I agree that Gillibrand is probably sincere there. Problem is, she’s not sincere about much else. Her record as the ultimate flip flopper is pretty well established.
I have been told by my wife that I will vote for Oprah if she wins the nomination. So I have to take back what I said earlier about supporting even Trump over Oprah.
Sanders has said he will run as an independent if he runs again. I hope that’s true if he runs, and I hope even more that you’re right and he doesn’t run again.
I disagree that we need to run a candidate that can out-Trump Trump. I think we need to run a calming, very experienced, extremely competent candidate. I think many people have had enough of the circus.
Jeff Merkley
Mark Warner
Sheldon Whitehouse
Sherrod Brown
Adam Schiff
Chris Murphy
Cory Booker*
*I like Booker, except for his policy stance on school vouchers. I don’t like that at all.
Booker is the most electable candidate regardless of the voucher situation, and there’s no way in hell that any voter - literally any single voter in the entire country, and I’d bet my life on it - would vote for Trump over Booker solely on the voucher issue. I don’t even know what the voucher issue IS and I can already tell you it doesn’t mean jack-shit in the upcoming election.
Re: Chris Murphy, anyone who has a strong association with gun control is a bad choice. Murphy has made it one of his soapbox issues, maybe the main thing he’s known for among people who even know who he is. I do think that gun control is one of the major issues that sways people off the fence onto one side or the other (pretty much the Republican side) and I do think that many of these voters would vote for a moderate Democrat over Trump if that Democrat did not make gun control a big issue.
Yes, the single-issue voters for whom that issue is guns, are generally inclined to vote Republican no matter what, because the Democrats collectively are so strongly associated with gun control. However, since Trump, the old books have been thrown out and it’s a very different situation.
I just looked up clips of Sheldon Whitehouse. He is way too much of a bland WASP. He’s like another Tim Kaine. There’s absolutely nothing dynamic or exciting about his personality. The candidate doesn’t need to “out-Trump Trump” exactly, he just needs to be someone whose persona, not his policies, generate enthusiasm and get voters out of the house to go vote. And yes I’m saying “he” and “his” because I don’t know if this country is ready to elect a woman and while I would hope that it is, I think it’s too risky of a proposition to stake 4 more potential years of Trump on. A female VP would probably be fine.
That depends on if Booker can muster up an ounce of authenticity. He comes off as a politician afraid to say anything interesting. It’s not that you want to out Trump Trump, so much as you can’t beat him with someone who come off as faker than Hillary Clinton. The voters are sick of that type of politican, and that type really should have been retired long ago. In the internet age, where we can figure out fairly easily who people really are, I don’t get why politicians think they can package themselves just for an election campaign and fool anyone.
To start with, any Democrat posing as a progressive hero who did not have a history as a progressive hero is playing you for a sucker. If they were willing to be in the center before, they’ll move right back to the center for the general election campaign. Such candidates should not even be considered. Trump will MURDER them if the economy is good and people have grown kinda used to him and we’re in no wars. Peace and prosperity is popular, regardless of how much of a boob the President is.
As I’ve said before, Democrats can win as centrists and they can win as fire breathing progressives. They cannot however, win as insincere political opportunists. Sanders and Biden may be old, but they are authentic. No one is confused about who they are. The young ones seem to think that spin and deception are positive attributes of politics and they seem to have put more thought into those things than in actually thinking about policy issues. Maybe it’s a generational thing? I know the Boomers have been awful but quite a few of them are pretty principled folks. Gen-Xers in politics though seem to be proving themselves to just be shallow professional climbers.
If policy doesn’t matter, then what’s the point of politics? Just the spectacle of it all? Or do you hope for a return to the “respectable” status quo of the Obama years? That was a state of affairs which led to such misery and desperation that people voted Trump in hopes of changing the system.
I hijacked a GQ thread to ask a question about Elizabeth Warren’s DNA. I apologize for that hijack and repeat the question here. Be aware that I do love Ms. Warren; she is a true heroine. I’d love her to run for President if she could win the general election.
Why in tarnation doesn’t Ms. Warren simply get a DNA test and tell us what Native American ancestry it reports?? If the test comes back “0%” she can go on TV and say “I was wrong! Our family legend turns out to … be just a legend. As a five-year old girl, I was gullible; I wish that Trump’s biggest confusion was comparable to my gullibility as a child.”
Instead, are we to be subject to Pocahontas-Gate, Pocahontas-Gate II, hearings about Warren’s great grandmother’s birth certificate, et cetera? Have we learned nothing about the frenzied sequence of media shit-shows that American discourse has become?
Yes, if the test comes back Native American 1%, we’d need a retest by a bipartisan commission to extract a fresh saliva swab while Ms. Warren is hand-cuffed, but let’s get this this over with. We don’t need Pocahontas-Gate dragging into 2019.
She might have done so and found it to be zero, so she figured it was best not to mention it.
Or she finds it useful to keep Republicans focused on the one trivial thing they’re currently obsessed with. Resolve that, and they’ll go dig up - or make up - some new bullshit.
Or maybe she found out her grandmother was Dutch.
Let’s rule out Bernie. He’s too damn old and if he gets nominated we’re going to see nothing but hammers and sickles in all the Republican ads leading up to the election.
I can live with any of the names that have been bandied about. What we need is someone that can excite the base and draw the voters to the polls. Perhaps a Booker-Castro ticket might be the answer.
Another hopeful eye on Hickenlooper(D). Slogan: “Funny name, not insane.”
Non-disastrous stints as mayor (Denver) as well as governor.
About as scandal-free as anyone can be at that level of government.
Here’s my take:
THe Warren “scandal” isn’t disqualifying, it’s not even a big deal. I dislike her tremendously and this just doesn’t matter much. Here’s the small ways in which it does matter:
But as for Warren’s qualifications for office? Her moral character? This issue says nothing. Lots of families have legends.
So why is it such a big, blown out of proportion issue? Because it’s easy to understand and it’s interesting. That guarantees press coverage and everyone having an opinion on it.
The real reason Warren shouldn’t be President is that she wouldn’t make a very good President. She’s an activist and an academic, which is a toxic combination. She’s also a specialist, which makes her more suited to the Senate. I don’t think it’s unfair to say that consumer protection will not be a top 10 issue facing the next President. On other issues, she’s just taken a progressive stance because that’s her brand. Her knowledge of other issues is suspect, and her ability to get anything done completely unproven. She has never demonstrated an ability to persuade the public of anything. And she’s too liberal to get elected. It’s possible that any President can beat Trump, but assuming that means you can just go full progressive is silly. The Democrats will get destroyed again in 2022 midterms, then probably lose the Presidency in 2024. The Democrats need to build an enduring majority, rather than looking for “windows” where they can pass stuff and then spend the next 10 years complaining about Republicans having too much power.
John Kerry:
Because blowing one election he should have won wasn’t enough.