Hickenlooper’s campaign was a disaster, an exercise in vanity. It was so bad it might end up hurting his chances for the Senate.
Jay Inslee just dropped out. I’m sad to see him go - of all the 1%ers, his was the only campaign that was clearly not a vanity campaign.
I dunno. The difference between a vanity campaign and a quixotic shot in the dark is a murky one, RT.
Still, you’re right that the field is narrowing. But I’ll still push back on your analysis of Buttigieg. He seems to be playing an odd game. One very clearly focused on catching attention in the early states and building from there. Alternately, he wants himself perceived as God’s perfect VP choice.
Nationally, you’re correct, he’s at ~4-5% (538 averages). But here are his numbers in the first four states:
Last four polls:
Iowa 7, 7, 8, 13
New Hampshire 7, 8, 6, 8
South Carolina 5, 5, 4, 5
Nevada 13, 7, 7, 5
Those are interesting numbers for the largest no-name in the race.
He’s another one who might be an interesting senate contender in two years. But for the moment, he’s far exceeding expectations for a the Mayor of South Bend and he’s only raising his profile. So long as he’s got the money why not stay in and see how far he can take this thing?
And hell, maybe Inslee - presuming a D win next November - would make a good EPA director.
Him not getting an invitation to the Climate change townhall despite being the most foremost campaigner on the subject was probably the writing on the wall. Unfortunately with the importance of meeting financial thresholds to keep up, a Jimmy Carter type campaign can never win the nomination again.
It’s really a shame that someone like Inslee can’t be competitive in a presidential race. I guess he couldn’t find an identity lane to run in, but whatever. I’m not pissed that he didn’t win, but I’m pissed that people like him can’t even compete - can’t even poll better than Tulsi Gabbard and Andrew Yang. I would say the same for Hickenlooper but he showed himself to be an asshole, so count me as ‘not a fan of that guy’. But Inslee had the goods.
As awful as the Republican party is, the fact that accomplished governors can’t even be remotely competitive anymore is proof that our democracy is just plain dumb, and probably dead.
I must have missed this. How was he an asshole?
Mocking Bernie Sanders the way he did in his last debate was an asshole move. Mocking the progressive wing in the Democratic party generally was another asshole move. And his refusal to drop out even after his own closest advisors told him he had absolutely ZERO chance to win is evidence that he’s an arrogant, delusional ass. He just strikes me as someone who’s really let this “I’m the governor of a swing state” thing go to his head.
I think the work Inslee and his team have put into developing a quite detailed plan for addressing climate change distinguishes Inslee’s campaign from a vanity campaign.
I don’t think that any non-disgraced senator or governor can be regarded as a “vanity campaign”, at least not at the start. If you still haven’t broken the 1% threshold after six months and two debates and you stay in, sure, at that point it’s a vanity campaign. But at the start, you look at a governor, and you say “it could happen”.
By the same token, when a guy is running whose main claim to fame is doing a bad job of playing a billionaire on TV, at the start, that’s a vanity campaign. But it might become something else if he sticks in it and somehow manages to outpoll all of the real candidates.
Seth Moulton is out, too. Yes, I know, “He was in?” Good guy but started too late and had too little rationale to offer for his candidacy.
Inslee for Energy or Interior, I hope. He impressed *me *a helluva lot, FWIW (and yes, I know that too).
In every interview he has attacked fellow Democrats as socialists who are too extreme for the country, helping right-wingers who are trying hard to make “socialist” a dirty word.
Also he kept saying he his skills & interests are only in the executive branch, and didn’t even want to be a Senator. That always seemed disrespectful, not to mention hypocritical - are people supposed to be excited about voting for him as a Senator now? That may well have destroyed the Democratic party’s chance to take back the Senate majority.
When you get right down to it, libraries are socialist. Loaning books to just anybody. Depriving authors of royalties. Jeez.
I’m not mad at Hickenlooper, but the rest is spot on. Washington is a fairly populated state with an extremely strong amount of economic and cultural capital, and he has been a good progressive governor there. Plus he was in Congress before that, so he wouldn’t be one of those governors who comes in knowing nothing about DC. It’s absurd, as you say, that he would be taken less seriously than Gabbard and Yang. Frankly, the polling up and down the entire field shows that Democratic primary voters don’t know what the fuck they are doing (not that the Republican ones do, obviously). They are terribly unpragmatic in most cases, and the ones who think they are being pragmatic are backing a guy (Biden) who is way too old and was never that strong a candidate even when he was younger. :smack:
Just curious, why are people saying that Beto should do this and not fellow Texan Julian Castro? Beto, at least is at 2% rather than 1.
Probably because most folks don’t even know that Castro’s running.
Or think he’s Fidel. That surname is poisoned until the dumber Boomers are dead.
Castro should too, IMO. And Biden should just retire. Tulsi should drop out because she sucks (and has no chance). Delaney, too. And Steyer, Yang, and everyone else aside from my top 5 candidates (Warren, Sanders, Harris, Booker, and Klobuchar).
[quote=“iiandyiiii, post:97, topic:835798”]
And Biden should just retire. [\QUOTE]
??? The top polling candidate should retire?
Yes, in fact because he is the top polling candidate but he is weak. However, Warren is also weak in her own way, even weaker probably—and if she understood that, one would hope she would get out for the good of the country. I was pleased that Bill Maher last night expressed his worries that she is another McGovern, a worry I share. He raised the point to shoot down the claim made by Katie Porter, the same one I see here and on social media, that her strong polling among Democrats shows that she is not weak. McGovern shows that sometimes what is catnip to Democrats is repellent to swing voters. He pointed out that Nixon was no Reagan and that in fact he was a “sweaty, awkward loser” who had no business winning 49 states and would not have against a strong opponent.
Yes, and Trump should resign, and so should Pence, so Pelosi becomes president, and McConnell should retire, as should every other Republican in office. The 5 conservative SCOTUS justices should retire, as should every other Republican judge.
What, you disagree?