Linky Friday: 2020 Primary Potpourri
[LL1] Joe Biden Joins 2020 Democratic Presidential Race
[LL2] What The Potential 2020 Candidates Are Doing And Saying, Vol. 16
[LL3] For hacked campaigns, 2020 might as well be 2016
[LL4] A Guide to Elizabeth Warren’s (Many) 2020 Policy Proposals
[LL5] Every 2020 candidate’s 404 error page, rankedEvery 2020 candidate’s 404 error page, rankedEvery 2020 candidate’s 404 error page, ranked
[LL6] Do’s and Don’ts for 2020 Democratic Candidates Targeting the Youth Vote (satire)
[LL7] Andrew Yang, the most meme-able 2020 candidate, also wants to save journalism
[LL8] Did Bernie Sanders Give Progressives A False Positive In 2016?
[LL9] 3 winners and 3 losers from CNN’s marathon Democratic presidential town hall
[LL10] The 10 Worst Presidential-Nomination Campaigns in Living Memory
[LL11] Why the Media Abandon Their Favorite Democrats
[LL12] Sanders faces heat for saying people should be able to vote from prisonSanders faces heat for saying people should be able to vote from prisonSanders faces heat for saying people should be able to vote from prison
[LL13] Bernie Sanders is winning the money primary for 2020 (so far)
[LL14] More Democrats Call For Impeachment Proceedings Against President Trump
[LL15] News outlets will struggle with how to handle document leaks in 2020
[LL16] well, d’uh: Dem race shows signs it could get nasty
[LL17] Campaign consultants frozen out of DCCC money create ‘The Blacklist’
[LL18] Meet the Republicans Likely to Challenge Trump in the 2020 Primary
[LL19] John Kasich planning new book release in October
[LL20] Republican Gov. Larry Hogan giving 2020 Trump challenge ‘serious consideration’
I don’t know if the Federalist and the National Review are the best sources on these stories respectively. Bias and concern trolling and all.
Also the 404 story link does not work. Is that the joke?Report
Lord no it wasn’t a joke, but I wish I had thought of that. Link is fixed.Report
How does Conor F get paid so well for being naive?
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/04/sean-hannity-trump-interview/588115/Report
Because it leads him to take some people seriously that everybody else dismisses.
Sometimes (like here) it’s bonkers-making, but he’s one of the few people who’s ever written anything on the Campus Culture Wars that’s worth reading.
To the extent that anything about the Campus Culture Wars is worth reading, of course.Report
I just don’t know what the point of the Atlantic is in the age of Trump. They seem to be a relic desperately clinging to the past of when noone questioned going to Davos (or Aspen of course because they run Aspen). Of trying to be high-minded no matter the cost to dignity or respect or authority. Fox News, especially in their opinion shows, is a Republican propaganda outlet. Treating it like it is anything thus (especially at the much-less profitable Atlantic) seems like high-minded cognitive defenses against defeat.Report
Speaking of Fox “News”, David Roberts had a good article on how they united the right while the left remains divided:
https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2019/4/22/18510518/green-new-deal-fox-news-poll
“Here’s a familiar story in US politics: Democrats (or the left, broadly) find something, a candidate or a policy proposal, that sparks grassroots excitement and enthusiasm. The enormous right-wing media machine immediately smells blood and targets the person or policy with relentless negative coverage, ensuring that the right-wing base views the person or policy as almost comically evil.
There is no parallel left-wing media machine to swing around in support of the person or policy. Democrats have no such machine, and they couldn’t get their shit together to be unified enough to run one if they had one. There is only the mainstream press, which the right has conned everyone into thinking is the “other side.”
Mainstream political journalists have a 24-hour primal howl in one ear and a bunch of infighting, sporadic fact-checking, and white papers in the other, so naturally coverage starts to trend negative.”
Or as Kevin Drum would say “The Hack Gap is real and the center-left just can’t help themlseves.”Report
There are more substantial differences between the center-left, further left, and far left than they are between different graduations of the right. It kind of hurts the cause of party unity. That’s one reason why Lenin insisted that once the Party made a final decision, everybody had to support it.Report
Yeah, this is a good insight.
It’s fun to just ask the question “What is the center-left position on X?”, for any X, and compare to the answer for “What is the far-left position on X?”
Here, I’ll start throwing some fun ones out there:
What is the center-left position on pet ownership?
What is the center-left position on marriage?
What is the center-left position on team sports?Report
It’s somewhat difficult to answer since the far left is rather fragmented like the branches of a tree and you’ll get different answers.
Center left says “Pets are fine so long as you treat them well” the far left says the same thing or they say “pet ownership is violence against animals and your cats are ecology killing machines” or “Everyone has a right to a state funded support animal and should be able to take it anywhere they go.”
Center left says “Marriage is useful, people should embrace it if it fits their relationship and married couples tend to do better than unmarried couples long term.” The far left says the same, or it says “Marriage is a hetero-normative imposition and should be banned” or it says “marriage should be free to all including poly marriage and every other form” or it says “Marriage is just a distraction from the revolution by the bourgeois.”
I can’t even begin to try and extrapolate team sports.Report
Yeah, I was thinking about that too. There isn’t *A* far-left position. There are *MULTIPLE* far-left positions.
Do we want the Deep Ecology one? Do we want the SCUM Manifesto kinda one? Do we want the Tankie one?
You will always be able to say “that’s not *THE* far-left position! There are other people who can reasonably be considered far-left who think something completely different!”
And that’s absolutely true.Report
Yep, it’s true to a lesser degree on the right I’d say but the branches are fewer and thicker (and weird- the most coherent, in my opinion, right wing branch has the least adherents and vice versa).Report
Ya answered your own question up above, here. The Atlantic exists because the hack gap is real. The Dems are much more weighted to the center population and voter wise, than the Republicans are. The Atlantic caters to that very large segment of the Dem coalition. Write all those peeps off and you’d get rid of the inclination to corporation cronyism, yes and probably also the hack gap, but also you’d dump most of your policy chops, your money support and, of course, a huge swath of voters.Report
Headline: Kamala Harris owns a handgun. That’s disqualifying for a 2020 Democrat in my book.
Subhed: Harris, a former DA, apparently thinks it’s fine to own a handgun for personal safety. That’s a position held by the NRA, not progressive Democrats.Report
The author of that piece is going to be bitterly disappointed by any nominee, I suspect. Banning handguns is pretty far from the mainstream of the Democratic Party.Report
It’s showing up in USA Today, though. If it were Salon, we could say “Salon gonna Salon”.
I originally wrote a Vince Foster joke here but deleted it.Report
:shrug:
Op-eds can sometimes be pretty far out there even for more moderate outlets.Report
Or maybe more like, a female prosecutor owning a handgun is pretty far down the list of what most Democrats consider a disqualifying event.Report
So maybe this is a pro-Harris editorial trying to elicit sympathy for her among those who are not the most liberal of Democrats? Get even center-right types to say “hey, Harris isn’t so bad after all”?
Yeah, I guess I could see that.Report
I doubt Mayor Pete doesn’t own a handgun.
And for sure he knows how to handle oneReport