January 14, 2020

If he gets the nomination, should Joe Biden pledge to serve a single term in his acceptance speech?

I believe the only person to have ever done this was Teddy Roosevelt when running for re-election in 1904 (his 1st elected term, since he became President when McKinley was shot). TR won re-election in a landslide.

My thought is that it could play really well if Biden did this, especially if nothing about it leaked out and it was a surprise during his convention acceptance speech. He could say that he was going to focus for 4 years on re-establishing American institutions and foreign alliances in the wake of Trump and not on political considerations of getting re-elected. It could help alleviate concerns about his age if he made clear that he was only going to serve for one 4 year term.

I realize that lame ducks often have less political leverage, so there's that, but in terms of getting elected, I think it would be a positive. The public would have a clear choice between 4 more years of Trump or a 4 year single term of Biden. If it was a surprise announcement at the convention, it would get massive coverage and give him a huge bounce.

November 14, 2019

Are they pre-empting impeachment hearing coverage to cover the Cali school shooting?

Or are the impeachment hearings on a break now? Obviously, a school shooting event is horrible, but those events are unfortunately, not infrequent, and they don't have many facts to give about the shooting at this time.

July 13, 2019

The 22nd Amendment sucks - A 3rd term of Obama shouldn't be prohibited

I understand the idea of not wanting a President to gain too much power through incumbency. I get why 4 terms of FDR led Congress to create the 2 term limit. Although, I think it worked out very well that FDR was around to cope with both the depression and WWII.

But, IMO, the 22nd Amendment should only prohibit someone from serving 3 CONSECUTIVE TERMS. If someone who is young enough takes a term off and then, having seen their work, the public decides they want them back, that shouldn't be banned. Winston Churchill was voted out of office after WWII, but then elected again later.

It's stupid to eliminate someone with that level of job experience, where the voters know exactly what they're getting. People think there was a precedent set by George Washington that two terms should be the norm because he chose not to run for a 3rd. But, Washington might not have done that on principle. He died two years after he left office; he likely didn't feel physically up to a third term.

If Barack Obama was a candidate in the primaries now, he'd probably be polling at 70%. He would obliterate Trump in a general election. And, it's not like being a 2 term former President necessarily makes you a strong candidate. George W. Bush was so unpopular that he didn't even attend the Republican convention in 2012.

April 17, 2019

Would you consider crossing over to vote for Bill Weld in the Republican primary?

This might seem like a weird thread topic, but I live in Massachusetts, which is an open primary state. In 2000, I crossed over and voted for John McCain over Dumbya in the Republican primary because I liked both Al Gore and Bill Bradley, but Bush was obviously horrendous. Lots of other people did this, which caused McCain to finish with like 74% of the vote in the Mass. primary. There was no question that I was going to vote for the Democratic nominee in November.

When the primary comes, if I feel equally good about Kamala/Pete/Klobuchar/Warren, etc., and if Bill Weld is polling decently going into the primary (he was a popular 2 term governor here), there's a chance that I may feel like my primary vote is more useful giving a black eye to Trump.

March 25, 2019

Michael Avenatti arrested for alleged extortion scheme

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/25/michael-avenatti-to-be-charged-with-wire-and-bank-fraud.html

This is breaking news, so the details will become more evident over time. But, doesn't the timing seem suspicious to coincide with Trump's narrative that he's the victim?

February 19, 2019

Bernie Sanders Announces that he is a Candidate for 2020 Democratic Presidential Nomination

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/19/us/politics/bernie-sanders-2020.html

I have fewer issues with Bernie than many people on DU and welcome as many voices as possible to the large marketplace of ideas that will comprise the 2020 primaries.

But, one scenario that I could see developing, that I'm not sure that I would like is that with such a large field of candidates, the progressive, or "new face" candidates could all siphon votes away from each other and open the path for a more centrist establishment candidate like Joe Biden to sweep through with like 26% of the vote.

I like Biden and I'm not sure that would be a bad thing, but there's going to be multiple spoiler effects going on. For one, Kamala Harris & Corey Booker are likely to split the black vote and open up states like South Carolina for someone else.

February 9, 2019

Rep. Pramila Jayapal torches Matthew Whitaker

February 6, 2019

Looks like Amy Klobuchar is going to announce her Presidential candidacy on Sunday

She just told Rachel Maddow that she is going to announce whether she will be running for President at an event in Minnesota on Sunday. The way Klobuchar said it (she used the phrase "drop the mic" , it seems like the only interpretation is that she will announce that she's running.

February 6, 2019

Dump brought out Holocaust survivors to pimp his policy of hostility with Iran

He launched into how Iran is "an evil regime, a really evil regime, bad, very, very bad" (after saying how strong a relationship he has with Kim Jong Un) and that Iran has called for the destruction of Israel and we can never tolerate anti-semitism (from the man who didn't know who David Duke was and said that there were fine people on both sides in Charlottesville).

It was right then that he brought out Holocaust survivors and US soldiers who liberated Dachau for applause (and a cop that responded to the synagogue massacre in Pittsburgh.) This is an astounding level of manipulation. It's unfortunate that the Holocaust survivor doesn't realize that the greatest honor they could pay to their experience is to not allow it to be part of this demagogue's narrative.

February 6, 2019

Is this the longest SOTU ever?

His convention acceptance speech was the longest in history. This Stephen Miller cloying screed is endless.