Trump’s election has pushed a significant chunk of the D’s further to the left. They will agitate for a very liberal candidate in 2020, perhaps even surpassing the fervor of the Bernies in 2016. We could see far left candidate vs. far right in 2020 with nothing meaningful in the middle to vote for.
Mike Dukakis, Walter Mondale, Al Gore, and John Kerry would like me to remind you that we had a calm, competent, moderate, centrist Dem running last time. Didn’t help.
Dukakis was not a competent candidate, just as Hillary was not.
The rest were all viable candidates that might have won in other circumstances (e.g. Jesus Christ would have lost to Reagan in 84). Bill Clinton and Obama also campaigned as competent centrists. And IMHO any of them would have a good chance to beat Trump in 2020.
An avowed socialist, or someone that tries to beat Trump by out-insulting him, or someone whose chief qualification is their gender or race, not so much.
They all lost and they were all considerably less charismatic then their opponents, IMO. Boring candidates usually lose to less boring candidates. We need to nominate someone who’s not boring. No milquetoast candidates – we need high turnout, and high turnout needs some level of charisma and genuine connection. We won’t get an Obama/Bill Clinton every election, but we can do better than Dukakis/Kerry/Hillary Clinton in the charisma department. Even Bernie connects with voters better than those three.
Dukakis is anything but calm, competent, moderate, & centrist .
Gore nearly won.
Mondale was running vs a Incumbent moderate Republican.
Both Gore and Kerry faced contested elections with GOP shenanigans:
Bill Clinton was calm, competent, moderate, & centrist , so was Carter and to a degree Obama.
It’s going to be interesting to see how significant of a chunk and how far left. Personally I am skeptical.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s win has, with very good reasons, got a bunch of press. But one of the good reasons was that a progressive winning a Democratic primary is in fact news. Mostly the pragmatists closer to the center left have been who energized Democrats are coming out to vote for.
Oh there will be very vocal agitiation and lots of activism. But the majority of democrats and Democratic leaners, many of whom will actually want to participate this time I think, are only moderately far left. They want Obama’s style of liberalism and intellect back more than they want an extreme left candidate. His not Red not Blue wouldn’t fly too well this time but they do want someone who invites more leaners and swing voters in rather than one who pushes them away.
I think. But we’ll see!
I’m tired of hearing about leaners and swing votes. When was the last time that trying to appeal to swing voters worked for the Democrats?
We hear this every election “oh, if we just nominate a centrist moderate, Republicans moderates will maybe vote for him over the Republican extremist”. It never works. It’s been the conventional wisdom for decades and it’s why Democrats keep losing elections. You want to talk competent and centrist? Hillary went competent and centrist when she chose Tim Kaine over Bernie to be her VP. She got bupkis for it.
The Democrats don’t need leaners or swing voters - if they can motivate their own base to get up and vote. Another boring Republican-lite guy isn’t going to do that.
To hell with centrists. To hell with moderates. To hell with Democrats who want to attract Republican voters. To hell with Republicans. Every time we hear, “Oh - who are the leftists going to vote for if not the Democrat? What is their option? They need to grow up and vote responsibly.”
That cuts both ways. Centrists Dems who think obligations only run one way in the Democratic Party need to grow up and admit that their one cool trick doesn’t work.
Obama. Both times.
Bill Clinton. Both times.
Even Carter and Kennedy won with moderates and swing voters.
Really when was the last time a Democrat won the presidency without appealing to moderates and swing voters?
And outside of the presidency in many Senate and House races including special election ones this cycle - Lamb, Jones … the list is long.
Times that the Democrats tried to appeal to swing voters and won it:
Barack Obama.
Bill Clinton.
Times that the Democrats didn’t try to appeal to swing voters:
Hillary Clinton
Al Gore
Times that the Democrats tried to appeal to swing voters but didn’t succeed:
John Kerry
Not appealing to the middle got you 0/2.
Appealing to the middle got you 2/3.
Let me also note that the implication that you can win without swing voters rather belies the definition of “swing voter”. It’s like suggesting that you’ll be able to turn on the light without toggling a switch.
I don’t necessarily disagree that aiming for swing voters has been the better strategy, and what we’re really talking about here is building strong coalitions in which there is mutual trust that each faction will get something out of the deal, or at least feel like they’re not getting short-changed. But I also think Merneith and more ambitious progressives have a point, which is that Democrats need a re-branding, and they should campaign to “sell” moderates on progressivism. There is a very real problem in that the wealth of individuals and corporations have disproportionate power, and it’s critical that Berniecrat skeptics need to take more seriously.
But going back to an earlier discussion on another thread, I think what Ocasio Cortez and Bernie Sanders are doing is crucial. They need to start speaking to Middle America again, even if they don’t believe there’s a chance they can win. You just never know what can happen. Democrats lost in part because much of the country that used to vote for Democrats felt ignored. Republicans are ignoring much of their former base and I guarantee you there are moderate conservatives and centrists who are looking for a new home.
The more I think about it, the more I hope someone in the Dems is speaking with retired military brass and encouraging them to run.
I’ll admit, I’m a fanboy of Bill McRaven, and would love to see him run. Or how about Adm. James Stavridis? Even if a retired general or admiral doesn’t necessarily win the nomination, I’d love to have that type of presence on the debate stage for the Dems.
But back to my boy McRaven, I’m half convinced if McRaven teamed up with Hilda Solis, he could turn Texas blue in 2020.
Top of the ticket, what McRaven brings: White, dude, military discipline, red state Texan, charismatic, good speaker, (probably) moderate, calming presence, leader, war hero.
Running mate, what Solis brings: Progressive, female, Latina, daughter of immigrants, very pro-labor, both parents were union members and father was an organizer, she was a member of the Obama administration (and hell, less than two years into Trump, even conservatives are admitting nostalgia for the Obama years) without having a huge target on her back from conservatives (like Holder, Kerry, Clinton, Lynch), former member of Congress, solid public speaker.
Both would come at the campaign as semi-outsiders, without being completely ignorant of how Washington is run, so they could appeal to a wide swath of people (from the “shake things up” voters to the “return us to normalcy” voters). And again, there ain’t no way Trump would be able to make a former Navy SEAL, the admiral who led the mission to kill Bin Laden, look weak or incompetent. The dude oozes leadership.
Anyway, military brass balls aside, I’m still convinced the ability to convey a strong message that resonates with and inspires large groups of voters is the most important thing, and that will be the thing that defeats Trump. A great message can also make up for a “weak” or non-traditional resume. I’m totally open to a Garcetti or Landrieu or Inslee or Kennedy or someone else I don’t even know about yet, as long as their message resonates and inspires. That’s what got the last two presidents elected, regardless of their non-traditional look, name, resume, etc.
I’m looking forward to the 2020 primary season. I think it’s going to be the refiners fire that we need to save us from this unholy shitstorm. And if we collectively fail to produce the candidate our nation needs right now, then perhaps asahi was right all along.
I agree with much of your post, in particular the parts I bolded to highlight them. Rather than continue the fantasy of winning Texas, Democrats MUST develop a strategy to secure the Rust Belt states that went to Trump. Screw Texas and even Florida if need be. Without Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania in the blue column come Election Day 2020 Trump will be guaranteed four more years. At least Ocasio Cortez and Bernie seem to understand that.
I am so far left I’m hardly a liberal or Democrat anymore but I have enough sense to realize finding common ground with centrists is how to win elections. I’m seeing very little evidence Democrats, especially progressives, get this.
As a (partial) Greek-American I would love to have a fellow pipe-hittin’ lamb-grillin’ Greek mofo in the Oval Office, but I don’t think this country is ready for a president with a Greek name just yet, they’re usually too hard to pronounce/spell, and also Dukakis fucked it up for the rest of us.
McRaven - maybe. I’ve always believed that a military guy could make it happen for the Dems, under the right circumstances - I’ve been a big proponent of Jim Webb, though he would need major coaching and practice to polish his debate skills and speaking presence. What these guys have, and which John Kerry who tried to run on his military record lacked, was unassailable military credentials.
I have a hell of a lot of friends both active duty and veteran. By and large, they are reasonable people. Aside from being very absolutist on the 2nd Amendment in the main, they’re generally not the kind of dogmatic right-wing zealots who are mindlessly hostile to anything involving Democrats. In MY experience, though maybe not others’, officers skew moderate to liberal, whereas enlisted skew conservative. I know that most of these people would rather have someone like McRaven than Donald Trump, even if the former had a D before his name.
But of course, the military vote is only a sliver of the total, and despite the virtue-signalling veneration of the military from the right, the fact is that the majority of Americans have no personal connection to the military and don’t really understand or care about the military in any but the most abstract sense. The days when virtually all American males went through military service as a rite of passage, like my grandfathers and all my great-uncles, and the more educated and ambitious among them went on to be the stewards of national and civil governnance - the days when pretty much any man behind a big desk supervising a bunch of people, however comfortable or white-collar his surroundings may be, could be expected to have at one time flown a B-24 or commanded a submarine or supervised the gathering of military intelligence, or even seen his friends get shot to pieces and die horrifically in infantry combat - the days when these people were an important voting bloc, is long over.
That’s why I say, military service can help a candidate but it is by no means the magic bullet to win the Democrats back their balls.
Just a personal and completely non-scientific observation here from a Canadian but I have noticed that the names of US Presidents follow a sort of pattern in that they are always easy to pronounce and they flow well in conversation. If this is an informal requirement of the presidency, I am afraid Mr. Stavridis has no chance at all despite any and all qualifications.
As regards the OP, I like what I have seen of Eric Garcetti so far (although he might also end up disqualified under the name rule) if we want a serious candidate. For a celebrity who can bring the headlines and humor while still offering reasonable policies, I’d be intrigued to smell what Dwayne Johnson is cooking.
If memory serves, it was his VP choice - Ferraro - who sunk his campaign because of her tax issues.
Not really - it was more Dukakis’ lack of personality, plus the Willie Horton smear campaign, that were the biggest factors. And Reagan had been a popular president so Bush had some coattails to ride.
His VP choice was Bentsen, who knew Bush’s VP choice was no Jack Kennedy.
:smack: Of course - Ferraro was Mondale’s running mate. All those bland Democrats blend together in distant memory. And Mondale’s personality issues were even worse than Dukakis’.
I recall someone describing Mondale events like this: he’d say something about supporting teachers and the teachers would all stand and cheer, something else about minorities and all the minorities would stand and cheer… and so on throughout all the usual Democratic factions. But he never said anything that would make the entire room stand up and cheer. So we had some guys who said all the right things and supported all the right causes, but we didn’t have guys who could arouse excitement.