Democrat 2020

[Montmorency]

The alt-right appreciated Sanders for the same reason the "Yang Gang" exists: 'welfare for me, not for thee'. Boring.

The resentful history of Clinton's campaign doesn't hold up well in retrospect.

Clinton monopolizing party resources toward her campaign was bad, but it's a milestone of a pernicious trend toward prioritizing presidential elections. Obama did much the same, just less intense because the money flow grows with each cycle. The deleterious effect on state and Congressional politics was evidenced in the collapse of the Democratic party during Obama's tenure. 2018 midterms was a rebuke to this emphasis, but now most are back to focusing on the presidency. This is, I should introduce, one of my concerns with Sanders and his most zealous supporters, that they have fallen into a cult of personality and have failed to realize that no "heroic" presidency is worth much without Congressional majorities. If Dems had +20 Senators and +150 Representatives, in step with Rooseveltian figures, a literal donkey in the Oval Office could pass Medicare for All. Roosevelt's max (after his first re-election) was about +250 Reps and +55 Senators, and even then he had to moderate his legislation to pass it. You need those figures if you want a full Green New Deal so much as on the table. The current figures are House +38 and Senate -6.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

On the latter point one can argue for vote deflation. In the 1930s the parties were less ideologically and electorally coherent than they are now. With the expulsion of the Southern Democrats seething in waves along FDR, Truman, LBJ, Reagan, Clinton, and lately Obama, a contemporary Democratic Congressperson in the midst of a supermajority could well be a more reliable vote now than back then. Going further, one could even apply a gerrymandering/suppression handicap to lower the effective Dem threshold. The relatively overwhelming numbers are still the prerequisite for passing legislation more ambitious than the ACA though. And don't get me wrong, the ACA was an enormous lift as it was.

I'll finish replying about Warren and Sanders within a day, but let me say that watching Warren spitting policies be like:

Interesting shift (though his use of a "quality" assessment for the candidates warrants grain of salt treatment). I found it interesting that the strongest outliers in favor of incumbency were during the height of the war/leftist protest movement during the Vietnam conflict. Of course, the baseline culture was different then, so that may not betoken a backlash against today's crew of ardent lefties.

I'm not familiar with the literature, but here's a paper on the subject of disaggregating the effect of incumbency from "candidate quality", a poli sci variable as venerable as your career.

Note that the definition in equation 1 does not assume that the candidates in
w(')and wcO) are identical in all respects except for incumbency status. Our theoretical definition of incumbency advantage properly includes the electoral advantages of all the perquisites of office: constituency service, fund-raising, name
recognition, visibility, and others. We also do not make the counterfactual assumption that candidate quality is the same for incumbents and challengers, allowing quality also to be included in our definition.

I don't know enough to speculate on granular fluctuations in incumbency advantage, there must be many variables. For example, if per the recent data referenced some main drivers of contemporary voter behavior are partisanship and polarization, then holding that hypothesis alone for the incumbency trend is cleanly contradicted by the incumbency advantage rising and peaking just as the party's were starting to properly diverge from their elite consensus (1950s consensus - 1980s incumbency peak - 2010s hyperpolarization).

Warren's group did not release their first quarter totals.

It's out there, disclosure is mandated by law. A little over $6 million, with $10 million transferred from her Senate war chest. Bottoming out among the frontrunners for fundraising is a definite weakness, and I assume her repudiation of high-dollar fundraisers (while admirable) must handicap her.

Unless Warren's grass roots support set up is WAY better than it seems from media coverage, it may be a little premature for you to change horses.

I did say "see you next month". My state hasn't even confirmed the date of the primary yet, so I might be irrelevant.

Right now, I am thinking Biden/Buttigieg, with Biden's basic centrist appeal and Buttigieg's strength in Ohio, would be the strongest electoral mix -- though admittedly less trueheart social-democrat than the core of the party faithful would likely prefer.

With both Beto and Butty (a genius, to be scrupulously fair) running, Biden would be a high-tier fool to declare at all. While ideology isn't everything given the near-certainty of a divided Congress, electing a team to the right of either Obama/Biden or Clinton/Kaine would seem to be an efficient way to waste a generational opportunity, lose the 2022 midterms, and ensure a one-term Democratic president.