What are you looking for in the 2020 Democratic candidate: restore norms, or counterrevolution?

The least "Dem Tea Party" the better.

 

A politicians positions mean nothing if the don't have the means to achieve them. A compare and contrast are Carter and Johnson. I think everyone believes Carter is the better person but Johnson probably got more done domestically than any president since Roosevelt. Of course Carter didn't leave hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese.

 

100% norms for me. I don't think that med4all or free college is a hill worth dying on right now. The most immediate threat IMO is the disintegration of our system, politicization of courts, corruption in congress and general breakdown in institutions.

2020 could be an opportunity for Democrats to create a contrast of what grown up government looks like. I'm afraid that the revolutionaries are base panderers, and they don't actually know how to pass bills and get shit done. What they're going to do is create another 4 years of chaos and gridlock because they won't compromise on anything. By 2024 the voters will summarize that there's really no difference between the Trumpers and the Berniecrats. In the end it's all just yelling and gridlock with nothing getting done. Which pretty much lays the groundwork for the fascists to make a comeback in 2022/2024.

The next Dem president needs to be a fixer not a flamethrower. So much is broken right now ... relationship with allies, debt spiraling out of control, corruption, breakdown of oversight, every department being dismantled from within. I say put the pieces back to normal into something functional again. I definitely want someone progressive, but I also want someone who cares more about getting shit done than getting people worked up with slogans and finger pointing.

 

I'm for both. Elect a progressive who has bold ideas ... this election is a referendum on Trump, so a true lefty won't be penalized any more for his/her positions than the true righty Ronald Reagan was in 1980, when the election was a referendum on Jimmy Carter. But get a progressive who delivers with action as well as talk.

 

Whomever my wife tells me to vote for, I'm voting for. I had her canvass for two election cycles for Obama, and I made her canvass for Hillary even though we both despise the Clintons. So she gets to pick.

What does my wife want in a candidate? It falls under the same mystery as "what do you want for dinner" and "why God do you keep putting painful small items on the staircase are you trying to kill me" and other such lawyerings.

So ******** knows who I'm voting for.

 

Our new president needs to differentiate themselves from Obama in one important way. New president has to have a little vengeance in their heart and hold people accountable. We have a tradition in this country of pardoning and excusing criminality in the executive branch. Nixon getting a pardon. Reagan being idolized despite Iran Contra and death squads in Latin America. Clinton misogyny and sexual misconduct being ignored to the point where by 2012 he was looked at as a Dem hero speaking to standing ovation at 2012 convention. Bush's band of war criminals still all walk freely with no accountability. Nobody was held accountable after the rampant looting of the American taxpayer in 2008. Obama was naive. He thought that avoiding conflict would pay off in the end. This cycle needs to stop. A certain amount of conflict is necessary when the country comes under attack from something like Trump. The new president's DOJ needs to keep the pressure up. Investigations need to be pushed until every criminal is rounded up, even if it takes years. We need to make an example to future would be criminals and make an example to the American people that there is accountability in government.

Another major failure of Obama was a lack of salesmanship. Sure, he could sell himself on the campaign trail, but he couldn't sell his policies off the trail. They rolled out Obamacare with no PR push. They couldn't explain the law to the average voter. They allowed the GOP to define the law. The fact that he couldn't consistently sell the platform to voters led to catastrophic losses in congress, governorships and state assemblies. That can't happen again. We need a president who can be a more forceful advocate for the work that's being done.

Other than that, I think if you make a Venn diagram of Democratic normal and Democratic revolution, the overlap is bigger than some like to admit. It's not like we're talking about two separate circles. The trick is to find that overlap and appeal to a majority of Americans. The good news here is that polls show that a lot of mainstream Dem policies are pretty popular. This new accountability in government bill that the House put out there is a perfect example. You can go down the list of all the proposals, and almost all of them have overwhelming support. We already saw that restoring voting rights to x felons in Florida got some support from GOP voters. We just need a president who has good instincts to go after the low hanging fruit first in order to gradually gain the trust of the voters and to build some momentum. I'm afraid that the radicals are incapable of thinking this way. They're not as interested in where the Venn Diagram overlaps. They seem more interested in where it doesn't, so they keep demanding more and more purity tests. This sort of base only politics is basically just Trumpism in reverse, and I'm not interested.

 

Really you can't go back to the good old days because the GOP is so radicalized. They will not cooperate on anything.

 

That is the problem, the counter-narrative is not simple and not compelling at all.

Bold, simple and compelling is just populism in a different form.

For Example in Italy, one is the 5 star movement, the other is the Lega Nort.

Both offered simple bold compelling arguments (on the opposite side of the spectrum), both are bad, but they worked.

 

we are fvcked!

 

They disagree but both options are not mutually exclusive. A new D President can still work into restoring noms while working on ideas deemed Big but still urgent. Whatever one wants to call it, Climate Change policies/ GND or whathaveyou, it is a big plan that is also urgent and can't be delayed further.

 

Almost like we need to sideline/bench Republicans until we shore up our institutions.

 

Would be great to get rid of this gasbag called Matt Gaetz but I am not sure how they could proceed forward with such action. The Ethics committee would have to take up on this and I can't se them recommending his expulsion.

 

Gotcha. Hard to comment on specifics though w/out knowing them.

 

Probability = 0%

I would think even the most hardcore non-partisan would agree that only one party has rules right now.