His state is Michigan, not Indiana.
I missed that he moved. Thanks for the correction.
Between Slotkin, Whitmer, and Buttigieg, is there any indication who is more popular in the state? And is Michigan the kind of state where there are rah-rah Michigan types who would like the idea of a Michigan president, maybe even if they usually vote for the Republican?
Pennsylvania has some of that tendency. I think Shapiro could win Pennsylvania, and, because we are trending Republican, he may be a unique Democrat in that regard.
The lack of experience is what dismays me.
But he was mayor in South Bend.
“Pivoting to the center” is what Harris did. No thanks.
My personal favorite is Slotkin. I think Whitmer may have blown herself up when she visited the Oval Office earlier this year and hid her face behind her folders while Trump was signing some heinous EOs. Didn’t make her look presidential or even professional.
I have no idea how Buttigieg polls here. He hasn’t been active in state or local politics since he moved to Traverse City.
I don’t think Michiganders have any special feeling about voting for a native. I know it wouldn’t matter to me (as a Michigan native myself). In fact, of Whitmer shows up on my primary ballot, I’m not voting for her.
I’m not sure “being able to deliver their home state” matters in general anymore. Trump didn’t win his home state in any of his campaigns. Biden, Obama, and Dubya won theirs, but any candidate from their party would have won those states. Maybe Bill Clinton won Arkansas where another Democrat wouldn’t have, but his wins were by large enough margins that it didn’t really matter.
With the ideological divide being what it is, I don’t think any undecided or unmotivated voter is gonna make a decision based on their living in the same state as the candidate.
She gave three or so good economic proposals trying to appeal to the average Joe when she debated Trump, but then dropped them. That was not pivoting to the center, or anywhere else:
Republican in the cabinet? That’s not pivoting to the center, because it has no policy content. And you cannot win without peeling off some Republicans. Obama promised a GOP cabinet member, and delivered with several. Even AOC would say that in the general.
Obama didn’t win by “peeling off Republicans”. He won by energizing progressives. Biden ran to Obama’s left in 2020 and won even bigger. A self-described socialist just got elected mayor of New York by the largest margin of any candidate in 60 years.
If people wanted Republican policies, they’d just vote for a Republican. When you water down your agenda to try to appeal to the center-right, you lose the left.
I recall, decades ago, posting that Obama was an unusually strong progressive, based on interest group ratings, and being shot down as plain wrong. Glad to see that I was correct. But hasn’t Democratic registered voter voting propensity increased since then?
On what issues?
In a liberal city, he only got 50,8 percent. This compares to Kamala Harris getting 67.7 percent of the NYC vote a year earlier. The only reason you can say his was a big margin is that two weak candidates split the right of center vote.
No to California candidates. No to NYC candidates. Yes to women, Jews, Hispanics, gays, Asians, Native Americans, Blacks, and even white Christian men.
Obama was against gay marriage in 2008, for one.
But hasn’t Democratic registered voter voting propensity increased since then?
Fewer states require voters to register a party preference now than 20 years ago (and in my state it’s not even an option anymore).
Which is more than ANY mayoral candidate in NYC has achieved since the ‘60s, and he did that with his own party’s establishment actively working AGAINST him in favor of a Diet Republican candidate. The point is that progressive social policies are popular and Democrats who embrace them win while Democratic candidates who act ashamed of their own platform in order to try to win Republican votes lose, because instead of winning Republican voters, they cause Democratic voters to stay home.
You post that Harris won 67% of NYC voters. Biden won 76% and Obama won 79%. Of recent Democratic presidential candidates, she was the most “moderate” and she performed the worst.
And Mandani won with 51 percent. Looks like a trend line, except that Mandani was off the chart low.
Which, frankly, was pretty common for mainstream Democratic politicians in 2008.
Massachusetts had legalized SSM in 2004, but that was the only state which had legalized it by the time of the 2008 presidential campaign (though Connecticut legalized it shortly after the 2008 election).
They categorically did not. They were both extremely policy-light and focused their messaging almost entirely on “you’re a bad person if you don’t vote for a woman” or “Donald Trump is mean/corrupt/a rapist so you’re stuck with me.” The latter may be basically true, but we’ve learned that the kind of voters who care are already voting for Democrats; it does nothing for swing voters no matter how much you think it “should.”
Harris’s one actual policy proposal was ridiculous - instead of running on the Biden administration’s remarkable accomplishment of bringing inflation back down to 2% by 2024 despite the legacy of COVID stimulus money-printing, she immediately gave in to Trump’s inaccurate framing that grocery prices were out of control thanks to the administration she was a part of, and proposed the insane step of federal price controls on grocery stores, a completely economically illiterate idea that everyone also knew she could not possibly make happen.
She did nothing to counter voter perception that Democrats are soft on crime, she did not champion an alternate vision of immigration policy, and she did not distance herself from the shrieking campus left. In addition to the economy, those issues, in that order, are what swing voters reported caring about, and the Harris campaign absolutely whiffed on all of them. (The trans stuff didn’t end up mattering because everybody who was willing to change their vote on that was already firmly in one camp or the other).
You don’t get a bonus for higher “energy” from people who were going to vote for you anyway. Obama got a lot of persuadable voters because he responded to what they were sick of in the Republican administration (the lingering Iraq war and complicity in the economic meltdown). He also made a lot of promises about making health care “affordable” which turned into the biggest financial clusterfuck in recent American history, swept a Republican Congress into power two years into his term, and made Trump possible. Again, real and perceived policy proposals and performance in governance matter a lot more than people want to admit. You’re looking for some sort of magic wand along the lines of “we just need to find someone with Obama’s charisma or an unimpeachable military service record or some other way to bamboozle people into supporting policies they don’t like” and the problem isn’t that you aren’t looking hard enough for that person, it’s that those things have never really mattered.
I guess we watched different campaigns
Yeah, you were. Obama was heavily supported by hopeful progressives. That is not the same as being progressive. As midwestern urban Democrats go he was pretty much a died-in-the-wool centrist and I don’t think he ever pretended much that he wasn’t.
I remember some of my progressive friends being bitter after the fact that he wasn’t more of an accelerationist, but rather just another trying-to-be-collaborative gradualist. I (politely) scolded them for projecting their own beliefs onto a guy who had always pretty much toed the line. Their response was ‘well, okay - but I was just hoping for more’. Many people believe what they want to believe based on desires, not objective reality. Witness our current administration.
What I’m looking for is a Democrat who doesn’t think “liberal” is a four-letter word and isn’t ashamed to support progressive causes.
Not quite. He was advised to say that, but his private opinion was different. In 2008 things were different.
In 1996 he was in favor of it.
Also he did not just say “no gay marriage”- he said that a Sacred Civil Union would be better.
Both also appealed to Indy voters.
This is not true at all. DNC Chair Ken Martin publicly encouraged New Yorkers to vote for Mamdani ahead of the general election, so did Harris, Obama and Sanders. Admittedly, others such as Schumer were rather slow in their support. But they did.
Adams got 67%. del Blasio got 73%
Cite?
Here is what she actually proposed-
Harris’ campaign website states that her policy would “build on the anti-price gouging statutes already in place in 37 states.” These 37 state-level anti-price gouging laws largely function by banning firms from significantly increasing the price of essential goods during disasters or states of emergency. When we spoke to the Harris campaign, a representative confirmed that the anti-price gouging proposal is specifically meant to curtail price increases during emergency situations.
Two top economists are quoted in my cite as saying it could work, and another had doubts.
Harris was considered tough on crime, having been the AG of California. In fact that worked against her, and since violent crime was way down, this was only a MAGA fantasy.
Why should she? There was no immigration problem, that was entirely a MAGA fantasy.
If the other side claims that dragons attacking our cities is an issue, should we counter it?
Yes, if a huge chunk of swing voters believe that, and your goal is to win the election, you need to create messaging that changes their mind. That’s what a political campaign is. You do not get points for high-fiving other people on a message board about how stupid the voters are. It became very clear very early that Kamala Harris was paying a lot of inner circle advisors who fundamentally did not understand this.
I think I mentioned her way upthread but she bears mentioning again:
Not eligible to run for POTUS yet but I think she’s got a bright future in politics and she’s liberal AF. Instead of $1000 a plate fundraising dinners, she does food drives for the local community. She gives out menstrual products and other necessities for free from her campaign office. One of her campaign priorities is “basic existence”.
I follow Kat on Bluesky. She’s definitely got potential.