Nate Silver: “His case to win the 2020 Democratic nomination is fairly simple: As Barack Obama’s two-term vice president, he’s the most familiar brand in the field. He’s ahead in the polls (it’s emphatically not a tie for the lead with Bernie Sanders; Biden’s polling is quite a bit better). He’s also the best-performing Democrat in polls against President Trump, and he gains a lot of support from Democrats on the basis of his perceived electability. And while he might not be the most liberal Democrat, that isn’t necessarily a disadvantage; roughly half of voters in the Democratic primary identify as moderate or conservative, which could be a plus in a field where many candidates are running to the left.”
“Of course, this doesn’t mean Biden’s path to the nomination is easy. Not by a long shot. But before we start to poke holes in Biden’s candidacy, let’s ruminate on his advantages a little longer. There’s a case to be made that the media — in seeking out shiny new objects like Pete Buttigieg, and in ignoring the preferences of older, more working-class and more moderate Democrats who still make up a large part of the Democratic base — is overlooking the obvious front-runner in Biden. Arguably, in fact, media elites have the same blind spots for Biden that they had for Trump.”
Kyle Kondik: “If Joe Biden wins the presidency, he will bring with him nearly a half-century of elected officeholding experience, giving him perhaps the fullest resume of public service possessed by any new president ever.”
“But Biden’s experience, and everything that comes with it, is no guarantee to be an asset to his campaign. It may ultimately be a detriment, and that may be doubly so if the value of his experience is not deployed in service of a strong campaign.”
Vox: “The next time a new national 2020 poll comes out, you can probably fill in the blanks yourself: Biden at 30 percent, give or take, Sanders trailing 5-10 points behind him, Harris and now Buttigieg both hanging around at 10 percent. O’Rourke in there somewhere, Warren at 5 percent or 6-ish, and then a crowd of Booker, Buttigieg, Klobuchar, Castro, and Kirsten Gillibrand with maybe a few percentage points each.”
“The story has barely changed all year. The big unknown is how durable Biden’s stubbornly consistent lead really is — but we should start getting a better idea now that he’s finally officially announced his candidacy. And even then, things may not really change until the first round of debates, when the public turns its full attention to the presidential campaign.”
Harvard Political Review: “As parties become increasingly polarized, Democratic Party leadership seems focused on finding a candidate who can win. Moving into the 2020 primary season, the question on many left-leaning minds is not which candidate stands on the best policies but rather, who can beat Donald Trump.”
“Though this approach may seem like savvy strategy in the short term, candidates seeking to garner the youth vote may benefit more from following trends in youth political attitudes than trends in electability. A poll organized by the Harvard Public Opinion Project indicated that 82 percent of millennial respondents believe that it is more important for a candidate to share his political views than to be an electable politician. Across all demographics, youth support for candidates who share their political perspectives never falls below 75 percent of respondents.”
A national progressive group, Indivisible, is asking the 20 candidates in the Democratic presidential race to sign a pledge promising a positive, “constructive” primary that ends with all participants coming together to support the eventual nominee — “whoever it is — period,” BuzzFeed News reports.
Rep. Tulsi Gabbard’s (D-HI) presidential campaign had just one full-time employee in the first three months of the year, the Daily Beast reports.
“A review of Federal Election Commission records show Gabbard’s campaign made a single payment of less than $2,600 to field staffer Amaury Dujardin. Every other member of Gabbard’s campaign staff, including her campaign manager, was paid as a consultant, not a full-time employee. By contrast, the campaign spent $30,850 on billboard advertisements over the same period.”
Former Vice President Joe Biden called Anita Hill earlier this month to express his regret over “what she endured” testifying against Justice Clarence Thomas at the 1991 Supreme Court hearings that put a spotlight on sexual harassment of women, the New York Times reports.
“But Ms. Hill, in an interview Wednesday, said she left the conversation feeling deeply unsatisfied and declined to characterize his words to her as an apology. She said she is not convinced that Mr. Biden truly accepts the harm he caused her and other women who suffered sexual harassment and gender violence.”
Said Hill: “I cannot be satisfied by simply saying I’m sorry for what happened to you. I will be satisfied when I know there is real change and real accountability and real purpose.”
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D), “who has raised millions of dollars during his campaigns over the years, has indicated to associates in recent days that he will be opening his vast and powerful fundraising network exclusively to Joe Biden,” CNBC reports.
“Cuomo’s support could be a game-changer for Biden. While the former vice president has consistently led Democratic primary polls, he has been aggressively courting donors in a bid to catch up to an already crowded primary field that has a head start in the fundraising game. New York State Board of Elections data show Cuomo has raked in $100 million in campaign contributions since he first ran for governor in 2010. At least 80 percent of his backers have given him $10,000 or more.”
My concern with Biden is, his unwillingness to apologize for anything he has done in the past is going to destroy him in the main election if he wins the primary. He apologized to Anita Hill NOW. Not six months ago, not one year ago… only after it became obvious he was running for President. That doesn’t read like an apology, it reads as fig leaf to cover him if anyone tries to accuse him of not apologizing.
And that’s bad, because the same independents who refused to vote for Hillary because they think that if they’re handed a lousy Democrat candidate and a worse Republican candidate, staying home and refusing to participate is a political statement to the Democrats that they want a NOT possibly corrupt person to win the primary is an acceptable thing to do will not vote for Biden, hard stop. The “oh his family members got hired to a lot of jobs with companies that were tangentially involved with him in office” is a shining, golden opportunity for people who are trying to skew the election. Just like they did last time, telling everyone “Hillary stole the primary, stay home”. Biden’s inherently vulnerable to that kind of social engineering. And now the McCain’s are endorsing him! “He’s actually a Republican, look, the huge Republican family is supporting him!” I will be happy if literally anyone except Biden or Beto win the primary. But I can see the whisper campaign that killed Hillary forming around everything in Biden’s past (he was pro segregation for far too long) the more I find out about his past.
I am terrified that he is going to win the primary. And THEN the foreign influencers will be back. Bringing up all his skeletons, along with the many, many quotes of him saying he has nothing to apologize for. And then his support will evaporate, too late to do anything about it because he won the primary. And since the time for him to apologize was years ago, when he wasn’t trying to become President, and not now, when any apology will read as saying something to get people to vote for him….
100% agreed.
People dont give a shit how genuine Ol’ Joe has always been. It doesn’t look genuine now.
He was supposed to be Obama’s blue collar cred. The accepted narrative, true or not, is that the “middle class” got “left behind” in the recovery. It doesnt matter that it was due to republicans and shitty dems like Carper and Nelson and Schumer. Agree with that or not, it is the line most Americans believe. Because of that, he has no real credibility on “representing the middle class”
It doesnt matter that trump clearly doesnt give a shit about the middle class. If Biden’s concern is also in question, incumbent wins. The safety and calculation for old school Clintonian 50+1 wins is echoing Kerry.
He even screwed up his campaign roll out multiple times. Remember when they floated Abrams as VP without fucking asking her? Add his shame of Anita Hill and it does not look like a man who respects women of color in his soul. Not when it really matters.
fucking terrified. Biden will not win the general election.
I couldn’t agree more.
He blurs enough of the lines to take away, or atleast lessen, Trump’s major weaknesses.
Age? Well Biden’s older
Wallstreet? The Bankruptcy bill
Corruption? The Fox News hypocrisy will run with Hunter’s ties.
Woman? The touching, and Anita Hill
Race? The busing and gaffes.
Most of it will be total bullshit, but it won’t stop Trump and Fox News from driving a narrative that the mainstream media will happily play along.
Luckily, the other Dem candidates seem to realize this and aren’t scared.
Also what exactly are Joe’s policies? As those come out, and he will be forced to clarify, that will weaken his support as well.
His advisers and family did him a disservice by letting him run. He was a great VP, and with all his flaws a good senator for Delaware and is genuinely nice guy. But he won’t be president, and this run will tarnish his legacy.,
(though i am buying one of his coffee mugs, they are pretty cool)
It is always and everywhere a Bad Take that a candidate is a problem because people will attack him and her. The attacks are baked in the cake. And it doesn’t matter if they are truthful or if they come from bots. It is just gonna happen.
Clinton ended up producing a remarkably progressive set of policy platforms that I’m doubting Biden will want to buy into. I could be wrong, we are too early here to know, but we’ll get signals really soon.
It is a very real mistake to underestimate the sigh of relief that many run of the mill Dems breathed out when he threw his hat in. But he also makes the conversation pretty clear — are we talking about turning back the clock to before GRIFTUS or are we talking about starting to make the changes that might make a GRIFTUS no longer possible. Based on the first video, my guess he is betting on the turn back the clock theory. And I think he *could* win on that. There’s enough people who want the GRIFTUS gone including some of the folks who voted for him in the first place. The oligarchy won’t object to him, since he won’t be breaking the crockery every 5 minutes. I just don’t know if his theory of winning is the right one.
“turning back the clock to before GRIFTUS” – cassandra
Nominating Biden would turn the clock back to the politics that gave us GRIFTUS !
cassandra, I’m not saying we should use a guarantee that a candidate will be attacked to shut down their campaign before it starts. But… Biden is essentially Hillary 2.0. It’s been two years since the election, we know that Russian saboteurs rigged the election, and yet independents STILL call her “Crooked Hillary” and “Killary”. Even though they know that narrative was a lie, they still bought it! Biden isn’t just vulnerable to attack, he’s vulnerable to the same attack…. and he, like Hillary, sees absolutely no reason to apologize for his mistakes. Hillary’s failure should demonstrate to everyone involved that if we do not wake up, and start playing by the new rules, Democrat candidates will continue to not win in the main election. Independents want to see a candidate who admits when they were wrong, and who wants to move forward, not live in a past that doesn’t exist anymore.
He will be treated the way Hillary was treated. But it is real folly to think that there are no D candidates that won’t get this treatment. It is — after all — why Fox and the right wing noise machine exists. And there really aren’t Independents. They are registered I and mostly vote D or they are registered I and mostly vote R. You are still working at capturing a lean D or R vote. This is just another “electibility” argument that relies on old debunked election mythology. We can’t make an argument about looking forward while relying on the same old bullshit.
One of the top comments on one of the New York Times politics articles this weekend is an independent who “voted Democrat in every election since 1992 but couldn’t vote for HRC”! Ignoring the fact that there are large numbers of people who do that, say they cannot vote for a candidate who feels too conservative, will hand Trump four more years!
The Republicans don’t claim to be the inclusive party. They don’t claim to be good, so their voters don’t care if they aren’t good. But Democrats, slowly but surely, have become the party that is a light in the darkness. And people who lean Democrat get angry if a Democrat candidate says they’re good, and does not appear to be living up to what they say. They say “I can’t vote for that. If we don’t vote for that the Democrats will see that we will not vote for that, and they will give us a candidate that we will vote for next time”.
People who are willing to sit out 2020 because “they won’t vote for that” and “they will give us a candidate that we will vote for next time” are flaunting their privilege because, in the end, they’re okay with Trump as president.
People who voted for Trump bought his racial grievance or succumbed to the misogynistic attacks you noted above. Independents split down the middle in the last election. In 2018, the largest organizing work was around outreach to Dem-leaning voters who just don’t turn out. That was very successful and plenty of candidates are going to continue that effort.
You can get the independents who will be with you, but at some point you can’t keep chasing essentially conservative voters and think you have a chance at enacting a more progressive agenda.