Because again, your actions only make sense if you’re assuming that you can’t get your base out without extraordinary measures. We’ve got a name on our side every bit as big as Hillary Clinton: Jeb Bush. Yet our governors are considered equally as qualified and likely candidates, whereas yours are not. Do you have a plausible explanation for that? Even those that oppose Clinton are focused on another celebrity, rather than the quite liberal candidates and champions of the middle class who are actually running. Do you have a plausible explanation for that?
Let’s not even get into whether or not Obama was a celebrity candidate. It’s true he was lesser known than Clinton, but he was more well known than Warren, and those that did know him were extremely excited based on nothing more than his rhetorical abilities. Anyone who was familiar with him, which was actually a lot of people even then, knew that he could inspire people once they got to know him, and he did. The reason O’Malley and Webb and Biden aren’t being taken as seriously has nothing to do with their abilities or qualifications: it’s the fear that few have heard of them or will care.
If the Democrats didn’t believe this was a problem, their races would be more like the Republican races. The Republicans work on the assumption that the process will involve all factions of the party and that the eventual nominee will be able to pull everyone together and turn everyone out reasonably well. The Democrats do not work on that assumption at all. If O’Malley was a GOP governor, he’d be right there with Jeb Bush in the polls.
No you don’t. You’ve got a name on your side bigger than O’Malley, but not nearly as big as Hillary Clinton.
Sure – Hillary is extremely popular within the Democratic party, and none of the Republican candidates are extremely popular within the Republican party. And Hillary is much more well known, and more popular nationally, than any of the Republican candidates (including Jeb). And most Democrats would be okay with O’Malley or various other candidates, should Hillary stumble.
What’s to explain? Of course a popular politician within the party will be considered a possible Presidential candidate by many. The Republicans greatly wish that they had someone who was a “big name” – someone very popular within their own party, much less within the country.
If Hillary Clinton is popular among Dems I’d hate to see what unpopular looks like. It’s more accurate to say she is broadly acceptable among most Democrats. Yet as in 2008, an alternative would be welcome. And there is an alternative! More than one, actually. But without name recognition, they have no hope. Because that’s how your base works. jeb Bush is the only candidate on our side with majority name recognition, yet other candidates are quite competitive with him.
In any case, I wasn’t trying to get into yet another fight about Democrats and celebrity candidates. The issue at hand was Democrats’ holier than thou attitude towards democracy. “We win when people that never pick up a newspaper vote!” is not a rallying cry for democracy. It’s simply a rationalization for a sad state of affairs.
Want to know what unpopular looks like? Look at the favorable/unfavorables for the various Republican candidates within the Republican party, and compare it to Hillary’s among Democrats.
No it’s not – she’s got a huge positive favorability rating within the Democrats… much larger than any of the Republican candidates within their own party.
They have no (or very little, actually) hope because Hillary is very popular and well known among Democrats. Jeb is not nearly as popular, and not as well known, even among Republicans.
It’s also nonsense.
If you’re saying that Democratic rationalizations about democracy are nonsense, then I agree. I’d also add hypocritical. Democrats’ behavior has never been particularly respectful towards democracy. Take the racial appeals to black and Latino voters in the last election as a good example. Saying that electing Republicans means more Fergusons. Wow, really respecting their intelligence there, rather than trying to get people riled up and voting without thinking.
Again, actions speak louder than words. A party that was truly pro-democracy would want high turnout and high information among voters.
No, your statements about them are nonsense.
That’s what Democrats want.
And yet, Fox News viewers are the most poorly-informed block out there, behind people who don’t follow the news at all. Interesting how that works.
That’s what Democrats SAY. What they do when they need to win elections is another thing entirely.
Hillary Clinton is neither the most liberal candidate in the race nor the most qualified, unless we’re assuming that foreign policy is the most important issue in the 2016 race. In a rational primary, she simply should not have the commanding lead she does.
Nonsense.
There has never been, and will never be, an entirely “rational” primary in the real world.
So why are the Republicans the party that’s trying to make sure “the wrong people” don’t get to vote?
Those polls are nonsense due to the nature of the questions they ask. You’d think the liberal “the tests are biased against minorities!” coalition would be more skeptical of such polling.
But since you brought it up, let’s look more deeply into one of those polls:
If you drill down to the actual questions, they are good ones, and Republicans got more right than Democrats. While Fox news is apparently the worst, Republicans apparently get news from more sources, while Democrats get news from one source or none at all.
No they don’t, at least not from what I can tell. On most of the questions, Democratic-leaners are more likely to get the right answer than Republican leaners.
Popular looks like: First choice of 69% of democrats and second choice of another 15%.
Unpopular (but with room to grow) looks like: First choice of 17% of republicans and second choice another 12%.
Please stop with the democrats really, deep in their hearts, want someone other than Hillary.
Rebuplicans SAY they follow the campaigns more closely. This isn’t evidence that they actually do follow the campaigns more closely.
Here’s a linkto evidence that conservatives have a propensity for self enhancement.
That’s some rather interesting spin. Not even the best possible spin.
Lean Rep beat Lean Dem on 5 of the 8 questions. Combining all Dems with all Reps yields 6 out of 8 in favor of the Republicans.
I didn’t mean it as spin – I meant Dems + Leaners vs Reps + Leaners. But I may have been comparing the wrong columns and rows, because the text doesn’t discuss Republicans vs Democrats. Democrats seemed much more willing to say “I don’t know” – on some of the questions, Republicans got more of the right answer (by a very small amount), but they also had more of the wrong answers.
I have a plausible explanation for that. 37% of likely New Hampshire Republican primary voters have an unfavorable opinion of Jeb Bush according to a recent Franklin Pierce University poll.
Meanwhile in the analogous poll of likely New Hampshire Democratic primary voters 84% have a favorable opinion of Hillary Clinton compared to 12% unfavorable. She is extremely well liked by democrats. A claim to the contrary would need extraordinary evidence to be taken seriously.
Both polls are of New Hampshire voters, but barring one weird state here or there, I don’t see why this wouldn’t be indicative of a national trend.
Just like the polls about Obamacare that don’t include a “go further now” option? *Those *you hold up as gospel. :dubious:
Like Free Republic, NewsMax, Washington Times, the WSJ editorial page …
His last name is big. Not the first, as you may not realize, being a Floridian. It doesn’t figure to help him in a general, though, does it?
It wasn’t always clear on what the correct answer was, which might have been the source of confusion.
Plus the questions weren’t totally fair to Democrats. Two of them involved who won the IA and NH Republican primaries, which in the grand scheme of things aren’t that important for anyone to know, but is something more likely to be known by people actually participating in those primaries.
Take those two questions away, and Democrats won 3 of 6. But normally, the questions are biased against Republicans. I remember one asking if WMD were found in Iraq. The technical answer to that is yes, but it’s obviously not even close to what we were supposed to find. So the question was just flawed from the beginning. Yet they expected the answer to be “no”, and obviously more Democrats said no, thus getting it “right”.