2020 Democratic Candidates Tracker

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Not a terribly long CV.

Longer than Trump's was, and Obama didn't have that long of one either.

He was also the front runner to partner Hillary until the slip up with the Hatch Act.
 
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Another Texan I hear good things about is Beto O'Rourke.

Plus he has an excellent name.

What credentials he has are decent enough (from a liberal/progressive point of view) but he's too junior. He has a major hurdle to traverse next year. If he wins the Senate seat, we can start talking about him but as a Congressman (House of Representatives) you need Paul Ryan's kind of tenure to be a major force and he just doesn't have that.
 
I've seen people mention the Rock, but to what extent is this a serious suggestion?

Of course, I realize we are now in the universe where a total joke candidate has already been elected president, and if Donald Trump is not beyond the pale it is quite difficult to know who is, but still. Is there any serious consideration that The Rock's celebrity status is what is needed to dislodge The Comb-over Con-artist?
 
I've seen people mention the Rock, but to what extent is this a serious suggestion?

Of course, I realize we are now in the universe where a total joke candidate has already been elected president, and if Donald Trump is not beyond the pale it is quite difficult to know who is, but still. Is there any serious consideration that The Rock's celebrity status is what is needed to dislodge The Comb-over Con-artist?

He has publicly expressed interest. Because he is wealthy and famous I think we cannot rule him out yet, but obviously he has to be considered a long-shot at this point.
 
Just come up with someone without the baggage of a Clinton. I want you guys to get a better candidate. Not Warren for gawds sake, not Harris, not anybody I can think of off the top of my head.

Get a new face. I don't want to see anyone who made a headline in the last election because they all have the smell of Hillary on them. They are tainted and it won't work.

The Rock? Don't be stupid. Chelsea? If you want to lose.

If you guys had an even marginally better candidate I'd have voted Dem. Not that it would have mattered here in California. This time you're going to need someone better than "marginally".

And you/the left along with CNN and the gang kinda need to stfu a little and stop being whiny bitches. It's annoying. Change your delivery and pick your battles. My attitude in this post directly reflects my annoyance with the left in general right now. It's really bad. Just my opinion.
 
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Just come up with someone without the baggage of a Clinton. I want you guys to get a better candidate. Not Warren for gawds sake, not Harris, not anybody I can think of off the top of my head.

Get a new face. I don't want to see anyone who made a headline in the last election because they all have the smell of Hillary on them. They are tainted and it won't work.

The Rock? Don't be stupid. Chelsea? If you want to lose.

If you guys had an even marginally better candidate I'd have voted Dem. Not that it would have mattered here in California. This time you're going to need someone better than "marginally".

And you/the left along with CNN and the gang kinda need to stfu a little and stop being whiny bitches. It's annoying. Change your delivery and pick your battles. My attitude in this post directly reflects my annoyance with the left in general right now. It's really bad. Just my opinion.

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Well, I'm going to take a page from the right wing trolls on Twitter and various newsfeeds....

Good! It's working.
 
Just come up with someone without the baggage of a Clinton. I want you guys to get a better candidate. Not Warren for gawds sake, not Harris, not anybody I can think of off the top of my head.

Martin O'Malley. He's the guy I would have voted D for. Of course, you know what that means; he's the snowball trying to mountain bike through hell. It's like when the libs tell you they would have voted for what's his name--the former governor of Utah if he had been the nominee. I could look it up, but it's not the point. These guys are always going to be what's his name or alternately, what's her name.

And if there's one thing I can guarantee you, the Democrats will not nominate a moderate the next time around. I don't care if the economy is roaring and the Dow at 35,000, they are going to nominate somebody from the left flank. Bernie or Elizabeth; realistically I cannot imagine anyone else. Even if the economy is roaring (a distinct possibility with nothing coming out of Washington these days) I cannot imagine the base holding their nose for another establishment candidate.
 
Martin O'Malley. He's the guy I would have voted D for. Of course, you know what that means; he's the snowball trying to mountain bike through hell. It's like when the libs tell you they would have voted for what's his name--the former governor of Utah if he had been the nominee. I could look it up, but it's not the point. These guys are always going to be what's his name or alternately, what's her name.

And if there's one thing I can guarantee you, the Democrats will not nominate a moderate the next time around. I don't care if the economy is roaring and the Dow at 35,000, they are going to nominate somebody from the left flank. Bernie or Elizabeth; realistically I cannot imagine anyone else. Even if the economy is roaring (a distinct possibility with nothing coming out of Washington these days) I cannot imagine the base holding their nose for another establishment candidate.

Yeah, 71 year old Elizabeth Warren, after just losing an election with another pushy broad running? Or 79 year old New York Socialist Jewboy.

As I said, these threads are helpful in seeing Republican wet dreams. Neither will be in consideration for 2020.
 
And you/the left along with CNN and the gang kinda need to stfu a little and stop being whiny bitches. It's annoying. Change your delivery and pick your battles. My attitude in this post directly reflects my annoyance with the left in general right now. It's really bad. Just my opinion.

Well, I'm going to take a page from the right wing trolls on Twitter and various newsfeeds....

Good! It's working.

I was going to say. Has mgidm86 been under a rock for the last 9 years of conservative media? Given the last election, that’s what it takes to win.
 
Yeah, 71 year old Elizabeth Warren, after just losing an election with another pushy broad running? Or 79 year old New York Socialist Jewboy.

As I said, these threads are helpful in seeing Republican wet dreams. Neither will be in consideration for 2020.

No, I would definitely much rather have a moderate Democrat win the nomination than a radical like Warren or Sanders. I don't expect Trump to be an exceptionally strong candidate the next time around and would like to hedge my bets.

But that's exactly why the left wing will push for a fire-breather.
 
No, I would definitely much rather have a moderate Democrat win the nomination than a radical like Warren or Sanders. I don't expect Trump to be an exceptionally strong candidate the next time around and would like to hedge my bets.

But that's exactly why the left wing will push for a fire-breather.

Trump is such damaged goods, I don't think the Dems need to play to their base here. A moderate Dem with a resume just long enough to be qualified but not long enough to have baggage could be the perfect choice.
 
Trump is such damaged goods, I don't think the Dems need to play to their base here. A moderate Dem with a resume just long enough to be qualified but not long enough to have baggage could be the perfect choice.

You've got that backwards. If Trump is damaged goods, then the Democrats don't need to go with a moderate; they can afford to play to the base.
 
Another Texan I hear good things about is Beto O'Rourke.

Plus he has an excellent name.

Good Texas name. Seems like a god guy, someone you may actually want to be friends with. But those, dropped criminal charges from the 90s are just waiting to be fully fleshed out. And El Paso is barely Texas, if you ask folks in Houston and DFW. I doubt he'd even carry the state.
 
You've got that backwards. If Trump is damaged goods, then the Democrats don't need to go with a moderate; they can afford to play to the base.

The Democrat's base is moderate. That's why registered Democrats overwhelming voted for Clinton in 2016 Primaries.
 
He will be so long as he wants to be. No matter what comes out of investigations or what he does as President, the current GOP are too spineless to impeach or do anything else to get him out of office and will block any attempts by the Democratic Party and/or the forces of law and order to do likewise.

There is, as Trump suggested about his opponent, the 2nd Amendment option. But then that makes Pence the incumbent, something the Dems don't want to face.
 
No, it's by picking candidates people don't find compelling. When they do, people vote for them. When people find you compelling, you get the Teflon.


I'd think one candidate receiving 3 million more votes than the other would be a reasonable indicator of who the voting public found more compelling.
 
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The idea of going "moderate" is exactly how Democrats have been losing for years.

Exactly how many years have they been losing? I seem to remember that there was a Democratic President not that long ago. Osama or something.
 
The idea of going "moderate" is exactly how Democrats have been losing for years.
No, it's by picking candidates people don't find compelling.
There's so much overlap that it's not clear to me that there's a difference at all. Moderate is inherently uncompelling. I suppose I can imagine the possibility of a candidate who is neither compelling nor moderate, but it's rarely what we actually have available.

Exactly how many years have they been losing? I seem to remember that there was a Democratic President not that long ago. Osama or something.
During whose Presidency his party lost a thousand seats in Federal & state legislatures and governorships... and that slide didn't even begin with him.
 
I'd think one candidate receiving 3 million more votes than the other would be a reasonable indicator of who the voting public found more compelling.
Not at all. Her opponent was the most unpopular candidate ever and the margin was tiny even against that. She was the perfect symbol of what's been wrong with the Democrats' approach: put up an unpopular Republican Lite in the name of centrism to try to get votes from the other side, get nobody from the other side, get minimal support even from your own side either, lose, and then go on arguing about how & why you need to do even more of the same thing next time, all while every poll shows how wrong that is because a liberal candidate would have won handily.
 
Not at all. Her opponent was the most unpopular candidate ever and the margin was tiny even against that. She was the perfect symbol of what's been wrong with the Democrats' approach: put up an unpopular Republican Lite in the name of centrism to try to get votes from the other side, get nobody from the other side, get minimal support even from your own side either, lose, and then go on arguing about how & why you need to do even more of the same thing next time, all while every poll shows how wrong that is because a liberal candidate would have won handily.

Is it your opinion, then, that Sanders would've won against Trump? I'm not sure of that.
 
Is it your opinion, then, that Sanders would've won against Trump? I'm not sure of that.

I can't speak for Delvo, but IMO part of the Democrats' strategic error is that Clinton had the Democratic leadership so in line that the only ones to challenge her were Sanders (not a Party member) and Lincoln Chafee (defunct Ford model).
 
The idea of going "moderate" is exactly how Democrats have been losing for years.

In Opposite World, yes.

They won the White House the last three times they did so with moderates. Jimmy Carter saved the party from the populist left and was not seen as he is today, he was definitely a moderate. Bill Clinton made his name on cashnapping businesses from the rust (union) belt and giving them incentives to move. He was a corporatist Democrat. Barack Obama was a moderate liberal. Look at what he didn't do at Commerce, The Fed and Wall Street.

Each of those had different appeal, but in all three cases their playing to the middle worked out very well.
 
Not at all. Her opponent was the most unpopular candidate ever and the margin was tiny even against that.


And yet still more compelling then her opponent. This argument that 2 isn't really greater than 1, simply because they are so close in value, is beyond ridiculous. Don't play ignorant about how comparative adjectives work.
 
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During whose Presidency his party lost a thousand seats in Federal & state legislatures and governorships... and that slide didn't even begin with him.

This has far more to do with how Democrat voters have viewed the importance of those elections. Democrat turnout has always been low for them, not because of the candidates, but because they were not seen as important as the Presidential Elections, which get good turn out. Similar was true for the Republicans until they worked out that they could gain control Nationally by gaining control locally, and so they started targeting local elections and getting their vote turned out for them. The Democrats seem to be realising that they need to catch up fast there, and the turn out in Virginia and New Jersey along with close races in whet used to be deep red districts would indicate they are understanding that all elections are important, well almost, there are still a lot of Republican held seats that are likely to be unopposed next year.
 
The Democrat's base is moderate. That's why registered Democrats overwhelming voted for Clinton in 2016 Primaries.

Yes, the Democratic party overall tends to be moderate, but their base--the activists, the bloggers, the people doing the envelope-stuffing and dialing for dollars, are going to be more liberal than the party overall, for the simple reason that there are no passionate moderates. The same applies to the GOP, although of course there the base is more conservative than the party overall.
 
They won the White House the last three times they did so with moderates.
Carter is before my memories begin and possibly before the phenomenon I'm talking about began. Clinton's campaign did indeed include some moderate/conservative themes along with the mostly liberal ones, but he got 43% of the vote and was handed a "win" by Perot sapping away Bush's votes. Obama campaigned as a liberal, and can only be described as moderate based on how he governed, not how he campaigned, which made him a big disappointment to people who'd voted for him based on what he was supposed to do. Clinton II avoided issues & stances and campaigned on feelingism & platitudes, and couldn't manage better than rough parity against an inept rabid orange baboon. Polls asking about Sanders/Trump have consistently had Sanders doing around 10 points better than Clinton all along. Polls asking about the issues instead of candidates have been consistently showing that liberal stances are what the American people favor by wide margins, including smaller majorities even among Republican voters. And in both of the recent rounds of non-Presidential elections, the Democrats who lost, and lost biggest, were the ones who had campaigned the most by trying to look like Republicans, while those who won and won biggest were the ones who contrasted themselves against Republicans the most by clearly spelling out liberal stances on the issues; voters who had significant differences to choose among went with the farthest left option they had, and those who had little or no real difference to choose among didn't.

Or, a shorter observation of the same general thing: we all know which party has been gaining the most ground lately and which one has been losing the most lately. Now, which strategy has which side been using? The side that's been actually standing for what they stand for has been winning; the mealy-mouthed group-hug party has been losing.
 
I can't speak for Delvo, but IMO part of the Democrats' strategic error is that Clinton had the Democratic leadership so in line that the only ones to challenge her were Sanders (not a Party member) and Lincoln Chafee (defunct Ford model).

That falls in line with the old jab: I don't belong to an organized political party. I'm a Democrat.

Cats don't like to be herded. Attempting to organize democrats only weakens the party.
 
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