I’d also note that, of the last four Democratic presidents, three of them (Carter, Clinton, Obama) likely had pretty low name recognition, nationally, prior to the campaigns beginning in earnest.
OTOH, given the changes to the media and news landscapes even since Obama’s time, that observation may or may not have any real weight today. 
James Carville doesn’t use the word bench but is convinced the Democrats have a good one. After listing names, he says:
Nikki Haley to announce in the next two weeks for the GOP.
I admire her (and anyone else) willing to file against Trump. But I don’t admire much else about her. Maybe she’ll surprise me.
In D politics Carville’s last comment is a feature. In R politics, it’s a bug.
Which explains a lot about how our country got to be how it is.
So except for Biden, no Democrat on this “bench” has been elected president in the last 60 years. It sounds like the bench isn’t all that useful.
Both Hillary Clinton and Al Gore won the popular vote.
Bill Clinton won out over a good pack of candidates, but Bush was a very weak and beatable president. You have to go back to 1988 to have an election that a better Democrat might have won. Dukakis got the nomination over a bunch of nobodies. (Yes, I realize that a young Biden was one of them.) Frankly, I don’t think any Democrat could won over the third term of Reagan, but Dukakis was both inadequate and as good as anyone else.
I absolutely hope that the present possibilities are more like 1992 than 1988, but there’s not much to back that up right now. I would prefer that Biden runs and wins and gives room and air for the next generation to make their cases and gain name recognition. If not, I hope that somebody named above is a fantastic and charismatic politician.
The bench concept makes some sense in the primaries. Primary voters may, unfortunately for the Democrats, consider House members, and small-state governors, beneath consideration AKA off the bench. But I don’t think the bench concept makes any sense for the general election. The presidential candidate is no longer unknown after the convention.
For many voters, it’s not which presidential candidate they’re for but which they’re against. Because of that it would be desirable run an unknown. You’re unlikely to hate someone you’ve barely heard of. But by October, even low-information voters have heard about them — and dislike a lot of what they have heard.
I’m anxious to see exactly how Trump eviscerates her. He made her ambassador to the United Nations, and she once said that she wouldn’t challenge him if he ran in 2024. He’s been a little soft on her thus far (the only thing I’ve seen him say is that she’s “overly ambitious.”), but if he has to face her, those kid gloves just may come off.
Of course, it’s possible she’s angling for the VP spot, and it’s not out of the realm of possibility that Trump is thinking he may be able to bed her without having to pay for it, since she’d be grateful that he picked her.
As you can probably tell, I’m of two minds on the whole situation.
The problem with that approach (“run an innocuous nobody”), as so clearly evidenced in 2016, is that folks who are against one candidate in the general election face a choice: Do I vote for the other one, who I’m not real excited about, or do I just stay home? The latter choice may be much, much easier depending on where and how you live.
Each party has a problem: turnout is what wins elections in our knife-edge balanced society. You want a candidate that utterly motives your voters to actually bother to vote. While also running a candidate that encourages apathy in your opponent’s voters. That’s a tough needle to thread.
This is also why voter suppression is so very effective. If your team can suppress their voters and run a charismatic firebrand who really gets your voters out to the polls, your team not only wins the presidency, but the coattail effect gives you lots of congresscritters and state governments too.
He absolutely needs her to run. That’s why he’s being soft on her.
In fact, he needs as many people as possible to run, just in case DeSantis runs.
Bare minimum, he will get 35% of the GOP primary vote in most states. So if he can have Haley and Hogan and Bolton and whomever each take 5-10% away from DeSantis then he can win a plurality and take the lion’s share of the delegates.
As we get closer, and more folks make noise about running on the GOP side, you will continue to see him being neutral and even encouraging to everybody except DeSantis, whom he will eviscerate every chance he gets.
Perhaps, but Haley is being disloyal. She said that she wouldn’t run if he did. And we all know how much he hates people who aren’t loyal to him.
Right. So a guy known for hating disloyalty has this to say about two people considering being, in his mind, disloyal:
About Haley: “She should do it” and “I talked to her for a little while, I said, ‘Look, you know, go by your heart if you want to run,’” Trump said. “She’s publicly said that ‘I would never run against my president, he was a great president.’”
About DeSantis: "So, when I hear he might run, I consider that very disloyal,” and calling him “DeSanctimonius” and continually slagging him about COVID and how he only won because Trump endorsed him.
The different responses are very telling - he wants Haley to run and he doesn’t want DeSantis to. Because he knows he will crush Haley, but that he might need Haley (and others) to siphon off some never-Trump votes from DeSantis.
Now, could Trump be wrong about that? Of course. He’s an idiot. But he’s generally pretty good at figuring out who the threats are and what the best way to neutralize them is.
Isn’t this thread about Democratic candidates?
I have changed my mind about Buttigieg. After 10 days of a disaster in Ohio( toxic waste affecting many) he finally posts that hes …concerned.
It does seem like Mayor Pete is taking an increasing amount of heat for the East Palestine derailment. Marco Rubio’s called on him to resign (not a surprise), but some Democrats as well have been critical of how he and the DoT have responded. There’s no reason to think he bears any particular blame for the incident, but if the Administration feel like it needs a scapegoat, he’s being teed up nicely.
I was for Bullock last time around as a flyover state Dem who’s used to never voting for a winner.
But I want more attention for Duckworth. It looks like she recently(ish) released her “I might be doing something in national politics soon” book. We’ll see if the library has it on audiobook.
I think there are a lot of things that the federal agencies can do about the trainwreck that do not require permission from the governor of Ohio.
OSHA, EPA, Dept of Labor, Dept of Transportation, Dept of Agriculture.Dept of Health
All of those people probably did mobilize immediately but just did not make a big enough public noise. You don’t have to put people into cheap FEMA trailers for 4 years to be involved. Buttigieg needs to call for inspections of all rail equipment,EPA needs more training for local responses, Agriculture needs to monitor any goods coming out of area etc. Make East Palestine the new Framingham study group for long term effects.
Buttigieg can recover from this but I don’t know if he or Biden can recover from the union blocking decisions they made.
That Senator from Montana sounds enticing if he can get out and speak to the whole country.