Democrat 2020

[Montmorency]

Clinton was the obvious choice, but was Clinton the safe choice? Her problems with likeability, especially among independents were known going into the campaign. She was the 'next in line' and had the support of the party leadership, that's really the only reason she won. Sanders is not part of the party leadership but ran under Dem party for exposure and he certainly showed the weakness of her position among the young Dems.

Hindsight is always 20/20, but the Dems could have benefited from a proper vetting of candidates, for instance if Biden had entered the race. Another way of putting it is this, competition during the primaries keeps campaigns on their toes and shores up flaws. Having Hillary anointed the victor before Iowa caucus was definitely a very risky play by the Democrats.

You're right, I should have compared against the potential candidates who chose not to enter the race. I'm doubtful on the face that Harris, Gillibrand, or Warren could have been safer in 2016 - but I acknowledge that Biden would have been the safest possible front going in. Not that safe because 2016 would have been genuinely was a plenty good time to have an intramural falling out over Biden's liberal conservatism (further right than Clinton ended up).

Interesting note on favorability: By the Sanders Gallup polling I linked earlier, Clinton's favorability (77%) among Democrats in September 2018 is equal to Sanders' favorability (78%) among Democrats in the same period. Discuss.


BTW Acetaminophen, since you expressed preoccupation with electoral-geographic-demographic issues

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

here are two articles on how deregulation and retrenchment of Antitrust enforcement drained wealth and jobs and white collar workers from rural America and mid-sized Cities toward large coastal metropolitan zones. The suggestion is basically to reverse these trends of 'urban coastal elite privilege' and engender competition for jobs between all parts of the country. One putative side effect may be eliminate the Democrats' Senate disadvantage, to weaken the economic anxiety of (currently) flyover whites and thereby reduce the racial anxiety that is the other side of the coin. Which - hopefully drives enough whites to vote third party or abstain, I guess, from voting Republican...? As long as we're going to be scaring white upper-middle-class urban liberals with the specter of genuine desegregation, we might as well...

(Yes, there is an obvious flaw in this reasoning that elides the role of the modern international economic framework, plus existing and mutually reinforcing metropolitan social and infrastructural assets, in drawing efficiencies from geographic clustering of the highest-value industries. A neoliberal policy can disrupt the old ways, but nullifying it won't alone encourage the reproduction of those arrangements just as they developed within their contingent ecologies. We may still be prompted to ponder certain privileged interrelationships all the same. Good thing too that most of the articles' recommended commitments are independently desired among the Left.)

I'm not falling for any mischaracterizations. In that same speech she talks about how she thinks truancy is a criminal issue and that she's going to solve it by using her "big stick" even though some of her aides thought it was a bad move. She was absolutely bragging about her idea to threaten parents with prosecution if their children missed too much school.

Yes Harris did help that women get access to services, but she also charged her with a crime which I can imagine compounded her stress and made her life even more of a living hell than it already was. My own mother is unemployed, mentally ill and trying to raise my 13 year old sister by herself so I have some insight into what that kind of life can be like. If my mom was charged with a crime because my sister missed too much school it would totally wreck her mentally and emotionally.

I found Harris' attitude to be incredibly paternalistic, hence why I wrote that she thinks "poor people are too stupid for their own good".

The distinction remains between cheering prosecution for its own sake and upholding its possibility's targeted value in changing behavior (I'm not considering here whether it actually does, and I agree it's unimaginative.) I would quibble about whether she thinks poor people are stupid or more responsive to "sticks" than carrots, but OK, I see you.

Actually, this is a more pervasive kind of bias: poor people respond to threats, whereas rich/educated people respond to "incentives". This brief from 2013 I came across epitomizes the contrast:

Avoiding the “Big Stick” Approach: Regulators Seek to Aid Transparency for App Developers

California’s Attorney General Kamala Harris addressed mobile developers on Wednesday morning regarding mobile application privacy and her offices’ commitment to consumer privacy at The Future of Privacy+Innovation: A Workshop for App Developers in San Francisco. While the Attorney General has made it clear that consumer protection and application transparency are top priorities for her office, Harris pointed out that her office seeks not to aggressively go after all application developers with a “big stick,” but rather make sure that application developers are knowledgeable of what the law is and are empowered to take steps to make sure they are compliant with the law.

Ouch, not a good look. That juxtaposition is plain cringeworthy. It does go to show why a candidate should emphasize at least some measure of class warfare, to cut through the self-serving worldview of the - economically favored.