Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

This fight is for everything.

Something needs to be done about our bogus SCOTUS.

I did not have telepathic declassification on my 2022 bingo card.

Americans barely caring about Afghanistan is so last month.

No one could have predicted…

A last alliance of elves and men. also pet photos.

T R E 4 5 O N

Usually wrong but never in doubt

Republicans seem to think life begins at the candlelight dinner the night before.

Republicans are the party of chaos and catastrophe.

It’s time for the GOP to dust off that post-2012 autopsy, completely ignore it, and light the party on fire again.

Let us savor the impending downfall of lawless scoundrels who richly deserve the trouble barreling their way.

Teach a man to fish, and he’ll sit in a boat all day drinking beer.

Not all heroes wear capes.

No offense, but this thread hasn’t been about you for quite a while.

Peak wingnut was a lie.

“Jesus paying for the sins of everyone is an insult to those who paid for their own sins.”

Everybody saw this coming.

Some judge needs to shut this circus down soon.

Whoever he was, that guy was nuts.

I’d hate to be the candidate who lost to this guy.

Thanks to your bullshit, we are now under siege.

Let’s delete this post and never speak of this again.

Give the craziest people you know everything they want and hope they don’t ask for more? Great plan.

You are here: Home / Past Elections / 2020 Elections / A Few Thoughts Before Tonight’s Debate: Nobody Really Knows Much of Anything Yet So We All, Including Me, Need to Chill the Fuck Out!

A Few Thoughts Before Tonight’s Debate: Nobody Really Knows Much of Anything Yet So We All, Including Me, Need to Chill the Fuck Out!

by | 96 Comments

This post is in: , , , ,

A Few Thoughts Before Tonight's Debate: Nobody Really Knows Much of Anything Yet So We All, Including Me, Need to Chill the Fuck Out!

I know everyone is stressed right now. As I’ve written here before, on the front page and in comments, that’s the whole point of the President’s attempt to dominate the news cycle, social media, and digital media 24/7/365. It is to create a bizarro, reverse panopticon where everyone has to pay attention to the President, his surrogates, and his supporters all the time. His supporters do because they can’t get enough of the rage, fear, grievance, and victimization he’s feeding them constantly to keep them engaged, angry, and involved. Everyone else because a failure to pay attention could lead to being caught unaware as bad things are happening. The result is everyone is overwhelmed. All the time. And the intended effect is to make people want to give up, give in, and stop fighting, if not go along to just get along.

And the stress from the President’s never ending influence operation is being magnified by the Democratic primary. A primary that despite having started a year ago has seen exactly two states vote, or, technically, one state caucusing and one state voting, and only 65 delegates out of a total of 3,979 having been awarded as a result. Nevada’s now hybrid early voting ranked choice primary and primary election day caucus will award or allocate another 36 and then South Carolina’s primary will award or allocate another 54. By the end of February a grand total of 155 of those 3,979 delegates will be awarded. The 65 delegates already awarded are from states that are wildly unrepresentative of the Democratic Party and its multi-ethnic, multi-religious, multi-generational, and ideologically complex constituency made up of everyone from those from the center-right through the center and the center-left all the way out to the left of center. An ideological, ethnic, religious, generational, and even geographic diversity driven by the fact that the Republican Party and the conservative movement that sustains it has fully remade itself into a revanchist white Christian herrenvolk party. The quest for Nevada’s 36 delegates is the first contest in a state that looks more like the Democratic Party and its constituents. The question at this point is how its now hybrid and never before used because it is a response to the mess of the Iowa Caucuses system will actually work. Will we get a nice clean set of results or another election night mess that lasts for several days. South Carolina, where 54 delegates will be awarded/allocated, is the first actual contest of this primary that both reflects the reality of the Democratic Party and its constituents and will be run as an actual election, not a caucus and not a quickly kludged together hybrid early voting rank choiced primary and caucus.

As of right now no one knows anything. The polling is all very interesting. A lot of it is telling us a lot more about the pollsters and the pundits than it is telling us about the candidates, their campaigns, and the actual potential primary results. Even here we don’t know a whole lot about outcomes, but we do know some things about the actual 2020 presidential campaign. The first is that national polls are nice, but they aren’t telling us anything useful because, and bear with me here as I repeat this for the umpteenth time, WE DON’T RUN NATIONAL POPULAR ELECTIONS FOR PRESIDENT!!!!! The presidential election is going to be contested in the Electoral College and that means between 5 and about 20, at the most, states are actually in play depending on who the Democratic nominee will be and whether we have any third party spoilers. For those of you who are now despondent that your votes are pointless because you live in one of the states that are not potentially at play in the Electoral College, THEY ARE NOT!!! Running up the score in the popular vote and ensuring that turnout is overwhelming everywhere will have a gigantic effect on keeping the House and flipping the Senate. So don’t despair.

The second thing we know is that this election isn’t really about policy. It is about the President, whether he deserves a second term, and whether his surrogates and enablers in the House and Senate deserve to continue to be reelected. If the President is reelected, not one of the policies being proposed by the Democratic candidates will ever happen. If the Democratic nominee is elected to replace the President, but the Republicans retain their Senate majority and Senator McConnell remains majority leader, the new Democratic President will NEVER be able to enact those policies. I’m not even sure she or he would be able to properly staff their administration with the senior appointees that require Senate confirmation. You can kiss filling judicial vacancies, regardless of whether they’re Federal district, appellate, or the Supreme Court, good bye. It isn’t that I think one candidate’s policy proposals on any given issue are better than another’s. It is that none of those differences matters, from the small disagreements to the large ones, if the Republicans maintain their Senate majority.

The presidential election is a referendum on the President. The various Senate elections in the different states are all referendums on the Republican majority Senate’s and specific Republican senators abasement and fealty to the President. The House election, in the various House districts in every state, are about maintaining at least one institutional check on the President. That’s it. I know that doesn’t sound inspiring. I know that isn’t what supporters of specific candidates want to hear. But it is the cold reality of where we are. The only policies that happen if the President gets reelected are unconstitutional, anti-Constitutional, and frankly anti-American. The only policies that happen if a Democrat gets elected and Senator McConnell maintains his majority is none. Nada. Zippo. Nil. Bupkes. This election is not about whether any of the remaining Democratic candidates’ policies would be better than the others. It isn’t whether the Green New Deal can be sold to voters in states where the Electoral College is in play, Senate seats need to be flipped, and House seats need to be maintained. This election is about one thing and one thing only: the preservation of what is left of the democratic-republic, as imperfect, battered, and bruised as it is, that is our inheritance as Americans. A preservation necessary so that the long hard work of fixing what is left to be preserved can be undertaken to prevent the potential slide into kleptocratic authoritarianism from ever happening again. That’s it. If that isn’t inspiring enough for you, then nothing I’m going to write will make any difference.

This leads to third thing we know about this election, which is whoever gets selected as the Democratic nominee needs to have coattails. And that’s where the first point flows into the second. Some of the candidates have greater potential down ballot effects than others. Both positive and negative. So whether you live in a state in play in the Electoral College for the presidential election or not, we all have the same job:

  1. Make sure you are registered to vote.
  2. Make sure everyone you know who is eligible to vote is registered to vote.
  3. Make sure everyone you know makes sure that everyone they know who is eligible to vote is registered to vote.
  4. Vote.
  5. Make sure everyone you know who is registered to vote votes.
  6. Make sure everyone you know makes sure that everyone they know who is registered to vote votes.
  7. Stay alert, stay aware.

That’s pretty much it. Doing this, – ensuring massive, overwhelming turnout –  is how we can ensure that the Electoral College doesn’t get weaponized for the third time in 20 years and that the various senators representing the mild moues of disappointment and the tightly clutched pearls of hysteria that need a nice, quiet retirement receive their so justly earned desserts. It is how we ensure that the current Democratic House majority, which is one of only two real institutional checks left on the President and his anti-constitutional administration is preserved. And it is how we ensure that Democratic state governorships and Democratic state legislatures, which are the only other real institutional check right now on the President and his anti-constitutional administration are preserved and, wherever possible, expanded by flipping governorships and state legislative seats.

And, at least here at Balloon Juice, how about we try not to kill the various messengers who are either trying to explain how process works or what potential concerns might be for various candidates might be or even why you should support any of the candidates might be. We can all, me included, do a better job of not making all of us more stressed, more overwhelmed, and more freaked out.

Or we can defeat and destroy ourselves. The choice is yours. And for now, you still have a choice. That may not be the case after November 3rd.

Open thread.

Reader Interactions

96Comments

  2. 2.

    Jerzy Russian

    Also too, if I can’t freak the fuck out about the election, may I freak the fuck about the return of that ad at the top that covers the navigation arrows (at least it does on the phone)? If freaking the fuck out is not an option, then I guess I will have to be satisfied with merely pointing out this minor problem.

  13. 13.

    JimV

    Thanks for another thoughtful post.

    I think one of our many problems is that most people like yourself, who have useful jobs and are doing good work, don’t want to stop that to run for office.  (I think Warren is an exception to that, maybe because she realizes we need people like her in  office so the rest of us can focus on our jobs.) There are a lot of candidates whom I wouldn’t trust in a technical job.

  15. 15.

    Immanentize

    DOOM II for Android Phones is pretty good.  Better to go to hell and kill demons than watch a FIVE FUCKING MODERATOR debate.  I will read what y’all note.

  17. 17.

    Jerzy Russian

    @Adam L Silverman:

    Yes, knock yourself out.

    Thank you.

    OMFG!!!! THAT GODDAMN AD IS BACK!!!! JESUS HUSSEIN CHRIST, WE ARE ALL GOING TO DIE***!!!

    ***Well maybe not die, but refreshing the page or navigating between pages is harder.

  20. 20.

    Jerzy Russian

    @Sab:

    That usually makes it go away.

    For now. However, during the first iteration of this ad, that action stopped working after a while.

  23. 23.

    different-church-lady

    SERIOUSLY, IF YOU PEOPLE WANT SHIRLEY TEMPLES YOU’VE COME TO THE WRONG GIN JOINT!!!11!

  32. 32.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Morzer: It isn’t the running, walking, ambling, or moseying that worries me. It is the prison for ripping my opponent’s arms off and shoving them up his nose at the debate part that worries me.//

  33. 33.

    David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch

    Of all the gin joints in all the towns
    in all the world…
    …different-church-lady walks into mine

  35. 35.

    Mr. Kite

    Tonight I want Elizabeth to kick Bloomberg’s teeth in. That’s all. I might even have to watch the damn thing.

  46. 46.

    Anya

    It is hard to see Harry Reid like this but I am glad he’s making the case why Iowa and New Hampshire shouldn’t be leading the primary season.

  49. 49.

    Adam L Silverman

    @NotMax: Let me amend that earlier statement to include ripping Chuck Todd’s arms off and shoving them up his nose as well.//

  51. 51.

    Anya

    Don’t attack me but I have a soft spot for Robert Gibbs. Some of the few times I’ve watched a fox segment was of Robert Gibbs just snarking at them and mocking their stupid points. Hopefully he’s not doing lobbying but I mean, who is he gonna lobby to when republicans control the Senate and the White House.

  53. 53.

    Anya

    Ugh! I don’t want to watch this debate but I feel like I have to. I wish we had one viable candidate and we were just crowing that candidate now. Although, my dad keeps making the point that it’s good for Democrats to go from state to state and connect with voters because that’ll help down ticket like in 08.

  54. 54.

    Marcopolo

    So there is nothing to compare the figure to (aside from 84K total caucus participants in 2016), but 70,000 early voters this week sounds pretty good.

    Now if they can double that # on Saturday and get the results out cleanly it’ll be a win win.

  56. 56.

    mad citizen

    @Anya: I had forgot about him, but saw him on my cable tv viewing last week when I was in a hotel.  My main thought was, what is going on with his hair?  It seems to have gained volume and darkness since the Obama years.  Sadly Google revealed nothing, so no one is in interested in Robert Gibbs hair.  Probably a slight positive for the age we live in.  But I still get amazed at men who employ the hairpiece.

  57. 57.

    Steeplejack (phone)

    @Jerzy Russian:

    I reported it to WaterGirl.

    Also, even when you make it “retract,” the pull tab still interferes with Refresh and the “top of page” arrow. (Answering a later comment.)

  58. 58.

    Martin

    California really should be the first primary. We have large black communities, latino communities, asian communities. We have active LGBTQ populations around the state. We have tourism and manufacturing and agriculture and tech. We’re a trade hub. We deal  with immigration directly. We lead the nation on climate change.

    Yes, it’s an expensive state, but so much money is dumped in Iowa and NH that you could cover California.  We wouldn’t be tripping over candidates like in NH where everyone is a block away from each other. The state is 800 miles long. We have multiple million population centers spread over more than 500 miles.

    If you wanted to determine if a candidate appealed to a specific part of the Democratic party, you can determine that in CA, and I think only in California.

  59. 59.

    Marcopolo

    @feebog: Harry really is one of the major reasons for the ascendancy of the D’s in Nevada.  Obviously help by demographics but that’s just the clay.  It still needs to be shaped.

  64. 64.

    TS (the original)

    Still doing it – MSSNBC showing poll results. “Bloomberg has soared right into contention” – he has the SAME figure as Elizabeth Warren who is listed BELOW him & didn’t score a mention before I turned off the sound.

  65. 65.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Baud: They didn’t. They adopted it hastily this year as a result of the mess during the Iowa caucuses creating a new hybrid system where you can vote early, but you have to indicate your first, second, and third (possibly fourth) choice preferences so it fits within the caucus concept. As a result you’ve got a hybrid system that combines a ranked choice voting early voting primary and a caucus.

  67. 67.

    Another Scott

    @Martin:

    Yes, it’s an expensive state, but so much money is dumped in Iowa and NH that you could cover California.

    Citation needed.

    Thanks.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  69. 69.

    Ruckus

    Adam

    Just got home from work and read this.

    Mostly this is spot on. We are so worked up that the shit will continue that we are shooting ourselves in the crotch and it’s not pretty. We’ve lost at least 2 commenters that I know of and both of them have been here a long time and are hard core democrats. I don’t know if they will ever come back. And we need them, just like we need the rest of our side, because this is a massively important election.

    My only contention is the part about this will be determined by so few states. In a normal situation I would agree with you 100% but first, this isn’t normal and it seems a lot of people will be voting in this country that have not in the past. Second, CA’s primary is a lot sooner than it has been in the past. I think this will change the complexion of the states that follow.

    I wish that I could financially support a lot more people but the reality is that while that may be what’s needed and helpful, but I can only do so much.

  70. 70.

    Marcopolo

    @Adam L Silverman: Honestly, the caucuses are supposed to be over at noon.  If there is huge turnout I’m not sure they’ll hit that mark.  But we’ll see.  And as I’ve said here before, at some point we will have a nominee so worrying too much about any one thing is probably a waste of time.

  71. 71.

    Betty Cracker

    @Martin: I think FL has the better claim, tbh. We’ve got East and West Coast urban elites, a yahoo interior, large immigrant populations, old folks, young folks, rich folks, poor folks, significant black population, etc. Plus, cheaper media market and a true swing state, so a better sandbox for the general election.

  72. 72.

    Anya

    @mad citizen: @mad citizen:  I’ve noticed that he’s lost a significant weight but the hair didn’t register with me. I guess he thought he was away from tv for a long time that no one will notice. I am still not sure if he got a hair piece though?

  75. 75.

    Steeplejack (phone)

    @Immanentize:

    Doom II?! I loved that game. (Dating myself.) Do you have enough control on the tiny keyboard or whatever to keep up with fast action?

  76. 76.

    Anya

    I’ve decided that I will vote for Elizabeth Warren in the New York Dem primary regardless of her poll numbers by April 28th.

  77. 77.

    West of the Rockies

    Tulsi and Steyer should bow out.  The signal-to-noise ratio in this primary is still too much.  Their departures wouldn’t give anyone a bounce, but it might help sharpen focus a little.

  79. 79.

    Anya

    @Martin: Personally, I think Georgia or Florida should be first. Georgia because it has a big AA community but also it’s a state we need to turn blue. And it has the potential to turn blue. If Wisconsin, Georgia, PA or Ohio got the attention that Iowa and New Hampshire get every freaking presidential primary season we would be raising the awareness of the voters and increasing organizing in those states.

  81. 81.

    Ruckus

    @Martin:

    LA County has a larger population than 41 states. If it was a country it would rank 17th in population, in the world.

    It’s GDP is $700 billion, which is also larger than a number countries.

    And LA County is only around 25% of the population of the state.

  82. 82.

    Marcopolo

    @Adam L Silverman: Hey Adam, the one thing about your post I’m curious about is the idea of Presidential coat tails. We won’t know until after the election but there’s a decent possibility that coat tails will also work in the other direction.  I’m generally a low expectations kind of person but I think the grassroots are fired up enough, and we’ll have enough candidates running in enough elections that maybe, just maybe, turn out for local & state races will carry the national candidates.

    Its a theory anyway.  I’ll be happy if it pans out.

  84. 84.

    Soprano2

    Good post, thanks. Guess you’ve been reading my freakouts. I’m calmed down for a day at least.

  85. 85.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Marcopolo: The higher the turnout, the better. The popular vote win needs to be above 5% nationally, and, ideally 8%, to ensure the President doesn’t eke out another Electoral College victory while losing the popular vote.

  87. 87.

    Ruckus

    @Betty Cracker:

    Personally I think the primaries should all be on one day, just like the election. No state should be first, or last. Hell 5 time zones makes enough difference with modern communications but several months of primaries is only good for 2 things.

    1.The MSM makes all that ad money.

    2. People being discouraged about voting and participating if they go towards the end, mostly the candidates are already chosen.

  88. 88.

    Mathguy

    ”

    “Make sure everyone you know who is eligible to vote is registered to vote.”

    For me, it would be to make sure that a brother and sister, their spouses, and my parents don’t vote. Trumpkins all.

  89. 89.

    Martin

    @Another Scott: 70 million dollars just in ads in Iowa this past year. Doesn’t include town halls, ground games, etc. That was for less than 200,000 voters. That’s $350/vote.

    The same 70 million dollars would still be $15/vote in California. That’s on par with political spending per vote for the general election.

    And honestly, organizing a ground game in Iowa and New Hampshire is pretty easy. Try it in California. That’s going to look a lot more like the national election – you have major voter bases in the bay area, in LA, in San Diego, Inland Empire. Hell, the Central Valley is the size and population of Iowa and has a larger agricultural output, and doesn’t contain any of the major metropolitan areas of the state.

    It’s a wild state. We go through Iowa and New Hampshire and then argue that they aren’t representative. California is. I mean, maybe not perfectly representative, but we have an Iowa analogue, a South Carolina analogue, a Nevada analogue, and so on. All in one race. Why are we knocking out all of the candidates of color before Nevada? There are no cheap states that represent everyone. But there are singular states that do.

  90. 90.

    Marcopolo

    @Ruckus: I’d advocate for something like 5 primary days, one a month.  The first one in January would be for the 1/5 of states with the lowest pop. The next one in Feb would be the second quintile. And so on until in June the biggest states vote.  That would at least give poorer less well known candidates a chance to ramp up.

  91. 91.

    Steeplejack (phone)

    @Ruckus:

    L.A. County has a larger population than 41 states.

    That has popped up lately in my RWNJ brother’s Facebook feed, although the lurid graphics usually say 43. “If the Electoral  College goes away, L.A. County will be more powerful then 43 states!” (“The horror!” is implied.)

    Somebody commented: “One man, one vote,” but my brother’s feed is so screwy that I couldn’t tell if that was somebody snarking at him or some idiot thinking they were agreeing with him, i.e., “One [white RWNJ] man, one vote.”

  92. 92.

    Calouste

    @Ruckus: 17th ranked country in the world by population is Germany with 83 million. The whole state of California is less than half of that.

  93. 93.

    Ruckus

    @Calouste:

    That can’t be wrong, I saw it on the internet!

    May have been some other point but I did check once again before commenting. And of course I got it wrong, it’s not population it’s GDP. Los Angeles County has the 17th largest GDP, measured against the countries of the world.

  94. 94.

    dimmsdale

    Hi all, just nodding in from watching the debate. I can now safely predict that Bloomberg is toast. Too many skeletons, dragged out of the closets by ALL the other panelists, and Bloomie had nuthin substantive in response except to stand there with the egg dripping off his face. Possibly he’s not as accustomed to batting away accusations as the more practiced campaigners (though he should be)…but clearly, his money isn’t buying sh8t tonight.

    (apologies if this comment belongs on the debate thread; I’m hanging over here instead because it’s a great thread.)

  95. 95.

    Ruckus

    @Marcopolo:

    Part of the problem that we see now, and that I’ve seen many times prior is that a lot of people are not making a decision for themselves they are looking at what everyone else ahead of them does and making the same decision. That’s not a good way to choose a government. We have been spending what, a year on this already and now people are deciding based upon what everyone else is doing. If that’s the metric then we should find 12 people will to make a choice and just go with what they want. We have debates and they are usually a waste of time. We have months upon months of ads and emails every damn day telling me, well bullshit.

    We need to all vote on the same day, early mail in voting is allowed with the results given out all on the same day as election results. Election day should be a holiday, although with early and mailing voting that isn’t as important. Every citizen should be able to vote, including people who have served their time in prison. All voting is by paper ballot that is saved until there is no doubt about the outcome. The court doesn’t decide, the citizens do. We vote in the actual election all on the same day why is the primary different? No state should have oversized effect on my or your vote. No more caucuses, all individual voting. No electoral college. And while we are at it equal representation in the house. The smallest state population will set the constituent limit with every member of the house have a reasonably sized limit, rather than several times the number as we have now. Yes the house would have to be bigger. So what?

Comments are closed.