I’ve been saying that for years. The younger generation of Democrats just doesn’t seem interested/capable in seizing the nomination the way Obama did in 2008.
I think Gillebrand is a good candidate, and she’s only 51. There are certainly others. None of them is the obvious heir apparent, but I think one will emerge.
Presumably, the DNC learned some lessons last round. God, I hope so.
One lesson needs to be to not fear the clown car primary. Let everyone run and let the process sort it out. Let’s not crown whomever leadership decides is next in line.
She’s probably the second most famous woman in the world. And I can’t imagine there is anyone on earth with a telephone who wouldn’t take her call.
FUCK NO
WTF is wrong with you? The clowncar is exactly why we have fucking Trump.
Or perhaps the fact that the DNC put their finger on the scale for Clinton is why Dems lost. She certainly muscled a lot of people out of the race.
I think so also. As long as he remains in office, Trump is going to dominate the media. Hell if that ever looks like that is going change, Trump will start a war, or throw people in jail just to make sure the spotlight is always on him.
So you have to run as the anti-Trump to a large extent.
Realistically, Obama is a once in generation political talent. If there was one out there, I think we would have seen the person by now. The Democrats lack of Governors and folks in the state legislators is really hurting them.
If you look at the 2016 Republican race there were a few Republican like Rubio, Christie, and even shockingly Ted Cruz, that showed some raw political talent. They were overshadowed by Trump, in the same way Obama was a star back in 2008. The Republican new blood was helped in that old guys Bush 43, McCain, Romney stayed off the stage. As long, as Bill and Hillary, Bernie, Pelosi, Schumer, Biden are still on in the spotlight, I don’t think any of the new Democratic blood has the charisma to breakthu,. unless they are attacking Trump.
I agree to the extent that you can’t pre-determine the winner and bend the system to ensure their victory. Doing that for Hillary turned out to be a grievous error. But I also remember that the GOP’s clown car primary split the reasonable candidates and let a bugfuck-crazy pigfucker with a delusional base become POTUS.
I don’t see that happening to the Dems. But I don’t think many Republicans saw it coming, either.
Seriously dude, look at the GOP.
They ended up running an imbecile who was effectively chosen by their most retarded 30%, because the rest of the field split the 70% of reasonably sane people.
Clowncar is BAD.
Which candidates did she muscle out of the race?
Sure it ended awfully, but I don’t think a wide open field is a bad idea. It is hell of a lot than better, the next in line strategy, which has produced exactly one elected President in the last 60 years (Bush 41),
I don’t think the Democrat base hates their leaders in the same the Republican do.
Good point.
I suppose we’re lucky that there is no clear ‘next in line.’ That’s another way of looking at a ‘weak bench’ ;)
I just hope Biden, Sanders and Warren realize that it’s time for the Dems to move on from septuagenarian candidates. They’re all great, but they’re all too freaking old at this point.
The problem was that Trump’s utter incompetence was effectively hidden in debates during the primary where no one got more than like 1.3 minutes.
Part of why you have a party is to provide some guidance in this regard.
Folks like Huckabee? That guy had no business on stage in debates. But the cutoff point to get on the main debate was like… 2% in the polls?
I think there is middleground between clown car and heir apparent.
I think a cut off of 4 candidates would be reasonable. You can’t go full clown car though. It just lets the Trumps hide in the crowd and dilutes the votes among every one.
Dems do a clown car approach and you’ll have a Sanders (or much, much worse) running almost guaranteed.
All this ‘weak bench’ stuff seems like the same kind of doom and gloom P&R has been wallowing in for about a year now. I don’t buy it.
I was a freshman in 1992 when the Democratic field included Clinton, Tsongas, Jerry Brown, and I think a few others (Gore? Jackson?).
My conservative roommate (who started each morning listening to Rush Limbaugh) had an issue of National Review or somesuch featuring a political cartoon lampooning the Dem field. Each person had some line like “I’m not boring” (probably Tsongas), or “I’m not weird” (Jerry ‘moonbeam’ Brown, natch), and then looking on there was a frustrated donkey covering his ears and saying “I’m not here!”
Not really apropos anything, just all this talk of crowded Dem fields stirred the memory.
That year there was also a little pro-Bush rally before the election. This was USC, so some of the students had signs saying ‘Trojans love Bush,’ and then I think a conservative woman had a sign saying ‘Bush loves Trojans.’
Harr harr harr!
But that’s not what really happened. Throughout the campaign Trump always got a more air-time. I remember one of the early debate Trump ended with 20 minutes of airtime out of a dozen or so candidates.
As far as I’m concerned the very first debate which was moderated by Fox’s Chris Wallace, Megyn Kelly, and Briet Bair exposed Trump’s temperament and intellect. There were a couple of debate where Trump wasn’t getting hammered by either the moderators or the other candidate but these were a minority.
After Super Tuesday the debate field dropped to Trump, Kaisch, Rubio, and Cruz (with Carson present but irrelevant for 2) Trump was always the center of these debates…
You really can’t say the Press kept the public from knowing about Trump’s shortcomngs. The Republican party knew what they were getting and so did the electorate.
Let’s not forget that none of the other candidates thought Trump had a chance, at least in the beginning, but feared attacking him else he drop out and run an Independent campaign, which he threatened to do many times.
But that only lasted until NH and Iowa, by the time of the South Carolina some Republican was always attacking him. None of the attacks seemed to do much damage, and they generally hurt the attacker.
Republican were super slow to react to Trump, but they weren’t completely stupid. They were after all the most successful politician in the most successful party in this century. If the goal of the typical Republican primary voter was to tell the leadership, you guys are fucking up, we are mad as hell, it is hard to argue that Trump wasn’t the perfect messenger.
Maybe Obama will run again in 2020. :)