I thought this topic might get some discussion going.

Biden Ahead of Sanders by 32 in Latest Poll

Bernie dropping like a stone.

I always find the horserace entertaining. These debates should be a lot of fun. I'm on team YangGang but he is a very long-shot obviously. Mayor Pete would be my second choice followed by Biden.

Regarding the polling, I think it shows that there are a lot more moderate democrat voters out there than the far-left progressives think. Online forums like this one tend to be dominated by younger and/or more progressive voters - they don't really reflect the democratic voting block as a whole. I can't see someone like Bernie growing his support beyond his base to attract moderates.

That's the same reason I've argued that AOC will never be a viable candidate for a higher office. She's too radical for many moderate democrats.

I know there's actually already a ton of media coverage out there of many of the candidates: town halls, podcasts, etc. But I haven't really bothered to look at/listen to any of it. I guess some of it is just my extreme aversion to watching/listening to news versus just reading things. But I think some of it is just that I'm rebelling against the election cycle being 2 years long. I don't think I'm going to start paying attention until the debates.

I'm not sure if that's just me or if it's generally too early for most people to have formed opinions.

Anyway, for me the field is wide open. I have no idea who I'm going to vote for yet.

How about an african-american transgender lesbian? How about Lori Lightfoot?

I'd say it's Biden - - - - - - - - - Sanders--Warren - Buttigeig

I'm cheering for Tulsi Gabbard, the best of a bad lot.

Biden Doubling Up on Sanders in New Hampshire

Quote:

by Sanders at 18 percent. South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg (D) is at 9 percent support, followed by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) at 8 percent and Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) at 6 percent.

Former Rep. Beto O’Rourke (Texas) and Sens. Amy Klobuchar (Minn.) and Cory Booker (N.J.) are each at 2 percent support, followed by former Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper, Rep. Tim Ryan (Ohio) and tech entrepreneur Andrew Yang at 1 percent each.


Biden also has the best favorability rating in the survey, at 80 percent positive and 15 percent negative. Sanders rings in at 73 percent favorable and 15 percent unfavorable.

Biden is mopping up among older voters, with 53 percent of those 65 and older backing the former vice president, compared to only 9 percent for Sanders. Biden also leads Sanders 36 percent to 19 percent among those between the ages of 50 and 64.

Sanders does better with younger voters, leading Biden 27 to 20 among those under the age of 50.

Fifty-eight percent of likely Democratic primary voters in New Hampshire describe themselves as moderates or conservatives, and Biden leads Sanders 45 percent to 10 percent among this group.

Sanders leads Biden 29 percent to 23 percent among self-described liberals.

Biden way out ahead. Doesn’t this sort of support suzzer’s contention about Dems shifting to the left? I looked over the platforms of Dem POTUS candidates from Dukakis through Obama. Doesn’t seem to be that much of a shift.

I’d discuss other candidates but they don’t seem to have a ghost of a chance.

Still early but very bad sign for Bernie that he's so far behind in a state you'd think he might be leading.

I'd like to see another candidate catch fire like Mayor Pete or Yang, but it's hard to see anyone surmounting the huge advantage Biden has with older voters.

No one could have seen that coming

Hummm... Who could have seen this coming?

Jesus Christ.

Do you think he is sincere about this? My guess is that he views this kind of bipartisan talk as good messaging, not sure that he is sincere about it.

Ugh, I posted it in the wrong thread. I just saw the 2020 and put it here.

Honestly I don't know. I'm so convinced of my own position about Republican intransigence it's really hard for me to imagine people thinking it otherwise.

Fixed?

Yep thanks!

you can move my post back, thx

Done.

Uh-oh Bernie



https://thehill.com/homenews/campaig...-drops-sharply

It's too bad Warren's in third. She's good.

word

This article is accurate.

Joe Biden is a Dealmaker

Quote:

Now that Biden is running to unseat President Donald Trump, he’s touting himself as a true master of the art of the deal, a son of a car salesman who knows how to get to yes, a relentless consensus-builder who can work across the aisle to bring Americans together. And as the stimulus showed, his bipartisan friendships, Washington experience and genial Uncle Joe approach really can help produce results that produce change; he also helped persuade his buddy Specter to defect to the Democratic Party, which provided the 60th vote for Obamacare.

But in the hyperpartisan atmosphere of 2020, that skill may be a deal killer. It’s not clear whether Biden’s message of adult-in-the-room civility and pragmatic compromise will resonate in the Democratic primary — one in which many Democrats, and especially motivated primary voters, are looking for an ideological warrior. They see his rhetoric about common ground and good-faith negotiations to be dangerously naïve at a time when Republicans have shown little interest in meeting them halfway.

Even Biden’s stimulus success has drawn a decade of fire on the left. The Republicans who signed on, as well as several moderate Democrats, all insisted the cost had to be less than $800 billion, even though the hole in the economy was much bigger than that, and Snowe demanded a $70 billion tax fix that further diluted its power. Many liberals have argued the recovery would have been stronger if Biden had held out for a better deal rather than brokered a compromise.

“Give me a break,” Biden told me several years later. “I’ve been doing this my entire career. I’m going to say something outrageous: I don’t know anybody who counts votes better than me in the Senate. … I love the left saying, 'Well, we could’ve gotten more.' OK, you go get it! You tell me how to get the 60 votes!”

Biden did cut several key deals as vice president, but it’s understandable that many Democrats doubt the value of compromise after the results of the last decade. Republicans waged all-out war against Obama’s legislative agenda and even blocked his nomination of Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court; voters responded to their obstructionism by giving them control of the House, Senate, White House and Court. And Trump hasn’t even pretended to care about bipartisanship, trashing Democrats as radical traitors, filling the courts with right-wing judges and ramming through a sweeping and controversial $2 trillion tax cut with only 50 Republican votes. Biden has boasted in the past about his strong working relationship with the arch-partisan Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who at times refused to negotiate with anyone else from the Obama White House, but these days that’s not much of a selling point among Democrats.

It is early but Bernie seems like an also ran still to me. Elizabeth Warren just doesn’t seem to be inspiring to that many people. Of Biden isn’t necessarily inspiring but he does have a track record of actually getting legislation through Congress IE his selling point is his experience.

Relevant to my interests: The sociologists behind Elizabeth Warren's Education and Debt plans

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/ful...36504219830674 is one of the articles linked.

I am not a fan of dividing debt into "white" and "black" but it does speak to a core competency that's passed down in wealthier families: taking advantage of debt.

I think the racial wealth gap is important enough to be worth highlighting that way, but I agree you can also conceptualize it as an issue of class with similar accuracy (leaving aside some real issues of discrimination).

I also think you can talk about cultural capital and "competency" but the important point is it's not just competency as if the poor could just learn to get the "good debt" if they wanted, e.g. when they mention "title loans vs. American Express" and the like. Of course there are also legitimate reasons for different terms on debt, but it's a hard problem given the way it creates a feedback loop.

Yeah. Access to cheap debt and the ability to manage said debt are very important in any wealth building exercise. I don’t remember the article exactly but there is reading out there even when blacks (particularly blacks, but also true for people with poor backgrounds generally) have cheap access to debt they manage it pretty poorly.