There is no such thing as “experienced” when it comes to electing a president. However, there is such a thing as experienced when it comes to how government works. Obama was a civil rights attorney, a constitutional law professor, a state senator and a national Senator before he ran for president. He knew the norms and limits of government before he took office as POTUS.
This.
I mean, I get that “experience” counts, but on the Dem side, the leadership doesn’t really understand the rules have changed… and have been changed since 2009 when the GOP rebranded itself as the obstructionist party. The Democrats fight fair. The Republicans fight to win. Frankly, at this point I prefer winning.
When I think about my conversation with Joaquin Castro the other month, I always come back to this:
Avenatti understands this in the way a group of Democratic Senators who just allowed another 6 Republican judges to be nominated so they can get some extra days off do not.
I mean, if Primary day came and it was Avenatti vs. John Lewis (another fighter), all things being equal I’d vote Lewis. But Avenatti vs. Schumer? No way Chuckie would get my vote. Avenatti vs. Biden? Sorry, Joe.
Here is a WaPo list of the top-15 Democratic candidates as of March 24th. Avenatti is preferable to a large number of them, imho:
Agreed.
Much is made about “executive experience”, and there is something to be said about that, but Trump had lots of “executive experience” prior to 2016. One needs to look at experience, temperament, policy position and electability. Avenatti might be better than 99 out of 100 random people picked off the street, but the question is more whether he’s the best the Democrats have to offer, and is he electable. It’s hard to imaging that the answer to the first question is “yes”, and the answer to the second question is, at best, a crap shoot. He’s never run for public office. Do we want to take a crap shoot in 2020?
Anyway, I still think the OP is putting the cart before the horse. Would Avenatti be a good president? Maybe. Would he be a good candidate for the Democrats in the general election? I don’t think so.
I’m in complete agreement. I’m reminded of the phrase (in reference to FDR) “a second class intellect, but a first class temperament”. Avenatti seems to have a terrible temperament, based on the little I’ve read of him (or rather, his public persona).
I will always echo the refrain that we need a smart person with political experience and some record of public service.
However, let’s look at the recent record of US presidents:
[ul]
[li]Trump, imbecile in every way except for self-promotion and arse-covering.[/li][li]Obama, an academic with 2 years as a senator and a bit of whatever community organizing is. That he was an exemplary president was just plain dumb luck. Failed to see the bruising street fight for what it was.[/li][li]Bush the Lesser, Yale C-student, Air National Guard no-show, and good-old-boy-finagled governor of Texas whose main qualification seemed to be owning a baseball team.[/li][li]Bill Clinton, governor, Rhodes scholar, shady attorney, Oval Office fellatee[/li][li]Bush the Greater, first of his name, former VP and actual Navy veteran[/li][li]Ronald Reagan, film actor, liar, and I assume a good former governor of California.[/li][/ul]
It appears that America has a vanishingly small record of drafting political valedictorians for the presidency in recent history. I follow Avenatti on Twitter and he seems to be highly principled, laser-focused on the issues that Democrats want but seem to waffle on, whip-smart, and media savvy. I could live with that.
Even more than that, it’s appealing to think of someone with legal smarts, experience, and fire in the belly to keep hammering on Trump family crimes through 2028 to expose the whole sordid mess to sunlight (which is something I personally hope from the next administration).
For now I like Kamala Harris, but if it should come down to Avenatti or Trump, I won’t be holding my nose when I vote for Avenatti.
I’ll save y’all a click by transcribing that list:
- Bernie Sanders
- Elizabeth Warren
- Joe Biden
- Kamala Harris
- Cory Booker
- Kirsten Gillibrand
- Chris Murphy (junior Senator from Conn.)
- Terry McAuliffe
- Deval Patrick
- Sherrod Brown
- Andrew Cuomo
- Eric Holder
- Mitch Landrieu (Mayor of New Orleans)
- Oprah Winfrey
- Steve Bullock (Gov. Montana)
If that’s not enough choices WaPo adds eight “Worth watching” names:
Julián Castro
Jerry Brown (will be almost 83 on Inauguration Day)
John Hickenlooper
Amy Klobuchar
Eric Garcetti
Jeff Merkley
Howard Schultz (ex-CEO Starbucks)
Luis V. Gutiérrez
Evidently WaPo isn’t enthused about our Draft Bill McRaven movement!
Not one. A fine idea.
I don’t want an inexperienced president. Not at all.
But being a pussy is worse than being inexperienced. And the experienced democrats are pussies. Republicans do not value democracy. Democrats beg for friendship. It’s not working.
If there is an experienced Democrat as ruthlessly efficient as avenatti, I would happily support them for president, senate majority leader and house speaker.
Because you think he would be a good President…or because you think the Republicans could kick his ass?
This, precisely. I don’t want an amateur for President.
ETA: Also, what Fretful Porpentine said. And jayjay.
The issue isn’t ‘better than Trump’. I could throw a dart at a phone book and find someone better than Trump to be president.
I just want ruthless fighters in positions of leadership.
For the life of me, I can’t figure out why republican voters hate Mitch McConnell so much. That guy is an incredible senate leader. He is ruthlessly efficient. While Chuck Schumer trips over his own shoes and begs for friendship, McConnell uses every underhanded trick in the book to get his way.
I want people as ruthlessly efficient as McConnell as president, senate majority leader, house speaker and the chairpersons of the important congressional committees.
And I value ruthless efficiency more than experience. However I’d love to have politicians who have both.
The days of LBJ and FDR are long gone. People who welcome the hatred they will get for standing up for their voters and values. The democrats don’t fight anymore because they are terrified of being called names by fox news or terrified rich people will fund their opponents. Hopefully the modern age will give birth to a generation of democratic fighters like Avenatti.
I would posit that the kind of executive experience Trump had in a private company where he was answerable to no one and all around him were subordinates dependent on his capricious favor is terrible preparation for the executive role of an American President, for whom Congress and the courts present independent power centers with their own agendas and nowhere near the same obligation to be subservient to the executive’s will, which is circumscribed in many ways by law, custom, and practical realities. Having been governor of a state is a much better education for the executive role the Presidency requires.
Medicare for all is really popular among voters – I’m guessing you mean most Democratic politicians won’t touch it?
Don’t give up: it looks like Sanders’s 2017 M4A bill got 1/3 of Democratic senators to support it, including rumored 2020 contenders Booker, Harris, and Warren. Conyers’s House version got well over half of Democratic representatives to co-sponsor it.
Don’t worry; there won’t be any shortage of Democratic politicians running for the nomination with M4A in their platform. It’ll be the orthodox Democratic policy position on healthcare by then.*
*I am not thrilled about this, for a number of solidly left-of-center reasons, but it does appear that more gradual/technocratic/cost-saving reforms can’t survive Republican presidents anymore – so the big clumsy entitlement program it’ll be, I guess.
Obama won two Presidential elections, got his signature legislation passed, and the country did very, very well under him. How are you so sure he was outsmarted?
Michael Avenatti is a fine lawyer and public advocate. He is quite literally not one of the fifty thousand best Presidential candidates in America.
It took him a year to get health care passed because him and the democrats kept hoping the GOP would contribute, when all they did was obstruct.
Obama tried to pass legislation that would’ve raised the medicare age, but luckily the GOP wouldn’t agree to it. He basically sold out his base to appear bipartisan. Plus raising the medicare age doesn’t save that much money as 65 and 66 year olds are not that expensive to insure.
It took Muhammad Ali until the eighth round to beat Foreman, and until then it LOOKED like Foreman was winning. Everyone thought Ali was crazy, but as it turns out, he knew more about boxing than the fans knew. Obama knew more about politics than you do. It’s results that matter, not who makes you happy because they’re all fighty like Michael Avenatti.
I don’t know that the results of Obamacare are anything to brag about. The Republicans added every landmine they could to make it fail.
Just in case anyone isn’t aware, Avenatti isn’t exactly hopping around like Scrappy Doo with his dukes up picking fights with people. Not that kind of fighter. He’s an attorney who is a fierce advocate for his clients, but moreover, is not shy about naming the villain and the broader problems that he stands for (in this case, Trump’s lawlessness, bullying, and squalor). I doubt his sudden ambition for office, but his motivation is clear from his 18 year track record. For all the sensational statements he’s made on Twitter, most of them have proven accurate or prescient. We’ll know about the rest very soon.
We can debate whether Obama erred in trying to make a good-faith last stand for bipartisan cooperation, to show that we tried. But I think it’s clear that moment has passed, and this moment is about prosecuting the Trump crime family as well as the web of Republican corruption interwoven with it.
I’m puzzled someone like Jon Tester is never on these lists - Dem from a Midwestern agricultural state. Did he do something really nasty that disqualifies him or is it just that he isn’t interested? He strikes me as someone who could appeal to a lot of the disaffected types who voted for Trump.
(Honestly, I would prefer someone like Biden or Jerry Brown but those guys are just too old for me to take either seriously for a 2020 run.)
My bolding.
He’s ruthlessly efficient in very different conditions than the Presidency. Mike Tyson in his prime was ruthless and efficient inside a boxing ring. Drop him into a Ranger battalion in front of a pile of gear with a mission in 12 hours and things change. Let’s call that ruthlessly incompetent in those conditions.
Will to fight is only part of being successful. It generally takes both skill and will. There’s nothing in Avenatti’s experience that would lead me to think he’d be particularly skilled in the Oval Office. He might be turn out more like the Ranger Tyson.
I want to throw a flag on this play. Trump’s executive experience is actually very limited. In the end, the Trump organization is really a small family business centered on a handful of people mostly creating licensing deals. Was is successful? It appears so. But those sorts of deals are really signs of sales ability, not executive leadership. According to CNN Trump enterprises employs a lot of people, good. But most of them are far removed from where Trump was.
And, for that matter, I’d like to put a hole in the ‘we need a businessman’ argument. Running a business is specifically a for-profit process. I’ve run them. I know.
Government is the exact opposite of that. Running a government is for things that can’t make a profit. If they could be run at a profit, some enterprising soul would be doing so. The instincts and skills necessary to make a government function are at odds with the skills and instincts to run a business.