate inside the union halls that we need to win across the Industrial Midwest. The blue collar trades and unskilleds aren’t always know for being the most enlightened fellas around. I say this as someone who spent the past couple decades hanging out in union halls, and have plenty of friends and family members who are still there. It was an exhausting slog trying them to get out for Hillary, mostly impossible at the end of the day, and I fear it would be the same with Pete.
It’s one thing to wear a campaign shirt for a woman candidate around the guys, but no one’s gonna want to be the first one to show up at the union hall in a shirt advertising a gay guy. You’d be asking for…well, a lot of ball busting. And that would be the end of that.
A openly gay guy wont play in Peoria in 2020. Maybe America will be ready in 2028, I hope so.
We havent seen the inside of pets skeleton closet yet, we dont knwo what dirt the GOP and Kremlin have on him.
All the polls say Biden will do the best vs Trump.
Now Pete is in the frontrunner tier he is facing real backlash. Up to recently he kind of got by against his rivals who treated his rising polls as a flash in the pan like Harris.
Well Iowa is less than 100 days away. He’s here to stay.
And the common attack I am seeing on social media is not his poor appeal with black voters which needs to improve for him to have any chance in the South — even if he wins Iowa. Iowa is overwhelmingly white.
The common attack I’m seeing is he is a poll tested candidate whose positions have changed with the wind. I think it’s not a bad strategy to have shifted from trying to be progressive-left to vying for the Biden alternative spot…but the problem is authenticity. He’s the guy on record supporting Medicare For All in 2018 but in 2019 attacks it. He’s the guy who said in the early debate “no matter what we say the republicans will call us socialists” to saying Beto’s gun comments will give the republicans campaign add fodder. He’s the guy who says Biden represents going back to the old normal which is better than Trump of course but helped rise the fuel for a Trump like candidate to win. Yet his platform is pretty similar to Biden’s. He’s just got a face 40 years younger to sell it.
Experience wise South Bend is 15 times smaller than San Antonio were Julian “struggling to hold 1%” Castro was Mayor.
Pete’s a great debater no doubt. He has the Bill Clinton trait of being the coolest man in the room even when everyone else is flaming. But now he is in the top tier expect this to be the focus in vetting Pete: what do you actually stand for?
I’ve seen that tossed around. "Flip flopping " on your health care plan would be a lot more damning if the first comment wasn’t from a media scrum from well before he started his Presidential campaign. Kinda bullshit, frankly, but I see Warren fanboys pretending it’s a legit criticism.
I think, iirc Pete wanted REAL Medicare for All, not that overpriced travesty Sanders is calling MFA but which has no relation to it at all. But that’s IIRC.
Pete is a great guy, but this is not his year, America isnt quite ready. MayorPete in 2028!
The irony is Peoria is located in Illinois, one of the safest blue states in the nation. It doesn’t matter if he plays in Peoria. Literally any one of the democrats running will carry Illinois.
He only needs to be competitive in the dozen or so swing states. Can he do that? No, and it’s not because he is gay. It’s because he looks like and talks like the overpaid, overeducated middle management guy that fired you once. When he speaks, it warms the hearts of college-educated liberals, while conversely making the eyes of working class voters glaze over.
And of course, if he somehow becomes the nominee, every black voter’s social media feed will be inundated with all manner of anti-Pete propaganda. Nothing but concern-trolling news articles and memes shared by bots about how allegedly racist his tenure as South Bend mayor was, all the way until election day. The “Mayor Pete is a white supremacist who protects killer cops and gentrifies black people out of their homes” seed has already been planted, which is obvious if you just glance at what prominent leftwing voices and their followers say whenever Pete comes up. He is currently polling at an impressive 0% among black voters, and by election day he would probably end up with record low AA turnout for the Dems.
The current top 4 are deeply flawed, which is why Dem elites are getting desperate & floating even more names that should still enter the already hilariously overstuffed primary race. Bloomberg, Patrick, Holder, even Clinton. It’s like watching a slow-motion car wreck. The sad thing is there were good candidates running once, but they had the wisdom to drop out (and this basic commen sense makes them seem even more qualifed to be president than the dozen also-rans currently polling in the single digits). Jay Inslee looks like a retired star quarterback and his square jaw alone could turn unthinkable states blue. Hickenlooper is a hip former beer brewer and former governor of one of the most desirable places to live in the US. Tim Ryan was uniquely suited to winning back the Midwest and he might’ve even flipped Ohio. These guys are idealogically diverse, but none of that matters. The average American voter can’t even explain the differences between the 2 major parties if asked, much less even tell you what the difference is between a centrist democrat or progressive one. All that matters is who they want to have a beer with.
No one wants to have a beer with the 4 front-runners. The two old-timers might drop dead from mixing alcohol with their medications, and the other two seem likey they might rat you out to your boss for driving tipsy.
I really wish Patrick had jumped in a year back because he is the kind of candidate the Democrats need. It’s probably too late now though.
I dont see any “deep” flaws in Biden and I’d have a beer with him any day. Warren too.