It would be awesome if the election turned into essentially Obama v Trump; with Trump wasting tons of time attacking the still-overwhelmingly-popular Obama instead of the actual Dem candidate all summer
Democratic Presidential Primary |February OT| It Can't be Worse than Iowa, Right? (Discussion Guidelines in OP)
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It would be awesome if the election turned into essentially Obama v Trump; with Trump wasting tons of time attacking the still-overwhelmingly-popular Obama instead of the actual Dem candidate all summer
Barack "The Islamic Shock" Hussein O'Blacka would come in with this blazing.
Turnout for the actual caucus might be down as well though since a lot of people early voted.
Personally I'd much rather fill out a ballot with my choices marked down than bother to go out and caucus.
I don't trust Bernie to pick someone that works, but I'm also not overly concerned with VP. I'm way more concerned about political appointees. Like, please pick someone normal for the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, the OMB Director, the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs, and the Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs... to say nothing of something like Attorney General.
Please, let the party help you out by identifying qualified candidates, Bernie.
Please, let the party help you out by identifying qualified candidates, Bernie.
I don't like Joe Rogan but this would actually be kinda sick.
Vladimir Lenin's corpse for secretary of Labour.
Gorbachev for SoS.
Can we get killer mike for white house press secretary?
Those briefings gonna be lit.
I'm not. But I'm not terrified. Still, nothing Bernie's done gives me confidence in this, but I admit, it's not a sexy debate topic or on any candidate's website. Has Bernie talked about who a notional SecDef would be?
That said, while important, I care less about Cabinet-level positions.
Rather, I care about people doing the actual work, because the federal government has been eviscerated due to shitty political appointees that have pushed out career folks.
And I simply don't believe (and I'm happy to be proved wrong) that Bernie would take binders full of candidates from the Democratic Party for nominees to fill low-level but still important political positions, like... I don't know, the Special Counsel at the Office of Special Counsel, which prosecutes Hatch Act violations and helps service members with Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act violations.
FUCK!!! Bernie is gonna be in my neck of the woods tomorrow and I can't go because I have critical meetings at work. :'(
I don't see why not. It sounds like a big pain if he picked them personally. If they're not infringing on his core goals, why not appease some of the moderates? One of the big things I hope comes out of a Democratic win is that government can be boring again. Paying attention to the constant scandals coming out of this administration has been exhausting.
I fully admit that, while this is my personal cause célèbre, it's not important to a ton of folks. But, this is something I have a personal stake in. I also sincerely hope you're correct: I want the orderly, day-to-day administration of government to be boring and relatively scandal-free again.
(That said, I do want to hear names for SecDef and SecState.)
I'm afraid of his cabinet. His hiring has been... questionable at times.
I'm just sitting here, serenely, imaging Warren as AG. I don't know if that's really on the table, but just imagine it.
You know, I wouldn't hate it. I'm not as non-interventionist as Khanna, but I'm firm supporter in returning the decision on the use of armed force to Congress. And hey, no need to mitigate conflicts of interests due to ties to defense contractors.
VP isn't unimportant. I maintain that if Hillary picked Warren as her VP, she'd be president today.
Giving Congress more power over military authorization would be a really good development yeah. I'm guessing Trump has permanently shattered the idea the executive should have broad unilateral powers over this.
I agree it's important, but it's mostly a "pure" political position.
I'm over here in the corner actually wanting to have a safe, boring pick for General Counsel of the Department of Education or Principal Deputy Administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration, to say nothing of Director of National Intelligence or DCIA.
Matt Christman and Virgil Texas for the White House Press Secretary. Felix Biederman for National Secuity Advisor. Will Menaker as Ambassador to Ireland.
That's something Bernie's talked about pretty recently as well.
Would 100% support Bernie shattering that giant fucking Reese's cup on the sidewalk outside the FCC and telling Pai to hit the road.
I am generally opposed to the government seizure of private property save for those compensated under the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment, but I'd make a special exception for Bernie to do this personally.
I am generally opposed to the government seizure of private property save for those compensated under the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment, but I'd make a special exception for Bernie to do this personally.
Wow, what a 180 from what people had been suggesting for months
That recent article about this (forget where it was) suggested that the Obama Insiders who suggested otherwise were "speaking out of turn" or some such shit
Sanders is an independent but he has been a mayor, a congressman and a senator for decades. The odds that he maintains Trump's hollowing out of government are pretty low.
However, "normal" people for positions like the Federal Reserve, Treasury etc is something that he shouldn't do and hopefully wouldn't.
With regard to the question about superdelegates in the debate last night, I don't understand how anyone (Elizabeth Warren) could be for abolishing the Electoral College, since it doesn't reflect the will of the people, but is super cool with super delegates deciding the DNC presidential nominee instead of the will of the people...
Does anyone have a logical ideological answer to this quandary that isn't the obvious: "fuck Bernie, I want to be the nominee!"?
Does anyone have a logical ideological answer to this quandary that isn't the obvious: "fuck Bernie, I want to be the nominee!"?
It really is sad at this point. The people who keep "disagreeing" (with no medical basis whatsoever) that Bernie has released his full records are no different from anti-vaxxers or climate deniers, who are always just "asking questions" or being "skeptical" while refusing to learn anything. Their only point is to spin a narrative that he is not being transparent and hiding his "true" health status.
Elizabeth Warren Is First Democratic Hopeful To Release Medical Records
The Massachusetts senator and presidential candidate is in “excellent health,” Warren’s physician attested.www.huffpost.com
That's literally 5 basic tests: CBC, BMP, LFT, lipid Panel, thyroid function. You get this in your yearly checkup. It just looks like it's a lot because it's multiple pages. A 2nd year medical student can go through that data in 2 minutes.
The 3 letters from the physicians would have taken MUCH MORE data into account to analyze Bernie's cardiovascular function post-MI and stenting; including analysis of EKG's, echocardiograms, angiograms among many other tests (the 5 above would have likely been drawn multiple times on Bernie during his hospital stay). Those letters are much more comprehensive in answering the pertinent question regarding his health; just because they don't release the granular numbers of his lab results does not mean that Warren's here are more useful.
The ignorance behind this is astounding; Warren actually thinks that she has released more with that document is now attacking Bernie on it, but any clinician knows that this is just pure health illiteracy at play. What are people actually expecting here, to go through each lab value themselves in Bernie's case?
For the record, this is more than enough data to gauge Warren's general health; I would never demand her lifelong medical records.
You definitely can't say because you're speaking out of your league.
This one statement in Bernie's letter "underwent a successful graded exercise treadmill examination...was able to exercise to a level that is approximately 50% higher than other men his age with a similar diagnosis...his level of fitness would be suggestive of favorable outcomes, from a cardiovascular perspective, going forward" provides more relevant information towards medical assessment than the 4 pages of labs that Warren released.
When they brought this up in the debate last night I couldn't help but roll my eyes when Pete or Amy said "Oh, I didn't just release my records, unlike Bernie I also had a PHYSICAL!". Oh wow, a physical exam, good for you! Guess what, Bernie also had a physical. He had a coronary angiogram. He's had follow up echocardiograms and stress testing. Heart exams don't get more "physical" than that.
The stupidest thing is you don't even need to see his echo or stress test results, or any damn part of his medical record to know Bernie is fit for the job, you only have to look at him. You don't run an intense presidential campaign like his if your heart is not up for it. You physically cannot do it. I'm not joking. This is literally the most important part of examining a patient. Just the overall eyeball assessment. Not putting a stethoscope on somebody.
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LGBTQ Latinos here. We voted for Bernie today as soon as our mail ballots got in. Go Bernie! Everyone vote!
this fear that he's gonna go trumpian with those nominees and just put up his friends is overblown fearmongering nonsense.
It's becoming pretty clear that Sanders is here to stay and is a clear frontrunner. Even talking heads on CNN and MSNBC have been saying that he's the favorite for the nomination. Freaking Chris Matthews has been saying that as well.
Looks like people are coming around to the idea of a Sanders presidency.
Yes but have you seen Warren's BMP spread out over 2 pages? It seems like it's more information. Bernie should release the results of his sebaceous cyst removal and images from his previous colonoscopies to prove the skeptics wrong.
The short answer is "no."
The slightly longer answer is handwringing concern-trolling about """electability""" when Sanders beats Trump in hypotheticals on average by more than every other candidate than Joe (who won't lead in that metric for much longer). But still ultimately yeah it's "I want to win by subverting the popular vote."
Florida is a bit of a hell hole electorally. The bright side is that it doesn't really reflect anything about other parts of the country.
Jesus Christ why does the latest 538 FL poll have Bloomberg in 1st, Biden in 2nd, and Sanders in 3rd? His "buy all the media" approach can't be working can it...
warren really did murder this man, had him doing his own version of the delaney except delaney was low key impressed while getting skewered bloomfucker could only be stupefied
Right. Bernie wants an extremely functional central government. That's, like, fundamentally critical to his entire thing.
It's still something I want to hear. It's also something I want to hear from all candidates -- just focusing on Bernie because he's the most likely nominee.
Bernie does not inspire the most confidence with hiring decisions, and his brand is doing his own thing. That's his appeal. I also believe that he means to do the right thing (to be fair, I also think Amy thinks she's doing the right thing, etc.), but I'm looking for the nominee to chart a course on a return to normalcy.
And no, I don't mean not pushing for what's right, but we don't need a revolution everywhere. For much of government (which is large and does a lot of important, but boring, work), we simply need a return to competence and efficiency.
Florida is full of boomers and they hate Bernie. The "socialist" tag is a real spooker.
Bernie backed abolishing the electoral college and also in 2016 literally advocated the super delegates could/should vote for him rather than Clinton who would have the majority. So ask him?
That is not what Warren and others were advocating either. They were speaking of a scenario where someone gets a plurality and not a majority (even less "will of the people" than sanders scenario above). Then a coalition could be formed according to the rules (that Sanders agreed to and helped put in place) and that coalition happens before super delegates would even vote.
Regardless I do think the person with most votes should in most cases get to be the nominee but possibly with concessions depending on what vote count we're talking here. It's hard to say someone with day 22% is more will of the voters than someone with 21% for example.
But in any case everyone is just holding their cards and leverage same as Bernie did in 2016. He got concessions in the platform because of it. If they all pledge now then there can't be concessions later and we might be facing a scenario like I outlined above with like 22% or something. Concessions are fine because they help heal the party and unite them rather than having the whole thing end with "well fuck the literal majority of voters that didn't vote for this person."
Old people don't like Sanders, Cubans don't like Socialism, FL is full of both old people and Cubans.
they base it on the fact he had some people with like, questionable twitter timelines working for him at some point. because campaign staffing or endorsements are on the same level as cabinet positions requiring congressional approval, apparently.
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