“There is a lot at stake and people are scared, but we can’t choose a candidate we don’t believe in because we’re scared.”-
Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA)
Stanley Greenberg was the lead pollster behind the successful 1992 Clinton campaign. A long time political demographer, he was an expert on the Reagan Democrats in Macomb County Michigan which went 70-30 for Kennedy and 65-35 for Reagan just 20 years later. He performed a similar post-mortem after the 2016 campaigns when this reliable Obama county went for Trump.
What he has discovered in his new book, RIP GOP, is that a new coalition is emerging ready not only to win this election but radically remake American politics for a generation.
Class conflict helps elect Democrats and defeat Republicans
Greenberg suggests that Clinton erred by focusing too much on multiculturalism at the expense of class, and by trying to discredit Donald Trump as a vulgarian rather than a plutocrat.
But defending multicultural America helps Democrats not only with voters of color and young people, but upper income whites with college degrees who are now becoming vastly more Democratic than they were in 2016 and vastly more liberal on issues of immigration
That resolve to resist has led many voters to define their own beliefs in opposition to Trump’s. On immigration, for example, “every Trump outrage increased the proportion of Americans who said, ‘We are an immigrant country,’” writes Greenberg. Indeed, according to recent Pew data, 62 percent of Americans say that immigrants strengthen the country, while 28 percent, a near record low, see them as a burden.
This rising coalition is fired up and ready to go, and will turn out for anyone the Democrats nominate.
going into 2020, Greenberg believes that what he calls the “rising American electorate” — including millennials, people of color and single women — will ensure Democratic victory, almost regardless of whom the party nominates.
So it’s time for Biden and his supporters to stop running around like only their guy can beat Trump, and it’s time for the progressives to realize our base is at its most powerful when it’s turns out and staying home is simply not an option. Even if a guy like Biden does win the nomination. For now let’s focus our energy on helping the candidate we like in the primary win, and then we can all work together for the nominee.
We’ve all seen the polls so I don’t think anyone is saying Biden is the only one who can beat Trump. It’s funny you bring this up though because I feel like so often you are the one who is trying to play chess regarding whom other people will vote for. I say let everyone simply choose whom they personally want to see as President and the person who is chosen by Dem voters will be by definition the right person to have been nominated.
I follow the data and stay reality based. I thought we were overly optimistic going into 2016 and the election proved my big fear (the 64 electoral vote question) to be true. I think we were overly pessimistic going into 2018 and it turns out we did even better than I expected. So I’m cautiously optimistic for 2020. If the election were tomorrow, Trump would lose in a landslide. It makes little sense for Iowa or New Hampshire voters to close ranks around Biden when nearly any of the top five candidates are doing well against Trump. In a primary you should always vote for the candidate you like best!
My prediction is that NH will be won by one of its neighboring Senators and the result will clarify which of them gets to carry the progressive banner forward, and of those a very much hope it is Warren.
I agree with you on all counts.
I think Elizabeth Warren is far and away the best candidate for all the reasons you cite.