First declared 2020 presidential candidate is someone I could support
He doesn't stand a legitimate chance, in addition to not being a perfect candidate, but if by some chance he did win I think he'd be the best president this country has had in generations.
Democrat Richard Ojeda may have lost his bid for Congress in West Virginia's 3rd Congressional District but the man who's been called "JFK with tattoos and a bench press" announced he still has plans to run -- for president.
Ojeda filed his 2020 bid Sunday with the Federal Election Commission.
...
Trump, who has called Ojeda "stone cold crazy," remains popular in West Virginia's third district, an area considered the heart of Trump country...
"If I'm stone-cold crazy because I have a hard time going to sleep at night because we have kids that go to bed hungry, then I'll be stone-cold crazy, and I'm OK with that," Ojeda told ABC News.
Unlike Trump, and the phony right-wing populists around the world, Ojeda is an authentic populist. What's more, he speaks in the language of New Deal Democrats, and I think that's HUGE.
Almost as important, Ojeda has listened to what people are actually saying.
Ojeda’s case for his candidacy is straightforward: The Democratic Party has gotten away from its roots, and he has a unique ability to win over a white, black, and brown working-class coalition by arguing from a place of authority that Trump is a populist fraud. He’s launching his campaign with an anti-corruption focus that draws a contrast with Trump’s inability to “drain the swamp.”His authority — and one of his greatest liabilities — would come, in part, from his own previous support of Trump in the 2016 general election. After backing Sen. Bernie Sanders in the primary, Ojeda refused to support Hillary Clinton, seeing her as an embodiment of the party’s drift toward the elite.
...
As a state senator, Ojeda led a push to legalize medical marijuana and played a central role in this year’s teacher walkouts that resulted in a rare pay increase for educators. In his congressional race, he ran on a thoroughly pro-labor, progressive platform despite the partisan lean of the district, framing issues as pitting people against corrupt, out-of-touch elites. He focused heavily on the role of Big Pharma in sparking the opioid epidemic.
If this guy isn't better than anyone the establishment is likely to endorse, then I'm missing something.
Comments
The field is still open
link
I llike Mr or Ms. OftheAbove a whole lot better than I like
I
center right Democrats.
I like Ojeda, too.
broad support from party's base - as if they give a damn
If I had Trump, the traditional field of useless Democrats & Republicans, and Ojeda, I would support him too. Wouldnt it be interesting if he ran as a Republican?
"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."--Napoleon
From what I saw of Ojeda
in Michael Moore's recent film, I would say, as a leftist pacifist socialist, count me in. I would vote for him. I welcome the fact that he is a veteran of our horseshit wars as a positive, given his anger about poverty and drug abuse in our country. I say, yes!
More Ojeda less Hillary
We have to keep up the momemntum of getting beyond partisanship and division with inclusive candidates like Ojeda and Beto and Ocasio Cortez. The Clintonites want more partisanship and disdain for the "Deplorables" etc. I was reading some headlines on Google News this morning about Hillary planning to run. Why doesn't she understand how harmfully divisive she is and go away for the good of all.
Beware the bullshit factories.
Because, unfortunately, the
"good of all" does not matter to most politicians.
dfarrah
Beto is a member of the New Democrat Coalition, just like DWS;
He was also charged with attempted robbery, DUI and insider trading.
Not a fan.
Moreover, more Ojeda, less Hillary is not what the PTB of the Dem Party seem to want, to put it mildly.
very true
It would take a small miracle for him to still be in contention by Super Tuesday.
However, if he managed that then LOOK OUT!
@HenryAWallace He also admitted voting
He also admitted voting for Trump.
"Polls don't tell us how well a candidate is doing; Polls tell us how well the media is doing." ~ Me
Gawd! Even I never would have guessed that.
@HenryAWallace Are we going to use his
Are we going to use his candidacy to build a movement?
If we do, will that movement have a larger purview than just running candidates, raising money for candidates,knocking on doors, etc.? Because there are multiple organizations already dedicated to doing all those things. There are the ones that were invented fifteen years ago, the one that was invented ten years ago (which I think is mostly defunct) and the ones that were invented two years ago.
If he loses, probably due to chicanery or more oppressive crap handed down from the party leadership, will our putative movement maintain the infrastructure, the connections that we made through his candidacy, or are those going to disappear?
If he wins, and starts mysteriously supporting the same policies that have been promoted by both parties since at least the nineties, what will we do?
Given the political history of the last twenty years or so in the United States, these are questions that need to be answered--in addition, of course, to the question of how to deal with election fraud when the legal system clearly doesn't want to deal with it.
EDIT: Now that I've read through the comments, I'm not sure we'd want to build a movement around this guy, but I think my questions still stand--about any presidential candidate.
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
@HenryAWallace That bunch of questions
That bunch of questions was not intended to be a response to you, HAW; sorry.
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
I'm not sure...
...that I want Ojeda as President, but I welcome him into the primary field. In 2016 we had the "it's my turn" lady screeching that "you'll never have single payer, period" versus Sanders patiently shifting the Overton window.
This election I'm looking forward to a reasonable number of candidates having fact-based discussions about progressive issues, rather than one big meta-debate about whether we should even mention progressive issues.
I would trade Joe Manchin for Ojeda in a heartbeat. Looks like West Virginia's other Senator, Shelley Moore Capito, is up for reelection in 2020. I sort of wish Ojeda had targeted that seat instead.
"The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function." -- Albert Bartlett
"A species that is hurtling toward extinction has no business promoting slow incremental change." -- Caitlin Johnstone
Me too
And then, hopefully, all the more real candidates will consolidate behind the eventual challenger to the establishment.
Beware the bullshit factories.
Another mouthpiece to be red-baited out of existence.
Mark my words. The pigs will make sure this guy never gets any traction, and even if he does, he'll Andrew Gillum'd, platform walk back and all. Yeah, I said it.
Modern education is little more than toeing the line for the capitalist pigs.
Guerrilla Liberalism won't liberate the US or the world from the iron fist of capital.
I posted about this guy a month ago...
and it wasn't very flattering.
Quite frankly, I don't care if Michael Moore thinks he's great. I don't listen to "celebrity endorsements" anymore. As far as what this guy is saying, I heard the same gushing about AOC, who turned out to be another phony. But at least AOC is pretending to be a socialist. This guy is one of the career military officers that the DNC has embraced. Yeah, I get that he's not a CIA Dem, he's a grunt. But, how about the lefties put someone out there who says "we spend way too much on the military", "we fight way to many wars of aggression". I am tired of "thanking people for their service" when the service is to destroy third world countries for the benefit of Wall St and multinational corporations.
Sorry, I don't think I want to support this guy.
I’d missed that post
Thanks arendt. I looked him up to see what the excitement is about. Found he is:
- very pro military (campaigns in army fatigues)
- against single payer (wants to prop up ACA and add public option) - says single payer “takes away healthcare choice”
- ironically, anti-choice on reproductive healthcare (Says he is “not for abortion” - but if a woman is raped should not have to “carry the seed” if she doesn’t want to.”
- pro coal, bigly. Mimics Obama’s all-of-the-above strategy — while supporting coal we can also develop renewables.
Many other issues he’s simply dodged taking any position on.
But those were enough for me. Giving up on addressing climate change, stopping or scaling back the wars, single payer healthcare, and reproductive rights... what on earth has he done that’s so great it’s worth giving up all of those issues? At this early juncture no less. I’m mystified what’s supposed to be so wonderful about him.
"campaigns in army fatigues"
That's real close to the edge. Active military are forbidden from political campaigning. Being former military, and wearing only fatigues, which anyone can purchase from a surplus store is basically mocking the civilian side of government.
Who does this guy think he is, Mussolini? I don't want people campaigning in fatigues. It shows disrespect to the Constitution.
"A scary asshole". Heh. Well hey, he's a democrat, of the
democratic war party. Actually, a Trump democrat as you point out.
Here's WSWS,
"However, his interview with Richard Ojeda, Democratic Party politician, West Virginia State Senator and candidate for Congress, is another sham. Ojeda is a capitalist politician and former Army officer, who boasts on his website about the years he spent “fighting the war on terror” and serving “alongside the bravest men and women I have ever met.” Needless to say, Moore doesn’t question Ojeda about the bloody US-led wars the filmmaker claims to oppose."
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2018/09/21/fahr-s21.html
Dude looks like a gung ho skinhead warmonger too. The war OF terror would certainly continue under him.
As for Moore, right. Moore endorsed Clinton, he's a partisan thru and thru. Nuff said.
Let's say all of the criticisms of Ojeda are true
Let's concede all of that.
I still stand by my statement:
Compare him to Trump, Obama, Bush/Cheney, Clinton, Bush, Reagan.
He doesn't look so bad compared to that list.
Nor does he look bad compared to Hillary and Biden.
Is there a lot of room for improvement? Yep. But then I think that there is a lot more nuance in his positions than portrayed (for instance, the supporters of his opponent claimed that Ojeda was NOT pro-coal).
Well, maybe it would have been better
if we hadn't said anything and let you paint him as the next coming of whatever. "The best president in generations". Right. You could have presented a more balanced view.
Have you missed all the LOTE discussion on this board?
LOTE = Lesser of Two Evils.
I do not understand your being OK with this guy. He is as far from a "leftie" as I can imagine. We've had 25 years of Clintonian/Obaman "campaign left, govern right". And this guys "left" is pretty flawed.
The idea that someone who has never been in government, or anywhere near the legal profession for his entire life, could be "the best president in generations" leaves me absolutely baffled. He, even more than Trump, would be eaten in a single bite by the Deep State - of which he is already a servant.
@arendt No, it's just that
No, it's just that some people on this board believe in LOTE voting as long as those lesser evils are not Clinton/Bush Democrats. Or at least, seem not to be so--it's legitimately hard to tell who is and who isn't, these days, especially since non-Clinton/Bush Democrats are liable to magically become Clinton/Bush Democrats once they attain a certain level of success.
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
Saw him on some news program prior to the election
Couldn't stomach the guy. All he did was rant and rave. Came across as a bona fide phony.
Count me out.
My late father was military.
He said never vote for military men for public office.
Dad said they were conditioned to follow orders, seldom had to make orders or plans, unless they were top brass.
No.
I am a no vote.
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981
really?
Might be worth checking out this examination of his funding.
https://twitter.com/Alt_LeftAlabama/status/1009342217658433536
"Polls don't tell us how well a candidate is doing; Polls tell us how well the media is doing." ~ Me
thanks, but those
images are too small to read for me. is he supported by four-star general wesley clark's WES-pac? why do so many libruls love military candidates? oh, i forgot...clark did a li'l bit of whistle-blowing on 'the next five regimes slated for regime change' or something, didn't he? now he's a hero again, too, among libruls.
in charge of bombing yugoslavia, but darn; milosevic was finally exonerated at the ICC when it came to light that massive amounts of exculpatory evidence was finally shown...in part.
I can tell wealthy Dems are going to hate him
He wears Army boots!!!!! No Hollywood haircut! He was in a war, (to fuel the jet planes the 10% take to Aruba for holiday). The kinds of folks who disdain Walmart are going to hate him from the get go. The Limo libs. and if given enough time he'll win. Of course there's the problem that he's Mexican/American. Lots of Dems are cool with someone to mow the lawn, clean the house, and fix the food at the $120 a plate restaurant, but President? No that job is reserved for the woman from Bryn Mawr/Yale/Holyoke/Smith etc who can both look down her nose at people with crew cuts and talk as if her nose is somehow stuffed up.
Worse still, Ojeda right off the bat says people running for office should give up their fortunes and agree to a measly $250K per annum post govt work. How the heck can we attract "the right sorts of people" with those conditions.
First caucus is Iowa, then it's NH. Best cherry pick some quotes on abortion and immigration, while the getting is good and smear this guy who promotes the working class. Forget the fact he says we need to move beyond coal except for specialized metallurgy but do need to take care of the former workers with real jobs. Iowa? Is that like Kansas or something? and NH? Guns NH? That place? OMG!
He's just another way to sell out the left, like AOC.
Did you read what I posted above?
Our two biggest problems are an out of control military and climate change denial. This guy is on the wrong side of both of those issues.
You seem to have confused "from the working class" with "favoring policies that help the working class". This guy is another cheerleader for the MIC. His reasons for disliking certain rich folks are not my reasons for disliking a system run by and for the elites. The enemy of my enemy is not necessarily my friend.
NO. The left should not be gushing over military types.
sellout ocasio?
oh, my, the tankies on twitter are *still* having fun with outing her. this is an oldie, but goodie, imo. loved william buckley, highly educated, working for kennedy in preparation for political office, loves gentrification of the good sort™, and now the poor thing can't afford the rent in deecee until she gets her first paycheck in january. er....get a loan with your salary as collateral.
As if banks
wouldn't rush to give her credit. As if she doesn't already have credit.
The lefties have turned the mockery of AOC over this into some sort of statement about the homeless and the lack of affordable housing. The MSM has been bashing Fox for making comments like yours.
Her jobs as a waitress and bartender were for show, nothing else. She is a fake just like Obama. She should spit out a book, Dreams of the Bronx, and go on tour and become a millionaire. She has time to squeeze this in before taking office. Then she could live next door to the Obama's.
dfarrah
if i might quiblle a
little, from my vantage point it's Libruls, not Lefties who do so, including, sadly, telesur english. but now that Amazon has chosen queens (and a washington suburb?) NYT, for their second HQ, the tankies are havin' a field day retweeting ocasio's tweets on Amazon. for intance this thread if you click the tweetie to cause it to stand alone.
well, she wouldn't want to spend all that 15 grand on rent, now would she? she needs new walkin' shoes. yeah, she shows her tired, worn out shoes on twitter, too. but always remember: Socialism Has Come to America!'
Yes, I don't know
what words to distinguish between the left and the right and all of the shades of them.
So, lately, I've been using 'lefty' - I should say "those somewhere on the left" and "those somewhere on the right."
dfarrah
And now Fox
is reporting she has $15,000 in savings.
Good grief, she really stepped in it. For someone supposedly so smart, she sure does exhibit a lot of stupidity.
dfarrah
Then she calls housing "little things."
"I have three months without a salary before I’m a member of Congress. So, how do I get an apartment? Those little things are very real."
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
Ugh. If I were in her district, I would definitely back a recall effort. She is just too dumb for words.
dfarrah
ah, thanks;
i really needed the laughs.
on edit: at telesur poking about for zapatista/amlo news, i found a thing by bernie saying he's not decided about running in 2020, but D control of the House will mean that the muella investigation re: putin running the white house, interfering in our elections, etc. is not gonna die. in that piece, dunno if he'd said it, or it was background...but 'ocasio can't run in 2020 cuz ya have to be 35 to run'. but srsly, her star is rising sooooo fast.
Yep, just like
Obama, Kamala Harris, and Booker.
dfarrah
@ban nock What about people who
What about people who don't work in government? Should they give up their salaries and agree to a measly 250K per annum, or do they get to continue to have a net worth of 60 billion dollars which guarantees their ability to run the place?
Is the gentleman railing against corruption and fiscal waste in government while pretending the private sector doesn't exist? Because that's not good enough. That's just the same shit that right-wing Republicans have been pushing since I was twelve.
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
Voting for Trump...
is a deal breaker for me.
Even if he didn't want to vote for Hillary, he had other options.
The current working assumption appears to be that our Shroedinger's Cat system is still alive. But what if we all suspect it's not, and the real problem is we just can't bring ourselves to open the box?
I confess I have jumped
into support for Ojeda in this discussion because of Michael Moore's coverage of him and nothing more. I work with the assumption that anyone who has been in the military during these despicable wars is opposed to them. And his angry criticism of poverty in this country really impressed me, as it was shown in the film.
I agree with everyone here about Michael Moore. How he can be so effective at showing the crimes of the Democratic Party and still hang with them is beyond me. I think he just can't turn on his funders, or something.
But, just as Big Al educated me about things I didn't know about Tulsi Gabbard, I want to thank arendt and others here who are educating me about Ojeda.
Maybe Grandma was right. She always voted No for president. Maybe that's the problem. We're still looking for some good person to run for president of the United States. But if we are looking for someone who is perfect, we'll be here forever getting nowhere.
I would vote for Rand Paul because he has been strongly and consistently anti-war. I'm certain many people here can educate me about why he's terrible or even not as anti-war as I think he is. I guess what I mean to say is that war is the biggest obstacle to environmental survival, to bringing environmental killers to justice, to social justice, and to human survival, in my opinion. So whoever is strongly and effectively anti-war is whom I'll vote for.