Huh?
Clinton’s choice of Kaine was one of the most egregious of many miscalculations that contributed to her loss. Trump and his advisors made a smart strategic choice to pick a guy who would shore up the evangelical vote, the crowd who would have preferred Cruz, no doubt. Pence truly helped him clinch the victory. As much as I loathe him, I have to give him credit for a clever VP strategy. Hillary did nothing of the sort. Kaine brought nothing of value to the ticket.
I wasn’t aware of that. That could pretty much kill his chances.
I think Clinton was so sure she had the election in the bag that she thought in terms of choosing a vice president, not a running mate.
Am I the first to think…Doug Jones??
I made a contribution to him, and if he works half as hard for his constituents as he did at trying to get a second contribution from me, he will end up on Mount Rushmore (Seriously, like six to eight emails Every. Goddamn. Day.).
The New Yorker had a long article on Tulsi Gabbard a few weeks back. She identifies as Hindu, but is actually a member since birth of a cult whose leader encourages followers to eat his toenail clippings in order to gain enlightenment. Said cult has a long record of trying to infiltrate members into elective office in Hawaii. When she first entered politics, she was a disciple of her father, who was IIRC a Honolulu city councilman whose defining issue was homophobia, in accordance with the teachings of the cult. Yes, almost any Democrat old enough to be President will have had to execute a flip-flop on gay marriage at some point, but most of them even in the 90s were able to discuss the issue without making analogies to bestiality and pedophilia. Seems like there’s a lot of baggage to overcome there.
Brown is a collection of issues more than an actual person who could be President. He checks boxes. Back in the days of smoke filled rooms that might have worked, as he’d make a good compromise candidate. But primary voters vote for actual people, they care about character and they care about your vision. Brown is just a dude in the Senate who votes a certain way.
By all accounts Doug Jones is a decent man. But he’s proved nothing as a candidate. He has won exactly one election with the qualification of not being into young girls. Now I realize that given the lowlifes we tend to elect President that might actually be a great qualification. But I think we can do better.
Brian Schweitzer talked about running in 2016 but got scared off by the Clinton juggernaut. After all that talk I can’t believe he’s just planning to never do it.
Mark Warner is still a great potential candidate. As is Tim Kaine. Looks like Terry Mac is going to be delusional and try to run though, so the Virgina Dems who are actually good will probably be scared off. Terry Mac will outraise them and occupies the same ideological and experience lane that they do.
I’m going to make my first prediction of the 2020 Presidential race:
The Democratic candidate will be one of these three:
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Joe Biden- If he runs, he wins. Since Biden hates running when he can actually win, that means he’s not running. Seriously, how did Biden not see a great opportunity in 2004?
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Cory Booker- If he figures out how to be a straight talker and actually appeal to people, he’ll win easily.
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Bernie Sanders- if all else fails, give the progressives the ball and see what they do with it. The Bernie Bros are right about one thing: better to crash and burn spectacularly with an actual progressive than to mope to defeat with another Clinton-type. And I see a LOT of Clintons in the Democratic party, at least when it comes to looking like a crass politician who will say anything.
This is about the time in the cycle that we started to get regaled by your predictions the last time, too. The fun just never stops. 
Last time I got everything wrong. So I can only do better in 2020.
Kaine brought decency, though. He’s a decent guy from all that I can tell. I get that decency doesn’t necessarily win elections, but I think Clinton was probably rattled by Bernie Sanders’ movement and she was also rattled by the fact that she wasn’t nearly as popular with Obama voters as she thought she would be. When that became clear, I think she went with what she thought was a safe candidate. She didn’t trust Bernie Sanders, which is understandable given all the things that were said between the campaigns. I don’t blame Kaine for Clinton’s loss, as much as I blame the entire concept and story boarding, if you will, of the Clinton campaign from the start, much of which was controlled by none other than Hillary herself. She was a late 1990s flip phone candidate running in the age of social media and the smartphone, and it showed.
Kaine solidified the Democratic brand as “the responsible party”. Sure, Clinton could have gone with a gimmicky pick, but she wanted someone who could be President on Day 1 and be a good governing partner. Julian Castro would have been a gimmick. The guy probably would have gotten maybe 10 minutes of face time with the President in 4 years. And going with a hardcore progressive would just endanger her agenda should she die in office. She took some heat for accusing Bernie Sanders of wanting to end Medicare, Medicaid, and Obamacare, but I actually think that’s one case where she was telling the truth as she saw it. She’s a DEMOCRAT, Sanders is not. She cares about the Democratic legacy and wants to build it. Sanders wants to tear it all down and build something new in its place.
I agree that Jones is not a serious prospect right now. But…
If he performs impressively in his first year in the Senate…there are a lot worse elevator pitches than “I won an election in freakin’ Alabama!” Obviously that win was a fluke, but still. He has much more national name recognition than the average freshman Senator; as I mentioned above, every liberal in the country is already on his e-mail list. And he’s not likely to be a Senator for long, so this election is probably his only shot if he wants to take it.
I would say it’s probably about even money that the nominee comes from that group of 3.
I don’t agree that Biden would be a shoo-in if he ran. He’s old, white and male and was mean to Anita Hill. He’s a familiar name and the party establishment is comfortable with him, but he’s run for President before and it didn’t go anywhere. His main appeal is his link to Obama, and if that were enough by itself to win a general election…well, the country would be much better off today. It seems to me that there is an alarmingly high degree of overlap between the people who think Biden is a good idea and those who thought Hillary was a good idea.
Cory Booker is interesting. Progressives have distrusted him for his coziness with Wall Street, but since the election he’s been pivoting to the left, calling for free college, legal pot, and single-payer health care. I’m not familiar enough with him to have an opinion about his personal charisma, but if he can pull the ideological swing off convincingly and find some new big-money donors, he sure seems strong on paper.
Best case scenario IMO is for Bernie to find some charismatic young person to lay his hands on and anoint to lead the progressives into the Promised Land. If he runs again himself, I think he has as good a chance as anyone, and I would almost certainly support him. Really, though, he’s just too damn old. He can be Secretary of the Treasury.
If the Prez Candidate is someone from the West or Northeast they could do a lot worst than picking Jones as veep however.
One of the problems with Sanders is that African-American voters won’t turn out for him. From what I’ve been reading, they consider him only slightly better than a Republican. His comments that Trump’s election had nothing to do with race and that the African-American vote “distorts” the Democratic primary process didn’t go unnoticed.
I just don’t see him anointing a young progressive either. He seems stuck on the idea of himself as the vanguard of the progressive revolution. He’s quickly becoming a Ron Paul type, albeit with a bigger following.
I think Tim Kaine would be a bad choice. During the 2016 race the first time I thought that Trump had a chance was during the VP debate. I think Pence easily outdid him and I don’t see Kaine doing any better against Trump. It would be nice to see Doug Jones do a good job over the next two years and then throw his hat in he ring. I doubt he would win Alabama, but being from the South might would help in North Carolina an Florida, which I think will be key with the rust belt states having gone red last time and probably remaining red in 2020.
In order for Jones to be impressive he has to actually win a full term. Scott Brown was in his position, shortly after his win Republicans talked him up a little. That talk would have gained momentum had Brown vanquished Liz Warren, which would have made him a superstar. But he lost, and now he’s a footnote.
Based on history It seems that an outsider has a much greater chance of winning . The old war horses like McCain, Romney, H. Clinton, Dole, Kerry, Mondale, etc. simply don’t win. What does Biden have over all those people?
I agree with this. In fact, in every story I read about who is the most likely to be the 2020 Dem nominee, I see the same five names: Booker, Biden, Warren, Sanders and Gillibrand. I can guarantee it won’t (and shouldn’t be) one of those. You think the Republicans aren’t strategizing furiously how to beat them? You think the trolls aren’t getting their racist/misogynistic/fear-montering messaging and fake news strategies ready for these five? These five have massive targets on their foreheads, and the trolls are cleaning their glocks.
I think the best bet is someone who isn’t even on the national radar yet.
I’m liking the idea of a moderate or boring progressive Democrat. Politico recently had an article making the case for a generic Democrat to beat Trump– as opposed to one of those rockstar Senators (which is all everyone seems to be looking at these days). Jay Inslee is attracting me more these days to my presidential fantasy life. He’s the chair of the Democratic Governor’s Association, and if the Dems perform well next year (when we have 36 gubernatorial races), that would be a pretty nice feather in his cap. Plus, being the governor of Washington state, he’s not really on national radar. He’s a somewhat generic white dude who looks like Clark Kent when he puts his glasses on. But he’s somewhat progressive, and he’s been willing to challenge some of the bullshit coming out of the east coast’s Washington.
Pair him up with Tammy Duckworth (moderate, midwestern, rustbelt, vet, disabled, woman, PoC), and that could be a winner.
Or another possibility at the top of the ticket: A retired military guy like William McRaven, who’s shown moderate Democratic tendencies. He’s another generic white guy on no one’s radar, and his military experience steals some of the Republican/Trump thunder of being the champions of the military. Plus, he’s from Texas, which could go a long way toward pushing that deep purple state into the blue column. Pair him up with someone like Cory Booker and you could have another nice ticket.
I just think there needs to be some thought about what the Republicans could attack on in the next go-round: Race, gender, religion, military experience, blue collar/midwestern/rustbelt bonafides. Top of the ticket needs to be target-free, white and male (IMO). If the top has no military experience or isn’t from the midwest, there *needs *to be someone on the ticket who does. A woman and person of color as the running mate would be icing on the cake.
We can’t just throw up the biggest flashiest Senator and expect this to be a cakewalk. Hillary was a big flashy name who most people (especially her) thought was due to take the WH, both in 2008 and 2016, and failed both times. When candidates come out of nowhere, they seem to do better-- Bill Clinton, Barack Obama.
McRaven (whose name makes me think of some kind of twisted McDonald’s meal) is a Navy SEAL. Everyone loves Navy SEALs, they’re real-life superheroes who the country idolizes. That could be a good candidate. Who the hell is going to challenge him when it comes to patriotism and the military? He would make Trump look like a total pussy. But has McRaven shown any inclination at all towards running for office?
the people most into politics tend to be on far left or far right. They get fired up during the primaries but they are a small group. If a far left/right guy gets nominated the problem is they have to appeal to everyone , not just those fringe people. Lately the people who have won have not been people that had a lot of excitement behind them with the exception of Obama.
Cuomo/Booker for me.
Booker is the sunny, rising star. Cuomo is solidly liberal and mean as fuck. It feels right.