Not happening but would be interesting if Biden threw everyone for a loop and asked Tulsi to be his running mate.
LOL no way. More likely any other woman that was in the race, and some not in the race. I think it will be Kamala to shore up the dwinling black support that Trump is getting and to get more women to vote. I imagine Trump may actually replace Pence with Haley and they are terrified of this and will raise them one minority woman in response to this ante. But actually, Trump may wait to make that move depending on who they choose to run with. Trump may want them to choose Kamala because it won't help them despite the optic move at first glance. Harris is largely reviled and hated for her time as a prosecutor, lied about her past with drugs, despite throwing people behind bars for the same crime. She is a vile woman who is unloved and will not get near as much black support as they think. Especially since the first black vp is useless as a running point since Obama already accomplished a full 8 years as president of the whole show. She is a dud and the Republicans will rejoice if Joe picks her. And I predict he will try. A demented pervert and a prosecutor lol. This will go over really well.
What are you talking about? Tulsi was in Vegas over the weekend at the UFC event. She even made an appearance in the octagon with the champ, Weili Zhang. No word on if she realizes the NV caucus was last month. And you guys thought she was backed by the Russians.
It was four years ago that she resigned as vice-chair of the DNC in order to endorse Sanders and criticize the internal corruption within. She was a rising star in the party until that point, and had she stayed in the position and played the game, she would have almost certainly been a popular VP pick, if not a contender for the nomination. Considering Clinton's nomination and victory was assumed at the time, it was hardly a decision for personal gain. She made a difficult decision to follow her conscience in spite of being warned that her political career would be over once Hillary was president. Even without her anti-imperialist, pro-transparency message, her "betrayal" was enough to make her persona non grata to the Clintonites. I think her presence in the race and her voice in the House has been good for political discourse in regards to foreign policy, but the DNC won't even let her be in a room with Biden at this point so I wouldn't hold my breath for her being his VP pick.
The Clintonites are the least of her problems. Her bigger problem within the Democratic Party is that no one else in the party likes her. Her views don't match anyone in the party which is why she consistently polls at 0%.
At the very least, she has more delegates at this point than Harris, O'rourke, Gillibrand, or Booker, who were not so long ago, and moments in time, darlings of the media and heirs apparent. She's the first minority woman to win any delegates in a primary since Shirley Chisholm. Had that been true of Kamala Harris, we'd be hearing it in the news cycle for weeks. Everyone in the party liked her fine until she resigned from the DNC, endorsed Sanders, and criticized inner corruption. Speaking truth to power is not something that gets you rewarded by those in power. Her lack of popularity is from concerted efforts since to discredit her for a perceived betrayal, not for her changing any of her positions to something contrary to what they were. If she were so insignificant, why would they go to so much trouble to smear her and change rules to prevent her from debating?
I'm not talking about DNC members or people in power. I'm talking about the millions of everyday Democrats out there. Those people aren't voting for her either. Even when 20 other candidates dropped out, none of their voters went to her.
I think Pence was a smart pick for Trump -- he's an evangelical icon and liked by the security establishment and GOP orthodoxy, and got a lot of the GOP base to feel more comfortable voting for him. Nikki Haley essentially quit on Trump and would alienate the economic nationalist / non-interventionist wing of the Trump coalition and would take away more than she'd bring. Warren makes the most sense for Biden at this point, especially with his neurological health being more than questionable. Her supporters are loyal and comprise the wokest segment within the party that are the least enthusiastic about supporting an elderly WASP. Besides bringing them, she'd also bring some of the progressive wing with her and could be touted as a unity candidate to bring in Sander supporters without actually threatening the status quo in any meaningful way. In my opinion, she turned off a lot of potential voters by softening her criticism of Wall Street and advocacy of banking reform (a topic she has owned for years) for the sake of chasing Woke Twitter and I think that hurt her, but to be a running mate for Joe Biden, it probably helps.
Gabbard has delegates because she stayed longer in the race and the Democrats do proportional delegates. If Harris or Booker stayed they likely might’ve gotten delegates too. The difference is that those people didn’t see a path to victory and dropped out. Since Gabbard is largely running a vanity campaign and apparently doesn’t spend much time legislating she feels she can keep on going. Also just to add Clinton lost and was totally out of government. Sander was still in and has more recognition now than 2016 and also allies in the House like Ocasio Cortez and Omar. That Gabbards popularity is lacking behind many Freshman Reps has far more to do with her personally than Clintonista cabal.
The Booker campaign was told that they can't change the rules to lower the threshold once they were set to accomodate any candidate, but then changed them shortly after to allow Bloomberg in, and then changed them again within hours of Gabbard picking up delegates that would have otherwise allowed her to particulate in the March 15 debate. She also wasn't invited to last moth's CNN Town Hall despite polling better than several candidates that were. She polled well above the 2% required for the New Hampshire debates, polling about the same as O'rourke at the time including the ones by the Economist and Boston Globe which weren't the "certified" ones the DNC counted and was thus excluded. Every time she was able to participate in debates, her numbers went up -- they would have certainly been higher had she been allowed to.
Those delegates earn her a place in the convention to decide who to give them to. The others either ran out of funding and/or endorsed Biden and will be rewarded for it. She's managed to keep her campaign afloat from donations and without the benefit of superPACs or billionaire sponsors. And if Gabbard had remained vice-chair at the DNC and kept her mouth shut and endorsed Clinton, she'd be a party favorite from the start. But she didn't and she was punished for it. Gabbard is running an advocacy campaign against political corruption and "regime-change wars" with a message that she's been a witness to both. A presidential campaign is the best way to sell the message to voters and she continues to hold town halls to reach voters and listen to their own experiences. She has a constituency and is growing it. If she qualifies for free TV appearances, it's definitely heavy handed to change those rules the moment she does. You don't think Clinton has any influence within the Democratic Party? In media? To large segments of the Democratic base? You don't think her public statements accusing Gabbard of being a Russian agent doesn't affect how she's treated? Gabbard was popular enough to get elected four times to the House after holding public office at the state level previously. She was also once popular enough within the party that she was a vice-chair of the DNC and touted as a rising star. That suddenly changed in 2016 because she was critical of Clinton and DNC leadership -- criticism that was vindicated after the leaks permitted the public to see for themselves just how bad the corruption was. PBS made this before she resigned from the DNC: The narrative management about Tulsi Gabbard may have changed since 2016, but she hasn't -- and that's kind of the point.
She is welcome to stay in the race, but Tulsi isn't still in it because of fundraising. She's still in it because she isn't really running. She has less money on hand than other candidates had that dropped out. She's raised less than $15 million total. She has received contributions from high dollar Trump donors who have obvious reasons to want her to stay in the race. I don't doubt that she has genuine beliefs about global interventionism. I respect her passion on that issue. She's still not really in this race and she is receiving money and media coverage from Trump supporters who want her to hurt the Democratic nominee. That's all she can be at this point.
None of those rules were changed. The latter debates never had rules set - the DNC said well before that those rules would be different than the early debates because they were happening after people had voted and they would be determined based on the state of the race (ie, higher thresholds if there are fewer candidates). At no point has the DNC changed any rules, nor did it exclude anyone who should have been in. The problem here is that you simply don't know anything about the process. You read articles about people complaining and assume you know the whole story. Or you do know better and are just a liar.
I found out because I follow Xochitl Hinojosa on twitter, and that's the primary source of the information before the actual press release was released three days ago that was quoted when it was reported by media after. And that was before this happened. The previous threshold was any delegates. Hours after the results on Tuesday, as it was speculated she would be in the debate, just after 7pm on Super Tuesday, Hinojosa announced the threshold would be raised to 20%. The reaction was overwhelmingly negative (though to be fair, it is Twitter). Still, why else would it change if it wasn't to prevent her from participating? I also don't see why you would need to insult me unless it's projection. I've certainly been wrong before, but I've never made a statement on the board in bad faith.
If I'm constantly asked to provide evidence for the things I say, it would be fair to ask that you do the same. Funded by high dollar Trump supporters? How exactly are they getting return on investment, especially when she's endorsing whoever the nominee is? If Gabbard benefits anyone else in the race, it's Sanders. She's the one attacking his opponents in ways that he won't and whose policies are the closest to hers.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/michel...oney-to-tulsi-gabbards-campaign/#30a133adbdaa There you go. I should have vetted the story more closely before I said "supporters" with an S as the two appear to be married that both gave her money.
Because the thresholds go up - the goal is to have candidates who can actually win the nomination. Having 1 delegate was a relevant metric after only 60-80 delegates had distributed after 2 or 3 small states. 1 delegate is irrelevant after 1000+ have been distributed. The 20% threshold eliminated lots of far more successful non-Tulsi's like Bloomberg and Warren too because they also had no shot of winning the nomination at that point. No one cares about Tulsi Gabbard.