JoshL
5529
My millennial nephew asked me what I thought about Yang this weekend. Anecdata!
I think that’s called a Yangecdote.
Tim_N
5531
Well, no one could foresee that Dean would raise his voice at a rally. Wow, what a change there’s been in US political campaigns.
I don’t like Mayor Peter as a running mate because I think it is unacceptable for Democrats to run an all-white ticket in 2020 (I think this was true in 2016 too), which would be the case barring an unlikely rally from Harris or Booker. I’d personally like to see Stacey Abrams on the ticket. She’s doing important work now with voter rights protection, but she’s far too compelling to be out of the public eye.
That’s an interesting view. Not sure why it would be unacceptable though. I would rather leave that up to the Democratic caucus.
Everyone in the primary has one or two marks against them. I would rather we didn’t think that race is another one.
Harris and Booker both have baggage that makes them less then ideal to represent the current modern Democratic party.
In the 2018 midterms, 90% of blacks, 69% of Hispanics, and 77% of Asians voted for Democrats, compared to 44% of whites, per Pew. It’s a bad look for a party that counts minorities as an essential part of its base to fail to represent that on its presidential ticket for what would be two cycles in a row. I don’t like Harris and I’m not crazy about Booker either, which is why I mentioned Abrams.
If you prefer to look it less through the lens of representation and more pragmatically, Buttigieg famously polls poorly with non-white voters. This is true of the candidate I support (Warren) as well. Someone like Abrams could give the Dem nominee inroads into the South and possibly increase black voter turnout nationwide.
How about Julián Castro for VP?
CraigM
5537
And yet, if 100% of non white voters supported dems and only 44% of white voters did… their total numbers would be about equal.
Now there may be some merit to the idea of driving engagement with key communities though VP pick, and using that to leverage voter turnout for critical races. How effective VP choice is for that? Debatable. But it is certainly an argument worth discussing he merits of.
Simply saying the Democratic ticket should not be two white people because white people is nonsensical. Now if you want to argue Buttigeig is not the best VP choice on the merits, well have at it! And to be clear ‘does not drive enthusiasm in key minority groups’ is absolutely a valid merit! If you think that another person would be better at engaging and drawing support for important states I am all ears.
I like Pete for his obvious intelligence, well spoken and considered positions, and the fact that his choice of spouse is a big Fuck You to Pence. In terms of policy I prefer him to several other choices. And I think there is value in the contrast, he could be used to legitimately sell policy ideas to the midwest.
But if you think someone else could do better, and Abrams is an interesting choice, hey that’s great. I hope whomever the nominee is considers all aspects and has a good team around them for VP selection to choose he best one possible.
But using race as a determining characteristic (especially when female president and gay VP are the proposal) is self defeating.
Sounds like a shift into kingmaker mode, basically.
Tim_N
5539
Numbers are misleading… When you consider the racial background of people who vote Democrat, it’s roughly 61% White, 15% Hispanic, 19% African American, and 5% Asian. And the last Democratic President was African American. I’m not trying to argue that it’s not their turn or anything like that, just that if you use a numbers argument I don’t think it implies what you thought.
The much better argument is what you wrote next, that pragmatically it makes alot of sense as minority turnout will probably be important to beating Trump in 2020.
Makes sense, to be honest.
Really well said throughout this post. 5/5, would buy overpriced DLC on launch day.
Timex
5542
Why doesn’t he just drop out?
I mean, maybe not. But whether its fair or not, one of the things the older cadre of candidates – Sanders, Biden and Warren – have to do is convince voters that they’re sharp enough and robust enough to handle the gig. And of those three, Warren is really the only one to really make her point.
Same as ever; the longer he stays in, the longer he’ll possess influence on the party platform. Is it in the best interests of the Democratic party? Maybe not, but at least at this point it’s not causing undue damage.
I dunno about that. It would surely be better to coalesce behind an obvious nominee sooner in the process, and Sanders could do a lot to make that happen.
I disagree - coalescing early gives your opponents more time to define you as a candidate in general and in this specific case it allows Trump to frame any decision that affects his chances in 2020 as support for a specific opponent’s worst characteristics.
There’s no real empirical support for the idea that a quick nomination process yields a stronger candidate.
I don’t know about that. I think the Democrats are 0-2 in Presidential races where the candidate was chosen at convention without a clear primary winner in the post-WW2 era. The examples that come to mind are ‘84 and ‘52.
In multi-candidate presidential elections in the EU, it’s not uncommon for less popular candidates to hang on in order to mobilize voters or shift the debate, abandoning the race later while endorsing a candidate. I’m not knowledgeable on how effective it is, but it’s not the worst thing.
