dave
dave
Beto is running for vice-president.
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nitinkhanna
nitinkhanna

I know @dave doesn't reply on here (or anywhere for that matter), so I'm just going to put this here that I agree with him. As an outsider to US politics who can't vote, the only thing I see is someone who failed to win at local politics going national, which means he's hoping to fail and something else to come for him, in this case Veep.

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manton
manton

@nitinkhanna I think "failed to win" doesn't fully capture what happened in 2018. As a grassroots movement his campaign was very successful at helping other local races, even if it came up short electing Beto himself. We'll see what happens!

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nitinkhanna
nitinkhanna

@manton yeah, I have zero visibility into what happened at the grassroots level and didn't quite follow his campaign real time. Just the first thought that came to me.

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manton
manton

@nitinkhanna Yep, I think "you didn't win before, how will you win now?" is a valid question and will be an early story in the news. Luckily there are some good answers.

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JohnPhilpin
JohnPhilpin

@nitinkhanna oh my ... welcome to the quotes page - CLASSIC!!

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nitinkhanna
nitinkhanna

@manton looking forward to those :)

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nitinkhanna
nitinkhanna

@JohnPhilpin hah! That looks like a neat collection of quotes! :D

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JohnPhilpin
JohnPhilpin

@nitinkhanna my take .. spoiler alert ... despite what I titled the post, I write;

”Personally, much as I like him, he isn’t going to win the Democratic nomination … much less the Presidential race. Which means that we are wasting an excellent member of The Senate.”

... as @manton says, the back story is powerful ... but my short piece on the click through is really about a bigger picture - and what Beto could have done. Oh well.

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dixonge
dixonge

@nitinkhanna the early GOP talking point is that he couldn’t even beat Cruz. But the last full-term Democrat Senators in Texas were Lloyd Bentsen, elected 1971, and LBJ, elected 1949. Getting within 3% of an incumbent Republican was an amazing feat!

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dixonge
dixonge

@nitinkhanna also, he won city council and US House races. That’s local.

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smokey
smokey

@nitinkhanna To build on what @manton and @mexpat have said, the electorate for President of the United States is significantly different from the electorate for United States Senator from Texas, so the fact that he couldn’t beat an incumbent Senator in a “traditionally” deep red state doesn’t mean he can’t win in a purple country (although obviously the GOP will try to argue that).

That sort of criticism is more applicable to the group of people floating Stacey Abrams to run against David Perdue for Georgia’s Senate seat next election—if she couldn’t beat a racist crook in one statewide election (Governor), how is she going to beat a less despicable incumbent Senator? (That said, having her on the ballot at all will likely help Democratic candidates in other in-state races, just as both she in GA and Beto in TX did in the last elections.)

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smokey
smokey

@JohnPhilpin The US Senate was the greatest tragedy of the 2018 election, and almost no one seems to notice/care, since “the Democrats control the House!”

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khurtwilliams
khurtwilliams

@nitinkhanna I'm a US citizen and STILL and outsider to these "The Voice" style popularity contests. I live in New Jersey. It always goes blue regardless of my choice on the ballot. For me voting is just a formality at this point.

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JohnPhilpin
JohnPhilpin

@khurtwilliams your vote might be a formality ... it you can still help. I am not a citizen so can’t vote, I live in the SF Bay Area so even if I could my vote would be largerly symbolic .. that said at th last election I spent time on the canvas trail in The Central Valley working for a candidate, essentially going door to door. We won ... extraordinarily narrow win ... it took around three weeks to declare, but we won and took a seat in th House.

It wasn’t just me ... of course ... but it isn’t just me if I vote.

The most gratifying thing? Actually .. not the win ... it was talking to people on the door steps of their houses ... who were thanking us for coming down to help make a difference.

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JohnPhilpin
JohnPhilpin

@smokey ther is no doubt that the mainstream media report the news as if winning the presidency is a winner takes all .. might explain El Presidente’s view of course .. in fairness winning the Senate back in 18 was always going to be hard and the Texas result reveals the truth of the populations position .... that said, if there’s a few in the political class that understand this and are playing strategically ... and can act united ... it can be done ... my worry is that the dems are not focused on the big picture. All those people on the ticket ... with ‘old man biden’ in the lead without even declaring is taking those people out of other races ... Beto being the major example ... and don’t get me started on the Governerships and States .. where the ‘pubs have been focused for 30 if not 40 years ... and we know the importance of the states.

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nitinkhanna
nitinkhanna

@khurtwilliams that is the weirdness which I don't understand. If it's true for you, and you're happy with your economic situation, you'll never move, which means you'll get a chance to turn a red place blue, or vice versa (I don't know how you vote). But the same is true for most people. They won't get up and move just because their vote matters less. I guess what I'm saying is - the electoral college is a stupid idea.

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In reply to
smokey
smokey

@JohnPhilpin I wasn’t counting on winning back the Senate in 18, but just somehow holding the line so that convincing only 1 or 2 Republicans to grow a conscience for a single vote could stop disastrous legislation/appointments—but in spite of the “Blue Wave” the Democrats lost ±2 seats, so now it requires convincing 4 or 5…. But, yes, the Democratic Party needs a lot more strategic and long-range thinking than it seems capable of :-(

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bradenslen
bradenslen

@smokey @JohnPhilpin For the last 30 years a coalition of conservative elements (Republicans, Conservative Evangelical Christians, Conservative talk shows, corparatist industrialists, etc) have been buying up small commercial radio stations, then adding repeater stations to spread their message and brainwashing people. At the same time, the Republican Party has been working on a state level in a concerted effort to win statehouses and thus the right to gerrymander congressional districts.

Meanwhile, the Democratic Party alternates between herding cats or forming circular firing squads.

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JohnPhilpin
JohnPhilpin

@bradenslen re circular firing squads ... at least if they all faced outwards you could understand it ....

I need to research more ... but ‘tw’il that Richard Nixon introduced the idea of a UBI which got turndinto a bill . which progressed through House and Senate and the Dems killed it because it ‘wasn’t enough’ ....

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