Our Next President?

[EJ]

Can an anti-FIRE Economy candidate possibly win?

[thriftyandboringinohio]

Re: Our Next President?

Can an anti-FIRE Economy candidate possibly win?

Nope.

[seobook]

Re: Our Next President?

A crash would have to happen first.

Also, I forgot you interviewed her long ago. My memory might be fuzzy here, but I thought you promoted Brown in the election way back in the day. You sounded fond of him in this thread.

[EJ]

Re: Our Next President?

A crash would have to happen first.

Also, I forgot you interviewed her long ago. My memory might be fuzzy here, but I thought you promoted Brown in the election way back in the day. You sounded fond of him in this thread.

To clarify, not promoting Warren. I have mixed feelings about her. Asking if it's possible for a presidential candidate to win who takes such a strong anti-finance and insurance industry position. Brown ran a shabby, lazy campaign. Warren ran circles around him.

[thriftyandboringinohio]

Re: Our Next President?

To clarify, not promoting Warren. I have mixed feelings about her. Asking if it's possible for a presidential candidate to win who takes such a strong anti-finance and insurance industry position. Brown ran a shabby, lazy campaign. Warren ran circles around him.

Senator Warren would be a great president, whip smart and hard working.
But it seems the victory of FIRE is essentially complete now.
The Citizens United environment allows unlimited amounts of untraceable money to be spent on elections, and FIRE has more money than can be imagined.
Senator Warren has been fully vilified by right wing media since 2011, and would seem to stand no realistic chance of being elected to national office.

I would be delighted to find myself wrong on this one.

[geodrome]

Re: Our Next President?

Perhaps FIRE and Warren can reach a "compromise".

[jk]

Re: Our Next President?

Senator Warren would be a great president, whip smart and hard working.
But it seems the victory of FIRE is essentially complete now.
The Citizens United environment allows unlimited amounts of untraceable money to be spent on elections, and FIRE has more money than can be imagined.
Senator Warren has been fully vilified by right wing media since 2011, and would seem to stand no realistic chance of being elected to national office.

I would be delighted to find myself wrong on this one.

i agree with you in a way. however, even in the unlikely event she would get elected she would face a hostile congress on BOTH sides of aisle.

[BK]

Re: Our Next President?

Sorry - I believe Elizabeth Warren lacks to charisma of Presidents Obama, Bush (both), Trump.

The masses like to be sold and follow a charismatic leader. Every top elected leader has an ability to mesmerize a crowd in their own way.

Reading a great book of Nazi Germany and Hitler had the special sauce to mesmerize the crowd. The Elites of Germany loved Hitlers oratory skill and figured to use him as a puppet to manipulate the masses. Hillary Clinton did not/does not have the ability to mesmerize and was able to win lots of states with her platform/resume, but not enough to secure the office.


Just my theory and I may be completely wrong. Take a look at Elizabeth Warren drinking beer on Instagram which comes across as an awkward way to relate to voters.
Then take a look at Ann Richardson (Democrat) former Governor of Texas https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wtIFhiqS_TY

I think Ann Richardson had the special sauce and perhaps would have become President if alive today.

[jpatter666]

Re: Our Next President?

Can an anti-FIRE Economy candidate possibly win?

It was possible in 2016. Not now.

The reactionaries are in charge and Warren isn't seen as a radical alternative anymore. She missed her window IMO.

The DNA testing did her no favors either as per the Trump tweet. https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/...240896/photo/1

I think whomever is the Democratic candidate might well campaign as anti-FIRE, but I'm expecting it to be an unholy alliance under the covers. Warren actually was (at least she was then in 2010 -- I haven't looked at her closely recently).

[lakedaemonian]

Re: Our Next President?

I think Warren is unelectable in a similar way to Howard Dean and his “Dean Scream” in 2004.

Dean could argue his was the first campaign to effectively leverage the internet for campaigning.

But one gaffe and the opposition pounce ruthlessly.

Warren has had a few gaffes already and completely lacks the charisma to connect with large audiences.

But I believe she has the right mindset and the ability to connect one to one and one to some, just not one to many.

I could see here as a very potent running mate, but would she defer to another?

[jpatter666]

Re: Our Next President?

I could see here as a very potent running mate, but would she defer to another?

Now that's a very good question.

[shiny!]

Re: Our Next President?

Perhaps a good follow-up question is: Even if an anti-FIRE candidate DID manage to beat the odds and get elected, could s/he actually get anything accomplished given how FIRE interests have so successfully taken over our political and economic systems? I would bet on massive, generated hysteria over anything and everything they would attempt to do.

[vt]

Re: Our Next President?

"You didn't build that" Warren would be a disaster.

We do however need a much smaller FIRE that provides what the financial sector needs, but with all of the corruption and excessive costs
carved out of it. You are seeing more of that with top teams leaving wirehouses and becoming lower fee managers and financial planner RIAs

The big banks will be massively downsized by Amazon, Square, and other innovators.

The insurance industry will need to jettison all the useless variable annuity scams, and trim down to life and disability coverage.

The real estate industry will also be massively eroded by technology and new innovative solutions. 90%
of the 1 million plus real estate agents will have to find other jobs.

All this will be led by an independent party led by a charismatic leader that will capture enough votes to win, and begin the
process of replacing the two corrupt parties we have now. It will be a revolution of the center, totally inclusive, free competitive markets,
and bring back a much larger middle class.

[dcarrigg]

Re: Our Next President?

i agree with you in a way. however, even in the unlikely event she would get elected she would face a hostile congress on BOTH sides of aisle.

I'm not sure that's true. I've said it before, but the last time Republicans held as many federal and state offices as 2016 was 1928. An as in 1930 (although a bit smaller in magnitude, Dems gained 52 in 1930 and 41 in 2018), a large shift happened in 2018, not just in terms of numbers of seats won, but also in terms of the ideology of people who won those seats. There are 26 new members of the progressive caucus in the House of Reps as of today, bringing the total to 95 out of 235. That's quite near the tipping point of majority of Democrats in the house. They're bigger than the New Democrats now (the biggest difference between a New Dem and a Progressive is probably friendliness to FIRE), and the Blue Dog caucus is down to about 24. Just as in 1930, the Senate stayed in Republican hands. And like back then, the next two (the 2020 and 2022) Senate maps are unfavorable to Republicans.

Oh, I don't doubt the Senate will be the stumbling point, as it usually is. But we're late in the expansion in volatility land. We've got a President who already has shitcanned over 400 of his own appointees just 2 years in, and who's under the most serious investigation probably at least since Watergate. And we've got a background milieu of both accelerating political polarization and accelerating inequality. Thanks to the 2018 election, it doesn't seem too far off in the tails of probability to me that the Progressives pick up another 20 or 30 seats in the House on the coattails of a Presidential wave election in 2020. If that happens, the new speaker's going to be ideologically somewhere between Pelosi and AOC, and Hoyer's going to lose his position. Put plainly, the House would look nothing like the 2008 House. It doesn't even look like it today.

Like I said before, the Senate's stickier. But a President Warren might end up with a much friendlier House than you'd think. And even in the Senate, the most Conservative Democratic Senators on economic issues like Claire McCaskill (MO), Heidi Heitkamp (ND), and Joe Donnelly (IN) lost. Only Manchin held on. Think about that. The Dems only lost with their most Conservative economic candidates. Claire McCaskill lost campaigning against a minimum wage increase on the same ballot that won. Now, it's possible all this means nothing in the tea leaves. But I don't think so. I think it reflects an electorate that's changing. I think the moment the Washington Consensus cracked was 2016 when both Trump and Clinton were campaigning against TPP.

I strongly suspect that 2020 is not going to be a squeaker decided by Ohio or something. It could be. But I don't think so. I think we're looking at a disjunctive president on the eve of a realignment. Maybe that happens in 2024 and not 2020. But I doubt it. Domestically, a generational shift is occurring. For the first time in a generation, Fox News is not the number one cable news channel any more. Turnout in 2018 absolutely smashed records, highest in a midterm in a hundred years. This is not the type of thing that happens before another textbook humdrum Presidential election.

Plus, for the first time in half a century, I think there's a more or less concrete policy platform on the left that's leaking into the larger Dem party, and the Right is pretty much out of ideas. Not much more top bracket or corporate tax cutting to be had. Nobody wants the damned flat or fair tax; nobody's even trying to push that crap anymore. Nobody really has the stomach for tossing grandma off her Medicare. Border wall's kind of a sideshow, but whatever, wasting a couple billion for a goofy fence won't hurt any more than wasting a couple billion on some viaducts in Afghanistan that get blown up two years later. They've all but given up on having a healthcare plan of any kind.

Meanwhile, foreign policy's in shambles. UK's prepping for a hard brexit crashout. Italy and Brazil have all but gone fascist. China's grinding to some sort of a slowdown. Russia's more likely to try to absorb Belarus to create a real Union State and keep Putin in power under a new constitution. Incidentally, this move totally surrounds Ukraine. And US' soft power has been roughly dismantled, while Lord knows what's happening on the strategic hard power front. Long story short, odds are Uncle Sam's largely sitting this one out.

So anyways, who knows what will happen in the Primary. There's so many people rumored to be running, I can't keep track of them all. It's gonna go sequential as always, but the rules have changed a lot. In about 13 mos we'll have Iowa, then New Hampshire, then presumably a long three week wait to South Carolina. Warren could out-perform in NH. Not sure how she'll do in IA. But there will be so many people, it's going to come down to pluralities and whatnot. And New England punches above its weight in Democrat primaries, it's worth more delegates than Texas even though it's half the population. So combined with the timing, a strong showing there can be decisive. It's not necessarily. But it can be. Important thing is showing 'momentum,' even if you don't win outright, doing better in NH than you did in IA sets up that whole 'comeback kid' narrative.

It's all odds and I don't even know what the field looks like yet. But it doesn't seem so implausible to me as it does to some others here.

[vt]

Re: Our Next President?

FIRE will be totally tamed by a renegade within the industry who teams up with technology and business innovators.

The alliance of Buffett, Bezos, and Dimon will be a huge aid to the business process, but will not be a part of the political
leadership.

This will likely happen in the next two presidential cycles.