Interesting thing I heard on the FiveThiryEight podcast a while ago…
Elizabeth Warren has the distinction of being the only elected Democrat who has endorsed candidates who all ended up winning their primaries this year. Every single one. Biden too has a 100% winning endorsement record, but he mostly chose races that weren’t competitive, while Warren endorsed candidates in genuinely competitive primaries where the results were uncertain.
Now, I don’t think endorsements matter much, but it does show that Warren seems to have a really good grasp of what the average Dem voter wants out of a candidate. This could be really useful if she ends up on running for president.
Well it would be useful in the primaries anyway. She’d be DOA in the general election, unfortunately.
By the way, Bill McRaven is not just some 4-star admiral who was put in charge of Special Operations Command as a cushy sinecure. Instead he served with the SEALs throughout his career, beginning as a squad leader, then a platoon commander, and so on. He was an essential founder of “Low intensity conflict” curriculum; his master’s thesis is on-line. He served in several wars and was the hands-on commander of Operation Neptune Spear. He holds several high military awards; perhaps one of our military experts can tell us if this is just routine for an O-10, and whether any of his decorations were for valor.
When I hear Democrats debate between 80 year-old Biden and Pocahontas, I wonder if you should rename yourself the Party of Masochists. Heck, instead of an 80 year-old, why not re-elect one of our greatest Presidents, Harry Truman? He was “grandfathered-in” under Amendment XXII and AFAICT the Constitution doesn’t require the President to be living.
No. Instead
[INDENT]Draft Admiral Bill McRaven for President![/INDENT]
When I hear people throw out names like Mcraven or Webb, I wonder if they understand the Democratic electorate at all.
What path do these old straight white dudes have to the nomination of a party that’s usually skeptical of the military? What’s their base? Is there a giant group of retired military folk in the Democrats’ big tent that starts them out with a healthy amount of votes?
Even if by some miracle, or a huge field of candidates that divides the votes enough, Mcraven ekes out a win, you are looking at abysmal Democratic turnout in 2020. Stop trying to elect generals & war heros. If that’s what you want, become a republican and change the party from within, because it’s not happening on the D side.
The best candidate is someone who can unite all the various factions of the party, like Obama did in 08. There isn’t such a candidate at the moment. It seems like Warren could thread the needle best though.
Where are you getting the notion that Democratic Party or its voters is “usually skeptical of the military?” I’m a bleeding-heart lefty, but I have a shit-ton of respect for the military and vets. Just because I don’t blindly venerate the military as the end-all-be-all of human greatness and godliness doesn’t mean I don’t think highly of guys like McRaven. And I don’t think I’m alone in this.
According to this Pew Research study, 73% of Democrats have a “fair amount” or “great deal” of confidence in the military to act in the public’s interest.
But the general election of 2020 isn’t just about getting out the base. It’s about getting moderates, blue collars, suburban moms, low-information voters, disillusioned conservatives. Being from Michigan, I’m fairly confident someone like McRaven would play better here than Elizabeth Warren, or he would at least have less of an uphill climb to win over moderates and independents (and even some conservatives).
According to this Gallup Poll, 74% of all Americans have a “Great Deal” or “Quite a Lot” of confidence in the military-- higher than any other institution in the poll. Americans like their military men and women. I can’t imagine a retired admiral would automatically do poorly among Dems or the general electorate.
So not only are you wrong about how much support someone like McRaven could potentially get from Democrats, but at a time when many voters (on the left, in the middle, and even on the right) are looking for a return to stability in the White House, a military leader of McRaven’s bona fides *could *do very well in both the primary and general. Hell, someone like McRaven could probably do a good job of getting back some of those Obama voters that Trump peeled away in '16.
And let’s say for a second that Democrats are indeed “skeptical” of the military as an institution in greater numbers than Republicans are: We’re not talking about running an institution. Give me a charismatic candidate with a good message that inspires confidence, and their resume becomes secondary. Who had the better resume in '08-- McCain or Obama? In '16-- Trump or Clinton? In '92-- Bush or Clinton?
Now I’m saying McRaven “could” do well, not necessarily would, because the ability to deliver a message and inspire is still critical. A candidate with a great resume, without the ability to inspire and deliver a clear message, will fail. But from what I’ve seen from McRaven, he passes my initial sniff test.
:eek: :smack:
I think you’ve swallowed stereotypes from the GOP Kool-Aid. Fox News praised McRaven. It is the R’s, not the D’s, who will be disheartened and stay home if the D’s are smart enough to nominate McRaven.
McRaven probably has enough charisma. There’s much talk about a commencement speech with 25 million views. That particular YouTube has only 6.8 million views, but there are several Youtubes of the same speech — maybe 25 million is the sum across them.
No, I don’t know McRaven’s exact views on minimum wage. I don’t know what he thinks about the rights of transvestites to order custom pink lasagna from pizza parlors. We don’t need someone who gets 100% from the Department of Ideological Purity; just someone who will appoint someone interested in Education to Secy of Education, someone who wants to protect the environment to the Environment Protection Agency, and so on. And someone who can hold his own going toe-to-toe with Putin. Assuming McRaven is comfortable with the Democrats at all, I think he’s definitely worth a good look. If he does get the D nomination I’ll bet a case of Johnny Walker Blue he wins the general election.
He’s probably smart enough not to want to be President, but he’s a man of duty. I think he’ll serve if called upon.
the far left folks won’t like McRaven but the guy/gal they want almost never gets the nomination. And if the far leftist Dem wins the nomination, you might get a McGovern who is blown out of the water.
Perhaps “skeptical of the military” are not the right words, but as you say, Democrats tend not to venerate the military as the epitome of human greatness. There is a long history of activism in the party against pointless wars. Military candidates like Wesley Clark & Jim Webb went nowhere, while the military record of John Kerry was turned from an asset into a liability by propagandists.
I also think a guy who has never dabbled in politics suddenly deciding to run a years-long presidential campaign is insane. Trump at least had the celebrity & reality show background which translated well to campaigning, but Mcraven has no such experience. His presidential campaign would be rudderless and filled with missteps, just on the basis of him being a political amateur.
I personally have nothing against military candidates. My favorite rising star in the party is Seth Moulton, and if he ran for president I’d go all in and volunteer for his campaign. But Moulton and other military vets like Duckworth have a lot experience in the private sector & elected office, and more than one base of voters that they appeal to.
The far leftists, ie the party base, wanted Obama & they got him.
There is no middle to appeal to anymore. These exatlted unaffiliated voters are not enlightened centrists, but political morons who couldn’t even tell you the difference between either parties. They will always either vote for the exciting charismatic candidate, or whoever Russia covertly tells them to vote for on Twitter & Facebook.
Obama was to the left of Clinton but I don’t think he’s that far left. He was enough of a centrist in some areas to beat McCain and Romney. the fact that the economy was in the dumper in 08 and McCain and Romney were not very good candidates helped him quite a bit. For example in 08 Obama was not for gay marriage , he was later .
Sure, but he was acceptable to further left voters for various reasons. His coalition of voters included hardcore liberals, alongside various other voting groups like black voters, college kids & the establishment. Democrats who identify as “very liberal” has only increased since then, and they now make up a plurality of total self-described democrats.
Part of that was his personality and style on the campaign trail. Absent any of that, if you had just read off his resume to someone in 2006, would you have thought he’d be so appealing to all of those groups?
My point is, don’t write someone like McRaven off and figure we need to settle in with one of the Big Five (Warren, Bernie, Biden, Booker, Gillibrand) just because those are the ones we currently know most about.
I was a high school political junkie in Chicago and was familiar with him long before he ran. It was obvious he had a national political career ahead of him even when he was a state senator, and he was always intellectually ahead of the party establishment in a lot of ways. He didn’t suddenly sprout out of the ground and enter politics in 2004 like a lot of republicans like to say.
I’m not completely writing Mcraven off- let him run to represent his particular base in the primaries and he can make his case. I just think everything points to him being a bad candidate at this moment.
I worked on Obama’s '04 senate campaign. I knew he was special. But to read off his resume to someone in '06, you would never have said “That’s our next president.” Yes, it was a good foundation, which is what McRaven has as well. And you literally DID write McRaven off up-thread specifically FOR his resume/background.
Well, I also conceded that he could win the nomination if a lot of candidates divide the vote enough.
But sure, post-Trump, anyone could conceivably be elected president. Maybe he hires the best campaign team in history and turns out to have the charisma of Chris Pratt. Anything is possible… but if I were placing bets I’d just look at the track record of recent similar candidates, and I’d bet against him.
After his speech at the 2004 convention, I commented somewhere that Obama could be penciled in for VP in 2012.
And who outside of Georgia had any idea who Jimmy Carter was in mid-1974? He was even on What’s My Line? in December of 1973, and nobody knew who he was by looking at him. Three years later, he’s the President-Elect.
When I hear people throw out names like Warren or Harris, I wonder if they understand the electorate at all.
Yes, they could win the Nomination, but they have *zero chance of winning the Election. *
Yeah, a straight old white dude like Bill Clinton has no chance.:rolleyes: Or a military dude like Carter or LBJ or JFK- no way they never could become the Den Nominee. :rolleyes: Out of the last five Dem winners, three have had a military career, and all but one has been a straight white dude. So straight white dude is the way to bet.
McRaven, if he picks a good Veep, ( Cheri Bustos ) certainly energize the electorate. You got the straight white dude with Military background who wins the general elections, and a minority woman to energize the electorate.
It always bugs me when people read the tea leafs from decisions made by Boomers years ago. Clinton hasn’t been president since the 20th century. JFK, LBJ and Carter were made president by an electorate that has almost completely been replaced. Would you agree that the GOP has changed drastically in the past 20 years? But the Dems have remained frozen in amber since then?
For that matter, the overall American electorate has changed too. Harris & Warren have paths to victory in 2020- not ideal paths, but they exist. To write them off completely is ridiculous, but I guess millions of people did the exact same thing with Trump just a couple years ago, and Obama before him.
:eek: :smack: