I was somewhat hoping that Beto would declare in order to shake things up a bit, and keep it from being a Senator vs Senator vs former VP snoozefest. Now he's in, but at this point I'm more of a mayoral guy.

I like the cut of his jib.

Are you talking about 7% in win probability or 7% in polling? It's probably in the neighborhood of 7% in popular vote polling, but in terms of win percentage it's a lot more. I think someone like Beto is maybe 80+% to win, whereas the worst candidates could make Trump a favorite.

It's way too early to try to weigh win probability vs. progressive ideals. People in the early states should vote for whoever they like the most, and people in later states should make more strategic decisions. For example, Beto vs. Bernie is very different from Beto vs. Warren in terms of electability, whereas on policy it's probably relatively similar. I might argue for Beto over Warren, but Bernie over Beto. But again, I'm nowhere near deciding who I'll support.

As a few others pointed out, the right will call anyone Dems nominate a socialist. Obama was a socialist, Biden will be called a socialist, Clinton was a socialist, and on and on... The question is whether the attack will stick and be seen as a negative.

It'll stick to Bernie or Warren, it won't stick to Biden. I think it will stick to Harris similarly to how it stuck to Clinton - the right will buy it and be foaming at the mouth to beat her, but they'll be riled up over something anyway. I don't know whether it will stick to Beto, but if it does I don't think it will stick in any significant or negative way. He's an A+ campaigner.

But we definitely shouldn't be trying to avoid having our nominee called a socialist. If we nominated John Kasich as a Democrat, they'd be calling him a gun grabbing socialist.

Great post, the stakes are super high in 2020. If Democrats can get the trifecta and actually play chess not checkers, they can pack the court, pass HR1, and give DC and Puerto Rico statehood. In fact, even if they don't pack the court (which I highly doubt they will), HR1 and Puerto Rico statehood (HR1 includes DC statehood I think) would be enough to make a massive change in our political landscape.

Automatic voter registration, election day as a national holiday, fair redistricting, restoring the VRA and DC/PR statehood would make it a fair fight and shift our entire political spectrum to the left. The GOP as currently constituted would be drawing super thin to win in the House or White House, and the Senate would be hotly contested in almost every election.

If the "free markets" of politics function properly, this would swing the GOP back toward sanity over the next few election cycles.

If the Dems don't take the trifecta and/or don't use it to get this done, I agree that we won't accomplish anything meaningful from 2022-2024.

It's also going to be really important to educate people on this if they get the trifecta, because election reform won't be sexy to the average Democratic voter - they'll be hoping for healthcare, tax reform, gun control, etc... But it's a necessary first step to saving our democracy and MUST be the priority.

At first I thought the point of your post was going to be something intelligent like "lol yea, two pals from Texas have officially solved who 'has the best chance' in a general election in 18 months", and that you therefore stopped reading the post.

1) No, you don't have any ****ing clue whether or not Beto is the one with the "best chance", you don't have a crystal ball, you don't know how he'll do with Trump's bullying, you don't know how many young voters initially excited will eventually realize he has nothing to offer and not bother to vote, you don't know how many voters you'll lose to Green again.

Really you should've stopped writing here.

2) Use one space after periods, two is an outdated relic from the typewriter days (much like your political instincts).

3) What does this mean? What if Jeb was in, doing most of the same stuff but slightly less overtly racist? Still cutting public programs, still letting people starve, still killing brown people, still killing black people, no whiff of de-escalating wars, still killing the planet. Would this be not a problem worthy of serious effort?

4) Stellar point, nobody has ever thought of this and to date nobody has come up with an argument against it. (That's sarcasm, it's addressed every 5 posts in this thread.)

5) oh cool yea, keep reading maps and cast your vote that way after you use some algorithms to decide the optimal candidate. This shows you are a really serious person who understands the realities of electoral maps and the need to start meeting Republicans somewhere to the center-right NOW before it's too late.

6)

lol the beto thing is even worse when you see the email he sent out

I wonder if Beto not having any concrete policy positions is a bug or a feature.

I don't think you can count on every Dem to vote for statehood for Puerto Rico or DC.

100% feature. Don't piss anyone off get by on being charming and having the presidential look. It'd definitely work vs trump but we can do way better.

We need to make sure they are primaried then. They’re either stupid or in on it. Neither is good.

https://twitter.com/TheOnion/status/1106721861105258496

He isn't just a guy. He's one of the most famous people on earth, and that fact alone is enough to make him win elections. Whether that's justified or not is irrelevant, he is who he is, and he's a formidable and dangerous opponent.


This is a fantasy. We live in the real world, and Obama wasn't able to get a true single payer system by the 'blue dog' Dems in 2008. In fact, he wasn't even able to get a public option by them. If it hadn't been for Scott Brown winning Ted Kennedy's seat he might have been able to do it, but once that happened there weren't many options even to get Obamacare through and they were forced to pass it through the reconciliation vote.

Bottom line is that this is the kind of stuff that's totally baked in to the US style of democracy. If the country had a parliament, then Obama could've passed something like single payer health care with nothing but a majority government. But in the US system you need the Presidency, the Congress, a super majority in the Senate, and probably a 5-4 margin in the Supreme Court to pass legislation like that. That's the kind of **** that takes time -- maybe as long as a generation or two.

At the end of the day, be thankful you got what you did. And furthermore don't expect too much from the next guy (or gal), because you ain't getting much from him/her either. And don't let your desire for something you're not gonna get anyways get in the way of winning.


Meh, people are starting to realize that Trump is full of ****. The key for 2020 is to not run too radical a candidate that gets painted with the socialist brush too early and too blatantly. Otherwise the right wing smear machine will do its thing and by the time they're done Bernie and his entire wing will be equated with Stalin/Hitler/Pol Pot/Darth Vader/Voldemort/Satan. Just watch and see.

Most important is to win now, and deal with 2024 when it comes.

They will smear literally any nominee as a socialist loon. Come on, man. You’re a battered wife greeting the drunk husband with a cocktail and a blowjob in hopes he won’t beat on you again tonight.

I wonder why so many people want to make quixotic runs for president. Beto, for example, probably would have at least a 40% chance of winning the senate seat in 2020. But if he runs for president, he only has maybe a 10% chance to win.

Reminds me of people who would rather spend $500 on lottery tickets to win $1 billion than stick it in an index fund and make a boring 7% per year.

Beto's way less than 40% to win the Senate. Cornyn is hated way less than Cruz.

FOX and Breitbart will paint any Dem as a socialist loon. WaPo, NYT and MSNBC tell people Bernie is a socialist loon.

The point is that the line he is taking has higher variance and a lower EV. Same with most of the other candidates running. There is also the opportunity cost of all these state and local elections not getting good candidates because everyone just wants to run for president.

I don’t think this is complicated. He’s a complete egomaniac.

I don't know the answer, but what's better for his chances of becoming POTUS in a future election, running and not getting the nomination now or winning a Senate seat? Losing a Senate race is obv not helpful and possibly a problem. If Beto's only goal is to some day be POTUS does an unlikely-to-win run this year make more sense?

Not a horrible post by you to be honest. I do like the way I use spaces after periods though, and I ain't changing.

I also like Bernie, and I also agree that Beto may have harmed himself here early on by tacking center. But I still feel he represents the best shot to take down Trump, at least for now. Let's see how the next few weeks pan out.

I'm fine with Beto jumping in as long as long as he steals votes away from other moderate dems to reduce their chances of being the nominee. Also if he gets owned in Iowa / NH hopefully he will just drop out early enough to run for a seat in congress

The Russians are really good at hacking, so aside from identifying what to expect after they breach the firewall + multi-factor authentication + database encryption, etc., he's not teaching them anything. It seems that he himself is an expert at hacking and security, but is he actively working with Russian hacking teams? From what I found, he is working to prevent journalists from being surveilled or hacked.

This is already happening. I've seen posts on Facebook with S/H/PP as well as Mao, implying that AOC/Bernie will kill hundreds of millions of people.

He wants to win Texas and be the establishment Democrat the party wants.


Feature. Trump's ambiguity allowed people to project their own beliefs on what he stands for. Voters were able to mold him into what they thought was their perfect candidate.

I mean, "Bernie can connect with the working class to win MI/WI/PA" is also a "reading maps with algorithms" argument, just in the other direction. (and I like Bernie!)

Beto's play is to either win the presidency or get a cabinet position and after that's over move to a state where he can win governor (or senator but that's less desirable)

It's a bug vs. Trump. The right is really good at molding Democratic candidates for voters. And Trump will be spreading their lies and fearmongering from the bully pulpit at unprecedented levels. So Beto would be on defense all the time trying to explain what he believes and why Trump's tweet about him was inaccurate. It will hurt his ability to inspire people.

Bernie is our best hope vs. Trump because he's already molded himself into the guy that supports **** that everybody already wants. And he'll just keep saying what people want to hear over and over. He's the closest we can get to an inspirational nominee this time.