Ah yes, another round in the endless presidential campaign and, as promised, I make no predictions.
I do have opinions, though, on who I like more, and less, and otherwise, on the Dem side.
On the More side: Kirsten Gillibrand, Elizabeth Warren
Less: Joe Biden, Cory Booker, John Kerry, Tulsi Gabbard, Mike Bloomberg
Otherwise: Bernie Sanders, Julián Castro, Kamala Harris, Beto O’Rourke, Sherrod Brown, Amy Klobuchar, Eric Holder, Pete Buttigieg
There are a bunch of other possibilities, but I’m leaving them off due to the combination of relatively low national profile and undeclared status. (If I included them now, they’d all just go in otherwise because I don’t have much of an opinion on them.)
As for the whys of placement: I like Gillibrand’s overall decent liberal-left profile and I am more than fine with her feminism front-and-center, and I like Warren’s economic focus.
In the less category: I thought Biden was a fine veep, but there’s nothing about either him or his record that makes me want to vote for him. Kerry was a decent Senator and decent Secretary of State, but he’s ran and lost in 2004 and he’s too old, to boot. Gabbard is an Assad apologist. Mike Bloomberg was as good as a Republican gets.
Booker? He’s got some political chops, but he’s rather conservative on economic issues, I don’t know if he’s moved away from charter schools, and, man, there’s just something about him that makes me wary. Still, chops.
Otherwise: Sanders too old but he brings an enthusiastic crowd; I don’t know enough about Castro, Buttigieg, or O’Rourke; I’d hate to lose Brown’s Ohio senate seat and I don’t know that he brings anything more than Warren does; and Holder strikes me as too moderate.
Klobuchar? Again, somewhat moderate, but the stories of her mistreatment of staff are what give me great pause. Yeah, some of the criticism could be driven by sexism, but “the boys do it, too!” is not much of justification for really shitty behavior.
And Harris, well, I think she’s got some skill and she’s generally been righteous as a senator, but her record as attorney general in California is, from what little I do know, not great. I am very interested in her, but I gotta do some more homework.
All of this said: if ANY of these people were the nominee, I’d vote for them.
Finally, I have zero punditastic advice to offer to Democrats in general about who we “should” choose, who might turn off which group, or who scares Trump and the Republicans the most. The GOP are going to throw shit at whoever’s the candidate, so trying to find someone who’ll get less shit is a mug’s game, and demoralizing as all hell.
As much as I hate to say it, Trump as the incumbent has the advantage, so we cannot give any ground.
We Dems should choose who we think is best, get behind that person, and run as hard as we can.
AbsurdBeats 