Cory Booker has all but announced he’s running by choosing to testify against Sessions. This is not a man who normally takes stands, so apparently he’s coming out with a full head of steam now. He also just happens to be the best candidate to reassemble the Obama coalition except bigger. If he’s determined to run, my money’s on him.
But that’s not even the most important question for Democrats. Winning the Presidency from Donald Trump is the easy part, but it gets them nothing. Republicans are going to run roughshod for four years, and winning the White House doesn’t do much once Republicans have already done all they feel like doing. If anything, it gives them a break to just snipe at the White House again and build their majorities back again while they wait for their next chance. Democrats need a real plan, a plan to not just win back Congress and state governments, but what to do when they accomplish it.
I don’t think she should run or that she’s going to run in 2020, but her victory in the primaries was not close. Sanders was not within a few hairs of beating her.
Clinton won’t run again, because she wouldn’t win. She lost the first competitive primary and won the second only because a path was cleared for her. There will be no such path in 2020 and she’ll be competing against the brightest young stars in the party, as well as one or two respected veterans who have more accomplishments and are more likeable than her. She would be lucky to match Chris Dodd’s 2008 performance.
What are the Democrats going to do in 2018 and 2020? The same as they always do. Go up for the wide-open slam-dunk and clang the ball off the back of the rim.
Focusing on 2020 and the Presidency, I would suggest that the Democrats don’t just focus on Trump. They need to consider that he may have a challenger from within the party who could prevail. By then the Republican voters may be tired of his nonsense (assuming he doesn’t leave office early under any of a number of possible scenarios I won’t detail here. Hi FBI/Secret Service! Hope you are having a good day!).
So, whoever the Democrats run with, they need to be able to beat the eventual Republican candidate.
I think I see part of the problem. The Dems cannot seem to come up with 3-5 leaders of their own party. At least with the Pubs I could give you 3 off the top of my head: Trump (ex officio), Cruz (Evangelical subset) and Ryan (for the Normies in the party)
I wouldn’t be at all surprised if Trump decided not to run. He already added “being president” to his lifetime list of accomplishments, and I don’t know that he has all that much more interest in the job than that. Meanwhile, his lifestyle will be constrained in all sorts of ways that it was not when he was just a run-of-the-mill loudmouth billionaire.
Especially when he finds out that he has a lot less control of the government as president than he has of his business empire as owner.
Turnout in house and senate elections is lower in midterm years. In a presidential election maybe 120-130 million people will vote in the house & senate elections. In a midterm year closer to 80 million people vote.
A blowout election is something like 45 million votes for one party, 35 million votes for the other party. If you assume the GOP is demoralized because they will be the ones with power (the party in power is less motivated to vote than the party out of power), and if you assume the dems are highly motivated, then a turnout of 44 million dems vs 37 million GOP voters could be possible.
Whole flipping country has gone baboon batshit. What good is a “plan”?
Oh, OK, we’ll stick marbles up our nose and shatter them with hammers while yelling “Kitang! Kitang! Kitang!” at passing cars. We got a plan. Happy now?
Were you talking about the House vote? I assume the Senate vote swings wildly around depending on whether California, New York, and/or Texas have a Senator up for election that year.
For fuck;s sake, this looks like 2004 all over again-Dems lost because they were too extreme! Mark Warner/Joe Lieberman is our only hope! Ad naseum.
And who is his candidacy going to excite or swing over from Trump voters? He’s not even black or Hispanic so its unlikely he’d boost minority turnout that way, he’s not going to win over any WWC voters or excite progressives with his anemic social liberal record, he isn’t particularly charismatic, and he isn’t going to win over any more of the soccer moms when a majority of white women still voted against the first female nominee of a major party-enough suburbanites are willing to ignore bourgeois respectability if that means tax cuts. Walter Mondale 2.0.
Hickenlooper is a similar uninspiring nonentity. I’m not sure why you think Warren “can’t bring out the radicals or get the stay at home to vote” though. My main concern is she will be too old but otherwise, she should be a solid candidate.
Sanders will probably be too old but the rest of this is just ridiculous. Polls consistently showed Sanders doing as well as if not outpolling Clinton against Trump and he also had a massive favorability advantage that Clinton never enjoyed. Also unlike McGovern, Sanders would have solid support from Middle America and the support of the major unions including the AFL-CIO. Not to mention that McGovern’s main unpopularity was due to his cultural libertarianism not economic “leftism” (indeed on economic issues he was probably more centrist then old guard labour liberals like Humphrey and Scoop Jackson and he ended up supporting Social Security “reform” towards the end of his life!) while Sanders is more or less on the same page as Clinton on cultural issues (indeed he wouldn’t have been so radically anti-gun or pro-abortion in rhetoric as Clinton or make a comment about “deplorables” which led her to make no practically gains among Mormons and lose bigger then among evangelicals then any previous Democrat against a hitherto pro-abortion, thrice-married casino owner!).
Except that Sanders won-by a yuge margin-in rural Wisconsin and in similar areas nationwide.
I don’t think ideology is particularly relevant to Dems’ prospects for success. They can win in 2020 with a triangulation strategy(as long as it’s sincere and not bullshitting), or they can win as firebrand liberals.
The issue isn’t so much ideology as priorities and messaging. If they have 30 different messages for 30 different demographic groups they’ll lose. But if they focus on issues that everyone cares about, regardless of what exactly their proposed solutions are, they’ll win.
Telling the truth+a focus on issues all Americans care about= victory.
Taking positions everyone knows are just for the election+talking about stuff only small groups of people give a shit about= failure.
Firstly, the assumption that the Democrats have a “plan” is not supported by past behaviour. The GOP have plans. Evil plans. The Democrat flaps around like headless chickens and occasionally flap in the right direction.
Secondly, out of the current pool of likely candidates for 2020 I’d put Warren as the frontrunner, but of course it’s entirely possible that in the next 2.5 years someone new and exciting will come forward.
(That said, in retrospect I’m entertaining the idea that Warren could have won it this time if she’d been the Democratic nominee - much less baggage than Clinton and Sanders and with a clear history of a populist position in taking shots at financial sector excesses. The whole “Fauxcahontas” thing would have played out early and the GOP don’t appear to have much else to ding her on. And she’s much better at public speaking than Clinton. Admittedly I thought her lack of experience was a negative but it turns out no one cares about experience any more.)
Thirdly, it’s all speculative until the DNC choose a permanent chairperson. Brazile is still only interim chair, no? I wonder if Uncle Joe wants a new job…
Correction: Telling a good story + a focus on issues all Americans care about = victory. Truth is on the “nice to have but entirely optional” list (cf. Trump). Bonus if you can work it in, though.
I admit, it doesn’t compare well with the splendid strategic analysis you have offered. But I accept your admonishment with grace, and look forward to sitting quietly at your feet and taking notes as you drop more pearls of strategic wisdom for the progressive movement you support so fervently. Well, tepidly. Hardly at all, actually.
Right now, resistance is the plan. When we see how that shakes out with The People, we’ll have a better idea of what we need to do, what standard bearer would best bear the standard. But before “we” have a plan, there has to be a “we” to plan it.
Would that be you? From here, it looks like not. You are all about your non-partisan cred, about all you offer us is your opinion that “we” are wrong and should become you, then we would have your approval. Oh, happy day!
Those who find out Trump didnt deliver anything he promised?
And the progressives stayed home due to relentless personal attacks on Clinton, crap like she’s in the pocket of Big Banks (which is now so super ironic after seeing Trump cabinet it actually hurts) the Russian hacking and such like.
Yes, he did. *DID. *
But once Karl Rove opened up his files on Sanders and started attacking him, that favorability would melt away like snow on a hot summers day. The GOP held back on Sanders, since the sanders supporters were doing a great job of attacking Clinton.