That analysis actually shows how razor close the election might be.
Dems get to 278 EVs with AZ, FL, NC and IA being toss ups. Since Trump won all those in 2016, assume he has the edge there. That gets you to 278-260. The next closest state is WI with exactly 10 EVs. If Trump wins Wiscy, he wins 270-268.
Nate Silver basically sees it the same way. Dems should do better than 2016 (+2.1%), but not as strong as 2018 (+8.6%). At +4-6%, it is totally up for grabs.
I just don't see who from the Dem field can win the nomination and the general election.
The purity tests are daunting.
Harris has always been the media's favorite, but she is at real risk of being painted with some of the same brush strokes that undid HRC - concerned with power and lacking empathy.
Biden has proven, yet again that, internet memes aside, he remains incapable of campaigning at this level.
The Dems are not going to let Bernie get out of the primaries.
Booker is nuts.
Warren represents the other half of HRC's problems - a lack of familiarity with the truth and a general un-likability.
Buttigieg can't even handle a town-hall meeting.
Yang and Gabbard are the only two that pass the "who would you want to drink a beer with" test. But it sure doesn't look like they are going to get the party's (or more importantly the media's) backing.
The rest of the pack is just that - the rest of the pack.
Maybe Marianne?....
STILL somewhere back in the day....
...and waiting/hoping for a tinfoil hat emoji......
It's a total bummer that Hick isn't even in the running. You can't really package and sell what he does....he's a consensus builder who, like me, doesn't have a strong opinion on a myriad of issues...and seeks to figure out what the people want, and simply do that.
Yang and Gabbard are the only two that pass the "who would you want to drink a beer with" test.
You know Hickenlooper actually ran a brewery and bar...
He'll never get the nomination, but if he did he'd vaporize Trump.
I'd want Mayor Pete in that conversation. He's the best communicator of the bunch, conveys a lot in just a few words, knows the subject matter (whatever the subject) & is more than just talking points.
Contrast Pete's Naval Service with Hunter Biden's. They both took advantage of a direct commissioning program into the Naval Reserve which allows the politically connected to get their military ticket punched for their CV. It also enables civilian subject matter experts to serve for a deployment & in a contingency (FBI agents, US Atty's, etc).
Pete chose to go into Naval Intel & volunteered for a 6 mos Afghan deployment, in a unit that worked to disrupt the finances of the AQ, the Taliban & the drug trade, requiring him to work "outside the wire". He never saw combat, but was always in danger.
Biden (& Sean Spicer & Reince Priebus) opted for duty as Public Affairs Officers -- PR spokesmen & spin doctors.
Biden popped + on a drug screening on his first drill weekend. Spicer took it seriously & has stuck with it. He started when he was Cong staffer, completed Naval War College (via night school extension in the Pentagon) & has advanced to 0-5.
CU77 wrote: ↑Tue Jul 02, 2019 8:06 pm
Pete is gay, married to a man.
What fraction of voters would not vote for such a person, who might otherwise go out and vote for the D candidate?
My guess is that fraction is large enough to lose the general election. Think Catholic Ds, black evangelicals, etc.
Turnout would be awful.
the powers that be that control the party don't care about that kind of stuff. But his competitors will slit his throat before he has a chance to get close - and the knife they will use is the town hall meeting where he completely lost control of what was supposed to be a crowd of Dem friendly people.
STILL somewhere back in the day....
...and waiting/hoping for a tinfoil hat emoji......
"Is Donald Trump — whose approval rating rarely crests 45 percent, who lost the popular vote by about three million ballots and who governs without dignity or decency — bound for reelection?
I’m terrified of that. And the Democratic debates last week only intensified my fear.
Not that there wasn’t ample talent on the stage in Miami over those two nights, and not that there weren’t strong performances. Elizabeth Warren was impressive in the first debate, and Kamala Harris and Pete Buttigieg even more so in the second, as I noted in appraisals that I “filed” (to use a musty parlance) a few hours after each. (I just gave you links to those columns.)
But neither Warren, Harris nor Buttigieg would be a safe nominee, at least to the extent that such a concept is valid. There is without question significant sexism in America, and that might be a force more potent than the excitement many of us would feel about a first female president.
There’s racism, so Harris faces a double whammy. There’s homophobia, though in my view that would be less of an obstacle for Buttigieg than his age. He’s 37.
But my worry goes beyond all of that. Those three contenders plus Julián Castro and Cory Booker — who were the other standouts — are arguably farther to the left than a nominee would ideally be, at least to judge by what happened in the 2018 midterms. Democrats took control of the House not because of politicians like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ayanna Pressley, who won in districts that were long safe for the party, but because of less ardently ideological candidates who wooed swing voters in places that went from red to blue.
That’s a fact certainly not lost on Nancy Pelosi, who’s hardly some raging moderate. It’s the reason she has resisted the opening of an impeachment inquiry and that she dismissed the Green New Deal as “the green dream, or whatever they call it.”
My colleague David Brooks examined this in his most recent column and in the one before that. My colleague Bret Stephens also weighed in.
Over at New York magazine, Andrew Sullivan smartly explored the open-borders implications of much of what leading Democratic candidates said during the debates, suggesting that they’re out of touch with most Americans and that they’re leaving an enormous opening for Trump. For the newsweekly The Week, Damon Linker summed up these arguments, writing that Democrats were “not just running to the left of the party’s recent positions on some issues while staking out more moderate stances in other areas. Most of the candidates are running as progressives on everything at once: health care, immigration, taxes, child care, college loans, abortion, guns, transgender rights, and on and on.”
I don’t feel quite as grim about Democrats’ situation as Brooks, Stephens, Sullivan and Linker do. Some of the party’s candidates have room still to moderate themselves in a general election, and I don’t entirely dismiss the theory that a bold progressive could so energize the base that swaying independents wouldn’t be so crucial. But I’m suspicious of it.
And so I fret. As I noted in the second of my debate columns, “The most tested candidates (Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders) proved to be the least exciting ones. The moderates (Amy Klobuchar, Michael Bennet and John Hickenlooper) couldn’t quite break through.” Those who sizzled were the ones who would be a gamble. (That’s one of the reasons they sizzled, I guess.)
Trump, the luckiest man alive, could get luckier still. After behaving in a clueless and amoral fashion on the world stage, after failing to take seriously Russian interference in our elections, after presiding over the least professional and most corrupt presidential administration in my adult lifetime, he may sail on the winds of a strong economy and a suboptimal opponent into another four years. We’d need much, much longer than that to recover from it."
seacoaster wrote: ↑Wed Jul 03, 2019 12:16 pm
Those three contenders plus Julián Castro and Cory Booker — who were the other standouts
Up until the debates, I thought Julian Castro as a serious candidate. I did not think he stood a chance to get the nomination, but everything I read about him painted a picture of a person who entered politics for all the right reasons. And then he said that he supports government funded abortions for transgender women??!!?? That position means he is either a genius or an idiot. Because, well you know.....
But why even say it? Because the party is listing so far to the left, that if you want to even be heard, you have to say outrageously stupid things. I guess the candidates have all taken a page from Trump's (and AOC's) playbook - say outrageous and stupid stuff and get noticed. Bad press is better than no press and all...
Don't get me started on Booker. The guy is bordering on unstable.
Fauxcahontas is the best candidate the Dems have.....
.... to run against Trump ?.....
that's the best they can do ???....
We are doomed.
STILL somewhere back in the day....
...and waiting/hoping for a tinfoil hat emoji......
The fact that Castro made that comment out loud shows the potential for how bad the Dems could mess this up. Good luck riding the TG abortion pony to 270 EVs. Most of all, it is just irrelevant and silly.
First, as many pointed out after the debate, there really is no such thing as a transgender woman. Isn't the whole point of being TG is that you don't identify as your born biological gender? So Castro actually gets a PC penalty flag thrown from far left field even as he's trying to stake out the far fringe-iest of PC positions. Which proves how dumb he is for going there.
Second, exactly how many swing voters in swing states are likely to be swayed by that ultra narrow-casted position? Third, I have to believe (though I have not researched it) that anyone who shows up pregnant at a clinic will get cared for as a woman. Regardless of how they appear or self-identify.
Only 8% of Americans are "progressive activists." That path is the absolute deadest of dead ends. Sorry AOC, but there's really not that many leftie whackos and many of them don't vote anyway fyi. Pelosi and Biden know this.
The "devoted conservatives" are about 25% of Americans. So smooching up to the rightie whackos is a much more viable strategy -- especially since the whack right vote all the time.
The Dem play is for the remaining 2/3rds, most of whom are inclined to kick our inept and insecure leader to the curb.
Boycott stupid. If you ignore the gator troll, eventually he'll just go back under his bridge.
ggait wrote: ↑Mon Jul 08, 2019 12:38 pm
The Dem play is for the remaining 2/3rds, most of whom are inclined to kick our inept and insecure leader to the curb.
and yet, the picture I am seeing coalesce in front of me is one where the Dems blow it.
STILL somewhere back in the day....
...and waiting/hoping for a tinfoil hat emoji......
ggait wrote: ↑Mon Jul 08, 2019 12:38 pm
The Dem play is for the remaining 2/3rds, most of whom are inclined to kick our inept and insecure leader to the curb.
and yet, the picture I am seeing coalesce in front of me is one where the Dems blow it.
I doubt the bold orange copy is the case. Either the silent majority (IMO, a large portion of the mentioned 2/3rds) doesn't admit or are afraid to admit, that when push comes to shove, they will actually vote for him. The polls paint an inaccurate picture when it comes to Trump.
ggait wrote: ↑Mon Jul 08, 2019 12:38 pm
Only 8% of Americans are "progressive activists." That path is the absolute deadest of dead ends. Sorry AOC, but there's really not that many leftie whackos and many of them don't vote anyway fyi. Pelosi and Biden know this.
AOC knows this. She's been in Congress for about ten minutes....eventually, milllenials will age, have kids, and vote. That's who she's speaking to... and that's why so many older Americans (myself included) hear some of the things she says and wonder "What the heck is she talking about here?"
It's sorta like Carcaterra's schtick. He's not talking to 40+ year old lax fans. He's talking to HS and college age kids who play the sport. So us old geezers stare at the screen going, "What the heck is he talking about here?"
Pelosi and Biden's careers are all but over. Their bread and butter are corporate Dems, and they cater to the top 25% of American earners...and that's who have been helped by the last 30 years of Dem/Republican Congresses.
tech37 wrote: ↑Mon Jul 08, 2019 2:01 pm
IMO, a large portion of the mentioned 2/3rds) doesn't admit or are afraid to admit, that when push comes to shove, they will actually vote for [sic] Trump.
This was true last time, and will (imho) remain true in 2020 as well.
The Dems are in for a particularly rude awakening if/when their candidate has been forced to say that they believe biological men who identify as women are owed federally funded abortions, and that people who come into our country illegally should have the right to vote.
Any political strategist worth their salt knows those are LOOSING positions with the vast majority of Americans including/especially US citizens of Latin-American decent.
STILL somewhere back in the day....
...and waiting/hoping for a tinfoil hat emoji......
HooDat wrote: ↑Mon Jul 08, 2019 10:35 am
Up until the debates, I thought Julian Castro as a serious candidate. ...And then he said that he supports government funded abortions for transgender women??!!?? That position means he is either a genius or an idiot. Because, well you know.....
...& the MSM's giving him a pass, while hammering Trump for flubbing a line when the rain washed out his teleprompter.
Right. They should shut down the day's programming to report on some guy that no one even knows is running for President....
....and give the leader of the free world a pass for not bringing a paper copy of the speech at the parade. A parade that you thought was important a few days ago. Turns out Trump and his staff didn't think it was all that important.
