Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Reelya]

I mean, I hold out hope for a Warren/Sanders or Sanders/Warren ticket being announced any day now... hope these days seems mostly to be a way to add some extra anguish to your daily overload of outrage, disgust, and horror.

That actually sounds very unlikely. It's more likely to be a mainstream + leftist. The point of your VP pick is to appeal to whichever wing/faction of the party doesn't find the main candidate appealing. Hence, picks like Palin and Pence on the Republican side. McCain was too mainstream so they needed a hardline conservative, while Trump was too irreligious so they needed a bible-basher. If Biden gets nominated and he's smart then he picks someone pretty progressive as his VP. Similarly Warren or Sanders should pick someone seen as level-headed and pragmatic on the economy.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Sanders 100% needs to pick a diehard scary leftist for veep or the CIA will salivate all over him.

[sluissa]

I mean, I hold out hope for a Warren/Sanders or Sanders/Warren ticket being announced any day now... hope these days seems mostly to be a way to add some extra anguish to your daily overload of outrage, disgust, and horror.

That actually sounds very unlikely. It's more likely to be a mainstream + leftist. The point of your VP pick is to appeal to whichever wing/faction of the party doesn't find the main candidate appealing. Hence, picks like Palin and Pence on the Republican side. McCain was too mainstream so they needed a hardline conservative, while Trump was too irreligious so they needed a bible-basher. If Biden gets nominated and he's smart then he picks someone pretty progressive as his VP. Similarly Warren or Sanders should pick someone seen as level-headed and pragmatic on the economy.

That would be true if it were done during the general election. But the benefit of a Warren/Sanders ticket would be you'd unite two similar groups during the primary to beat out the other contenders. At current support levels that'd be somewhere between 30 and 50% of democrats supporting a single ticket if they all transferred over. I'm not saying that would be a guaranteed win, but it'd be better than anyone else at the moment. It's possible a similar biden/buttigieg/rest of the moderate camp would do the same thing and beat it out, but none of them are quite as close in messaging or goals as Sanders and Warren were until fairly recently.

[Reelya]

I mean, I hold out hope for a Warren/Sanders or Sanders/Warren ticket being announced any day now... hope these days seems mostly to be a way to add some extra anguish to your daily overload of outrage, disgust, and horror.

That actually sounds very unlikely. It's more likely to be a mainstream + leftist. The point of your VP pick is to appeal to whichever wing/faction of the party doesn't find the main candidate appealing. Hence, picks like Palin and Pence on the Republican side. McCain was too mainstream so they needed a hardline conservative, while Trump was too irreligious so they needed a bible-basher. If Biden gets nominated and he's smart then he picks someone pretty progressive as his VP. Similarly Warren or Sanders should pick someone seen as level-headed and pragmatic on the economy.

That would be true if it were done during the general election. But the benefit of a Warren/Sanders ticket would be you'd unite two similar groups during the primary to beat out the other contenders. At current support levels that'd be somewhere between 30 and 50% of democrats supporting a single ticket if they all transferred over. I'm not saying that would be a guaranteed win, but it'd be better than anyone else at the moment. It's possible a similar biden/buttigieg/rest of the moderate camp would do the same thing and beat it out, but none of them are quite as close in messaging or goals as Sanders and Warren were until fairly recently.

That still doesn't sound likely at all.
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/election-update-sanders-is-on-the-upswing/

The problem is that every percentage point Sanders gained is one Warren lost. This shows they're just going after the same voting pool. Even added together, Sanders+Warren is less than Biden. If Warren drops out then almost all her votes will go to Sanders, so Sanders would be an absolute fool to pick her as VP, if she's anywhere near dropping out already. He'd be better off picking a VP like Buttigieg, since that might pull some voters from Biden, rather than doubling-down on the primary voters he already has in the bag.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

You'd never get all the polonium out of the walls of the White House if CIA Pete was Bernie's veep.

[sluissa]

I mean, I hold out hope for a Warren/Sanders or Sanders/Warren ticket being announced any day now... hope these days seems mostly to be a way to add some extra anguish to your daily overload of outrage, disgust, and horror.

That actually sounds very unlikely. It's more likely to be a mainstream + leftist. The point of your VP pick is to appeal to whichever wing/faction of the party doesn't find the main candidate appealing. Hence, picks like Palin and Pence on the Republican side. McCain was too mainstream so they needed a hardline conservative, while Trump was too irreligious so they needed a bible-basher. If Biden gets nominated and he's smart then he picks someone pretty progressive as his VP. Similarly Warren or Sanders should pick someone seen as level-headed and pragmatic on the economy.

That would be true if it were done during the general election. But the benefit of a Warren/Sanders ticket would be you'd unite two similar groups during the primary to beat out the other contenders. At current support levels that'd be somewhere between 30 and 50% of democrats supporting a single ticket if they all transferred over. I'm not saying that would be a guaranteed win, but it'd be better than anyone else at the moment. It's possible a similar biden/buttigieg/rest of the moderate camp would do the same thing and beat it out, but none of them are quite as close in messaging or goals as Sanders and Warren were until fairly recently.

That still doesn't sound likely at all.
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/election-update-sanders-is-on-the-upswing/

The problem is that every percentage point Sanders gained is one Warren lost. This shows they're just going after the same voting pool. Even added together, Sanders+Warren is less than Biden. If Warren drops out then almost all her votes will go to Sanders, so Sanders would be an absolute fool to pick her as VP, if she's anywhere near dropping out already. He'd be better off picking a VP like Buttigieg, since that might pull some voters from Biden, rather than doubling-down on the primary voters he already has in the bag.

Skimming through recent polls, I'm not seeing ANY where Sander + Warren numbers doesn't beat out Biden's. Sometimes it's close, and of course it's not a guarantee that they'd retain both of their pools of supporters, but assuming they did, and Biden wasn't able to pick up significant support from elsewhere, they would win it. There's also no guarantee that Warren/Sanders supporters would go to the other side if one dropped out, without some sort of solid reason to like a dual ticket. Lots of Sanders supporters are supporters of ONLY Sanders, while many Warren supporters aren't necessarily Sanders supporters and might jump ship to someone else, and that's especially true after recent events. The other point of this would be to get it done early so they could look strong. If they fight this all the way up to the convention, and then only pool their delegates, it's going to look weak, like they're simply trying to sweep it out from under Biden (or whoever wins.) But if they formed a coalition ticket early on, and people were actually voting for that ticket, that's a strong message that they deserve the win.

This is all hypothetical though, and while I'm still not counting it out, I'm guessing it won't happen before Iowa. We'll just have to see how it all plays out.

[SalmonGod]

...Everything getting worse in the same ways it is now.  But at a softer, slower pace, with more layers of better designed abstraction to hide their direct responsibility for the outcome.

Bullshit. If you think that Trump's government is the same as a hypothetical Democrat would be, just "worse PR," you're ignoring everything that Ajit Pai, Betsy Devos, and Wheeler have done, let alone Trump's Fascist hatemongering of everyone other than straight white males and blatant self-enrichment.

No, letting the country fall apart is lazy at best, and aiding and abetting fascism at worst.

You got me.  Now that I've read your post, if Biden wins the presidency and my type 1 diabetic child dies because the price of insulin rises another 3000%, and my other child dies in young adulthood in an Amazon warehouse fire after bipartisan restoration of employer's rights to lock workplaces from the outside... I'll reflect on this moment afterwards while waiting in a climate refugee tent city under military watch to see if I'm allowed access to one of the already overcrowded last habitable places on earth and think "At least we didn't get another 4 years of Trump.  That would have been so much worse."

If you think I'm being hyperbolic, you're ignoring... a lot.

[Rolan7]

Yeah, my retired dad's living off stockpiled insulin (for now) and I'm betting against my health as I do irregular work.  Why in the fuck would I stay loyal to the liberals at this point?

Authoritarianism looks good on paper, at least to me, but it sure screwed us over.

[PTTG??]

Hold the phone. Biden hasn't won yet. If Biden wins, then there's no hope for the country and burning it down for the insurance money suddenly becomes an option, but that's not where we are now.

[SalmonGod]

Hold the phone. Biden hasn't won yet. If Biden wins, then there's no hope for the country and burning it down for the insurance money suddenly becomes an option, but that's not where we are now.

Ok, cool.  I was mistaking your approach for the "progressive stuff is nice but we have to be willing to give it up in order to kick Trump out of office - hold your nose and just do it no matter who it is" type.

Edit:

Another day, another bleak revelation highlighting how astronomically important it is that we get genuinely progressive representatives in office now.

North American bird populations have declined by 2.9 billion in the last 50 years.  In the past 11 years alone, biomass of migrating birds has dropped by 14 percent.  And as I'm always stressing, global warming isn't mentioned once.  It's blamed on pesticides and habitat destruction.

[scriver]

I want to make a windmill pirate/global warming joke but I'm afraid it will be taken seriously

But anyway, it's a problem in Sweden too (and I guess the entire world?). There's a problem here also with that the land that is used is over-used/used too efficiently and the land that isn't productive isn't used at all, causing it to change too. So there's a lot of species that's adapted to "border environs" that suddenly finds their space a lot reduced. Basically, meadows and pastures are quickly becoming a thing of the past, as are the natural "mixed forests".

[Iduno]

I mean, I hold out hope for a Warren/Sanders or Sanders/Warren ticket being announced any day now... hope these days seems mostly to be a way to add some extra anguish to your daily overload of outrage, disgust, and horror.

The Hillary Clinton team that Warren hired has killed the chances of that. Warren + Biden is more likely, but also won't happen.

[sluissa]

I'm glad this thread can give me some perspective in life. I spend so much time hanging around and listening to right wing nut jobs, that it's easy to forget the left has their own nutjobs that shouldn't be ignored.

It also reinforces my position here in the middle of things and keeps me from going nutjob myself just to spite the assholes I have to deal with on a daily basis.

Truly, thanks.

[Cheesy Honkers]

sluissa, if you think this thread contains anything that even resembles left nuttery you are out of your mind

[Quarque]

As a European, I keep watching in horror and disbelief at what is happening.

I can imagine having wildly different opinions about the politics.
I think Trump has a counterproductive approach to international trade and diplomacy, but I can imagine thinking he's doing it right.
I think his approach to the environment is destructive, but I can imagine not caring as much.
I think his tax deductions for the rich make him Scrooge irl, but I can imagine believing in trickle down economics.

Okay.

But when I watch his rallies, I am just stumped. How he made people chant about jailing and expelling his political rivals. How he calls the free press the "enemy of the people". How he loves to bully a protester out of his rally, is that a standard part of every speech he makes nowadays? How he "jokes" about become president for life, and installs his family in high positions.

That's where I am left speechless. How is it possible to like this guy and support him? Do you have to be blinded by anger? I honestly don't understand and it scares me.