Like I said, Pete Buttigieg.
If there’s one lesson we ought to take from the last quarter century, it’s that voters will pick a candidate who is charismatic and promises bold change over policy works who promise incrementalism and generally maintaining the status quo.
Harris, Hillary Clinton, Romney, Kerry, Gore - incrementalist wonks.
Trump, Obama, Dubya, Bill Clinton - charisma and bold change.
I’m on Team Pritzker because he’s hands-down the candidate who is most aggressively fighting back against fascism and doing so in a way that is populist, embraces his positions because he believes in them and not because pollsters say he should, and isn’t obsessed with antiquated norms or the idea that some nebulous period 20-30 years ago was a Golden Age to which we ought endeavor to return.
This is rich. Have you heard that Pete Buttigieg is gay? 
And as to whether he delivers on the promise (or if the promise was good to begin with) it’s another story.
His problem IMO isn’t that he’s gay, it’s that he’s a nerd. I’d feel OK with running Jared Polis, because he at least has a personality.
My link on this poll said that no candidate could possibly meet all the criteria.
I wondered about some of the biographical characteristics they didn’t ask about, like gender/race/has young children/has adult children/comes from my state.
One thing that gives pause – Vance matches up well with a lot they did find in the poll.
I mean…I gotta disagree. If you want to say they’re not billionaires, sure. But they bought a $9.1 million estate in 2024. When your net wealth runs well into the 8 figures range (and it surely does, they’re paying six figures annually just in fucking property taxes), you can’t be classified as “not wealthy by California standards.” They’re quite wealthy by CA standards, just not as obscenely wealthy as some.
Just on the biography issue, I’m more comfortable with Buttigieg than Newsom.
Vance’s biography – came from poverty, Marine corporal, is, from a pure political standpoint, outstanding. OK, maybe the military occupation of journalist is not so good, but Vance did deploy to a war zone.
Buttigieg at least matches Vance on the military side. So does Mark Kelly, Wes Moore, and my favorite, veteran-supreme Ruben Gallego.
I have no fear of the nominee running while female, and only a little with them running while Californian, but I have real concern about failing to at least halfway match the Vance bio.
And yet he has zero charisma, no deeply held beliefs of his own, seems to openly resent and loathe his wife and children, and admits to being a brazen liar who doesn’t care about facts.
This is why you can’t pick a candidate by checking off boxes. FDR would have been a billionaire by today’s standards, came from Old Money, never had a “real job” or served in the military or “created jobs in the private sector”, and yet he was the single greatest president of the 20th century (and overall IMO).
This is impossible to measure. But to play the game: Dubya has some charisma Gore lacks? What if there was no butterfly ballot? Gore wins. And 9/11 probably goes pretty much the same. Gore then would be seen as the great bold leader, strong against terror and strong on climate.
Bill Clinton was bolder than Hillary? He was the most moderate of Democrats. Or do you consider his ending welfare are we knew it to be the bold stroke?
Regarding an essential need for Trumpian, or other, charisma, I go with the old saw that indispensable men fill the graveyards. From a MAGA standpoint, that will one day be true of Donald Trump.
Mr. Zero charisma is the overwhelming favorite of his party, despite little indication that DJT favors him for 2028. Maybe there’s something we who will never seriously consider voting for Vance fail to see in his personality.
As for “seems to openly resent and loathe his wife and children,” this is over the top. Usha spoke at the GOP convention. I have little reason to think that she, like many other second generation Americans, has not found a way to internalize loyal Republicanism. When famed tiger mom matchmaker Amy Chua introduced Usha and JD, she probably saw a compatibility that we, in our distance, cannot.
I gather you like Pritzker’s rhetoric and policies. That’s a great reason to vote for him. If enough Democrats agree with you on Pritzker, I will vote for him in November 2028. But something impossible to judge, like charisma, is IMHO not an additional reason to vote for him in a primary.
If, somehow, Donald Trump runs again, I do not think being a billionaire rich kid heir will be a problem. But against Corporal Vance, it is a big one.
It’s 2025. Being “the overwhelming favorite of his party” when nobody is even going to announce their candidacy for another year and a half means nothing. In 1989 people seemed to think Jerry Brown had the lock on thr nomination. In 1997 pollsters were convinced Colin Powell was the frontrunner for 2000 and if you asked someone what they thought of George Bush’s son running they’d have thought you meant Neil. Obama was barely on anyone’s radar in 2005. In 2013 Jeb! was the future of the GOP.
Every interaction I’ve ever observed between Vance and his family gives me the impression that he only got married out of social obligation and to “prove” to his buddies that he wasn’t gay. If he’d known that his Stendhalian path to power would involve pretending to be Christian and sucking up to “America’s Hitler", he wouldn’t have picked a partner of whom the most flattering thing he can say is “Obviously she’s not a white person, but I just, I love her”. If he could trade her in for Erika Kirk he’d do so in a heartbeat. Maybe you don’t see that, but it’s clear as day to me.
He won’t be.
I don’t think tying his identity to the Iraq war is gonna be a winning strategy. You don’t have people writing songs and making movies about the heroism of Iraq war veterans or lamenting them as tragic victims of circumstance. There’s no “Born in the USA” about getting cancer from a burn pit or “First Blood” about vets being disrespected when they got home.
Yep, I concur.
This might turn into a hijack, but like I said- I do not believe that trans athletes should be excluded, I want to make that clear. Start a GD on this why not?
Yep.
No real experience. But maybe if he gets elected Senator or Governor, maybe 2032?
Biden won over trump.
Yep, but like I said, give him some real experience, and 2032 may be time.
Yeah, Dubya doesnt qualify as charismatic.
Here, we agree.
2020 is an outlier and Trump probably would have won if he had handled the pandemic better instead of pretending it wasn’t happening because acknowledging that everything wasn’t perfect was a slight to his ego.
Nixon had Charisma? He had negative charisma.
Nixon ran in the last quarter-century?
You claimed Dubya had charisma, when what he had was his fathers last name.
Which he did, especially compared to Gore. Jeb! also had his father’s name. How’d that work out for him?
Yeah, several of those are highly debatable. I note, though, that it’s a lot tougher to come across as the candidate of “bold change” when you’re trying to succeed an incumbent of your own party, as three of your five “wonks” and none of your charismatics were.
Maybe that’s because candidates prefer “wonks” as running mates, so as not to be overshadowed by a “bold and charismatic” VP. It’s a flaw of the system, and it’s why a serving Democratic VP hasn’t been elected President in over a century.
That is getting a bit specific, after all Biden was elected (altho, sure not “serving”). And LBJ was elected- after JFK died, sure, but he was the veep. Nixon was a republican, and so was GW Bush.