It's going to be either Sanders or Warren. Dems would have to go full ret*** to choose ultimate insider, senile, alcoholic, creeper Biden.

I know the sentiment is that literally anyone can beat Donald Trump, but it's still in the DNC's best interest to run someone who can deliver on a few of their ideas. Warren and Sanders have promised many many trillions of dollars in free ponies that they won't be able to deliver on, and that's all anyone knows about them.

Watch Trump come back and win 2024 after an unmitigated series of disasters in Warren's first term. The dems would claim that it was all Trump's fault and she didn't have time to fix it. Trump would rightfully point out that he left office with non-existent unemployment and a soaring economy, and he wouldn't be wrong. The level of jimmy rustling that would occur in the event of a 4 year gap in Trump terms would be truly epic to behold.

No body can deliver anything they promise if it's via Congressional action. The only things that can be delivered are through the executive.

So why not promise the things that Democrats want with the acknowledgement that they're probably not going to happen? Seems like as long as everyone knows what's up, the promise is acting like a statement of ultimate goals rather than some road map of what's going to be enacted come January.

Also this is day 5 of Trump trying to convince people that the hurricane is going to hit Alabama and Scott Walker's Foxconn deal is never going to make money for Wisconsin so I'm thinking this is less about a glorious return of Trump righting the ship after some Presidential Warren disaster and more something else

Isn't it hitting Charleston right now? Pretty sure you're getting trolled.

Kind of a lose / lose situation where either the President of the US is not mentally mature enough to let things go and so must obsessively try and prove himself right even during a natural disaster or The President of the United States picked a natural disaster as a good time to troll everyone. Not really good either way. In the fantasy world that'd set a high bar for what would be considered a disaster that Trump would have to rescue us from. In realty, the Warren disasters that Trump will have to save us from will be "the world doesn't respect us", "she wore the wrong color blouse", "she doesn't have a bust of Fredrek Hayak in the Oval Office" or some other sack cloth and ashes thing that only a True Conservative can save us from.

Yeah. It's lose-lose but the nature of the game is to drum up silly stuff for us to talk about--and thinking or wondering about Trump's mental state helps people from not thinking about permawar or whatever else.

This post needs more punctuation, I think. Not following you.

Scott Walker hasn't been governor of Wisconsin for quite a while. The guy who replaced him ran on tearing up the Foxconn contract. If there have been any recent developments on that, you know more than I do.

Meh, whether or not people should focus on personality or identity issues like Trump's dumbassery or Obama's tan suit is a bit orthongal to whether or not Trump is mentally immature or not.

Imagining a competent Trump (lol) swooping in to repair the damage of an incompetent Warren (lol) doesn't even match with reality. Mastabatory fever dream barely covers it.

Thought it was Warren, but I don't see Bernie ever dropping till the last vote is counted.

As poorly as Biden is doing, he just has to not totally implode.

If Elizabeth Warren is elected president, I think it is very possible that the progressive wing of the party will turn on her before her term is up.

I doubt that Warren will have the necessary legislative support for a lot of her agenda, even if the Democrats somehow capture a narrow majority in the Senate. My gut sense is that, if Warren is forced to choose between ideological purity and incremental advancement through compromise, she will choose the latter. (The compromise more likely would be with centrist Democrats than with the GOP, of course.)

At least some progressives will characterize any choices in favor of incremental advancement as betrayal and abandonment of the cause.

FWIW, I think a Bernie presidency would be very different. I don't think Bernie has any interest in compromise. I don't think he would budge an inch, even if it condemned his administration to paralysis.

Bernie can not comoromise all he wants. He'll get almost nothing for it. We dont live in a monarchy.

Also the"progressive wing of the party" isn't unified so it isnt a monolith.

What do you mean by this term? The voters or the Congresspeople? If the Congresspeople, which Congresspeople are you talking about? Do they matter if these people choose this island?

Also, the Dems haven't truly unified behind a sitting president since LBJ after Kennedy for a while after was killed. So, *shrug*? Realistically, probablt not since Truman until he dropped the nukes.

Feel free to remind me because nothing is ringing a bell here.

That's why I suggested that his administration would be condemned to paralysis.

No wing of a major political party is completely unified. But members of the party who self-identify as progressives share a lot of common goals.

I was referring mainly to voters. Democratic members of Congress surely would be cagey about criticizing a Democratic president until that president was a lame duck. Here is an example of what I mean. Although she tried to draw some distinctions, HRC largely ran for president on Obama's record. If Elizabeth Warren is president for eight years, I don't expect the most progressive candidate in the Democrat field for 2028 will be running on a platform of "four more years of Elizabeth Warren." Rather, that candidate will run as a "true progressive". In other words, that candidate will imply (or perhaps openly state) that Warren was a progressive in name only.

In any case, I was trying to make a point about what type of president I think Warren would be. She is widely perceived as an ideologue and a crusader. But I don't think she would be that sort of president. I think she is more of a pragmatist and a policy wonk than she lets on.

Hmm, this is weird to me because I think she totally lets on a pragmatic wonk.

I think the narratives surrounding her suggest otherwise, but her actual conduct suggest she's the same wonk she's been for a couple of decades. She just smiles more now.

She's a terrible wonk.

She knows a lot of stats but seems to lack basic economic literacy and almost approaches research as a quest for evidence to confirm her prior beliefs rather than as a quest for truth and understanding.

Basically she does the same kind of **** research Thomas and Scalia are often accused (often rightly) of doing.

People called Paul Ryan a wonk with a straight face

I would need a fair bit of convincing before I concluded that Scalia, Warren, or even Thomas, lack[ed] basic economic literacy.

I suspect that most criticisms of their economic literacy are better framed as allegations of bias. And how you feel about those allegations of bias surely depends on where you are on the political spectrum.

You may be right that I am reacting more to the narrative than to any actual change on her part.

She and Bernie get swept up in the same narrative. I think they would be very different presidents.

They called him a wonk because that was the image that he tried to project for many years. Like you, I never bought the image, but it was a least somewhat sustainable in the years before he morphed into an apologist for the worst members of the GOP and a full-on Trump pissboy.

I am surprised that there is so little discussion of the fact that all the major non Bidens are advocating several positions that could steer just enough people who are generally horrified by Trump, to vote for him anyway and thus give him the election. Just want everyone to remember that well before Michael Moore mentioned it, I predicted that Michelle jumps in (unless there is a major skeleton in her closet) for that exact reason.

Discussion where? This is the fundamental premise of the Biden candidacy.

I highly doubt there is a major skeleton in her closet. The Obamas were probably as skeleton proof as any couple in the White House since Dwight and Mamie Eisenhower.

And I will fall off my log backwards if Michelle runs for president. It ain't happening. I suspect that there is only one person in the world who could persuade her to seriously consider entering the race, and he doesn't have any interest in living in the White House for another 4-8 years.

Question, who do you think has the higher SAT score Elizabeth Warren or Joe Biden?