Michelle Obama.
I get that, but I can be okay with someone who voted for Trump as a way of protesting the system and protesting the Democratic party. Someone who votes for Trump now? No way, but someone who voted for Trump (and against Hillary) in 2016 and thought ‘Let’s see what happens?’…I obviously disagree with it, but it’s a forgivable sin. And I don’t think Ojeda was voting to protect coal as much as he was voting to bring attention to the plight of his community. West Virginia is potentially a very good case study on how to bring rural whites back into the Democratic party, and if Dems are going to really succeed at all levels, they need to win over some of those voters. I think Ojeda can win over urban and suburban voters with his message and his grit. I’m not necessarily saying he’s my top choice, and I won’t really know how I feel about him until he starts up his campaign.
Once the Primary actually gets rolling, any Democratic candidate that supported Trump should be rightfully ridiculed and booted.
If it were just any candidate, yes, but this is also the guy who challenged a regressive governor in a state with a mostly regressive legislature and spearheaded a major union victory for teachers. And in doing so, he also inspired teachers’ unions in other very red states like Oklahoma. Missouri also rejected a right-to-work law, which isn’t necessarily Ojeda’s doing, but he helped pump some serious life into unions, which have been dying for decades. He killed the meme of the lazy, useless union member and turned the conversation into one about organized labor can defend the working class and how the progressives can win with organized labor.
One of my points was that resume and name recognition are largely moot. The guideposts laid by previous presidential cycles are being wiped out, if they’re not largely gone already. Cultural shifts have changed how campaigns are run throughout our 200+ year history, and it’s happened again. The election of Donald Trump, the advent of social media, memes, 24-hour newsertainment, super PACS, et al doesn’t necessarily mean we have to look to campaigns 20+ years ago for how things are done now.
And frankly, I think you overestimate Bill Clinton’s popularity and love among the populace prior to his actual run for the presidency. From what I remember his only national exposure was a very poorly-received long-winded speech at the DNC in '88. Other than that, he was a small-state governor that most people didn’t think much about. He was charismatic, but people didn’t know that at this point in 1990.
And I’ll have to ask for your dictionary definition of “long.” Because his only other exposure to a national audience that drew praise was a mere two years prior, when he was a state senator, at the DNC. Once he actually hit the Senate, he wasn’t wowing anyone on a national stage. It’s not like he had years of inspiration and leadership under his belt here.
I have a sneaky suspicion you look at his wiki picture and envision him as the military strongman of your dreams. There is no way in hell this guy is winning the primary.
Definitely some retconning going on with that list.
Bolding mine.
Jimmy Carter was unquestionably NOT “a national figure of great charisma long before the election.” He spoke at my college in the fall of 1975, and at that time, few Americans had any idea who the fuck he was.
And either he wasn’t all that charismatic (which would be my assessment), or his charisma lasted just long enough to get him elected. Try to find news stories from 1977-1978 that mention his charisma. Good luck!
Carter’s definitely an exception to your ‘rule.’
[ETA: And then there’s] Shrubby. Was he “a national figure of great charisma” by November 1998? No, he wasn’t. He really only became well known to the larger public during 1999. Was he charismatic? Only by a very low standard that anyone who’s been able to win statewide office in a decent-sized state could meet.
So out of the last 12 cycles, we’ve got 6 where either an incumbent President won re-election or an incumbent veep got elected President (1972, 1984, 1988, 1996, 2004, 2012), 4 where the winner was arguably “a national figure of great charisma long before the election” (1980, 1992, 2008, 2016), and 2 where the winner unquestionably didn’t fit that definition.
So this is hardly an argument that Harris, Booker, Gillibrand, Klobuchar, etc. can’t win if nominated.
Like most candidates, Jimmy Carter was a candidate made for the times. Americans were so repulsed by what they viewed as a lack of ethics and decency in the White House that they wanted someone who would fill that void - Carter was made for that role.
Four years later, voters were sick of hearing an American president tell them what the country’s, and his, limitations were in handling the economy and matters of national security. Reagan fixed that with his confidence and assertiveness.
Americans were tired of the establishment and pragmatist caretakers, so they voted for Trump to shock the system. I suspect that in 2020, there will be a demand for a return to decency, ethics, and competence. It’s just a matter of whether progressive voters can put forward a candidate who can overcome Trump’s base. The right candidate could be a familiar name or could come out of nowhere.
I’m sorry, but this is simply untrue. During the 1992 primaries the candidates were collectively referred to as ‘The Seven Dwarves’ because they had so little stature and national regard. That’s not to say they weren’t known, but they weren’t considered national-level actors.
Bill Clinton, Paul Tsongas, Jerry Brown, Larry Agran, Bob Kerrey, Tom Harkin, Doug Wilder, Tom Laughlin, Eugene McCarthy (for fuck’s sake).
Arguably, Clinton might not make the top three, there. Harkin, Kerrey and Brown had a lot of miles and prominence. Certainly more than Clinton at that point.
Heck, by 1992, Clinton was most famous nationally for absolutely bombing his 1988 DNC speech in which he went on for more than his allotted time and losing his audience. Sort of an ‘anti-Obama 2004’ thing.
Clinton was really known as the wunderkind he’d won the Governor’s office in Arkansas, lost it and then won it again. Nothing more. If he appears as a hypercharismatic speechmaker in hindsight, we have to acknowledge that’s what it is…hindsight.
I will, however, utterly agree with this. If HRC made any real mistake, it was focusing too much on Trump and not on her message. A lot of it seemed to be ‘Jeez, this guy is an asshole, can you believe it?’ and not on getting her own message out.
The next one, whomever it might be, should focus on vision, optimism and the heart of the middle class. Leave the attacks and whispering campaigns to surrogates that can be disclaimed if needed. It’s not like people won’t KNOW he’s an asshole. It’s part of his damn brand, really. The candidate should be the good guy. The others can be the bad guys.
Exactly. I wouldn’t even want her in the convention hall. Any trace of 2016 should be scrubbed from the 2020 campaign like vomit from an Ash Wednesday sidewalk.
At this point, I want a whole lot of crank candidates to declare (Even Hillary!) and no serious candidates at all. The serious ones should wait until just before the deadline to submit their names, which is when the cranks should all drop out.
Because you know the Republican Hate Machine will spin up, and vilify anyone they think might be on the ticket in 2020. It’s what did in Hillary last time, after all. So I want to minimize the amount of time serious candidates are exposed to this type of propaganda, while maximizing the wastage of such propaganda on candidates who really don’t plan to run.
Sometimes, you really do need to take one for the team. This is probably the best service Hillary could do for the Democratic Party right now.
Nope. She has PRESENCE. People like who she is, and they like how she handles public events. She is not renowned for her stump speaking. She is competent, but unless she has policy chops, there’s not going to be anything behind her speeches other than her ability to deliver them, which is nowhere near the ability of Bill Clinton or her husband.
He’s the Jim Webb of this cycle but Webb was a Senator. But it’s also possible Ojeda will do better simply because many Democrats realize they probably won’t win if they can’t win a good percentage of white working class voters. And unlike Webb, he has a compelling biography(grandson of illegal immigrants). And having Latino roots might make his message more palatable than a guy who has written books extolling the Scotch-Irish.
Maybe give her a cabinet office, like Health and Human Services. After 4 years of that, maybe more.
Thanks for saying this, JC. That was my recollection too, but I didn’t feel sure enough of it to include it with my earlier post.
A few things I do remember from that year’s primary/convention season:
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It took for-fucking-ever for Clinton to win out over the rest of that less-than-impressive crew. They were still duking it out in April.
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Even after the primaries were over, Clinton, Bush, and Perot all had ~30% support in the polls.
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It took Perot dropping out of the race right before the Dem convention to finally give Clinton the boost that would finally give him a real lead.
If you consider Bill McRaven a more credible contender than Betsy Warren, who has the name recognition and the following, something is wrong somewhere. I really hope it’s just you.
Ojeda hasn’t been fighting for the middle class. He’s been fighting for an industry that is killing the middle class. Literally killing. You cannot be for both coal and the middle class.
I think it’s hilarious that septimus thinks that Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, or Barry Obama had well-established national stature and name recognition two years out. Jimmy Carter was yet to meet America as the post-Watergate outsider. Bubba Clinton wasn’t even yet known as the too-far-right dork who was trying to pull ahead of Paul Tsongas. Barry Obama was new, so new we didn’t know what part of Africa an “Obama” came from.
And at this point in the cycle, I think Republicans wanted Jeb, not Dubya, if one of Poppy Bush’s sons were to run.
It may be that when it came to events like nominating conventions, the Clinton-Democratic Party didn’t do a good job of lifting up rising stars outside the family, for fear of creating a challenger to Mama Hillary.
But freaking Amy Klobuchar and Tammy Baldwin have higher overall stature now than Dubya, Obama, Bubba, or Jimmy Carter did at this point in those cycles, and their reps are two heads shorter than Betsy Warren’s.
And yes, I still think it will be a woman.