I am curious why Hillary didn’t stay with a winning method.
She wasnt the most hated until the Kremlin and Rove started up their fake news machine.
They thought she had the best chance of winning.
Russians, maybe?
Honestly, I don’t see how this discussion even takes place with all we have learned about Russian intervention and the intensity with which they worked to influence public opinion against Hillary Clinton. I don’t even know why she is part of this discussion.
I offered the name of Mark Warner as a good potential who would meet the criteria we seem to think is a winning combination: Not Hillary, not even a woman, white, tall, experienced, not from California, principled, is lightly raising his profile, has integrity, is quick on his feet, has a better sense of humor than with which he is generally credited, etc. Couple him up with someone like Tammy Duckworth for VP, who has a highly legitimate claim to morality and integrity, is clever enough to successfully label the idiot in the Oval as Cadet Bone Spurs, and you can’t help but appeal to moderates, women, Middle America and the military folks. Bob’s yer uncle.
I think the Dems are wise to not let their best candidates lead with their chins. It’s much too early to worry about all this, and why give Republicans more than two years to throw shi… shade at those excellent folks, ruining their chances. You’ll notice it’s almost always Republicans who whine about Dems not having a “leader of the party.” Dems know they have many to choose from.
A word about those super delegates. You damn right Dems use them, and for good reason, too. Democrats work hard to advance particular ideals, to define what their party stands for. Super delegates function to make sure that whatever candidate runs on their behalf represents those things. They’re intended to prevent an outlier like Trump from taking over their party and their agenda. If Republicans had super delegates, there never would have been a Trump. Never forget that Bernie was well aware of all this long before he decided to run as a Dem – presumably because he wanted the party architecture. If he didn’t, he could have run as an independent.
The justification is very straightforward: the race that year was completely unlike what we are looking at for 2020. Pretty much “everyone” was very confident that if HRC ran she’d easily beat all comers. Because she was also the most respected and loved woman in USA politics and had the infrastructure in place. When one person is the presumed candidate pretty much everyone wants to jump to get on the train as soon as possible. The extreme of that of course is when an incumbent runs … of course pretty much all of the party lines up behind them before the primary season even begins. She was just one step below that. In 2020 no one has any idea who is going to end up on top ahead of time, there is no obvious presumed or consensus nominee. That a different ball game and few want to commit to a train that may end up not even leaving the station.
Gawd are those horrible mixed metaphors! But still.
More than anything else I think that WJC was not per se expected to win. In May 1992 he was polling in third place, ten points behind both Bush and Perot who were tied at 35%. When that’s where your season starts you run it aggressive.
When you are the favored to win you cannot help but run a different sort of campaign.
PLEASE tell that to all the rightie clowns I see posting about the “rigged” primaries.
All citizens get a vote in the election unless disqualified.
Usually, not in the primaries. Altho there are a few Open Primaries, generally in a primary you only get to vote for the party you are registered in.
And “circles are round”.
A statement which is about as relevant.
The page-long multi-quote micromanaged posts are getting tedious (not trying to junior mod, just…a more compact formatting would be easier on my brain.)
Because a winning method in the early 90s is very different from a winning method today. This shouldn’t even need to be explained. The game has changed so much since then. Online memes and humor and a strong social media following is the contemporary charismatic glad-handing and affability of Bill Clinton during his campaign, and Hillary failed at it…miserably! The internet was her worst enemy, because she was so ruthlessly mocked on it but failed to use it to her own advantage. Donald Trump had crowds howling with laughter at his rallies and at all the debates, very much laughing with him and not at him…and Hillary is like the antithesis of “funny.” Trump was funny in a mean spirited and juvenile way but it still elicited the desired response from his base; Hillary didn’t do anything similar. “Pokemon Go to the polls.” “Hot sauce in her purse.” It all fell as flat on its ass as Elmer Fudd slipping on a banana peel, except that analogy is awful because the latter is actually amusing so it’s too meta of an analogy. I won’t even bother trying to make an analogy, it just fell flat on its ass full stop.
Who we really want is Martin Sheen…
Stealing Locrian’s list from CNN…I will look at this from the situation of how each will be attacked…
FULL DISCLOSURE, I am an registered independent, I live in upstate NY, which means my vote is meaningless be it D or R, I voted for neither Clinton or Trump, I wasted my vote on Gary Johnson as I could not in good faith vote for the other two…
The 2016 election (This is all IMHO) swung on the fact that Hillary was a really bad candidate, not that she’s not intelligent, but she was perceived to be aloof, not very personable, cringe-worthy at times, when she was asked if she ‘wiped her server’, and she answered with a smug smile, “Like with a cloth?”, my immediate thought was, that was the worst answer she could possibly give and it was one she had obviously practiced, please, you are trying to appeal to millennials, they know what ‘wiping a server’ means…even more importantly, there were a whole lot of middle class people thinking, “Oh…OK…”
Most importantly, Trump absolutely painted her into a corner, defined her before she could define herself, she became, “Crooked Hillary”, whether she deserved it or not is totally irrelevant, she and her campaign allowed herself to be identified…and the Comey announcement just days before the election potentially affirmed the Trump narrative…
So, if one looks at how she lost, IMHO, one has to look at how each potential D nominee will be attacked…
- Joe Biden…his time has passed…the GOP/Trump campaign would likely attack him as ‘Creepy Joe’ and as being too old, but Trump is the ultimate creepy one and only three years younger, so that would not likely work, but the most important point, Biden is not relevant these days…Trump (for better or worse) is in the news every day, Biden is not…
- Elizabeth Warren…IMHO, this is the nominee Trump would want to run against, she’s not very popular beyond the NE area, and they would have a field day branding her as “Fauxcahontas”…she’s far more intelligent and moderate than that, but the attacks would really hurt her in the SE and MW…
- Kamala Harris…I don’t see her popularity and name recognition beyond the traditional coastal areas, Boston/NY/Philly/DC, around to her native CA and up to OR and WA…another one the Trump campaign would feast on…
- Kirstin Gillibrand - I live in upstate NY, less than an hour from where she grew up…Kristin Gillibrand is a political lightweight, she has no appeal outside of the Northeast…the Trump campaign would eat her alive as she willingly accepted Hillary’s seat when Hillary was nominated for SOS, and welcomed Hill and Bill campaigning for her…then, when the #MeToo movement exploded, she stated that, given the context, Bill should have resigned…https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/16/us/politics/gillibrand-bill-clinton-sexual-misconduct.html....she has no significant legislative record…
- Bernie Sanders…I know he gave Hillary a ride, but again, the Trump campaign would pounce on him for earning $1 million in 2017 and having three houses while espousing a socialist message…and that would not play in the fly-over, blue-collar states…
- Eric Holder…irrelevant…he’s not been in the spotlight at all…he’d have no traction…
- Cory Booker…too much baggage, he’s too close to Wall Street to distance himself from Trump…
So, the question is, who? Jim Webb makes sense, but it’s early, someone who has youth appeal and energy, Obama came from nowhere in the 2007 early cycle…Biden is the most logical one, but, again, I think his time has passed…JMHO…
Being “close to Wall Street” is not really the liability that many people make it out to be. Bernie’s popularity had more to do with his personal charisma, the fact that he sounded and looked unique (sheer novelty value) and the fact that he had extreme conviction in his positions and didn’t back down (except for that one incident with the Black Lives Matter women stealing his mic, which did kind of make him look like a bitch honestly.) I am convinced that he had a groundswell of enthusiastic support in spite of his anti-Wall-Street stance, not because of it.
Class warfare doesn’t work in America. Class resentment only exists in this country from the top down, not the bottom up. The people at the top and in the middle classes do, in fact, behind closed doors, often rant derisively about the lower classes, whether it’s rednecks, inner city minorities, or broke college students…but the lower classes don’t resent millionaires and billionaires, they want to be them.
The idea that someone should be scorned for merely having “connections with Wall Street”, is very fallacious and exists only in the minds of the farthest extremes of the left. Now, there are people connected “to Wall Street” (what a ridiculously loaded phrase!) who have malevolent objectives and are corrupt, but this is by no means some kind of universal rule, no matter how much socialists use “Wall Street” as a term of abuse.
Yes, Bernie’s popularity has to do with his charisma, but there is no way that plays in TX et al,…
“The idea that someone should be scorned for merely having “connections with Wall Street”, is very fallacious and exists only in the minds of the farthest extremes of the left”…
But, but, but the D’s are moving to the very left, so connections with Wall Street have become absolutely an issue…
“Class warfare doesn’t work in America.”
I will have to respectful disagree with this statement, class warfare is totally alive and well in America…I hate it, but it’s there…
I know, right ? I’ve been re-watching the whole series over the past few weeks and goddamn, it’s such a depressing show these days…
With running mate Alec Baldwin.
One thing not taken much into account is the dynamics of such a large, huge as of now, field. Many suggestions just keep broadening it.
As with the GOP in 2016, a big field of candidates can play to the advantage of one person who is in some way (perceived to be, it’s always about voter perception) different in a way which feeds a (hidden or not so hidden) hunger of the primary base the others don’t. In Trump’s case it was IMO a hunger for a more raw expression of hostility to the cultural left*, but also open hostility to the party establishment/Bush legacy (the latter aspect of Trump tends to be ignored or underplayed by people on the left).
So, the Democrats and GOP aren’t very similar right now, but one might try to think of what or who might parallel that. Some of 20-30 will test the waters and find not enough funding support. But at least as many as 2016 GOP field will probably actively enter. How would it actually be winnowed down? ‘We need a moderate or maybe a Southerner…’ I don’t think that’s the likely mechanism to settle on one person. More likely somebody who says stuff the base wants to hear in a way others aren’t willing to.
So I think it will likely be somebody fairly extreme, unless it’s another person in the category ‘it’s their turn’ like Hillary. Biden might fit that, or maybe Bernie checks both boxes. But somebody who is on a list of relatively similar people who are ‘moderate’ being the one to drive out the rest of the field by being moderate, I just don’t see that happening.
*you can call that some list of ism/phobia’s instead if you like, it doesn’t really change the point.
I think the key for 2020 is that the nominee run a different style of campaign than Clinton did. Not necessarily different policy positions, but a different way of doing things. Here’s one thing that I think would work if done correctly. During the first debate when the subject of Russia comes up, the Democratic candidate should finish his or her answer with something like this. “Unlike my oponent I won’t be Putin’s bitch.”
Has any of his opponents ever won a name-calling contest with Trump? IIRC, trying to play Trump’s game against him didn’t work so well during the 2016 primaries.