They dated for a bit, while he was only separated from his wife. The fact that you don’t know who he is doesn’t matter much. He was a party big wig in California and it’s part of a “Harris slept her way to the top” smear line, I’m guessing.
If you have lived in CA for long and dont even KNOW who Willie Brown is, then you dont follow the news.
Willie Lewis Brown Jr. (born March 20, 1934) is an American politician of the Democratic Party. Brown served over 30 years in the California State Assembly, spending 15 years as its speaker. He later became mayor of San Francisco, and was the first African American to hold that office. The San Francisco Chronicle called Brown “one of San Francisco’s most notable mayors”, adding that he had “celebrity beyond the city’s boundaries.”[1]
Now, sure, I will give you that if you dont know of the Harris/Brown scandal rumor, you are not alone. It’s not a big deal and little known.
Exactly. I mean, I know who he is, but I also know the history of Harvey Milk, Dianne Feinstein, etc. Most people don’t know or care. Barack Obama was friends with an actual left wing terrorist and it didn’t seem to hurt him, as much as right wingers tried to make it stick. Guilt by association with people few have heard of just doesn’t seem to get much traction.
You’re entitled to believe that, but Silver’s point was that this is exactly backward. You lose more ground than you gain, because you rile up the other side.
Mike Pesca made a related argument, that people who take this line seem suspiciously likely to be guilty of motivated reasoning. It’s never like “Boy, I really prefer centrist policies, but since we have to motivate the base to win the election, I’ll just hold my nose and go with candidates who push the envelope on progressivism.” :dubious:
It’s not guilt by association, at least in most places outside of California. It’s that he was a big power broker and Harris had a relationship with him early in her political career. While he was still married.
Separated is not “still married” other than in a very technical sense. My wife and I got engaged while I was still not yet divorced from my first wife, but had been separated for years.
You can’t just say it’s a losing strategy across the board, otherwise Obama wouldn’t have happened. He certainly riled up the Dem masses and won because of it, despite also riling up the opposition who didn’t want a Muslim from Kenya to win.
You know who didn’t rile up the Dems? John Kerry. Hillary Clinton. These were safe, boring candidates that everyone assumed had the election in the bag. To win this time, the Dems need someone who won’t lull voters into a state of complacency.
So when people say Harris slept her way to the the top with a married man, your killer rejoinder is “he wasn’t technically married”?
No, it appears to be “he was ONLY technically married”. I can’t imagine any significant number of Democratic voters caring about her technically-adulterous affair from decades ago. And it’s not exactly an issue that Trump can effectively use against her in the general!
If you can go beyond innuendo and actually point to specific evidence that Brown somehow unethically promoted Harris’ career as a result of that relationship, you might have something there. Having lived in SF during Brown’s tenure as Mayor, I *will *say that’s exactly the sort of thing he would be likely to do, but I still want to see some concrete evidence before I would take that line of attack seriously.
So you weren’t talking about 2008 fundraising after all. Glad to hear it.
Oh, ffs. You didn’t read my post very carefully, as I also mentioned the how crowded the field was. Quit being so desperate for internet points.
Well, Hillary would have won the EC if EITHER minority and youth turnout had been just a little higher, OR if she had done just a little better with moderate independent voters. So I would argue that anyone who believes that 2016 sent a clear message about which strategy Dems should pursue is engaged in motivated reasoning, no matter which side of the argument they come down.
First of all, I am just pointing to a campaign I think has been formulated against Harris. I have no wish whatsoever to smear her. But the man himself has come out and talked about how he promoted her, bafflingly not describing any ethical breaches.
And fwiw, the two jobs mentioned that he assigned her in the above quote happened while they were a thing. I’ll let you decide whether that’s unethical.
You can be a centrist and still inspire people to go to the polls. Once again, Obama is an example of this.
I firmly believe that John Kerry came as close as any Democrat could have that year, and closer than most. And that Obama did worse than a “safer” white male Democrat not named Gaydolf Titler would have. I am positive that in a 50/50 environment like 2000, Obama would have lost decisively and set back the prospect of a black president for many years. But the GOP brand was in the toilet that year. I do think we are seeing something similar now, so we again might get away with nominating a risky candidate. But we should not kid ourselves that it is the more electable path.
Speaking to an older African American woman who is in for Biden partly due to experience but also because “he won’t be tainted by getting beat”. In other words this is now or never for Biden. His final swansong. If Trump beats him the last public duty he has to fulfill is a concession speech. Then he will put his feet up and spend his time with family and friends like Hillary. Whereas the others have to return to the Senate or seek another office knowing there will be a stigma of losing to Trump. She said she doesn’t want to see a POC have to concede to Trump. It will be an insult. So since the polls still say Biden has the best head to head vs Trump, she is in for Biden. Interestingly despite ideoligcal differences she’ll happily vote for Bernie too. For the same reason…to beat Donald Trump.
Buttigieg is 37 — losing in the primary doesn’t stop you from seeking the presidency again and he’s young enough where he can try again in 20, 30 or even 40 years in the case of Biden and Bernie, but losing in the general election sticks will be an asterisk against his name forever. There is a lot of talented young people in this field of which some of them will no doubt run for the nomination again.
I read it word for word.
You mentioned how crowded the 2019 field was. About the earlier race, you said, “In 2008, Obama got $25M first quarter, $32M second (Hillary got $27M) in a much smaller field.” As far as I could tell, you were comparing 2019 with the first two quarters of 2008.
This is the Dope. If you can’t stand the notion of another poster nudging you to clarify your meaning when you’re seemingly comparing apples and oranges, you should really go somewhere else.
Ok, you win the internet.
What is your evidence to support this opinion? 2008 saw record turnouts among black, Asian, and Latino voters. This undoubtedly helped Obama win NC, IN, and VA despite being red for decades. At the same time, the number of white voters essentially stayed what it was in 2004. So I’m going to need to see some cites before I believe a safe white guy could’ve rallied minority voters the same way that way Obama did.
The GOP brand was in the toilet when in Bush’s second term too, but Kerry still lost.
The more “electable path” is obviously the one that leads to getting the most EC votes. It seems to me those who want to run the safest candidates (like Biden) are banking on the idea that he will woo the whites who for whatever Godforsaken reason thought HRC was worst than Trump back in 2016. Which is wishful thinking, IMO.
I think it’s more likely those whites will either stick with Trump (the same reason Bush voters re-elected him against all logic and common sense…sunken cost fallacy is a hellava drug) or won’t vote at all (or will vote 3rd party, which is the same thing). The former scenario means the Dems really need to focus on wooing demographic groups that are the least likely to vote Republican but are the most likely not to vote. This means doing what Obama did: rallying the minority voters and young voters.
Again, this is not orthogonal to running a centrist nominee. But it does mean we need someone who doesn’t distance themselves from the issues that concern minorities and young people.
This, if not just a one off, is where the polling shit get real for Biden in my mind. If Selzer’s, due in a few days, confirms that he’s lost his lead in Iowa, then if maybe not death spiral but at a point that he has to show serious and aggressive game going forward. Unlike most here I’m not convinced he cannot do that, but I’m not convinced he can either. IF he can rebound in the polls after the next debate then he is the comeback old fart and will be unstoppable. But if this Iowa polling is real and he doesn’t bounce back … [insert PacMan death sound here]
Biden’s path, in my mind, has been predicated on winning both Iowa and NH. The primaries are not a national election and national polling before those races really matter little. There just are no cases when those two have both been contested that you don’t win the nom without winning at least one of those, and winning both is essentially an inertial lock. (As RTF has pointed out several times.)
OTOH if Harris in particular wins just one of them she is pretty much on a glide path. Especially if she has earned some support from Black voters over Biden.
She has been polling surprisingly poorly in Nevada, the next up, but it still is in her region, and with a win in one of the first two her prospect there is very good. Then it’s SC and IF she has won over Black voters they are the key bloc in a Democratic primary there. She then dominates the news cycle with Biden’s support all going elsewhere and heavy inertia going into March 3 voting which includes her delegate rich home state and several states with large populations of Black primary voters.
Sanders and Warren are both in the position that if they fail to win either Iowa or NH (especially NH given that is their region) they are effectively finished. Buttigieg also needs a win in one of those two (bluntly put) whiter states as the next rounds are stacked against him.
Harris threw a good punch and Biden relatively just stood there flatfooted taking it across the jaw with no effective counter jab. I’m not so sure he doesn’t have the ability to come out strong next round, and we haven’t yet seen how Harris can stand up to being swung at by multiple others.
But assuming Selzer’s confirms these newest Iowa numbers I am on board with the Biden is in deep shit narrative. For the very little that is worth. (If OTOH Selzer shows little change, then still his step was into shit that may have smelled bad and stuck to his shoe some, but pretty shallow and of the sort that can be scraped off without too much difficulty.)