Elected office is a lot more like jury duty than any technical job. There’s a reason why elected officials don’t require experience by law, just as you don’t even have to be literate to serve on a jury.
Now granted, certain kinds of experience are valuable, but if your primary experience is “good at campaigning and spinning” that’s not really helpful at actually governing. A surplus of that type of “talent” has led to an extreme backlash against political elites all over the world. People elect with hope because they think they are electing good people, and then they suck, so people go looking for something different.
Well first, you probably don’t actually take the “experience” argument seriously, since much as with SCOTUS justices, the electorate seems to prefer people with SOME experience but not too much. If we truly valued experience all our Presidents would be 60+, but instead we value youth and energy. Well, I daresay that someone like Dwayne Johnson’s youth and energy would result in just as good a Presidency as Kamala Harris’ or Cory Booker’s.
Ah, “elites”. The word of choice for people who like to sneer without substance.
Which goes back to my “The American people suck at selecting candidates” argument. Congressional approval ratings have been in the toilet for decades and yet when election day rolls around they vote back in the same people again and again. Why is this the politicians’ fault?
Unfortunately, and as Winston Churchill allegedly noted, all the other ways of selecting a government are worse.
We value a balance of experience, capability, leadership/charisma, and a focus on whatever issues are important to us. Or at least we should; as per the “American people suck at selecting candidates” model, we actually prefer people we can make up favorable narratives about in our heads (“I’d like to have a beer with him” / “He feels our pain” / He’ll make America great again"). The candidates tell us stories and we fill in the gaps ourselves, because it’s much easier than trying to understand complex issues and doing background research and coming to terms with the fact that no candidate will be perfect and therefore you have to either select the best of a bad lot or run for office yourself.
As for Dwayne: he makes an effort to be nice, he’s incredibly hard-working and a self-made success, he’s articulate and TTBOMK he’s not mired in scandals so he’s already way ahead of the current incumbent. That said, I haven’t the foggiest idea what his political views are so I’m not writing him in just yet.
this is a nonsense assertion. most other systems do not look like yours and do not even have the same camaigning characteristics. If there is a ‘global’ backlash against the supposed elites, that is common across the different systems including not very democratic ones, it is hardly due to as your naive extrapolation from american perceptions ‘campaigning’ but from the frustrations arising from the global economic change from the automation.
And yet we hold to 40 hour work weeks and 50 week work years, because it is cheaper for the larger corporations that support the excessive advertisement-based campaigning, and export our business model.
Dammit, Warren said today she’ll be taking a “hard look” at running for president after the midterms. I really like her as my senator, but jeezus, we don’t need a schoolmarmish Massachusetts liberal going up against Trump (or Pence?) in 2020! :mad:
You post this like it is some kind of surprise. There is a reason there’s been this thread for three weeks. It has been clear that she is very likely going to run.
But care to add more about why you feel the way you feel other than that she is “schoolmarmish” and liberal?
I’m not a fan of hers, yet at least, based on what I’ve seen (I reserve the option to change my mind as I see her performance on the trail), but most of the contenders for the Dem nom will be in one flavor or another as liberal as she is or more so. “Schoolmarmish” is either saying her gender disqualifies or her intellectualism and professorial style does. If the latter well it won’t get her the votes of those who currently support Trump, that’s for sure … there is a strong anti-intellectual current flowing there … but those folk aint voting D no matter what.
Leaving the issue of the primaries alone for a bit, the ideal general election candidate can rev various elements of the base to turn out big, can whomp him in swingy educated suburban districts, and appeal some to less educated rural whites who are still wanting change that delivers for their lives.
So with those criteria in mind, more specifically, why would she make such a poor candidate?
I like Warren a lot, agree with her on most points, acknowledge she can make a rousing speech – rousing when she preaches to the choir, anyway – but for me personally she is too easy to caricature as a prissy scold. Yes, that is totally unfair and grossly far from what she is, but any halfway capable propagandist will be able to do that to her, and affect not just the unwinnable troglodytes but also the mushy middle unfamiliar with her that we need to win over.
If she does take the nomination I will wholeheartedly support her, but do you really think a Massachusetts liberal (East Coast big city snob elite woman – ptooey! plus Pocahontas!) can win? I’m not talking merits here, I’m talking winning an election in a country that elected Donald fucking Trump. :mad:
I certainly hope you’re right. I would LOVE to be proven wrong. It’s just that the last few decades have increasingly soured me on the capacity of the American citizenry en masse to see past the circus sideshows and conmen’s patter.
I think there are quite a few moderate Republicans who voted for Trump in 2016 who are ready to vote for a democrat if the candidate is right.
To get those votes, the democrats need to stay away from a minority candidate or a woman candidate. Joe Biden is a white male, a candidate that someone who is still clinging to 1952 can relate to and would be willing to vote for.
Keep in mind that the image of a woman that many right wingers have is Jane Wyatt in, “Father Knows Best”. They’'re just not going to vote for a woman.
Happy to hear she be rousing. It’s her campaigning that I need to be convinced of. How she campaigns would determine whether or not the “mushy middle” sees her as “a prissy scold” or as a “change agent.”
She has a life story that is not East Coast big city snob elite. Born barely lower middle class in Oklahoma, worked hard. Married High School sweetheart and followed him to Houston and then NJ. Became a lawyer while raising young kids and had her first marriage not work out. And a fair amount of her early academic career was in Texas.
A national campaign would emphasize those Oklahoma small town roots and her time in Texas as part of how she understands what rural state working class Americans are dealing with and how that is the foundation of her economic populism. And she can bring to the table some actual accomplishments in the fight along with a better understanding of how to acknowledge the problems of less educated whites without diminishing the independent challenges beyond economic factors that minority Americans face.
She would have to neutralize the Pocahontas crap and its accusation of dishonesty pretty quick, true.
I’m not a fan because I’ve been unimpressed by her style when I hear her speak especially off-the-cuff and on the fly. But I am open to having my assessment change.
Trump won the electoral college but do remember he lost the popular vote. He won by winning those who wanted “change” and were willing to throw the dice. Warren would, if she can campaign well at all, be the choice of change voters over Trump.
Re Jasmine: I don’t think winning moderate Republicans are the ticket. Honestly I’m not sure how many of them there are left.
I sincerely hope you are right and I am wrong, wrong, wrong, DSeid, it’s just the last couple of years especially have beaten the optimism right out of me.
Screw that. I’m not a big fan of Warren, but mostly because she’s a Baby Boomer and not a younger generation. I think the Democrats need to nominate a woman–this is the time for a female president. Any non-troglodyte knows that there’s a serious misogyny problem in this country, one that’s only going to be fixed when a majority of public offices are held by women. (To be clear, I think that’s a necessary, but not sufficient condition.) The Democratic candidate will need to make an effort to reach out to reasonable Republican women, and I think a female candidate will do that best. But my heart is hardened against male Republicans–they either follow their women and vote Democratic or lose their political power.
(Full disclosure: I’m a RINO in favor of Kamala Harris.)
You are correct here, she could far too easily lose to Trump. Honestly Massachusetts politicians have not done well in the least running for President since Robert Kennedy. It is both parties, though mostly Dems doing bad in elections that were winnable. Or in the Case of Teddy, doing damage to Carter’s chances for re-election.
Biden is the best antidote to Trump IMO, because he’s working class and squeaky clean and a straight, blunt talker, minus the assholery. Being a white male can’t hurt with white voters or males either, because identity politics is what it is. Groups tend to vote for their own. Can’t expect whites or males to be any different.
Weak. Since no bet was actually made, no payment is due.
But yeah, that sure looks like she is thinking seriously about running to have done this and made it public. Perhaps she could have waited for an actual debate to take place, and if Trump tried to make the bet she could have sprung the results she has on him. But then, she might even be concerned about this dogging her in the primaries since the press would probably keep asking her about it.