"Or maybe you could talk Julián Castro into running as a loyal member of the Obama-Biden administration who agrees with Obama about everything, rather than as Junior Varsity Elizabeth Warren."
I have to nitpick on this one. I think it is a category error to associate Julian Castro and Elizabeth Warren in this way. In the debates of 2020, Julian Castro was clearly running on the "hey, I'm hispanic", Trump is evil to migrants, separating families, and "rules discriminate and have disparate racial impact, so abolish rules". That wasn't Warren's primary schtick, which was economic, Nader-esque, pro-worker, pro-consumer, anti-business, anti-people with profit motives. Julian's bit was out there enough that Beto O'Rourke had to be like "I'm not going there with you man and walking that plank." The only thing they had in common was being to Biden's left flank, from different, uncoordinated angles.
I hear repeatedly that Biden needs to get himself out there to be able to reassure folks. But what if he can't? It appears that he can't and that turns voters off. Because if we elected Biden to do the job, and he seems incapable of doing it, then who is running the show? This is just fertilizer for not just MAGA types, but also for normies who really have genuine concerns. Can he speak coherently on a debate stage? That could spell disaster come November.
On a side note, this information did not come up with a google search but is obviously true. More fodder for MAGA types who see the mainstream controlling the narrative for their own ends, not pursuing the truth.
The main disagreement it seems between Klein and Yglesias is whether or not the Democratic establishment would be competent in “engineering victory”.
Ezra seems to believe that the convention process would result in a better candidate more capable of winning. And Matt believes that the Democratic establishment will be too consumed by their own ideology and policy preferences to choose a figure potentially popular with the wider public.
I wish I could trust the Democratic Party to be strategic. But I agree with Matt that I don’t trust them to be able to prioritize broader consensus over their own ideology.
Pundits speak of "liberal", "moderate", "to the left", "to the right". But a huge portion of voters hardly consider or understand these concepts. Nor do they vote for their own interests. They vote their emotional attachment to candidates who project strength and vigor. Trump, the entertainer who can read his audience, projects this. (So do successful preachers.)
Biden has lost whatever ability he had to project strength and vigor.
Harris never had this talent and never will. When representing California in the Senate many Californians didn't even recognize her name. By choosing Harris as his 2016 running mate Biden steered his party into a dead end street.
Harris should be out working in retail political situations and developing the kind of skills Biden has inabundance. Biden has the EQ and projects Clinton-like empathy that has allowed him to escape a long history of questionable positions (his conduct of the Thomas hearings, his support of segregationist Senators, his allying Delaware with the Confederacy, opposing integration of schools because he didn't want his kids to go to school "in the Jungle") and plagiarism or blantant lies (Neil Kinnock, the deaths of his first wife and oldest son).
Harris has none of these skills which is why she focuses on policy. The curse of the single party state candidate (Abbot or DeSantis would face the same) is that you don't have to earn votes. Even less so in blue states with a sycophantic media who is incapable of challenging them. So instead we are constrained to debating policies which will never be proposed, or when they are contain such egregious poison pills like the border compromise that they are dead on arrival.
We should stop nominating one-term candidates. Let them spend time learning to work a rope line and eating rubber chicken at rotary lunches. Let them learn how to give a speech that doesn't sound like a report on a book they haven't read. I think Biden's faults are legion, but this man knows how to be a politician - he knows how to run for office and win. No one else on the Democratic side is gaining traction because we don't know that they know how to do those things.
“ … play the role of identity politics human shield?”. Are you listening to yourself? Do you not understand that in a world of Glaudine Gay and Fani Willis, we do NOT need another identity politics candidate? Harris dropped out of the 2020 primaries because she would have lost her home state by a much larger margin than Nikki Haley will lose in South Carolina today. She is an abysmal candidate and has been a catastrophic vice president. It’s truly wonderful how you talk about her charisma in small gatherings, just like people talk about Biden’s supposed cognitive competence in small gatherings. Job Stewart’s comment also applies to Harris: it would be nice to capture those sessions on film so that the rest of us could see.
This entire discourse reminds me of the ``we should fire head coach'' of whatever your favorite sports franchise is. And, replacing the head coach in the middle of a season more often than not makes things worse. (I am partial to soccer myself, and if you are as well, see Chelsea, Napoli, or one of the many lower ranked teams in your favorite soccer league. If you prefer a different sport, I am sure you can fill in your own examples.)
The problem with Kamala Harris moderating her image by leaning into her tough on crime image, is that the first time she did that, she did it by framing innocent people for sex trafficking and barring inmates from parole so the state of California could benefit from their forced labor. Who knows what horrible thing she'll do next if she wants to reestablish herself as tough on crime? It might help her electoral prospects a little, but who knows how many lives she'll ruin in the process.
I am unsure exactly how someone could think Kamala Harris is underrated. Is it that Trump is a complete monster, while Harris is merely almost a complete monster?
Should we really take polling of the other potential Democratic candidates, who have nowhere near the name recognition of Biden, at face value? Any mainstream Democratic candidate, after gaining the nomination, would likely pick up the slack between their current polling vs Trump and where Biden stands, and then they could start building on that support. And I do not believe the play-it-safe-at-all-costs Democratic establishment would choose a leftist nominee. There is one clear potential nominee who would have the most appeal: Gretchen Whitmer. She's a popular, centrist governor of a swing state.
I listened to the latest Ezra Klein podcast on this subject. Just as maddening as the other ones and I sincerely hope the Democrats don't turn to him for advice.
What I'm really hoping for Klein is that he takes his own advice and if Biden proves he is up to the challenge of running, that he just STFU on this whole subject. Like in twelve days at the SOTU. If Biden gives a speech at least as successful as last year's, then it's time to put this "let's replace Biden" clown show in the grave. Continuing to whine about it will simply help the Republicans by convincing voters that even supposed Biden supporters don't think he's up to the job.
And, please, no more about an open convention ever. That way lies madness.
Biden’s age and him not being “out there” is entirely the fault of journalists.
When I was talking to a German friend about our politics, I wanted to pull up the picture of Biden bicycling from the campaign. I couldn’t find it but I found that he’d been doing that last August with a crowd in Delaware. It’s in the local Delaware papers. In major outlets? All commentary about how he can barely live and acting like he’s FDR secretly in a wheelchair and surrounded by nurses.
I’m starting to think that high-profile journalists are being laid off for good reason: they’re sub-replacement level and produce negative value for society
The takeaway from this post is that you just can’t get a moderate centrist to campaign for president.
Breaking: Shapiro, Whitmer, Warnock and others will all take off their masks and reveal that they are leftists the second they get near the presidency. Slow Boring commenters hit hardest.
I think the point is that a convention free-for-all will force a moderate candidate left because Dem activists and elites tend left.
Evidence for this is 2020. Moderate candidates did steer left, and Biden won. Remember the Medicare for All litmus test? Biden stood out as the candidate who bucked the Party CW. He was mocked for months, hey, I was one of the mockers.
Did the Party learn from 2020? I dunno. Here's Matt on that: "As things stand, something like 80 percent of progressive activist energy is dedicated to trying to sandbag Democrats over either Gaza or climate, and I think this monomaniacal focus on being counterproductive would continue in full force at a convention."
OTOH the Democrats were willing to do the border/Ukraine aid trade that Trump torched.
A lot of left Democrats seem not to understand the singular threat Trump presents.
Agreed. It seems like a lot of comments here are influenced by this caricature of the Democratic party that is promulgated by right-wing media. Are there extreme elements in the party? Yes. Are there a few of them in Congress? Yes. But the establishment tacks to the center. That's why they chose Joe Biden in the first place. And I'm sorry, but the policy moves Biden has made do not poll poorly; it's Biden himself who polls badly, and that's because he's been virtually invisible as president.
They're not voting for Dean Phillips because he came out of nowhere and started his campaign, such as it is, far too late. No one has ever heard of him. He's not a good proxy for the support a higher profile Democrat with executive experience would receive.
https://twitter.com/Politics_Polls/status/1762486987041153520
< whistling > “never noticed that graveyard there before…”
On what you could do with a time machine:
"Or maybe you could talk Julián Castro into running as a loyal member of the Obama-Biden administration who agrees with Obama about everything, rather than as Junior Varsity Elizabeth Warren."
I have to nitpick on this one. I think it is a category error to associate Julian Castro and Elizabeth Warren in this way. In the debates of 2020, Julian Castro was clearly running on the "hey, I'm hispanic", Trump is evil to migrants, separating families, and "rules discriminate and have disparate racial impact, so abolish rules". That wasn't Warren's primary schtick, which was economic, Nader-esque, pro-worker, pro-consumer, anti-business, anti-people with profit motives. Julian's bit was out there enough that Beto O'Rourke had to be like "I'm not going there with you man and walking that plank." The only thing they had in common was being to Biden's left flank, from different, uncoordinated angles.
I hear repeatedly that Biden needs to get himself out there to be able to reassure folks. But what if he can't? It appears that he can't and that turns voters off. Because if we elected Biden to do the job, and he seems incapable of doing it, then who is running the show? This is just fertilizer for not just MAGA types, but also for normies who really have genuine concerns. Can he speak coherently on a debate stage? That could spell disaster come November.
Biden just put out a 2 minute recorded message with 28 splices in the video. He doesn't speak continuously for more than 6 seconds at a time. Not a sign of being able to run the country. https://www.theblaze.com/news/joe-biden-video-spelling-errors-edit-cuts
On a side note, this information did not come up with a google search but is obviously true. More fodder for MAGA types who see the mainstream controlling the narrative for their own ends, not pursuing the truth.
The main disagreement it seems between Klein and Yglesias is whether or not the Democratic establishment would be competent in “engineering victory”.
Ezra seems to believe that the convention process would result in a better candidate more capable of winning. And Matt believes that the Democratic establishment will be too consumed by their own ideology and policy preferences to choose a figure potentially popular with the wider public.
I wish I could trust the Democratic Party to be strategic. But I agree with Matt that I don’t trust them to be able to prioritize broader consensus over their own ideology.
All true but irrelevant.
Pundits speak of "liberal", "moderate", "to the left", "to the right". But a huge portion of voters hardly consider or understand these concepts. Nor do they vote for their own interests. They vote their emotional attachment to candidates who project strength and vigor. Trump, the entertainer who can read his audience, projects this. (So do successful preachers.)
Biden has lost whatever ability he had to project strength and vigor.
Harris never had this talent and never will. When representing California in the Senate many Californians didn't even recognize her name. By choosing Harris as his 2016 running mate Biden steered his party into a dead end street.
Harris should be out working in retail political situations and developing the kind of skills Biden has inabundance. Biden has the EQ and projects Clinton-like empathy that has allowed him to escape a long history of questionable positions (his conduct of the Thomas hearings, his support of segregationist Senators, his allying Delaware with the Confederacy, opposing integration of schools because he didn't want his kids to go to school "in the Jungle") and plagiarism or blantant lies (Neil Kinnock, the deaths of his first wife and oldest son).
Harris has none of these skills which is why she focuses on policy. The curse of the single party state candidate (Abbot or DeSantis would face the same) is that you don't have to earn votes. Even less so in blue states with a sycophantic media who is incapable of challenging them. So instead we are constrained to debating policies which will never be proposed, or when they are contain such egregious poison pills like the border compromise that they are dead on arrival.
We should stop nominating one-term candidates. Let them spend time learning to work a rope line and eating rubber chicken at rotary lunches. Let them learn how to give a speech that doesn't sound like a report on a book they haven't read. I think Biden's faults are legion, but this man knows how to be a politician - he knows how to run for office and win. No one else on the Democratic side is gaining traction because we don't know that they know how to do those things.
“ … play the role of identity politics human shield?”. Are you listening to yourself? Do you not understand that in a world of Glaudine Gay and Fani Willis, we do NOT need another identity politics candidate? Harris dropped out of the 2020 primaries because she would have lost her home state by a much larger margin than Nikki Haley will lose in South Carolina today. She is an abysmal candidate and has been a catastrophic vice president. It’s truly wonderful how you talk about her charisma in small gatherings, just like people talk about Biden’s supposed cognitive competence in small gatherings. Job Stewart’s comment also applies to Harris: it would be nice to capture those sessions on film so that the rest of us could see.
This entire discourse reminds me of the ``we should fire head coach'' of whatever your favorite sports franchise is. And, replacing the head coach in the middle of a season more often than not makes things worse. (I am partial to soccer myself, and if you are as well, see Chelsea, Napoli, or one of the many lower ranked teams in your favorite soccer league. If you prefer a different sport, I am sure you can fill in your own examples.)
Josh Barro hits a lot of these notes in his latest: https://www.joshbarro.com/p/democrats-are-still-better-off-with
That article alone *almost* converted me to a paying subscriber (and if he was more prolific, I might have already gotten there).
The problem with Kamala Harris moderating her image by leaning into her tough on crime image, is that the first time she did that, she did it by framing innocent people for sex trafficking and barring inmates from parole so the state of California could benefit from their forced labor. Who knows what horrible thing she'll do next if she wants to reestablish herself as tough on crime? It might help her electoral prospects a little, but who knows how many lives she'll ruin in the process.
I am unsure exactly how someone could think Kamala Harris is underrated. Is it that Trump is a complete monster, while Harris is merely almost a complete monster?
Should we really take polling of the other potential Democratic candidates, who have nowhere near the name recognition of Biden, at face value? Any mainstream Democratic candidate, after gaining the nomination, would likely pick up the slack between their current polling vs Trump and where Biden stands, and then they could start building on that support. And I do not believe the play-it-safe-at-all-costs Democratic establishment would choose a leftist nominee. There is one clear potential nominee who would have the most appeal: Gretchen Whitmer. She's a popular, centrist governor of a swing state.
I listened to the latest Ezra Klein podcast on this subject. Just as maddening as the other ones and I sincerely hope the Democrats don't turn to him for advice.
What I'm really hoping for Klein is that he takes his own advice and if Biden proves he is up to the challenge of running, that he just STFU on this whole subject. Like in twelve days at the SOTU. If Biden gives a speech at least as successful as last year's, then it's time to put this "let's replace Biden" clown show in the grave. Continuing to whine about it will simply help the Republicans by convincing voters that even supposed Biden supporters don't think he's up to the job.
And, please, no more about an open convention ever. That way lies madness.
Biden’s age and him not being “out there” is entirely the fault of journalists.
When I was talking to a German friend about our politics, I wanted to pull up the picture of Biden bicycling from the campaign. I couldn’t find it but I found that he’d been doing that last August with a crowd in Delaware. It’s in the local Delaware papers. In major outlets? All commentary about how he can barely live and acting like he’s FDR secretly in a wheelchair and surrounded by nurses.
I’m starting to think that high-profile journalists are being laid off for good reason: they’re sub-replacement level and produce negative value for society
Re: #19, this is why we'll hear periodic but frequent punditry about the idea until it, 1) actually comes to pass, or, 2) doesn't.
The takeaway from this post is that you just can’t get a moderate centrist to campaign for president.
Breaking: Shapiro, Whitmer, Warnock and others will all take off their masks and reveal that they are leftists the second they get near the presidency. Slow Boring commenters hit hardest.
Biden is moderate and he is running.
I think the point is that a convention free-for-all will force a moderate candidate left because Dem activists and elites tend left.
Evidence for this is 2020. Moderate candidates did steer left, and Biden won. Remember the Medicare for All litmus test? Biden stood out as the candidate who bucked the Party CW. He was mocked for months, hey, I was one of the mockers.
Did the Party learn from 2020? I dunno. Here's Matt on that: "As things stand, something like 80 percent of progressive activist energy is dedicated to trying to sandbag Democrats over either Gaza or climate, and I think this monomaniacal focus on being counterproductive would continue in full force at a convention."
OTOH the Democrats were willing to do the border/Ukraine aid trade that Trump torched.
A lot of left Democrats seem not to understand the singular threat Trump presents.
Yea, Biden will be the last one because he’s a time capsule. From this point onwards it’s leftism all the way I guess.
Not so clear to me. Yes, the Reagan neo-liberal regime is discredited, that pushes everyone left on economics (Republicans included)
But I just don't see the squad capturing the Democratic party anytime soon.
The border/Ukraine aid deal that Trump torched is not the act of a Party that has fatally and finally veered into leftist irrelevance.
Agreed. It seems like a lot of comments here are influenced by this caricature of the Democratic party that is promulgated by right-wing media. Are there extreme elements in the party? Yes. Are there a few of them in Congress? Yes. But the establishment tacks to the center. That's why they chose Joe Biden in the first place. And I'm sorry, but the policy moves Biden has made do not poll poorly; it's Biden himself who polls badly, and that's because he's been virtually invisible as president.
If voters cannot stand voting for Biden they could vote for Dean Phillips. But they aren't. Thanks MY for
No. 11. Hardly anyone mentions him, but he pretty much proves age is not the singular issue in voter's minds.
They're not voting for Dean Phillips because he came out of nowhere and started his campaign, such as it is, far too late. No one has ever heard of him. He's not a good proxy for the support a higher profile Democrat with executive experience would receive.
It's discourteous that you are holding Phillips's youth and inexperience against him.