2020 Presidential Primaries

You wanna see another four year temper tantrum from the left, because that’s what you’ll get.

Sure! Right after you present your evidence and not just your opinion.

but she has all the bases covered for the Democrat fan base - minority female and young. That's a slam-dunk and enough to more than forgive her of any past prosecutor sins.

They hate cops though.

You do know she was Bush's National Security Advisor, correct?

Or was @T.R's statement more along these lines?

yes Garamet "the wise" it's a fact that her position was National Security Advisor and I am well aware of that. "Selling the war" is not in her job description,
it is your assessment of her performance and entirely your opinion...which I highly value!

Exactly.

I've heard worse ideas. Not a ton, mind you, as I'm pretty sure everyone in the Bush administration is far too tainted to be a net benefit (Bush's final approval rating, was, what, 19%?). But there are worse ideas.

It would be an interesting choice from a unity and rebuilding institutions standpoint.

If Biden wins and then had to leave office during his first term for some reason (be it death, illness, scandal, whatever) then in modern times having a Republican president take over without being directly elected seems like it could cause massive problems.

You're not suggesting a repeat of the Lincoln-Johnson admin are you?

If Rice were Biden's VP pick and that ticket won, she'd be elected just like him. As were Pence, Biden, Cheney, Gore, etc.

Ford was the last VP that didn't run for election before assuming the office because he was appointed after Nixon's first vice president resigned.

Also the first VP to do so. Agnew was second to resign, but there was no replacement process in 1832.

Well yes, I know how the system works, but there absolutely would be people riled up about it.

So I am wondering, for @Amaris

Do the present police protests and donald trump's dog whistle to see what cops are on his side for oppressing the people make you feel any differently about voting for Biden? My thought is trump is clearly trying to see what support he has with law enforcement for dominating the people. Where I thought the federal forces would be used by him, this makes me wonder if he will try somehow to create problems using our police forces. I don't know if he is capable of leading in such a way, but the current state of the police being less protect and serve and more command and oppress I wonder if they would side with him on a national level to cause more civil strife and attacks. We have seen how his rhetoric has already set off the white nationalist community, and his words are now encouraging the police to violence against the public.

As much as I am loathe to vote for Creepy Joe I have to recognize this new problem with Trump. OTOH a full on revolution against the authorities lead by Trump would force the battle which would most certainly take a backseat during a Biden presidency where very little reform would be done because everyone would think the threat is over until a new and better evil found it's way into the presidency.

My real thought ATM is it would be better to deal with a trump led fascist coup because Trump is weak strategically. If you got someone like Dick Cheney in there (in the old days) we would really be in trouble. We already lost huge ground during the Bush jr years because of nefarious and intelligent manipulation to give the federal authorities huge new powers. It is almost like letting the whole revolution happen now would make it a lot easier in the end because the Trump administration would eat itself and make itself an easy target.

Sorry to call you out, but you do have the more interesting view on things.

At this point I understand why there are people who will end up voting for Biden. Our two party system strangles just about every other avenue (which is why I think our system is already in dire straits and likely unrecoverable).

One of the problems I have with Biden is his recent statements versus his long history of being full of shit: for example, he says he's listening, but then also says things like he's going to increase funding by $300 million to the police, because he thinks they need more funding, not less, despite an ongoing and frustrated population (consisting largely of black folks) demanding police departments be defunded (or at the very least get rid of the massive military stockpiles they have).

Biden seems like a more civilized person, and that is dangerous because the media is less likely to attack him like they do Trump. Civility politics are very big in this country. Look how well loved Obama is despite some of the truly awful policies he pushed forward (pervasive and massively increased domestic spying, extra-judicial executions of U.S. citizens, immigrant children locked in cages).

Trump isn't getting attacked, in general, because he does these things (you'll note that the Democrats didn't go after him for those things in the impeachment, either, and that's because they engage in the same acts), but because he's Trump, he's grossly and openly amoral, lacks the veneer of civility, and blatantly lies to the camera while being hostile to most of the mainstream media. This makes said media less likely to cover for his political missteps, though that doesn't stop them from fanning the "both sides" flames when necessary.

Biden has some truly horrid policies in his legislative past, and they are indicative of the way he (still) thinks. Biden is very much the "tough on crime," "drugs are bad," "pull yourself up by your bootstraps," "I have no empathy for the younger generation," politician that got us into this mess in the first place. If he wins, and his behavior is generally the same as it has been the past 50 years, we will be in a prime position for the next Trump, who will likely have learned a great deal about how far they can go while also maintaining a veneer of civility. For a political system that keeps its voters engaged solely with performative theater (notice the recent kerfuffle on Trump drinking water, or shuffling up a ramp, it's all about his mannerisms and appearance, and how some Dems made the 14th "Obama Day" as a slight to Trump's birthday), that's a death knell for all of us.

Still, if people are going to vote for Biden, I get it. People are scared. It is scary for a lot of vulnerable people right now. To say otherwise is to lie. I have strong objections to Joe Biden, enough so that I will not endorse his behavior by voting for him. I reject both him and Trump as two truly awful human beings who have managed to fool enough people into thinking they give a damn, and I won't have any part of them. Some folks might say I'm voting for Trump as a result (while ignoring the flaw in such logic that if I'm not voting for Trump, that means Biden is getting my vote), but at the end of the day, I will not put my signature under either man's name and say "yes, I understood what these men represented, and I gave them use of my voice for their own ends."

like Georgia? Once more for the thinking impaired - the "state of Georgia" as a whole did not have voting problems. Several counties centered in Atlanta had voting problems.

People are not going to vote for Biden because they're scared. They will vote for Biden because he's better than Trump.

I think you want Trump to remain in office to further hasten the downfall of the established parties.

I don't think the ends justifies the means.

Any populous county i.e. Cobb, which is metro Atlanta, home of Newt and the Braves, had problems. And this in a primary where a fraction of the people voted that will vote in November.

The architects of the new system are getting exactly what they wanted; fewer people from Metro Atlanta voting.

That is my line.

You both have sensible opinions, but both of you are wrong for broad brushing voters. I'll agree that some people are not going to vote for Biden because they're scared. And of course some people will vote for Biden because (they think) he's better than Trump. But nobody really knows what other voters are thinking - nobody is a mind reader.

Democratic progressives are less afraid than republican conservatives. It's the nature of the beast.

Some will vote for Biden because they're scared of what Trump might do, but most will vote for Biden because they prefer him to Trump.

How's that for a narrower stroke?

You think wrong.

not buying it! How about some democratic progressives are less afraid than some republican conservatives? Hell as a compromise I'd even accept "most" since it is after all just your opinion. For all we know you might be much, much more afraid than myself, a conservative republican. Then again "afraid" in a political sense or general sense? I don't care for spiders but snakes don't bother me - you may be the opposite.

Fear in the broad-brush sense. Night sweats be it spiders or snakes. For me it's heights.

No, the basis for the republican party is religion and guns. Both are steeped in fear. Add to that a fear of centralized control for social programs, fear of foreigners, fear of climate science. Fear of change.

Somebody refresh my memory. When a Republican gets his party's nomination, do pundits keep writing op-ed columns about how he should pick a Democrat for his vice president?

Or do they only declare that Democrats should pick Republicans?

There's a subtlety here that Biden, as a former chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, is certainly aware of, relating to Federal grants to state, local and tribal police:

DOJ grants to the state, local, and tribal police (which are entirely separate from the military surplus sales) are zero-base budgeted every year, unlike the rest of the DOJ budget. Which means that *every* year shows a massive increase in funding, without actually being one. This is despite the fact that there's already ~$2.6-3 billion in mandatory spending on those grants (via the Crime Victims Fund, I think). So Biden can simultaneously look tough on crime by asking for a $300 million increase, but that's only over and above $2.6-3 billion, not above whatever was enacted the previous year. The real purpose of this ZBB is, I think, to allow Congresscritters and Senators to go home and tell their constituents that they fought the stingy federal government and wrung 4-5 billion new dollars out of them for police in their communities.

How much is current discretionary spending? About $1.75 billion requested (which is down from a peak of $2.9 billion requested in FY2017, $3.1 billion enacted last year on a request of $1.7 billion). So calling for a mere $300 million increase is plausibly actually calling for a decrease of 83% (of discretionary funding), while looking like an increase to the tough-on-crime-but-can't-actually-read-more-than-one-budget-summary brigade.

Biden is never, ever, going to virtue signal as hard as you want him to. He has an election to win, and he's not a populist like Trump, left or right. He talks a bunch of the talking points of Defund the Police but says "we're never going to defund the police". He's a politician. An old-fashioned, slimy, double-talking politician.

If his fight with police unions escalates, you can look for him to start talking about taking away the military toys, especially if polling supports that.

On certain occasions, yes..

Yeah, but McCain was actually considering it because he and Lieberman were old friends.