I’ve been arguing that, but maybe I should go a bit farther.
There a reasonable theory that U.S. presidents go in cycles. When the President is calm to boring, swing voters want someone dynamic, charismatic, and pushy. After hyper-masculine Donald Trump, maybe being a woman will actually help with Trump voters who think he went a bit too far. I’m not saying a leftist woman candidate from a solidly red state will convince a voter like that, but a Michigan woman may be the calming influence swing voters will feel it is time for after Trump.
What did Obama have that no one else had? What did Clinton have? They were absolutely amazing on TV (speeches, interviews, etc.). This probably shouldn’t be the only metric, but choosing the candidate who performs best on TV should be one of the very top concerns.
I think that in the current political environment, a candidate’s level of support for Israel can be their biggest weakness, no matter what that level of support is. Supporting Israel too much will get lots of people angry at you. Not supporting Israel enough will get lots of people angry at you. Anything in between will get both sets angry at you.
Democrats have a huge problem with extremist factions demanding purity tests in the primary, both in the presidential race and in contests for office in single-party states like California, that come back to haunt candidates in the general. The Israel thing is a double whammy - the positions demanded by the DSA faction are so radical that they will turn off even median Democrats and totally alienate moderate voters, and the people demanding that candidates take these stances generally are saboteurs who are not operating in good faith and will find some reason to oppose the Democratic nominee anyway. The temptation to try to find a way to win the nomination while disavowing these groups for advantage with sane people in November must be large.
The maximalist “destroy Israel, there is no such thing as anti-Semitism, anything anyone deems ‘Zionist’ is a legitimate target for discrimination or violence” position is going to be a big albatross in 2028. To the extent that the persuadable independent voter cares about this issue at all, they are more pro-Israel than anti-. But there’s a much bigger faction of people who are constantly stunned by the idea that “U.S. policy towards one country in the Middle East” is anything other than the 30th-most important issue, and view the obsessives (on both sides) as space aliens. Those people are a missed opportunity for messaging about things they care about and really, REALLY don’t like seeing stuff like campus rioters beating people over what they consider a very minor issue.
It should go without saying that the overt “we hate white men” stuff is also poison for a party that’s trying to win an election - will reserve judgment on whether anyone in the 2028 field is actually tainted by that era of rhetoric.
Is there any truth to either of these, or are they just right wing propaganda? Back before the colleges cracked down, I regularly walked past encampments at two different colleges. It was just people sitting together with signs. No rioting, no beating. And sometimes they’d march. Or stand in a lobby and be in the way for a while before campus security made them move along.
As for hating white men… I, like, once saw a Facebook post from one frustrated friend who said something about hating cis men. They had the post up for a day or two. And it was kinda like “i hate bad drivers”, that sort of frustration. It’s not as if anyone anywhere has ever run on a platform of “hate white men”.
I grant that some people confuse “you have this privilege” with “i hate you”. And that’s certainly a political problem. But it’s not a problem with hating white men.
…
Pritzker anchored his speech by reaching back to the days of John Peter Altgeld, a German-born American who helped to lead the Progressive movement and served as governor of Illinois from 1893 to 1897. Altgeld oversaw passage of some of the strongest laws in the country for workplace safety and protection of child workers, invested heavily in education, and appointed women to important positions in state government despite the fact that women could not yet vote.
Pritzker noted that in his State of the State speech in January 1895, Altgeld talked about “the need to ensure that science would govern the practice of medicine in Illinois; the high cost of insurance; the condition of Illinois prisons; the funding of state universities; a needed revision of election laws; the concentration of wealth in large businesses.” Altgeld expressed pride for appointing women to office and his statement that “[j]ustice requires that the same rewards and honors that encourage and incite men should be equally in reach of women in every field and activity.”
…
Still worthy objectives.
Later he refers to Altgeld again:
…
Pritzker reminded the audience that President Grover Cleveland had similarly tried to “subdue the Illinois population with hired thugs” during the 1894 Pullman strike after the Pullman Company, which made railroad cars, cut workers’ wages by about 25%. When workers struck, Cleveland deputized U.S. Marshals to end the strike. They fired into crowds of bystanders and, according to a Chicago paper, “seemed to be hunting trouble.” Twenty-five people died and more were wounded before the strike ended.
Altgeld had opposed the arrival of federal troops, and his fury at their intrusion still smoldered when he gave his State of the State speech almost six months later. “If the President can, at his pleasure, send troops into any city, town, or hamlet…whenever and wherever he pleases, under pretense of enforcing some law,” Altgeld wrote, “his judgment, which means his pleasure being the sole criterion—then there can be no difference whatever in this respect between the powers of the President and those of…the Czar of Russia.”
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My bold.
Furthermore (this is Pritzker talking):
That love for one’s neighbor, he [Pritzker] suggested, is the country’s most powerful tool against the rise of authoritarianism.
And Pritzker gives specific recent examples.
Pritzker is, as the saying goes, Presidential timber.
Well, the right-wing propaganda organs will always find some group of peaceful protesters who they can falsely label as rioters, so there’s not much we can do about that.
This, of course, is how you lose elections - look at things that objectively happened, that moderate swing voters who actually voted for Democratic presidential candidates at least twice since 2008 are concerned about, and simply decide they are “right-wing propaganda” because addressing those things makes you uncomfortable.
Yes, there was a days-long riot at Columbia University consisting mostly of 40-year-old nonstudent extremist activists fighting police, that was the top news story for a week. That happened. People with children of college age saw it and a hundred similar incidents and were appalled. Calling it names won’t change that and most certainly won’t win you any votes in November 2028.
Yes, part of the “DEI” push was that meaningful people - elected members of Congress and others - openly said that their goal is to deprive white people and men of jobs, income, and rights, not just abstract “privilege.” Yes, this is going to be a huge issue in 2028 and it’s mostly a mess Democrats made for themselves. You can cede the entire ground to us-v-them racial backlash by pretending it’s “propaganda” and letting JD Vance be the only person talking about it, or you can get ahead of it and offer an alternative solution that voters find attractive. Your choice.
Oh, I’m sure it will be a huge issue. The propaganda is strong.
So, you are saying there was one actual riot. I haven’t lived near Columbia in years, and don’t have first hand knowledge. I have first hand knowledge of two college encampments that got a lot of bad press, even on this board, and let’s just say I’m distrustful of the your claims about how bad it was. But, like the bit about “hating white men” I’m sure it will be an issue in upcoming national elections.
I observe that New Yorkers, the people who were presumably most immediately affected by the Columbia encampments, voted for Mamdani, who supports the Columbia protesters.
So, the people actually affected aren’t that bothered by it, but people across the country are.
We will have more incidents like that in the news, because the propaganda machine will make sure of it. Mamdani won without buckling to pressure to pretend that ICE was helping New York against the evil Palestinian protesters. I’m hoping that a national politician with enough charisma can do the same.
Did i mention that charisma is one of the top features I’m looking for in a nominee? Not purity on any issue (although I’ll vote against anyone who looks really evil), but charisma and leadership ability.
Nate Silver just dropped a paywalled article looking at some major candidates in terms of how they have performed in elections relative to other Democrats on the same ballot, which certainly seems like a good thing to look at.
Summary: Gavin Newsom does not look good from this POV. He’s never come close to actually losing an election, but has consistently gotten significantly fewer votes than Democratic Presidential candidates and many other Democrats in California. (Kamala Harris also looks bad; she won one of her State AG races by less than a percentage point, which is terrible for a Democrat in California). Buttigieg did terribly in his only Statewide race, for Indiana Treasurer, even relative to the low expectations for Indiana Democrats.
The two best performers are Beshear and Klobuchar, though Silver notes that Southern States are often open to electing Democratic governors while still being solidly red in Federal elections.
The good news is that several other candidates have consistently overperformed, such as Gallego, Shapiro, Kelly, Whitmer, Ossoff, and Warnock. (Shapiro’s numbers remain good even if you don’t count his most recent election, when he had the advantage of a visibly deranged opponent).
AOC and Booker are meh, Pritzker was bad in his first gubernatorial election but good in his re-election.
Beshear, Klobuchar, Gallego, Shapiro, Kelly, Whitmer, Ossoff, and Warnock. That sounds like a promising field. The ones i know are all solidly in the “I’d work for them against the Republican” camp. Some of them i haven’t heard of, but that’s okay, i often haven’t heard of some of the top contenders at this point in the election cycle.
The only problem with your series of satirical takes on the silly distorted views that conservatives ascribe to progressives is that sometimes you’re so close to those actual conservative claims that I lose sight of your satire.
