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Well, this is interesting. CNN did a focus group with Democrat voters and they rejected Joe Biden as their party's candidate for president. From the Hill:
The Democrats gathered by CNN, however, said they weren't interested in Biden. Some said they wanted a candidate who was further to the left. “I think we need a bold, strong leadership, and you’ll find that in the progressives," Democratic voter Carol Evans said.
“We had the standard-bearer for the kind of pragmatic centrist candidate in Hillary Clinton in 2016 and Donald Trump is now president. He is not your average political candidate, so we really need to try to think outside the box because, you know, it seems like the dude is made of rubber. Anything you throw at him just bounces off, there’s nothing that sticks," said focus group member Michael Milisits.
“I will be honest. He was riding the Obama wave and I thought he was a person that would unite the party, but to be honest, Sen. Biden really comes from kind of the good old boy politics of the past," Democrat Russel Banks said. “I don’t think Joe Biden represents that new thing that we need. We need a new economy, we need new politics and we need someone different," Democrat Owen Evans added.
While Biden leads in nearly every poll, there seems to be a lot of legitimate lethargy for his candidacy within the party. However, he could still win the nomination, as the only major establishment candidate he has running against him in the establishment bracket appears to be Terry MacAulliffe.
Sherrod Brown has decided not to run for President. He was not going to win anyway, but he could have raised his profile by running. In any case, Sherrod is out.
Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) announced Thursday that he will not mount a 2020 bid for the White House, saying that he believes the best way for him to serve the country is in the Senate. “I will keep calling out Donald Trump and his phony populism. I will keep fighting for all workers across the country. And I will do everything I can to elect a Democratic President and a Democratic Senate in 2020," Brown said in a statement. "The best place for me to make that fight is in the United States Senate.”
This announcement is notable because Sherrod Brown was one of the few plausible moderates that has discussed running this cycle for the Democrats. With him out, Joe Biden becomes even more vividly the candidate of the establishment. If not Joe, then who else?
Sherrod Brown has decided not to run for President. He was not going to win anyway, but he could have raised his profile by running. In any case, Sherrod is out.
Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) announced Thursday that he will not mount a 2020 bid for the White House, saying that he believes the best way for him to serve the country is in the Senate. “I will keep calling out Donald Trump and his phony populism. I will keep fighting for all workers across the country. And I will do everything I can to elect a Democratic President and a Democratic Senate in 2020," Brown said in a statement. "The best place for me to make that fight is in the United States Senate.”
This announcement is notable because Sherrod Brown was one of the few plausible moderates that have discussed running this cycle for the Democrats. With him out, Joe Biden becomes even more vividly the candidate of the establishment. If not Joe, then who else?
Doubt he wanted to talk about his beating the snot out of his former wife every day.
Looks like the only moderate left is Biden. They said he would announce either way in early April. I think the party will go extreme left with someone like Harris.
Looks like the only moderate left is Biden. They said he would announce either way in early April. I think the party will go extreme left with someone like Harris.
One of the reasons that the Republicans used to end up with a squish every time is that a bunch of conservatives would run in the primary against one moderate Republican. The moderate would hoover up all the establishment and moderate/left leaning votes, while the conservative voters would slash each other to bits, splitting their votes between multiple candidates. This was one of the reasons there are so many "winner take all" states in the Republican primary - to help the annointed establishment candidate win and do it quickly.
The Democrats do not have many, and maybe now not any, "winner take all" states. As a result of that and the number of candidates, there is a real chance we could see a contested convention for them this year. With the DNC rule changes, super-delegates (close to 15% of all delegates) do not get to vote on the first ballot. But on the second ballot, they do.
So Joe Biden is not likely to win 50%+ on the first ballot. But he might get 30-35%, especially with no real competition in the establishment/moderate bracket. Add another 10% for super-delegates on the second ballot, and he becomes a very heavy favorite. As candidates drop out, their delegates will be released and the pressure on them to support Joe will be Hillaryesque.
All that being said, like you say, the passion is all on the far left. How Harris accumulates enough delegates to beat Joe Biden is not clear to me. But if not Joe, then Harris appears to me to be the most likely alternative at this juncture.
The Democrat establishment will push very hard to make sure she does not win however, because they know she will not be able to beat Trump in the general. A LOT of these people would nominate Adolph Hitler if he was running as a Democrat this time and they thought he could beat Trump. Of course he is not running, and they would do the same for Kamala Harris - if they thought she could win in November. But she cannot and they know it.
This is why it seems more likely to me that they end up with Joe B. at this point. But who knows, maybe the leftist populist masses will override the Democrat establishment elites this time, the way the conservative populist masses told the Republican establishment elites to go stuff it in 2016. If that happens, we are in for a rollicking good time this election, for certain.
Looks like the only moderate left is Biden. They said he would announce either way in early April. I think the party will go extreme left with someone like Harris.
You do not consider Hickenlooper and Klobuchar to be moderates?
You do not consider Hickenlooper and Klobuchar to be moderates?
Klobuchar is moderate in her personality, but not so much in her political stances. Also, the establishment press has been trying to take her out with this "mean boss" narrative. That tells me she is not being embraced as an establishment preferred choice.
I will be interested to see how many Democrat voters are willing to actually vote for Klobuchar. Or to put that another way, how many Democrat voters will regard her as their first choice and will actually take the trouble to go pull the lever or whatever to say so. I could of course be wrong, but I suspect not all that many.
Independent Candidate Howard Shultz is blistering the Democrat's bare behinds with his broadsides against their radical extremist socialism, especially with regards to its effect on our Democracy.
Howard Schultz said that the Democratic Party is threatening democracy with moving too far left.
“We have a Democratic Party that’s moving closer and closer to fracturing our democracy and free enterprise system with socialism. And I’m here to say, ‘No, that’s not the way to go.’ We need a new level of leadership, and we need to reimagine the government,” Schultz told CNN Saturday morning.
“There’s no question that the Democratic Party now is a party that is in the shadows of things that are hard to even imagine, let alone recognize,” Schultz said, blaming two candidates, Sens. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., for driving the party too far left.
Rest assured, this line of assault will be one of the central themes of Donald Trump and the Republicans against the Democrats and their presidential candidates. In fact, in case anyone had not noticed, it already is.
Joe Biden is going to be pressured to move left as well. If he does, that may help him win the nomination for his party, but in the general election, a lot of those voters could very easily vote for Howard Schultz. And for those who want to try to convince themselves that Schultz will take more votes from Trump than whoever the nominee for the Democrats is, you are almost certainly mistaken.
Schultz is right. The Democrats as a party have gone radically to the left. It is too much and it is as he says, harmful to our democracy. In fact, it appears that the Democrats are largely accepting of that.
Efforts to try to explain away the radical extreme socialism that this party is now supporting is not likely to be convincing, because after all, actions speak louder than words.
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