Make some predictions on the Democratic race

Politics & Elections
1

  1. Who will be the nominee? Yes, of course it’s early, but think of it like trying to predict a Super Bowl winner in the preseason. Just do it.

  2. Which candidate will exceed expectations the most? There’s often someone who does better than expected in a multi candidate field.

  3. Which candidate will pull a Rick Perry and go from first tier to out of the race much earlier than expected?

  4. Which top tier candidate is the most likely to just decide not to run? Obviously Harris and Warren are in, but Booker, Biden, Beto, and Bernie, the killer Bs are still on the fence.

  5. Is there any candidate in the field that you wouldn’t vote for if they won the nomination? Okay, not a prediction, but still an interesting question.

My answers:

  1. Joe Biden. My predictions are usually wrong, but I’ll explain my reasoning anyway. Biden seems to me like Romney in 2012. He’s not the guy most of the party wants, but he is the guy most of the party will default to if no one emerges as better than Biden. And in the early going, the only one that really looks like a threat to him is Warren. And she won’t take the black vote from Biden, which will be decisive. Her appeal is narrow, his is broad.

  2. Two answers: Richard Ojeda, simply because if a state Senator wins even 1 delegate that’s exceeding expectations. He might win more than one. My other answer is Jay Inslee. He’s got a focus issue, he’s got a record, he’s an executive, he’s likeable, he’s smart, he’s just the kind of guy that appeals to educated Democrats. He’ll do really well in the suburbs.

  3. Kamala Harris. I just don’t think she can look smart standing on the same podium as Liz Warren, Bernie Sanders, Cory Booker, Joe Biden, and Jay Inslee. She just seems so unready, but she’s been hyped so much a lot of the base really wants her to succeed. But I think the chance of a Rick Perry moment is high for her in the debates.

  4. Two answers here too, for different reasons: Beto, since he can run for Senate in 2020, and his first national interview did not go well. This is not a policy wonk by any stretch of the imagination. He’s just a nice guy who wants to be nice and liked. The second, and I hope I’m wrong, is Biden. Joe has a penchant for running when it’s futile and turning down winnable races. Biden could win in 2020. So if he stays true to his history, he decide he doesn’t want to run.

  5. I won’t say absolutely I’d support Trump over these candidates, but if the economy is good and he hasn’t started any wars, I’m going with the do nothing but tweet and insult people buffoon over an idiot who wants to remake half the economy and possibly fix future elections and pack the courts. Do nothing idiot beats want to introduce radical change idiot every time. So that being said, my list of probably won’t support over Trump is:

Kristen Gillbrand
Kamala Harris
Liz Warren
Bernie Sanders
Eric Holder
Terry Mac

The other 30 or so are acceptable to me.

2

I’m in a pessimistic mood right now, so here’s my answers from the prospective of a pessimistic liberal.

  1. This is more like picking next year’s Super Bowl right now, not like predicting the Super Bowl winner in the preseason. I’m going to say Elizabeth Warren.

  2. I think someone from the moderate wing of the party will do better than expected. I assume Trump won’t attract a serious challenger, so the old school conservatives might cross over and vote in the Democratic primary… Whoever fills the slot of the “moderate Democrat” will likely do better than expected.

  3. Agreed with Harris. Warren will get a lot of the votes that might otherwise go her way.

  4. Beto (and probably Biden and Bernie as well).

  5. None. I’d support any of the Democrats over Trump, even Bernie (assuming he’s running as a D and not I).

3

  1. Biden will be the nominee. The Democrats almost always go with the boring, mainstream candidate who’s been in politics for too long. (See: 2000, 2004, 2016) In 2020, that would be Biden.

  2. Gillibrand. Watching her, she seems more energetic and less phony then the others in the second tier like Booker, Harris, and Castro. I could see her poll numbers reaching 10% or even 15% after a good debate performance. But she won’t win.

  3. Warren. I think her campaign flight crashed on takeoff with the flub about the DNA test and her ancestry. She angered leftists who view her as a white women appropriating Native identity, and obviously she’s got no support from outside the left. Furthermore she’s just unpleasant and unable to connect with people who don’t already agree with her. She’ll be gone by South Carolina.

  4. I would expect Beto to sit this one out. I presume he’s smart enough to see that the field is crowded and that he can’t get the nomination with only a guitar and a skateboard.

  5. I’ll probably vote for the Libertarian candidate again.
    Looking at the Primary schedule, I expect it will all go down like this.

Long-shot candidates’ only hope is to make a big splash in the debates. But with a big field, I assume it will be somewhat like the Republican debates last time, with only 10 or so candidates allowed in the real debate. The losers who can’t make the cut will accept reality and drop out, or at least most will. I expect Yang, Ojeda, Delaney, Gabbard, and some others to be gone before Iowa.

In Iowa and New Hampshire, due to the big field, many candidates will finish in the low single digits. Those that do typically drop out. I expect that Castro, Warren, Buttigieg, and Bloomberg will do so. Possibly some others as well. I predict that Biden wins by a narrow margin in Iowa and Bernie takes New Hampshire by a large margin again.

So rolling into Nevada and South Carolina, the polls look like this: 1. Biden 2. Bernie 3. Gillibrand 4. Harris 5. Booker. Everyone else is gone.

Booker’s only hope is a big showing among black voters in South Carolina. He doesn’t get it and drops out.

Harris pins all her hopes on winning her home state of California on March 3. She doesn’t, and drops out. Gillibrand wins Massachusetts, being an East Coast liberal, and has just enough delegates to justify staying in the race. Bernie wins California but does poorly in southern states. Biden takes a sizable lead in delegates.

After a few more weeks, Gillibrand fails to get any significant wins and drops out. Bernie hangs tough and takes Ohio, Missouri, and Michigan on March 10, bringing the delegate count into a near tie. The party establishment and major mainstream media are near panic, fearing the Bernie may actually win. Money pours into Biden’s campaign chest. Anti-Bernie ads and editorials saturate the airwaves and newspapers. A mysterious online ad campaign accuses Bernie of all kinds of bad stuff.

Biden wins Arizona, Illinois, and Florida on March 17th. Bernie rallies to take Wisconsin on April 7th. Biden wins big in the East Coast states on April 28 and from that point onward, he pulls away as Bernie’s hope of winning gradually fades.

4

I think it’s Biden’s to lose as well. He’s just too broadly popular. This is not a Lieberman/Giuliani situation where he’s ideologically out of step with his party. Progressives like to THINK the party doesn’t want Biden, but he is still very much the kind of candidate the non committed progressive voters in the party like.

5

I disagree with both of you, and will stick with my prediction that Biden won’t even run.

ETA. If he does for some reason actually run, he will do well, likely attracting the votes of moderates that I mentioned in my 2nd prediction. I do agree it’s his to lose, but he can’t if he sits out again.

6

Hillary Clinton will push hard to be renominated.

This will horrify many Democrats who think that would be suicidal for the party.

It will get ugly.

7

1) Who will be the nominee?
I can see it as either Warren or Harris. You want me to pick one? Harris is a charmer, she’s younger, she can line up the billionaire donors because she doesn’t pick fights with them, and she’s superficially a lot like Obama. She is attractive to the party as it has become, if not to the Berniecrats. The one thing that might tip it to her though is that, as a former prosecutor, she might relish the Commander-in-Chief role in a way Dr Warren wouldn’t.

2) Which candidate will exceed expectations the most?
Warren. A lot of observers think that she’s too much like Hillary; an older white liberal woman from flyover land with an advanced education. But they are very different, and Warren probably has a broader natural base.

3) Which candidate will pull a Rick Perry and go from first tier to out of the race much earlier than expected?
Rick Perry was never really good enough to belong in the first tier. But I don’t know, this is a paradoxical question. I don’t really expect Booker or Holder have what voters are looking for this time. Nor Biden. Actually, I’ll say Biden. I like Joe a lot. He’s a meme, he’s a legend. But this is really not his year.

4) Which top tier candidate is the most likely to just decide not to run?
I’m going to cheat and put Beto here. He’s getting a lot of undeserved hype right now, but honestly, he’s not running for Prez, nor should he.

5) Is there any candidate in the field that you wouldn’t vote for if they won the nomination?
Too soon to say that, except of course that I would rather die in prison for killing a Clinton than see one of them on the ballot again. The party really needs to stop thinking that swing voters love Bill & Hillary; they really, really don’t.

8

Oh, I agree he may very well not run. That’s just what he does. He’s had real opportunities to be President at least two times(2004, 2016), and I’d even count 1992, as it was assumed he’d try again but he and other high profile candidates stayed out because they assumed Bush was unbeatable. The years he chose to run, 1988 and 2008, he had no chance and he knew he had no chance. It’s a mental block for him or something. He might genuinely be afraid of winning.

9

If Warren exceeds expectations, she basically wins since she’s already considered first tier. Doing well but not winning I think is about what most people expect already from her candidacy.

10

  1. Who will be the nominee?
    Julian Castro. He comes across as a good person and is well spoken and calm.

  2. Which candidate will exceed expectations the most?
    Castro- see #1

  3. Which candidate will pull a Rick Perry and go from first tier to out of the race much earlier than expected?
    Kamela Harris. I think she’s great and would be a good president, but I don’t see her as being likable enough to make a long run.

  4. Which top tier candidate is the most likely to just decide not to run? Obviously Harris and Warren are in, but Booker, Biden, Beto, and Bernie, the killer Bs are still on the fence.
    Bernie Sanders. Too old and occupies the same political space as Warren.

  5. Is there any candidate in the field that you wouldn’t vote for if they won the nomination? Okay, not a prediction, but still an interesting question.
    Not possible. I will never vote for a Republican for any office for the rest of my life and I will not waste my vote on a third party.

Very good questions by the OP, by the way. Not that I agree with his answer to #5…

11

I predict Biden will not be the nominee. Too much baggage. I think we know the baggage I talk of. Whatever you think of him it’s not a good vibe he gives off in certain circumstances. It will effectively be used against him in the primaries.

12

  1. Fuck-all if I know. Having been asked to take a WAG, I’m gonna say Kamala Harris.

  2. Gillibrand.

  3. Biden.

  4. Biden. It’s gonna be one of these, or the other, for him.

  5. No. Even if Trump doesn’t run in 2020, even Tulsi fucking Gabbard would be better than whoever gets the GOP nomination. That’s how bad the GOP is, as a party.

13

  1. Pass

  2. Warren

  3. Tulsi Gabbard, although she has probably done it already with her blatant anti-gay stance.

  4. Biden. Just too old and tired.

  5. Nope. None.

14

What is it- the phony outrage over plagiarism? Where he gave attribution of a quote maybe 18 out of 20 times he used it but neglected a couple times? Or the phony outrage over a photoshop smear showing him to have Roman hands and Russian fingers?

15

That would be huge, because while Castro is likeable he’s not even the most popular likeable guy from Texas. Although Beto staying out would make his path to the nomination somewhat clearer.

Well I’m a right wing guy in the Never Trump category, but my calculations change with him as an incumbent, assuming the next two years isn’t disastrous for the country. For all his awfulness, things are going pretty well, and if that continues I can afford to just vote to reelect if I fear the consequences of a very ambitious Democrat looking to change pretty much everything.

But obviously I expect that 99% of Democrats will support whoever the nominee is, and the fact that I’ll support most of them too is a sign of where we are.

16

Biden’s got two things going for him that most politicians with baggage don’t have:

  1. Almost all his baggage is ancient. Really ancient. The one thing that could be considered a legitimate fairly recent problem is his vote for the Iraq war, for which he actually has a good explanation, and shouldn’t be much of a problem given that not only did Clinton get the nomination despite that and her continued hawkishness, but most of his opponents don’t even have a record on the war at all. To add one more thing on Iraq, Clinton and Edwards and Kerry voted for the war with an eye on their Presidential ambitions. Biden was trying to get a better resolution and was getting no cooperation from either Republians or his more liberal Democratic colleagues, who wanted to oppose the war and didn’t want a smarter resolution that would be harder to vote no on.

  2. Where most politicians lie, spin, and try to obstruct the people trying to get to the truth, Biden just lays it all out there and you can take his answer or leave it. We’re not going to get a drip, drip of new scandal on him throughout the campaign. All his past issues will be litigated early and he’ll give you his answers and then you’ll all judge him on those answers. He’s an open book.

17

His wandering hands. That’s the smear that will imo prevent Biden from winning the nomination. We can pretend it’s insignificant but the look isn’t helpful for a Presidential candidate. Democrat primary voters will almost certainly not nominate him(though I’d never say never).

18

It’s not insignificant, but is there malice or sexual intent behind it or is he just one of those guys who likes to be in people’s personal space a lot? Seems to me he’s just as touchy with men. And isn’t the whole point of equality to treat everyone the same?

Looking at pictures that people say are a problem, I’m just not seeing this rise above misdemeanor level. Kissing her on the head? Putting his hands on her hips? hands on shoulders of various people?

19

IIRC, Biden’s never been accused by anyone of groping, assault, harassment, or anything like that. Videos of him hugging families/supporters/colleagues/etc. with creepy music, floating around on the internet, don’t count as actual allegations of groping, assault, or harassment.

20

I think if the FBI is investigating whether the illegitimate occupant of the Oval Office is a Russian agent, then by definition things are not going pretty well.