2020 US General Election Thread IV: The Battle Begins

[New Rogernomics]

Goldfish actually make decent pets unlike the primary front-runners, and none of that has bearing on what will happen, which multiple news sources such as politico are already pointing out is going to likely be a Trump victory.

President Hillary Clinton says hi.

She lost twice, and most just want her to go away. It isn't enough that she lost in 2016, as she has to keep attacking her own party to bring in book sales. That said, if Sanders wins, there are enough fanatical Clintonites to make sure that he never gets enough votes to win against Trump, as they still blame him and his supporters for Clinton losing in 2016. Whether it is a center-left candidate or a more far left-leaner, there isn't much hope as the token gay guy isn't going to cut it among the more left of the party - and has already lost the voters or 'Bernie Bros' he needs to defeat Trump by attacking Sanders.

[Bear Stearns]

I prefer Pete over Bernie. I think he's more electable

You're just objectively wrong, more non-leftists will vote for Sanders then Buttigieg statistically.

Bernie would pull the most Trump supporters of any Democratic candidate. Buttigieg is Hillary supporters minus blacks.

[San Lumen]

President Hillary Clinton says hi.

She lost twice, and most just want her to go away. It isn't enough that she lost in 2016, as she has to keep attacking her own party to bring in book sales. That said, if Sanders wins, there are enough fanatical Clintonites to make sure that he never gets enough votes to win against Trump, as they still blame him and his supporters for Clinton losing in 2016. Whether it is a center-left candidate or a more far left-leaner, there isn't much hope as the token gay guy isn't going to cut it among the more left of the party - and has already lost the voters or 'Bernie Bros' he needs to defeat Trump by attacking Sanders.

Yeah how dare Sanders be criticized.

[Gormwood]

President Hillary Clinton says hi.

She lost twice, and most just want her to go away. It isn't enough that she lost in 2016, as she has to keep attacking her own party to bring in book sales. That said, if Sanders wins, there are enough fanatical Clintonites to make sure that he never gets enough votes to win against Trump, as they still blame him and his supporters for Clinton losing in 2016. Whether it is a center-left candidate or a more far left-leaner, there isn't much hope as the token gay guy isn't going to cut it among the more left of the party - and has already lost the voters or 'Bernie Bros' he needs to defeat Trump by attacking Sanders.

I'm sure Clintonites will do exactly what Bernie Bros were accused of doing to her in 2016 just to pull everyone back into the crab bucket.

[Genivaria]

She lost twice, and most just want her to go away. It isn't enough that she lost in 2016, as she has to keep attacking her own party to bring in book sales. That said, if Sanders wins, there are enough fanatical Clintonites to make sure that he never gets enough votes to win against Trump, as they still blame him and his supporters for Clinton losing in 2016. Whether it is a center-left candidate or a more far left-leaner, there isn't much hope as the token gay guy isn't going to cut it among the more left of the party - and has already lost the voters or 'Bernie Bros' he needs to defeat Trump by attacking Sanders.

Yeah how dare Sanders be criticized.

Facetiousness doesn't suit you.

[San Lumen]

You're just objectively wrong, more non-leftists will vote for Sanders then Buttigieg statistically.

Bernie would pull the most Trump supporters of any Democratic candidate. Buttigieg is Hillary supporters minus blacks.

what;'s to say they wont turn out in high numbers regardless of the nominee. He could chose a black running mate.

[Gormwood]

Bernie would pull the most Trump supporters of any Democratic candidate. Buttigieg is Hillary supporters minus blacks.

what;'s to say they wont turn out in high numbers regardless of the nominee. He could chose a black running mate.

"I'm not racist, I have a token black running mate!"

[San Lumen]

what;'s to say they wont turn out in high numbers regardless of the nominee. He could chose a black running mate.

"I'm not racist, I have a token black running mate!"

a black running mate is a token?

[Galloism]

what;'s to say they wont turn out in high numbers regardless of the nominee. He could chose a black running mate.

"I'm not racist, I have a token black running mate!"

Ironically, that is how San Lumen sounds.

[Genivaria]

Bernie would pull the most Trump supporters of any Democratic candidate. Buttigieg is Hillary supporters minus blacks.

what;'s to say they wont turn out in high numbers regardless of the nominee. He could chose a black running mate.

Do you seriously think he'll pull in the black vote by having a black VP?
Don't sink to the level of the Republicans please.

It's a completely condescending attitude where you think black people are stupid enough to vote on skin tone and not on the policies that most effect them.

[Nanatsu no Tsuki]

what;'s to say they wont turn out in high numbers regardless of the nominee. He could chose a black running mate.

Do you seriously think he'll pull in the black vote by having a black VP?
Don't sink to the level of the Republicans please.

Why am I remembering South Park?

[Aureumterra]

You're just objectively wrong, more non-leftists will vote for Sanders then Buttigieg statistically.

Bernie would pull the most Trump supporters of any Democratic candidate. Buttigieg is Hillary supporters minus blacks.

Bernie is also the best alternative to Trump, anyone but a warmongering neoliberal in office is good

[Albrenia]

Completely random and out there pair of questions:

Could Obama be running mate, or does the 'no third terms' thing apply to the VP position and not just the Presidency?

Could Trump change his VP for the election?

For a bonus round: Could Trump have Obama as VP?

[Cisairse]

I think barring a miracle Sanders will get the nomination. Picking Klobuchar would be a wise choice but he’s probably going to pick someone as radical as him

Yeah, that's my concern, too. And while the current polling data shows that Bernie would likely beat Trump in a head-to-head race if it were held today, I'm thinking that things could be very different in another nine months, especially once the Republicans have had a good, long opportunity to hammer him for being a socialist.

Now, I'm sure that you Bernie fans out there are thinking, "Socialist, Shmocialist... So what?" What's in a label, right? Especially when a lot of the public aversion to socialism is a residue left over from a Cold War that ended nearly 30 years ago. Who cares?

Old people, for starters — and that matters quite a lot, considering the fact that old people tend to vote much more reliably than young people do. Chris Matthews hit that nail on the head last night when he suggested that Republicans might challenge Sanders to tell Americans what he thinks of people like Fidel Castro. If Sanders turns out to be at all hesitant to piss on old Fidel's grave (and I suspect he might be), that's going to look really, really bad to a generation that remembers when the Reds were the Enemy.

But I think there's a subtler problem here, and one that Sanders isn't likely to be able to answer in any effective way. In last night's debate, when challenged on the "socialism" label, Sanders tried to argue that conservatives were "socialist" in their own way, by advocating subsidies and tax breaks for the rich. The problem is that this argument assumes that the only issue here is how the government chooses to allocate resources (although even here he made a misstep by lumping tax breaks in with subsidies; after all, there's a qualitative [and somewhat unsubtle] difference between the two — and the fact that Bernie's answer suggested that he doesn't see that difference is problematic in the extreme).

Sheer redistributionism is one thing; but inherent in socialism is the idea that there's such a thing as "enough", and that "enough" can be determined both objectively and across the whole of society. IOW, under socialism, it's not only permissible but indeed expected for society to collectively decide how rich and poor its members ought to be, and for society to then employ various regulatory or confiscatory means to enforce these norms, both by ensuring that the poor are able to live at or above a certain minimal material standard of living and by ensuring that the rich do not exceed a certain maximum allowable material standard of living at the other end of things. Which is where the rub comes in: It's OK to tax away, expropriate, or outright confiscate "excessive" wealth when a person's wealth exceeds a certain level — IOW, when that person has "enough". Inherent in socialism is the idea that we're going to take both income and wealth away from those who have "too much" and either give that wealth and income to those who have "too little", or else leave it in the hands of the State where it can be held in trust "for the People", both to finance further projects aimed at lifting up the poor and to prevent the rich from continuing to both have and accumulate "too much", with all the negative consequences that might come from having a class of individuals with "too much".

Now, I suspect that only the hardest of hardcore conservatives truly object to seeing society aid those who have "too little" (although conservatives do have a much broader set of objections to seeing it do so if it uses government power to bring this about; most conservatives, after all, support the existence of charity as a means of helping the poor, confining their opposition to redistributionism to governent-funded assistance programs, since these involve taking money involuntarily from people who have it in order to improve the condition of people who don't). But a much larger group of voters — and not just conservatives by any means — object to the notion that government has the right, whether done "for the common good" or not — to limit the material prosperity of its citizens on the grounds that there is some objectively demonstrable standard that serves to define what is "enough" or "too much" for its citizens to own.

And it is on this basis that I think Sanders is most vulnerable. Americans in particular have long maintained we all have a right to achieve "success" — however each of us may measure it — so long as it is won in a fair and honest way, and so long as it does not come at the expense of those around us. Yet this year — more than in almost any other in recent memory — the left is showing its antipathy towards the whole idea of success, if only in material terms. The whole "us" against "them" vibe that both the Sanders and Warren campaigns have been emitting has the subtext that "we" (i.e., those who are not rich) need to do more than just make "them" (i.e., those who are rich) pay their "fair share": While the left hasn't quite trotted the guillotines, or insisted on its right to take everything from those at the top, it is very clearly articulating the idea that society has an inherent right to place a cap on material success and say that the rich can only get so rich before they hit their limit — and that after they do, everything that's left is rightfully "ours".

Then there's that insistence — which I cited earlier — in considering tax breaks to be the same as subsidies. It suggests that — at least in the eyes of the progressive left — personal wealth isn't really "personal". What we own isn't really "ours" in any absolute sense; rather, it is merely what society allows us to designate as our own, and then only at this particular moment in time. Following this logic, all wealth is actually community property, to which society enjoys an ultimate overarching claim; for the sake of maintaining something of a tie to the capitalist past, we let people lay claim to some share of it, but by rights society can take it away any time it sees fit — and in the case of the ultra-rich, should probably do so sooner rather than later.

It's only by looking at wealth and prosperity in this way that the left — including people like Sanders and Warren — can equate tax breaks with subsidies. By allowing the rich to keep their wealth, we're not actually allowing them to retain possession of what's theirs, because it really isn't ultimately "theirs". In that sense, a tax break is exactly like a subsidy: We either give you temporary title to more of what is rightfully "ours" (in the case of a subsidy) or defer taking from you what we've given you temporary title to in the past (in the case of a tax break). Either way, it's clear who actually owns it: Society rather than the individual.

If this is where Progressives are going (or where they have arrived, depending on the person in question), then perhaps it is actually for the best that Progressives now call themselves "Progressives" rather than "Liberals". It allows those of us who are more towards the center to part ideological company with them and in doing so reclaim the older "liberal" moniker as our own, and so to assert for our part that we tax the rich more heavily than the poor because (at least in our view) that's the most equitable way of sharing the burden of building a society in which we can all enjoy the benefits of higher civilization. We expect people to try and support themselves, and yet understand that sometimes this is difficult or even impossible, extending aid to those who find themselves in such a difficult position until they can turn things around. We build roads and establish public amenities, hire policemen and raise a military, educate everybody's children and care for the sick, promote the arts and sciences and incentivize innovation, all because doing these things makes life better for everyone. We want everyone to live better, and so we don't begrudge the success of the rich so long as they don't try to use their wealth to subjugate the rest of us. That's the difference between the socialist and the mere liberal; for the most part, the liberal doesn't see the existence of the rich as "problem" to be solved by their ultimate elimination as a class, while (in general) socialists do.

My concern here — aside from my view that socialists are fundamentally wrong in their belief that human enterprise must be strictly limited for the good of society — is that a move within the Democratic Party towards socialism will concede the center to the Republican Party at precisely that moment in our history when the Republican Party has abandoned its longstanding belief in constitutionally limited government and (more or less) free markets in favor of authoritarianism, cronyism, and nativist xenophobia. Never in our Nation's history did we need a sane center more than we do today; and yet at this very hour it seems as though a strong center is precisely what our body politic is missing.

I disagree with your conclusion because (1) it assumes that wealth and standard of living are the same, which is extremely untrue but the level to which it is untrue is skewed heavily towards the upper classes, and (2) it assumes that there is a given standard of living that some people live at in an unequal society but that nobody will live at in an equal society. This is also untrue due to the potential for automation to create near limitless wealth that is not tied to humans.

[Genivaria]

Do you seriously think he'll pull in the black vote by having a black VP?
Don't sink to the level of the Republicans please.

Why am I remembering South Park?

I honestly don't know, there's so many episodes that come to mind.

[Nanatsu no Tsuki]

Completely random and out there pair of questions:

Could Obama be running mate, or does the 'no third terms' thing apply to the VP position and not just the Presidency?

Could Trump change his VP for the election?

For a bonus round: Could Trump have Obama as VP?

I think since Obama already served two terms as POTUS, he couldn’t run as VP pin the event the actual POTUS can’t serve his or her term.

[San Lumen]

what;'s to say they wont turn out in high numbers regardless of the nominee. He could chose a black running mate.

Do you seriously think he'll pull in the black vote by having a black VP?
Don't sink to the level of the Republicans please.

It's a completely condescending attitude where you think black people are stupid enough to vote on skin tone and not on the policies that most effect them.

Governors Whitmer and Evers picked black running mates. I never said people vote based on skin tone.

[Nanatsu no Tsuki]

Why am I remembering South Park?

I honestly don't know, there's so many episodes that come to mind.

I remembered now. There’s a character named Token, and he’s black.

[San Lumen]

Completely random and out there pair of questions:

Could Obama be running mate, or does the 'no third terms' thing apply to the VP position and not just the Presidency?

Could Trump change his VP for the election?

For a bonus round: Could Trump have Obama as VP?

The first has never been tested. From what I have heard is in theory yes.

Trump absolutely could change his VP. He can't fire him though. He would have to convince him to resign.

[Gormwood]

Why am I remembering South Park?

I honestly don't know, there's so many episodes that come to mind.

Token Black, the one black kid in town.

[New Rogernomics]

She lost twice, and most just want her to go away. It isn't enough that she lost in 2016, as she has to keep attacking her own party to bring in book sales. That said, if Sanders wins, there are enough fanatical Clintonites to make sure that he never gets enough votes to win against Trump, as they still blame him and his supporters for Clinton losing in 2016. Whether it is a center-left candidate or a more far left-leaner, there isn't much hope as the token gay guy isn't going to cut it among the more left of the party - and has already lost the voters or 'Bernie Bros' he needs to defeat Trump by attacking Sanders.

I'm sure Clintonites will do exactly what Bernie Bros were accused of doing to her in 2016 just to pull everyone back into the crab bucket.

The DNC can't really decide their favored candidate this time around though. Last time it was Clinton, this time it has gone from Biden to Warren, and now Buttigieg since he supposedly is at the top in Iowa. I voted for Sanders in 2016, though I gave up on there being a fair primary process back then, and won't vote for him again - as he legitimatized that flawed system by going around the country supporting Hillary. Not that it made Hillary hold back, as she still hates him.

[Farnhamia]

Completely random and out there pair of questions:

Could Obama be running mate, or does the 'no third terms' thing apply to the VP position and not just the Presidency?

Could Trump change his VP for the election?

For a bonus round: Could Trump have Obama as VP?

The first has never been tested. From what I have heard is in theory yes.

Trump absolutely could change his VP. He can't fire him though. He would have to convince him to resign.

Pence wouldn't have to resign. If the Republicans don't nominate him for VP, he leaves office when his term expires.

[Cisairse]

Completely random and out there pair of questions:

Could Obama be running mate, or does the 'no third terms' thing apply to the VP position and not just the Presidency?

Could Trump change his VP for the election?

For a bonus round: Could Trump have Obama as VP?

12th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution:
"[N]o person constitutionally ineligible to the office of President shall be eligible to that of Vice-President of the United States."

There is actually an ongoing legal debate among constitutional scholars over whether the specific wording of the 22nd Amendment forbids the scenario you describe. The XXII states "No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice" -- scholars disagree as to whether the "eligibility" described in XII is equivalent to the "elected" status in XXII.

[San Lumen]

I'm sure Clintonites will do exactly what Bernie Bros were accused of doing to her in 2016 just to pull everyone back into the crab bucket.

The DNC can't really decide their favored candidate this time around though. Last time it was Clinton, this time it has gone from Biden to Warren, and now Buttigieg since he supposedly is at the top in Iowa. I voted for Sanders in 2016, though I gave up on there being a fair primary process back then, and won't vote for him again - as he legitimatized that flawed system by going around the country supporting Hillary.

How was it not fair? Why was it bad he supported her and do you not want him to support the eventual nominee if it isn;'t him? That's handing Trump the election on a silver platter. Don;t be petty like that.

[San Lumen]

The first has never been tested. From what I have heard is in theory yes.

Trump absolutely could change his VP. He can't fire him though. He would have to convince him to resign.

Pence wouldn't have to resign. If the Republicans don't nominate him for VP, he leaves office when his term expires.

Trump can't fire him though. They should chose someone else at the convention but that is very unlikely. I'd love to see a contested Republican convention though were delegates turn on him and refuse to nominate him