This all makes sense. The fact that Mayor Pete has the 5% chance just shows how weak the field is.
IF Biden can hold them off — go on TV early on and show up Trump for the lying scoundrel he is — then Welcome, President Biden. If he wants to show me something he should do it soon. And if he CAN’T do that then, by elimination, it’s
Liz Warren for President Liz Warren for President Liz Warren for President!
Last I looked BetFair showed her as favorite face-to-face against Trump IIRC. I hope they’re right.
I don’t think the issue is so much that Buttigieg is gay, as it is that he claims to be gay and Christian, and claims that Christianity affirms his sexuality. That’s what will rankle many Christian voters, and harden those who might be on the fences, to go over to Trump. (Sure, there are Christian liberals, but they’d go for Buttigieg no matter what)
It’s like how Muslim voters have no problem voting for a non-Muslim candidate who eats pork - after all, it’s what non-Muslims do. But if you had a candidate who claimed to be Muslim, yet ate pork openly and claimed that the Quran praises pork-eating, that would anger much of the Islamic vote. (Supposing, hypothetically, that America were a 40% Muslim nation)
The RCP betting page is rather fascinating. It has Warren at 53% and Biden at 21% which seems about right. It’s also informative because a naive observer just looking at the polls might conclude that Warren and Biden are locked in a very close race whereas those numbers suggest, correctly IMO, that Warren has a substantial advantage and has had one for weeks.
Below that it gets weird though. It has Yang at 7% and most astonishingly Hillary at 6% ahead of Harris. I can almost understand Yang. At least he is in the race, raising a lot of money and making some waves and his supporters are probably the kind who are likely to place political bets. Hillary at 6% is pure craziness though; I struggle to think of any scenario however outlandish where she becomes the nominee or why anyone would be betting on her even out of misplaced enthusiasm.
The ‘predictions’ on Yang and Hillary may be too high, but these dark horses have a chance because the Democratic field is so weak. Hillary was (and perhaps would be again) a much better candidate than anyone on the Democratic debate stage today.
The first primaries are months away, and focus is on just two names. And both Biden and Warren are flawed. Already we can predict low-information voters troubled by “Biden’s Ukraine corruption;” plus serious gaffes or health lapse is a likelihood. Many moderates at SDMB have announced they’d vote Trump rather than the “woman who would take away their insurance.” If either Biden or Warren falter, we’re down to a single candidate for the election still a year away. Harris and Beto will soon be soon as losers rather than viable alternatives.
It’s hard to imagine the exact scenario where Yang, let alone Clinton, becomes the nominee, but there may be some surprises ahead.
These words don’t mean what you think they mean, and twinks and flamers are usually one and the same. BTW, I have not heard the latter word since high school, how retro.
Anyway, Pete is not either. Maybe his husband is, but Pete is probably on otter judging by the beard he sported in college. Although who knows how much body hair he has these days.
*If *Trump’s approval ratings truly crater and he appears doomed, *and *Biden vs. Warren duking it out appears to weak, then Hillary might be able to make a run. She would surely salivate inwardly at the thought of dealing Trump a landslide defeat in November 2020, an ultimate redemption story.
Besides, what could she really have to lose? If she loses in 2020 in the primaries, so what? She’s already lost one before, so what bad would happen if she lost again? Best case for her is that she becomes POTUS, and she doesn’t get to live this life twice, so nothing to lose.
Only a few Christian churches hate gays. Mostly some Baptist churches. Gay & Christian isn’t a contradiction at all.
United Church of Christ ,Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (since 2010) and the Presbyterian Church (USA) The Episcopal Church in the United States, and the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) all have openly gay ministers.
I know what the words mean, it was just a poorly formed joke that needed some work and I accidentally posted rather than back buttoned out of like I thought.
In terms of the serious idea behind it it makes sense. Older gay politicians have either been closeted or very liberal. A politician who has always been out but is centrist enough to appeal in a general is going to be of a more recent vintage.
I think this is a very insightful piece. About a month or so ago I posted here of a response by Dave Weigel of the Washington Post who did a Q&A on Twitter with one question about the somewhat light media scrutiny Warren was receiving. His answer then ties in with this article released a couple of days ago that Warren is the closest to a media darling candidate in this field.
She’s running an impressive campaign no question but for a top tier candidate she has got away with some very softball questions. For example it was Stephen Colbert who pressed her harder on whether middle class taxes would go up on his late night show! The late night bookings are supposed to be the light-hearted fluff of the campaign trail!
Her “wealth tax” is just a more sophisticated way of saying the “millionaires and billionaires” will pay for it all as Bernie does.
Then there was an issue at the LGBTQ Forum people picked up when Kamala Harris (whose track record with respect to that community is much more good than bad over her career in CA) was questioned in a much more critical manner than Warren who doesn’t have much of a record with that community.
The moderator picked up two past actions both now regret and “evolved” yet Harris was asked “how can we trust you” whereas Warren was told “you’ve changed your position and that’s great”. Subtle difference but very noticeable. And for the record the moderator also went after Joe Biden despite the fact that when he was Vice President of the United States it was he who came out in favour of gay marriage really moving the scale.
I am not anti-Warren. On the contrary I’ve praised her and think she’s far more viable as a progressive candidate than Sanders. That said now the gap between her and Biden is closing it’s time she was properly challenged. It’s not good for a candidate to have the media acting as a mouthpiece. “I have a plan” is becoming a gimmick. How is she going to accomplish these plans? How is she going to get Congress to approve them? Both her and Sanders like to re-frame questions delving into the viability of Medicare For All as “Republican talking points” but that’s such a lame cop-out. This is not how you prepare for a general election.
Good points, Boycott. I’m sure she will be scrutinized more seriously in the next few weeks in various forums, and I look forward to hearing her reactions, both in substance and style. I like her, but she needs to be truly prepared to answer concerns about her health insurance plan, and to a lesser degree her tax plan.
And, she needs to do a few things that make her look presidential and have nothing to do with domestic economics. Maybe something foreign-policy related.
…they aren’t acting as her mouthpiece though. Thats a narrative. Even if true though its out of her control. This isn’t a critique of her or her campaign.
And it shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone that Colbert would be capable of holding a politician to account. He’s been doing that for years. He knows his stuff: as do Seth Meyers an even to an extent Jimmy Kimmel. If it came as a surprise to you then maybe you haven’t been paying attention.
The Trump administration has effectively broken the Federal government. Agencies have been hollowed out. Experienced, qualified people have been removed or marginalised and have been replaced by Trump party hacks. The Department of Justice is at Trumps beck-and-call, the State Department has effectively been sidelined, the Whitehouse twitter feed is basically broadcasting propaganda 24 hours a day. Nothing works the way its supposed to work any more.
I said a couple of years ago that if the Democrats do manage to defeat Trump at the next election (and I’m not convinced that they will) then it will take years, if not decades to be able to fix this. The next administration will effectively have to be rebuilding American institutions. It will be like entering a disaster zone. Departments will have to be rebuilt. The Trump regime on their way out will be deleting emails and destroying servers and visitor logs will be burned and they will be removing all the “k’s” from the keyboards.
This will not be a normal transition.
And I argued a couple of years ago that you can’t do this without a plan. So I am entirely pleased that there is at least one person running for President who is preparing for the shit-show that will face them (if they are able to firstly win the nomination and then win the presidency. )
So no, this isn’t a gimmick. Its a recognition of reality. I would be less worried about “how she would deal with congress with a plan” than I would be if she “planned to deal with congress without a plan.” How would she accomplish those plans? The same way the rest of the world does it. I’m wondering: how do you accomplish something if you don’t have a plan? That would be the bigger question, wouldn’t it?
Its not a lame cop-out. It the truth. There are literal talking points printed out by Republican think-tanks that are distributed to Trump spox and to the media outlets that say these things.
Being prepared is a great way to be prepared for a general election.
There is a picture of him floating around on the internet from his college rowing days where he has a full beard. He looked about ten years older than he does now. If he had really smart people working on his campaign, they’d tell him to grow that thing back right quick.
I agree that the boyish features and shortness are his biggest liabilities. He doesn’t look at all presidential, which is a shame because he is probably the only person running who has a genius-level IQ. Someone like Brian Sims or even Jared Polis are more likely to be the first gay president, simply by virtue of seeming more “manly.”
Why would those be mutually exclusive? It’s a Republican talking point and it’s a lame copout for Warren to refuse to address it on that basis. If we are supposed to believe she will be an effective nominee, she has to be able to answer the charges that have the most traction. Ignoring them won’t make them go away. And polling shows that this is a very serious public opinion weakness of the Bernie Sanders plan she has endorsed.
I guess the problem is that bearded presidents went out with the Gilded Age.
I have a great deal of respect for Byler as an election statistics junkie and analyst. But he’s out of his area of expertise in writing a piece like this, and it shows:
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!!!
I’d love to move to the alternate universe where this is true. Just sayin’.
Most national journalists who cover campaigns don’t bother to learn about the issues even to the extent that the average poster in this thread understands them. Instead, they ask horse-race questions (“how do you think your stance on X will play with WWC/African-American/whoever voters?”) and write articles covering the race from a theater-criticism POV.
The Warren campaign’s approach to the media has been to take them out of their usual narratives as much as possible. If a reporter asks a campaign rep what they think about polls showing X, the answer is invariably, “we don’t look at polls.” Maybe they do, maybe they don’t, but it takes that whole gambit away from reporters covering them. The story they would have written if they’d had a conversation about polls just became unwriteable.
After getting their legs kicked out from under them on this and various other standard horse race/theater crit approaches to getting those standard stories, reporters are forced to ask the Warren people questions about policy, where the Warren people can describe their policies in the best possible light, and policy-ignorant reporters are in no position to ask good questions, because you have to know shit to ask good questions.
The result is the same - Warren’s campaign gets positive coverage - but Byler’s way off base about why this is happening. The truth is, Warren’s team had a plan - for the campaign itself, including for the handling of the media, and it’s working like a charm.