Asking for a candidate to compare Gabbard to is a strawman. Of course none will be forthcoming. Every candidate on the list with the possible exception of Sanders is more hawkish than Gabbard by a mile.
Who is less hawkish than Gabbard from this list?
I picked most of the people I know the least about. I am following this fairly closely and cuts need to be made for polling purposes. I don’t want most of them to reallllly drop off out in case they’re going to shine later, but I voted for them in this poll because I don’t think they are going to.
And Biden because he’s such a creepy weirdo who had clearly not listened to everyone telling him to stop. And Bernie because… well, I don’t think he’d be good at it in 2020 and that’s all I have to say about that. And Tulsi because she is the only Dem candidate that would make me seriously hesitate in voting for in the general.
DNC just set new requirements for the third round of debates.
New: DNC to raise qualifying threshold for third presidential primary debate in Sept.
According to Nate Silver, that may narrow the field.
Why should anyone leave? One way or another, there will be a single winner in the end. Drawing out the battle royale will just make him or her stronger.
Those are not outrageous requirements. The first two rounds of debates will send the no-names packing. If the survivors can’t get up to 2% in the polls and can’t begin building an organization by the end of summer, they’re not a factor.
OK, WillFarnaby, for starters, Sanders, Harris, Warren, Booker, Klobuchar, Gillibrand, O’Rourke, Castro, Hickenlooper, Inslee, Yang, and Biden are all less hawkish than Gabbard. I don’t know about the rest.
So what I find interesting about the poll results so far is who is being least disliked or dismissed: by far Kamala Harris.
She’s not been too many’s favorite candidate and maybe not even second choice for lots, but very few think that she shouldn’t be in the race. (Whether that be because she is objectionable, see Sanders for that, or immaterial, see Messam for that.)
Making an unwarranted assumption that we reflect the general Democratic electorate, what does that portend for her? Anything?
That’s an interesting observation and question, DSeid.
I think of 1988, when Dukakis was everybody’s second or third choice (his kindergarten report, I joked back then–having been a kindergarten teacher at the time–read “Everybody likes Mikey, but nobody likes him very much”).
Didn’t work out very well, did it. I don’t know which Democrat would have won that year or necessarily made it close, but it seemed even then that a decent Democratic candidate facing Bush should have won a lot more than ten states.
On the other hand, that’s just one data point, and 1988 was a lot of years ago, and the country is a lot more polarized than it used to be. And to me at least Harris seems to have more substance about her than Dukakis ever did–So maybe it’s a bad analogy.
So probably it doesn’t portend much of anything. Hmm.
Well, yes, she’s generally acceptable to many, and she hasnt had the hate campaign against her like Biden has had.
But if you take that hate campaign into account, Biden is doing very well here.
I am rather surprised at how many think it’s time for Sanders to go.
I didn’t vote for anyone to drop out except Messam. He made a Facebook post saying the following, “With Miramar being larger than South Bend, more Fortune 500 companies and more diverse, I was asked in New Hampshire by WMUR-TV host, Adam Sexton, if it is Race or White Privilege on why Mayor Pete has gotten more national exposure than me. I’ll let the pundits answer that question.”
The fact that he would play the race card as an excuse for why his campaign is going so poorly really turned me off to him. It’s one thing to blame race when it looks like a legit factor, but there are so many other factors at play here, and I don’t want the leader of our country to be the sort of person who does that.
No other candidate has made a comment that turned me off badly enough for me to write them off, so at this early point in the race, I don’t think any of the other candidates should drop out. Or rather, while I see the value in having a less crowded field, none of the candidates have particularly stuck out to me as worse than the others.