Wishful Thinking

I guess if ever there's a moment to say what I think about politics on my political blog it is now. Super Tuesday is... Tomorrow! And that means my State of California and many others will be voting, after which the basic contours of the race will be set and difficult to alter.  It appears we're headed for either a clear-cut Bernie win, or no one getting a majority and therefore a contested convention, which could play out any number of ways. I have read so many arguments and counter-arguments for the different candidates it's difficult to conclude anything with any strong sense of certainty, but I will share my basic impression of the situation.

Suffice to say I am not sold on the idea that Bernie is the best candidate to beat Trump. This study calls into question the Sanders' camp's electability claims:

Democrats should not be very reassured by early polls that find Sanders faring as well against Trump as the more moderate candidates: These numbers may only look decent for Sanders because they assume he will inspire a youth turnout miracle. Our survey data reveals voters of all parties moving to Trump if Sanders is nominated, a liability papered over by young voters who claim they would be inspired to vote by Sanders alone.
The gamble Democrats supporting Sanders based on his early polls against Trump must be ready to make is that, despite the evidence to the contrary, the lowest-participating segment of the electorate will turn out at remarkably high rates because Sanders is nominated.

There have been many articles making the case that Sanders is either the most electable, or in any case a very electable candidate... I cannot say with certainty they are wrong, but my gut feeling is that all these arguments are written by people who badly want them to be true, and whose biases are affecting their judgment. More concretely, the above article notes that all the models that have Bernie winning rely on the assumption that there will be a historic surge of voting among people who typically do not vote. This seems a dicey proposition at best to me.

Jonathan Chait makes many salient points about the dangers of nominating Sanders here, but one in particular I want to call attention to is this:

In 2008, Republicans began shifting their attacks to Barack Obama after he took a delegate lead over Hillary Clinton. By the end stages of the primary, Clinton was outperforming Obama in polls against John McCain. And indeed, Clinton’s popularity continued to rise for years after Obama became the face of his party, and Clinton was spared the brunt of Republican hostility. But this hardly proved Hillary Clinton would have made a stronger 2008 nominee than Obama. It simply displays the fleeting benefit of drafting off the front-runner’s position as the principal target of intraparty attacks. Notably, Trump has been directing his criticism at almost every candidate except Sanders, whom he, in fact, frequently defends as the innocent victim of a rigged process.

To me it feels obvious that this is what's going on right now... and of course as soon as Sanders seals the deal that dynamic is going to change FAST.  There's no question that Sanders is the candidate Trump wants to face, and for all his flaws Trump does seem to have a gut instinct for what needs to happen for him to pull out another win.

Trump is a notably unpopular president, especially considering how well the economy has been doing, and is very beatable. What Trump needs to do to win is to change the election from a "referendum" on him into a "choice" between him and a seemingly equally risky opponent.  He needs to be able to say, "hey, you might not like me, but my opponent will wreck the economy!" Sanders is probably the only candidate still in the race that would be seriously vulnerable to that charge. 

I believe he would be a weak candidate in a general election, for the most obvious of reasons. Just try to step back and disengage from this particular moment and just think in general terms: Does the United States seem like the kind of a place that would elect a Socialist as President? Has that been your understanding of where this country is at? Because to me it's the type of country that elected George W. Bush after starting a disastrous war over John Kerry, and then Donald Trump after (insert list of obscenities here) over Hillary Clinton. But perhaps you have a much, much more charitable view of the American electorate!

That said, Sanders has certainly run an impressive campaign and built a potent turnout operation during this primary. Honestly, for most of the campaign I assumed he had no chance of being the nominee, because most voters named "electability" as their top criteria. Amazingly that hasn't changed, but Sanders has managed to convince people that he, the "Democratic Socialist," is in fact, the most "electable." While I don't agree, I'm impressed he's been able to convince so many people of it. If he manages to secure a majority of the delegates (either before or during the convention) then he will certainly have earned his spot at the top of the ticket!


Of the candidates still in the race, for my money the one that would make the best President is Elizabeth Warren.  In contrast to Sanders, who even if he managed to win I suspect would be an ineffective leader, I think Warren knows how to get stuff done. But, honestly, I don't see her as being any more electable than Sanders, although for different reasons. I think she is likely to evoke the same hostility as HRC did, just because of who she is. Obviously her gender is a key part of that, but it's more than just that. Most people aren't very ideological, but vote for people they can relate to... The qualities I like about EW - her razor sharp intellect, her unwillingness to suffer bullshit - are precisely the things that many Americans find alienating. Like HRC I think she will strike people as a know-it-all woman telling them how to live their lives. I feel like arguments for her electability are, like those for Sanders, made by people who very much want them to be true, and so should be treated skeptically. That said, if we're going to chance it on a riskier candidate personally I'd rather it be Warren, as I think there would be more of a pay-off in the event she won.


I literally did not decide who to vote for until today, as I filled in my ballot. But ultimately I chose the candidate I think has best chance of beating Trump, among those that have a chance of winning the nomination.  Swing state polling suggests that person is Joe Biden. While I'll concede I'm not super inspired by Biden, I do think he's basically a good guy, and with him at the top of the ticket the election will be a referendum on Trump, which bodes well for our chances. Furthermore it's possible we could do quite well down ballot with Biden at the top.  I'm certain that the balance of Congress will have far more to do with how much gets accomplished than who is President (provided it's not Trump). I think that Buttigieg, Klobuchar and Beto all all getting behind Biden speaks to their understanding that we cannot afford to blow this election. It would be catastrophic.

Of course the concern about nominating anyone other than Sanders is that there are surely some Sanders supporters who would sit out an election if their guy isn't at the top of the ticket. This is a legitimate concern. Ultimately, though, I think Sanders is the riskier proposition. First of all, anyone who would sit out an opportunity to get rid of Trump is ultimately not a reliable voter under any circumstance. In other words, if you can't be counted on to vote for Biden over Trump you can't be counted on to vote for anyone over Trump. And second of all I think any defections from Sanders supporters will be more than outweighed by the defections we will avoid from the rest of the political spectrum who are primarily concerned about not screwing up the economy.


So, after much back and forth, that's where I finally landed. But I want to add that one thing I've come to appreciate over the course of this challenging election season - having seen so many impassioned, well-reasoned, persuasive arguments on behalf of any number of candidates - is that none of us have a monopoly on the truth, nothing is certain, and that all you can really hope is that people will take it seriously, consider alternate points of view and make their best choice according to whatever criteria they find appropriate. It may sound trite, but I really do respect anyone whose made their best effort to do that, even if they came to a different conclusion than me.

The only thing that gets under my skin is when people impugn the character of other candidates. All of the candidates are flawed, to be sure. But I do think they're all trying to do what's best for the country. They have different ideas about what that means, and various personal deficiencies, and sorting through all that is why we have primary elections. But let's at least give them some credit for throwing their hat in the ring to try do right by our country, to their best understanding of what that means.

I also want to add that, despite my serious reservations about Bernie as the nominee, I certainly do not share the paranoid fears of people like David Brooks who think Sanders is going to destroy democracy. (This takedown of Brooks' column is worth the read.) Sanders, like all of us, has his personal failings, but I do believe he is a fundamentally decent person and would do his best to help the less fortunate, which is certainly admirable. If he is the nominee I will support him without reservation.

Onward to Super Tuesday and beyond!




ICYMI I highly recommend these articles and companion videos by Vox making the case for the top candidates. They all make very interesting points.



Also, completely unrelated (for now), I learned a lot from this article about Coronavirus. I have a feeling we'll be talking a lot more about this.

Everything Flows

I made a flow chart....

The NYT stops being polite and starts getting... "real"

The New York Times editorial board listens to Amy Klobuchar

I watched that NYT endorsement show, where the editorial board meets with the candidates as part of their endorsement process... it was interesting, if silly.  As others have noted, they basically turned the process into a reality tv show, which is pretty much where we already were anyway.

A few quick points:

First, while the folks on the NYT editorial board don't seem like idiots, nor do they seem particularly more informed or insightful than most people I know. They're just people taking their best guess at this, using the same bs metrics all the rest of us are using, trying to figure it out. (Some argue the 'endorsement' of Biden from the building's elevator operator may be more significant than that of the editorial board.) The confusing 'double endorsement' of completely different candidates just reenforces that they're as clueless as the rest of us.

Another thing that stuck out for me involved their take on my man Andrew Yang. Basically they liked him and thought he had good ideas (without really grappling with those ideas, which after all are quite a bit different than those of all the other candidates)... but basically just dismissed him because he has no previous elected government experience. And, I will admit, that's a valid argument! It's something that concerns me as well. 

But one of them made a comment that to my mind actually deflated the significance of this factor: something to the effect of "we already have someone with no government experience in the WH, and we see how that's going." That made me chuckle... as if Donald Trump had only had a few years being governor or a senator then he'd be doing a better job as president. Trump's flaws clearly have nothing to do with his lack of experience: at this point he has three years experience being President and he is clearly getting worse at the job, not better. 

Holding Trump up as a point of reference seems to actually strengthen the case for Yang in my opinion: Yang, in contrast to Trump, clearly has the the kind of temperament and thoughtful approach to issues that one would want to see in a President, which is obviously more important than "experience.". On the other hand Trump's lack of government experience does highlight that that is clearly not a barrier to getting elected (it may even work to a candidate's advantage)... so if electability is our most important metric (as it should be) then perhaps we should not be placing such weight on this factor. 

Now, I get it: at this moment voters are not comparing Yang to Trump, but to the other Dems running for the nomination. In that context, all things being equal, I would prefer a candidate that has government experience. I think there are nuances to getting the bureaucratic gears turning that would be helpful for a President to already understand going in.

But it's not the only thing to consider. If there were a candidate with government experience who seemed to understand both the desperate need for change in this country AND that running just a more extreme version of the same game plan as before will simply continue to divide the country, creating more partisan gridlock and the familiar frustrations of the Obama years... someone who "got" the urgent need provide relief to struggling families without playing into the 'givers/takers' paradigm that turns so many voters off ... then of course I would vote for that person! But no one like that is running, so I'm left choosing between the person who does get all that stuff and... people with government experience. 

As a side note: I've come to realize even supporters of Bernie's "revolution" don't think anything significant will change under a Sanders admin... they just want someone at least arguing for full-throated revolution while the government stagnates under what they see as inevitable gridlock.  (Good to know they don't buy into all that 'revolution' crap, but still...) Meanwhile Biden's peddling fantasies of future bi-partisan cooperation, which are preposterous on their face. Yang's the only one thinking about how to scramble and re-align our politics to get us out of this awful stalemate. It may be a long-shot plan, but at least it's a plan!

Long story short: I feel Yangs strengths outweigh his weaknesses. If someone finds his lack of government experience disqualifying I can respect that. I just felt the NYT discussion of Yang if anything exposed some of the weaknesses of that line of thinking.


Finally, the show reenforced my belief that we lost a notably talented candidate with the exit of Cory Booker. 

Freedom of Choice (is what you got)

“This is an election that will have such profound impact so take your vote seriously. And for the Democratic voters, try to vote for the person you think is most likely to win because at the end of the day that is what will matter. And not just the popular vote, but the electoral college too.” 

— Hillary Clinton, quoted by Variety.

As usual I'm with HRC: electability remains my first, second and third priority. Of course, what does that mean? Who is most likely to win? It's still a hard question to answer.  I end up counting 6 candidates running for President that I would at least consider voting for.  Generally I lean towards supporting more moderate voices that I feel would have wider appeal, but I can see other points of view.

I found this argument from Warren stirring, for example, even if it didn't completely persuade me (yet). (watch the last 32 seconds)

Speaking of Warren, this article makes the case for choosing her. It's in depth and worthwhile. It talks about her strengths in bending bureaucracies in her preferred direction ("personnel is policy"). It argues her skills would be especially valuable with a divided government that would make progress difficult to achieve through conventional means (passing laws, etc).  I would just note, however, that it makes the case why she would be a good President, but not so much about why she would be a good candidate.  

This video clip of Warren campaigning prior to the midterms perfectly captures both her appeal to people like me, and why I think much of America would hate her.  "Angry woman fights back" is not a popular genre in this country. 

All that said I won't rule out voting for her. She's smart, has strong values but with a pragmatic streak, and she is "persistent." :)


Then again I also wouldn't rule out voting for 'Sleepy Joe.' I don't think he really has any sense of purpose or vision, but his flaws aren't ones that I think most Americans would really hold against him. Beyond just being a generally decent person, his electability is really the only thing he's got going for him... but that ain't nothing!

So... about Bernie.  I wanted to share a couple articles I found helpful: a 'pro' and a 'con.'

The 'pro' is from the same series of articles that made the case for Warren above. It makes the somewhat counter-intuitive (to me, at least) case that he could be the most electable of the current Democratic front-runners. Worth considering.

But if you are considering voting for him you owe it to yourself to also read this article arguing he is un-electable, which I find ultimately more persuasive. 

I guess the counter-counter argument is maybe voters don't even care about plans/ideas at all, and really are just voting for who they find more 'authentic.' Sanders is nothing if not 'authentic,' that I will give him. But to simply assume most voters will ignore everything mentioned in the article above seems like a risky bet, and one not supported by history.

I think Sanders has a good shot at winning the nomination for the same reason Trump won the Republican nomination last time: no one wants to attack him because if they win they'll need his voters to show up for them. He's never been truly tested by anything like the onslaught of negative attacks that would come were he to be the nominee. There's certainly no shortage of material to turn him into Che Guevara in the eyes of the public. I think this can be very difficult to appreciate for those of us living in liberal enclaves surrounded by like-minded people. It's a big country, and most of it is quite different than what we experience. 

I'd also like to give a brief nod to Klobuchar, who I think is a more articulate, dynamic version of Biden. This article makes a strong case she would be a great candidate to take on Trump.  She would of course face the same uphill battle that any woman would face. (As I've noted before the issue is less people saying 'I won't vote for a woman' as it is people making all sorts of negative assumptions about women without consciously even connecting it to their gender. See: Clinton, Hillary.) That said she has a proven track record of winning elections by significantly higher margins than other Dems on the same ballot.

She also makes the valid point that a candidate with coattails (meaning someone who does so well that Dems pick up more seats in Congress as well) would actually be able to accomplish more liberal goals than a more strident candidate who ekes out a victory while negatively affecting down-ballot races, ensuring they face a defiant Congress. 

If Klobuchar catches on I could imagine voting for her.

It's unlikely I'd vote for Bloomberg, but man... he's spending some real money! I read he's already spent more on this election than was spent on Obama's entire 2012 reelection campaign. 😮 And it's focused on taking down Trump, not other Dems. And he's said he's willing to spend up to a billion dollars to defeat Trump, even if it's Sanders or Warren on the ticket (who he admits not caring for). I'm not gonna bad mouth someone like that. And I won't completely rule out voting for him. He'd be a strong candidate.

I actually like Buttigieg (he seems to inspire a special kind of revulsion in some people, haha)... but his support in the black community is in the single digits... by which I mean the actual number of his black supporters 😂. A Democrat cannot get elected without strong support from African Americans. He's got a bright future ahead of him I'm sure, but this is not the role for him.

I was hoping Deval Patrick might make some waves because from what I've read about him he seems like he could be a really strong candidate. But I hardly ever hear anything about him. It's like he's barely even running. I wish he'd get on it, because he brings a lot to the table. But it's probably too late at this point.

I still think my guy Yang would be both an excellent candidate and President, for reasons I outlined here. California, where I currently live, votes on 'super Tuesday,' immediately after the first four states.  If Yang cracks the top four in any of the early states I will certainly vote for him... and maybe even if he doesn't.  

I remember way back in 2004 I was excited about Howard Dean, but by the time the race came to New York, where I lived at the time, he was toast and it was down to Kerry and Edwards. For some reason I thought Edwards was preferable of the two so I voted for him. I came to regret that... of course Edwards ended up being kind of a creep, but also I really liked Dean and I felt like I should have stayed true to myself. 

Yang has really inspired me and I feel like even if (as seems likely) he doesn't catch on this time his ideas will persevere, because they are good ones. And, hey, it's not too late for him to catch on... anything could happen! 🤷

But I probably won't decide who to vote for until pretty much the day of. It's that kind of election!

P.S. Here's a Youtube playlist I put together of mostly UBI/tech/Yang videos, with a few on Russian disinformation as well. Lots of good stuff in there!

This Moment

We're having another 'moment.' They seem to come more and more frequently. Wanted to quickly share a few articles I thought captured the current dynamics.

These two are especially interesting taken together:

"What Americans Do Now Will Define Us Forever," by Adam Serwer

and

"Trump Betting Indecency Can Win in America," by Andrew Sullivan

They compliment each other as they make similar points but also diverge, most notably on how Dems have responded to Trump. I'm more in tune with Serwer, but Sullivan's points shouldn't be discounted (even if occasionally he does write idiotic things).

After you read those consider this important reminder:

"Trump's Racism is Part of His Larger Con," by Matthew Yglesias

What he's doing is despicable in its own right and it matters, for sure, but let's not forget why he's doing it.

If you're looking for even more to read there's:

"Donald Trump Hates America," by David Brooks

It covers some of the same ground as Serwer and Sullivan, although more in Brooks' calm, erudite fashion. (He doesn't even bother to go after Dems.) Mostly just wanted to give him credit for writing it and proving not all Republicans are awful. (I know there are others: Charlie Sykes, etc. But it's a short list.)

Oh, and come to think of it, that article would pair well with (articles are like wine and cheese) this one:

"Trump is the Most Unpatriotic Presidential Candidate in American History," by Jonathan Chait

So true.


Have a great weekend!