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Been a crazy primary, hasn’t it? Ups and downs.., well apart from Sanders and Biden, who have stayed roughly the same in polling through most of it. Crazy news stories, twitter battles, reveals and counters, debate moments….
But after all that, the voting is now about to start, so I figured it is a good time to both throw a lot of last minute money at Warren, and remind people who she makes the best choice for president out of all the remaining options (Warning; I will be doing comparisons, so will be criticizing the other candidates as part of that.)
Why Warren:
#SheHasAPlanForThat: The plans themselves probably won’t pass or be put into practice exactly as described. What they do show is that Warren has has hired policy people (an important part of what a president will do), proposes programs that are generally sensible, and paid attention to a variety of issues that otherwise don’t get much attention. Any candidate can talk about, say, taxes, but oceans are quite a bit less common.
Competence, Making things happen and Doing it well: There’s 3-5 candidates I’d call “competence candidates”, who both support a lot of good programs, and have skills that can make them happen. Warren is the last of this group remaining (Harris and Inslee were definitely in, Gillibrand probably, Castro might have been: I just saw him as “another mayor” when he entered, and he wasn’t polling well when I learned about HUD as well, so never really looked at how well he did things there.)
If you run into anyone who says “competence is boring” or anything related, please give them a god solid kick in the nuts or woman equivalent. This goes way, way, way beyond the primary, but well run governments are a good thing to have.
Support for Warren comes in two areas:
Congress: The senate is going tough, there’s no questions about that. Dems have fewer seats now, will almost certainly grab Colorado, Arizona, Maine, North Carolina, maybe Iowa are also good options, and then there’s the stretches in (Iowa might go here) Georgia, Texas, maybe SC, Montana, KY, or a few other places. We’re all going to flood these places with money, but a narrowly controlled senate is the bottleneck to make anything happen, at the same time we’re looking at imminent global warming, plus the continuing issues of Health Care, voting rights, and such.
What to do about it? Biden has one proposal: use personal charm to work with Republicans, otherwise don’t change much. This is, shall we say, questionable. Sanders suggests using reconciliation for a few things (which means just 1-2 big ticket issues go through), than using big protests to force through other stuff. this isn’t just questionable, it’s been done: big protests for ACA repeals, and against Kavanaugh. Kavanaugh in particular is (I’ve heard) the only unfavorable overall SC nominee, Reps could get the same stuff from other judges, but they voted him through anyway.
Warren, on the other hand, has argued something plausible: get rid of filibusters. Filibusters didn’t always exist, and the idea seems to be batted around a little more over time.
Bureaucracy/Executive Agencies: Warren proposed, designed, and was looked at to run one of these. While Biden has done some of this as well (as vp), Sanders has not since mayor several decades ago, and that’s over a much smaller area.
Demographics: Warren’s support crosses the biggest split in the current democratic party: older vs. younger voters (“what about moderate vs. left”, “race!” some of you are thinking. I’ll have a post in hopefully a week or two on this, and can more fully summarize the argument in the comments if wanted.) This age related split played out in 2008, played out more obviously in 2016, and is occurring in this primary, as well as a lot of local ones. Biden and Sanders are highly polarized by age, with Sanders being a “young person” candidate, and biden being strongly an “old person” candidate. Warren, on the other hand, gets more even support all throughout. A couple reasons this is important:
Governing philosophy: In a stereotypical argument, old people are the ones who know we can’t have nice things, that we have to compromise for the sake of it, that proposing anything ambitious of Crazy and Wild and Totally Impractical and just plain rude. Young people, stereotypically, want change Right NOW! and won’t stop protesting Schumer or overthrowing anything vaguely establishment until the party is destroyed, and know that Experience is for Chumps. (I’m exaggerating, if that doesn’t come through.)
To have a richer, healthier, happier, more successful, etc. country, it seems to me you’ll want (this is very, very simplified, of course) a mix of younger person ambition and government programs, and older experience and existing knowledge of how governments work. Electorally, there’s probably more room for ambitious proposals than existed in past years: younger people generally lean more dem and vote more, Clinton faced unexpected foreign interference, running for a third term, and the worst media coverage of anything I’ve ever seen (Others have written about this, I plan to also), and still had a solid popular vote win. However, running government isn’t easy, and will work much better when the already existing people are working with you and using their experience and knowledge. Economics, science, etc. also tends to support more ambitious proposals.
Reading the first paragraph, you probably recognized some of Sanders, Biden, probably Buttigieg in the descriptions. Warren’s been handling this more like the second paragraph, making ambitious proposals, but otherwise generally working with people in the party.
Social Media interference: This is another “If you see someone spreading bullshit from social media, kick in the nuts” situation, and it goes again beyond the primary. Like it or not, though, this will happen, and a big question is how to resist it?
There’s technological, regulatory, etc. suggestions, but one big one to avoid: strong emotions, and polarization. A polarized primary between older and younger voters, where the opposite age group is bitter and angry, is a recipe for exactly this sort of fighting.
Warren has BALLS: Ha Ha, I said a woman has balls, aren’t I funny. But it is true, Warren, fitting McConnell’s quote, really is persistent, willing to stick with a goal and work through it towards a result: it comes across in almost anything she does. This is probably useful in a president, it’s also useful if you’re talking emotional reactions and likability. (Yet another of my planned posts: a different opinion on what makes someone likable and unlikable)
(We really need a unisex word for Balls. We’ll, some of the time, the trickster part of my brain still enjoys saying women have them and some men don’t, like Mr. orange real estate man.)
Better Supporters: This mostly compares to Sanders. While most candidates have their problem fans, Sanders has a much bigger share of toxic ones. “Russia didn’t happen, Clinton’s just blaming others”, years of internet harassment, threats in Nevada caucus, helping to spread media nonsense about Clinton, pushing for Stein votes, Sanders has a lot of toxicity associated with him, whether from high level supporters or media, or random people. This isn’t the kind of thing you want to reward. (I’ll write about the media examples, hopefully, in the media post mentioned above.)
More Efficient with Campaign Resources: Biden and Sanders started with the most support, both started with more money than Warren did, Sanders has continued to have more money since. Neither of the two has gained much or any support in the process apart from announcement bounces (that faded), even though in theory people would want to bandwagon. Warren, on the other hand, is the only non-Biden candidate to ever match Biden in any aggregates, is polling higher than she was at first announcement, and may have pushed other candidates to push out their own plans/proposals as well to compete, changing how the primary functions.
Whether due to the candidate herself, her staff, or both, that’s a good sign for a general election. any candidate will have a lot of resources available, full support from the dem party, etc., but will want to use that money well.
Maybe some of you think of more, but that’s a pretty good list to go out and raise money, electioneer, etc. as the primaries approach.