So one person on the Internet that you’ve never met before is forcing you to not look into Amd. McRaven’s potential as a presidential candidate? Ho-kay.
What?? :smack: Have you taken leave??
McRaven never referred to the Senator as “Pocahontas” — that was me.
And, anyway, I have huge respect for Warren. I also refer to Hillary Clinton as “the Witch of Benghazi” — and I have great respect for her as well. And I also have great respect for Joe Biden whom I may have referred to, adding a few years with literary license, as “the 80-year old.”
I use the same pejoratives that the GOP uses to remind rational Americans what sort of hateful liars we are up against. It is not enough to run great candidates and then, the day after the election, say “Whine whine. We ran a great candidate and would have won were it not for the hateful Republican Lie Machine.” It is necessary to Win!
Capische?
Dem Billionaire Tom Steyer likely to run for president if Dems control the house and gain in Senate this year.
I recall from reading history, the catch phrase used by Republicans in the 1920 election. “A return to normalcy”. I think the American public would greatly appreciate a return to normality. Former customs and precedents respected.
After the 2017-2021 Trump debacle, rebuilding the economy (likely in recession by 2021), rebuilding trust in Washington and rebuilding the institutions damaged or even destroyed by the current corrupt Trump-mob will be, perhaps, too much for one person to tackle.
But a person like Joe Biden would likely be trusted to lead the effort. But he’d need a very strong second in command.
What about a ticket with Biden at the top and a likely young Democrat as VEEP? Perhaps Biden could even come right out and say he would be happy to step aside in 2024 for his vice president after that person was seasoned with four years in the second chair?
That vice president would have to be chosen not to win a particular state or to somehow “balance the ticket”, but as a real president in waiting and a very real helper in repairing the damage.
Oops, that would be unprecedented. But the 19th century saw a number of one term presidents and a fair number of presidents have named or attempted to name their successors.
What normalcy would we return to? The obstructionism of the Obama years, when Supreme Court seats laid vacant for a year and Tea Party radicals invaded every corner of government? Which btw was such a winning strategy that the abnormal weirdos were rewarded with control of every single branch of government and almost enough state control to hold a constitutional convention
Maybe the normalcy of the Bush years, when the saintly bipartisanship everyone seems to miss brought us the Iraq War, one of the most wrestched mistakes a country has ever made, whose ripple effects directly led to the Trump Presidency.
Or maybe the Clinton years, when President Punchline was almost impeached for lying about a blowjob. Or we can go further back and go back to the Nixon years, who could be Trump’s political twin.
This pining for a return to normalcy is why I don’t have much hope for democrats or the country. There is no normalcy to return to, and if you look at the trajectory of American politics over the past century Trumpism ultimately just looks like the logical outcome of a country being warped by ever-increasing apathy, ignorance & capitalist excess.
I’ll make a confident prediction: the next phase of American politics after Trump will not be “normal.”. The sooner democrats accept that, the more likely it will be that they’ll be the ones to benifit politically from the state of things.
To the extent the Democrats can manage a return to decency, tradition and respect for precedent. Obviously that is a promise than cannot be 100% fulfilled, but it certainly is desirable compared to the culture of utter corruption around Trump.
They can promise a return to honesty and decency, or they can do what they usually do, try to ram through as much ambitious legislation as possible fearing they’ll have only a two year window, and as a result, they end up with only two years in power.
I’ve never understood the eagerness of the Democratic party to just give back the House to the GOP as quickly as possible. Maybe they’ll learn this time. But the kind of rhetoric I’m hearing says they are going to double down on passing tons of legislation regardless of whether the public wants it.
After the revelations of the last two days, the Democratic campaign slogan for 2020 should be, “A return to sanity”.
No clue if he can actually get the nomination but, Cory Booker made me reconsider him in a big way today when he told Cornyn to “bring it.”
You may not agree but, the man has serious balls and will fight for what he believes in. First Democrat I’ve a seen in a while who made me feel like voting for them.
Further, Cornyn is a stuffed shirt with a stick so far up his ass I’m amazed it isn’t poking out the top of his head. Fucking prig.
Booker is one of the most cautious, equivocating, waffling politicians in the country, who occasionally chooses random times to go Spartacus, usually when it doesn’t actually matter. Which means it’s probably just part of his strategy to make you THINK he’s a fighter without actually taking any chances.
I think Booker is a great prospect, but right now he still seems to be finding himself. And his “Spartacus” comment is going to be the most mockable thing anyone’s said in a long time.
BTW, since you’re so eager to offer advice to the D’s:
How are you voting on the Sixth of November? (And then 104 weeks after that?) For the patriots trying to save America from this onslaught of hypocrisy and inhumanity? Or same-old same-old?
This November? Split ticket, Gillum for governor and Rick Scott for Senator. I will not support Trump in 2020, but I make no promises downticket. All depends on the candidates.
There is various press speculation that if Beto O’Rourke loses in a squeaker to Ted Cruz he could go for the big prize in 2020 instead. In past years this would have been an insane strategy but political experience seems to have been thrown out completely in favor of likeability and crowd appeal and Beto seems to be doing well on the overall appeal and general campaigning and fundraising fronts thus far so who knows.
Amid all the talk of electability and likability, remember there’s one area where an inexperienced President cannot defer to “the wise men” — military crisis.
JFK was inexperienced but, rightly or wrongly, he went eyeball-to-eyeball with Khrushchev … and Khrushchev blinked. BHO was inexperienced but he got tough sanctions in place against the Russian Bear. But what about Warren or Sanders? Will they force Putin to blink? Or will they blink first? Don’t just say they’ll have competent advisers — on such matters there has to be a single Master.
No, I still want to Draft Admiral Bill McRaven!
So what’s the plan? You wanna knock on his door with a plate of cookies, or should I?
We could hope that the vast Deep_State-Clinton-Soros-Rothschild conspiracy that Alex Jones and Steve Bannon warn us about were real after all. Then three Magi from the Illuminati would be knocking on McRaven’s door right now bearing gifts of frankincense, myrrh, and cookies.
But there is no Illuminati conspiracy and there is no Santa Claus. instead I see a leaderless B-team adrift without plan or purpose. I just watched Cory Booker’s “I am Spartacus” moment. Is this the best we can do?
Jason Kander seems to have a similar idea, but no, it’s not going to work unless the person has some pretty crazy ability to connect with voters. And Donald Trump started out with near universal name recognition. Few know who Kander and O’Rourke are, so they’d have to make a strong impression in the debates.
Also, both are moderates, and the part of the base that is most motivated to think outside the box on candidate selection isn’t voting for moderates.
I can just say that liberals are weak and they’ll blink first, but that’s impossible to know in advance. Warren strikes me as a non-blinker, Sanders seems like a blinker for sure. He only really seems to have strong feelings about domestic issues, so he’d probably do anything to just end a crisis so he could get back to what he cares about. Warren on the other hand, while also focused primarily on domestic issues, strikes me as someone you don’t screw with.
A more tractable question than “Who can defeat Trump?” Is “Who will be the Democratic Nominee?” I checked BetFair and Predictwise just now, and they agree on one thing:
While Donald Trump is, by far, the person most likely to be elected POTUS in 2020, the 2nd-most likely is … Kamala Harris! Mike Pence is down in 6th-place, behind the other three obvious front-runners for the D nomination.
Looking at the numbers for the 2nd-tier of D contenders may be like reading tea leaves, but the Predictwise graph shows Booker-nomination oscillating between 4% and 6% since his “I am Spartacus” moment.
With Kamala Harris we will have four more years of Trump. 