This has been a terribly gut-wrenching week, with disappointing Super Tuesday results and Liz Warren dropping out. See Amanda Terkel, Elizabeth Warren Could Never Escape The Baggage Of Being A ‘Female Candidate’.
And once again, we’re seeing that younger people just don’t turn out to vote in the same numbers as older people, and this killed Sanders’s momentum. See Jack Holmes, The Bernie Sanders Youth Revolution Was Nowhere to Be Found on Super Tuesday.
Next Tuesday there will be primaries in Idaho, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, North Dakota, and Washington state. In 2016 Sanders won the primaries in Idaho, Michigan, North Dakota, and Washington. If he doesn’t win at least a couple of those, especially the critical state of Michigan, it’s going to be really hard to argue he’s got a path to the nomination or a claim to being the best person to take on Trump.
So that leaves us with Joe Biden. Paul Waldman wrote,
There is little or no evidence, anecdotally or in data, that Biden’s momentum is built on a groundswell of passionate enthusiasm for the former vice president. Even before last week, the heart of Biden’s argument was a pragmatic one. I’m the electable candidate, he said, and many of the voters who supported him said that though they might have liked someone else better, their only concern was beating Trump, and Biden seems like the best one to do it.
There’s a lot going on in that “seems,” however. As I argued repeatedly (to no avail), making your primary choice on electability is a fool’s errand, because you’re almost certainly wrong about what makes someone electable; again and again in recent history, we’ve seen electable candidates like Mitt Romney or John F. Kerry lose, and supposedly unelectable candidates like Barack Obama or Donald Trump win.
Trying to figure out who other people will like inevitably leads you to gravitate toward candidates that talking heads in the media tell you other people will like, and their thinking is dominated by conservative, establishment ideas (e.g. that what you need is a moderate older white man).
To be clear, that doesn’t mean Biden can’t or won’t win, should he be the nominee. He can and he might. It’s not that encouraging, however, that he has fallen into such a strong position despite his campaign being characterized by a weak organization, mediocre fundraising and a candidate whose performance on the trail has been erratic at best.
So it wasn’t Biden’s shrewd strategy or blinding charisma that put him where he is today. It was a collective decision on the part of voters to do what they decided was the pragmatic thing — especially black voters, who tend to be the most pragmatic of all.
He really is something like Hillary Clinton 2.0, in some ways, although Joe is generally more likeable. If he’s the one who can get the suburban and black votes, maybe he is the best person to beat Trump. He’s going to need a lot of surrogates to help him in the general election campaign, because I’m not sure he’s got much fight in him. And the campaign against him will be unimaginably dirty. But maybe desire to get rid of Trump will be enough.
But then we’ll be saddled with Joe Biden as POTUS. I’m hearing a lot of people say they may start to focus more on helping Democrats take the Senate, because a Republican Senate and a Joe Biden administration is not something they want to even imagine. Probably a good idea.
I wanted Warren and Bernie is just fine, too. We aren't finished but if Biden is the nominee, there are distinct advantages overTrump. One is simple competence. Not Biden's – the appointees. Keep in mind that his month, Trump moved to pack the key spots in the intelligence community with loyalists. Trump has the DOJ under his thumb to the greatest degree since Nixon. Not only are these appointees political toadies, but they are also incompetent. Dumb as a rock in positions where expertise is a requirement.
Joe knows people from his time in the Obama administration. So does Sanders know good people – this isn't an advantage over Bernie. I'm scared that the system is stressed in ways I've never seen with the level of boneheads in key spots. I want a progressive POTUS but a return to Obama-level mediocrity would be a relief.
Warren and Bernie for me too – in that order. Then Castro, Harris, and yes, even Booker.
The best thing I can hope for if Biden's the candidate, is tRUMP might not want to debate him. He'll be afraid of making a serious gaff (like I am with Joe). tRUMP might remember how Biden eviscerated Paul Ryan.
I think the only candidate tRUMP would want to debate is Sanders, because he could say the words "Socialist" or "Socialism" a million times.
Warren would chew on tRUMP and spit out his remains.
I may be wrong about him not wanting to debate Biden, so let me know what you folks think.
PS: Biden needs a Stacy Abrams or Senator Harris as his VP if he ends up being our candidate!
Apparently, Maha, people still value aggression in leaders. In most other ways, women and men are seen as equals.
I just hope Biden gets over the line and beats Trump, and I wouldn't bet the farm on it. Pretty bad when the people around him get excited that he didn't say something stupid – sort of like being thrilled that your elderly relative was actually lucid the last time you saw them. If he somehow manages to win, I won't care. Reagan was senile too.
I am consoled by the fact that Biden can draw on the Bank of Bloomberg and his crack media people. I've seen some of the ads already – I've also seen how kids are very in tune with this, their media people know how to reach kids. If only Bernie had this. I was really pissed that Bernie was too good for Bloomberg's money, although that was probably just an opening position.
Yes, very definitely give what you can to take the Senate. We only need four seats to flip it. And I hope Biden stays away from picking Klobuchar or Warren as his Veep, simply because we need a Senate majority bad.
I've read rumors that Trump will replace Pence with Nikki Haley, who would be formidable.
Frank Rich on Biden’s support:
It’s going to be long hot summer.
He's a doddering, prion-addled, fool who is clearly a neo-liberal corporate stooge….with a history of telling silly, easily falsifiable lies, drifting off in mid-sentence, and being in league with segregationists. You all better pray this ridiculous clown doesn't get the nomination….because we all know what comes next. It's almost as if the Democratic establishment are either fine with this or they are simply wholly incompetent
I despise Trump, personally & politically, but he's not the root of all our problems.
1. Trump is a symptom of the rot & dementia of the GOP. The worst things he's actually done – stacking the Supreme Court is #1 – are standard GOP procedure. OTOH, his insistence on personal loyalty has minimized the effect of the Neo-Cons' attempts to stack the Foreign Policy bureaucracy with chicken hawks.
2. Democratic Party "moderates" – particularly the Clinton wing – generally support very dangerous militarist Foreign Policy, particularly in the Middle East (but also Latin America).
3. The Dem Party is starved for cash, so big donor groups (Health Ins, AIPAC, etc) have enormous influence over the policy preferences of the party machinery. Big donors control the GOP, too, but Trump is actually outside that circle, so he can run "against" them while actually doing their bidding (tax cuts).
4. Despite his combative bluster, Trump ran way to the left of the GOP on a few issues in 2016, particularly war (getting out of Middle East & other foreign bases) and Safety Net (opposing the GOP push to kill Medicare, SocSec, etc). I would never trust him on any of that, but if the Dems nominate Biden, Trump will partly run to his left, and his barbs will hit the mark.
So, my opposition to Joe Biden is two-pronged: I don't think he can beat Trump, and I fear he'd be a dangerous president, particularly on Foreign Policy.
There's a counter narrative to some of the above: Over the past 3+ years, Trump has made everything about himself. This election isn't about the Democratic nominee to any extent other than that they seem "conventional" in comparison. It's likely Trump would win debates against either remaining viable candidate, because he's an aggressive and talented salesman. However, everything has to be balanced against Trump's more bizarre character traits and incompetent, obsequious, crooked, reality show White House.