On the other hand, ideally we want a President who most people feel represents the country as a whole, and not just the nutzo wing of one of the political parties. You know, after the election there is governing, which can be hard to do if the election totally polarizes the country — Jake

Polarizing the electorate seems to be the new fad. And I think that the American voters aren't yet so tired of the partisanship and of loathing the other party that they really would want a President who seeks consensus.

Regarding Mattis in politics, it's probably helpful to remember why he resigned.

He resigned because the President wanted to withdraw a token 2,000 American troops from Syria. Too few to have any real military effectiveness and served only as a trip-wire force warning potential aggressors that an assault on the Syrian Kurds would likely kill Americans and trigger a larger war with the US. But... does the US really want to go to war against Turkey or Assad? While we could probably win such a war, would it serve any American purpose?

The President believes that it isn't America's task to straighten out Syria and make it right. (It's Syria's job.) Nor it is America's job to turn the Syrian Kurds into an American protectorate for whom we become eternally responsible. We were in Syria to help defeat ISIS, and now that ISIS no longer holds any territory and its "caliphate" has been erased from the map, that's been successfully accomplished. It probably remains as an Islamist insurgency, but the locals need to be the ones to tackle that. We don't need to become another participant in Syria's all-against-all civil war.

The United States probably needs to recognize that the current chaos in Syria is in some part America's doing, if not created then certainly exacerbated by the Obama administration's childishly idealistic support for the "Syrian rebels". All we accomplished with that one was speeding Syria's devolution into another of the Middle East's failed states. So unless we are willing to impose a solution on them, which didn't work so well in Iraq and would require hundreds of thousands of troops and countless casualties if it succeeded at all, we probably shouldn't be there.

So do the democrats really want to become the party of never-ending war in the Middle East, the successor to George W. Bush's "neoconservatives"? I'm not sure that the American voters would favor that. Especially from a democratic administration that's perceived by much of the electorate as wanting to defend Syria's borders but not America's own.

And I think that the American voters aren't yet so tired of the partisanship and of loathing the other party that they really would want a President who seeks consensus. — ssu

Good point. It seems an issue of timing. Sooner or later the polarization fad pendulum will swing in the other direction. When exactly that will happen, whether 2020 is the moment for that, I would agree is unknown.

If you are right, then the only path forward would seem to be to get more Dems to the polls. And so perhaps we should recall, Hillary got more votes than Bernie.

I'm glad I'm not the only one with these concerns.

You make good points, but you've fallen in to the trap of not addressing the question at hand, which is....

Do you want Trump to have another 6 years in office, yes or no?

If you answer yes, peace be with you, and conversation over.

If you answer no then the question is, who can beat Trump in the next election? It simply doesn't matter what some hypothetical Democratic candidate believes if they can't beat Trump.

I'm not arguing that Mattis is the only Dem who can beat Trump, or even that he is the best choice. I'm saying only that he seems a more interesting prospect than anyone I've seen mentioned as a possible Dem candidate so far.

It's entirely reasonable to point to objections anyone might have with Mattis, but if it's not Mattis, then who do the critics of Mattis have in mind? If no one specific, then you should be able to understand my concern. Who exactly is it that we Dems will put in charge of defeating Trump? As the last election should have demonstrated, it had better be somebody good.

So you realize Mattis isn't a democrat, right? (a) He's never been registered as a member of any political party; (b) He's a Hoover Institute guy who spent his pre-Trump time doing things like co-writing anti-Obama books with right-wing academics (Kori Schake). He's pretty unambiguously a neocon republican in all but name only. He shares virtually none of the values or goals of the democratic party.

It's entirely reasonable to point to objections anyone might have with Mattis, but if it's not Mattis, then who do the critics of Mattis have in mind? — Jake

A democrat, or at the very least someone who represents democratic aspirations and shares democratic values.

The story I heard on NPR, a media outlet I trust a bit more than anonymous strangers on the Internuts, that Mattis has been a life long Democrat. That could be wrong, I could have heard it wrong, these are possibilities I grant. I basically don't care, and here's why, for about the 10th time...

DO YOU WANT TO BEAT TRUMP, OR NOT, YES OR NO???

If yes, who do you propose that would have a better chance of beating Trump than Mattis? I'm entirely open to that conversation. I will admit to growing weary of the usual forum routine of "whatever somebody else says is wrong, but we have no solutions of our own to offer". That's lazy, raise your game my good fellows!

The story I heard on NPR, a media outlet I trust a bit more than anonymous strangers on the Internuts, that Mattis has been a life long Democrat — Jake

Yeah, why trust a guy who gives you several verifiable facts you can check out for yourself when you can yell at him in all-caps instead.

If yes, who do you propose that would have a better chance of beating Trump than Mattis? I'm entirely open to that conversation. — Jake

If you're interested in an open conversation then I would suggest you consider following-up on facts which as they are presented and respond to reasonable comments without turning on the caps-lock.

I will admit to growing weary of the usual forum routine of "whatever somebody else says is wrong, but we have no solutions of our own to offer". That's lazy, raise your game my good fellows! — Jake

I will admit to growing weary of the usual forum routine where I reasonably correct people on basic facts pertinent to the thread and they react unreasonably.

A democrat, or at the very least someone who represents democratic aspirations and shares democratic values. — John Doe

We did that already. We lost. So....

Who specifically? Which Democrat? Again, it doesn't matter if a candidate "represents democratic aspirations and shares democratic values" unless they can win. Who can win?

If you're interested in an open conversation then I would suggest you consider following-up on facts which as they are presented and respond to reasonable comments without turning on the caps-lock. — John Doe

It's your claim, you do the homework and present it to us. Until then I'm sticking with NPR.

I apologize for the cap locks, but you are blatantly ignoring the question of this thread..

WHO CAN WIN??

Do you want to beat Trump, or not? Why is everyone being so shy about such a simple question? What is preventing you from typing, "Yes, I want to beat Trump!!" No, it's not an obvious given, because you've not yet shared any strategy for actually winning, but have instead shared a strategy which failed only 2 years ago.

Well because it's your right as a voter to believe that some particular candidate is the most likely to win an election, or the only plausible winner, and to support that candidate 100% as the best person to put forward, on these grounds, as the nominee for your party. Personally, I think there are many excellent candidates available to the democrats. I also think you overestimate how dire the situation is for a party that won two presidential elections in a row then won the popular vote in the third election despite an historically disliked candidate, a massive October surprise, and significant foreign influence. Of course I want to beat Trump like any democrat, and I am not sure why you think this is in question.

My reason for not getting into the specific names that every reasonable observer is familiar with -- Sherrod Brown, Kamala Harris, Adam Schiff, etc. -- is that if you're reacting with such contempt to my presenting you with facts that you can verify for yourself, yet refuse to do so, I can only imagine how you'll react to a speculative discussion about potential candidates and their merits. You have obviously concluded for some strange reason that Mattis is the only plausible candidate. Strange, again, because he's not a democrat and you refuse to verify this fact because of something you heard one time on NPR.

Well because it's your right as a voter to believe that some particular candidate is the most likely to win an election, or the only plausible winner, — John Doe

Not any point I made. I'm making an argument for out of the box candidates, with Mattis being only an example. I clearly said in my opening post I don't know that much about him.

Personally, I think there are many excellent candidates available to the democrats. — John Doe

There are many candidates with solid Democrat credentials. Hillary Clinton had that out the wazoo. She lost.

I also think you overestimate how dire the situation is for a party that won two presidential elections in a row then won the popular vote in the third election despite an historically disliked candidate, a massive October surprise, and significant foreign influence. — John Doe

Trump clobbered every professional politician he encountered. All of them. Every one of them. In both parties. He didn't just beat Clinton, he beat everybody, including the media that was confidently predicting his demise up until the very end. I think you under estimate how dangerous complacency is.

Of course I want to beat Trump like any democrat, and I am not sure why you think this is in question. — John Doe

I've already explained that above. You've articulated no success strategy other than more of the same which has already failed. I accept that you are a sincere Democrat, I don't accept that you are serious about winning. And I'm saying this not so much to you personally as I am the entire Democratic Party.

s that if you're reacting with such contempt to my presenting you with facts that you can verify for yourself, yet refuse to do so — John Doe

This is a philosophy forum. Each person making a claim bears the burden for supporting their own claim. Again, I'm not going to do your homework for you, but if you present good evidence that Mattis is a Republican I will accept that conclusion. But I still want to know if he is the one who can beat Trump.

I can only imagine how you'll react to a speculative discussion about potential candidates and their merits. — John Doe

Put some on the table who you think can beat Trump and I'm all ears.

You have obviously concluded for some strange reason that Mattis is the only plausible candidate. — John Doe

I've never said anything like this, and you are now just making shit up.

I don't accept that you are serious about winning. — Jake

I don't accept that you are serious about winning if you refuse, after repeated entreaties, to do any sort of basic research on candidates you put forward for higher office.

This is a philosophy forum. Each person making a claim bears the burden for supporting their own claim. — Jake

Not when it's a basic fact about the universe. You should do your own homework.

This is a philosophy forum. Each person making a claim bears the burden for supporting their own claim. Again, I'm not going to do your homework for you, but if you present good evidence that Mattis is a Republican I will accept that conclusion. — Jake

Buddy, if you're unwilling to do your basic homework on who Jim Mattis is, his work at the Hoover Institute, his obsession with civil-military affairs being non-partisan, the role he played in helping to orchestrate the right-wing attack on Obama's deal with Iran....what's all this hogwash about "my claim" and "my homework"? You've put forward Mattis as a great candidate for the democrats. You talk as though you're interested in how to win an election and potential candidates yet you refuse to learn anything about the candidate you put forward. As I said earlier, I don't want to get into a deeper speculative conversation about the democrat's strategy in 2020 because it's been distinctly difficult and unpleasant to get you to accept basic verifiable facts about a human being that are available to you via google in less time than it takes to write a post. I can only imagine how difficult, unpleasant and time-consuming it would be to try and argue for a non-verifiable counterfactual with you when you're in attack-mode and have put this much energy into avoiding easy to look up facts.

but if you present good evidence that Mattis is a Republican I will accept that conclusion. — Jake

Not what I said. He is a life-long unaffiliated (because of his deep commitment to a non-partisan military) who has spent significant time in the right-wing institute and propaganda sphere. If you read his writing and that of his right-wing academic friends (e.g. Kori Schake) it is pretty clear where he lands on the spectrum politically (neoconservative). My evidence is you should take two seconds to google that shit.

So, I genuinely understand why some of this can be confusing. Mattis, for example, backed the Iran deal while in the Trump administration because he did not want to piss of America's allies. And his current position backing continued involvement in Syria seems reasonable because he is opposing an insanely fast withdrawal and betrayal of our allies. But I think you're mistaking this for him being a democrat. All this talk of "my homework" but it's basically on you to go read up on this and learn for yourself.

I've never said anything like this, and you are now just making shit up. — Jake

You're right, I misread. Mea culpa.

None of your analysis matters at all. You're completely ignoring the purpose of this thread, which again is...

WHO CAN BEAT TRUMP??

That's the first test any candidate has to pass. If they don't have a convincing strategy for beating Trump, nothing else they believe or say matters a bit.

I've offered Mattis as one possible interesting candidate. You've offered no alternative. That's the kind of sloppy thinking that will earn us 6 more years of Trump.

Here's an article from the Washington Post that offers speculation about possible Dem candidates for President in 2020.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2018/07/06/the-top-15-democratic-presidential-candidates-for-2020-ranked-3/?utm_term=.11fd921c59d7

Michael Bloomberg is yet again considering making a move. I'd like to hear more from him, should he ever make up his mind.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2018/07/06/the-top-15-democratic-presidential-candidates-for-2020-ranked-3/?utm_term=.11fd921c59d7

So NPR is now diving headlong in to the 2020 speculation and just did a story listing a great many possible Dem candidates, too many for me to remember or list here.

I started this thread because so far at least none of the names suggested have inspired me to jump up out of my chair and yell, "YES!" Perhaps that will change as I learn more about these folks.

Meanwhile, I now confidently predict that the best candidate the Dems can run against Trump is Dick Cheney. :smile: Ok, ok, so now I'm trolling, you got me...

We were in Syria to help defeat ISIS, and now that ISIS no longer holds any territory and its "caliphate" has been erased from the map, that's been successfully accomplished. — yazata

How typical of the arrogant and ignorant hubris that is so usual. Let's see, how many times have Americans stated (and believed) that Al Qaeda/ISIS has been successfully erased and "mission accomplished"? I count three times at least.

With this thinking, the US again snatches defeat from the jaws of victory. Has become a habit.

Al Qaeda/ISIS — ssu

Al Qaeda and ISIS aren't even allied, much less the same thing. Less racism, please.

Al Qaeda and ISIS aren't even allied, much less the same thing. Less racism, please. — frank

And whom was the leader of ISIS? Wasn't it Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi? Formerly known as the leader of the Al Qaeda in Iraq? You see The Islamic State of Iraq (ISI) was also known as al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), was the Iraqi division of al-Qaeda. And that ISI became ISIS. Yeah, perhaps ISIS and Ayman al-Zawahiri aren't now in speaking terms, but they surely come from the same root.

The roots of ISIS trace back to 2004, when the organization known as “al Qaeda in Iraq” formed. Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who was originally part of Osama bin Laden’s al Qaeda Network, founded this militant group.

The U.S. invasion of Iraq began in 2003, and the aim of al Qaeda in Iraq was to remove Western occupation and replace it with a Sunni Islamist regime.

When Zarqawi was killed during a U.S. airstrike in 2006, Egyptian Abu Ayyub al-Masri became the new leader and renamed the group “ISI,” which stood for “Islamic State of Iraq.” In 2010, Masri died in a US-Iraqi operation, and Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi took power.

Some facts please, frank.

Some facts please, frank. — ssu

You're just blowing smoke. ISIS and al qaeda arent the same thing. Grouping them together is either ignorant or racist.

When one organization emerges from another with same people in charge, be it an offshoot or not, there simply is a link. Period.

Peculiar how you find it racist.

Link, sort of. You seemed to be suggesting that they're the same.

Happy New Year, ssu.

And I think that the American voters aren't yet so tired of the partisanship and of loathing the other party that they really would want a President who seeks consensus. — ssu

This is an interesting point! It speaks to a psychopathology of the society. As sickness, it is not quickly healed by shamanistic pronouncement. You may be right, it may be civil war in a kind of semi-civil discourse (better than guns). And the wisdom of Lincoln applies: we may just have to go through it!

You may be right, it may be civil war in a kind of semi-civil discourse — tim wood

That I think is the correct term to describe it: a semi-civil (war) discourse.

Meaning that Americans can hurl obscene insults and loathing across the social media, act all warlike with few hotheads even creating up a small riot for the onlooking media before the police separates the demonstration and the counter-demonstration.

I'm not in camp who forcasts that a civil war or a semi-civil war will erupt in the US. What can happen is something equivalent to the restlessness of the 1960's. Acts of sporadic violence. Home grown terrorism by individuals or small cabals of extremists. Racial riots are a possibility, like in the Detroit or later the LA riots when a totally outrageous video of police violence finally causes a true outrage in a city where racial tensions are ready to explode. Yet these kind of events are really riots, eruptions of violence and disobiediance and not the kind of violent struggle with an objective like what you have with a civil war.

In fact a civil war needs a feeling of total hopelessness, that things won't get otherwise better. This feeling is not shared only by some estranged person that has serious mental problems, but with ordinary people that otherwise would have a "normal" life. Civil war means a total collapse of the security system: if the police dissappears from the scene, people will form militias. Civil war would mean that states truly would start declaring their independence and forming their own militaries out of their National Guard units.

And civil war means that people genuinely think that killing other people, their fellow citizens, will make the country a better place to live. That is hardly happening with Trump. Or with the next person who becomes President however progressive he or she would be.

Yet the social media seem like something similar to the Ruandan genocide will soon happen in the US.

How typical of the arrogant and ignorant hubris that is so usual. — ssu

Speaking of the devil.

And now you've got me doing it too.

I wrote: "We were in Syria to help defeat ISIS, and now that ISIS no longer holds any territory and its "caliphate" has been erased from the map, that's been successfully accomplished."

Ssu writes "How typical of the arrogant and ignorant hubris that is so usual."

You conveniently left out the next words that I wrote: "It probably remains as an Islamist insurgency, but the locals need to be the ones to tackle that. We don't need to become another participant in Syria's all-against-all civil war."

When we got involved, ISIS was a territorial state. It extended from east of Damascus to Mosul and from the Turkish to the Saudi borders. It had a government, treasury and judiciary. It occupied an area as large as most European countries ruling millions of people. It was expanding on all sides and seemed for a while there to be almost invincible, even threatening Baghdad. (Leading millions of Muslims around the world to believe that it had the favor of God and attracting thousands of foreigners who wanted to be part of the glory.)

Today that's all gone. ISIS holds no territory at all and its reputation for invincibility is finished. It's very hard for anyone to believe any longer that its fighters are God's chosen. Foreigners aren't rushing to join it, but to escape Syria and make their way back to wherever they came from (often Europe).

Certainly there are locals, in both Syria and Iraq that still support the Islamist ideology that it stood for, which isn't so different than the many other Islamist groups in Syria that pretty much comprise the "Syrian rebels". And there are inevitably going to be Syrians (and Iraqis) that support that kind of revolutionary religious fundamentalism.

But that's something for the Syrians and Iraqis to work out for themselves. The United States can't keep US military in these places until everyone changes their hearts and their minds. The US military is a fighting force, not an international social-change agency.

I think that the first rules of deploying military forces is to give them achievable objectives and an exit strategy.

If you disagree with me about that Ssu, perhaps you might want to encourage the European Union to replace the Americans. (There are only 2,000 Americans in Syria, Finland alone could easily replace them.) I'm not sure what mission those European troops would be given or what they would be expected to accomplish, but that would be Europe's decision to make.

In my view, the best candidate for the country is anybody but Trump. — Jake

I don't feel that way. The best protection the US has against Trump is his own incompetence as a head of government (as opposed to his competence as a campaigner, which was high). That's what has prevented him from achieving most of his agenda. I shudder to think what could happen with a competent extreme rightist as president. For that reason I hope Trump doesn't get driven out of office before the next election by criminal proceedings. Because if that happens, the President will be Pence, who is - from what I've heard - extreme right, yet unlike Trump, clever and competent.

Personally, I don't think Warren would win because I don't think the US is grown-up enough yet to have a female leader. I don't mean that as an insult. My own country showed back in 2010-13 that it isn't grown up enough yet for that honour either. Unlike New Zealand and Germany.

You conveniently left out the next words that I wrote: "It probably remains as an Islamist insurgency, but the locals need to be the ones to tackle that. We don't need to become another participant in Syria's all-against-all civil war." — yazata

My bad, yazata.

Yet I think it's telling that Trump's special envoy to the Middle East in the battle against ISIS resigned immediately (and Trump acted as even he didn't know him). I did mention this earlier (or was it on another thread) what he said just few days before:

"We're on track now over the coming months to defeat what used to be the physical space that ISIS controlled," McGurk told CNBC's Hadley Gamble. "That will not be the end of ISIS." "Nobody is naive," McGurk said less than a week before Trump's decision. "The small clandestine cells, the individual terrorist attacks, will remain a threat for some time. That is why we have to remain together as a global coalition to keep the pressure on."

Furthemore, just remember how basically the US armed forces won Al Qaeda by the "Sunni Awakening" and basically backed another insurgents than Al Qaeda and truly got the Sunni's on their side. But then the US withdrew and what did the Shia regime do in Iraq? Broke every promise that Americans had done, jailed the Sunni vice-prime minister and continued sectarian policies that basically then lead to ISIS to emerge.

But the argument that "now it's time for the locals to do their share" is somewhat lacking. Just like if the US would retreat from Afghanistan and "leave it to the locals", how do you think history will see that if then in a couple of years the Taliban retakes Afghanistan?

That's actually what happened to the Soviets. Once they withdrew, it took (if I remember correctly) several years for the insurgents to overthrow the Pro-Soviet Najibullah regime. And then the country fell into anarchy and finally Pakistan got involved with a certain Proxy Group called "the students".

Personally, I don't think Warren would win because I don't think the US is grown-up enough yet to have a female leader. — andrewk

Well, we did just elect a black man, twice, who remains pretty popular with quite a few Americans.

I believe we could elect a woman, but a woman would face more challenges than a man, and thus she'd have to have more personal skill than Hillary Clinton, who herself was honest enough to admit she's not really a great campaigner.