That’s had no cooperation in Washington and still is killing it. I get that you don’t like him but what people are going to ask themselves is am I better off then I was 4 yrs ago. The majority of people will say yes and that’s going to be hard to beat especially considering what the other options are.
I agree, people have to have enough trust in the system for this to work without turning into a total cluster. And so far this is not what is happening.
I flipped on the TV to watch Iowa/State of the Union analysis last night. David Axelrod, Van Jones and the other Democratic commentators were not bullish about how things were going. Trump “has the wind at his back” and will be very difficult to beat as an incumbent in 2020. It’s going to take a lot more then running ads with Trump sound bites.
I bet the majority of Democrats side more with Bernie on issues than a centrist Democrat like Clinton. Bernie was an independent, now he is solidly a Democrat. One thing I've figured out recently is both sides hate the federal government. Centrism is dead - Its aligned with the status quo, which everyone is sick of.
Again, WHY? Bernie knows how many votes he got in each precinct. He knows how many votes everyone else got. The campaigns have the raw data because they had people at each location and you could physically count the number of people in each corner. What specifically do you think the DNC can do to manipulate the vote?
Honestly, no in terms of the conspiracies. Here's a good article on the whole shady organization (ACRONYM and Shadow): https://www.politico.com/news/2020/...oad-operative-over-iowa-caucus-results-110807 They are exactly what I said - a big mess of Democratic tech people that are trying to beat Trump with a digital operation. The key players are veterans of the Obama and Clinton administrations. They existed long before Pete was even running for President. They seem to be very controversial within the Dem party with some people seeing the need for trying new things, and others feeling like its an unwieldly and ethically sketchy mess. Multiple campaigns are working with them, and they are working outside of the campaigns on anti-Trump messaging and other such things. This app was a small piece of a much bigger organization. I don't care if a leader in one of the companies is married to or otherwise linked to someone high in the Pete campaign. People in Dem circles are connected in all sorts of ways to other people in Dem circles. This is like the Hunter Biden thing. I want to know what the specific conspiracy theory is and what we are alleging happened to somehow benefit Pete, because I just don't see any logic to it. Sorry you may have already answered this - I got distracted and missed a chunk of this thread after I posted that question earlier. I will go back this afternoon and check on that. I get the concerns about a theoretical conflict of interest. But my argument would be that these campaigns are massive. And these new Democratic initiatives are massive. And people within the two are going to collide. If you look hard enough, you'll find top people from all the campaigns connected to outside organizations that cross paths with campaigns, elections systems, etc. It's inherent to the fact that all of these people are in the same general circle of people - high level Dem operatives.
I don't think Trump "has the wind at his back". He simply has no headwind. The country has not functionally changed since 2016. All of the economic indicators are following their same patterns from the Obama era, while all of the quality of life indicators are still trending downwards. There's been a lot of smoke, but no fire. The only substantive/meaningful change was the tax cuts, which was just a self-serving kamikaze attack on the deficit. Everything else has been mostly performative gestures, symbolic changes, or pure noise that otherwise doesn't affect daily American life.
Agree. He’s governed to his base. If the Dems can get a good turnout, they will win. If they can’t, they will lose. It seems that simple to me.
I personally think populist ideas (from my perspective) poll much better than nuanced policies. In this environment, “centrism and moderates” have become like “socialist”. People want change, people want to have faith in their leaders, etc. But I think people will start changing their tune when populism has to start actually explain how it will work.
Correct. You either have to put up someone with a lot of charisma/character, or you have to put up someone with a lot of ideas that will get Americans off their couches. Or, ideally, both. Right now Democrats don't seem to have much of either on offer. Best case you are voting for someone who has fatal elect-ability flaws or has an uncomfortable amount of inadequate ideas (or worse yet - dangerous/bad ideas).
Meh. Sure, versus some ideal. Our team is the picky team -- that much is for sure. I'll enthusiastically vote for any non-criminal at this point, and campaign for them as well. But I know that's just me.
I used to work as a software developer at a University. There were always incompetent companies trying to use connections rather than ability to sell software and services for the highest possible profit. My boss called them beltway bandits. I'm sure they exist in more fields than just software. I would make a large wager that a few key decision maker at the top of the Iowa Democratic Party were convinced by some shady a-holes in the DNC that their shiny new company could make a cool app to bring them into the 21st century. Sadly that is business as usual in Washington. If its not outright fraud then its spending way too much to get way too little. The story should be about how the system results in these messes, not silly conspiracy theories. TL;DR Its sliminess and incompetence, not deliberate meddling.
The problem is that people in politics will rely on other people in politics about what they should do. There are literally hundreds of small software shops that could have done this app in a week and had it tested and ready in time for the election. Hell they could have gone to a state university prof and had a grad student do it. Tallying votes from 1,700 precincts could have been done on a google spreadsheet.
Of course the party heads have a Bias against Bernie its because he is trying to hijack the party that he has never been a part of. My premise is that just because a couple of people have a bias against Bernie it does not mean they are plotting to take him out. As for my other post what does what he said have to do with anything that happened Monday. I need to understand your baseline do you think the DNC plotted to make Pete come out on top?
