2020 Presidential Election

[Inanna]

Sanders needs to step down just to cease voting.

[elengil]

Sanders needs to step down just to cease voting.

Not sure I understand what you mean by this

[Inanna]

People should not be going into places to vote right now. Organizers need to not be doing this in public places. Biden has won, just concede.

[RoseMorninStar]

I just signed up for absentee ballot for the rest of the year.

[elengil]

Would that actually stop the primaries, though? I mean, there were still some Republican primaries even, even though Trump was the only one on it in my state! So would Sanders backing out actually affect the rest of the primaries?

[Inanna]

Really? Oh. That’s a duh moment for me.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

No, it would not stop the primaries, which still would need to take place. It might, however, blunt the impact of postponing them, since they would not actually affect the outcome of the nomination process with only one viable candidate remaining.

[Dave_LF]

And it would certainly reduce the number of people who turned up for them

[River]

Vote by mail. Everyone needs to get on that train.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

My political predictions are often wrong (see my earlier posts about Elizabeth Warren), but I am rarely flat out shocked. I was flat out shocked when I saw this headline.

Tulsi Gabbard ends 2020 campaign and endorses Joe Biden

Bernie?

[yovargas]

Shocked that she finally dropped out (she was still in???) or that she endorsed Biden?

[elengil]

My political predictions are often wrong (see my earlier posts about Elizabeth Warren), but I am rarely flat out shocked. I was flat out shocked when I saw this headline.

Tulsi Gabbard ends 2020 campaign and endorses Joe Biden

Bernie?

While I acknowledge that it is a legit complaint under the circumstances, also under the circumstances is that Sanders is far more focused on being a Senator right now and doing what needs to be done now, and not worrying about whatever campaign he may or may not bother continuing in the future.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

I understand that. On the other hand, wouldn't it be easier for him to focus on being a Senator and doing what he can to combat the crisis if he was continuing a quixotic campaign that at this point is only succeeding at dividing the Democratic Party? I thought his angry response to the reporter asking him about his campaign plans was so extraordinarily inappropriate. But I guess it is in the eyes of the beholder. Others probably think it was entirely appropriate and indication of why they like him so much.

[elengil]

I understand that. On the other hand, wouldn't it be easier for him to focus on being a Senator and doing what he can to combat the crisis if he was continuing a quixotic campaign that at this point is only succeeding at dividing the Democratic Party? I thought his angry response to the reporter asking him about his campaign plans was so extraordinarily inappropriate. But I guess it is in the eyes of the beholder. Others probably think it was entirely appropriate and indication of why they like him so much.

Maybe. I find a lot of Biden's responses to people extraordinarily inappropriate as well, so I don't think that's really the best gauge of fitness for office at this juncture. I will grant it might have been a tad "virtue signaling", but it also may have just been genuinely too much on his mind and he gave a snap answer.

I would say whether he officially announces anything, he is currently not really continuing his campaign, he's focused elsewhere. I don't believe it is dividing the Democratic party, any more than any two people running for one office can be divisive. I don't see it as increasing the division, certainly.

But again, it appears to me as if he is putting so little thought into the campaign as to not even put thought into ending it, he's just focused entirely on the current crisis and his job as a Senator. I will point out that as of yesterday his campaign manager has put out a statement that they will be reassessing his run for president after last Tuesday.)

[Voronwë the Faithful]

I understand that. On the other hand, wouldn't it be easier for him to focus on being a Senator and doing what he can to combat the crisis if he was continuing a quixotic campaign that at this point is only succeeding at dividing the Democratic Party? I thought his angry response to the reporter asking him about his campaign plans was so extraordinarily inappropriate. But I guess it is in the eyes of the beholder. Others probably think it was entirely appropriate and indication of why they like him so much.

Maybe. I find a lot of Biden's responses to people extraordinarily inappropriate as well, so I don't think that's really the best gauge of fitness for office at this juncture. I will grant it might have been a tad "virtue signaling", but it also may have just been genuinely too much on his mind and he gave a snap answer.

Fair enough. As I said, eyes of the beholder. I know for instance that you were more offended by Biden's confrontation with the gun rights supporter in Michigan than I was. While I didn't think it was appropriate, I found it understandable and that it showed passion about an important issue to me. Sanders outburst - to me (I make no claim to have the only right view) - was all about his self-centered campaign (but of course that is colored to some extent by my belief that he never should have run this time at all, and instead should have strongly backed Warren's campaign, which I truly believe would have led to her winning the nomination and the presidency).

[elengil]

As I said, eyes of the beholder. I know for instance that you were more offended by Biden's confrontation with the gun rights supporter in Michigan than I was. While I didn't think it was appropriate, I found it understandable and that it showed passion about an important issue to me. Sanders outburst - to me (I make no claim to have the only right view) - was all about his self-centered campaign

To me I see it as Biden showing poor skill as a leader toward a voter (Yes, I know that voter likely would never vote for Biden but that is hardly the point - a president is meant to be a president for the whole country, not just those who voted for them). I wasn't offended, but it was inappropriate.

Sanders showed poor judgement in answering a reporter's question on what he felt was not remotely the most pressing issue at the moment. The reporter was just doing his job, but Sanders was also trying to do his. To be self-centered would have been to start actually talking about his campaign rather than flat out say he was doing something far more important. I fail to see how that actually translates in your view.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

I'll leave it at that.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

This is a good article from the Washington Post (reprinted by MSN so it should be readable by all), which I think pretty much defines what happened in the race for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination (and yes, I know it technically isn't over, but unless Biden falls deathly ill or some similar event occurs, it is over).

Insiders recount how Sanders lost the black vote — and the nomination slipped away

Meanwhile, according to the New York Post (admittedly not the most reliable source), Bernie Sanders will stay in 2020 race until New York primary

It is unclear to me what he thinks he is going to accomplish by this. Clearly, if he is sending out emails saying that "they were ramping up for the next round of primaries with thousands of volunteers phone-banking and organizing in the Empire State" he isn't just focusing on addressing the pandemic, as he claimed in his profane rant to CNN's Manu Raju a few days ago. Particularly since New York of all places needs as much focus as possible on addressing the crisis, and not on feeding Mr. Sander's ego so he can get one last victory before he sails off into the night.

[Faramond]

People are trying to draft Andrew Cuomo, governor of New York, to be the Democratic nominee.

Never mind that I don't understand any real pathway for this -- why the fascination with him?

I get that he's better on the novel coronavirus than, say, Trump, which I guess makes him look really presidential to some people, but New York the state has a TON of cases. I'm not saying this is all Cuomo's fault, but maybe he didn't order the shutdown soon enough? Not so long ago New York and California had about the same number of cases, but the measures taken in California seem to have stunted the growth in cases a lot more. New York has ten times the cases of California now. And yet Cuomo is the great leader here?

Maybe they should draft Gavin Newsom instead?

[Frelga]

Newsom's name has come up as well. Not for 2020, of course, but he's young by candidate standards.

As far as number of cases, they are only meaningful in the context of the number of tests conducted per capita. I don't know where New York and California stand.

And it's already been pointed out that even in San Francisco or LA it's easier to implement social distancing than it is in NY. Population density is far smaller with less reliance on public transportation (does LA even *have* public transportation?). SF is survivable without transit, especially if you don't have to travel downtown, where I assume telecommuting is the norm now. NYC, I can't imagine.