Tag: 2020 election

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society

Biden’s Vice-Presidential Choice

Some numbers: America has had a total of 48 vice presidents. Of those, 14 became president, either through election or succession. Of those 14, only two were vice presidents to presidents who had gone on to be elected president. (Those were President Jefferson (served under President John Adams, who had been vice president under President Washington) and President Ford (served under President Nixon, who had been vice president under President Eisenhower).)

The ability to continue on in the stead of a president is absolutely the most essential role and duty of the vice president, and that should be the primary factor in choosing a partner for the 2020 ticket: someone that can take over. That’s more true as there are indications that Biden would not seek a second term if elected, which would put more weight on this pick being an exception to that rule.

One of Biden’s benefits, having been vice president, is that he knows the job. He knows the Senate, and he knows the ceremony. He’s been steeped in the day-to-day politics without being in a particularly accountable or involved position. He’s had the confidence of the president, ridden in the front passenger seat while the president drove, ready to steer if he fell out.

After readiness to lead, the pick does several things for a campaign. The all-important fundraising, for one. Most politicians have a set of go-to donors, some of whom will already have communicated how much more they could give, should their favorite daughter be tapped.

Then there’s support in states, regions, or with particular groups the candidate needs to carry. This depends on the race, but is usually at least a partial factor in every choice for vice president, even if it’s not the main one. An offshoot of this, for current officeholders, is what will become of their old job. If they’re a senator, will their seat be safe?

Surrogacy is also a big part of the pick. Can they campaign well? Draw a crowd? Can they gain access to venues the main candidate either doesn’t want to, or wouldn’t be as well received in? Do they have any rhetorical specialties? Second languages?

Biden will announce his choice sometime this week. It should be interesting to see the rollout, given the otherwise odd nature of this election so far.

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unAmerican

Evidence and Allegations

There has been an allegation that in the early 1990s Joe Biden sexually assaulted a staffer. This post offers some thoughts on that and the larger problem.

First, Associate Justice Kavanaugh. He was accused of past wrongdoing during his confirmation hearings, and the Republicans in the Senate, along with the White House, blocked any real investigation into the matter. This is a sick pattern among Republicans, of blocking information about matters big and small. The Republican party is a shadow party, content to hide from the light of day all sorts of important information vital to the functioning of capitalism and democracy. So long as it’s not about a Democrat. Indeed, Mitch McConnell has called on Biden to release his Senate papers, while he and the White House blocked the release of thousands of pages of relevant information during the Kavanaugh hearings. To this day, I still do not have enough information to judge whether the allegations against Kavanaugh were true.

Now, Biden. As it stands, I do not have sufficient information to decide whether to believe the allegation. The claims of corroboration do not actually corroborate, but merely repeat. There were no additional details or indications of past details being offered by the people the allegator allegedly told of the incident.

I find it problematic to believe accusations without evidence. That’s not to say I disbelieve the claims, but it is to say I hold in my mind the capacity to place unproven claims in a space dedicated to them. And that’s how my mind is going to operate because there are plenty of things I cannot determine the truth of, at least yet, and I do not also find evidence to dismiss them entirely.

I think that having an independent law firm look through the relevant files and releasing any that apply to the circumstances is reasonable. I think the same should be done for Donald John Trump’s files and the accusations against him. And McConnell can release his own Senate files. But double standards are something I have no interest in. The Republicans who seek to dig into Biden while they hide under the table are public failures and the princelings of loserdom.

Going forward, the reasonable advice that movements like #MeToo should offer is that anyone who has been told by a friend, neighbor, coworker, or other familiar party of serious wrongdoing, sexual or otherwise, should seek out a lawyer to conduct a video recording with a court reporter present. They would make a firm record of the retelling of the telling, including questioning by the lawyer, to be kept in confidence should the need arise in the future to attest to having been told of an incident. That’s prudence, and it would be much more corroborative than anything offered in this instance (or in the allegations against Kavanaugh, for that matter). Nonprofits that specialize in this area can and should work to develop criteria to that end and a process to be followed.

Either we formalize the process, or we continue to entertain allegations and make judgments based on blurry pictures. I’m obviously in favor of formalization.

There are numerous benefits to such a process, and other than the risk of the material being leaked (which would find punitive effects for whatever lawyer allowed that to happen), the defects are few if any.

The allegation against Biden is serious, but without some evidence that is more than an allegation, it would be impossible for me to believe it. I understand others’ judgments work differently and I respect that. My own judgment is my own and is not to say others’ approaches are wrong.

The DNC (and the RNC, for that matter) should, however, have some formal processes in place to investigate any allegations and to, if warranted, replace defective candidates. Voters do at least deserve the reassurance that if details emerge that disqualify a candidate for office, they will not be left holding the bag for that malfeasance.

As for the likes of those who hide from the light like Mitch McConnell, while calling for it only to be shined upon political opponents, one can only hope that the voters of their states wise up and turn them away from their service.

The election is in 26 weeks (half a year).

Categories
society

Branding in Runs for President

With the race now down to two candidates, it’s worth looking back. Why didn’t the other candidates get traction?

The main thing a candidate needs is a brand. But that brand has to be anchored in who they are, in their story. They aren’t starting from scratch.

You don’t get to pick who you are, but you do get to brand it. You get to emphasize the things that matter. And you also get to create your message, your style of campaign. You can have an angry campaign, a friendly campaign, whatever kind. That’s something that doesn’t have to be who you have been for years. The campaign part of it is new. It can be what you need.

There’s policy. It matters, but mostly as a sample for how you will approach issues. There are lanes—moderate, progressive, trade, populist, whatever. But you can build your own lane, if you approach it the right way. That’s the main goal of the brand: to stake out a path that runs by as many voters’ houses as you can.

None of that is to say the also-rans did not have good points. But they often failed to get that basic branding down. Which is also not to say that Biden and Sanders did.

You go to the grocery store, looking for some new breakfast cereal. You check the options, try some free samples, and walk out with the same old box of cereal. That doesn’t mean you love that cereal, or that its brand won you over again. It just means you didn’t find what you wanted, so you continued on with what you’re used to until something better comes along.

The biggest problem with running for president is that you have to make a lot of noise. Bloomberg dumped hundreds of millions of dollars in noisemaking. But his noise did not carry very much. For Sanders, his followers make a lot of noise, but they often piss off the neighbors.

That’s particularly true in a crowded field. The most recognizable members of a crowd are those on the ends or edges. Surprise: Sanders and Biden were, at least in some measure, at the edges of the crowd.

The goal of the brand for a campaign, particularly a crowded one where making lots of noise isn’t really a sound strategy (unless you can really crank the decibels up to massive levels) is to find a new edge of the crowd to be at. Something that makes people say “Okay, all those are the same, but this one is over here doing something different.”

So for now it looks like the party is going with the leading brand: Biden. Sanders still has a shot. As does a no-majority outcome. It’s up to the voters to decide if Sanders’ brand is stronger, if they find them about equal, or if the leading brand it is.

One issue is, in the South, the Democrats are largely anchored toward the moderate side of things by the Republicans’ strength. They don’t see the field from the same viewpoint, and so the brands are distorted from where they stand. At least part of the remedy is for national Democrats to look to strengthen state Democrats in the South, so that they can better see the field and vote for more progressive options.

The election comes in 34 weeks.

Categories
society

Whom to Vote for on Super Tuesday 2020

I’ll be voting this Tuesday. If you have primaries in your state, I hope you will, too.

Let’s start with a brief evaluation of each candidate.

Joe Biden

Lots of experience, most good, some bad. So far he remains the candidate that seems to have the broadest support, although it has taken a hit following the early contests.

Michael Bloomberg

Lots of business experience, with some political experience as mayor of NYC. A businessman first. Barely a democrat. Lots of baggage and lots of money. Not much of a debater.

Pete Buttigieg

A healthy mixture of experience for such a young candidate. But still light on experience for someone seeking the most essential executive position in the nation. Limited demographic support so far.

Amy Klobuchar

She’s experienced and Midwestern and has receipts to prove it. A moderate, to be sure. Unclear if there’s broader support.

Bernie Sanders

Also has experience. Also, a democratic socialist. Has a solid base of support, but so far not too broad (though promising returns in Nevada).

Elizabeth Warren

Experience, and a solid progressive. Trouble getting broad support.

If I went with the candidate I like the best, it’d be Warren. I don’t like the call to eliminate the filibuster—there are better ways of dealing with the obstruction in the Senate than that. But overall she’s well-rounded and the closest candidate still running who is a third way between the moderate branch and the left branch of the party. The only reservation with Warren is her relative lack of support in the polls.

If I went with the safest choice, it’d be Biden or Klobuchar or Buttigieg (in that order). Sanders is a bit of a risk, and moderate candidates are good bets for Democrats. Biden, despite some slips, had a decent debate this week—particularly for a mess of a debate. He still appears to have good, broad support. Klobuchar and Buttigieg are good options too, but with the need to consolidate the moderate vote, Biden is still the safe-ish choice. Klobuchar hasn’t moved up like she needed to, despite some momentum a few weeks back. Buttigieg might make a good candidate some day, but he still doesn’t have as much experience as one would like.

On the whole, if any of those three looked to be consolidating the moderate vote, it’d be the way to go. As it is, the best choice to do that is Biden. The main issue with the moderate lane is that it hasn’t consolidated, and none of the candidates have set themselves apart as the obvious choice. Biden is so only from inertia, not because he’s earned it in the campaign.

And finally, if the models hold, to avoid a messy convention, I’d go with Sanders. I don’t like a lot about his history toward socialist countries around the world (for the same reason I think the pro-Pinochet economist-types on the right are batshit: authoritarianism is poison to the human spirit whatever cloth it wears). I think there are more palatable versions of Medicare-for-All than his proposals. But I don’t think his presidency would be a leftist-version of the loser we have now.

The main thing that gives me pause is Sanders’ inability to show any kind of political awareness of where he sits compared to the party. He has shown no capacity to wield an olive branch. For all of Donald John Trump’s flaws, that is easily the biggest of all—that he doesn’t even try to be understanding or collegial. That’s a stark difference to the basic Democratic Party big-tent mores: that the various sides of an argument matter.

Republicans show no real care about their loser’s incapacity to try to understand others, but most Democrats would remain skeptical of a Sanders administration. That’s true even while they would still vote to elect him if he became the nominee. And maybe having both parties united in skepticism would be healthy. Dunno. But I do know it would take a lot of negotiating to get any domestic agenda passed—something that’s true regardless of the nominee, but especially so for Sanders.

The other thing with Sanders, one guesses, is that he still believes there’s some socialist revolution around the corner. I’ve said before I think the capitalist–socialist debate is antiquated, but especially is the notion that there’s some big swing waiting to happen where people come out of the woodwork to embrace socialism. That’s likely why Sanders keeps repeating support for even shreds of regimes like Castro’s—he doesn’t want to alienate these revolutionaries. But they don’t exist. It isn’t going to happen. The home for socialism in America is through the same meat-and-potatoes policies it has embraced since the Great Depression, not some alternate universe story where there’s a socialist NATO and a socialist Federalist society and so on.

That’s my dilemma. Three choices. I won’t spoil it by saying which way I went until next week. Mostly because I’m not entirely sure, myself (and want to see how South Carolina turns out).

One other matter worth addressing here is the notion that you should vote for a candidate simply out of excitement or love. The love in voting is for the nation, for democracy, not for the candidate. To the extent a candidate excites or enamors a voter, it is the candidate’s embrace of the common cause of humanity and self-governance, not some mystic quality. So, yes, vote out of love, but vote out of love for the USA.

There are 35 more weeks until the election.

Categories
society

The Convention Candidate

Okay, that debate deserves at least a few words. Warren gave a very strong performance. While a lot of the coverage focuses on her attacking everyone, the fact is that other than the newcomer and maybe Biden, everyone else was attacking everyone, so Warren isn’t alone there. But she is alone in her performance, followed by another strong showing by Klobuchar, whom Buttigieg tried to hit, mostly without success.

Anyway, we’ll see how this sets the polls moving for the Nevada caucuses. This post isn’t really about the debate, but what happens going forward. I had written the rest before and then watched the debate, it was easily the most important debate of this cycle (so far?), so I wanted to point at it here.

The trajectory of the Democratic nomination is such that no one may have enough votes to win the nomination on the first ballot at the convention. The question is, what should happen next?

While the candidate with the most delegates at that point will likely call for their own nomination, is that right? Depends.

It depends, first, on how many delegates they actually have. If they are a hair short, then the claim is stronger. If they aren’t, it’s weaker. Second, do they have broad support among the various constituencies of Democrats? Did they get broad African-American support, Latino support, Asian support? If so, stronger, if not, weaker.

In what seems the most likely scenario at the moment, Sanders comes away with a healthy lead over individual candidates, but at a deficit to the moderates collectively. He doesn’t get strong minority support. He doesn’t get that close to an outright majority.

In such a case, he hasn’t earned the nomination. He might still get it, through the politics of a convention, but it wouldn’t be his for the taking. It would be down to horse trading. Who will be the VP candidate? What concessions to rules and policies for the platform? And so on.

Which is where we’re likely headed.

Sanders would have leverage in that scenario, but only so much. His main threat would be to blow up the party, which isn’t as much of a threat as a description if he doesn’t have control over his own voters. Which, he hasn’t shown much control.

Anyway, that’s where we’re heading if the current state of things stays as it is. It’s not as likely to, though. Chances are a lot of folks see Nevada and South Carolina and take a cue and the four-way moderate contest becomes two at best. The moderates that fall back likely drop out and pick their horse and things firm up considerably.

Assuming that does happen, Sanders loses some support in the offing, as some of his current support is from people who just like front-runners.

But the way the math works out, even then the convention may go past the first ballot with all that entails. Oh well. Politics is messy.