It would hurt a lot of momentum within the party and by the people that actually do the work to elect candidates

Saudi Arabia has detained American dual nationals:

Both Prisoners of Conscience and the AP reported that U.S.-Saudi dual nationals Bader Al-Ibrahim, a writer and physician, and Salah al-Haidar, whose mother is prominent women's rights activist Aziza al-Yousef, were among those arrested.
Al-Haidar has a family home in Vienna, Virginia, but lives with his wife and child in Saudi Arabia.
All of those reportedly taken into custody have voiced support for increased women's rights in the kingdom or have close ties to other people already jailed. Most of those swept up in the purported crackdown were journalists or authors, including Moqbal Saqqar, a novelist who wrote a book highlighting the challenges women face in Saudi Arabia, where the government implements a strict form of Islamic rule.
The arrested individuals, nearly all of whom were detained on Thursday, are not seen as front-line activists but rather people who have quietly supported greater social reforms, and most have ties to a group of women's rights activists currently on trial.

I think a solid bottom of the ticket and a 1 term pledge would help some, but I also think that was a dumb thing to float prior to running and insulting to allegedly name Stacey Abrams who is also considering a run for President.

The best thing for the down ticket, the party and the country would be to win back the Presidency, not cater to those who will vote for Jill Stein and won’t work for the party if their preferred candidate isn’t nominated.

especially since stein was most likely working for Putin.

pacino wrote:Saudi Arabia has detained American dual nationals:

Both Prisoners of Conscience and the AP reported that U.S.-Saudi dual nationals Bader Al-Ibrahim, a writer and physician, and Salah al-Haidar, whose mother is prominent women's rights activist Aziza al-Yousef, were among those arrested.
Al-Haidar has a family home in Vienna, Virginia, but lives with his wife and child in Saudi Arabia.
All of those reportedly taken into custody have voiced support for increased women's rights in the kingdom or have close ties to other people already jailed. Most of those swept up in the purported crackdown were journalists or authors, including Moqbal Saqqar, a novelist who wrote a book highlighting the challenges women face in Saudi Arabia, where the government implements a strict form of Islamic rule.
The arrested individuals, nearly all of whom were detained on Thursday, are not seen as front-line activists but rather people who have quietly supported greater social reforms, and most have ties to a group of women's rights activists currently on trial.

This is obviously terrible, but I wonder if some good could come of it in that maybe people will start seeing the Saudis for what they really are. I think most americans see them as allies, which they have been when it suited them, but they are more often a backwards theocracy that supports terrorism and treats half their citizens as subordinates. The royal family is also ridiculously hypocritical, drinking and doing other things they pretty much forbid common people to do.

JFLNYC wrote:The best thing for the down ticket, the party and the country would be to win back the Presidency, not cater to those who will vote for Jill Stein and won’t work for the party if their preferred candidate isn’t nominated.

Anyone who does this is my enemy. Full stop.

JFLNYC wrote:The best thing for the down ticket, the party and the country would be to win back the Presidency, not cater to those who will vote for Jill Stein and won’t work for the party if their preferred candidate isn’t nominated.

This makes no sense. Biden is going to make people go “meh, I guess I’ll stay home” or those wonderful baby boomers who vote republican most of the time vote for him and then republican down the rest the ticket and we lose the House again.

I’m voting democrat no matter what, but the only reason I’ve seen in this thread to vote for Biden is that republicans like him the most, which is in-fucking-sane.

A few somewhat connected thoughts on how I see electability.

1) A good place to start is to remember we live in a probabilistic world, but presidential elections are rare events with discrete outcomes, and we only get one chance every four years to watch two people face off against each other. So that makes talking about and knowing how to judge or measure electability hard. And maybe this is where I should stop, but I won’t.

2) Electability is real, but probably overrated. Every single Democratic candidate has a very real chance to defeat Donald Trump in November 2020 if they were to win the nomination. Every candidate has a very real chance to lose to Donald Trump in November 2020 if they win the nomination. My guess is if we got to see 10 versions of the race with all of the main candidates getting their crack against Trump (we don’t, see point 1) the Dem % of the two-party vote share would fall within a 2-3% range. Which is not nothing, but it’s also not everything.

3) Augustus is right that there are different kinds of electability, and highlights the two paths of running to the middle and firing up the base. I think that’s basically right but maybe overly simplistic. There are different kinds of people in the middle – white working class voters in northwest Wisconsin or suburban voters in Chester County PA or Cubans in Miami – and different kinds of people in the Dem base – college kids in Madison or inner city African Americans in Philly or Puerto Ricans in Orlando. Different candidates will be relatively stronger or weaker with different groups, and that could end up mattering a lot.

4) The idea that Donald Trump won the election so voters should just ignore pundits because no one thought he was the most electable Republican is flawed. Trump ran behind basic political science models of how a generic Republican should perform running against a non-incumbent opponent whose party has controlled the WH for two terms, despite running against the 2nd most unpopular candidate in modern history (largely because he was the most unpopular). He lost the popular vote pretty badly. He did win, which back to point 1 is I guess what matters, but it was about as close as it could have been, and there’s no reason to think other Republicans also could not have won the election.

5) A stray thought on the difference between a running to the middle vs. ginning up base turnout, is persuading someone to vote for the Democratic nominee instead of Trump is worth twice as much as getting someone off their butt to go cast a vote (or pick the Dem nominee over a 3rd party choice). Doesn’t necessarily mean there aren’t sufficiently more people in the base groups that need to be motivated to make that the better choice, but it’s something worth keeping in mind.

6) I’m not sure which take between Elizabeth Warren can’t win and follow your heart, if they can win the primary that shows they’re electable in the general I hate more. I guess the former because I’m saying everyone has a chance so whoever wins the primary is technically electable. But the arguments and skills it will take to win the Democratic nomination are not necessarily the same as those needed to win the general election, so if you’re focusing on ‘electability’ as a relative quality winning the primary isn’t necessarily a huge checkmark in your favor. But still less bad than the other because Elizabeth Warren can definitely beat Donald Trump, even if she might be the Dems worst choice if that’s your main goal.

7) Going back up to point number 2, we’ll probably know a lot more in 10 months when voting starts how strong Trump is as a candidate in re-election. If the economy continues as it is and he hasn’t otherwise gotten us all nuked, Democrats picking the person polling strongest against him seems pretty important. If we’re trending toward a recession and Trump’s job approval breaks through the floor it tends to touch when he’s in one of his slumps, then you’re probably safer to push the envelope.

8) Of the major candidates, my personal opinion is Biden is the most likely to defeat Trump and Warren is the least likely. This might change as the campaign moves along, especially if Biden shows he doesn’t have his fastball. But I’ve seen some recent polling that has Biden beating the absolute shit out of Trump in PA/MI/WI, and that’s hard to shake out of my head.

9) Also sort of informing my opinion is Dems biggest gains in 2018 were in the suburbs largely with inoffensive, center-left candidates who weren’t looking to reinvent the wheel. So candidates who fall in that mold, Biden foremost among them, would be most likely to be successful. And you can go out of your way to pick out a few House candidates who are evidence in the other direction, but they were the minority of gains.

10) I think Elizabeth Warren sucks at the getting people to vote for her part of politics. I know pacino wants elections to be about who releases the best position papers, but that’s not how things work in the real world. All that said she may well be the favorite against Trump in a year if she’s winning the nomination depending on what is going on in the world. But in our simulation where everyone gets a turn, I would place good money on her achieving one of the lower vote shares.

11) I jumped around a lot in writing that and if you read the whole thing congratulations on wasting your time. At least you didn’t just spend 20 minutes on a Saturday writing it. I’m sorry there are probably multiple unfinished sentences throughout.

Well said, can't wait for The Savior to pick out a line and call you a racist or something

Gimpy wrote:

JFLNYC wrote:The best thing for the down ticket, the party and the country would be to win back the Presidency, not cater to those who will vote for Jill Stein and won’t work for the party if their preferred candidate isn’t nominated.

This makes no sense. Biden is going to make people go “meh, I guess I’ll stay home” or those wonderful baby boomers who vote republican most of the time vote for him and then republican down the rest the ticket and we lose the House again.

I’m voting democrat no matter what, but the only reason I’ve seen in this thread to vote for Biden is that republicans like him the most, which is in-fucking-sane.

It’s worth noting I didn’t specify or even mention Biden.

slugsrbad wrote:Well said, can't wait for The Savior to pick out a line and call you a racist or something

What if I find a few lines?

Gimpy wrote:

JFLNYC wrote:The best thing for the down ticket, the party and the country would be to win back the Presidency, not cater to those who will vote for Jill Stein and won’t work for the party if their preferred candidate isn’t nominated.

This makes no sense. Biden is going to make people go “meh, I guess I’ll stay home” or those wonderful baby boomers who vote republican most of the time vote for him and then republican down the rest the ticket and we lose the House again.

I’m voting democrat no matter what, but the only reason I’ve seen in this thread to vote for Biden is that republicans like him the most, which is in-fucking-sane.

about 30 percent of the electorate is now self-identifying as independent. If you don't think that matters, I don't know what to say. No one expects Trump Rs to vote D no matter the candidate. That's a straw man. In about a half a dozen states, those independents are what matters....and turning out the base.

And the base isn't white millennials who vote at about a 1/3 of the rate of the 60+ crowd.
.

saw bits and pieces of Don’s big day with the Jewish Republican Coalition in Las Vegas, this is a nice summary of his rally.

Since he mixed business and pleasure he’s got to owe the government for his travel. Where does one find that, and highlight that the campaign does not pay?

The rise of self identifying independents has much more to do with the institutional weaknesses of the parties than it does any kind of migration toward the middle of the political spectrum. Most independents consistently vote one way or the other. Here's some good data from Pew on the subject: https://www.people-press.org/2019/03/14/political-independents-who-they-are-what-they-think/ I think your "true independents" remain mostly low information voters.

Not to go all Chuck Schumer on everybody, but let's take a white, male suburban dad in Chester County or Waukesha County or Oakland County. Old Gen-Xer/youngish Boomer. He makes a six figure salary and considers himself an "independent." Maybe he voted Obama once or twice and he voted Trump in 2016. If the economy holds steady, why wouldn't he vote Trump again? He already knew who Trump was the first time. I know JH mentioned the polling data on Biden vs. Trump, but I'm convinced that the "shy Trumper" effect very much exists.

Biden is wildly preferable to Trump, but his limitations and liabilities are very real and I think he'd make a pretty lousy president. If I'm going to take on an old guy who's incapable of articulating policy, has a history of lousy votes, has questionable interactions with women, has run two failed campaigns for president, displays limited imagination and intellectual ability, and whose chief qualification seems to be the memes about him and Obama being friends, it should be for a better reason than some aging white people might vote for him.

I don't know who you are but you should post here more.

It’s an intelligent, articulate criticism of Biden, especially so because it focuses on real issues instead of just proposing that all older, white male candidates should simply step aside because they’re older,
whiter and maler. Unfortunately it’s also one-sided, incomplete and misses the larger point.

It’s one-sided and incomplete because, as with any reductionist argument it attempts to distill a political career of over half a century into one pithy paragraph and totally ignores any and accomplishments in order to accentuate the limitations and liabilities of one particular candidate.

And, speaking of limitations and liabilities, the reason it misses the larger point is because all the recent discussion of Biden obscures the very real limitations and liabilities of all the other candidates.

I want to make myself as clear as possible by reiterating that I want a Dem candidate who will beat Trump. As long as he or she is not a serial killer I don’t care much which it is. Check that, if he or she will beat Trump being a serial killer is OK.

As the campaign moves forward we’re going to see who in the field stands out as the best candidate. All the candidates will have their very real limitations and liabilities revealed and things will look very different. At this very, very early stage Biden leads the polls so I really am not interested in doing Trump a favor by excluding any candidate yet, especially one who is the early leader.

One last point: If you’re making your decisions based on the age, gender or race of a candidate you need to check your progressive credentials.

Won't the vast majority of people -- who don't follow this stuff nearly as closely -- view Biden as a return to the Obama years? Which I would think would have a lot of appeal for all but Trump's die-hards.