Where does Harris fit into this? Is Booker even on the radar?
These are the only three in double-digits. I don't think that means nobody else can win, but these three pulled away. Of the three, I'm for Warren also.
I admit that I like Sanders less after I heard him speak. I think the reason I missed how Obama was going to be a strong candidate is because I'd never heard him speak. I hate the TV news.
It's bizarre that the three front-runners are all old.
Me! For Biden! Because I care about foreign policy!
5: It's baked into the demographics, I think. There are just so many people of that age group, they are a huge portion of the voters on the demand side. On the supply side, they have been sitting on the positions that would let somebody younger built up a good position from which to run.
Anyway, I am still hoping for somebody younger to break out. Harris, probably.
If my problems are listed such that they enumerate to 99, "old white people" are at the heart of about 58 of them.
If my assets were similarly listed, "old white people" would come in at maybe 43.
Maybe keeping that ratio better is why actual old white people care so deeply about Antonio Brown.
Killjoy comment, but US polls have so small samples that demographic breakdowns become unreliable. You could figure out the moe or look up if this is a recurring pattern, but I'm too lazy.
I have a vague feeling aa women are Biden friendly, that could be a factor.
I also care about drinking. Biden4eva
Not a vague feeling, but rather I've read they are, but I'm not going to look up polls.
I know Bernie is overall doing much better w poc than in 2016, whereas Warren and most minor candidates like Buttigieg are doing very badly w poc. Bernie is probably doing really well with hispanics and mideasterners, since he doesn't seem to be particularly well with southern african americans.
There's a noisy faction in his coalition -- I'm sure they're vastly overrepresented online -- calling for the repudiation of Obama and all his works. There's a more polite faction who'll calmly tell us how important it is that we disregard the preferences of women and middle-aged African-Americans. IMO, neither of these groups are doing Sanders any good, but when you build a movement that attracts misanthropes, you're going to get stuff like this.
Bernie's anger is part of why he appeals to younger low income people so much. Question is to what degree they will show up to the polls in both primaries or general.
I really am concerned with the lack of visceral anger from the other candidates though. But they will run against Trump. How many Trump disapproving high income people will Bernie really lose when Trump is the incumbent and they want to kick him out vs. the low income young people who won't be excited by Warren or Biden?
(I'm not saying that all, a majority, or even that big a chunk of the Sanders movement is misanthropes. I do think, mostly ex recto, but also based on the folks I know, that Sandrs wins the misanthrope vote going away.)
It's the savanna. Come out of that northern forest into the sunlight and you're fucking blind in the glare and the heat haze. Never see the hyenas coming.
Yes, obviously, if young people show up in numbers never before seen, the results will be different than any that have ever been seen.
AAHAHAHAHAHA! HAHAHAHAHA! Why is it humans valorize the big cats when we are so clearly big dog-things ourselves?
Obama turned out young voters and marginal voters in general to a greater degree than for example Clinton or Kerry. You don't need to posit any miracles. You need to get out the vote.
Another wrinkle is that if you look how many people say they follow the election compared to previous cycles, it points to unprecedented turnout regardless of who the candidate is, 70+ percent. Doesn't seem so unthinkable if you look at the midterm turnout. Unfortunately both sides are more motivated than normal.
Republicans had unprecedented turnout in 2018, it was just trumped by the democratic turnout. The most plausible scenario where Trump wins is that the republican turnout will be unprecedented, motivated by the trump show, while democrats will have become weary and the candidate will be unexciting, and they will look at polls that say the democrat is guaranteed to win. Most polls are based on weighting and turnout models.
I didn't notice this was a Stanley post. Hi Stanley!
Sanders and Biden are the only candidates that consistently have solid leads against Trump, and Biden doesn't seem equipped to run for president at this point. It's hopefully just name recognition, but at some point Warren's numbers need to go up a bit for her to feel like a safe choice.
AAHAHAHAHAHA! HAHAHAHAHA! HAHAHAHAHA!
Hyenas are big cat-things, of course.
Fuck that shit. Anyway, the point stands, witness stupid Disney. AAHAHAHAHAHA! HAHAHAHAHA!
Bernie supporter here. My support is because of his policies and morality but I'm also very encouraged by his political coalition which is the coalition the Democratic party should aspire too.
Per (this particular polling by) Pew, Sanders is the only candidate with majority women supporters and majority non-white supports. Warren actually has the whitest base, which I hope her supporters realize should be unsettling.
Sanders also considerably stronger support than Warren among those making less than 50k per year and among those without college degrees.
https://www.politico.com/story/2019/07/12/sanders-warren-voters-2020-1408548
All in for Warren too though I would be fine, if not positively delighted, if it were Sanders.
6 Seriously? Sanders is very good on foreign policy. Matt Duss was a great hire.
Warren's 70 is 66 in guy years.
(70 * life expectancy ratio 76.9/81.6, and yes I know that is life expectancy at birth and there's class and don't @ me.)
Forest, heat haze, bone-crushing jaws. America needs some of that deeply-compromised Cold War Right Stuff.
I agree with the post title, that next year is expected to be the longest year on record, by several orders of magnitude. Everyone gripes about climate change, but I'm also concerned about time dilation.
I'm really forcing myself not to become emotionally invested in any candidate prior to the winner of the primary.
My stomach won't let me drink my worries away, so until I heal my gastric system again, I'll need to find peace from less reliable methods.
That Sanders and Warren ate diving the progressive half of the party along fairly definable lines doesn't tell us much about what the coalition will look like when only one of them is in the race.
People say that Biden's lead is about name recognition. I would say this is probably accurate as to every candidate but Sanders.
I admit that part of me would really enjoy having a president whose name started with "Butt." Still, I want someone who has won a state-wide election.
I just found out the "The Office" isn't leaving Netflix until 2021. I had stopped watching it because I thought it was going to disappear before I could get into it. Maybe I'll re-start episode 2.
On the demographics / age point earlier in the thread:
7: On the supply side, they [the oldsters] have been sitting on the positions that would let somebody younger built up a good position from which to run.
This really isn't true any more. There are/were 24 or so Democratic candidates running for the nomination - many of them with decent political experience under their belts. The much-touted hand-wringy notion floated in past years that oh, oh, oh, the upcoming Democratic bench is so bare, so empty! has proven not to be true.
To Weman at 14: I wasn't aware that Warren was doing poorly with POC. I had understood that she was very well received at the black women's "She the People" forum some months ago. Of course that's not a substitute for polling data.
There are/were 24 or so Democratic candidates running for the nomination - many of them with decent political experience under their belts.
It's not that none of them are younger, but that so many of them are really fucking old. Three of them (the three in the lead) are old enough that if elected they will be older than Reagan was when he started and back then there was a lot of worry that he was too old. Worry which turned out to be exactly correct, except that Reagan seemed to become a better president after dementia than before.
Trump's dementia is unlikely to work out in anybody's favor except other wealthy.
I really don't know how you tell what part of Trump's behavior is dementia and which part is just vanity and cruelty, but I'm pretty sure at least some of it is dementia.
Everyone gripes about climate change, but I'm also concerned about time dilation.
Seriously though.
30: That's an absurd argument. Warren is the obvious best future President. The only way demographics enter into it is to the extent it affects electability (and I don't know which way that cuts).
Sanders would be better than Biden, but in terms of efficacy the man is clearly Jimmy Carter II.
Seriously, the next Democratic President will have to rebuild the entire federal government. Warren is by far the most capable in the field.
I like Bernie because his policies are the best, but the demographics of his support (poorer, less educated) make him a better candidate in the general election against Trump than Warren since the richer more educated dems are more likely to show up to vote for a dem they are not that excited about in the general.
I basically cannot get on board with the notion that the election will hinge on the differences between these three in any predictable way. The current president is a deteriorating lunatic, the country is insanely polarized, and the media profits off distorting reality for clicks. Any time we're pretending that we know who will coalesce behind whom, we're really just pretending to anticipate which semi-self-fulfilling narrative the media will glom on to.
Any sane person in this country will vote for whoever of these three wins the nomination. We're dissecting the behaviors of people of people who are not using one wisp of attention towards politics in these bonkers times.
I suppose I don't have much of a point. Angst, angst!
I cordially despise electability arguments. If Warren can't rally the Democrats, then we won't need to worry about her electability next fall.
The question of electability is largely a function of the judgment of the media, and fuck the media. If they tell me I have to vote for Joe Biden, I will, but not until after the Democratic primary.
Electability isn't something that'll be given to the leftish candidates, they have to take it. Are they putting together a movement that will sweep all before it or not? If not, not only is electability an issue, but all the policy things they are talking about are meaningless. But if they are, then nothing some stupid Beltway journalist has to say should mean a fucking thing.
The way for Sanders to prove hordes of younger. poorer, maler voters are going to turn out for him in the fall is to get so many to turn out in the spring that he swamps Biden. Can he do that? If he can't, what even is the point?
Unlike the general, the primaries reward running up the score in Oakland, Brooklyn, and Austin. Columbia and Charleston, for that matter.
And as for the media, I'm not sure what demographics out there are less susceptible to establishment media bias than the core elements of the Sanders movement.
They're susceptible to the confirmation bias of the media's perpetual underreporting of Warren (that I believe to be true based on nothing I can point to).
They also seem to be susceptible to Russian bots.
The Patriots seem to play football very well. No wonder Antonio Brown wants to play for them.
Speaking of the NFL and a divided America, if the liberals get custody of the NFL and Walmart by default after a conservative boycott, I'm not sure I know how to feed them or care enough to learn.
I can drink beer and be disappointed in large men, if necessary, but I'm not going to spend money on overly large, way too bright, shirts
53 "The way for Sanders to prove hordes of younger. poorer, maler voters are going to turn out for him in the fall"
Are you disputing the Pew finding that Sanders supporters are majority women? If not, there's no need to refer to his voters as "maler"
Charleycarp's contributions to this thread have been sharp and well argued, even the parts i don't wholly agree with.
When your time dilation reaches 8 centimeters, you should go to the emergency room.
I think that Warren would clearly make the best president, and be the craftiest in getting things done with administrative action when the Senate inevitably kills the chance for progressive legislation. But I think Sanders is most likely to win a general election against Trump, by being the best at keeping the narrative of the election focused on the economy and the phoniness of Trump's populism.
Warren has shown signs of getting better at forcing things into a populist frame (e.g. this response about banning straws at the climate debate: https://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2019/09/04/elizabeth-warren-fossil-fuel-industry-cnn-climate-town-hall-vpx.cnn/video/playlists/climate-change/) so I'm holding out hope.
It would be foolish and too clever by half to only care about electability. You need to figure out which candidate might change politics enough that the next republican president will be less awful than Trump or Bush, rather than worse. You need to figure out how you get away from the one step forward two steps back dynamic. So the planet won't burn.
The republicans are always balancing on the edge of unelectability. If you make the electorate a little more left-leaning and make voter suppression a little harder republicans may have to change dramatically, not just tweak their approach. But you can't just kick back and hope demographics will do that for you, the political culture and political economy is always changing faster than demographics are changing, and group identities are always changing too. Paralysis and policy drift favors the right, and the kind of young people who aspires to run for office as republicans in ten years are mostly baby Stephen Millers. You need enough progress to change that trajectory, substantial progress. You need, in fact, a political revolution, whether Bernie Sanders will be involved or other people, or both our medium term and long term prospects will be very bleak.
Policy plans are meaningful and important. Only looking at policy plans would be a very humble approach, not trying to be too clever by half or clever at all, but it could lead you to vote for a whole lot of Nick Cleggs, and it seems like something people want other people to do rather than what they actually do themselves.
60 I'm not disputing that, no. Our coalition has more women all around, the basic run of men having shown themselves susceptible to a toxic mix of awful ideologies. To win the thing, Sanders has to get lots of people to vote. To show that he can win the general, it seems to me, he ought to show he can win the primary not only by depressing Biden voters, but by swamping the polls with new people.
61 Likewise. From my vantage point, on the front lines in a tiny corner of the party, anger is looking like a real double edged sword. Anger at Trump is great, and won us the midterms. Anger at the DNC and the other 'traitors' in our midst is harder to work with. It's a huge wave indeed that lets the nominee get away with angrily alienating half the party, Any nominee is going to have to bring the losers' followings on board. That's easier when you (or, really, your followers) haven't been vilifying them.* I consider Warren to be the better bet in the general, but we're so far away that, as folks have said above, it doesn't make much sense to have opinions about electability at this point.
* I'm not saying that only Sanders' movement is like this. There's a whole lot of vilifying Sanders' supporters going on as well. Everyone should cut it out, and realize that it actually is going to take all of us to win this thing.
64.1. When the Republicans do their best to break every aspect of government and skirt every law and tradition (and I'm talking about "administrative rule" here, among other things), I don't think "Hold my beer..." is the best response from Democrats. Also, CharleyCarp's 67.2 is right, as he often is. The Republicans just lurv that traditional Democrat circular firing squad.
I intended this one to be a response to 67.2 et al.
69 I don't think anyone is worried about you voting, and voting for our nominee.
My theory this morning on the polling vs Trump is that a bunch of people, who might not actually favor Biden, think he'll do better against Trump than Sanders/Warren would in Pennsylvania, Iowa, Wisconsin, Michigan. There's still plenty of time for them to prove that wrong. As above, I wish their team spent more time making the positive case for this, rather than hoping/escalating Biden's fall, but the ground work for that is probably going on and I'm just not seeing it.
Locally, the Warren campaign seems to be attracting a lot of Democratic women Who Get Shit Done, while the Sanders campaign has a strong share of guys Who Talk a Good Game and Then Never Follow Through. I mean, we all know who has actually been knocking on doors, and making phone calls to voters. I know, and know who the local Warren lead person is. I couldn't tell you who the local Sanders lead is -- which isn't surprising to me because this was also the case in May 2016, when I was the one tasked with coordinating with both campaigns to put together our county delegate selection convention. Now obviously the Sanders campaign then wasn't playing to win (although they won our county 2-1) but it turned out there wasn't really a lead, and I had 4 people with me for the walk-through of the venue, none of whom had any authority to say yes or no to anything. (In contrast, the Clinton lead had been our state Senate minority leader, and definitely knows how to Get Shit Done.) Our primary is at the end of the process, so it won't matter. I wouldn't be surprised if this pattern is replicating in a lot of places around the country.
Locally, the Warren campaign seems to be attracting a lot of Democratic women Who Get Shit Done, while the Sanders campaign has a strong share of guys Who Talk a Good Game and Then Never Follow Through.
Yeah, that's been my impression here as well. Sanders' fundraising campaigns have been tremendous; the so-called "ground game" not so much.
Did you all see this map of individual small-dollar donors, broken out by candidate? From a month ago, so dated already, but it's remarkable how far Bernie's reach goes. I do hope the NYT updates such maps as time goes on.
Also, 47 nails it.
53
I agree that beating out Biden for the democratic nomination is crucial to Bernie's plan to become president
72: I think that's intended as snark, but a lot of Bernie voters ignore this. If he wants to demonstrate that he is the nominee most likely to get votes, he can start by becoming the nominee.
||
Re: the rock-climbing discussion, I do not understand people like this at all, but let a thousand flowers bloom: https://www.espn.com/espn/story/_/id/27494779/free-solo-climber-alex-honnold-next-summit-rest-life-body-issue-2019
|>
74. The linked article was too long, but what I got from it is that he is not going to be climbing sheer cliffs without a rope anymore. Is that correct? Or is he just thinking about it? It would be sane of him. Even though I already knew the outcome, "Free Solo" had me constantly worrying about him falling. He should stop. He's done the ultimate thing in his sport.
There seems to be a small movement of sports figures who have decided to retire before they are completely beaten to crap. This is most prominent in football, which has had the most publicity about the effects of having your head smashed to the ground a few dozen times a year. (Who knew, right?) Rob Gronkowski of the Patriots and Andrew Luck of the Colts are the main examples. What is interesting is that Pats fans keep hoping Gronk will change his mind, and Colts fans, always classy, booed Luck.
He's done the ultimate thing in his sport.
Not really.
Well, let's hope he's not a lurker here, then.
It's funny that the author thinks "shizzle" and "dialed in" are Honnard-isms.
|| John Bolton is out. Perhaps the greatest moment of the Trump Presidency. ||
They're doing the "You were fired/No I quit" thing.
Fired by tweet. I'm almost in charity with Trump. Couldn't happen to a nicer guy.
Even after three years, somehow prominent Republicans still have not internalized that Trump destroys everything he touches.
I'm almost in charity with Trump. Couldn't happen to a nicer guy.
Honestly, I had the same thought: for once Trump did the right thing. God knows how that happened -- I'd love to be a fly on the wall hearing what sorts of ludicrous suggestions Bolton was offering up ('No, dude, seriously, we should bomb Iran. Also withdraw from the United Nations entirely. Also NATO, entirely. Fuck those guys.') such that even such as one as Donald Trump said, "Nah, you know, you're a bit much."
He fired the guy for having the exact same opinions on everything as when he was hired.
Messina had a good take: who on earth would want that job -- the guy wants to run FP himself, neither listens to nor takes advice, doesn't want to know there's been some sort of process.
Maybe AG Barr can have OLC put together an opinion that allows Trump to appoint his gut for the position, and drawn a paycheck.
73
"If he wants to demonstrate that he is the nominee most likely to get votes, he can start by becoming the nominee."
the issue is that a lot people support Biden for electability reasons so making the case that Bernie is more (or at least equally) electable is a reasonable way to persuade them to switch.
Plus, becoming the democratic nominee is really more like the end of the time to argue the electability of your favored democratic candidate rather than the start.
Even after three years, somehow prominent Republicans still have not internalized that Trump destroys everything he touches.
If you mean Bolton deciding to take that job, I suspect Bolton knew it was likely to be a humiliating washout, but thought it was worth the risk for even a small chance it would see all his dreams fulfilled. (Most of the prominent Republicans are trying to benefit while staying as far personally from Trump as possible.)
73. CC is talking sense. The general election will be decided by turnout among people in swing states who basically do not read, are not (demographically speaking) reliable for showing up at the polls.
If Bernie's demographic is angry poor youngish people, who historically have not showed up in droves for primaries, then having a lot of them show up at the primary and outnumber the constituencies for Warren (college+ dems basically) and Biden (everybody else) seems necessary for BS to show rather than tell those not already for him that he can help.
91
Bernie definitely needs to win the primary. But the electability arguments are part of the process of winning the primary which is why Bernie supporters make them. It would definitely be better if electability was not a consideration in the primary because that would crater Biden's support, but I am not in charge of that.
89, 92: Yeah, I take your point.
I'm coming at this from a different angle, though. I'm not trying to advocate for a candidate, I'm trying to comprehend how "electability" works, and how we should think of it in the context of the Democratic Party's nominating process. (Tentative answer: Who the fuck knows?)
So for me, this is interesting in terms of the natural experiment that we are witnessing. I prefer Warren and believe she is more electable than Bernie, but if Bernie wins the nomination, I will cheerfully acknowledge my error.
Surely the electability question would have to hinge on those few battleground states that edged Trump over the electoral college finish line in 2016. Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan, as I recall. Yes:
The most important states, though, were Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Trump won those states by 0.2, 0.7 and 0.8 percentage points, respectively -- and by 10,704, 46,765 and 22,177 votes. Those three wins gave him 46 electoral votes; if Clinton had done one point better in each state, she'd have won the electoral vote, too.
Or put another way: But for 79,646 votes cast in those three states, she'd be the next president of the United States.
Obviously, 2020 is not exactly the same landscape as 2016 [we will not be running Hillary Clinton as candidate]. Clearly, trying to flip other so-called purple states to the Democratic candidate's column -- through get-out-the-vote campaigns, fights against voter suppression, and so on -- matters. Nonetheless, the electability question doesn't have to be some amorphous thing nobody can get a handle on: we know where efforts need to go.
I haven't dug down into the weeds on how many campaign and outreach offices each Dem candidate has opened in various states and counties, but anecdotally anyway, Warren has one hella ground game.