I agree on Biden being a bad candidate. With Buttigieg... I could see his sexuality as a real obstacle with black voters, black males in particular. In general, his background as the privileged son of professors is dripping out of his every pore. (Is that a valid metaphor in English, lol?) The way he talks and moves, his gestures and body language, the way he frames things - I'm not sure if someone with his habitus would really appeal to the disgruntled or disillusioned working-class voters in the Rust Belt.

Buttigieg would probably make for an okay-to-decent president and be one of the stronger candidates the Dems could field, but I'm not really sold on him. He's basically Obama 2.0, just white and gay instead of black and straight. Like Obama, he's got strong appeal to college-educated voters, but his appeal to the other ingredient of the 'obama coalition', to blacks and minorities, is far lower than Obama's. I really dont see Buttigieg winning the fairly 'trumpy' Florida, I dont see him strong in Pennsylvania, and I'm not sold on his prospects in North Carolina, Nevada or Arizona either.

Sanders or the country burns!

Wow, you're REALLY out of touch. Sanders is literally the riskiest pick out there. There's a substantial portion of the electorate who are vehemently against him AND a lot of industry are scared of his policies. Changing the economy during a strong economy seems like a really dumb campaign slogan. There are people like my parents who would vote for Biden over Trump but would vote Trump over Sanders. That means you have to get TWO non-voters for every voter like that. That seems like an incredibly risky proposition.

As for Buttigieg, I really like him because he seems incredibly thoughtful and would create a wonderful bureaucracy. However, I have enough self-awareness to know that I'm a very small minority of the electorate. I'm a big fan of his but I think he'd struggle getting substantial portions of the electorate to vote for him. He's the exact opposite of a "beer" candidate.

Ultimately, I think the Dems will turn out no matter what. The prospect of Trump getting another 4 years is just too much for the base. I'd be curious to see what your takeaways from 2016 are. The "safe" pick/swamp analysis seems vacuous to me.

I disagree. Buttigieg and Warren are Trump's ideal candidates. Do we think Buttigieg can mobilize black voters in Michigan? Can Warren mobilize anyone?

Biden is probably a trap pick, but at least he can compete. Sanders might actually have an outside shot, but the moment he becomes viable the money will pour in to stop him.

Another prime example of Mr. Outoftouch.

For all us (ex-) party animals, our good friend Bernard Sanders voted against the RAVE Act.

It's bizarre to me that so many Democrats don't understand why they lost in 2016. Sure, there's the event driven stuff (Comey, etc.) but most of it is demographics. Enough white working class folks in the rust belt went to Trump and that cracked the Obama coalition. It's pretty simple and there's a ridiculous amount of polling data that corroborate that analysis.

Probably should have paid attention when unions said that they wouldn't vote for Hillary unless she came out against the TPP. Those are supposed to be Democrats bread and butter and they were on the fence about the Dems candidate.

Still, messages like access to college and healthcare resonate super hard with people in those demographics. Trump won them with a lot of rhetoric about bringing back jobs that will never actually come back.

The biggest reason the Democrats lost in 2016 was because they choose an uninspiring candidate. She didn't turn out the young vote, and though she did well with minorities in the margins, she didn't turn out their vote, either. This was compounded by the fact that the DNC kept a lot of their voters home by rigging their own primary and worsening relations between the moderate and liberals of the party.

Conservatives are consistent voters. They'll turn out for whoever: Trump proves that. Democratic voters are less reliable. They need to be inspired and moved to vote. They have a different and less conventional political playbook than Republicans. Obama covered up the flaws of a terrible party infrastructure in 2008 and 2012 by turning out massive amounts of young voters and moderates who lean left. The Rust Belt wouldn't be nearly as talked about now if Clinton had turned out just a few more young votes in key states.

As an incumbent with a strong economy, Trump is the odds-on favorite to win no matter who the Dems nominate. Counter to your point, I'd argue that picking Biden is actually not learning from the 2016 election. Another old, out of touch, uninspiring political swamp monster.

Sanders and Buttigieg would be indeed risks, but Dems need to make a risk in order to win a tough election. I don't think Biden's political ceiling is as high as Sanders' or Buttigieg's, who are both more inspiring, more politically talented and more relevant at this political moment.

To be clear, I think Warren is the worst pick out of the remaining Democratic "Big 4."

Biden is inarguably the safe pick, but offers a lower political ceiling than Sanders or Buttigieg against Trump, who is an incumbent president with a strong economy.

One thing Ive wondered for a long time is whether anyone else, anyone other than Obama himself can actually pull off the 'obama coalition'. That Clinton's black turnout would fall off compared to Obama is something that had to be expected, right?

The standard electoral analysis at the moment goes something like this: "Trump traded away college-educated whites, particularly in the sun belt, for working-class whites in the rust belt. While this wasnt helpful for his popular vote share, or perhaps even hurt it, it formed a coalition which is much stronger in the electoral college". But what if we actually have to apply the same line of reasoning to Obama as well? Something like "Obama eroded white working-class support for Democrats, but he was able to compensate for it because he was improving with college-educated voters and because he was, for obvious reasons, getting unprecedented black turnout".

Furthermore, his specific coalition faced a favorable playing field: in 2008, the Republicans were toast no matter what. From 2010 to 2014, the GOP was pushing hard on the fiscal conservative agenda, something that doesnt appeal to moderate working-class voters in the rust belt at all. So in this sense, I think that the GOP's wrong strategical direction had covered up the already ongoing alienation between the white working-class and the Democratic party. When Trump waltzed in in 2015 with his agenda of cultural conservatism and economic populism, the seed had long been sown for these voters to switch sides.


The longer I think about it, the more I'm convinced that the Democrats are just stuck between a rock and a hard place in 2020. The old "Blue Wall" strategy is probably no longer feasible, while the time has not come yet for the "Sun Belt" strategy. Perhaps all they can do is wait until demographic change turns Arizona, Texas, Georgia and North Carolina purple or light blue.

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Jan 20 2020 02:38pm