Stormy: Were you in?
He is now Basta point of no return…
Avenatti would have been fun in the debates
Well, I’d take issue with the statement that Sanders “did just fine in Midwestern rust belt states.” There were 5 “Midwestern” states (counting PA, which everybody does for this purpose) that Obama won twice and Clinton didn’t: PA, OH, IA, MI, and WI.
Of the five, Sanders won the primary pretty decisively in Wisconsin, but got beaten badly in PA and Ohio. Michigan and Iowa were essentially ties, with Sanders narrowly winning the first and losing the second.
In all, Sanders won about 48% of the vote in those states. Not bad, and several percentage points ahead of his overall 42% figure, but nothing to write home about. Based on the primary results, Sanders might have been able to win Wisconsin in a general election, which Clinton did not manage; but there’s no evidence that he could have flipped Iowa or Michigan to blue, let alone Ohio or Pennsylvania.
I think you’re right that having a “dynamic message that people can connect with” is more important than having a particular home state, but the primaries don’t indicate that Sanders had that kind of connection with the people of these states. To say that O’Rourke might do as well as Sanders isn’t really saying anything, then. If O’Rourke (or any Dem) is going to win these states in 2020, he (or she) is going to need to run a hell of a lot better there than Sanders did.
You’re probably right about all that. My only evidence comes from the union halls I was working out of in west Michigan in 2016; every electrical worker, plumber, iron worker and UAW worker I encountered was fired up for Bernie, and subsequently pissed when their unions endorsed Hillary. In my limited exposure, Bernie seemed to fire up the rank and file while Hillary…didn’t. I probably projected Bernie’s rust belt popularity a bit.
Regardless, I stand by my larger point of needing a candidate that can create massive amounts of buzz, and not just look impressive with his/her resume.
You really can’t extrapolate general election results from primaries.
I would like to make a prediction: if Biden and Sanders are both in, it’s a two person race by South Carolina. You can talk all you want about 20-30 candidates who are possibly viable, but if those two big guns are in, they start out with a huge following and name recognition. Biden has the Obama coalition and the establishment and Sanders has his constituency. I see no way for anyone else to break in between them.
Of course, Joe Biden can never make up his freakin’ mind.
Sure, I probably got a little ahead of myself when I said that Sanders might’ve won WI based on his good showing there vs. Clinton. Too many other confounding variables…But his victory in the primary is certainly one of the best pieces of evidence we have about what might have happened had he been the nominee. I mean, we can also look at demographics, past voting behavior, and so on, but here’s an actual election in which Sanders defeated Clinton, and that’s a suggestion of what could have been the result in a Sanders-Trump matchup. Dispositive? Hardly. An indication? Absolutely. If pressed, I’d say Sanders doesn’t win Wisconsin, but I admit the possibility, based partly on the 2016 primary.
And in the case of Ohio I think the primary results are even more telling. Sanders supporters were nothing if not enthusiastic–all those rallies, all those stories about the “enthusiasm gap” between him and Clinton. Sure, the electorate in a primary is different from the electorate in the general, but that ought to benefit the candidate with the enthusiastic supporters where the primaries are concerned. I think the primary results in OH demonstrate that people didn’t find Sanders compelling, given that he lost to Clinton by about fourteen points. Again, there’s other factors we could look at; but based solely on the primary results I’m quite comfortable saying “If Clinton couldn’t win Ohio, no way Sanders could have done it.”
(I agree that for a lot of states the primary winner doesn’t have much to do with the general election winner. Sanders beat Clinton easily in HI, WA, and RI, for instance, but Clinton won those states against Trump…easily. Clinton beat Sanders easily in states like DE, CA, and NY, but it seems likely that Sanders would have won them against Trump too. Clinton won Georgia, Mississippi, South Dakota and didn’t win the general, and Sanders’s easy victories over Clinton wouldn’t have translated into general election wins in Idaho or Kansas or West Virginia. But that’s a function of having 35+ states where the outcome of the presidential election is pretty much decided even before we know who the candidates are. In the remaining states, where the identity of candidates might matter, primary results do give an insight into what voters are thinking. Of course, we’ll never know how accurate any of it is…)
Yes, it was terrible of Biden to not focus on his political campaign back in 2015 while his son was dying (or had just died) of brain cancer.
Bidens’ inability to make a decision on running wasn’t just limited to the 2016 race. It’s been an ongoing thing for him and continues to the present day.
Well he ran in 2008, eventually becoming the Vice Presidential candidate, then ran again as VP in 2012, then decided not to run in 2016 due to his family circumstances. Which “ongoing” races has he been waffling about in particular?
Despite the advantage in name recognition, I don’t think there’s any chance at all that the field winnows to Biden and Sanders that early.
First, it’s extremely unlikely that two old white men are going to sweep everyone else out of the way in 2020. While there are certainly Democrats, including some on this board, who think that only a white guy can defeat Trump in the general election, there are many, many more who are agitating for a woman or a person of color. I just filled out my MoveOn Straw poll ballot–they asked about what qualifications you want to see in a candidate (check up to three) and those qualifications included “a woman” and “a person of color”; it’s perhaps instructive that none of them was “a white man whose age is rapidly approaching 80.” The folks that lean toward a woman or a minority aren’t going away, and I have no doubt there will be enough votes cast for nonwhites and women to keep one or more candidates who fit that description in the race for a pretty good spell.
Second, there’s no way that everyone else will get out of the race by the time South Carolina votes. The first three states to vote are Iowa, which is extremely white, new Hampshire, which is even whiter than that, and Nevada, which does have a large Hispanic population but is not a state that screams DIVERSITY! at you. Plus, they’re small–they have 2% of the US population between them. Yeah, it could be that Biden wins Iowa, Sanders new Hampshire, and Biden Nevada, but the Bookers and Harrises in the race will say–and accurately–that these states don’t truly represent America or the Democratic Party. South Carolina’s a very different story where diversity is concerned, so there’s absolutely no downside for Harris or Booker to staying in the race through then (and probably longer…this time around Super Tuesday includes California…)
Yeah, I know about funding drying up for perceived “loser” candidates, and the media attention focusing on those who win the early primaries…but it is implausible that only two candidates, and particularly only those two candidates, would be left after a single primary and a couple of caucuses, all in states with a grand total of 16 electoral votes.
Here’s my reasoning: both are far and away enjoying the most voter support early on. Now if this was a Joe Lieberman or Rudy Giuliani situation that lead would obviously be based entirely on name recognition. Both were ill suited ideologically for their party’s nomination. But that’s not the case with Biden and Sanders. They both have very real appeal to different wings of the party. Biden in particular is extremely popular and you’d be hard pressed to find a Democratic voter who won’t support him should he win the nomination. Even if he’s not everyone’s first choice, he’s universally liked in a way that previous front runners were not. Sanders of course has his large following and if he’s in the race he owns the left. And almost every Democratic contender plans to run to the left, a place Sanders already occupies. So where do any of the other candidates fit in? And to the extent the non-Biden, non-Sanders candidates do fit in, how do they avoid cannibalizing each others’ support? Even if half the party REALLY wants a younger or minority candidate, how do they coalesce around just one? Harris? Booker? Beto? Gillibrand?
Current polling shows Biden 1st, Sanders 2nd, and about 50-60% support for other candidates all in single digits. It’ll take a heck of a debate performance or massive establishment support to get one of these younger candidates to emerge from the pack. At this point it looks like the establishment wants Beto to be the primary alternative to Biden. Can they get a House member into the White House? I doubt it.
Not to mention California and Texas are voting early. Big state primaries tend to be name recognition contests. Of course, Texas is a state Beto can definitely win, so maybe the establishment is on to something here.
Yeah, that’s really tough-- It’d take at least a year, maybe more.
Which, hey, look, is time that we happen to have.
The first polls that matter are taken in Iowa on 2/3/2020 and in New Hampshire on 2/11/2020, and maybe the one taken in Nevada on 2/22/2020. What happens in those polls are big drivers of name recognition from there.
The only other polls that might matter some before that are the polls taken of donors whose votes are dollars and organization. But in a huge field without clear assumed leaders the odds are that many will hold those checkbooks a bit waiting to not bet on a horse that ends up with no chance. Here Sanders is at a disadvantage. The small donors who powered him last time? Many of them are moving on to newer other faces who are also speaking the progressive game.
So sure Biden and Sanders are well positioned to do well in the first of those two polls based on established name recognition and fans. But their one and two either way won’t be the news. The news will be who is three and four with the others not getting any attention at all.
And those who want someone different than the flavor of previous cycles will begin to coalesce to one of those two.
Now how it goes from there depends on who those two are. Harris is of course well positioned to take CA and O’Rourke TX. (I’m hoping Beto runs for John Cornyn’s seat instead.)
Of course if either of Biden or Sanders is not one or two in those first two they are toast. For anyone else third or fourth is a win, for either of them it would be disaster. Expectations are the game at that point.
There will be likely four very live prospects going into Super Tuesday and likely after.
It won’t take a heck of a debate performance (although that certainly won’t hurt), or intense establishment support (though likewise).
For one thing, as Chronos points out, there’s a lot of time for things to begin to shake out before the first ballots are cast. We’re not going into Iowa with Biden at 30%, Sanders at 30%, and ten candidates at 4% apiece. Someone will make a stupid comment and their support will drop. Someone will make an excellent speech and their support will go up. Others will decide that the money just isn’t there and drop out. With so many candidates, including so many who aren’t well known, support is very fluid. I don’t know anybody who’s all “Kamala Harris or bust”–it’s “Well, I like Harris, but I like Gillibrand and O’Rourke too for somewhat different reasons, and I could absolutely see myself voting for Warren or Brown…” Early in the race voters, politicians, and donors WILL switch from one (possibly sinking) candidate to another (whose star seems to be on the rise) quickly and easily. (And while some of that switching might go to Biden or Sanders, a lot of it will not.)
Then, as DSeid points out, somebody other than Biden & Sanders WILL do well in Iowa or NH, even if that means third place, and that person’s campaign will get a boost both in terms of media and in terms of cash. Maybe we head into SC with Biden and Sanders still “in the lead,” whatever that means when so few people have voted and so few delegates have been awarded, but there will certainly be another candidate or two who has separated from the pack. As the campaign goes on, those who don’t like Biden and/or Sanders for any reason WILL coalesce around whoever’s moving up.
Also, I doubt that Biden and Sanders are going to prove as popular as you believe. I like Biden myself; my wife probably sees him as her first choice right now. But a lot of that is nostalgia for When Things Were Good and We Had a Real President. We look at Joe through rose-colored glasses. When he’s on the campaign trail, things may be different…we may find ourselves focusing on his gaffes (of which he has had many in the past), his age, or things we don’t even know about at this point, and his support could drop rather suddenly. Not saying it will; just that I think his support currently has a lot of air in it which may not hold. As for Sanders, I don’t think he will have a monopoly on the progressives this time around. He will not be the only progressive in the race in 2020, and I expect that a bunch of voters on the left end of the spectrum will find that they prefer somebody else for various reasons. And if that does happen, I don’t think he will handle it well, and that could exacerbate his problems as the race moves forward.
It will certainly be interesting to watch.
Sorry, I’m a little late catching up, here you go: https://splinternews.com/78-democrats-vote-to-weaken-a-key-wall-street-regulatio-1825249063
On Colbert, Joaquin Castro announced that Julian Castro will be running for president. And Julian, sitting right next to him while he said it, didn’t deny it.
So while not officially in, he apparently will be.
And Sanders and Warren meet and agree: They both are probably running.
But still, the official candidate count remains at two:
- Rep. John Delaney
- WV State Sen. Richard Ojeda
I’m a strong supporter of financial regulation in general, but I know little about the specifics; and think that some regulations have been very misguided. The particular vote in question (by Beto O’Rourke and 77 other House Democrats) seems to be
To make the world’s Top Sixty list, a bank needs $471 billion in assets. JPMorgan Chase & Co. has $2.5 trillion. It’s these too-big-to-fail banks whose egregious conduct is of greatest concern. I’m not sure that relaxing regulations on “small” banks is a bad thing.
I’d be more concerned about 11 Democratic Senators:
Deregulating banks with only $249 billion in assets because they’re “small”? That seems like real money to me! :rolleyes:
George Will (!) praises Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) as the guy who may be able to beat Trump two years from now. Not sure I agree with him, but Brown is my senator and, other than his protectionism, a great guy: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/this-candidate-may-be-the-optimum-challenger-to-trump-in-2020/2018/12/12/86fb4a60-fd7c-11e8-862a-b6a6f3ce8199_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.eb4282bc6b45