This. I have never voted for a Democratic presidential candidate in my life* but I will be this November regardless of who he or she is. If the Bernie Bros stamp their feet and hold their collective breath because their guy does not get the party’s nod, they will deserve every bit of the opprobrium that will be heaped upon their heads.
*Or, to be fair, a Republican.
I agree. Trump is probably the worst thing to happen to the world in 50 years. If we can’t get out shit together enough to nominate a functioning human being to run against him, that’s the government we deserve. Swinging from dictatorship to oligarchy isn’t a favorable swing.
I thought Booker was the best candidate. I loved Pete. I think Warren would be a great President. I’d even vote for Bloomberg. I’m not a Bernie bro by any stretch. He’s like my 5th choice.
Nominating Biden is the doubling down on the Hillary mistake and he doesn’t have the capacity to do the job.
So yeah, fuck it. Burn the system and bring the revolution.
If I may ask, I’m curious about this ranking. I’ve been considering Sanders and Warren to be basically interchangeable: Both have very similar ideological positions, both seem to be willing to fight for those positions, both are Senators, both are similar in age. But you obviously see a significant difference between them. Why the strong preference for Warren over Sanders?
I’m not Rittersport, but I too have a strong preference for Warren over Sanders. Two things:
Warren has a track record of being able to work with people to get things accomplished. Sanders doesn’t. He wants to be the leader of a revolution.
The filibuster. Sanders’ ‘revolution’ isn’t going to be able to put enough pressure on enough GOP Senators to get anywhere near 60 votes to get bills through the Senate.
IOW, they may want essentially the same things, but Warren is realistic and pragmatic enough that she has a chance of accomplishing some of them if elected. I really don’t see that being true with Sanders.
Also:
All other things being equal, I’d consider a woman in that age range to be effectively 2-4 years younger than a man of the exact same age. So I’d consider Warren to be functionally more like 10-12 years younger than Sanders - before considering Sanders’ heart problems.
What filibuster?
For what it’s worth, I have several relatives with this ranking as well. They are older liberal women who have been Democrats their whole lives. The problem they have with Bernie is the Bernie bros. They believe Bernie’s campaign to have some sexist elements to it and don’t support him due to that. So even though they are on the left to far left end of the political spectrum, they would rather support a moderate before they would support a liberal who has (according to them) a significant element of sexist supporters among his base.
Yeah, this seems like the largest effect. If someone like Warren goes over 15% in some places where she wouldn’t have with Pete in the race, then that significantly changes the delegate math, even if she herself isn’t going to get close to winning the nomination race overall.
William Walker, what did you think? 
I wonder if there are any Buttigieg fans out there who will vote Trump in the general election. It seems odd, but in terms of policies how far apart are they all anyway?
I’ve always heard his name pronounced ‘Buddha-judge’ – until a couple/few weeks ago, when I was listening to a story on NPR. The woman repeatedly pronounced his name ‘Buttah-gig’. Drove me nuts. (Not that it’s that long a drive to nuttiness.)
My impression is that she’s much more thoughtful and much more reasonable than Sanders. And, her championing the CFPB shows she can get stuff done. When it’s clear that Medicare-for-All is a non-starter, she’ll have the chops to figure out other solutions, and will likely also hire others similarly capable. I don’t see Sanders as being all that willing to bend and there’s no way he’s getting what he wants as is – no one does. I see a higher risk with Sanders of bringing in a purity-tested cabinet (similar to Trump, but in Trump’s case, the purity test is whether they will kiss his ass), and not focusing primarily on competence and skills, but whether they tow the Sanders line on policy.
Also, I think she has a better chance of beating Trump – a woman is probably more electable than a Jewish Atheist. He has so many skeletons in his closet (his visits to the USSR, his qualified praise for some of Castro’s policies), plus calling himself a socialist is an own goal – he’s not a socialist (Venezuela, Cuba), he’s a Social Democrat (Sweden, Denmark) and it’s stupid to give the Republicans even more ammo.
And, Krugman is a big fan of hers (although he didn’t like her turn towards MfA, and neither do I), and I respect his opinion.
Does the order change every four years, based on the previous election year’s turnout? If so, then it might end up locking states in their positions in the order, as there will be higher turnout for the early states, but if there is a clear leader, then later states won’t have much of a turnout as the result has already been decided. Also, if there is an incumbent, turnout might end up being low throughout the country, or biased toward states with open primaries trying to unseat someone from the other party in the Senate or the Governor’s mansion.
Buttigieg “fans” are probably pretty rational people. I can’t see many voting for Trump. (any, really. But there’s always some crazy in any group)
I’m in Illinois and saw my first Warren ad an hour ago.
I live in an old folks home and it is more like 5-10 years younger.
I think Buttigieg missed an opportunity to help the party at his speech. There was a chant of “2024!”; he should have said, “I won’t need to run in 2024 - that’s when we will be nominating the incumbent Democrat that wins in 2020, and we need to make sure that we can do this by getting behind whoever we nominate!”
The only way some closed door agreement didn’t happen is if he saw a blowout against him on super Tuesday and wanted to spare himself the embarrassment. I do think somebody tapped him for a cush appointment though.
I agree up to this point.
So what it is you’re calling “the Hillary mistake”? It can’t be running a moderate, because that’s been exactly the Sanders-ist dig at Pete. :rolleyes:
I can’t say I haven’t been concerned about Biden’s senile-sounding gaffes, but he was well-known for gaffes when he was a couple of decades younger, too. I thought he gave an excellent speech after he won in South Carolina, which of course someone wrote for him but he still delivered it well.
I still don’t know if I’m going to vote for Biden or Bloomberg (or possibly someone else) in the primary until after Super Tuesday shakes out. But I don’t see what’s so horrible about Biden that picking him is “burn down the party” territory when seemingly NONE of the other candidates cause that same reaction for you.
Not aimed at you particularly but a general comment: I don’t understand the sheer depths of rhetorical fire and brimstone aimed at certain candidates, seemingly aimed at caricatures of them rather than their actual selves. To me, Biden, Buttigieg, Bloomberg, and Klobuchar all seem to have similar policy positions and all either have experience (elected mayor of the largest city in the nation, larger than some states, is experience) or demonstrated skills. I could comfortably vote for any one of them, and will decide based on who’s still in the race when my primary comes up and who seems to have a real chance at winning the nomination. But to some people, Buttigieg was a phony and worse than Trump because he worked for a consulting firm, and Bloomberg is completely indistinguishable from Trump because he’s a billionaire, never mind how many liberal causes (fighting the NRA, closing coal power plants) where he’s put his money where his mouth is. :rolleyes:
How in the world does someone prefer Bloomberg over Biden?
He hadn’t even been able to reach Biden before the announcement. Take a look at the calendar, it was the 1st of the month, I think it came down to money and no clear path ahead in ST. May as well pay the staff and not have the campaign in debt. Also, Obama did call Biden to congratulate him. No, that’s not an endorsement, but that’s not exactly being subtle either.
Right on time.