Exactly. And yet the conversation here again and again is ignoring these things in lieu of things that most people just don’t care about. Voters: “I can’t afford to eat, get sick, or pay my rent.” Democratic Candidate “I can’t help you with any of that, but the other guy is terrible, and I’m white, straight and male so vote for me!”
At this point 20 years ago, everyone knew it was going to be Hillary vs Rudy. Polls this far out are nothing but name recognition and knee jerk response.
Name recognition is critical.
Yes, polls are unlikely to be “accurate” this far out in terms of picking a winner, but it’s much more likely than not that the nominee will be somebody we’ve all already heard of. So in that sense name recognition is a very big deal.
Gavin Newsom went on Ezra Klein’s podcast; I thought it was a great listen.
I guess she is running:
Harris stepping toward another White House run
He’s a symptom of a bunch of bigger problems.
I’ve said she should run if she wants to. But I doubt I’ll vote for her in the primary, and I think Vance could beat her in a general election. We need to nominate a military veteran.
I don’t have any faith that Harris can win a general election. On the other hand, she could run a lot of ads of herself in 2024 warning the nation about things that have already happened. And will happen. I hope for a stronger candidate, but she’s not the worst bat on the bench.
I’m entirely cynical on this issue. I’ll support whichever Democrat I think has a realistic shot at winning in the primaries.
One thing I am 100% sure of is by the time my state has its primary my vote will be meaningless.
No we don’t. Nobody really cares about the military anymore. Both sides use it to virtue signal but nobody in their heart of hearts really gives a fuck. I used to think it (a candidate’s military service) was important too, but the trajectory of contemporary politics proves it to be less and less of a thing with each successive election.
Personally, I’m just glad that I’m never going to have to hear again about what a given presidential candidate did or didn’t do in Vietnam.
I’m cynical that the latter would be Harris at this point. She has plenty of true blue supporters, but enough blame her for the last election and the perceived failures (however you add them up) of the Biden administration. I doubt she’s truly viable anymore even in the primaries, but maybe we’ll see I guess.
Right now I’m not very enthusiastic about her campaign; but it remains to be seen what Harris actually runs on. I don’t think she really got much of a chance to set and communicate her own agenda last time around, both because of how short the turnaround was and because she was kinda continuing Biden’s ticket rather than running on her own. I look forward to seeing what she (and other potential candidates) have to say.
That was a good listen.
Polls indicate she would win, but that is a long time from now.
Walz or Mayor Pete are the two choices?
Right. Unless they nominate some great war hero, but Vance was a war correspondent. Mind you yes, he did his time over there, sure.
Mark Kelly.
Senator Mark Kelly is a decorated U.S. Navy veteran, serving as a combat pilot and retired Captain, flying 39 combat missions in Operation Desert Storm before becoming a NASA astronaut and now a Senator for Arizona. He has over 25 years of military service.
Mark Kelly can’t leverage his military status into anything that will appeal to anyone but boomer liberal normies.
He could have called a press conference and said, “Donald Trump is a fat pedophile.” Crowd would go apeshit, media would have a frenzy, and he’d become an instant folk hero. Instead he gave a boring and tedious lecture and 3 days later everyone forgot who Mark Kelly was.
Like all career military men, he can’t step outside of his rigid court ettiquite. Even “Mad Dog” Mattis couldn’t do it.
Nice guy and a maybe, but had zero showing in the polls.
Early days…
This. IMHO the biggest issue is going to be how aggressive the next Democratic POTUS should be in conducting purges of Trump’s appointees. Obviously the cabinet level people will change, but what about the next level down? What about middle management? The people at ICE that are conducting raids targeting people here legally including American citizens? The people at the FDA that approved a black box warning for COVID-19 vaccines? The people at the Department of Education that are de facto forcing out university presidents that are defending DEI and other progressive causes, and so on? Those people all need to be fired, and that, more than anything else, will get us back to being a normal country. The next nominee needs to be the candidate who can get that across in a way that wins votes rather than alienates people.
Nobody has even announced their candidacy yet. Polling at this stage is functionally the equivalent of asking if you’ve heard the person’s name.