Blue Mass Group

Reality-based commentary on politics.

Unofficial June BMG Democratic Presidential Primary Strawpoll Time!

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Now that the Democratic Presidential Primary field is starting to really take shape, I figure it’s time to get a real sense of what BMGers think about the presidential primary at this early date.

So, let’s have a straw-poll!

The rules:

Pick one candidate who’s in the race or is considering entering the race, and reply with their names in a comment.

The candidates who are currently declared in the race, in alphabetical order, are Hillary Clinton, Martin O’Malley and Bernie Sanders. Others who have been pretty open about considering the race would include Lincoln Chaffee and Jim Webb, and Joe Biden hasn’t definitively ruled out a campaign. I’m sure there are others I’m missing (my apologies!).

Feel free to provide a few sentences on why you’re supporting a particular candidate, but let’s leave any heated debates for other threads.

If people don’t feel comfortable openly declaring their choices at this point, but would still like to contribute anonymously, email me your selection at Ryepower12ATaolDOTcom, along with your BMG handle, and I’ll record them for the tally.

I won’t share which BMGers email me answers anonymously with anyone, but I want to make sure there’s a BMG handle tied to the vote so we can be sure that this is representative of the BMG community.

I also won’t count any votes from handles created after the submission of this post towards the official count, to avoid any shenanigans.

I’m going to set a deadline for this Friday, June 5th, at 11:59PM for votes. Any votes made after, whether by reply or email, won’t count toward the “official” count to this very unofficial straw poll.

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Comments

  1. as the candidate best qualified by experience and the most viable progressive reformer in an honorable field.

    Fred Rich LaRiccia

    Founder, P.O.W.E.R. ( Progressives Organizing Wakefield to Elect Reformers )

  3. I also like Bernie Sanders. Pick one.

    Like the old aphorism says, in straw polls like this, I like to “vote early and often”.

    • If I ever do this again, maybe next time I’ll let people rank candidates or something like that.

      • I like Bernie Sanders, and know more about him.

        If I actually had to vote for one today, it would be for Bernie Sanders.

  5. I felt in 2008 she was best prepared, and now with a term as Secretary of State under her belt, that is even more the case.

  8. Three big reasons.

    He’s a candidate that I can spend more time supporting and less time defending.

    He’s the sort of candidate that an independent voter would be most supportive of.

    He’s not a hawk and has no bravado to prove. Been there, done that.

  9. He will be getting my primary support, though I expect to be casting my vote for the first female President in the general and think she is the most qualified candidate in the field. I can respect her record and achievements while preferring we have a real debate that puts clean elections and a populist economic program front and center.

  10. I am very interested on O’Malley as well, but thought I was the only one in the universe.

    It should be another interesting test case of whether it’s possible to run an effective national campaign with background as a big-city mayor.

    • Of course, those of us from Maryland might ask whether or not Baltimore qualifies as a “big city”. 🙂

  11. I greatly admire Sanders, but if the primary were today I would go with the woman best prepared to go into the general and kick some ass.

  12. Bernie Sanders will be getting my vote, and if I’m not too busy with organizing against the Olympic bid, I’ll probably volunteer for his campaign.

    I plan to support Bernie because he is the most progressive candidate in the race, and I want a candidate who supports single payer health care, free higher ed, and a bold agenda on confronting climate change.

    I think Hillary Clinton is intelligent and talented, but she and I differ significantly on many principles and issues, and I do not trust the people in the Clinton circles. Hillary Clinton is too close to Wall Street and is too hawkish in foreign policy.

    Jim Webb is ardently pro-fossil fuel and thought that the problem with the ACA was that it wasn’t bipartisan enough. He was a relatively conservative Democrat when he was in the Senate, and I think Democrats need to be moving left.

    I don’t know anyone who is unironically excited about Lincoln Chaffee.

    Martin O’Malley was probably one of the better Democratic governors recently, but that’s not saying much at all given how bad most Democratic governors have been. However, his conversion to progressivism is new and has always reeked of opportunism. I would turn your attention to this piece of word vomit he co-authored with Harold Ford in 2007 (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/06/AR2007080601158.html) and his blasphemy against the New Deal here (http://www.vice.com/read/the-democratic-party-future-dark-money-fracking).

  13. I appreciate and respect many things about Hillary Clinton. However, her support for needless war in Iraq and her silence in the face of mass surveillance speak volumes. Bernie Sanders deserves my primary vote. I am reserving my vote in the general; if Hillary Clinton gets it, it will be a hard choice between her and not voting.

  16. “You fall in love, then you fall in line.” – Bill Clinton.

    I’m falling for Bernie Sanders now. I’m fall in line behind Hillary when the time comes.

  17. Just how would Bernie lead this country. The Nation researched his terms as Mayor of Burlington, Vt. He was able to bring business people to buy into a progressive agenda that improved the lot of Burlington’s citizens:

    http://goo.gl/CB9IBi

  18. He makes sense to the world of the world! He is gifted, unafraid, and practical. I can’t wait to see him in a debate on the economy or anything else!
    He reminds me of the nuns on the bus in his passion for what is right.

  19. She’s the most able person, with Biden a close second.
    Sanders? His idea about inter-party debates is kooky. We’ve spent 7 years defending Obama from ‘he’s a socialist!” RW attacks – now we’re supposed to pivot? No, and gun rights and Gaza, fwiw.
    Mumbles O’Malley accused Clinton of wanting kids to die:

    “some were suggesting — including Secretary Clinton — that we should return refugee children from Central America summarily back to death gangs,”

    and then adopted the RWTP of Royalty! at his poorly attended announcement event.
    Chaffee is as exciting as old toast, as observed by Morey Stettner:

    The only breath of life came when Chafee paused, looked around at the well-fed partisan crowd (they had just polished off lobster, corn on the cob, strawberries and whipped cream) and marveled, “How is it possible that Republicans won the House in 2010 and the Senate in 2014? How is that possible?”
    He failed to arouse the crowd. His robotic gestures didn’t help. And his face looked defeated from beginning to end.

    Webb? If he wants to be VP, he’d better have something positive to say about himself. If not, he’ll look like just another dime-a-dozen hater.
    Doesn’t anyone here want to be veep?

  22. Far too many concerns about Hillary Clinton’s Wall Street coziness and hawkish tendencies to feel comfortable supporting her in the primary. As others have written, I expect her to win the nomination and will support her in the general election. My hope that a full and loud airing of the economic agenda I believe we need happens in the interim and that Hillary Clinton is forced to give more than lip service to that agenda.

    I am not super-enthusiastic about this election. But three Supreme Court justices over 80 by 2016 (happily including Scalia and Kennedy, but critcally including RBG), with Breyer turning 78 that year, make this a must-win. One more right-winger on there and it’s “Goodnight, Gracie.”

    • I agree, and this is why I hope that Elizabeth Warren continues to do exactly what she is doing now as our senior Senator (as opposed to joining the primary field).

      Ms. Warren is doing a great job of keeping the economic agenda both on the table and discussion of that agenda focused on its most important aspects. The resulting movement in the electorate will, I hope and think, influence both the GOP and the Democratic nominees and campaign in the needed direction.

      Maybe we can even begin to correct the course of the great ship of American governance.

  23. bernie bernie bernie bernie bernie

    …that’s 8 votes total by me for Bernie Sanders.

  25. OK, OK, I know in the end, I’ll be actively supporting Hillary Clinton because there is little doubt that she will be the Democratic nominee and a win in 2016 by any of the creepy crop of Republican nincompoops terrifies me. But in the meantime, my support and energy will go to Bernie Sanders. He is the only candidate that has earned my gratitude for speaking passionately for the truth. Thank you Bernie!

  26. best represents my thoughts about what the national needs. I would very much like to see him enable a cross-party debate. In fact two or three would be just fine.

    But then the moderator of such a debate would have to be restricted to substantive questions.

    And we all know that will never happen.

  27. I am very excited about this. I knew I’d be enthusiastically supporting him if he ran but since the announcement I’ve been more and more impressed by every interview and speech in how well he is articulating the problems and the solutions and swatting away stupid cynical questions. His campaign is making me hopeful for not only his presidency but the debates leading up to it.

  28. I like that she’s ready to automatically enroll 18-year-olds to vote.
    And a bit of history: Hillary Clinton is more liberal than the media give her credit for, and has the same healthy respect for regulation that Sen. Warren does. Hillary was the one who introduced President-elect Bill Clinton to Brooksley Born, the commodities regulator who wanted to stop the derivatives bubble before it inflated.

    Clinton did offer her [Brooksley Born] a position on the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. In 1996, he promoted her to chairwoman.

    The CFTC is, to most, an obscure agency charged with “protecting market users, and the public, from fraud, manipulation and abusive practices … related to the vast array of financial instruments.”

    Born immediately noted there were approximately $70 trillion of derivatives being traded on the market without regulation or supervision and said publicly she would begin writing regulations to control the sale and accountancy of such sales.

    The “big boys” — Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan, Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, Deputy Treasury Secretary Larry Summers and Arthur Levitt, chairman of the SEC — held hands and decided to quell this disturbance from someone who “didn’t know what she was doing.”

    Summers called Born at her office and said: “I have 13 bankers in my office, and they say if you go forward with this (regulations), you will cause the worst financial disaster since World War II.”

    Born responded by writing a position paper and proposed regulations of the derivative market. The courage it took for her to defy Greenspan, who was called the “Oracle” in the mid-’90s, and the others required Promethean gall.

  29. I’d really like to hear a good explanation for some of his votes, including this one:

    In 2005, a Republican-dominated Congress passed the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA). This law doesn’t protect gun owners; it protects gun manufacturers, distributors, dealers, and importers. The PLCAA was the No. 1 legislative priority of the National Rifle Association for years, because it shields gun makers and dealers from most liability when their firearms are used criminally. It is one of the most noxious pieces of pro-gun legislation ever passed. And Bernie Sanders voted for it. (Sanders’ campaign has not replied to a request for comment.)

    — Mark Joseph Stern, “Bernie Sanders, Gun Nut” (Slate).

      • This is a knock against Howard Dean’s otherwise liberal record as well. I’m not sure what VT is worried about. The type of guns they likely use aren’t the ones I or I think most gun controllers are most concerned about.

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