Two weird things that I see more and more, perhaps because I spend so much time scanning toxic social media sites like twitter and facebook, are people needing to look for slights to encourage the to vote for their preferred candidate and everyone being a fucking pundit and needing to factor electability into their choice. As always, I am guilty of both to some degree, but I seem to see it more and more.
I mean, I guess whatever motivates you, but I am supporting Warren because she best represents what I think we need to do going forward, has what it takes to get it done, and does a good job explaining HOW she will get it done. I don’t care if the polling says she is less likely to win than someone else, I don’t give a fuck if Trump calls her pocohontas or another campaign did something obnoxious. I think she has the best ideas, so that is who I am going to vote for in the primary if she is still around.
satby
So will I.
Yes, I defend Buttigieg a lot, but he’s been a target of a lot of misinformation, as was Harris until she quit. I don’t like misinformation campaigns (edit: and both from same sources).
Omnes Omnibus
I’ll pull this from one of yesterday’s threads since I think it fits:
Policy chops don’t necessarily bring out voters. Also, I think there are three priorities for the next president. 1. Climate Change. 2. Restoring the US as a good faith member of the international community. 3. Voters rights. If we can do those, then everything else will fall into place.
A lot of specific things can be included in those three categories, and no one can possibly complete them in four or eight years. But those are the challenges. The person we need to elect is the one who can best oversee and be the head cheerleader for those projects. If Warren is the person you think is best suited to do that, then she should be your candidate. If you think someone else would be better at doing it, then that person should be your choice.
Emerald
This year I’m discounting policy altogether. The only thing that matters is winning, because if we don’t we absolutely lose our democracy. After we get that eensy problem solved we can get back to fighting about policy.
I’m happy with anybody except Wilmer (who will lose 40 states) or Gabbard, as long as we win. Right now I’m leaning Biden because I think he knows how the government is supposed to work and so is the best for piecing it all back together and repairing our relationships with our allies. Also, pretty clearly, he’s the one tRump is scared of, otherwise why the elaborate operation to smear him?
Of course, the Rs will use massive disinformation against whomever we choose. It’s gonna be bloody. With Wilmer, however, most of it will be true. With Biden, it isn’t, and the old pro politician might be the best at countering it.
But I’ll go with Warren if that’s who we choose. No problem there at all.
debbie
She has the best ideas because she has the best grasp of the issues. She won’t dictate like that other guy would, and she won’t over-compromise trying to get buy-in from people who never will buy in. She’s the best choice all around.
debbie
@Omnes Omnibus:
There should be a fourth priority: Economic inequality.
Omnes Omnibus
@debbie: Fix voting rights and we win elections going forward. We win elections going forward, economic inequality will be addressed. The Bernie people get it backwards.
ETA: We can’t do everything at once. Trying to do that is what gets us protests in favor of abortion rights where we have speakers talking about how meat is murder.
WhatsMyNym
@John Cole
I’m glad you, and the other front pagers, do review social media. I don’t and there are a few good sources that I would otherwise not hear about. Also, we need to keep an eye on the trash that is being spewed from those platforms.
maeve
Alaska Democrats are switching from caucus to primary with ranked choice voting this year which makes me happy. It is in April so who knows what will happen. Caucuses were sort of ranked choice voting but the only people who could participate were people who could spend half a day there. Its also “open” in that you can be one of several other parties than Democratic and also re-register at the door if you are unaffiliated or other.
(There’s also a referendum going around for signatures to be on the ballot for ranked choice voting in all elections.)
debbie
@Omnes Omnibus:
I wasn’t saying that as a Bernie person, but addressing economic inequality at the start would bring all kinds of new allies over to the Dems.
Wapiti
@Omnes Omnibus: I think the corruption angle matters. How much of our inability to work on climate change is because of the corrupting influence of oil and gas interests in our politics? How much of our butting heads with the rest of the free world is because of the corrupting influence of autocrat money in US business and politics? How much of the problems with voting rights is because of business money flowing to Republicans eager/willing to block minority votes and keep the campaign donations flowing?
Perensejo
I also have a hard time wrapping my head around why any Democrat would be attacking any Democratic candidate at this point. I’m sure many people have different issues nearest to their hearts, but we should all be able to agree that the Republican progress towards fascism must be reversed. I love my Senator because she is so smart, and understands and explains things so well. But if she is not the choice I am given, I won’t be mad. I’ll be happy I still get a choice. Current trends being what they are, if Trumpski takes this next election, we might not have another one.
PsiFighter37
Honestly – I will start caring more about it if the contest isn’t decided by the time NY votes (which is the end of April). But, given the clusterfuck that was Iowa, I have to think both Booker and Harris have to be figuring out what went wrong. They should both still be in the race.
satby
@Omnes Omnibus: you’re correct that that’s got to be the first thing, because success in any of the other things depends on it. Ironically, Buttigieg’s “shape of our democracy” quote regarding fixing voting suppression (and the attendant problems) was mocked for being too wordy. But he’s been talking about that as a first step consistently.
Mrs. D. Ranged in AZ
I feel exactly the same way…Warren is my choice and I could give two everlasting f*cks about anything beyond the fact that she knows what we need to do and she knows HOW we can do it. And that includes how to stand up to Trump.
PJ
@Omnes Omnibus: Warren’s main message is corruption, which is an overarching theme for the problems we face, including the ones you mentioned.
Kent
I don’t think things have really changed all that much. What is new is that ordinary folk have much more ability to propagate nonsense and lies through the internet. If you watch the War Room about the 1992 Clinton Campaign which was pre-internet, or at least pre-world wide web, the same trolls were out there but they had to try to leak their nonsense to cable news or print reporters who at least acted like something of a filter. But you can watch Stephanopolis and Carville spending most of their time trying to beat back lies and rumors over the phone with reporters and such and try to keep on top of the news cycle.
I don’t know what the answer is but I do no for ABSOLUTE CERTAIN that it isn’t trying to pour money into amateur-hour grifters like Tara McGowan founder of Acronym and the famous Shadow software developer. What is telling to me is that actual media professionals like Bloomberg don’t touch these amateur grifter consultant types like McGowan, Carville, Brazille, Penn, etc. with a 10-foot pole. He hires actual media professionals who normally work for companies like Nike, Coca Cola, Apple, etc. and they put together the best media campaign money can buy. And it is damn good.
satby
@PsiFighter37: but they’re not. So what we have is what we have.
John Revolta
OTOH it seems obvious that Trump fears Biden the most (and actually seems to WANT to run against Bernie). OTOH Trump is pretty much wrong about everything and always has been so I dunno.
zhena gogolia
@Emerald:
You and I have the same brain.
PsiFighter37
@satby: Yep. Not saying I would have necessarily voted for either of them, but the choice of someone too old (Biden), someone trying to buy the race (Bloomberg), someone too inexperienced (Buttigieg), and Amy Klobuchar as the ‘establishment’ candidates…not the best the Dems could have done.
My general sense is that social media has really created a bad environment for a Democrat running nationally. It has given far too much volume to fringe voices and making it sound like it is the voice of the majority of center-left voters. In particular, Wilmer and his team know how to exploit this. Cory Booker has many faults (I would say the education debacle in Newark being at the top of the list), but all of the left-wing voices on social media say he’s in pharma’s pocket because of one amendment Wilmer specifically tagged onto a bill after the election in 2016. It was a devious, scummy move, but all I ever heard from the left after that was that Booker basically worked for Merck.
Obama figured out how to utilize social media as an organizing tool, but the far left, the fringe voices, the single-issue voters who will burn at the fucking stake before voting for a Democrat who might’ve done something wrong, and Sanders’ campaign – they have weaponized it and turned it into an unreasonable tool to apply litmus tests.
Baud
I like Warren, but it’s hard for me to see how she gets ahead. I hope she can.
feebog
I’ll say it again. Ideology does not matter this election. So I’m fine with either Biden or Warren, though I would prefer Warren. They are the only two candidates who have the experience to undo the damage Trump has and will wrought. Pete is super intelligent, but as the new Biden ad pointed out, inexperienced and low on accomplishments. Wilmer has the experience but his “my way or the highway” attitude is going to result in total gridlock.
Kent
What is ACTUALLY going wrong is that we are in the midst of the last gasp of the early boomer generation who to a person are just too damn selfish and egotistical to let the reigns of power transfer to the next generation. It isn’t just politics, it is every damn aspect of modern life.
The average age of the modern CEO is about 10 years older than it used to be in the 60s and 70s. https://www.morningbrew.com/daily/stories/2020/02/02/average-age-fortune-500-ceos-increased-recently
The average age of college presidents is increasing: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2017/06/20/college-presidents-diversifying-slowly-and-growing-older-study-finds
The average age of tenured professors is increasing: https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2018/5/23/yir-aging-faculty/
So here we are in politics with four of the top 6 candidates over 70 and three of them nearly 80. Take Biden, Sanders, and Bloomberg out of the race and it looks entirely different. Even Warren is on the older side, but she is obviously such an energizer bunny compared to Sanders and Biden that we can leave her in. But imagine how different Iowa and the campaign would have been so far had our top 5 candidates been:
Warren, Buttigieg, Klobuchar, Harris, and Booker with perhaps Beto and Castro knocking at the door. It would be an ENTIRELY different race.
Fuck the geriatric boomers (and Sanders, Biden, and Bloomberg are all actually too old to be Boomers). I have a sinking feeling that between Trump and the geriatric Dems, this is going to be last gasp of that generation and they are all bound and determined to take the country and the rest of us with them.
janesays
@Emerald: Sanders may get blown out, but he won’t lose 40 states. No candidate would – we’re too polarized right now for that to happen on either side. He would win every state where Hillary won by at least ten points: Hawaii, California, Massachusetts, Maryland, Vermont, New York, Illinois, Washington, Rhode Island, New Jersey, Connecticut, Delaware, and Oregon. That’s 13 states, none of which would ever vote for Trump, even if the Democratic nominee were a literal head of cabbage. After that is New Mexico (Hillary won it by 8.21%), which I have a real hard time seeing Trump flipping. Next is Virginia and Colorado, which are a lot more uncertain.
Anyway, my broader point is that comparisons to the blowouts of 1972 and 1984 are completely silly, because Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan both had something in those respective years that Donald Trump does not – tremendous widespread popularity in the American public at the time. They both hovered right around 60% job approval immediately before their landslide re-elections. Trump rarely has an aggregate approval rating above 45%, and it usually hovers closer to 40%. For that reason alone, even the worst possible Democratic nominee is assured to win at least 13-15 states.
Anya
For the first time since I’ve developed some political awareness (since I was 14 and it was easy because Bush was awful) I am undecided. The only thing I am sure about is that I don’t take Yang seriously, I’d be happy if Klobuchar or Warren wins and I’ll be scarred shitless if Sanders won, and I am hoping Joe would quit.
Another Scott
@Omnes Omnibus: I see you’ve been to A.N.S.W.E.R.-sponsored rallies too. Represent!!
:-/
Cheers,
Scott.
Cameron
@satby: I wish he had gotten the job as chair of the DNC. That’s not a knock on Perez; I just think Mayor Pete would have been a really outstanding fit.
robmassing
Exact f—ing same here
satby
@feebog: ironic that the new Biden ad came out barely two days after Buttigieg’s defense of Biden against the Hunter smear question in the debate. Politics is ice cold.
But an inexperienced guy who’s smart avails himself of experienced advisors, just as Obama did. Everyone agrees Pete is smart. And this time one of the informal advisors will be Obama, pretty much no matter who wins. Unless it’s Bernie, because he knows everything already.
satby
@Cameron: I agree. Incredible missed opportunity there.
Mo MacArbie
I’m wondering whether to go with Warren (presently below the delegates threshold here) or Biden (presently above). Mostly though, I’m wondering how to sort out all the downballot primary candidates. US Senate and House are pretty straightforward, but I’m not sure where to turn for the various state offices.
Sab
@Kent: You’re being a bit vitriolic, which is off-putting, but otherwise I agree with you.
I am a boomer, and we are too old to be running for what should be an 8 year stint in a really difficult job.
Have you seen any pictures of Obama from 2008? He looks so young. I certainly didn’t age that much in the same period in my life.
TC
I agree, people need to stop prognosticating and just support their candidate. The primary process is designed to lead toward concensus, give it a chance.
Also, I would note that this site can be as toxic as any, John
janesays
I intend to vote for Elizabeth Warren if she’s still a viable candidate when my state votes on March 10th. But I’m not sure she’ll still be a viable candidate by that point – if she can’t finish better than third place in the next three states, it’s going to be nearly impossible for her to become the nominee. I like Klobuchar, but the same applies to her. She certainly got good press after the debate Friday night, but whether or not that translates into votes we have yet to see. She either finishes in a strong third place or better (within ten points of first place) Tuesday, or she goes home. If my choices are effectively down to Buttigieg, Bloomberg, or Bernie by the time my state votes (and that’s certainly a possibility), I may just skip the primary and leave it up to everybody else to pick our nominee. I’ll crawl over broken glass to vote for whoever winds that person wins up being in November, no matter who it is (including Sanders), but Warren is honestly the only candidate that I feel especially enthusiastically about right now.
Josie
I supported Harris, and, since she dropped out, I am finding it difficult to make a decision. I’m hoping things look more clear after Nevada and South Carolina.
PJ
@Another Scott: If only “Free Mumia!” were the first thing on the Democratic platform.
low-tech cyclist
My take is: once we win 2020, we’ll still need to ‘win’ 2021, in the sense of passing legislation (a) to deal with climate change, (b) to restore and protect democracy, and (c) make people’s lives better in tangible ways, so we don’t get hammered in 2022 the way we did in 2010 and 1994.
Unless you think the candidate that can win 2021 is really a lot less likely to win 2020 than the others, I think you should vote for the candidate who can win 2021.
In addition to winning the White House and the Senate, we’ll need to get rid of the filibuster to do (a), (b), or (c) above. Warren’s the only candidate who, as President-elect (and as President if necessary), will lean on the Senate to kill the filibuster. If no one leans on the Senate, the filibuster stays.
In my mind, this ends the argument. And yes, there’s a good chance that no matter what President Warren does, the Senate refuses to kill the filibuster anyway. But there’s also a decent chance that she might get through to them. And a decent chance beats the hell out of no chance at all, which is what we have with any other remaining candidate.
satby
@janesays: one of those 3 Bs is a good Democrat. The other two are …not.
I’ll vote for the Democrat.
JWR
I was all in for Kamala Harris, who was the only one who truly gave me a presidential feeling, (and I hope Bloomberg drops out and fund raises to get her back in before Super Tuesday //), but now I’m a bit torn between the two women still in it. When I see Warren doing an interview, she handles herself really well, to the point that you know she would be a really good president, and then Klobuchar gives a great answer to something, and she’s young and energetic and I find myself thinking that she would be a really good president, too. I’m beginning to believe we have some really good candidates. Even Mayor Pete, who’s riding quite high right now.
satby
@low-tech cyclist: she’s my candidate, but she’s not the only candidate saying the filibuster has to go.
opiejeanne
nothing to see here. Stop with the generational bomb-throwing, please.
oldgold
Most folks here are not Bloomberg fans.
At this point, I do not have a firm opinion on Bloomberg.
i do know this, the ads Bloomberg is running are terrific. His latest: here.https://mobile.twitter.com/MikeBloomberg/status/1226580658807504897?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1226583703868116995&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.democraticunderground.com%2F1287492898
Omnes Omnibus
@oldgold: There have been other authoritarians throughout history who have been really effective with visual imagery. Mike has a lot of work to do to get on my consideration list.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@opiejeanne:
Come over here and sit by me.
opiejeanne
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Yeah, I’m sick of this shit.
janesays
@low-tech cyclist: Realistically, you get one or two big ticket items passed in Year One of a presidency. We may or may not have control of the U.S. Senate, but even if we do, it will be by a very thin margin – a one or two seat majority at best. If Warren or Sanders is elected president, we lose control of their senate seats for the first few months of their presidencies (because MA and VT both have Republican governors who get to pick the placeholders) until special elections are held, and that could be enough to keep McConnell as Majority Leader for at least the first 100 days of the new presidency, which means nothing gets done in that time legislatively. But even if we do have the majority right out of the gate, we still have to deal with the filibuster. Which should absolutely be abolished. But that’s probably going to be Chuck Schumer’s call, and I’m not overly confident about him being the process reformer we need in that regard. President Warren could pressure him, but ultimately, the Senate Majority Leader will get the last word on what happens with that. Neither Biden nor Sanders want the filibuster abolished. Not sure where Buttigieg, Klobuchar, or Bloomberg stand on it. Those are the only people who have even the slightest shot of becoming the nominee, so I’m not really concerned about how Yang, Steyer, Gabbard, Bennet, or Patrick feel about the filibuster. If Schumer doesn’t nuke it, then we only get one big thing passed in 2021, and it will have to be something that can be passed via budget reconciliation.
In any event, the most important thing is getting control of these levers of power. We can worry about what can and cannot be accomplished after that happens, but first we need to make that happen. I do have one big wish, should we take the White House and Senate – that Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer announce they will be retiring at the end of the 2021 term. We need to fill those seats in 2021, because 2022 will be an election year and nobody will have the stomach for the fight, and it is entirely possible that we don’t control the senate in 2023, even if we do control it in 2021. Can’t take any chances on this. Ginsburg should have retired in 2013 or 2014 when we could have filled the seat, so now we just bide our time and pray to FSM everyday that she can hang on until January 2021. If Trump gets re-elected, we’re almost certainly screwed, because I think the likelihood that the Notorious RBG will still be among the living in January 2025 is very low.
satby
@opiejeanne: especially since, as he admitted, Biden, Sanders, and Bloomberg are Silent Generation, not Boomers.
At least slag the right people for chrissakes.
Sab
Kamala Harris fans with spare money should donate to her. She probably has some debts to retire. Also, she is youngish and talented and needs a war chest for her next endeavor.
gene108
WaterGirl
@Kent:
I wish you would stop with that already. You paint with way too broad a brush, and it’s dismissive.
Sab
@satby: That’s why they seem SO old. My mother died old at 84. Bloomberg and Biden aren’t that much younger.
JanieM
@Kent:
Sanders, Biden, and Bloomberg aren’t “early boomers,” they aren’t boomers at all.
As to “to a person” — vitriolic smearing of an entire generation is, as @Sab points out, off-putting, like any kind of nasty generalization about an entire swath of the population.
As to average ages of people in various roles increasing, life spans have been increasing as well, even if you look at life expectancy at sixty-five instead of at birth (though the latter has increased far more dramatically because of reductions in infant and child mortality).
All that said, as an almost-seventy-year-old actual boomer, I think Sanders, Biden, and Bloomberg should have stayed home and let someone younger handle it
ETA: Watergirl got in while I was looking for life expectancy links. Like a CDC PDF that comes up if you google “US past life expectancy at age 60.
ETA2: I see others got in too….my brain is fried.
WaterGirl
@opiejeanne:
Completely agree.
opiejeanne
@satby: Yes.
I was getting this “evil Boomers” crap from my youngest 20 years ago, about how we had fucked up the world and no one could get a decent job. She was still in HS and living with us, so how did this nonsense get started?
Some online friends that I’ve known for about 20 years started slinging this BS about 15 years ago, one of them whining that her generation couldn’t get a promotion because mine wouldn’t retire. We were in our 50s and no way could we retire even though we desperately wanted to. When another one started in about how awful we were I pointed out that our generation had changed her diapers and fed, clothed, and housed her, and she laughed bitterly at me. I’ve never heard her mention having horrible parents so I found it confusing.
Curt in LA
I’ve “soft landed” on Senator Warren for the same reasons John Cole identifies. Alas, as a California voter, I’ve trained myself to view the process in the early stages as though I’m an interested Canadian watching from the outside. It seems like my first choice(s) are consistently knocked out by cow-and-granite-quarry-oriented states. But this year, God willing, my favorite candidate will still be in and my primary vote may matter.
Kent
I was born in 1964 so right at the boundary between Boomers and Gen-X. and my whole entire life has basically been lived in the shadow of the famous older boomers who came before. In music (can we ever stop hearing about Woodstock, I was 5 years old then and I’m 56 now). But it is every aspect of culture from baseball nostalgia to Trump’s MAGA nonsense is nostalgia for an America that never existed. Sanders famously romanticizes the Brooklyn Dodgers but during the 1950s their average attendance at Ebbets barely broke 13,000 and this was during the Jackie Robinson era before local TV coverage when CBS broadcast one national game of the week and the population of Brooklyn was at its peak of just under 3 million. The Charlotte Knights AAA minor league team draws almost as many fans as the famous Brooklyn Dodgers.
All this nostalgia for an America that never existed blocks us from moving forward on both the left and right. It’s like both Trump and Biden and Sanders are all living in same Norman Rockwell painting but Trump is the asshole bully and Biden is the good kid and Sanders is the one who left home for college and came back wearing tweed and annoying everyone with lectures about Niitzsche and Sartre.
opiejeanne
@WaterGirl: I may have posted a bit rashly, initially. Then again, I’m really sick of this.
Emerald
@Kent: Here, take this from Whoopi Goldberg: https://twitter.com/Bakari_Sellers/status/1226203905903775744?s=20
Stop putting down the people whose shoulders you’re standing on.
opiejeanne
@Kent: Then again, maybe I should have been harsher in my comment to you.
STOP IT! Your points are completely indefensible.
opiejeanne
@Emerald: Whoopi is wise in this lecture.
Baud
@Kent:
QFT.
Sab
@opiejeanne: Naw. I want to slag the Gen-Xers, who thought Reagan was normal amd acceptable.
Eljai
A while back I was impressed with Elizabeth Warren when she said “I am not afraid. For Democrats to win, you can’t be afraid either.” And I thought, “I am all in, Liz.” Then I found myself drifting in to fear & wondering if I should vote for Biden or who knows? I have decided that no one is going to parachute in and save us. It takes all of us in partnership and she who persisted gets it. So I am voting for Warren in my state’s primary on March 3rd. Also, Trump is not invincible. We can beat this m-effer and all his enabling toadies, regardless. So let’s do it!
Baud
@opiejeanne:
That comment wasn’t wrong. Except perhaps if he limited fake nostalgia to old people. Young Bernie supporters suffer from it greatly too.
Sab
@Kent: You sound just like my baby sister, who is your age. I worked on the McGovern campaign in high school. She’s a Republican.
zhena gogolia
@Emerald:
THAT IS TERRIFIC
Mnemosyne
@feebog:
Yeah, I’m also torn between Biden and Warren on Super Tuesday. Mr. Mnemo is all in for Warren and has been since he saw her in that documentary about bankruptcy that she did before she was a senator. I’m waiting to see how South Carolina goes before I make a decision.
JanieM
@Kent:
And my whole life (born in 1950) has been lived in the shadow of the generations that fought and lived through WWI, the Depression, and WWII.
Every generation both stands on the shoulders of, and in the shadow of, the people who came before.
So boo-hoo. Get over it.
For the record, I’m a boomer, and I’m not nostalgic about much of anything. And I know a lot of other people who are like me in that regard.
satby
@Emerald: YES!
Sab
@Mnemosyne: Ageist here. Biden is really old to be applying for an 8 year job position.
Kent
I’m happy to hear any alternative theories about the 2020 Democratic Primary that doesn’t involve 3 geriatric white guys approaching 80 that are sucking all the money and oxygen out of the room.
There has been a lot of hand wringing on this blog about why Harris, Booker, Castro, Warren, and Klobuchar haven’t been able to catch any breaks. But we can’t talk about the three elephants in the room?
My parents are the age that Sanders, Biden, or Bloomberg will be at the end of their first term. They are as healthy and fit as can be but they are starting to get lost in airports and can’t figure out the difference between Bluetooth and WiFi and are getting increasingly susceptible to online fraudsters. And pretty soon I’m going to have to start wondering about taking their car keys away.
Elizabelle
I canvassed yesterday for Elizabeth Warren in Virginia. It was marvelous — more people answering the doors than usual on an early Saturday afternoon, and just about everyone was wonderful. Found EW and Bernie supporters, primarily. Met one retired teacher who had Pete at number 1 and EW in second place.
Leading answer was “I am going to vote for the Democrat.” (We vote on Super Tuesday, March 3. FYI, South Carolina votes on Leap Saturday this year: February 29.) I think a lot of voters are not ranking their candidates, as we do here, because a lot can happen in the intervening month and they are team Democrat. They are excited to vote.
The Bernie supporters were gracious and said they were going to vote for the Democrat, every single one.
I would really suggest going out and canvassing, both to support your candidate (or party) and to get your own spirits up.
I personally prefer knocking doors to phoning because the voter is more likely to give you two minutes, and you can observe them as they respond. Suspect it reassures them to find the campaigns out knocking doors, too.
Have not heard ANY of the shit here at the doors.
Had planned to be out again today — it’s sunny and in the 50s — but laryngitis struck overnight.
Jinchi
I just dropped off two ballots for Warren (living in Ca has its perks this year). I think we’ll know who’s electable once we see who wins the nomination. I encourage everyone to vote for your favorite and we can all join up to support the nominee in November.
Ruckus
This is vital.
Voting for someone just because you think they might win is ludicrous.
Fixing the shit that the republican party have broken, and not just in the last 3 yrs, is going to be a job for a serious person who can fix broken stuff. Many such persons actually, but a leader who is someone with a record of working in political/governmental circles and getting stuff done.
Baud
@Elizabelle: Good for you.
JanieM
@Kent:
There has been endless talk about those three so-called elephants. That’s not the same as going on a rant that smears an entire generation with the faults you’re imputing to a handful of people.
Sab
@Kent: The America of my youth was assasinations of MLK and the Kennedys, lynchings in the South, riots in the North, every male I knew getting drafted to go to Vietnam.
I am not all that nostalgic about it. I tell my stepkids that the only people who pine for the sixties or seventies didn’t live through those decades.
Yes our music was better. It’s not my fault Gen-X had sucky music taste.
glory b
@opiejeanne: Wasn’t it in an earlier thread that Adam qouted someone who quoted Sun Tzu about how to defeat an enemy, sow discord between the old and the young?
anarchoRex
I detest the whole Boomer vs millennials thing, it’s dumb as hell. There’s too many counter-examples. The biggest candidates with da yooths this election have been Bernie, Gravel, and Warren, who are all old as balls.
And if anyone is thinking of supporting Bloomberg, please reconsider, it would be a disaster for the party:
A Republican Plutocrat Tries To Buy The Democratic Nomination
Kent
I worked in the Carter re-election campaign in High School but it was damn hard when he re-instituted draft registration and did the 1980 Olympic boycott in an attempt to look tough to the Soviets. There were actually two Olympic hopefuls attending my HS, one who made the team as an alternate in boxing, and one who made it in C1 canoeing. So Carter was not particularly popular with the young that year. Not many kids wanted to get drafted to go sit in tanks facing the Soviet Red Army in the Fulda Gap.
Sab
@glory b: Point taken.
Elizabelle
@Baud: It literally was good for me. (Except for losing the voice.)
Great exercise, met some really nice people, and got some positivity instead of hanging out here and seeing people get slagged, day after day after day.
Get off the keyboards and get out there, if you have the ability to do so. It will be good for you too, jackals.
No substitute for in person and helping to identify our voters.
The Thin Black Duke
@opiejeanne: Agreed. It isn’t just Bernie guys who are rigid and narrow-minded in their belief systems. Bottom line, getting things done in politics means working with people you don’t like and you if can’t get past that, nothing is going to get done.
notoriousJRT
@Sab: And still do.
Kent
I’m not trying to smear a whole generation and sorry if it came out that way. I’m mainly talking about the increasing problem of old white men in power refusing to step aside. It’s not just in politics, it’s in academia, business, religion. Pretty much everywhere in life where power accumulates except perhaps the NFL where performance is everything and nostalgia counts for nothing and the average age of coaches is actually dropping (but still white as hell).
anarchoRex
@Kent: how does your analysis account for the youngest candidates doing the worst with voters under 30?
debbie
@opiejeanne:
Seconded.
Sab
@Kent: Agree with you there. I think about that every time I see Mika on TV. Her father really screwed things up.
LeftCoastYankee
Ditto on perceived electability being bad criteria for support. In early 2008, poll after poll had John Edwards as more electable than Hilary or Obama.
Needless to say that would have been a disaster….
Also a long primary season is not a bad thing, as long as we come together at the end.
Kent
My problem with Bernie is that he has had 40 years to build his Democratic Socialist party and now that he is pushing 80, what does he have to show for it? Who does he have to step up and take the reins? There is AOC I suppose. After that….Nina Turner?
Omnes Omnibus
@Kent: Since you are already 56, you are a few months older than me but not more than that. All I can say is “Jesus Fucking Christ, drop it. It is stupid and and beyond pointless.” And, as long as I am at it, does every fucking thing you post have to be nine paragraphs long?
JanieM
@Kent:
:-)
Ruckus
@Kent:
That is not the gist of the discussion, everyone gets old, most get forgetful and have a harder time with anything new. What you are doing is conflating old and conservative and/or worthless. It is no different than saying you lived in Alaska so you must be conservative. Simply, it’s bullshit.
And yes it would be better if we weren’t faced with 2 or more candidates who weren’t in their late 70s or a senile 73 yr old in the WH or a decent candidate who is 70 but here we are. There are truly only 2 viable candidates, EW and Amy out of the 20 on my CA ballot. That doesn’t mean that they will be who you or I can vote for in November. There are a few who might be good next time around, including some that aren’t running this time.
debbie
@Kent:
Maybe they can’t step aside because all they see are unqualified shits lining up to demand their rightful due.
James E Powell
@debbie:
There is no evidence that this will ever happen.
A Ghost To Most
I have enough work on my hands trying to convince my sons not to vote for St. Bernard.
Y’all fight amongst yourselves
LeftCoastYankee
@Omnes Omnibus: I take Kent’s generational rant as a Gen X thing. We were told to wait our turn for leadership, and now we’re being past over for a younger generation. Some of it is cost savings — less experienced = cheaper (for a while). I think more is younger generations have learned teamwork and cooperation, while we took DIY a little too much to heart. Some of us have realized it is what it is and adapted/accepted it, some not yet.
Obviously this is a broad generalization, but from my experience has some legs.
Kay
Because they’re afraid we’re going to lose, John.
We can’t both tell voters “this is the most important election of your life!!!!” and also tell them to treat it like it’s a normal primary.
It’s higher stakes. They’re reasonably and justifiably anxious. For myself, frankly, I have a justifiable concern that the last institutional check on Trump could fail. That doesn’t make me a nervous nellie. It makes me someone who has now watched as institution after institution has failed. I’m a long time loyal Democrat but handing me the clunky, balky Democratic Party as the slim reed I must cling to is, you know, concerning.
I wish we had a “machine”, like Republicans are always claiming. We sure could use one for this.
anarchoRex
@A Ghost To Most: I’ve seen several people post about being aghast their kids are voting Bernie. I’m curious, are you trying to convince them for someone specific? Or just to not vote for him generally? What kind of arguments are you using?
SFAW
@debbie:
I’m really hoping the Liar-in-Chief and his entire family (except Barron and maybe Tiff) get their rightful due. Followed by Moscow Mitch, Shill Barr, Graham and the rest of the Repub enablers.
I know that’s not what you meant, but I decided to pass on the opportunity to bash the boomer-who-wishes-he-weren’t-so-that-his boomer-bashing-would-have-more-cred-or-something
ETA: And, right on cue, a not-gettin’-the-point response.
Ruckus
@Kent:
That’s a problem with power, not with old or whiteness, it’s a problem with power, especially power in a democracy. People don’t like to give up power, that’s why trump is so much worse than before, he won the last battle and he thinks that makes him more perfect than he wasn’t before. It’s not his skin color (although that didn’t help the situation) or his age, it’s him and all the massive baggage that he carts around. An ego bigger than all outdoors, his narcissism, his lack of a grasp of reality and all those assholes in congress who refuse their right to deny him, and us, the benefit of the truth.
Kent
by “unqualified shits lining up” you mean: Harris, Klobuchar, Booker, Castro, Gillibrand, Bennett, Beto, and Stacey Abrams?
SFAW
@Kent:
Which of those “demand(ed) their rightful due”? I guess I missed that part.
ETA: Or was an “unqualified shit,” for that matter.
debbie
@Kent:
Clearly not them. I’m thinking of unexperienced people who think they should win over experienced politicians based solely on their youth and passion. No one seems to value experience anymore. That is my takeaway from your original post.
TC
@JanieM: Seriously. The asshole literally blamed the entire “boomer generation who to a person are just too damn selfish and egotistical to let the reigns of power transfer to the next generation. It isn’t just politics, it is every damn aspect of modern life.”
How else is this supposed to be read? Notice he didn’t just leave the generational smear at politics either. It apparently extends to every other aspect of life. SMH
frosty
@Sab: Gen-X had sucky music taste? I’ll spot you Blondie, Tom Petty, and the Bangles to start. It took awhile to get past the 60s leftovers but the 80s were pretty good.
SFAW
@debbie:
Except in the business/world, of course.
Kidding. I’ve been hearing, for a number of years, that companies don’t seriously consider engineers older than (let’s say) 35, because “their knowledge is no longer current” or some such. Although that’s not universal, it’s a lot truer than should be the case.
SFAW
@TC:
Well, that’s a self-evident truth, of course. Or something.
Kent
@SFAW: Those were Debbie’s words not mine
SFAW
@TC:
On the other hand, if one is going to smear a generation — one to which he belongs, by the way — he might as well go whole hog. I eagerly anticipate him writing “I never generalize.”
SFAW
@Kent:
Yeah, because I’m illiterate boomer, I completely missed that part.
frosty
@SFAW: Any engineer that wants to stay employed is constantly learning new stuff. In my field, stormwater, the regs and goals have changes every 10 years at least.
That being said, getting a new job after 50 isn’t easy.
SFAW
@frosty:
Yeah, me too (re: learning new stuff). But until interviewers start wearing glasses which make me look 30 years younger …
ETA:
What really sucks is when you have to plan for “100-year events” occurring every 10 years, these days.
Kent
@SFAW: How about the NFL where performance is actually measurable by win-loss record? How many 78 year old NFL coaches are getting signed to 8-year contracts? That’s what Biden, Bloomberg, and Sanders are asking us to do. Surely the presidency is a more demanding job than coaching an NFL team.
The two oldest coaches in the NFL are Pete Carroll (age 68) and Bill Belichick (age 67). The old veteran coach of the super bowl winning chiefs, Andy Reid, is 62 and even he is an oldster in the NFL where the average age of head coaches is 49, the age of Barak Obama in the 3rd year of his presidency. And the average age of new head coaches is 47 or 48, the same age as Obama in his first year.
Of course the NFL has its own race problem but that’s another topic. It is interesting though, that for a high-stakes management job that requires innovation and quick thinking on your feet, really old is 10 years younger than either Sanders or Biden.
janesays
@satby: Are you talking in the primary, or the general?
In the general, I’m voting for the person who has the (D) next to their name on the ballot, regardless of whether or not they’re a good Democrat or how long they’ve decided to call themselves a Democrat. Because there will only be two realistic options: Donald Trump, or the person with the (D) next to their name. Of the 11 people currently running to be the person to have that (D) after their name on the November ballot in the presidential election, 11 out of 11 of them would be infinitely better than the alternative, which is a second term of Donald Trump. The person with the (D) after their name may or may not be a highly polarizing individual with a supremely shitty fanclub, but that person will indisputably be an upgrade over what we’ve currently got. And why is that? Because Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s recurring bouts of cancer say, “Hi!”
Bill Arnold
@Kent:
It came out that way. The HR variant of your attitude is forcing people out of work in their mid 50s, to make way for younger, less experienced, cheaper, more compliant/docile employees.
Leadership positions should be performance driven, agreed. Many corporations have a mandatory retirement age for executives, which is a good thing. And power clings to power, yes.
What would be really nice to see is more focus on D.J. Trump’s cognitive decline.
Kent
No, the HR equivalent would be not picking three 79 year old white guys to be your 3 finalists for that CEO or College President position for which you intend to sign them to an 8-year contract (I think they will all be 79 on inauguration day or very close to it)
SFAW
@Kent:
Shorter you: Look! Over THERE! No, OVER THERE!!!!!
Mo MacArbie
So if you are a “Boomer” that is actually older than a Boomer, does that make you a Boomer Sooner?
Bill Arnold
@Kent:
That’s a much better statement. No generational insults needed.
(Mind you, i’m a still-competent SW engineer in my late 50s looking for work ATM, and it is not fun. My brain has 10+ good years left; still clocks well e.g. reaction time in lowest pentile of 18-25 YOs.)
anarchoRex
@Kent: shouldn’t it be millennials fault that one of those silent generation candidates is leading the field?
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
@frosty: Not to mention REM, U2, Nirvana, Pearl Jam… and that’s just in rock bands.
Other genres of music were starting to hit big too. But it was the beginning of the end of the monoculture, so the older stuff gets more respect.
janesays
@Kent: The real power in the NFL is still with the 32 owners, who are overwhelmingly made up of old, white men.
janesays
@anarchoRex: Gravel? As in Mike Gravel? The nearly 90 year old former senator from Alaska who also ran way back in 2008? You’re kidding, right?
I doubt that even 0.01% of the American population was even aware that he was a candidate this cycle. There was never any groundswell movement among the yutes (or any other age group) behind Mike Gravel at any point in the four brief months in which he was a candidate. Because almost nobody knew who he was or that he was even running. John Delaney, Seth Moulton, and Michael Bennet all have more name recognition than that guy. And they all have pretty close to zero name recognition.
Kent
@janesays: Well, yes, but if they cared about actual job performance, Jerry Jones would have been fired decades ago. And even he is younger than Biden and Sanders. I’m only using the NFL coaches as an example because it is one of the few high level executive leadership type jobs in the country for which job performance has actual measurable metrics. Jimmy Johnson the old coach of the Super Bowl cowboys just got elected to the NFL hall of fame. He last coached 21 years ago in 1999 on a loosing campaign with the Dolphins. No one is suggesting we should dust off old Jimmy Johnson to bring back some 1980s era coaching ideas for the next NFL opening. He is 76, two years younger than Biden, Sanders, and Bloomberg.
Just saying….
janesays
@Kent:
From 1948-1957 – their final ten years in NYC – the Brooklyn Dodgers average attendance was 15,648 per game. But keep in mind, there were literally half as many Americans in 1955 (165 million) as there are today. While an average of 15,648 may seem pathetically low, they were #1 or #2 in attendance in the National League in seven of those ten years. Two of the years they finished 4th, and their worst attendance year in that span was 1957 (5th in the league) – when it was becoming clear that owner Walter O’Malley was getting ready to pack up his team and head west.
https://www.baseball-reference.com/teams/LAD/attend.shtml
The Charlotte Knights typically average just under 9,000 per game.
https://www.charlotteobserver.com/sports/article234435462.html
It’s an apples and oranges comparison when you consider you’re talking about two completely different time periods with vastly different national populations. The Brooklyn Dodgers were about as popular as any other baseball team in the country in the 1950s, but for whatever reason, baseball in the 1950s as a whole doesn’t seem like it was extremely popular, at least if we’re using average attendance at MLB games at the time as the measuring stick. Throughout the 1950s, the average attendance at ANY Major League baseball game was just under 12,000. Up until the end of WWII, average attendance at all MLB games in any given year was almost always below 8,000, and it never exceeded 10,000 in any year until 1946.
Kent
@anarchoRex: Or the boomers fault that college, housing, childcare, and heath care has gotten so ridiculously expensive in the past several decades that Sanders looks good.
janesays
@Kent: This.
Kent
@janesays: Brooklyn alone had 2.7 million people in the 1950s and sports were not on TV. It was supposed to have been Americas Game. There was barely anything else going on. No sports on TV, NBA didn’t hardly exist. Every old New Yorker like Sanders can wax endlessly about the Brooklyn Dodgers and Ebbets field but barely anyone actually went to the games which is why they actually moved. It is like the Woodstock or Haight Asbury phenomena where 10 million boomers remember doing it but only 5% actually did.
The past is never quite like we remember, and some of this boomer and silent generation nostalgia stuff is remembering an America that never actually existed. Trump with his MAGA nonsense is the worst of it by far. But Biden does it too with the “No Malarky” back to the working class Scranton steelworker stuff “when a guy could honest dollar for an honest day’s labor”
debbie
@frosty:
Even though the music was during the 1980s, that music was made by boomers (at least Stipe and Petty).
frosty
@debbie: I don’t think the age of the artist governs. The Beatles and the British Invasion were Silents. What matters to me was the music that was playing when people were growing up.
Heck, Debbie Harry’s older than I am but Blondie wasn’t a Boomer band.
SFAW
@Kent:
So an average 50 percent occupancy at Ebbets sucks/sucked, I guess. Good to know.
Omnes Omnibus
@debbie: That’s because every time that this generational bullshit comes up people on every side of the discussion get stupid.
I, for one, think that Kent needs to keep his resentments at how poorly his older siblings treated him from affecting his opinion of everyone a few years older than him.
Omnes Omnibus
@frosty: Who was going to CBGB in 1977? Very few members of Gen X that’s who.
debbie
@Omnes Omnibus:
I moved to NYC a little after that. I was looking forward to going to CBGB until I read an article in the Village Voice about slam dancing, complete with photos of bleeding, happy people. That was enough for me to just listen to the music at a safe distance.
janesays
@Kent: Throughout the 1950s, the New York Yankees had the highest attendance in baseball (as they have throughout most of their entire history), and their average attendance that decade was just a little over 20,000. There was a six year span that decade (1953-58) where they never cracked 20,000 average attendance in any of those seasons. In those six years, they appeared five times in the World Series and won three of them. But they still couldn’t consistently get 20,000 people to come out to the House That Ruth Built in that time period.
What’s my point? Throwing out average attendance of 13,000 as a metric for the Brooklyn Dodgers popularity at the time (an inaccurate metric, as their attendance actually averaged closer to 16,000) is meaningless without putting it in a broader context. They were competing with two other teams in the same market at the time, and one of those teams happened to be the most successful franchise in baseball history. And that team – the New York Yankees – only drew a little more than 20,000 per game on average in the 1950s. The NY Giants averaged just under 13,000 per game on average during their final ten years in NYC, which placed them a distant third behind both the Yankees and Dodgers among NYC-based MLB teams in the 1950s.
An average draw of 15,600 per game for an MLB team in the 1950s only seems pathetic if you ignore the fact that most MLB teams had even worse average attendances than that per game at the time.
The Dodgers didn’t leave NY so much because of poor attendance, but rather because they were playing in an antiquated stadium and Robert Moses was blocking O’Malley from building a new stadium in Brooklyn.
In fairness, the past of Brooklyn in the 1950s isn’t like either one of us remembers it, either, since neither one of us was even alive in the 1950s.
Omnes Omnibus
@debbie: I am within a few months of Kent’s age and I turned 13 that summer. People my age and younger were not the mainstays of the scene in those days.
debbie
@Omnes Omnibus:
My youngest brother is around your age and he says the same crap as Kent. We’ve had arguments about which generation is responsible for screwing up the country. He throws “Follow your bliss” at me, I slap back with “Greed is good.” Since he voted for Trump, I feel I have won the argument.
SFAW
@janesays:
So you’re saying Moses was a boomer? Keeping Gen-Xer Walter O’Malley from getting ahead in the world? More seriously: I had no idea that was the cause, thanks for the education. Moses was somewhat of a visionary, I guess, but he was certainly a bit of a dick. I’ll have to read Caro’s book someday.
ETA: Speaking of dickishness: Junior’s tweets show he’s just as much of a dick as his father, but without any of the (meager) accomplishments to his name. He needs to insult the wrong person, maybe gain some humility. [Yeah, right.]
janesays
@SFAW: Moses was pushing O’Malley to build at the Flushing Meadows site that eventually became home to the New York Mets with the opening of Shea Stadium in 1964.
burnspbesq
Try to imagine Bernie’s Cabinet, IRS Commissioner, SEC and EPA chairs, etc.
if that doesn’t scare the bejeebers out of you, I don’t know what to tell you.
janesays
@burnspbesq: It definitely worries me, but thinking of a second Trump term makes me borderline suicidal.
burnspbesq
@janesays:
i hear you.
Kent
@janesays: My point is not to quibble about baseball attendance figures from the 1950s. My point is that there is endless nostalgia for an America that never was. Trump with his MAGA bullshit has sucked in a whole bunch of my rural farm relatives in PA, MI, and IN who have a gauzy vision of some Norman Rockwell white rural America that never was. Biden plays the same game with the old Scranton white working class lunch bucket shtick. Bernie does a whole different other shtick which is perhaps why he is so popular with the young. I find him problematic for other reasons.
SFAW
@janesays:
I think I’ve figured it out:
Kent: Bernie-the-not-quite-Boomer-but-he’s-old-so-I’ll-call-him-a-Boomer’s gauzy memories are bullshit because no one went to Dodgers games
janesays: Your misrepresentation of attendance figures is a bullshit technique, and leads to your faulty premise/conclusion/whatever
Kent: It doesn’t matter whether my figures or conclusion(s) were correct, my point is valid, because Boomers suck.
Feel free to tweak this as necessary
SFAW
@burnspbesq:
Jane as IRS commish and SEC chair, can’t think of a good EPA head. I don’t see a problem.
JanieM
@Kent:
Second time (at least) in this thread that you’ve denied doing what we all saw you do. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Or something sorta like that.
I think maybe it’s time for dessert.