Vote for one Democratic primary candidate:
If he gets in, and stays in until March 10, 2020, Brown’s got my vote. I don’t see anyone else stealing my #1 spot at this point.
The one who’s not Joe Biden. I think it’s time to go younger or further left if not both.
Granted, Joe would probably be better at the foreign relations part of the job.
Biden. Although if I didn’t think we need a minority or woman on the ballot, this would be a very good pair-up for Pres/VP. I need to see if Biden still seems as energetic and on-the-ball as he did when I last saw him interviewed shortly after McCain’s death. If so, he’s my top choice.
Biden/Harris or Brown/Harris would also work. Though I’d prefer Klobuchar to Harris.
Still Biden. Don’t like Brown’s trade policy and don’t want to lose a Senate seat. Plus, I just don’t know if he’ll even carry Ohio. It seems to be getting redder as people continue to move out leaving a lot of Trump types behind as well as older folks that can’t afford to retire to Arizona or Florida.
On the upside of people - like myself - leaving Ohio to come to the south for jobs we’re seeing North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia turning more blue. At some point he GOP is in for one hell of a shock down here.
Oh, yeah. It already happened. We elected a D for my district for the first time since the Nixon administration.
I find it odd that the ability to be a long term progressive who can win in a state that is otherwise Red is considered a negative …
Because many Democrats want a deep blue guy for 2020. Winning in a red state is actually considered a liability by some because it suggests that the candidate isn’t, well, deep blue.
Brown. Like Biden, he is non threatening to whites who care about identity politics but he strikes me as less naive than Biden. Also he us more leftist.
The plagiarist.
I have said all this before, so I won’t go into it again (the problem with a third round). Bottom line, I like both of them pretty well but am voting for Brown.
I have literally never heard any Democrat of any stripe say this. Cite?
Yeah, I gotta back this up. Polling numbers are pretty clear that most D voters want a win more than ideological purity this time around. While I don’t doubt that there are some - my socialist youngest brother would be one - who are standing firm on ‘this way or no way’ there are many, many more who feel that a marginal - as opposed to complete - win is more important in 2020.
Worrying about “ideological purity” at a time like this is like the gentlemen of social standing on the Titanic who were said to have continued to obsess about proper dress and decorum even as their vessel was rapidly sinking. We all have our priorities, but such priorities are not pragmatic or rational. The overwhelming priority is to get the Orange Peril out of the White House, fumigate the place, and start undoing the vast amount of damage already done. “Ideological purity”? Hell, I’d be thrilled just to have a sane competent Republican in there, never mind a true-blue Democrat. A time of national crisis is not the time to bicker about ideological minutiae.
What would you consider “minutiae”?
“Minutiae” was not the right word, my apologies. What I was trying to say is that the winnability of the Democratic candidate is of absolutely paramount importance and completely overshadows the question of whether or not they support traditional Democratic objectives like health care and tax reform. Getting rid of a president who is both dangerously, objectively incompetent and in the grip of clinical personality disorders has to be the primary objective, and has to take precedence over everything else.
Bernie (for instance) can whine about single-payer health care and Warren about corporate greed and malfeasance; none of it does a damn bit of good if they lose and Trump gets a second term. You’ve probably seen enough of my political posts to know that I agree with both of them, but now is not the time to run on risky long-term reform propositions. The ideal Democratic candidate right now should be absolutely mainstream, conservative by Dem standards, and be able to flaunt as their primary attribute, not some idealistic reform program that scares people off, but – God help us – the fact they they are sane.
I’d be a swing voter who grew up in the beautiful state of Ohio, despite his gun control views, I might be able to get behind Brown …
Oh. OK, I think you’re wrong, then.
On sanity: I’m worried that the objective can’t be just the status quo ante. The status quo ante seems to have spurred voters to vote for an amateur, a “brick through the window.” The voters voted for insanity, and you may even have to run someone insane to win them over.
On going “left”: Remember that the median US citizen would be “wackadoodle far left” by the elitist standards of Congress. There’s not a lot of margin in trying to be a less conservative Republican. Big dreams like the Green New Deal are meant to inspire voters. Medicare for All is meant not only to repudiate the Obama-era “solution” to health insurance, but to expand a popular and functional program.
Sane fer sure. And a voice for us being one America out of many.
Otherwise I also disagree, and I say this as someone who would love status quo ante, the moderate course of Obama was fine with me. But voters like voting for change. They don’t actually want much change I don’t think. When it happens it scares them. But they vote for it for president. Trump won as a what’s behind door number two something different, something that was a change. Obama was a change. When he wasn’t as much of the change he won by less, and may have lost if the challenger was selling change. A challenger in particular needs to sell not just a return to before but some new course.
I am not so much a progressive myself. But a progressive populist message that hits on wealth inequality while not minimizing institutional racism and the impact of sexism is going to sell better than a careful calibration to the middle. These are messages that can unify the D base and attract the independents who wanted to give Trumps change a chance and are not thrilled. Independents who include former Republicans btw.
Milquetoast, not exciting (and unifying) the D base and not exciting those who just want to try something else, is more a risk of failure than having a bold and ambitious positive vision for the country’s future is.
IMHO.