If you’re an anti-war voter, you have to take what you can get. It reminds one of the old saying, “beggars can’t be choosers”. Anti-war Democrats had to put up with Afghanistan war plodding on for 8 years under Obama, while drone strikes also continued in numerous countries and bombing and troop engagements expanding in others. Hillary in 2016 promised to be even worse. Gabbard is the most outspoken candidate saying that she wants to end the pointless wars that we’re currently fighting and avoid starting new ones. Is it really productive to complain that she’s not completely ideologically pure in her motives for doing so?
I was there. Crowd size about 1-1.5k, the speeches weren’t too long, and Castro was introduced by his mother. Immigration reform, M4A, and universal pre-K were the three main policy points he touched on, but there was more, I’m sure, as I left a little early.
Very interesting, early start to the race. Surprised to see a heavy hitter like Warren jump in early. That’s brought Harris in, as well as a lot of 2nd tier contenders. So now we see what Biden and Sanders and Booker do.
Beto, on the other hand, doesn’t look like a guy who is going to run to me. He sounded really unsure and uninformed in his Washington Post interview:
Questioning whether the US can still be governed by its constitution, that one’s going to hang over his head for life if he doesn’t figure out a real smart way to clarify that one.
I heard Sherrod Brown on NPR this morning. He sounded very unprepared for the interview. Maybe because he went off-script to comment on the previous story (veterans lose burn-pit court battle), but I hope his aides scold him for it. If you can’t handle impromptu comments, stay on script.
One of the problems with Brown that won’t be a huge factor but will be SOME factor and probably means he definitely won’t be VP is the fact that Democrats definitely lose his seat until 2022 if he leave the Senate. Kasich appoints his replacement until the end of his term.
Yeah, I’ve been cooling quite a bit on Beto in the past few weeks or so. I really hope he doesn’t run, as I don’t want him to suck up the excitement and headlines and dollars from other candidates. He should run for Senate again in 2020.
At the same time, these are the days for fucking up interviews and getting the kinks out with feedback from staff. Over the next year, the good ones will get better, the rest will fizzle or flame out. And the ones who are completely out of their league will, hopefully, be advised not to run.
I don’t think Beto has staff right now for a national run. From what I"m reading, all this planning for a Beto run is being done by some really high profile people without his input.
