The Democratic field is demoralizing Democrats
I’ve had a number of conversations with Democrats in recent weeks that have all gone about the same way.
The person asks me who is my favorite Democratic candidate (for the most part, these people think they’re talking to a fellow Democrat). I say I don’t know and that the field is poor, and then throw the question back at them and they agree with me that it’s poor.
They agree with a furrowed, worried brow. Sometimes they say something like, “Well, I’d like Biden if there wasn’t all this Ukraine stuff and if he wasn’t so old.” Several said maybe Bloomberg, because they’re not afraid of a Bloomberg presidency – which indicates to me that they’re actually afraid of most of the other candidates. But they agree that Bloomberg is unlikely to win the nomination.
They don’t seem to know what hit the Democratic Party. They don’t just express lack of excitement, they express bewilderment and puzzlement. I’ve not encountered anyone so far (granted, the pool I talked to is small) who has expressed a particle of enthusiasm for any Democratic candidate.
It must be very very depressing for them. They hate Trump. He seems to them like a sitting duck, and the presidency seems to be ripe for the taking. And yet as they look around they don’t see a single person in the vast Democratic Party who they believe can do it. And these Democratic voters don’t know why.
Voter enthusiasm is a big deal in elections because it affects turnout, which can be ultra-important. This is one of the reasons that Democrat leaders and the MSM keep pounding on Trump’s awfulness, even making things up. It’s their only hope – to energize Democratic voters against Trump rather than for anyone.
[NOTE: Neither Hillary Clinton nor Michelle Obama’s name has come up as a possible candidate during these discussions, either, by the way.]
Maybe your friends secretly think Trump is doing a good job but cannot admit it to themselves.
My experience has been the same. On the other hand Trump voters are PISSED, and can’t wait to vote.
“They don’t seem to know what hit the Democratic Party.”
“. . . even making things up.”
So there it is. Can’t see the lies for all the lies. Pity.
“They hate Trump. He seems to them like a sitting duck, and the presidency seems to be ripe for the taking. ”
That’s what they get for just mainlining CNN WaPo and NYeT. The bubble has no outside for them. Hence no thinking outside.
I’ve not encountered anyone so far (granted, the pool I talked to is small) who has expressed a particle of enthusiasm for any Democratic candidate.
That’s my impression too, aside from those already committed to Sanders and Warren.
Which is why I still consider Michelle Obama a possibility. If she were persuaded to run (and I agree that left to her own devices, she doesn’t want to), all those vague, worried Democrats would line up like iron filings to a magnet.
The Dems’ 2020 priority above all else is to defeat Trump. The leadership and party voters know they are in trouble. If Michelle descended from the sky and said, “I am here,” obstacles would melt away.
But even Michelle might not be able to defeat Trump, and that’s what I understand is the real problem. Mr and Ms O don’t want to go to all that trouble and lose.
That’s what they get for just mainlining CNN WaPo and NYeT. The bubble has no outside for them. Hence no thinking outside. [VanderLeun]
Can’t disagree, but I’m noticing something more. My jurisdiction is over 80% registered Democrat and my neighborhood is 90%. I hear the cant in their voices beginning to shake, quiver, lose its certainty. They repeat their rosary, but these three years have taken a toll. A successful executive is hard to beat with Cory Booker and lefty yentas. Just like the folk who admitted they were glad it wasn’t President Gore after 9/11.
The principal answer is they don’t have better candidates because their schtik is fading into history and they have no new ideas, zero.
I felt somewhat the same in 2015. I knew Hillary would run, but I had confidence that one or the other of the conservative field would be able to beat her — or, at least I hoped so. However, by this time in late 2015 the Trump uprising was well underway and his following was growing. There is no one like that to energize the Democrats this time that I can see.
It’s another indicator, in case we needed one, that in comparison to my grandparents’ contemporaries (b. ca. 1900) and in comparison to my parents’ contemporaries (b. ca. 1929), today’s professional-managerial class is composed of people of low character. The bad screening system is then responsible for intensified pathology. These people aren’t fit to shine the shoes of the cohorts who organized the war effort ca. 1943 or the young people who fought that war.
These people aren’t fit to shine the shoes of the cohorts who organized the war effort ca. 1943 or the young people who fought that war. [ArtDeco]
We need a good Depression to toughen us up.
Victor Davis Hanson had a wonderful Thanksgiving tribute to the Greatest Generation with invidious comparisons to the generations since:
My father, William F. Hanson, died when I was 45 and I still recall his advice whenever I am at an impasse, personally or professionally. “Just barrel ahead onto the next mission.” Such a spirit, which defined his generation, is the antithesis of the therapeutic culture that is the legacy of my generation of Baby Boomers—and I believe it explains everything from the spectacular economic growth of the 1960s to the audacity of landing a man on the moon.
https://www.hoover.org/research/thanksgiving-toast-old-breed
A female friend, who is a lefty in a lefty town, gets spitting mad about Trump (and about Kavanaugh, too). She thinks both should just take all the shit flung at them without complaint or retaliation. “It’s not Presidential…”
I asked what Trump had done to earn her hate. “He wants to hurt people I care about!” She means gays; she admits that the tide of illegals worries her. I asked her what Trump was doing to gays. She couldn’t name one thing. And she has a tranny living with her daughter, and trust me, mom doesn’t like him. But Trump was a bad man.
There’s no point in reasoning with her, as reason didn’t get her where she is now.
“They don’t seem to know what hit the Democratic Party.”
Having rejected critical aspects of both human nature and operational principles of the external reality within which we all exist… they have no basis for accurate analysis or feedback.
You cannot successfully navigate across the oceans if you reject objective observations as irrelevant subjective opinion.
I support ANY party that fosters policies that will achieve job growth, family creation, increased marriage rates, decreased divorce rates, more children, and less abortion — all signs of a healthy society. I would happily switch from (R) to (D) but I don’t see it happening anytime soon given the current trajectory of the Democratic Party.
We need a good Depression to toughen us up.
No, we need a better culture. Britain prosecuted the war more vigorously than we did, even though the Depression there was comparatively mild.
Trump’s prospects for re-election are strong. The smart, strong Democrat candidates know this, and so are not running. Your Democrat friends, and mine, are in their bubble and blind to this reality. This is why the Democrat field is so glaringly weak. But don’t tell your friends, that would be an impolite way to speak to them.
One important thing to grasp is that the best candidate for the presidency often comes from the governorships. Showing the capacity to be leading an entire state, with all its various issues, is often a good sign for capacity as a PotUS. Name a significant Dem governor, though.
Most of them are idiots and incompetents, busy pissing off too many people when they DO manage to get in charge. Most state governors of note tend to be Republicans.
The major class that dressed things up and smashed the old way, is going to find out the hard way, you cant turn a pickle into a cucumber…
One important thing to grasp is that the best candidate for the presidency often comes from the governorships. Showing the capacity to be leading an entire state, with all its various issues, is often a good sign for capacity as a PotUS. Name a significant Dem governor, though.
A number of governors set up campaign committees and the like. The Democratic electorate wasn’t interested. Sanders and Buttigieg have executive experience. Sanders was, in his time, an accomplished mayor. Buttigieg has been a business-as-usual failure.
It’s not the field of people,
it’s the PC ideas.
The lies the Dems and the Dem media have been telling for so many years.
Since only Dems who speak the PC false ideas are speaking up without a woke outrage mob shutting them down, the Dems are hearing false ideas.
And don’t yet accept that they’ve been believing lies.
Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice – nah, I’m too smart to be fooled twice. Or thrice. Or over and over again and again — I’m not THAT dumb.
They ARE that dumb, but smart enough to realize that to admit they’ve been fooled so often so long means they have been dumb — so they don’t allow themselves to admit it.
They’re blaming Trump now, but I’m wondering if Trump won’t get them to start blaming the Dem media, and the Dem professors in colleges. And get them angry enough to not vote, which is a halfway support for the Rep, even if voting Rep is too much for this election. They actually have been fooled by the Dem media and disgusting Dem professors, so any anger at those groups would be cathartic.
How’s that WalkAway movement doing? What about with Kanye and blacks and Jesus is King?
Great economy … no recession means Trump wins re-election. 70% (60-90 range, my current probability).
One important thing to grasp is that the best candidate for the presidency often comes from the governorships.
OBloodyHell: That was the conventional wisdom, maybe still is, but we’re sure seeing a lot of senators running for Prez the last few decades, more on the Dem side than Rep.
this is a democrat farce too..
https://intelligence.house.gov/report/
The Democrats have not learned that calling roughly half the population deplorables because they don’t endorse the LBGTQXYZ agenda, abolishing the 2nd amendment, open borders, radical feminism, infanticide, the sky is falling climate hysteria, and globalism over sovereignty will not encourage the deplorables to either commit suicide or stand in line meekly to enter the concentration camps.
“one of the reasons that Democrat leaders and the MSM keep pounding on Trump’s awfulness, even making things up. It’s their only hope – to energize Democratic voters against Trump rather than for anyone.”
Yep, I totally agree with you on that Neo; they have no other real options except to say that Trump is so awful that you HAVE to vote for one of them.
parker: But that’s the Dem MO. Stake out a moral position outside the box, then keep pushing until it’s inside the box, then win.
It’s worked pretty well for them … so far. Stuff works until it doesn’t. I believe that strategy has reached its sell-by date, but the Democrats don’t know that yet.
The No Malarkey All Buffoonery tour has just begun!
One technical aspect producing this demoralization is probably the DNC’s stupid idea to “nationalize” the debate process. I just looked it up. There were only THREE Democratic debates in 2015. There are scheduled to be EIGHT before the end of 2019. It would have been six except they had to split two debates into two-night events because there were too many candidates to fit on one stage.
So, the national audience is getting way more exposure to these candidates way earlier than normal. I think the idea is the DNC wanted to take control of the winnowing process and not wait for it to happen with Iowa/New Hampshire/South Carolina at the start of 2020. The result, however, has been the previously mentioned overexposure, candidates having to go even harder Left than usually to try and meet the donor/poll number requirements to get in the debates, and the middlebrow of the Democratic field (like Harris, Gillibrand, Bullock, etc.) being prematurely forced out.
Mike
The husband of Democrat Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell (D-FL), who sits on the House Judiciary Committee, reportedly took $700,000 from firms connected to a Ukrainian oligarch who has allegedly been “accused of ordering contract killings.” Democrats are set to move their impeachment hearings from the Intelligence Committee to the Judiciary Committee this week with hearings to officially begin tomorrow.
regardless of their circus, more and more is coming out
first from the latvians who found the paper trail of the bidens
to things like above… which later will include pelosi kid too
this is definitely a popcorn moment…
MBunge, add the new early voting where you can vote before you find out more and cant change it by election night…
http://www.baltic-course.com/eng/legislation/?doc=151779
Latvia’s PrivatBank has been used to transfer money from Ukrainian gas and oil company Burisma Holdings to Rosemont Seneca, a company belonging to US Vice President Jo Biden’s son Hunter Biden
and if that isnt popcorn ready, just add this biden butter
Hunter Biden Wants Financial Records Kept Secret in Child Support Suit
politifact says this:
Pelosi, Romney and Kerry don’t have sons working for companies linked to Ukraine
here is paul pelosi in a video
NRGLab & New Technology
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1KfU5ifhqE
Paul Pelosi Jr. is a member of management team of Viscoil Group of Companies and NRGLab. Paul Pelosi Jr. is interested in developing clean energy that can replace gasoline and diesel as transportation fuel sources.
When Pelosi, Jr., was asked about the purpose of his visit at the time, this is how he responded:
Pelosi, executive director of the Corporate Governance Initiative, was asked why he was in Kiev.
RedState reports:
…Viscoil is under investigation for securities fraud. It seems as though the public management of the company, which included Paul Pelosi, Jr., as President and COO, was actually a Potemkin arrangement that hid the fact that the company was actually controlled by a pair of convicted felons.
and from Washington Examiner:
John Kerry’s stepson rushed to play damage control at the State Department after his business partner Hunter Biden cut a deal with an oligarch-owned Ukrainian gas company in 2014, according to internal State Department correspondence obtained by the Washington Examiner.
[snip]
At the time, Hunter Biden, now 49, and Christopher Heinz, the stepson of then-Secretary of State John Kerry, co-owned Rosemont Seneca Partners, a $2.4 billion private equity fir
i didnt bother to read politifact…
if anyone does, let me know how they prove the point against Viscoil, burisima, rosemont seneca and Chris Heinz…
given Trump has the power to make things no longer a secret, be interesting if he chooses to remove the block on things as he had already delegated that power to another investigation…
i also wonder if any of that money ever went to campaigns..
To paraphrase little Stevie Wonder: “When you believe in things you don’t understand, you make everyone suffer. Dogma ain’t the way.”
Would the Democratic campaign be any different if it were run by zombies? “must vote Dem, must vote Dem.” Why? “Brains, brains.”
Agree the dem candidates are beyond mediocre. For all the reasons stated above – and more! However, that may not matter. My fear is that the dems will conjure up enough votes out of graveyards and car trunks to win. They only need about three states. And then we’ll be stuck with whatever third rate ward heeler they nominate.
Scary.
Sad!
Molly,
I agree 100%. That’s my first worry too.
There is a reason why so many people hate Donald so much, and why this has almost no impact on him and his followers. 4 years ago when my wife and me were watching one of Trump campaign rallies, she told to me: “A very strong Lutheran upbringing”. I belived her immediately, because completely apart from the Trump’s religious convictions, if he has any, this is a matter of psychology, not of theology or religious practice. And she also had this very strong Lutheran upbringing, in spades. Such people are the most stubborn, unruly people in Universe, much more than any religious fanatic of any creed. Their ultimate argument is their own conscience, not any principle, authority or dogma. They reserved for themselves the right to be illogical, to deny facts, decorum or traditions, if these things are felt “unfair” to them. “Here I stand and can not do otherwise” is the argumentum which can not be even attacked, much less defeated. And this subjective fairness is the penultimate truth for them. After 50 years of marriage to a woman of such type, I know what I am talking about.
Even worse than the Democrat presidential field are the elected Congress and the voters that elected them!The presidential candidates are the best!
This goes back to the tried and true aphorism: ‘They don’t understand us, but we understand them’. Our views and our convictions are unfathomable to them, therefore they don’t understand why they are losing and we are winning – they don’t understand our (or Trump’s or any conservative’s) appeal, and they don’t understand their own candidates’ lack of appeal.
Ah well – ’twill be forever thus.
I think there are a number of dynamics at play. Here’s one: the liberal Left is afraid of their own kids. I’m afraid of their own kids too.
Old-time Democrats were able to play both ends against the middle — to pretend to having socialist sensibilities, while using that pretext to increase their power and, with it, their opportunities for graft and corruption.
Not unlike Republicans who pretended to care about the Constitution and religion and the family so just they could position their snouts closer to the trough.
Old-time Democrats and establishment Republicans were more alike than not. That’s why they were so good at coming up with bipartisan ways of fleecing the taxpayers. They kept their eyes on the ball: power -> graft -> corruption -> money -> more power.
Obama gave the true-believing Left hope that he was a different type of politician. He wasn’t, really. He was just a talented Chicago guy who took the opportunity to turn Washington into Chicago.
The Left has finally realized they were snookered. But only the kids really have the nerve to go full red-diaper baby; they don’t think they have anything to lose.
The Right realized they were snookered sooner than the Left, hence Trump. Their politicians were more interested in corralling them and controlling them than in fulfilling their promises. The Tea Party could not be corralled, so they were destroyed. There’s a reason Republicans don’t want the IRS scandal investigated. They know their base will more easily forgive their projected incompetence than outright treachery. Trump scares them the same way the red-diaper babies scare the Left: it’s the end of the world as the politicians know it.
Both sides are fully energized.
And now for the real problem: the “extreme” Right wants to restore American norms; the extreme Left wants to continue tearing them down.
You cannot form a consensus when one side won’t compromise with those who are trying (in their view) to preserve a corrupt status quo, and the other side won’t willingly compromise with those trying to tear down everything they cherish.
How do you compromise with someone who wants to destroy what you love? Okay, we’ll let you destroy half of it?
As for me? I’m one of the coal-mine canaries. I saw most of this when Pat Buchanan saw it. It was just a little zit then. By 2008, it was a gross-looking pimple.
Today it is a festering carbuncle. It won’t be pretty when it explodes.
The irony is that Trump is simply a 1990s-style moderate Democrat: pro-worker, pro-gay, pro-Israel, tough on illegal immigration. Seriously, read the 1992 DNC platform sometime. So he is attractive to us former Democrats who are baffled at how our party has abandoned us to chase some ideas it read on Twitter.
The Democratic party, particularly its large liberal wing, has certainly changed. Compare the present field to this from the life of George McGovern, who ran against Nixon in 1972. During WWII he received the Distinguished Flying Cross.
“On McGovern’s December 15 mission over Linz, his second as pilot, a piece of shrapnel from flak came through the windshield and missed fatally wounding him by only a few inches. The following day on a mission to Brüx, he nearly collided with another bomber during close-formation flying in complete cloud cover. The following day, he was recommended for a medal after surviving a blown wheel on the always-dangerous B-24 take-off, completing a mission over Germany, and then landing without further damage to the plane. On a December 20 mission against the Škoda Works at Pilsen, Czechoslovakia, McGovern’s plane had one engine out and another in flames after being hit by flak. Unable to return to Italy, McGovern flew to a British airfield on Vis, a small island in the Adriatic Sea off the Yugoslav coast that was controlled by Josip Broz Tito’s Partisans. The short field, normally used by small fighter planes, was so unforgiving to four-engined aircraft that many of the bomber crews who tried to make emergency landings there perished. But McGovern successfully landed, saving his crew, a feat for which he was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_McGovern#Military_service
“Trump’s prospects for re-election are strong. The smart, strong Democrat candidates know this, and so are not running.”
Name one smart, strong democrat. Just one. If there was ever any bench, obama cleared it off.
Has beens, never weres and never willbe’s
Hillary happened. If she had conceded the election with class, the Democrats could have gone forward with the appearance of sanity. But no, she couldn’t do that. Blaming others for her manifold failures is the Hillary way and it has driven the party and MSM nuts. Her lack of leadership was deadly to the party.
The irony is that Trump is simply a 1990s-style moderate Democrat: pro-worker, pro-gay, pro-Israel, tough on illegal immigration. Seriously, read the 1992 DNC platform sometime. So he is attractive to us former Democrats who are baffled at how our party has abandoned us to chase some ideas it read on Twitter.
Jim: After the Tea Party emerged in 2010 (seems a long time ago) Democrats and pundits went on about how radically right-wing the Tea Party was — as if the Brown Shirts were at the gates and looking to turn back the clock to the 1930s.
However, IMO the Tea Partiers would have been quite satisfied to go back to the 1990s during Clinton’s presidency. It is the Democrats who have changed radically.
Name one smart, strong democrat. Just one. If there was ever any bench, obama cleared it off.
I doubt Obama had much influence on anything, other than intensifying the sort of entitlement mentality in the Democratic Party you’ve seen since 2010: i.e. entitled to use the tax collectors and security services against the opposition. You don’t have lousy candidates because Obama somehow prevented them from building political careers. You have lousy candidates because the office and the campaign for the office is so horrid (and this screens out good people), because good people aren’t motivated to build political careers because the whole system stinks, because our professional-managerial class is chock-a-block with lousy people, and because street-level Democrats have no interest in quality or accomplishment. Look at the run of people who have built competitive campaigns in the Democratic Party in the years since 1990: Hellary, Bernie Sanders, Barack Obama, John Edwards, Wesley Clark, Howard Dean, John Kerry, Bill Bradley, Albert Gore, Bill Clinton, Tom Harkin, Bob Kerrey, Paul Tsongas, and Jerry Brown. The ones with admirable accomplishments outside of electoral politics were Gen. Clark, Dr. Dean, and Gov. Kerrey. You might point out that Hellary, John Edwards, and Bill Bradley made a good living in other venues, but you’d have to qualify that with the observation that Hellary’s law partnership was with scant doubt a function of her husband’s political office, that Edwards’ law career is a manifestation of the pathologies abroad in our political economy (just as his family life is an indicator of a different sort of pathology), and that the disjunction between athletic endeavour and any other sort of endeavour just renders Bradley’s accomplishments inapplicable. It says something about the culture of the Democratic Party that Dean thought it behooved him to do bad imitations of Sam Kinison in order to win votes. You’ll note, btw, that Messrs. Clark, Dean, Bradley, and Kerrey are all over 70, that while all of them were competitive candidates after a fashion, none were anywhere near the brass ring. Aside from their presidential run, Dean’s last electoral campaign was in 2000, Kerrey’s in 1994, and Bradley’s in 1990. Clark received his last posting in the military in 1997 and retired three years later. These are men from a different era.
And, again, how did the Democratic electorate react to Gov. Hickenlooper, Gov. Bullock, or John Delaney? They didn’t care. They go for Pete Buttigieg who was at best a meh mayor and for Joe Bribem, who has too many pathologies to count.
This is largely Trump’s doing. His strategy is to badger the Dems into going crazy so that they can’t put a coherent strategy together and agree on a viable candidate. Trump has this gift of saying something outrageous that will provoke the Dems into foaming at the mouth and becoming disoriented.
Tulsi Gabbard is their best candidate but the DNC doesn’t think she is progressive enough. Too bad. They will have settle for a candidate who is much older and dumber!
Bad news, folks. “Scholars Testify: Founding Fathers Would be ‘Horrified’ by Trump’s Actions.”
That cinches it.
Ann Althouse has said she was aghast at the conduct of three of the four professors who testified, finding herself barely able to watch.
Hang him high!
Hillary’s name may not have “come up” but it’s always there lurking menacingly in the background…like a crazed ex who doesn’t quite understand the meaning of “It’s over”.
(Talk about a candidate “energizing” the base!)
But one never knows. Given the extraordinary “no words could do it justice” nature of the current gaggle of Democratic candidates, this could be Her Excellency’s “Apres moi, moi” moment:
https://pjmedia.com/trending/hillary-says-she-has-been-deluged-with-requests-to-run-for-president-again/
“Her Excellency’s “Apres moi, moi” moment”
Vraiment, les mots justes! LOL, Barry.
Jim, It’s a reasonably good comparison, but I don’t remember any support for Israel. So I went and read the platform, as you suggested, and I am right. The discussion of the Middle East rests on the old, dead, impossible dream of a compromise between Israel and the so-called Palestinians based on direct talks.
Trump is the first president to have the guts to tell it like it is — the Israelis are the good guys and their enemies should pound sand. (Of course, a lot has changed since 1992 to make this possible.)
The other big differences I see are the stated support for abortion (“choice”) and the stated support for universal health care as a “right.”
So that’s three big differences. But most of the platform emphasizes economics, and there is certainly a lot of overlap there.
Based on the opinions I see them express, if I were to conduct a proper poll of my lefty Seattle FB friends list, I suspect that every Democratic candidate would have about 20% favorable and 60% unfavorable ratings.
Nobody can speak in favor of any candidate without three others saying how awful they are, and every time a candidate drops out there’s a huge chorus of “Bye Felicia”.
Of course, they all swear that they’ll vote D no matter who the nominee is, because OMB, and Washington makes it so easy to
commit vote fraudvote by mail, there’s little chance they’ll “stay home”.Ah, but you haven’t talked to any of the dead ones, have you? They’re rock solid for whoever the Democrats nominate. And they vote.
[NOTE: Neither Hillary Clinton nor Michelle Obama’s name has come up as a possible candidate during these discussions, either, by the way.]
According to The Babylon Bee, America’s electronic paper of record…
https://babylonbee.com/
,,, Democratic power brokers who are also dismayed with the current crop of candidates are working behind the scenes to draft Aragorn, King of Gondor, at the convention.