Harris, Warren, Booker, Gillibrand to launch 2020 campaigns 'in next few weeks' - Polidicks

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/29/us/politics/2020-democratic-candidates-kamala-elizabeth-warren.html Senator Kamala Harris of California is eyeing Baltimore or Atlanta as a possible base of operations for her likely 2020 presidential bid and is close to bringing on a top aide to run her campaign. Elizabeth Warren, the Massachusetts senator, has completed a detailed review of her writings and political record to identify potential vulnerabilities, and her aides have been scouting headquarters near Boston. Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey has been interviewing possible campaign managers, as well as strategists who could run his Iowa caucus effort. And Senator Kirsten Gillibrand has been reaching out to more women than men for campaign roles, though she is expected to pick a man — her current top aide — to manage a campaign likely to be based near her upstate New York home. These four high-profile Democratic senators are poised to enter the 2020 presidential race in the next several weeks, advisers and people briefed by their associates say, after spending December finalizing the outlines of their political operations, selecting top campaign staff and conducting research into their own political weak spots. In some cases, they may first announce the creation of presidential exploratory committees to ramp up their fund-raising and hiring efforts, before launching their candidacies more formally in the following weeks. “Between the first of January and the middle of February, it would not surprise me for us to see six to eight people say, ‘I’m jumping in,’” said Jaime Harrison, a former South Carolina Democratic Party chairman who now serves as associate chairman of the Democratic National Committee. He said he has heard in recent weeks from an assortment of likely candidates, including several senators and mayors. For the Senate foursome, moving quickly into the race is also a pre-emptive effort to undercut the early advantages of a duo of universally known contenders, former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who may enter the race in the coming months. Mr. Biden and Mr. Sanders would start off with important advantages, including existing networks of support among early-state activists and party donors, and the stature to generate impressive displays of support at early rallies. Elizabeth Warren has also just dropped 'For MA' from her Twitter handle, because: https://youtu.be/XO7JGfqPB0s?t=177

Shame the whole Native American thing happened, she'd be the number two pick besides Bernie if that didn't hurt her general chances.

Also, the first debate is in six months! This thing is gonna get going faster than people realise, I think, and the decision time for people like Beto is getting pretty close http://time.com/5485673/democrats-presidential-primary-debates-2019/

Eww. Those are the exact names I didn’t want to see running.

I'd vote for Kamela, but I still want Bernie.

Why?

Warren is the best option there. Pragmatic, smart, busts balls and wants to put the corporate wing to the sword. She's also highly intelligent and a life long Progressive.

Unfortunately her not endorsing Bernie in 2016 has soured her a bit to Bernie supporters, and she played into Trump's hands and looked like an idiot.

What's wrong with Kamala Harris?

So it’s begins, very soon...

I like Liz a lot but she's too overly coached and she often listens to the know-nothing Democratic strategists who think running to the center is a winning strategy. The other three are forgettable corporate hacks.

https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/109818/2c7d4cfd-f57b-42b7-b803-d645b7f18d1e/chrome_2018-12-30_19-29-16.png Her name. (I have no idea who she is.)

Pragmatism is recognizing that a good public presence matters in American politics. Is it superficial? Yes. Is it how politics should be done? No. But it's the reality of things, and in that respect, Warren does not have the weight to carry a candidacy

Her progressive credentials are fuzzy at best. She's politically savvy enough to hop on board the left's popular ideas but my problem is I simply don't believe her conviction over somebody like Bernie who's been fighting for the same positions for 40 years. She also didn't prosecute Steve Mnuchin when she was AG of California and he was illegally foreclosing homes when he ran OneWest Bank. Turns out he also donated to her campaign. Yeah.

I really want Beto run even though he might not be the best candidate (lack of experience), he'd be valuable to have up there and maybe he will turn out to be the best

Beto looked amazing next to the hobgoblin that is Cruz, but in reality is basically more of the same as Obama, corporate dem with tons of charisma. I like him as a person and was rooting for him to win but he's going to end up as maintaining the status quo I think.

Yea, That’s why he lose to Cruz for getting hard left-wing voters enough to win but oddly enough ‘Mainstream’ media (except Fox News) are still pretending he somehow still thing despite his loss.

Lack of experience? he's been in politics for over 13 years and an involved in nonprofits/NGOs before that. Also if lack of political experience should discredit candidates why do republican rich dudes with zero political experience or competence are able to run and get elected Nothing points to Beto not having the competence to run.

The first people to launch their campaigns are always the first to drop out.

For me, its Bernie or Ojeda. Warren is too easy to get a rise out of over minor shit and the others are oppurtunists or neoliberal hacks.

Mr. Biden ... would start off with important advantages, including existing networks of support among early-state activists and party donors, and the stature to generate impressive displays of support at early rallies. I thought Biden said he wouldn't be running?

Well More specifically I don’t like the policies their respective states may bring to the federal stage. Harris because she’s from California which is a neoliberal parody and an affront to everything I believe would be good for New Hampshire. Admittedly I don’t know much about Harris herself, but generally from the policies I’ve seen, Californian politicians have a terrible habit of trying to look like their solving social issues without actually addressing any of them in any meaningful way. Also while writing, I just scrolled down and saw this: Wow she’s way worse than I thought. Fuck that. Booker because New Jersey is notoriously corrupt. EDIT: but apparently not as corrupt as California. Warren is probably the one I have biggest issue with because I get a front row seat to see the garbage that goes on in Massachusetts and don’t want any part of it. For some time (I want to say possibly around the Bush administration?) it was speculated in local media that she may have claimed to have minority status with Native American heritage for personal benefit at Harvard. That blew up in her face. Gun legislation in Massachusetts is literally the worst in the country due to the current attorney general. I have friends in law enforcement there, and they’re saying things are so convoluted that they’re not sure which weapons are legal to practice with while off duty. Even worse, nothing is even really codified into law because they’re just declaring what’s legal or illegal via an “enforcement notice” which is mostly subjective. It almost makes assault weapons bans look sane in comparison. Of course she’s perfectly fine with all of this despite several pending lawsuits. From what I can tell, she seems to be going the same route as Martha “technically it’s not illegal to be illegal in Massachusetts” Coakley in terms of immigration reform. By that I mean by selectively enforcing laws as the solution and not doing anything to address the root cause. Basically I think they’re all going to be reskins of the same old neoliberal bullshit when compared to either Beto O’Rourke or Bernie Sanders.

No Ojeda. Ojeda is just anti-establishment. He voted for Trump because he thought it would bring coal jobs, and called him the lesser of two evils. And now all of a sudden he's tagging every Bernie-esque policy onto himself like the Green New Deal because of how it would provide job training to coal workers. So all of a sudden he's to the left of even Hillary on coal jobs, who advocating for job training too. A truly anti-establishment person would've voted 3rd party or a write-in easily over the billionaire corporate CEO that has exploited working people all his life. He can say he regretted it, but at this point I don't even know if I should trust that he even voted for Trump and it wasn't just something he said for his district, either way I see massive judgement problems. If you want someone with actual credit to economic populism that would sell himself well to the midwest and rural, then you pick Sherrod Brown. Not Ojeda.

Ojeda voted for Trump, he will never win the primary and rightfully so.

I'd take Bernie with Warren as his running mate.

Except he voted for Bernie in the Primary and then voted against Hillary after that due to primary bullshit going for the Democrats. And as for job training, his reasoning is that the job training was for jobs that don't exist in his state so it would only fuel the downward spiral its in. There was no Green New Deal until after Trump was elected so it would've been more of Obama's policies which gave job training for jobs that didn't exist in many states and still don't. As for judgement, I feel like one vote doesn't suddenly disqualify him when he was and has been fighting for Unions since he took office and joined the Teacher's Union strike before it was popular or a big story.

Bernie is too old. Democrats really need some younger presidential candidates amongst the democrats. Sad to see there arent many good picks.

She's a really bad choice. Not only would is she a relatively milquetoast politician at the end of the day, she's implicated in russia influence operations, whether correctly or not that's a bad mark. She's had a scandal around her heritage that she fumbled and made look even worse than she would have done by ignoring the whole thing. She's a divisive figure on the right, and that's not something the US needs right now. Tulsi Gabbard should run.

Her foreign policy is too conservative to be able to win the primary, she's as big a hawk as a Republican.

And most of the big democrat names are just the same old corporate stooges who will go to war for the sake of a war time economy if the military industrial complex gets its way, so in all it's a big shit shoot. Fair point about her policy though. Bernie's alright but he's not going to court the moderates enough and he'll be sabotaged by the media for his age harder than we can really imagine. I really don't know who could even generate enough goodwill to upend Trump at this point, all of the popular faces of the democratic party are either unappealing for their lack of ideology and corporate connections, or unappealing for their ideology that completely fails to speak to the moderate and moderate rights they'd need to overcome the dysfunction of the EC in a general election period.