Tag Archives: Electability

2020 Democratic Primary, Democrats

If only the women running for the Democratic nomination were more likable

“A gentle warning to Democrats who are newly awakened to the prospect of Amy Klobuchar:

Remember that right now you like her. . . .

A woman but not, you know, the Elizabeth Warren kind of woman everyone had decided they didn’t like or couldn’t win. . . An electable woman. Acceptable to the assorted Biden castoffs and Buttigieg skeptics. . . .” — Monica Hesse (“You like Amy Klobuchar now? Remember that when your inner sexist starts doubting her,” WaPo, February 13, 2020).

As Hesse reminds us, Hillary Clinton had a 65% approval rating as Secretary of State, while Kamala Harris and Kirsten Gillibrand made strong positive first impressions when they declared their candidacies — until doubts about how likable (or, in some way or another, how presidential) they were overtook them.

In a November 2019 post, I noted that Elizabeth Warren was being transformed from a “cheerful, exuberant, uber-competent woman who simply gets things done and makes everyone feel included and proud” — à la Mary Poppins — into another unlikable Democratic woman.

I’m still with Ed Kilgore: C’mon, Democrats, don’t buy into Trump’s misogyny. Women serving in the House, the Senate, as governors and state legislators, and in local offices all the way down the electoral ladder are highly successful.

There is a long list of reasons why Hillary Clinton lost to Donald Trump in 2016: Vladimir Putin; Steve Bannon, Robert Mercer, and Clinton Cash; James Comey; complacency; her campaign’s neglect of voters in Michigan and Wisconsin … I could go on and on, and never mention sexism.

But after 2016, Democrats are spooked. They are second-guessing their own judgment — er, um, the judgment of other voters — on who is best qualified to beat Trump. Gotta make a safe choice, right?

Wouldn’t it be great to elect a woman, though? Kilgore quotes Li Zhou, who makes the case that the prospect of electing women creates added excitement among Democratic voters. Remember 2018 when Democrats, and a record number of women candidates, took back the House?

After November 2016, and the Mueller Report, and the Senate acquittal of Trump, and the week since the acquittal, fear is gripping Democrats by the throat.

Better — in my view — to act with clarity and confidence of what matters to Democrats, of what we stand for, of the vision and priorities that distinguish us from Republicans, than to succumb to fear and a thousand doubts about electability.

2020 Democratic Primary, Democrats

Donald Trump ran and won as a moderate – more moderate than Clinton (in voters’ eyes)

Quote of the day (Editor’s emphasis added):

” Many progressives have what they believe to be a knock-down answer to nervous Nellies who fret that talking about desegregation busing, decriminalizing illegal entry into the United States, banning assault weapons, and replacing private health insurance will kill them at the polls in 2020: Donald Trump is president.
If Trump is president, the thinking goes, it’s the ultimate proof of “lol nothing matters” politics. And if anything does matter, it’s riling up your base to go to war, not trimming and tucking to persuade precious swing voters. The old rules no longer apply, or perhaps they were never true at all.
Activists are pressing candidates to take aggressively progressive stands on broad issues like Medicare-for-all but also narrower ones like including undocumented immigrants in health care plans and providing relief from graduate school debt.
This is, however, precisely the wrong lesson to learn from the Trump era.
It’s true that Trump is president, but it’s not true that Trump ran and won as an ideological extremist. He paired extremely offensive rhetoric on racial issues with positioning on key economic policy topics that led him to be perceived by the electorate as a whole as the most moderate GOP nominee in generations. His campaign was almost paint-by-numbers pragmatic moderation. He ditched a couple of unpopular GOP positions that were much cherished by party elites, like cutting Medicare benefits, delivered victory, and is beloved by the rank and file for it. ” – Matthew Yglesias

Yglesias provides documentation justifying my headline and the selected quotation, which begins his piece. I’ll add that Democrats flipped the House in 2018 by presenting a clear contrast with Donald Trump’s Republican Party, not by reaching to the left edge of the Democratic Party.*

Fearless editor’s fretting: Elizabeth Warren is far and away my favorite United States Senator. I’d like to vote for her for president. Warren’s stance on Medicare for All (rather than Pete Buttigieg’s Medicare for All Who Want It) and the elimination of private insurance strikes me as a huge political miscalculation – and, independently, as bad public policy** – for someone who wishes to turn Trump out of office in November 2020.

I’ve voted for Kamala Harris in several statewide elections. She is high on my list of prospective Democratic nominees. Harris has twice endorsed the elimination of private insurance and twice walked it back the next day. This, much more than her past hedging (“We should have that conversation“), sows doubts about whether her tool chest of political skills – while impressive – is stocked with everything she needs to run a high stakes national campaign against Trump. She’s very good when she’s well scripted (though perhaps the script isn’t always reliable). And I’m not yet convinced that she’s “quick on her feet.”

* Taxing the rich is popular. I’m ready to take that stride to the left. Taking away someone’s health insurance is highly unpopular, for reasons – I’d argue – that are sound. See the note below.

** In my view, this policy shift is a heavy lift, which cries out for an incremental approach as we figure out in stages how to do it right and how to ameliorate the unwanted consequences. Furthermore, without a Democratic lock on the White House, the Congress, and the Supreme Court, the risk of Republicans sabotaging things during the transition (as they’ve done with ACA and Warren’s CFPB) are far too high. If the shift to Medicare for All Who Want It is done well, this will serve to reassure the public on the wisdom of a more radical change.