Please. For the love of freedom, democracy, and our country I’m calling on all Democrats as patriots to stop eating our own and focus on defeating Trump. Why can’t we support our chosen primary candidate without tearing others down?
Joe Biden is not a racist. As many of you know, I interned for our late Senator Ted Kennedy. He addressed this issue regarding his relationship with Senator James Eastland of Mississippi, Chair of the Judiciary Committee, in his autobiography, True Compass: : “Eastland’s racial views posed a moral problem for me. Civil rights became one of the defining causes of my career. How could I seek guidance, or cooperate in any way, with a proponent of segregation?
My decision regarding Eastland —in fact, my guiding impulse to reach across lines of division during my career—took strength from the concluding phrase of Lincoln’s first inaugural address, on the eve of the Civil War. I decided to put faith in “the better angels of our nature.” I worked with James Eastland; in fact, the two of us became friends. Then and always, I would work with anyone whose philosophies differed from mine as long as the issue at hand promoted the welfare of the people, and I would continue to await those better angels, and to remain confident in ultimate justice.”
The Drudge report is giddy about the suicidal circular firing squad forming to destroy Biden. Who will be next? Our own favorite daughter, Elizabeth Warren?
I love you Fred (is your House the yellow one with the big Pride flag on Main Street?) and I love Joe Biden.
But when Joe Biden is praising segregationists as part of a bygone era in civility it undermines his entire argument about Trump’s equivocation on white racism at Charlottesville being the reason he is running for President.
When he is quoted in the same fundraiser assuring wealthy donors:
…it undermines his argument that he alone will appeal to black voters and Obama/Trump voters alike. Our economy is fundamentally rigged to reward capital over labor. Even Tucker Carlson gets this. Our nominee has to understand that problem and have a plan to solve it.
Now we can do what Bernie wants to do and toss out the baby with the bath water and get rid of capitalism or we can tame capitalism with a New Deal 2.0 as Sen. Warren proposed. Both approaches have their pros and cons, but neither of them is rested on the premise that nothing will fundamentally change.
If we run on that in 2020 than don’t be surprised if we get the same result as 2016. I think that it is only fair to question his commitment to current progressive priorities and to question whether or not his electability is real. I want to win and I want real changes. The two go hand in hand. Joe’s campaign so far shows he doesn’t get that.
Not just praising segregationists but also doubling down on his statements when criticized. Cory Booker rightly said Biden should apologize for his comments. Biden said that Booker is the one who should apologize and that he doesn’t “have a racist bone in his body” and has been “fighting for civil rights his entire life.” There’s a certain type of person who needs to say they don’t “have a racist bone in” their body. Who’s the other person in politics we hear saying that about himself or having close surrogates saying it about him????
It’s making more and more sense why Joe Biden praises someone like Mike Pence as a “decent man.” Joe Biden himself is NOT a good guy.
Props to the Obama White House folks for keeping him reined in and building the “Uncle Joe” persona for him as VP.
For those who think that beating Trump is absolutely the only thing that matters, I think Biden should be worrisome than early polls indicate. He is and has always been an awful campaigner. His campaign to date has been marked by almost no public appearances, dozens and dozens of wealthy donor events (including ones where he has directly asked for support from Trump-supporting billionaire dirtbags), zero substantive policy suggestions but plenty of criticism on solid progressive goals, limited interactions with the press, and most importantly almost no interactions with the public. And he’s still managing major gaffe after major gaffe. He’s going to try and ride the name recognition and high polling to the nomination. When forced to campaign it could be really bad.
Congratulations, you (as have many other progressives) just took two Biden quotes way out of context:(
He was saying that once upon a time people could work with those with whom they virulently disagreed (as did FDR, LBJ, and Ted Kennedy). He was absolutely not defending segregation on the merits. With an incumbent who apparently still believes his last opponent belongs in prison this attitude is just what the doctor ordered.
He was telling the wealthy donors that no lives in that room were going to change dramatically. In other words, if you pay your fair share you still won’t have to worry about where your next meal is coming from.
“Organizing Democrats is like trying to herd cats in a room full of rocking chairs.” our friend, Mike ‘the Duke’ Dukakis, former three term Bay State Governor
Eastland liked Biden because Biden was also against forced bussing. They were also in the same caucus so it’s not like they were sworn enemies across the aisle with beliefs across the board that did not align. Biden chose to invoke the segregationists for this point, however, and not some fiscal conservative Republican he worked with over 30 years in the Senate.
You’re going to have to do better than that. You’re pulling that “pay your fair share” idea out of the air. Biden did not say or imply that.
The full quote is worse than what James cited.
If Biden cannot acknowledge the wealthy in this country as a source of any problem, he is fundamentally incapable of facing any problem we have in 2019. When he says “nothing would fundamentally change” that is exactly what he means.
I want to quibble with this a bit. I fear you focus too much on “the wealthy” and not enough on wealth concentration. The two are different. The problem is wealth concentration. The uber-wealthy are the source of this only to the extent that refuse to share some of their wealth (or nearly all of it on their death).
The wealth concentration can only be solved by increasing taxes on the wealthy and especially the uber-wealthy. If and when that is done, the uber-wealthy will be no more or less evil than they are now.
We should not demonize the uber-wealthy. We should instead tax their wealth.
I don’t think the problem is just the concentration. It’s the the power and the use of that power that comes with wealth that is a bigger problem than the disparity. A wildly different tax structure will change the power distribution but the wealthy will still use their wealth to influence a host of issues or their positions in corporations and finance to do the same. Higher taxes (massively higher) are one way to get to part of it but not the only solution that is needed.
My use of “the wealthy” was inarticulate because it is much more than that. It’s a horrorshow of concentration, corporate power, institutions, and political influence for which distinct policy can help a lot but only structural change can truly solve (which I think gets at that Warren-Sanders difference again).
Biden doesn’t want to touch any of it, though. That (and many other fundamental flaws) is why he’s unacceptable to me. Other candidates I strongly dislike for a variety of reasons, but he’s the only one I look at and think “we aren’t on the same team.”
I have had first-hand experience with some wealthy and very wealthy men and women who are marvelous, warm, and generous people who are acutely aware of their privilege and who go to great lengths to use it to benefit the least fortunate among us. I’ve known others who were utter jerks. The same is true for the not-so-wealthy men and women I’ve known.
I think you put your finger on the key — power distribution. When the wealth concentration issue is solved, the power distribution will be more even and the abuses of government will be much reduced.
We had much healthier wealth concentration in the period from 1929 to about 1980. We also had a much healthier economy in that period (at least for white men).
It was the election of Ronald Reagan (together with a host of GOP lies) that ushered in the Great Lie that the unfettered accumulation of wealth, unhampered by government regulation, would result in a more fair economy for all of us. That is a lie, and certainly the structural changes that resulted from that Great Lie need to be reverted.
I think it’s really important, though, to separate policy and economic issues from personal identity. The wealthy have no lock on hate, bigotry, and misogyny. Surely the success of the Tea Party demonstrates that political influence (of which the Tea Party had much) springs from personal attitudes rather than the size of personal holdings.
Yes, we urgently need immediate structural changes. Yes, we need to end the “horrorshow of concentration, corporate power, institutions, and political influence”.
I’m as uncomfortable about asserting that someone who is wealthy is evil as I am about asserting that someone who is in the country illegally is a rapist, terrorist, or murderer.
Is Biden committed to taxing their wealth when he assures them their standard of living won’t fundamentally change? I guess that this is why I was bothered by that second quote. We need radical economic change to ensure the conditions leading to nationalism are heeded off by a renewed commitment to a fair deal.
I do wonder if Biden is promising to keep the economy the same to Wall Street doors in private while assuring union members in public he’s on their side. Sometimes you have to make choices and I would rather a nominee solidly on the side of labor and not naively trying to bridge labor and capital. We tried the Third Way already and it didn’t work.
Well, reasonable people can be against forced bussing – I am.
You mean, just like how there can be good people on both sides? #fail
You have got to be kidding! Just because I don’t think that particular policy is appropriate you are implying I’m either neo-Nazi or neo-Confederate? I know you hate it when I call you a purist, but when the shoe fits…!
I don’t think she’s kidding, and neither am I.
Forced busing is not an issue where there are two sides that reasonable people can disagree on.
Wow Christopher. I never called you either of those things, but perhaps you doth proteth too much? I’m now taking it as a compliment when you call me a purist. And SomervilleTom is right – I’m not kidding.
I took “good people on both sides” as an allusion to the events in Charlottesville a couple of years ago when Trump used the phrase in a context where one side consisted of neo-Nazis and neo-Confederates. It sounded to me like you were suggesting that anyone who disagrees on a particular remedy for our racial disparities is just as bad as they are.
That’s *your* interpretation – maybe you need to think about why that is.
Just a word-smithing nit: The topic we’re discussing is “busing” (with one “s”). The plural of “bus” is “buses”. The word “bussing” refers to kissing someone.
Christopher, I really encourage you to walk this one back.
Just what do you think was a better alternative to forced busing, especially here in Boston, in the 1970s given the long history of explicitly racist public education policy?
If you are still against forced busing, what do you propose instead?
I know of no way to sugar-coat or soften this. Opposing forced busing IS enabling and encouraging racism. It just IS, by construction.
Do you also oppose open-housing laws, or do you agree with some that “a man’s home is his castle”? Do you oppose laws that make it it illegal to discriminate in rental accommodations based on race?
Forced busing is not ideal. A government policy that made neighborhood schools in urban minority districts as attractive and high-quality as those in well-to-do communities would be great — and is steadfastly opposed as strongly (or more so) than forced busing.
There is no way to escape the underlying racial animus here. It IS racist.
Come on, we’ve been through this. Of course I support anti-discrimination laws. Nobody should be discriminated against on account of their race. We need to make all schools excellent such that racial makeup is a footnote. Just because you make assertions with a capital IS does not make them unquestionably and objectively fact. Everybody should be able to go to the school assigned to their part of the community, not bussed away to guarantee either segregation or integration, which works just fine in the communities I am most affiliated with.
What is the racial balance of “the communities [you are] most affiliated with”?
What progress has been made in the last fifty years towards making all schools excellent such that racial makeup is a footnote? How does our progress in that task compare today with, say, 1969? Is the disparity between the schools of Carlisle and Springfield worse, about the same, or better today than in 1969?
I think you know the answer. We can blame prop 2 1/2, we can blame the GOP, we can blame “the economy” — but the truth is that if anything we’ve gone backwards.
Forced busing is the ONLY thing that came close to actually working in the city of Boston.
The absence of forced busing and the complete paralysis about improving urban schools has the effect of ensuring that children in urban minority neighborhoods are denied the same public school education that their peers in suburban and rural white neighborhoods take for granted.
That is discrimination on account of race. I get that you deny that reality, but your denial does not change the facts.
How much do you know about the communities of Springfield, Holyoke, downtown Lawrence, the Acre in Lowell, Roxbury, or other minority neighborhoods throughout the state? How much do you know about the communities in states that Mr. Biden was talking about?
This dog won’t hunt, my friend.
I know about Lowell since I live here and I’m pretty sure they don’t bus. Dracut where I sub definitely does not. I’m happy to blame prop 2.5, just about the worst fiscal law we’ve ever had IMO. If we were expanding the enrollment of the better schools and closing the ones that weren’t as good thus bringing in more people that would be one thing, but my understanding is that busing involves taking kids out of good schools so we can all feel good about balance and I cannot abide that. Busing is a bandaid at best, and leads to resentment. There is something to be said for neighborhood schools on the merits. Keep in mind I am just as opposed, probably moreso, to forced busing for the purpose of making sure schools remain segregated. You aren’t proposing proportionality based on other superficial traits as eye or hair color, are you?
@You aren’t proposing proportionality based on other superficial traits as eye or hair color, are you?:
I think that’s about the most racist comment I’ve read on BMG. You are flatly denying the existence of racism, by conflating it with eye or hair color.
A reasonable person might have made your argument in 1969. In my view, it is beyond the pale in 2019.
How does the Charlotte M. Murkland Elementary School compare with its counterpart in lily-white Carlisle or Dover today? How did it compare in 1969?
“my understanding is that busing involves taking kids out of good schools” To the extent that this is true, it also involves taking kids out of bad schools and into good ones.
“[forced busing] leads to resentment” That is another white-privilege whine. Do you think that perhaps forcing inner-city kids to stay trapped in terrible schools might also lead to “resentment”?
Do you care about the resentment of those black and Hispanic families nearly as much as the whites in Dracut?
I’m trying to be courteous here, but to conflate racism with eye and hair color is truly inflammatory.
They are all physical traits that we never should have judged or sorted people on and certainly should not now. I can absolutely understand people resenting that they are in underfunded schools, but THAT is what really needs fixing, not the racial stats. We need an equitable per pupil funding formula with if anything a thumb on the scale in favor of those with greater need. If you have well-resourced, mostly white, school A and under-resourced, mostly non-white school B, then pick random kids from each to be bussed to the other, that’s a great opportunity for the original school B kids, but a detriment to the original school A kids. Why should they pay for previous discrimination and lack of resources? Plus school B is STILL under-resourced so as far as I can tell we haven’t really accomplished anything. To be clear, I am not at all denying that wide disparities exist. I just think busing is a poor way to solve the problem and am not convinced it solves it at all.
@busing is a poor way to solve the problem and am not convinced it solves it at all.:
Busing is the only actual action that has actually provided a better education to the victims of racial discrimination.
@Why should they pay for previous discrimination and lack of resources?:
The children don’t pay, their parents pay. And the reason why those parents should pay is because it is those parents who refuse to support any other solution.
Your school B will be underfunded until the state solves the problem. Busing is one of the penalties paid for that refusal of white voters to do anything meaningful.
Racial discrimination is fundamentally different from eye and hair color. I don’t think anybody has been hung from a tree because they have green eyes. There is no history of blondes being suffering their entire lives because their state flagrantly and illegally refuses to fund schools that blonds attend. Blondes were never forced to live in “blonde ghettos”.
Forced busing happened in Massachusetts because Massachusetts explicitly refused to obey court orders to desegregate Massachusetts schools. It was absolutely necessary as a last resort because it was the only tool the courts had left.
@I can absolutely understand people resenting that they are in underfunded schools, but THAT is what really needs fixing, not the racial stats.:
You cited the resentment of white parents as an argument against forced busing (“Busing is a bandaid at best, and leads to resentment.”). It is striking that you offer the resentment of whites as an argument against the policy, while simultaneously discounting the resentment of blacks.
The bottom line is that black and Hispanic schools are underfunded and white schools are not. That is fundamentally racist. We are not talking about poor white kids being bused from poor white communities to wealthy white communities.
Forced busing is a consequence of illegal racial discrimination. That is even more true today than it was fifty years ago.
Joe Biden is at best utterly tone-deaf to make the comments he is making about forced busing. Your opposition to forced busing today is worse, but of course you are not a leading contender for President.
Controlled choice is a voluntary busing program that worked where I grew up in Cambridge and has also been successful in Louisville and other districts across America. METCO has been similarly successful as a voluntary integration program, albeit with some black students facing isolation and resentment in the suburban schools they attend. It’s also under assault from some host districts that no longer want it.
The reality is our schools are more segregated by race today than they were before Brown v. Board and it’s a problem we should actively solve instead of ignore. Forced busing is neither the only viable remedy to the problem as Tom contends nor a radical remedy to fear as Christopher contends. It’s opponents do have a moral obligation to back a better proposal (like controlled choice) and push that on the agenda instead. Otherwise they are ignoring a pervasive reality of racial discrimination and segregation in our schools that is only getting worse.
I’ve now taught lessons on this topic in a majority black high school and a genuinely diverse high school, and most students are better than adults are at recognizing the value of being able to go to a quality school with a diverse student body. They already feel there is a reason white schools or white districts have better equipment and more money, and as the judges in the Brown decision conceded, this knowledge creates a pervasive feeling of inferiority that is hard to overcome. Our schools are still separate and unequal in 2019, and our next President should make solving that issue a priority instead of wishing it away.
To be clear, I don’t “fear” busing. It just doesn’t make a whole lot of sense and still creates winners and losers without resolving the fundamental problems. The solution I have proffered all along is more equitable funding.
I don’t believe in enacting policy as punishment or to make a point. If this only involved busing black students to better schools, thus expanding the enrollment thereof, I’d probably be OK with that, especially if that is what the families wanted, but as long as it also means busing white students to inferior schools I can’t get on board. Plus, I wouldn’t be so quick to assume what parents support and don’t support. It is possible to support excellent education for all AND prefer your own child be educated close to home. Heck, I know people who prioritize sending their kids to a close school over a better school. I AGREE that funding disparities are a problem, so let’s, you know, end the funding disparities. I really wish you would save your vitriol and accusations of racism for people who oppose such things, and there are many such people. I strongly suspect everyone here supports excellent educational opportunities for everyone. I’m not the enemy here – really!
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Help! Can’t seem to delete this comment, only edit it.
@can’t seem to delete this comment:
I don’t think comments can be deleted. At the top left of your browser window is a button that says “Blue Mass Group” and triggers a pulldown where you can find a “dashboard”.
You might be able to delete the comment from there, but I doubt it.
@At the top left of your browser window is a button that says “Blue Mass Group” and triggers a pulldown where you can find a “dashboard”:
I already tried that, didn’t see a way to delete it from there either. Oh well.
#NailedIt
(Something is off with the nesting – this was in response to SomervilleTom’s comment ending with ‘I’m trying to be courteous here, but to conflate racism with eye and hair color is truly inflammatory.”)
Betsey, you’re just too far over to the right side at this point. The nesting eventually stops so which reply goes with which comment is no longer delineated.
For a second I thought you meant too far over to the right *politically* – LOL! Thanks for the laughs.
Yeah, I thought about how that would come out, but the day you are considered too far Right is the day I’m done with politics!
Jonathan Chait is pretty centrist and not a fan of the emerging left wing of the party, and even he found the quotes to be deeply problematic.
Ed Brooke mentioned how shocked he was that the likes of Eastland and Thurmond were civil and polite to him in the Senate gym and cloakroom. He felt like it was a deep form of hypocrisy, that they were either lying to him pretending to be nice or lying to their voters pretending to be racist. Thurmond for instance certainly had no qualms about race mixing in his personal life even if he was against it in public.
Biden served at the same time as Brooke and did not seem to be as disturbed by this hypocrisy in this retelling. It also portrays a naïveté that he can find common ground with Trump supporting members of Congress today. If they gave him nothing when he was working for President Obama they will give him nothing as the top man in the White House. They will work just as fervently to make President Biden a one term President.
Maybe not QUITE as hard.
Joe Biden is white. Barack Obama was not. It matters to the GOP.
I’m just around the corner from the Main St. rainbow Pride flag house at 1 Franklin St. Stop by and say hello the next time you’re in the neighborhood.
Will do!
“It wasn’t a window into his feelings about race. It was a window into his ability to say the wrong thing at the wrong time.” David Axelrod on Joe Biden’s boy gaffe
But it was a gaffe. Wrong thing at the wrong time. I think it’s something to be critically concerned about.
I think it’s long past time for we Democrats to attack the “Democrats” who remain resolutely paralyzed about impeachment.
We have a Pentagon that intentionally keeps the President in the dark about cyber attacks because of concerns that he will immediately forward the information to Russia. We have a Senate Majority Leader who refuses to allow a vote on a bi-partisan resolution to block Russian interference in the 2020 election. We have nominee for Secretary of Defense who is forced to withdraw because of utter incompetence in his vetting. We have a President who explicitly accuses the New York Times of treason.
We have an entire executive branch whose only response to legitimate Congressional inquiry is a raised middle finger — and Congress does ABSOLUTELY NOTHING substantive. The threatened court actions are like “threatening” to write a speeding ticket for the getaway car of a mob hit team.
It is time to begin formal impeachment hearings.
We Democrats are in power in the House. We are — again — absolutely squandering that power. We did the same thing in 2006-2008, when the same Speaker absolutely refused to even investigate the war crimes of the George W. Bush administration.
It is time for Nancy Pelosi to either move to begin an impeachment investigation or step aside. It is time to vigorously attack EVERY Democrat who fails to demand that move.
The tit-for-tat back-and-forth of the 2020 presidential campaign is a meaningless distraction until we face up to our immediate and urgent responsibility.
All respect to Fred, but I don’t really agree with this. First, it’s a primary, which is an election — that means that candidates will be highlighting differences. Sometimes that gets petty and small — it is called “the silly season”, but that’s all in the way of things.
I think Biden doesn’t necessarily deserve quite the drubbing he’s getting for these remarks; he wasn’t endorsing or romanticizing segregationists. I get that. However, I think he’s really not reading the room very well at all. The Republican Party — especially those virulently racist elements — want to crush democracy — stealing a Supreme Court seat; neo-Jim Crow vote suppression; gerrymandering, and the like.
I don’t think that we should be finding a way to “work with them”. We tried that in the Obama years. No, we should find a way to crush them, politically. That’s the only thing that will “correct” the GOP. We need a candidate with that mentality.
If things were different, then they would be different.
There is apparently nobody on our side qualified to be the next President based on complaints from progressives:
Not Joe Biden – he’s too tied to banks, mistreated Anita Hill, and puts his foot in his mouth
Not Elizabeth Warren – she disrespected Natives by taking a DNA test, and still a capitalist
Not Kamala Harris – she was a prosecutor and enforced truancy laws too much
Not Cory Booker – he takes too much Wall Street money
Not Kirsten Gillibrand – she used to hold more conservative views (also Wall Street)
Not Pete Buttigieg – he did not sufficiently resolve racial housing issues in South Bend
Not Bernie Sanders – he once got an A rating from the NRA
Not Bill de Blasio – he didn’t do enough to curb police abuses
Not Tulsi Gabbard – she didn’t evolve quickly enough on LGBT issues
Not Amy Klobuchar – she’s mean to her staff
Not Jay Inslee – he’s a one-issue candidate
Not Seth Moulton – he challenged Pelosi
Not Beto O’Rourke – he’s too full of himself
We also don’t want some random white guy nobody outside their jurisdiction has heard of.
Still laughing over “Not Beto O’Rourke – he’s too full of himself”! So true! I also think Seth Moulton is too full of himself.
I think they all have flaws, the question is who is the most viable progressive in a general election. Most polls show Sanders and Warren doing about as well as Joe Biden in head to heads against Trump, and both are running far more substantive policy oriented campaigns focused on moving the country forward beyond Trump instead of moving us backward to before Trump.
Biden is running a Harding esque small c conservative campaign on a return to normalcy, a time when America was great under Obama. I think challengers to incumbents have to run as disruptive change agents and not just restorers to the politics of the past. Rust belt voters already rejected a third term of Obama-Biden already in 2016-they might be persuaded to abandon Trump for someone with radical prescriptions that will actually work for them. This is the hard task for the next nominee and it’s bit disloyal or unpatriotic to question whether Joe Biden is up to that task today.
John Lewis on Joe Biden : “I don’t think the remarks are offensive. During the height of the Civil Rights movement we worked with people and got to know people that were members of the Klan—people who opposed us, even people who beat us and arrested us and jailed us.”
I believe Jim Clyburn is also defending Biden in this context.
For me the presidency is the epitome of establishment, competent administration, and definitely not the place for disruption. We can put disruptors in Congress to keep the President honest. Harding won, btw, and Biden is more ethical than he was.
Has Biden ever administered anything?
He was an active VP and being a Senate chair requires some administration, but in this context he knows the organization he seeks to lead by having been part of it for so long. In most organizations that’s a plus.
In other words, no.
That’s an awfully conservative definition of the presidency. By that standard Cleveland, Taft, and HW Bush rank as the best while Lincoln, TR, FDR, and LBJ are too disruptive.
The people had a choice between competence and disruption last time and they went with disruption in the states that mattered. They will do so again unless we offer a radical vision of change on our side.
Inclusive change, fact based change, and competently enacted change. But the people want change. They clearly don’t want another Clinton style centrist Democrat like Biden.
Warren and Buttigieg are doing that. I get the hesitation around Bernie, but why Biden over Warren and Buttigieg who have arguably done more with their fewer years in experience to move the conversation in a progressive direction than Biden? That’s what I’m not getting.
Um, I believe current polls show Biden leading Trump by more than some of the others are (and would be quite the change from the current situation). FDR and LBJ were very well-qualified for the presidency. I probably would have been a Seward guy in 1860 – highly qualified AND more impatient to end slavery.
The point is that six of the current Democratic candidates would beat Donald Trump in a one-on-one contest held today, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released on June 11.
Mr. Biden launched his campaign on the strong implication that only Joe Biden could defeat Donald Trump. These polls show that in fact a half dozen Democrats can defeat Mr. Trump.
Each of us has his or her own reasons that motivate our preferences. The ability to beat Donald Trump is necessary but not sufficient.
I understand that Biden is not the only one, but I was pushing back on the assertion jconway made that, “They clearly don’t want another Clinton style centrist Democrat like Biden.” which is demonstrably false.
Our 2016 nominee was comfortably leading similar polls at this time in 2015.
I just don’t think the claimed ability to win the general election is particularly helpful in narrowing the field.
Is it? He’s topping out at 40% nationally and rapidly losing his early leads in IA and NH to the likes of Warren, Sanders, and Buttigieg. He’s doing far worse than Hillary Clinton was at this stage, and once the field narrows to just 2-3 viable alternatives to Biden he will have a harder time breaking through. We’ll see how he does in debates as well.
Haha! I admire your consistency Christopher.
I would have been a Lincoln guy. As a pragmatic progressive, his objective was to preserve the Union AND destroy slavery.
I’m sorry, that’s bad history. Lincoln’s objective as of the 1860 campaign was very much NOT to destroy slavery, though that’s what the South thought it was. He was for Union above else and declared he would free all, some, or none of the slaves to accomplish that goal. He wanted to restrict the practice to where it already existed. When he finally got around to issuing the Emancipation Proclamation it was a narrowly tailored war measure that only applied to where his ability to enforce it didn’t reach anyway at the time. He was personally anti-slavery, but definitely not an abolitionist.