Harris by far and away. Warren just sounds too preachy. She’s like the kid in class who has her hand up and answers every question to show us how smart she is. I think Harris has a much higher probability of being liked by the voters. I put stock in the “who would you rather have a beer with?” theory. Gillibrand left a sour taste in my mouth for pushing Franken out the door and Klobuchar is nice enough but I don’t think tough enough to take on Donald. I can see Harris loading up for bear against Donald to a much greater degree than she did against Biden. She’ll bring up the rape charge, the treatment of migrants, his fellating of Putin and Kim, all that stuff. She will come to kick ass and chew bubblegum.
I see this sort of thing a lot, often from people who then express their support for Warren or occasionally Harris. The odd thing is that both of these senators quickly fell in line behind Gillibrand in calling for Franken’s resignation (as did, I believe, both Sanders and Booker). Yet somehow the blame is on Gillibrand alone. I don’t get it.
We don’t want the average white voter. We want to maximize turnout of people who will vote Democratic. Our base is bigger than their base, but our base is younger, more diverse, and includes way more intermittent voters.
Sure, a Harris/Castro ticket would lose us a few steelworkers in Ohio. (But wait, aren’t those guys being told by the GOP that Harris is really white anyway?) It would also turn out a shitload more LatinX voters than usual, and boost African-American turnout as well. The college-educated whites that have increasingly moved into the Dem column (as the GOP has increasingly rejected the very notion that knowledge is good) by and large won’t care that there isn’t a white guy on the ticket.
That ticket would kick Trump’s sorry ass.
You realize that Republicans are just as much based on “identity politics”, don’t you?
That’s what pretty much everybody thought about Hillary, too.
As I recall, she was the one that pushed the snowball down the mountain. Others joined in, but after it was already proceeding downhill.
I don’t believe this for a second. Not only would you lose the rust belt, but you would endanger the Dem chances in purple states like Nevada, Colorado, North Carolina and Virginia. Arizona, Georgia and Florida would be lost causes. But hey, maybe you’d still win the popular vote without an EC victory by boosting your margins in California, New York and Illinois- wonderful!
People have been trying to boost Latino turnout for years, and it never works. Trump got more Latino support than Romney anyway, and his approval rating among that demo isn’t that much worse than the average Republican’s. Relying on black turnout is also a fool’s errand. They are around 13% of the population and clustered in states that are either safely blue already or stifled by voter suppression. Anyway, if the Democrats can’t win a national election without somehow juicing massive turnout from a tiny demographic that already supports them by over 80%, then they are an unhealthy, obsolete political party. Something has to change. The identity politics game has run its course. Trump and the Republicans have weaponized white identity politics, and that will currently beat whatever group Democrats may cobble together.
The Democrats had a decent midterm in the House by not focusing on identity politics. The economy and healthcafe are what people care about.
As is Bernie Sanders.
Yes, kids, “straight white men” is an identity too.
No shit- and when Republicans succeed in making white voters think that they are on their side, Democrats lose. The easiest way to make the case for them is to run a ticket without a white person on it.
I was actually flabbergasted when HRC chose Kaine as her running mate. A PoC would have been a far more sound selection, and may have helped in a few states that went red. But the inverse is true too- a nominee like Harris, Booker or Castro would be wise to pick a white running mate, like Obama did. He certainly wouldn’t have won states like Indiana, Virginia or Ohio without one.
Good point. I don’t recall any Democrats at all in 2016 suggesting that any other candidate might be more electable than Hillary. :rolleyes:
Anyway, to the OP, Gillebrand and Gabbard clearly aren’t going anywhere, Klobuchar can’t win the primary (thank Og), and Warren can’t win the general. Gotta be Kamala.
…if you participate in the exact same exact misinformation campaign that will be used by Republicans/Russia/Facebook trolls/Twitter bots during the general election, and if you repeat the exact same exact misinformation that will be used by Republicans/Russia/Facebook trolls/Twitter bots during the general election, it becomes **indistinguishable **from the misinformation campaign that will be used by Republicans/Russia/Facebook trolls/Twitter bots during the general election. You become part of that campaign.
So stop doing that already.
The people who don’t know what “LatinX” means are the voters we desperately need to flip.
I feel like you kinda yadda, yadda, yaddaed over some important issues here. She may be a Russian plant, but yadda, yadda, yadda, photogenic?
I like the phrase “yadda, yadda, yaddaed.” You’re right, of course.
Not only that, but the “political outsider” claim in pjacks’s post is quite peculiar. Gabbard’s a US House member who despite her youth is already in her fourth term in Congress. She was elected to the state House at the age of 21. She was chosen to serve as vice chair of the DNC. She comes from an intensely political family. In short, she is in no sense whatever a “political outsider.” Marianne Williamson is a political outsider. Andrew Yang is a political outsider. Gabbard? Just the opposite.
BobLibDem – You’re correct that Gillibrand was the instigator of the get-Franken-out-of-the-Senate push. If you think that Franken should have remained a senator, then it makes sense that she should get the brunt of your anger. But if it had just been Gillibrand, her efforts never would have gone anywhere: one lone senator crying in the wind doesn’t get things done. It was the support offered her by Warren and Sanders and Booker and Harris (and others) that ultimately led to Franken’s resignation. I’m just intrigued that I’ve heard at least a dozen people say they’ll never vote for Gillibrand because of the Franken issue, but I have literally never heard anyone criticize any of these other folks for following along.
(Besides which, “It was Kirsten’s idea to get drunk/go joyriding/vandalize the statue/cheat on the test; I just went along for the ride” isn’t the kind of explanation that tends to be viewed as principled or ennobling. Again, I’m intrigued that the non-Gillibrands aren’t even being asked to provide this excuse.)
I assumed this was a poll about which female candidate would be most likely to beat Trump. Basically, if I were an omnipotent being who could magically place any current female candidate in the role of Democratic nominee, based solely on their electability vs. Trump, who would it be.
In that case, it’s Gabbard. I don’t like her- she is a member of a creepy cult and has an anti-LGBT record that would make the average Republican blush. Out of the female candidates she is probably my last choice to vote for. However, the Russian ties are probably an asset. Russia has propped up candidates in elections before- often on both sides to mantain an illusion of choice- and they would definitely tip the scales for Gabbard to get Democrats off their backs during the next administration. That, and the other reasons I mentioned, are why she’d have the best chance against Trump in this hypothetical and unlikely world where she became the Dem nominee.
A lot of people are just voting for their favorite female candidate, it seems. How boring… or perhaps I misunderstood the poll.
I want it to be Warren. It’s likely to be Harris.
Seconded, though with the caveat that we are talking specifically about female candidates. I think it is actually likely to be Biden.
Warren is a strong candidate in a lot of ways, so I picked her. Not so much because she is “strong against Trump” but because she has a serious following.
If I’m picking someone just to fight Trump, maybe Gillibrand, to whom he has been particularly vile. But look, he’s going to be awful to any one of them.
I like Gabbard a lot; thought about her. She is a veteran, maybe she can beat up on him from that angle. But if you’re looking for a veteran to throw down with him, maybe Tammy Duckworth would make more sense.
I still haven’t voted in the poll yet, but my two favorites are Harris and Warren. I’m on the verge of pushing the button for Harris at this point for two reasons: I think there are better options for running mates available to her, and she’s just got more swagger.
As far as running mates for Harris go: Buttigieg would be a solid pick, as would a career military guy (McRaven, Stavridis). There are also a couple of really-outside-the-box picks I wouldn’t mind seeing: former New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu and AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka (an impossible long-shot, I know. But damned if Harris-Trumka wouldn’t be a killer ticket).
I don’t see as many winning running mate options out there for Warren, even though I personally like her better. I would think it would need to be a male and a person of color. But who is there? Booker? Anthony Foxx? Julian Castro? Andrew Gillum? Luis Gutierrez? I just don’t see anyone that could make it a real solid ticket for voters in the Industrial Midwest.
Personality-wise: Harris has a swagger Warren doesn’t, and you can’t underestimate swagger in these things. Trump (God help me) had more swagger than Hillary. Obama had more swagger than McCain and Romney. W had more than Kerry and Gore. Clinton had more than Dole and HW. I mean, Harris has smoked weed, listens to Tupac, has thrown some motherfuckers in jail over the years, is pretty damned impressive on the mic. At the end of the day, it kinda is just a big ol’ popularity contest, and I think Harris has the potential to be more popular than Trump, but not Warren. I do wish Harris would stay away from race issues in this campaign though.
And personally, I *think *my two-person focus group of Uncle G and Cousin D (briefly described here) would be more likely to vote for Harris than Warren. TBH, an attractive prosecutor from California would get more votes from union halls than an older, frumpy Harvard professor from Massachusetts.