Campaign 2020

[Okri]

I think Sanders, by foregrounding the aspirational and revolutionary, gets a pass. A good chunk of his supporters seem to think they can just bully people to vote their way.

[taki15]

taki15 wrote
I still can't understand why Democrats rejected Warren so thoroughly.
She is a demonstrably better candidate than Biden, Sanders, Bloomberg, etc.

Two reasons:

1) Medicare For All.
Her polling dipped during the health care debate of October/November. She gave waffling, evasive answers about what she stood for. Her campaign mantra was essentially that Warren has a plan for everything. You can literally track her decline from that moment onward. She undermined her campaign message. That's a huge mistake. It also made her look dishonest. If she had just come out from the get-go and said, "I like Medicare For All but I support a Public Option" I think she would have survived it.

That's a tempting explanation but I am skeptical.

First, it's been established that most voters don't decide based on policy but other things (personality, charisma, perceived electability, etc.).
Second, Sanders himself has been unable to explain how he would fund his Medicare For All program, and it's his signature issue.
Not only that, just recently one of his press people recently said that there aren't enough votes in the senate to pass M4A and all his talk is just that, talk. Yet his numbers don't seem to have suffered at all.

[Sabin]

taki15 wrote
I still can't understand why Democrats rejected Warren so thoroughly.
She is a demonstrably better candidate than Biden, Sanders, Bloomberg, etc.

Two reasons:

1) Medicare For All.
Her polling dipped during the health care debate of October/November. She gave waffling, evasive answers about what she stood for. Her campaign mantra was essentially that Warren has a plan for everything. You can literally track her decline from that moment onward. She undermined her campaign message. That's a huge mistake. It also made her look dishonest. If she had just come out from the get-go and said, "I like Medicare For All but I support a Public Option" I think she would have survived it.

2) Timing.
Impeachment took her out of the game for the weeks leading up to Iowa and New Hampshire, where she was sitting pretty for weeks. Buttigieg pretty much ate up all her white, college educated support in those states. Meanwhile, Sanders shored up the progressive vote during her decline following his heart attack.

She's very impressive and would make a great President. I just don't know what a Warren comeback looks like. She's so far down. Maybe if she comes in second in Nevada.

[taki15]

I still can't understand why Democrats rejected Warren so thoroughly.
She is a demonstrably better candidate than Biden, Sanders, Bloomberg, etc.

[Big Magilla]

I don't have a problem with them piling on Bloomberg for things he's done or hasn't done but when they attack him with innuendos and lies that they picked up from the rumor mill, that bothers me.

With Biden last night it was the redlining charge that comes from an out-of-context comment in which Bloomberg was saying that the fix applied to redlining supplied by predatory lenders was the cause of the housing market collapse not that redlining caused it. I thought Biden was smarter than to fall for that one.

With Warren it was bringing up comments from a joke book - did he really call "women" (suggesting more than one female) "fat broads" and "horse-faced lesbians" or was it one or two in the 1980s or none at all? Was it intended as a joke, a paraphrasing of things he might have said? It was more than a little beneath her. She couldn't steal votes from Sanders, so now she wants to steal them from the moderate lane. Nice try, but putting on the best show is not tantamount to winning a debate in my book.

If anybody "won" the night it was Klobuchar who stood her ground against both aggressive opponents (Buttigieg and Warren) and a reporter with her own agenda. And Warren doesn't get a pass for defending her on one thing while slamming her on another.

[Big Magilla]

Last night's constant infighting took up so much time it ignored a number of important issues. There was little or nothing said about the rule of law, gun violence in the state that had some of the most horrific incidents of mass shootings in the last few year, North Korea, foreign affairs in general and the utter repugnance of Trump and everything he stands for and doesn't stand for.

Are you really blaming the Democrats for the moderators failure to do their job, or am I totally misunderstanding you?

But if you were to blame a Democrat for the lack of substance, then Bloomberg's the one to blame. They would have talked about all those other issues had he not interloped. I promise, they've talked about all those other things in the 20 other debates they've had.

The moderators were pretty bad, but so were the candidates. They had a minute and 15 seconds or whatever to speak every time they were called on. They should have answered the mostly dumb questions in 15 seconds and used the remaining minute to talk about something important to them.

No wonder so many people are saying "just tell me who the Democratic candidate is and that's who I'll vote for."

[Sabin]

Sonic Youth wrote
That said, although I can't tell you what people I know are saying post-debate, I think this will no longer be an issue. What little commentary I've heard tells me he's not being taken so seriously now.... certainly not as "the only one who can beat Trump".

Sonic, who do you think is best to defeat Trump? Also, do you have a preferred candidate in this election?

[Sabin]

Big Magilla wrote
Nobody won this one.

I disagree. I think Elizabeth Warren won this debate as clearly as anyone has won any debate this season and Michael Bloomberg lost the debate more than anyone has lost a debate since Marco Rubio.

And to be honest, your response reminds me of what happens on Fox News when a Democrat wins the debate. I think it was Obama and Romney's third debate. Trust me, somebody won and somebody lost.

Michael Bloomberg's candidacy has left me so disappointed in us and our media. He makes me wonder if in time it will be possible to elect digital candidates. This man has less charisma and political style than anyone I've ever seen run for office. I don't want this man anywhere near a debate stage with Donald Trump. All he had to do was spend a fortune and he didn't just fool us, he fooled our gatekeeper pundits who have been fawning over him, desperate for a competent centrist patrician, and defending him and propping him up for weeks. I just watched a remarkable segment on The View from this past week that made Joy Behar look like a fool and Meghan McCain look like the voice of reason. A Bloomberg candidacy would be ruinous for our Party. I hope our pundits feel embarrassed and do some deep soul-searching but I know they won't.

As for Elizabeth Warren, I don't know what a Warren comeback could look like at this point but her debate performance is what I've been waiting to see from her for a long time. A lot of substance and a lot of fight. It reminded me why I used to like her so much. But what can she do to stay in this? Come in second in Nevada? Third in South Carolina? Fourth in California? Will that do it? It's pretty clear that all these candidates want a brokered convention except Sanders (tbh, a pretty remarkably transparent moment). Can Warren be that compromise candidate if she's third or fourth?

Anyway, if I forced anyone to watch this debate with no context whatsoever and say "Who's going to be the President?" and "Who should be the President?" I think both answers from this debate would easily be Elizabeth Warren.

[Sonic Youth]

To those who know Americans beyond social media (I know that sounds sarcastic, but it's sincere), are Magilla's comments below par for the course for Democratic Party supporters/those who want Trump out?

To my dismay, the more information that comes out about Bloomberg, the greater the "Vote Blue, no matter who" sentiment emerges. Most people say they'll hold their nose and vote for Bloomberg and are willing to overlook everything else about him. Nobody I know wants him to be the candidate. Magilla is the only true Bloomberg devotee I've come across. But I wish people would spend less energy worrying about Democratic party unity, and more about making sure this entitled former mayor who apparently no one is comfortable with not get on the ballot in the first place. We're still in the primary, not the general, and people seem to forget that.

That said, although I can't tell you what people I know are saying post-debate, I think this will no longer be an issue. What little commentary I've heard tells me he's not being taken so seriously now.... certainly not as "the only one who can beat Trump".

[Sonic Youth]

Last night's constant infighting took up so much time it ignored a number of important issues. There was little or nothing said about the rule of law, gun violence in the state that had some of the most horrific incidents of mass shootings in the last few year, North Korea, foreign affairs in general and the utter repugnance of Trump and everything he stands for and doesn't stand for.

Are you really blaming the Democrats for the moderators failure to do their job, or am I totally misunderstanding you?

But if you were to blame a Democrat for the lack of substance, then Bloomberg's the one to blame. They would have talked about all those other issues had he not interloped. I promise, they've talked about all those other things in the 20 other debates they've had.

[Okri]

Both comments are from that compendium, according to the NY TIMES fact check.

[Big Magilla]

That opening remark from Warren about "fat Broads" and "horse-faced lesbians" took me by surprise, so I googled it just now.

I couldn't find anything about "fat broads" but I did find his about the other comment:

The “horse-faced lesbians” comment appears to be a reference to a 1990 booklet, “Wit and Wisdom,” of Bloomberg’s supposed sayings compiled by his former colleagues and employees for his birthday.

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics ... rren-women

[Okri]

To those who know Americans beyond social media (I know that sounds sarcastic, but it's sincere), are Magilla's comments below par for the course for Democratic Party supporters/those who want Trump out?

[Big Magilla]

Bloomberg obviously has work to do. He should be booking the Sunday talk shows and giving interviews this Sunday plus, yes, hiring a debate coach and coming out much stronger in the debate in South Carolina next week. That said, he is in the position now that former presidents have been in when running for a second term after having come off weak in their first debates. He has to rise from the ashes of last night or quickly become yesterday's news.

Most people, though, will not have watched the debate and will at best see just clips from it. Bloomberg will still be best known from his ads for a while. There has already been 74,000 early votes cast vs. 4,000 in the entire Nevada caucus last time so last night's debate probably isn't going to help or hurt any of the candidates in the short run.

Last night's constant infighting took up so much time it ignored a number of important issues. There was little or nothing said about the rule of law, gun violence in the state that had some of the most horrific incidents of mass shootings in the last few year, North Korea, foreign affairs in general and the utter repugnance of Trump and everything he stands for and doesn't stand for.

[danfrank]

Bloomberg was just godawful. His “maybe I told a joke they didn’t like” line illustrates quite clearly that he doesn’t get it. He was dull, inarticulate, and sounded more like a Republican than a Democrat. And yes, Magilla, he was unprepared. There is no excuse for that, of course, but to me that was the least of his problems. Please disappear, Mike Bloomberg.

Oh, and I thought Elizabeth Warren was pretty great tonight.