[–]Portarossa
[+3]'probably the worst poster on this sub' - /u/Real_Mila_Kunis 4460 points 1 day ago*6
Answer:
Tulsi Gabbard has been kind of a divisive figure this election cycle. She's never been near the top of the Democrats running for the Presidency; Gabbard has a history of saying things that make her troubling for a lot of Democrats. (For example, historically she was in favour of a constitutional amendment against same sex marriage, although she came around on the issue after serving in the Gulf; however, she was also one of Obama's staunchest critics when it came to dealing with ISIS, which put her at odds with the Democratic establishment, and is troublingly close to the Assad regime in Syria for a lot of Democrats.) Some people think that makes her more electable, or that it might help to woo Trump 2016 voters to the Democratic side in 2020. On the other hand -- as we saw with Bernie Sanders in 2016 -- the DNC doesn't exactly like people who rock the boat, and it can be difficult to gain a national platform if the DNC is against you. Gabbard has been very vocal about the fact that she feels as though she's being pushed down by the DNC, but how true that is is... still up for debate, let's say. Again, a similar complaint often emerged from Sanders supporters in 2016; the crucial difference there is that Sanders eventually managed to pull together more than 40% of the vote against Hillary Clinton, the DNC's favoured candidate. Gabbard has been consistently polling at about 1%, and didn't even qualify for the third debate. She did, however, qualify for the fourth, as it had the same qualification requirements but a greater time period in which to qualify.
Recently Hillary Clinton has spoken out to heavily, heavily imply that Gabbard is being groomed by the Russians as a sort of spoiler vote:
“I’m not making any predictions but I think they’ve got their eye on somebody who’s currently in the Democratic primary, and they’re grooming her to be the third-party candidate,” the former secretary of state told David Plouffe in his “Campaign HQ” podcast without providing evidence.
“She’s the favorite of the Russians. They have a bunch of sites and bots and other ways of supporting her so far.”
The idea, through Clinton, is that -- like Jill Stein (allegedly) in 2016 -- Gabbard will run as a third party and 'steal' votes away from the Democrats, allowing a Trump victory; it might be hard to get Democrats to vote for Trump, but getting them to vote for Gabbard (again, according to Clinton's idea) would be easier, and almost equally damaging. On paper at least, Gabbard has a lot going for her, especially as far as voters who might oppose a more mainstream DNC candidate (such as Biden) might be concerned: she served in the military (and describes herself as 'hawkish' on terrorism, but not on foreign intervention in general), she was an early supporter of Bernie Sanders (himself, as we've seen, not exactly a DNC darling), and she was one of the first people to suggest that she might work with the Trump administration if the offer came in (important for centrists and swing voters). Considering that a large part of the reason Clinton wasn't elected in 2016 was that Democrats, dissatisfied with her as a candidate, just stayed home -- and it was a close-run thing; if only 107,000 Trump voters had not voted (or 55,000 of them had switched their votes) in the right districts, Clinton would have taken the electoral college as well as the popular vote -- the idea of the often-cited (but largely overblown) Perot effect is a significant concern for the DNC going into 2020.
This is a pretty big accusation, given the fact that that part of the reason -- and yes, it's part of the reason; however much you believe it is generally depends on which side of the aisle you're on, but it's a pretty well-attested fact at this point that there was at least some meddling by the Russian government in the 2016 election and it was designed to benefit the campaign of Donald Trump -- Trump is in the White House as we speak is because of precisely the kind of election interference that Clinton is warning about. Gabbard, understandably, isn't happy about it, hence the angry tweets calling out Clinton:
Great! Thank you @HillaryClinton. You, the queen of warmongers, embodiment of corruption, and personification of the rot that has sickened the Democratic Party for so long, have finally come out from behind the curtain. From the day I announced my candidacy, there has been a concerted campaign to destroy my reputation. We wondered who was behind it and why. Now we know — it was always you, through your proxies and powerful allies in the corporate media and war machine, afraid of the threat I pose. It’s now clear that this primary is between you and me. Don’t cowardly hide behind your proxies. Join the race directly.
Again, that's probably a stretch: just as Clinton doesn't seem to have any evidence that Gabbard is being groomed as a spoiler candidate by Russia, Gabbard also doesn't seem to have any evidence that Clinton is singlehandedly behind some enormous inter-organisational coalition with the media to bring down a campaign that, it bears repeating, is still only hitting about 1% in the polls.
Gabbard's supporters are going after Clinton for her record. Clinton's supporters are going after Gabbard for her record. Twitter is going pretty hot and heavy, and it's fair to say that the base -- both for and against Gabbard -- is pretty riled up. It's getting her attention that she might not otherwise have had, but whether it has any significant upwards or downwards effect on her polling is up in the air.