Bullock is a dude who hasn't gotten much buzz but he has the red state white guy thing and is apparently putting together a sharp team.

I snapped up Klobbo at 2-3 cents and still haven't seen anything that makes me think it was a terrible thing to take a flier on; don't really know what "electable" means these days but if part of her appeal is that she plays well in WI/MI/PA then I've gotta think she'll also do just fine in Iowa vs all these city folk

One thing that I'm interested in watching is how forgiving Democrats will be about candidates' prior views/actions. Off the top of my head:

- Biden's views on crime in the 90s, as well as his role in the Anita Hill hearings

- Gillebrand on guns and immigration

- Harris's role as prosecutor

- Booker on pharmaceuticals

- Gabbard's LGBT views , as well as her views on Assad.


This isn't meant to single any individual out, I'm more just wondering which sins will be forgiven and which won't. My own view is that much of this stuff, especially if it's more than 10-15 years ago, shouldn't matter too much. Maybe I'm projecting my own shift over the last several years, but I think it's fair to say that centrist Democrats' views have shifted fairly significantly over the time (in a good direction), and that it shouldn't be disqualifying if politicians (at least in their public actions) demonstrated a similar shift.

I think it also depends on how willing people are to straight up say, "I no longer believe that", which is obviously risky, since people can be so easily characterized as flip-floppers or opportunists. (Let's leave aside how precisely none of these risks attached to Trump.)

So my general question is, out of the announced cast of candidates, which ones have records that you think are unforgivable. Out of the group above, I lean towards saying Gabbard's past is probably most disqualifying for me. I can see an argument for Biden because his 1990s look terrible with hindsight, but I think it's fair to believe his views today are substantially different from those in the 1990s. (As a Blue Hen, I also have a soft spot for Biden.)

(I didn't include Ojeda because he doesn't strike me as a real candidate. But I view his voting for Trump as disqualifying. Don't @ me.)

Biden definitely the most unforgivable. Gabbard is an unserious candidate. I probably like Harris least of all the rest but I definitely think people need to be careful how much blame she personally gets for things other people in her office said or did. Some of the attacks on her have been misleading or show an unrealistic understanding of bureaucracies I think. Anyway what I really want to see from candidates with past mistakes (IE all of them) is just simple apologies for the most part for past views or votes and acknowledgements that they were wrong and will do better. Most politicians won’t admit mistakes. I don’t really care if someone thinks it is for cynical reasons I’m not in the mind reading business. I like that gillibrand has apologized for her immigration votes and has went from an A to an F from the NRA and generally been the most anti Trump politician in both votes and rhetoric since 2016. Of course she is a senator from New York and met with Wall Street people to discuss her candidacy which is an unforgivable sin from the left and the Clinton/Franken establishment dems hate her for stupid reasons so her candidacy is mostly dead but I would want to follow her lead if I had some ****ty baggage like most of them do

Of course in reality everyone will excuse their favored candidate and use these things to bash opponents with. None of the candidates are near perfect. Bernie seemingly refused to endorse abolish ICE yet I’ve rarely seen him attacked for it from the left. (Admittedly this is probably completely rational as he is still the most left wing candidate but my point is lots of his opponents would/will be attacked for the same non commital by bernie fans)

Bernie is not AOC and he's been too political about things at times and "abolish ICE" is a risky stance. But Harris isn't just reluctantly saying "abolish ICE" is "ridiculous", she's a law and order prosecutor. That's who she is. If she comes out with "abolish ICE" I'll like her even less because it'll be the grossest pretend-to-be-progressive pandering since the 2016 DNC platform.

Maybe bernie actually doesn’t believe in abolishing ICE and there is no political calculation involved

This seems fairly likely to me, since I can't imagine there's a significant cohort who are feeling the Bern but have preserving ICE as a deal-breaker. Foreign policy and immigration are easily his weakest aspects.

Bernie is not one of the anti-immigration America-First type of person who is sometimes a Bernie bro. He's this guy:

I know that, I'm just saying I think that's where he's weakest. The fact that at his weakest he's largely indistinguishable from a libbish Democrat is taken as read, or I would've thought.

"libbish Democrat" is not saying enough. A lot of the "libbish" Democrats would have run a commercial with Latino businesspeople who speak perfect English. The more centrist Dems would have made one about Sergey Brin.

An interesting tweet that should get errybody mad:


https://twitter.com/mattyglesias/sta...96993188671489

Yglesias is right (as usual with some uh unfortunate exceptions)

People talking on twitter is not "electoral politics" so nah.

https://twitter.com/dolladollabille/...58051464151043


To the extent that Harris is trying to position herself as The Woke Prosecutor, stuff like this is going to follow her around, and if she becomes a frontrunner in the race, it will become a thing like "oh, I guess BernieBros still hate powerful women" as if Harris isn't trying to gaslight the world about her time in the criminal justice system.

For reference, here's Jacobin on the truancy thing:

For microbet, here's our dear Bari completely making a fool of herself trying to attack Tulsi.



Also notable how little knowledge Rogan and Bari combined have about prominent political candidates compared to like the average poster in this thread, given one is a NYT political writer and the other hosts a podcast that has political guests all the time.

Haven't watched the clip (can't stand listening to one word out of Bari Weiss's mouth), but if Joe is show lack of knowledge on Tulsi, that's doubly LOL since she was on his show just a couple months ago.

this is absolutely correct.

This is pretty good!

I actually am a fan of Booker and I think he will do better than most 2p2ers think. Being both black and male is an advantage imo. A little dull yes, but relentlessly upbeat and positive which I think will work well for him. Plus the guy ran into a burning building to save a woman from a fire like Superman - pretty cool!

I guess Beto wins the charisma sweepstakes, but it is a fine line between cool young guy and irritating hipster, especially in places like PA and OH.

For some reason I'm not seeing tweets in the browser and it didn't show up, but



And yeah, Bari sounds pretty awful there.

Hickenlooper is on CNN and is "weighing" a run for president. He's talking about how he was against legal pot before he signed off on implementing it.

Seems like a winning strategy!

Bari vs Tulsi?

Just kill me instead, please.

Trolly, better update that spreadsheet for Brown under "Why 2p2 liberals hate them" to include "who awval likes."

lol Bloomberg

Which party is Bloomberg considering a run in again???