Less than a year and a half from now, Americans will be going to the polls to select the next president. The first primaries are now “only” eight months away and the first debate is a month from now. So what do I make of the race so far? Who will I support?
Let me preface the following by saying I like all of the candidates. Even the ones I like least would be a substantially better President than Donald Trump. I am 100% committed to voting for the Democratic nominee and supporting them with my money and time. The risks of a second Trump term are just too damn high to have the privilege of opting out of supporting the eventual nominee.
Having said all that, I think one of these six candidates is most likely to be the nominee next fall: Bernie, Beto, Biden, Buttigieg, Harris or Warren. These are your frontrunners when it comes to fundraising and polls.
Everyone else is struggling to stay at 1% and raise the small donor money they need to get in the debates and with more candidates getting in by the day, what’s left of the oxygen that is not consumed by the front runners will be divided 15 ways and counting.
Ranking my choice between the top six I’ve identified, I would vote as follows, following the Fred LaRiccia rule of most electable progressive:
1. Pete Buttigieg
2. Bernie Sanders
3. Elizabeth Warren
4. Kamala Harris
5. Joe Biden
6. Beto O’Rourke
I met Mayor Pete and walked away impressed by his resume, his intelligence, his wit, his humility, and his military service. As a fellow millennial, I strongly feel the boomer generation has had its day and it is time for a truly new generation of leadership. We were not able to ask questions, which is unfortunate as I do have some misgivings about his foreign policy and record on race relations in South Bend. If he can address those issues more forcefully, he has my #1 vote.
I voted for Bernie last time and still feel there are few public servants as consistent as he has been on the issues I care about. While Warren was voting for Reagan, he was campaigning for Jesse Jackson. While Biden was voting for mass incarceration and mideastern wars, Bernie was voting against them. Before Pete, Booker, or Castro were out of diapers he was running his states largest city on social democratic principles. The downside is that his policies lack specifics and he still alienates a lot of Hillary supporters, moderates, and black voters he will need in his corner to win. He currently polls better than Warren in the states that count, which is why I give him the edge for now with my #2.
I have consistently been an Elizabeth Warren skeptic on this blog. I just can’t picture her winning the general election, and she has struggled so far in her campaign for the nomination. This is entirely too bad since she has the most thoughtful policy agenda of anyone in the race. Her best venue is the town hall format. If she uses that format the way McCain did in 2008 to sneak back into contention, she can beat out Bernie as the alternative to Biden. Otherwise, she’s toast. She’s my #3 for now.
Harris’ LIFT Act is a great family assistance plan and a policy she should be highlighting more. Unfortunately, she seems a lot more comfortable prosecuting the Trump administration than running on her own policy plans. The slip up on ACA is a prime example of her lack of fluency around specifics. She might be the most compelling speaker out of this bunch and is great at being an attack dog, but the top of the ticket requires a sharp policy mind. As a Veep she could be formidable, as a nominee, I have some reservations. #4
Biden has a solid third of the party that I would argue is a lot more ride or die than pundits acknowledge. Despite his many foibles around issues of race, class, and gender he seems to be the only candidate so far capable of exciting black voters, latinos, and working class whites at the same time. That said, there’s no policy agenda right now, which gives me pause, especially if his mediocre record is all we have to go by. #5
Beto is a policy lightweight. He does appeal to the same kind of people who liked Obama, and I know some Republicans who like him. He’s #6 on this list.
Campaigns I wish would gain traction: Inslee for his multi level policy experience and climate commitment, and Booker for his baby bonds. Otherwise the other also rans haven’t impressed me. What do you think?
Well, I’ll play so here are mine in order of preference:
1) Joe Biden – most experienced in relevant ways for a job you can never truly prepare for, which always trumps ideology for me when it comes to the presidency. Also, I do think he has the highest likelihood of getting crossover voters in key states.
2) Elizabeth Warren – I’m also consistently attracted to candidates who show they have done their homework, and make solid detailed proposals. My original thought is that she had too narrow a focus, but she’s smart enough to expand. Plus I’ll cop to home state bias on my part. Also, I don’t think her former Republicanism is worth mentioning.
3) Jay Inslee – At first I was ready to dismiss him as a single issue candidate regarding climate, but that is a pretty big issue and he does a great job tying it into any number of other issues to consider. Plus I like that he approaches climate challenges with a can-do attitude rather than jeremiads we often hear, including on this site.
4) Pete Buttigieg – My heart may be buying into the flavor of the month hype a bit here since my head is still telling me there’s no way the Mayor of South Bend has the requisite experience to be POTUS. However, I find myself drawn to opportunities to listen to him in the way I’m not with some of the others and I appreciate that he talks about his faith in a way that is so rare in politics.
I haven’t thought much beyond that and when I’ve tried I can’t make up my mind. There are a few candidates we probably would all agree are lower tier who have not even really justified their candidacies in my mind. I don’t get the attraction to either Harris or O’Rourke. When we have so many good candidates I fantasize about getting all of them by playing “Create Your Own Cabinet”. In that regard I can see the value of Beto for VP, Harris for AG, Warren at Treasury, Mayor Pete at HUD, Sanders at Labor, and Moulton at Defense (if he’s been a civilian long enough, which I’m not sure).
Appreciate the positive contribution.
To clarify my prior point you bring up
I’m NOT troubled by it at all and actually am surprised it isn’t part of her campaign narrative. I see it as a net positive if she starts the mentioning. I do see the Bernie campaign making the point I raised if they have to go negative on her. Warren strikes me as a non-ideologue who has come to all of her conclusions through cold hard data, it just so happens that data prove the game is rigged and we need targeted government intervention to save capitalism from itself.
Bernie is an ideologue, it just so happens I agree with him on most of the issues. I think Warren could win over the college educated Republican leaners defecting in droves from Trump while Bernie’s consistency appeals to the white working class voters we lost. I’m disappointed the race won’t come down to those two, I think that would be a fun primary and a worthy debate.
Au contraire… I think her former Republicanism might turn out to be her secret power and the key to the election, maybe even the key to saving the Republic. I’ve said this before.
Reconciliation requires MORE citizens to travel the road from Republicanism to ‘our’ side. (It’s their side by default, they’ve just been prevented from seeing it…) To provide a public example of and conversation about such a journey will be, I think, very powerful… She’s sorta the anti-Strom Thurmond, whose example gave many others permission to follow in the other direction.
#1, Elizabeth Warren, One of the few willing to admit the faults of the former Democrats in office, one of the few willing to take on corporate America, which is my, in my opinion, she is portrayed as “struggling” by the leaders of the party and corporate media.
#2. Kamala Harris.. A young, non-white woman from California who Trump will find trouble finding reasons to pick on her. Her performance at the last hearing was impressive. She can look Trump in the eye and he’ll be the first one to blink, maybe even cry.
#3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22……..all in the same field in no particular order as someone we nominated who got beat by Trump and gave us four our years of this dumpster fire.
Well, I think most of the major candidates can win, and Warren isn’t just “portrayed” as struggling as if that is being pulled out of someone’s sleeve. The polling data indicate she is having a harder time getting traction than some of us would like.
I have always enthusiastically and wholeheartedly agreed with Elizabeth Warren on pretty much every public position I’ve heard her take.
Her struggle, whether real or a media fiction, exemplifies why I think she is more effective as “Senior Senator from Massachusetts” then as “Early contender for the 2020 nomination.”
I think America desperately needs her leadership, and I think her presidential campaign blunts and blurs that leadership.
I like Kamala Harris,
It’s too early for me to have anything more than a superficial view of the field.
While I love Elizabeth Warren’s positions and campaign, I continue to feel that America needs her as Senator more than as President. In the best scenario for her campaign, she wins in 2020 and serves as President until 2028. I don’t think that’s long enough to accomplish the HUGE changes that America needs and that she champions. I think Barack Obama showed us that two terms are not enough time to make substantive changes in America’s direction. It is very unlikely that Ms. Warren would return to the Senate after serving as President. While there’s no prohibition against that, I don’t think it’s ever been done.
Mr. Biden and Mr. Sanders are at the bottom of my list. Mr. Biden reminds me Hubert Humphrey and Walter Mondale. I react to Mr. Sanders the way I did to Harold Stassen and Ralph Nader.
The rest of the field is still completely in flux for me. Contemplating the candidates reminds me of visitingrottentomatoes. I’ve seen trailers for Kamala Harris and Cory Booker, and I like them. I haven’t seen the full movie for them or anybody else else in the field. Mr. Biden and Mr. Sanders are reruns for me, and I didn’t much like either the first time around.
The first debate is showtime, and I want to wait until after that to start thinking seriously about the whole thing.
Some fun facts regarding a President returning to serve in Congress:
John Quincy Adams served many years in the House following his presidency, where he developed a strong anti-slavery voice.
John Tyler was elected to the Provisional Confederate Congress, and then to the more permanent CSA House of Representatives, though he died before being able to take his seat in the latter. Jefferson Davis gave him a very political funeral and hailed him as a hero of the CSA. His death was basically ignored by the Union government and he holds the distinction of the only President to be draped with a non-US flag upon burial since a Confederate flag was used instead.
Andrew Johnson was elected to the Senate in the 1870s, but only served a few months before dying.
Hubert Humphrey is the only VP to return to the Senate, which he did in the 1970s. He was designated the Deputy President Pro Tempore, an honorary position which Senate rules grant to any previous POTUS or VP who becomes a Senator, though so far only Humphrey has been so designated for that reason. Deputies can also be elected for the more practical purpose to fill in for the President Pro Tempore when s/he can’t serve for an extended period.
Johnson halting the bombing a few weeks earlier is one of my big what ifs. Also a cautionary tale about the left staying home instead of holding their nose to stop a greater evil. Now Nixon was way more liberal on domestic issues than the typical Republican today, but Humphrey was practically a social democrat on domestic issues by today’s standards. He would have been a great President in my view.
That’s a great analogy Tom, particularly the Mondale analogy. The VP for the last incumbent who’s been in Washington too long and gets all the establishment endorsements to propel himself to the nomination. We’ll see if there’s a Gary Hart among this bunch.
Total aside, but I highly recommend the Frontrunner. I was unaware of how serious Gary Hart was, since all I really learned was the “where’s the beef” charge sticking because he was a lightweight. The man really was ahead of his time on climate, automation, the end of the Soviets, and the rise of Islamic fundamentalism and tribal conflict. Or sadly the US fighting multiple wars in the Mideast over oil. The only blind spot he has was his fatal belief that the press corps would follow the Kennedy era rules about separating sex lives from the issues.
Though I also heard relatively recently that the whole Monkey Business episode may have been a setup.
ABT. Anyone But Trump is my candidate right now. I like them all. And, sure, I have my favorites. First, I love Elizabeth Warren — a brilliant and fearless Lion of the Senate. And, the first Senator to call for the impeachment of the “self-impeachable” loser.
And then there’s Joe Biden who I met in 2008 on a Manchester, NH rope line. when I confessed that I, like him, was a cancer survivor, he hugged me close to him and whispered in my ear : “You and I are both survivors and I promise that I’ll
keep fighting if you keep fighting.” That’s when this old boxer lost it for Joe!
That’s a great story Fred. I think people underestimate Biden at their own peril, I think he will be a very formidable front runner for these reasons. Everyone’s got a Biden story, usually positive. Stark contrast to Trump where you have a lot of ordinary people he screwed over or otherwise injured. Reminds me of how Menino, always looked down on by the progressives because he didn’t go to college and had more of a common touch, but always re-elected by wide margins since everyone in Boston knew he was in their corner. There’s something to be said about the old ward healer way of doing retail politics. Whether Biden can overcome his mediocre record or connect with the new directions the younger members of the party want to go is a much more open question.
Todays poll shows Joe Biden ahead of Bernie 2 to 1 in New Hampshire.
“Set-up” or not — Gary Hart acted irresponsibly (given the press hounds baying at his heels). His political destruction was a tragedy for all Americans. He would have been a very fine President, I suspect.
To someone like me, this is an impenetrable discussion.
The only sense I can make of it is that there exists an alternative reality in which the word “progressive” has no meaning, or perhaps is just a synonym for “is running for nomination as a Democrat.”
Thanks for the peek into that world, I guess.
Buttegieg just disqualified himself. Some Dems still think they can appeal to White American Midwesterners while giving The Finger to minorities.
https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/443280-buttigieg-crisis-of-belonging-in-this-country-exacerbated-by-identity
I agree with Buttigieg as quoted in the article and categorically reject your characterization thereof.
In South Carolina, Biden is polling better among African American voters who make up 2/3 of Democratic primary voters than he is among white voters.
fact check
https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/443435-poll-buttigieg-has-zero-percent-support-among-south-carolina-black-voters