US election 2020

[pietillidie]

[David]

Don't want to get prematurely excited, but Sanders is killing it in the polls right now. Up 7%, 12%, 11% and 12% from his nearest competitor in the last four national polls, and well ahead in Nevada, California (!), Texas (!!), Maine and Vermont, among others. Bloomberg's catching up fast, though, so it'll be interesting to see how tomorrow's debate (his first) goes, and whether Darth Mike's teflon coating is still affixed once everyone else on stage has put their baseball bats away.

[pietillidie]

Just an everyday implication for people who didn't vote for a war on Iran: http://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20200219000756

[stui magpie]

David, Sanders is not going to be POTUS. Not this time, not ever.

AOC is your best bet next time, assuming she's eligible by age.

[Jezza]

[David]

[David]

Well, that was fun!

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/19/us/politics/democratic-debate-nevada-recap.html

Don’t think I’ve ever seen an angrier or more acrimonious presidential debate, and Bloomberg (and, at times, Buttigieg) copped it big time. Was worried for Bernie’s heart at one point!

[Jezza]

^ I watched it, David.

Consensus seems to be that Warren performed strongly. Bernie was his usual self and Bloomberg looked bored out of his brain having to debate.

In saying that, I doubt any of them beat Trump.

[stui magpie]

CNN saw it that way pretty much, although less complimentary of Mini Mike's performance and gave Mayor Pete some love.

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/02/19/politics/who-won-democratic-debate/index.html

[David]

That all checks out with what I saw, though for me it’s debatable who "won" out of Buttigieg and Klobuchar – what’s clear is that they were at each other’s throats all night, and both came across as petty at times, I thought.

100% agree with the view that Sanders benefited from Bloomberg’s presence; it both gave him a target to go after and shielded him from copping most of the heat (as the current frontrunner). While there’s a long way to go, honestly, I don’t think he could have scripted a better primary for himself so far – a lot of luck has fallen his way; think about how Biden’s entry took the sting out of questions around Sanders’ age and how Joe’s early polling dominance (which crumbled as soon as people started casting votes) effectively killed off the otherwise dangerous Kamala Harris and Beto O’Rourke campaigns. Also see how Warren took a lot of the early heat from the establishment as a "radical left" candidate when she seemed like a frontrunner. And now you have four or five viable "centrist" candidates jostling for position without a clear leader.

I guess the big question if the current course holds is: what happens if there’s a brokered convention? If Sanders does end up with the most votes, how much does he need to make a compelling case for getting the nod (or, at least, scare the DNC out of backstabbing him)? Five out of the six candidates thought that the person with the most votes shouldn’t necessarily get the nomination, so that’s going to be interesting if it comes to pass.

[stui magpie]

[pietillidie]

^Few people would bet against that view, I'd reckon.

[David]

I think the zeitgeist can change very quickly. Think about how America was (or was popularly seen) in the Bush era – a bunch of Christian fundamentalist, mouth-frothing performative patriots. Or think about the Tea Party era under Obama, when suddenly everyone cared about debt ceilings. Neither of those relatively recent trends on the right can account for the ascension of the Trump candidacy, and neither does the conservative, weak-tea Democratic Party of the mid 2000s bear a great deal of resemblance to the shape of the current primary. One of the most popular politicians in the country among young people is an open democratic socialist, and I'm not talking about Bernie Sanders – I'm talking about the even-more beloved Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. I think if Sanders' socialism was the handicap some say it is then the political establishment would be a lot less afraid of him than they are.

[Wokko]

Alexandria "You can't pull yourself up by your bootstraps it's physically impossible" Ocasio-Cortez.

[stui magpie]