This.
Neither one is necessarily my top candidate, but I don’t understand why that fact would necessarily lead me (or anyone of a like mind) to conclude that they shouldn’t run. The goal of a primary is to have candidates compete to see who can best represent the cross section of the country. I’m one part of that cross-section, as is everyone else. It’s arrogant and self-absorbed to suggest someone shouldn’t run, unless they are patently harmful candidates like Donald Trump or Ted Cruz. Using that metric, the candidate who comes closest to “shouldn’t run” status is Tulsi Gabbard, who I once had a higher opinion of until I realized that she has had some kooky opinions. But hell, if it comes down to her and Trump, she still wins - I think.
Putting on my pure political analysis hat and setting all partisanship aside, it seems to me that Biden is the candidate with the best chance of beating Trump. Aside from him, the twenty-one (at last count) candidates are gambles at best. Among that group, you have Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren (the vanguard of youth!), another couple so far to the left who not only won’t play in Peoria, but will seriously piss off Peoria, some kids who might be serious players in another ten years, and several nonentities running for the exercise.
Last time around, the Republicans had seventeen candidates, most of whom were equally iffy. Because of the splintering of the primary electorate we wound up with Trump by process of elimination. Let us hope this is not the script for the Democrats this time around.
While I am a Republican, I am not a 'uge fan of the current incumbent. I’d love to have a serious candidate on the Democratic side to at least consider come Election Day.
Thanks for this. I assume (and hope and pray) that there are a fair number of decent Republicans left in the country. Based on your stated views, do you have any sense how many people like you 1) exist, and 2) would vote for someone like Biden over Trump in 2020?
Or, for that matter, would vote for one of the other candidates over Trump in 2020. If Biden is the best chance for beating Trump, then I’m all in for him, but I don’t think that’s a given.
I suppose it depends on whether Joe decides to appease the louder part of the primary electorate and tries to move to the left of Bernie. Unfortunately, not an impossible scenario.
Since we’re watching the current nitwit descend into senile dementia before our very eyes, I’d prefer it if the fossils would realize that their time is long gone and fade away into the K-T boundary with the rest of their kind. Alas, that is not to be and if they’re called upon I’ll vote for the doddering Democrats. But from the 2018 election it’s obvious that the old guard is on its way out in the Democratic Party, so I’m curious to see how this plays out. I think Bernie is relying on a youth vote that may be moving on from him. And Biden certainly will have issues getting the youth vote.
While I voted that they both should be in the race now, I think a risk we take in assessing their chances is that the primary electorate is not the general electorate. As we saw the last time, when it came right down to it, the party professionals tipped the scales in favor of Hillary. With one result being a lot of angry Bernie fans who reputedly voted Trump in the general. I could see the same thing happening in a Biden vs. Bernie showdown. The party professionals, not just the voters, are very influential in the outcome of the primaries (super delegates, anyone?).
Curiously to me, it seems that is not the same on the GOP side? If it was, I would have expected them to find a way to squash Trump along the way. But that’s a discussion for another day.
Anywho, all that I stated seems to suggest that we would be better off if neither were in the race, and that we would focus our attention on fresh blood. But realistically, I want someone who fills the “electable” bill too, and they are the only ones I see at the moment who check that box. For anyone else, it would be an uphill climb. We gotta bring a gun to this knife fight.
Why should the goal be to “Make American Normal Again”? The “normal” isn’t working and trying to simply restore the America of November 7th 2016 gets you a more competent and consistent version of Trump come 2024 or 2028. Buttigieg probably needs some sort of a national high level position given Indiana has an effective ceiling aspiring Democrats due to its strongly Republican nature.
As I keep saying, Democrats have no obligation to nominate people they think might best appeal to Republicans especially when the effect will be to keep the Democratic Party as centrist as possible and prevent it from embracing any sort of genuinely reformist agenda.
There’s no evidence to suggest that the youth vote is “moving on” from Bernie except in the sense that there’s more candidates in the race but under 35s remain disproportionately Sanders supporters.
I think a two White guy ticket is required to take votes away from Trump.
VP selection doesn’t matter all that much (unless its a Palin tier pick) and plenty of women and/or POC candidates have appeal among 2016 Trump voters, not least of which was Obama himself. By this reasoning, Buttigieg being gay might be a bigger turnoff than a white woman or a heterosexual nonwhite man.
I thought we were speaking of people who voted for Trump, usually attacked as being racist and misogynists.
Most Trump voters were/are lifelong Republicans, but a small and decisive proportion of them were Obama voters which enabled Trump to swing key Rust Belt states.
The map of House wins is the same map as of Trump wins. That strongly implies that the Trump win was because everyone voted a straight party line. Which further implies that people who are swing voters didn’t bother to vote in the 2016 election, because they had the good taste to not choose between two crooks.
I’m sure that there are a few people who switched, but it’s not a significant number. Of those that did, I would expect the difference to be financial, not whether one person was male or female, gay or straight, etc.
No, I think any candidates who want to run should run, and the public can sort out which one they want. But if I were going to arbitrarily get rid of a couple of candidates, I’d pick Tulsi Gabbard and Andrew Yang, who strike me as the ones most likely to turn into my nightmare scenario where an unqualified or kooky candidate ends up with the nomination in more or less the same way Trump did*. (Marianne Williamson, I think, would also fall into this general category, but I’m less worried about her because she doesn’t seem to have the weirdly rabid fanbase.) Biden and Bernie are both normal, conventionally qualified candidates with reasonably broad-based appeal. They can stay.
- Yes, I realize Tulsi Gabbard is, by some measures, more conventionally-qualified than Pete Buttigieg, but in the unlikely event that Mayor Pete ends up as the nominee, I’m not too worried about him turning into Democratic Trump, and I think it will be evidence that he actually IS that politically talented and probably deserves the nomination.
Couldn’t help yourself, could you? 
In my dream world, I would love to see Biden run hard through Christmas, then announce before Iowa doctors had found a health problem, and that he was withdrawing, but he would campaign against Donald Trump with every bit of strength he had for as long as he could.
Then from January to November, he makes numerous appearances in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania (and also Ohio, Indiana, West Virginia, Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, etc.) and uses every trick an old-time politician knows to get the crowds and/or big donors on his side, wholeheartedly endorses the Democratic nominee and introduces him/her at campaign stops right up to Election Day.
And then I hope Joe Biden announces his health problem is in remission and that he lives a long and healthy life and dies in his sleep with his family around him.
Same scenario for Bernie, except substitute college campuses. In fact, I’d like to see a series of Biden/Bernie rallies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the University of Michigan, Penn State, etc.
Interesting…
Curious if you think the primaries should simply be vote for who you like or if game theory should be applied to avoid milquetoast candidates?
Everyone on here known my opinion of Sanders and I wish like hell he would have stayed out. I’m slightly optimistic that he won’t have the same cult at 2016. The Daily Kos comment section and the Bernie subreddit made me ill in 2016, Karl Rove couldn’t have written harsher things about Hillary than the diehard Bernie supporters. I hope like hell people have leaned that you can’t cast protest votes in Madison, Ann Arbor, or State College.
I also wish Biden had stayed out. We’re in for 18 months of creepy Uncle Joe memes, it’ll be just like the damn emails all over again. Plus, it’ll give fuel to the ‘rigged’ shit if it comes down to Biden vs Sanders as the last two standing.
Biden’s time was 2016 and it could have prevented the awful Bernie vs Hillary wars. Sanders not dropping out after the New York primary and his ‘take it to the convention’ attitude is what caused the Hillary loss and the election of the worst president of the modern era.
dalej42, the Daily Kos comments section and Reddit are going to be populated by the same professional trolls no matter who’s running.