Politics: 2020 Dem POTUS candidate catch all discussion thread

To win power, Democrats don’t just need to appeal to the voter in the middle. They need to appeal to voters to the right of the middle. When Democrats compete for the Senate, they are forced to appeal to an electorate that is far more conservative than the country as a whole. Similarly, gerrymandering and geography means that Democrats need to win a substantial majority in the House popular vote to take the gavel. And a recent study by Michael Geruso, Dean Spears and Ishaana Talesara calculates that the Republican Party’s Electoral College advantage means “Republicans should be expected to win 65 percent of presidential contests in which they narrowly lose the popular vote.”

The Republican Party, by contrast, can run campaigns aimed at a voter well to the right of the median American. Republicans have lost the popular vote in six of the last seven presidential elections. If they’d also lost six of the last seven presidential elections, they likely would have overhauled their message and agenda. If Trump had lost in 2016, he — and the political style he represents — would have been discredited for blowing a winnable election. The Republican moderates who’d counseled more outreach to black and Hispanic voters would have been strengthened.

Instead, Republicans are trapped in a dangerous place: they represent a shrinking constituency that holds vast political power. That has injected an almost manic urgency into their strategy. Behind the party’s tactical extremism lurks an apocalyptic sense of political stakes. This was popularized in the infamous “Flight 93 Election” essay arguing that conservatives needed to embrace Trump, because if he failed, “death is certain.” You could hear its echoes in Attorney General William P. Barr’s recent speech, in which he argued that “the force, fervor, and comprehensiveness of the assault on religion” poses a threat unlike any America has faced in the past. “This is not decay,” he warned, “it is organized destruction.”

This is why one of the few real hopes for depolarizing American politics is democratization. If Republicans couldn’t fall back on the distortions of the Electoral College, the geography of the United States Senate and the gerrymandering of House seats — if they had, in other words, to win over a majority of Americans — they would become a more moderate and diverse party. This is not a hypothetical: the country’s most popular governors are Charlie Baker in Massachusetts and Larry Hogan in Maryland. Both are Republicans governing, with majority support, in blue states.

A democratization agenda isn’t hard to imagine. We could do away with the Electoral College and gerrymandering; pass proportional representation and campaign finance reform; make voter registration automatic and give Washington, D.C. and Puerto Rico the political representation they deserve. But precisely because the Republican Party sees deepening democracy as a threat to its future, it will use the power it holds to block any moves in that direction.

Click to expand...

CharminTide said:

Republicans represent fewer people, but more landmass, in a system that apportions political power to segments of land rather than to people.

Click to expand...

Tidewater said:

I had lunch with my self-described "radical socialist" friend yesterday. H described how impeachment will result in the banishment of the Republican party from the halls of power for decades.
It is remarkable to me the extent to which humans believe the majority sees things exactly the way they do.
I have no such illusions. I see affairs quite differently from most Americans. I, nevertheless, believe I am right, but I fully acknowledge that my views are unusual.
I have no idea how the next election will turn out. I still cannot believe Trump won 2016.

Click to expand...

rgw said:

The most important thing for the democrats is mobilizing voters in critical swing states. That is the path to his removal. Nothing more.

Click to expand...

B1GTide said:

Honest question, because I have not done the math. If each state had 2 fewer electors (the automatic electors assigned to each state no matter its population), would the results of the last election have changed?

Click to expand...

CharminTide said:

I haven't done the math either, but I don't think uniformly eliminating two voters really addresses the problem. The issue with the EC is actually the House. Every state gets a number of electoral college votes equal to 2 Senators + their House delegate.

However, Congress has passed restrictions on the size of the House which has resulted in extreme disproportionate representation given subsequent population shifts. Divide the number of people in Wyoming (3 EC votes) and California (55 EC votes) and you'll find that one vote in Wyoming is equivalent to 4 votes in California. This gives Wyoming a strong geographic advantage when weighing EC votes. Add in gerrymandering, which determines House districts, and that's another layer of geographic power that filters into the EC. Add in the lack of statehood for millions of Americans (the GOP is opposed to D.C. statehood because their Senators would most likely be Democrats) and the flaws in how we distribute political power start to compound, resulting in what we have today: minority rule.

Click to expand...

rgw said:

Sanders will kick Trump’s ass.

Click to expand...

B1GTide said:

Sorry, but if you remove the 2 from Wyoming, they only have 1. That is what skews the math.

Click to expand...

CharminTide said:

It helps, but it does not equalize the representation.

Wyoming (1 EC vote):
~580k citizens per vote

California (53 EC votes):
~750k citizens per vote

Click to expand...

B1GTide said:

Well, you can't give them less than 1.

Click to expand...

Wyoming Rule - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

CharminTide said:

Agreed, but if you increase the number of total House reps to divide, you can make it a more representative body. Which is the entire reason the House exists.

Solutions have been proposed before.

Wyoming Rule - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Click to expand...

CharminTide said:

The problem with America is that our democratic system is too weak. The only way to fix the country is to strengthen it.

Democrats are a diverse tent, and Republicans are not. Democrats are liberal whites, Christian blacks, Muslims, Jews, young Atheists. Republicans are overwhelmingly old, white, and Christian. Democrats listen to a variety of news sources, Republicans only listen to one. It's easy to activate a homogeneous group of voters, and it's vastly more difficult to appeal to a diverse set of interests. Republicans represent fewer people, but more landmass, in a system that apportions political power to segments of land rather than to people.

Ezra Klein (my favorite Ezra) writes about how our flawed democratic system has led to the political sorting behind our current climate of polarization. I'm quoting a large chunk below because it's important and also behind a paywall. Of the democratic candidates, only Buttigieg and Warren have really talked about this, and only Pete has committed to making Democratic reform a top priority for his administration.

NYT: Why Democrats Still Have to Appeal to the Center, but Republicans Don’t

Click to expand...

81usaf92 said:

Doubtful. We might have the largest turnout of Republican voters in history come out to see that not happen. The only chance for a progressive to win the White House in this election is Warren.

Click to expand...

rgw said:

Warren showing her ass w/r/t Sanders probably irreparably hurt her. The only way she'll be in the White House is if Biden rewards her with the VP nom for punching leftward at Bernie. That is assuming Biden doesn't implode first.

I fear that the problem here is that there is no squaring the Democrats big tent. The Republicans also host a big tent but essentially they all basically want the same end game regardless of the road they take to arrive there. The Democrats are trying to host several interests that are diametrically opposed on substantial ideological underpinnings.

The Sanders camp belief is that there is a substantial politically unengaged majority that will respond positively to a progressive left if you can mobilize them and if that is possible then you can tell the center-right wing of the Dems to suck it up and fall in or just go vote fash since you like compromising with them so much.

I don't know if he's right but I believe that is a better path forward than truly believing there is middle ground to be compromised on where the GOP is taking us.

Click to expand...

rgw said:

Guess we'll die.

Click to expand...

Bazza said:

I think she's beautiful.

You can see the Polynesian heritage.

Gabbard was raised in a multicultural household. She is of mixed ethnicity, including Asian, Polynesian, and Caucasian descent. Her mother was born in Indiana and grew up in Michigan. Her father was born in American Samoa and lived in Hawaii and Florida as a child; he is of Samoan and European ancestry.

Click to expand...

crimsonaudio said:

Gabbard was on JRE recently and I admit I was fairly impressed.

I also don't keep up with what most people think about various candidates, though it seems many Dems don't like her (I've seen people call her a Russian asset, no idea as to the reasoning behind that, maybe sound). She seems like a a solid candidate - ethnic minority female who served (several combat tours) and she seems tough minded.

Click to expand...