Symposium: Contributor’s Democratic Primary Endorsements
Photo by Alisdare Hickson via Wikimedia Commons
With the second round of Democratic Primary Candidate Debates in Detroit on the last two days of July looming, and the DNC-mandated cut-down of the field to follow, the 2020 presidential campaign season is about to pick up. Editor-in-Chief of Ordinary Times Will Truman put it out to the contributors and readers to submit their own endorsements, or at least make an argument, for their pick of the field.
As is usual with the talented folks of Ordinary Times, the results were varied, from the serious to the humorous, as great writers took up the cause of their candidate of choice. Over the next few days their posts and endorsements will appear for us to read, share, and discuss. These endorsements and cases for the candidates are part of a symposium, and reflect only the author’s personal opionions.
Over the next few days, these symposium pieces will be appearing in Ordinary Times with the “Endorsed” graphic appearing along with the candidates picture, like pictured here:
Be sure to read and discuss them all.
So…Who you got?
One of the biggest crazy-making experiences I have every four years or so (and have had for more than two decades) is to look at the current occupant of the White House and think “holy crap, the other guys are absolutely going to *SLAUGHTER* these guys!”
And then, as “Generic Opposition” coalesces into “John Jackson vs. Jack Johnson” in the primary, I think “this was avoidable”.
I look at Trump and think “holy crap, the opposition is going to *SLAUGHTER* him in 2020!”
I look forward to reading the essays about those who actually coalesced. (And writing a couple.)Report
(The only major exception to this was 2012. The Republicans could have run Zombie Reagan and he would have lost.)Report
this is South Parks “every election comes down to a Turd sandwich vs a Giant Douche” theorem, which has merit.Report
Given that somewhere around 40% of America thinks Trump is doing fine, I don’t see a slaughter of any kind happening.
In fact, I don’t think the conventional political wisdom applies anymore.
The closest parallel I can think of are the religious wars like in Northern Ireland during the Troubles, or Europe during the 16th-18th centuries, when every issue no matter how large or small was refracted through the lens of Protestant/ Catholic power struggle.
Except today it is White Supremacy versus multiculturalism.Report
One question I asked the other day and didn’t get an answer to… I’ll ask it again:
For example… according to your definition of “multiculture”, is The World Pavilion at EPCOT multicultural?
According to my definition, it is not. It is Unicultural.
Is it multicultural according to your definition?Report
The “food and festival” multiculturalism is one form of it, yes.
What do you mean by “Unicultural”?Report
By “Unicultural”, in this case, I mean “DISNEY”.
For what it’s worth, I think that “food and festival” multiculturalism is not opposed to white supremacy at all.
It’s a particularly subtle version of it.Report
F&F multiculturalism CAN be comfortably aligned with white supremacy, but isn’t necessarily the same.
Like, how Star Trek was multicultural, but insisted on having the farm boy from Iowa as the “unchecked category” the default human while everyone else was an exotic oddity.
But F&F is the first step, away from absolute intolerance. After tolerating the existence of exotic oddities, the next step of multiculturalism is to see oneself as merely one of many equal types.
Which is where we are now. Most Trumpists are comfortable with F&F, but are uncomfortable with not being the dominant center.Report
I suppose we all ought to get used to “It’s not necessarily the same as White Supremacy” arguments over the next five years.Report
Sure.
Which is why it is so helpful to have Trump as a litmus test.
Because those who are unwilling to take the next step will out themselves, whereas before they had some plausible deniability.Report
And you will know them by their appeals to “multiculturalism” even as they live in apartheid neighborhoods.Report
You forgot the third F: Fabric.
This arose from looking at school cultural fairs and patting ourselves on the back for nailing the Three Fs.
America’s would be wearing an Uncle Sam costume, eating hot dogs, and launching fireworks. U-S-A!Report
And yet there are the Democrats, the party of Jim Crow, running their slate of anti-busing white people (I worked with segregationists!), or ancestral slave owners like Kamala Harris, and some holdovers from the Spanish Empire, trying to take on an orange person with a Jewish family married to an immigrant whose name means “Melanin”.
The only authentically diverse candidate the Democrats have is Tulsi Gabbard (She’s a HIndu Pacific Islander), and after she did well in the last debate all the uber-white folks at Google de-platformed her, which is why she’s suing Google for $50 million. In contrast, Trump made Nikki Haley (who is 100% Indian and who was raised Sikh) our UN ambassador.
All of this is going to make the South Park theory quite amusing this time around.Report
60-40 would be a pretty good slaughter, electorally.Report
Huh. When and where and how did Will put out this symposium call? Was it in TSN and I just missed it? (You don’t see TSN on mobile unless you scroll way the hell down the page.)
Doesn’t matter, I suppose. I don’t really have a solid favorite yet.Report
There is an email thread.Report
I guess you have to be an insider.Report
No you don’t! If you have 500ish words of thought on your preferred candidate, put them together and send them in!
(And if anybody tells you “we don’t need your stupid vote”, I, personally, will argue against them.)Report
Yeah, it was on the internal list. I also mentioned on Twitter who we had openings for.
The way this unfolded was a bit unplanned. I put out an email to contributors giving them first shot at who they wanted to endorse. The idea then was that I was going to open it up to more people to fill other openings, and then in August people would start writing these things. Except people started writing them almost immediately and it was decided that we should do the bulk of these before the debates.
We will have some after, though, if you’re interested.
Report
Nah, I meant the “email thread” Saul is referring to. I don’t get any emails from OT or anything so I have no idea what he’s talking about. I’ve been hanging out here for, idk… seven years? I sort of thought I was part of the gang but apparently I’m that kid you pretend to like but don’t invite to the fun stuff. Now my feelz are hurt.
Edit: meant as reply to JaybirdReport
The email list he refers to is the Contributors email list. It’s mostly about who is writing about what, requests to look over writing before publication, and things like that.Report
I’m not quite ready to declare yet, but it seems that a certain Ms. Warren has been reading my OT comments to gather ideas for her new Medium essay on international trade*:
https://medium.com/@teamwarren/trade-on-our-terms-ad861879feca
“I want to invest in American workers and to use our leverage to force other countries to raise the bar on everything from labor and environmental standards to anti-corruption rules to access to medicine to tax enforcement. If we raise the world’s standards to our level and American workers have the chance to compete fairly, they will thrive — and millions of people around the world will be better off too.”
*C’mon- where else would she get these ideas?Report
It had to have been your OT comments otherwise she’d have just been shorter and written “I don’t want America to trade with any developing world nations nor trade with any first world nations that trade with developing world nations.”Report
Are we getting a Mayor Pete endorsement? That’s the one I’m waiting to readReport
Come out this morning. Watch for it.Report