Why? If I form a club, and you don’t want to join, that’s great, but than, you aren’t part of the club. You don’t get to be part of the process. Maybe you can come to the events, but I’m sure as hell aren’t putting you in charge.
Face it, as we can see in the Donald Trump administration, you have to do more than just be elected to get things done. You have to have power and influence, something Donald has almost nothing of outside his base. You know who does? Mitch fucking McConnell. The stuff he wants gets done. Of it did before 2018.
But again, why should I care. If you want sway in the Democratic Party, do something about it.
Oh… sorry. I had a conversation with some people in Philadelphia after the election that said almost the exact same thing. And meant it. Refused to vote for Democrats because we nominated Hillary instead of Bernie.
Well, it really does sound like they are trying to Dem Hard right now.
Very happy with the ability for the party to get their newer more popular members some spots on various committees. It will help in 2020 saying, “We shook things up and put these newly anti-establishment people in various high level positions in the party”
He actually has an impressive resume. Harvard graduate, Rhodes scholar, combat veteran (Naval Intelligence, serving in Afghanistan). He’s also an openly gay mayor – in Indiana. He’s a long way from being a realistic candidate for President, but some people run just to raise their national profile.
(Caveat, I know zero about his policy position – this was just a quick glance at Wikipedia)
I disagree. I think she’s great at explaining big ideas, at pushing provocative rather than focus-tested policies, and at using folksy charm to convey them. I think she’s significantly more charismatic than Bernie, more liberal than Biden, more authentic than Booker or Gillibrand, more caring than Harris, and sharper and more convincing than Beto, though some of those folks still have time to convince me otherwise. She’s more interesting than Hillary, both in how she engages with an interviewer or audience, and how she chooses her positions. I mean, Klobuchar is also bland in the “not the life of the party” kind of way, would she be a terrible candidate?
Let’s put it this way: if you asked Hillary or Gore a question about a policy difference with their opponent(s) or with the opposing party, you got some very wonky details or some prepared statement, if you ask Biden or Warren or Obama or Bill, you get a look of concern, a story about some specific person or group they were just talking to who is suffering because of bad ideas, and a broad solution about what to prioritize to make it better. She connects in that way, and I call that charisma.
She does have a high voice and a pleading tone that can sometimes come off as a whine. I don’t expect her big speeches to be as inspirational as Beto’s or as radical as Bernie’s, and she won’t be able to match Grandpa Joe’s charm and grins, but she’s a heavyweight candidate for a reason and she’s got a lot of appeal as a potential president. Assuming that she is terrible because she’s an old white lady like Hillary was makes no sense - they are very different politicians with very different approaches.
Warren absolutely does not connect with people in the same way that Biden, Clinton, or Obama do.
Seriously, it’s not even remotely on the same level as those guys. It’s not even in the same universe.
I’m not assuming… this all started because I had just watched her give an interview on AC360. She was terrible. It was ridiculously boring and bland.
Maybe if you are really into the content of what she’s saying then this isn’t the case… but that’s not the point. The whole point is that you need to be able to be interesting to people who don’t already agree with you on everything.
I watched the same interview and did not find her boring or bland. I don’t know what you are comparing her to, but she’s animated, presents ideas in context rather than just replaying workshopped talking points, and uses concrete examples of people who are harmed. There is very little difference between her approach and Biden’s, Bill’s, or Barry’s. Hillary and Gore were significantly more wooden and pre-programmed in their deliveries, and Hillary specifically would devolve into arcane details when confronted with something that she didn’t have in her script. Warren isn’t a dude and she doesn’t have Bill or Joe’s good-wingman vibe, but she is engaging in a way that most politicians are not. She also doesn’t have Obama’s skill at oratory from what I’ve seen, so she will have a harder time making the stump speech to a big crowd approach work.
It might be helpful for people to remember we’re debating charisma levels, not how qualified or good someone would be at the actual job. On the flipside, if someone says they’re inspired by a candidate, that’s a legitimate point in their favor.
However, this:
Has literally nothing to do with charisma. It’s great, it’s just not what we are talking about.
I don’t know what that means. I am engaged by the way she presents her positions and beliefs, which is not the same as being engaged purely by the policies she chooses to support. Someone else could present the same policies in a far less engaging way.
Charisma is a heavily-loaded term that I find highly suspect. If you are saying that people who are “wooden” or “not authentic” lack charisma, then I am saying Warren is neither of those things. If you are saying, “She just isn’t someone I want to party with,” then I don’t know what to say to that. I’m sure Bernie is quite a hoot at da club.
It means that you are excited by what she’s saying, independent of her communication of those ideas. You are excited by the ideas themselves. Almost anyone could present those ideas, and you would be engaged simply by virtue of the ideas.
This is opposed to someone like Obama who has the ability to be engaging almost independent of what he’s actually saying. Just the way he speaks, its cadence, his energy. It’s engaging on a far more viceral level than anything Warren does.
Virtually all of the other female candidates in the field right now are more engaging in this regard.
Of course, this all involves some huge amount of subjective opinion, so whatever.
