OK, I got that one. 
I wonder how many other participants here did.
My own contribution, in the words of the sainted Tom Lehrer from Lobachevsky:
Plagiarize
Let no one else’s work evade your eyes
Remember why the good Lord made your eyes
So don’t shade your eyes
But plagiarize, plagiarize, plagiarize -
Only be sure always to call it please ‘research’
Wow, you are old. 
Who are these “Democrats” who get to pick the person who is running for their ticket? Do they wave a magic wand and do that?
A true party convention hasn’t happened in my lifetime, and probably never will. 2016 was an extreme example (on the R side) of a party’s inability to pick their own candidate and control their ticket.
Well these 700-odd prominent democratic politicians represent about 15% control over the process. Hard to win when your establishment opponent has a 15% edge going into a close contest, like Bernie found out the hard way.
First of all, it’s not just on the Democrat side. It’s on both sides.
We the people do not get our pick. The elites winnow down the choices first to ones acceptable to them. Then we are permitted to choose from among those choices, all more or less the same. Bernie was not, in 2016, a choice acceptable to the elites.
Trump was the glaring exception to this scheme, and that is the reason BOTH sides are going after him hammer and tongs.
The only other exception to the above, during my lifetime, was Ronald Reagan. Reagan was great. But even Reagan was not as far outside the “system” as Trump.
Trump will be gone sooner or later. When he is, things will go right back to the way they were prior. Anybody who thinks Pence, for example, is anything other than an establishment wuss, is insane. Pence is a swamp rat, pure and simple, sitting around biding his time, waiting “his turn”. It is disgusting.
I used to think this was dumb. Now I miss it. I hope you are right about things going back to the way they were prior. As much as it had wrong, it was predictable. I like predictability.
Yes, but do you like predictably wrong. 
Hearing Beto’s voice now in the news. I think he will make a run.
Make some money with various prediction markets if you are convinced of a given person winning the nomination.
Liz is revving up her campaign:
The good thing about Liz is that she is energetic enough to be POTUS. Trump is also like that. They are older, but there is a LOT of life left in both Liz and Donald.
Also, we know Donald is a teetotaler, which is good. Liz is every bit as sharp witted as Donald. If she hits the bottle it certainly is not obvious. We do not need a lush in the oval office!!
As for the native American thing, it would appear Liz is going forward regardless. I think it will either be set aside or forgotten completely as her candidacy unfolds and enlarges.
She is giving Trump a gift. I don’t think we’ll hear the end of the Pocahontas comments.
Well, the thing about Liz is that she is the Democrat Party’s oldest candidate who does come across as half dead. She is a lively, energetic woman despite being almost seventy years of age. Her husband does look his age, though. She probably wears him out!
The Democrats have other contenders equally as spirited as Liz, but they all are younger than she. Hence, Liz might represent sort of a “sweet spot” in the panoply of Democrat contenders. Paired with a younger candidate for Veep, Liz and her running mate would offer quite a formidable challenge, I think, for Trump and Pence.
The importance of the Democrat nominee rose within these last 24-48 hours. It is more likely than ever that whomever the Democrats nominate will become our next POTUS.
Remember a large number of Republican elites detest and loathe Trump. Mitt Romney is newly emerged as one of the prominent standard bearers of this cabal. Romney is very prominent in the Republican establishment. He will be sworn in as a new Senator tomorrow.
All that has to happen for the Democrat’s candidate to prevail in 2020 is for the Republican elites to run a candidate against Trump in the general. They do that and it is over. Trust me, the Republican elites would much prefer as POTUS, over Trump, any Democrat we have mentioned up thread. It makes no difference to them whatsoever. In fact, so long as Trump does not win reelection nothing else matters to them. Their hatred for him is that visceral.
It’s always been Trump against the swamp. The swamp consists of all Democrats, at least half or more of the Republicans, and the mainstream media. All Trump has are his supporters, traditional patriotic Americans who do not buy into globalism, open borders, and all the rest. If the Republican elites can split the vote on their side, Trump’s supporters will not prevail and the Democrat candidate will win without doubt. Trump cannot win a three-way race. This is something of which the Republican elites are well aware.
If you want a serious discussion, keep your personal misguided vile vitriol to yourself.
Vile? Vitriol? Not at all. And gosh, that is a rather extreme, and highly selective, assessment of what I wrote. We simply do not agree. You must learn there are tens of millions of Americans who agree with me, and not with you. You may not like this. But it is a fact.
I doubt that.
You have to be completely and totally insane to believe the shit you wrote. I’m pretty sure you’ve redefined “the swamp,” which I believe initially referred to the executive branch, without even blinking an eye at the smelly garbage that replaced it. You’re calling people “patriotic” for supporting someone who only cares about himself and his money (not other people or country), and who is probably a foreign agent (even if an unwitting one).
On the bright side, they seem to have moved in the right direction.
They don’t get to vote anymore on the first ballot. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2018/09/04/the-dnc-voted-to-strip-superdelegates-of-their-powers-will-it-matter-for-2020/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.233ec5bae439
Whereas the GOP moved in the opposite direction in 2012 and got stuck with Trump, who the media propped up. The RNC unilaterally (with a questionable voice vote) changed the rules at convention.
I predict one of the following retorts:
“But HILLLLLLLLARRRRRYYYY ___________ !”
“Bengazi Hussein Obamaphone!”
“You’re just mad your guy lost!”
“You’ve got TDS!”
I’m gonna ignore the obvious venom above and reiterate my original point, which is so very on topic here:
The importance of the Democrat 2020 nominee is seriously enhanced by the very real possibility RINOs will join Democrats in tag-teaming Trump and Pence. If that happens, there is no conceivable way Trump et.al. will win reelection. Even without a third candidate, Trump’s prospects are dubious at best.
Historical supporting precedent
Republican elites do not like it one bit when a person with conservative leanings manages to become their party’s nominee. They prefer a Democrat POTUS to a conservative POTUS from their own party.
Consider the election of 1980. The great Ronald Reagan defeated George H. W. Bush in the Republican primary. Even though Reagan selected Bush as his running mate that year, the Republican elites were not mollified. There emerged the “independent” candidacy of Republican Congressman John Anderson, a representative from Illinois. This was back when you could find a Republican in Illinois without a magnifying glass.
Anyway, Anderson won a bit less than 7% of the 1980 vote, a significant number of Republican votes which otherwise would have been garnered mostly by Ronald Reagan. Reagan won, of course, despite the Anderson-Carter tag team. But consider:
Trump in 2016 was able to eke out a victory by only a very slim margin over perhaps the poorest POTUS candidate since Warren G. Harding in 1920. The Democrat standard bearer in 2020 will surely be a far stronger candidate than was Mrs. Clinton. This is a certainty by definition; it makes no difference whom the Democrats nominate.
So Trump will already have his hands full without a third candidate draining away votes, each and every one of which he needs so desperately. If Romney, Flake, Kasich, and other RINOs field a candidate, the 2020 Democrat candidate is a certain winner over Trump. That, of course, is precisely the outcome the RINOs seek.
Well, again, we just disagree.
But let me highlight a key difference between us. Simply because I disagree with you is not cause for me to infringe upon your right openly to express your views. Nor will I use bad language to emphasize my dissatisfaction with your line of thinking. For me to follow such a course would be, in the first instance un-American, and in the second simply poor manners.
I wish you well.