Elections

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Who should be the candidate in 2028?

I recently asked my friends on Facebook who they would want as the Democratic candidate in 2026 and got a ton of responses.

Keep in mind a few things before I report what they said. First, my Facebook friends are almost entirely other liberals (duh) so this skews that direction. Second, many made the proper distinction between who they would personally like to see as President and who they think would be the best candidate (since the two are not necessarily the same). Thirdly, this was not any sort of well-designed polling. Some people named more than one candidate, some only named who they didn’t want (“Anyone but X!”), some merely said things like “I’ll vote for a toaster for President if it’s a Democrat.”

Keep in mind as well that a year is a lifetime in politics. Someone new could pop up between now and election day, and any of these named candidates could do something to ruin their chances.

So I counted mentions, even if some people mentioned more than one.

“Who, me?”

As expected, the name that popped up most is Gavin Newsom. He certainly has dominated the news lately with his brilliant attacks on Trump, and that has endeared him to many Democrats. Of course, he comes from California, and we’re going to get all their electoral votes no matter who the candidate is, so I’m not sure personally if that would be the best choice. (On the other hand, I voted for Harris, and she’s from California as well.)

Close behind was Pete Buttigieg, although most everyone who named him commented that they don’t think he has a chance. (Hey, people said the same thing about Obama when he started running.) Personally, I think Buttigieg would be great — I’d love to have someone of his intelligence in charge. However, I think he should probably get more experience. The highest office he has ever been elected to was mayor of a town in Indiana. Since getting married, he moved to Michigan and people thought he did that so he could run for Senate from there, but he shot that idea down early and has taken no steps to do so.

Third was J.B. Pritzker, another governor who has been wonderful at attacking Trump and giving Trump the respect he deserves (that is, none whatsoever). Pritzker has the personality many Democrats like, does and says the right thing, and may be a possibility.

Those three were a bit ahead of the next group. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez led the second tier. Most respondents admitted they’d want her but know that she probably could not get elected (yet). Some mentioned her as a VP choice. AOC is beloved by many Democrats but, let’s face it, she’s still young and only a representative. She probably should run for Schumer’s seat when he retires (which hopefully will be soon) and get more experience first. She could wait until 2060 and still be younger than Biden or Trump.

My own governor Josh Shapiro was in the next tier, along with Senator Mark Kelly, Governor Andy Beshear, and Representative Jasmine Crockett.

I was surprised to see that my friends hardly listed Cory Booker and Kamala Harris … Both of those would be high on my list, although I can see why people would say that Harris already had her chance and it’s not a good idea to have her try again.

In any event, this means absolutely nothing, but it was interesting to see who was popular among my Facebook friends.

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Why I am cautiously optimistic about the election

While Biden was not even in my top 5 choices last time, I still voted for him over Trump and will again. And I’m pretty sure he is going to win, for the following reasons:

Trump’s support isn’t as good as it seems. The man lost the popular vote the first time he ran, never even reached a 50% approval rating his entire time as President (unlike every other person who has been President), and lost his second election by an even larger amount. A majority of Americans don’t want him.

And a large percentage of Republicans don’t want him this time, either. As a semi-incumbent, he should be getting the numbers that Biden is getting in the primaries, but instead, quite often, he’s lucky to get more than 50% of the registered Republicans voting for him. Many old-school Republicans (the kind who aren’t part of the Trump cult) can’t stand him, see the harm he will cause, and while they may not vote for Biden, they aren’t going to vote for Trump, either. They’ll probably just stay home.

The Republican party doesn’t have a lot of money. People just aren’t contributing to them in the same way they are for the Democrats. There are stories all over the states where the local parties are going broke. Which leads to the next point:

Trump has taken over the party. The head of the party is now Eric Trump’s wife. You remember Eric, who took money meant for a children’s cancer charity? Well, you can bet that any money the party raises isn’t going to go to the campaign. It’s going to go to Trump (and probably his legal fees, assuming he pays them).

Moreso, these people have no real experience in running a campaign, and they just fired all those who do.

Trump’s legal worries may influence the undecided. The Trump cultists will never change, and as Trump once said, he can shoot someone on 5th Avenue and still have their support. It’s difficult to imagine how anyone can be undecided in this election, but apparently there are a lot of clueless folks out there who can’t tell the difference between as a well-meaning old guy and a lying, cheating, raping idiot who wants to be a dictator, but perhaps the more Trump spends time in court, the more these undecideds may think that maybe they don’t want a criminal as President.

Democrats have done better than expected in recent elections. We’ve managed to win quite a few special elections and in those that we didn’t win (in very red areas) we did much better than expected and much better than the polls predicted. Some of that is because we’re angry and pissed, and that gets people to the polls.

And we’re tremendously angry about abortion rights. In red states where this was on the ballot, pundits were shocked to see that even conservative voters voted to keep abortion legal. Many states are putting the issue on the ballots in November, which hopefully will bring more Democrats out to vote to protect this right (and then they’ll vote for the Democrats running as well.)

And, let’s face it, there are still some reasonable Republicans and moderates out there who may come out to vote because while they don’t agree with Democratic policies, they don’t want someone in there who has vowed to be a “dictator on day one.” Some patriots will put the country’s needs over the party’s.

All we have to do is hold the states we won last time. All over the country, purple states are becoming bluer all the time. It’s not that hard. We can lose Georgia, Arizona and Nevada and still win.

There are more of us than there are of them. Democrats have won the popular vote in every single election except one since Bill Clinton, and the only reason Republicans got into office was because of the electoral college. We can overcome that by showing up in huge numbers in the swing states where our votes are tremendously important.

If we lose, it will be because we stayed at home and didn’t vote, or wasted our vote on a third party candidate. And then we can scream and shout all we want as our country moves toward a Putin-friendly dictatorship, but it won’t do any good because it will be our fault.

And now, a caveat: The GOP knows all this, so they plan to use their secret weapon: cheating. They’ll do everything they can to make it harder for anyone to vote; they’ll use the judges they’ve appointed to throw out ballots whenever possible; they’ll lie in campaign ads and use connections in Russia and China whose goal it is to dismantle American power; and otherwise claim to have won if they lose despite all evidence to the contrary (just like they did last time).

cartoon by Patrick Chappatte

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Four Reasons why the GOP will lose in 2016

Democrats may lose Congress thanks to apathetic voters, gerrymandering, and acting too much like Republicans, but we’ve pretty much got the White House secure for the foreseeable future.  Here’s why:

1.  The Electoral College.  As much as I want to get rid of it, it certainly works to the Democrats’ favor.  You need 270 electoral votes to win, and Democrats start with 252 that are pretty much guaranteed, in states that haven’t voted Republican since Bill Clinton was elected.

If you add to that group Virginia and New Mexico (states that have been reliably blue the past few elections) then bang, you’re at 270, and that doesn’t even count the possibilities of winning Nevada, Ohio, Florida, and Colorado, all of which have gone Democratic in the past two elections (even North Carolina and Indiana went Democratic in 2008, so don’t necessarily count them out either).

Republicans, meanwhile, start with maybe 167 guaranteed electoral votes.  That’s a huge burden to overcome. emap

Look at that map again. See how the Democrats only need to get Florida to win? If not Florida, then only two states (for example, Virginia and Nevada).  For the Republicans to win, they will need pretty much every single gray state on this map. And even if they took every single gray state, that would only be 280. If as few as one state goes the other way (Florida or Virginia, for instance), they lose.

2.  Numbers.  There are more of us than there are of them.  If we’d vote in equal percentages, we’d always hold Congress, too, but we don’t — except in Presidential years.  More people voted for Democrats in 5 of the last 6 Presidential elections (and in that last one — GWB’s re-election — there are those who question that).  There’s no reason to assume that will change, especially because of…

3. Demographics.  Republicans are predominately older white men.  It’s true.  Young people, women, minorities — all securely Democrats.  And as the country becomes less and less white, and as women become more and more independent, those numbers keep changing to the Democrat’s favor.  Further, fewer people identify themselves as conservative these days.   It’s a trend that has reasonable Republicans rightly worried.

4.  Candidates.  Let’s face it, the Republicans do not have a shining star on the horizon — there is no one with the personality of Ronald Reagan who can charm America into voting for him.  Instead, we get Ted Cruz, Mike Huckabee, Chris Christie, Ben Carson, Mitt Romney (again),  and a bunch of others who, in the last poll, could not get past 10%.

The Republicans know this.  And that is why they so desperately are trying to suppress the vote and get rid of campaign finance laws.  “If you can’t win by getting the most votes, then cheat and buy the election” is their motto.

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GOP betting the House

The GOP only won the House of Representatives in 2012 because of gerrymandering — more people voted for Democrats overall but because of the way districts are drawn, the majority didn’t win.

Thanks to the Shutdown, which most Americans correctly attribute to Republicans, there are enough Republicans in jeopardy of losing their seats that we could see Speaker Nancy Pelosi in 2016.

Of course, this poll is of the “If the election were held today, who would you vote for” variety, placing the incumbent against a nameless opponent. These are tremendously unreliable because (a) anything can happen within a year; and (b) people compare their current representative with an ideal opponent of the other party, and that’s usually not what happens.

Still, this poll is important because it emphasizes what many of us have been saying: This shutdown is hurting Republicans. They are so much in a bubble that they do not see this, but the numbers don’t lie.

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Chris Christie loses 2016 Presidential election

Once more, New Jersey governor Chris Christie has proven that he is unfit to be nominated by the Republican party to run for President in 2016. Yes, it’s true — he has once again placed the good of his state over the good of his party.

It was bad enough when he actually said a nice thing about the President after Hurricane Sandy, acknowledging the help his state received from the feds. Just because it was true never stood in the way of the modern Republican party.

But now, with the death of Senator Lautenberg, Christie had the opportunity to appoint a new Senator who would serve until the next election. Clearly, he should have appointed a Republican to fill the seat left vacant by a Democrat, even though the will of the state was clearly to put a Democrat into that seat at the last election. No, Christie has decided to let the people decide who should fill the seat by holding a special election. Maybe they’ll choose a Republican, you never know.

The party is outraged that he would allow the will of the people to be more important than the good of the party. So, by doing the right thing, he has pretty much destroyed any chance he had of getting the nomination of his party in 2016.

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2016 Democratic Presidential Straw Poll

Let’s just have some fun with a meaningless poll this far before any primary.

Not everyone is convinced Hillary Clinton or even Joe Biden will run in 2016.

Who do you think will run for the Democratic primary?

Not who you think will win; not who would you like to run. Who do you think will run?

You can vote for up to four.

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Bush versus Clinton? Again?

One of the reasons I supported Barack Obama over Hillary Clinton is because I have a real dislike of dynasties. We have over 300 million people in the US. Can’t we stop electing husbands and wives and sons and daughters of the same politicians?

This is nothing against Hillary. I think she’d be a fine President.

But now Jeb Bush may decide to run in 2016, and we could be presented with the third Bush getting a nomination and a race that looks awfully familiar: Clinton versus Bush.

In America, we don’t have royalty, but we apparently have something similar: A Ruling Class. We’ve had our Roosevelts and our Kennedys and our Bushes and our Clintons, going all the way back to John Adams and John Quincy Adams. Not that these people have necessarily been unqualified, but in a country this large, it would be nice to see who else is out there.

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How the GOP can win the presidential race

To follow up on yesterday’s editorial cartoon:

The Republican party has won the popular vote only once in the last six presidential elections (when Bush won by a razor-thin margin). They have a huge uphill battle, and it’s not getting any better for them. The population is changing, and the old angry white man vote is dying.

Look at the electoral college voting patterns. You need 270 electoral votes to win. If we count every state that has voted Democratic in the last six elections, the Democrats start off with 242 votes, and the Republicans have 206. If you count only the last two, the Democrats have 332.

This is bad news for the Republicans, which leaves them with two options: (1) expand their base by appealing to younger voters, women, and minorities; or (2) cheat.

As we have seen, they have decided to go for option 2. Republicans have instituted voter purges and intimidation, creating hardships for those in Democratic-leaning districts and causing long lines to discourage voting. They’ve fought against early voting and other methods which will encourage people to exercise their rights. They’ve gerrymandered districts in ways that keep Democrats from winning.

They’ve created a propaganda machine to convince people that voter fraud is taking place (quite ironically). They’ve passed laws making it harder for people to register and vote. And they’ve challenged the Voting Rights Act in court.

Because, let’s face it, the only other solution would be to actually listen to the will of the people.