Voters don't buy the "electability" garbage
This new poll is bad news for Biden and the Democratic establishment, and good news for Bernie and all insurgent candidates.
The survey released on Friday showed that 64 percent of Democratic voters said they would prefer to back a candidate who closely aligns with them on issues “regardless of whether they can go on to win the general election.”That’s compared to 28 percent of Democratic respondents who said just the opposite — that they prefer to back a winner in the general election regardless of their stances on issues.
Voters across party lines similarly prized shared values over electability.
Eighty-one percent of Republicans said it is more important to back a candidate that aligns with them on issues, while 72 percent of independents agreed.
This is (Finally!) a rejection of the lesser-evil voting strategy.
It also means that concern trolling by the media doesn't work on the vast majority of the public.
Like this one today.
Democrats and everyone else who is tired of the chaotic Trump presidency needs to remember that electability is key.
As we begin 2020, it seems that the most electable person is Biden. At least for the time being, he can do what no other candidate has been able to do: Consolidate support among the Democrats, voters of color, independents, disaffected Republicans and Never Trumpers, who can easily see themselves voting for Joe Biden but would never pull the lever for Warren or Sanders.
Right. Isn't this just a repeat of Hillary's 2016 strategy?
To get disaffected Republicans and Never Trumpers? How did that turn out?
About 100 million voters stayed home in 2016. Many, I suspect, can’t stand the thought of another four years of Trump. They need to be told why the Democratic nominee would be a better option for them and for the country.
True. Which is the problem. Biden and centrists have no answer for that.
Just a promise to return to the politics of the 1990's.
This was written by "Maria Cardona is a principal at the Dewey Square Group, a Democratic strategist." What is the Dewey Square Group?
The Dewey Square Group was founded in 1992 by Charlie Baker, Chuck Campion and Michael Whouley.[2] Whouley served as the field director for President Bill Clinton's 1992 presidential campaign.
On a related note, I don't agree with Andrew Yang on a lot of issues, but I like the fact that he's in the race because he says stuff like this.
Andrew Yang ripped the Democratic Party for focusing on President Trump rather than the issues he believes are key to winning the 2020 election.Yang, 44, claimed that Democrats lost to Trump in 2016 because they did not pay attention to the declining employment opportunities in swing states such as Michigan and Wisconsin. During an interview on ABC’s This Week, he urged his party to stop worrying about Trump and start focusing on issues that voters care about in swing states.
“It’s clear the reason Donald Trump is our president is that we automated away 4 million manufacturing jobs that were primarily based in Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Missouri, and Iowa — the swing states he needed to win. And what we did to those jobs we’re now going to do to the retail jobs, the call center jobs, the fast-food jobs, and eventually the truck driver jobs,” he said. “We need a way forward for all Americans independent of your political affiliation.”
Yang noted that Americans have reported high levels of financial stress because of personal debt burdens, which are mirrored in an increase in drug overdoses and suicides. He claimed these issues must be addressed by candidates if they want to win in 2020.
“The Democratic Party is acting like Donald Trump is a cause of all of our problems. He’s a symptom, and we need to cure the underlying disease,” the entrepreneur said.
But the Dem centrists have no solutions to cure the underlying disease.
While the Repubs claim to know the cure, by blaming people who have no power.
Comments
Those 28%
of Democrats who are "looking to back a winner" looks suspiciously like Biden's base at roughly the same level. He's been running as the guy who can win. If you're running as a winner, you better win. If Biden loses in any or all of the first three contests, his supporters may drift to someone who is actually winning.
"The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function." -- Albert Bartlett
"A species that is hurtling toward extinction has no business promoting slow incremental change." -- Caitlin Johnstone
last week I saw
two campaign commercials, one for Bernie and one for Biden. The difference between the two was like night and day. Bernie addressed many of the problems facing most of us, healthcare, income inequality, student debt, climate change. There was absolutely nothing of substance in Biden's message, just Trump bad. After watching the two, I'm totally flummoxed by how Biden is topping most polls.
I woke up this morning determined to drink less, eat right, and exercise.
But that was four hours ago when I was younger and full of hope.
Was it this one?
I'm seeing some tweets saying that ByeDone said that he'd be open to having a republican running as his VP. This is scary because a week ago he floated the idea of only serving for one term. And just remember that the VP breaks ties in the senate.
Go away, Joe is trending. Saw a tweet saying that either Bernie or Liz should drop out and then support the other one. And then tell your supporters to get behind that one. What a silly idea. Warren says that why yes she is still behind Bernie's MFA. "We just have to twig it a bit so that people are paying as little as possible for access to health care."
lol...hey, Liz. Millions of us already have access to health insurance. This is the problem. We can't afford it.
Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.
Access
Everyone already has access to health care, in the same way they have access to owning a yacht or a major league sports team.
Joe, Joe, Joe
It's a simple question. "There are good people on the Republican side, but I'll be picking one of our outstanding Democrats to fill that role. No, I don't have any names to share with you at this time."
This is not the Joe Biden from 10 years ago. Sure he has spent his entire career in the wrong party, but at least he used to be able to perform basic politician job functions like responding to softball questions you haven't been briefed on.
"The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function." -- Albert Bartlett
"A species that is hurtling toward extinction has no business promoting slow incremental change." -- Caitlin Johnstone
Interesting, and as
TheHill notes, the results are flipped from the same survey taken just in May. I'm a bit skeptical of this one, which could be an outlier.
As for Yang on how to campaign in the general, disagree. You need to do a negative/positive campaign -- both argue against why the incumbent should be removed and also why voters should vote for the Dem. Yang, being an exceedingly polite person as well as being heavily issues-oriented, is naturally going to lean towards running only positive on the issues. A successful Dem candidate will not only go after Donald for his multitude of crimes and sins, but hit him hard for his wannabe dictator tendencies. There is an historic high number of things he needs to be called out on, and to fail to mention the 800-pound gorilla in the room out of lofty high-mindedness would be to Dukakis yourself into election defeat.
Going after the Donald.
What could one of the Democratic candidates tell voters at this point that they don't already know? Is there one magical straw that breaks the camel's back and suddenly turns people against Trump?
Never hurts,
and usually helps to remind voters why the dud in office is not worthy of another 4 yrs. In politics, repetition works. And there are always those who either have lacked enlightening to that point or who are on the fence, as with some of the Obama to Trump voters from 2016.
In any case, we know for sure a) that going the above-it-all Dukakis route is a loser, and b) the Donald will be sure to run a very aggressive personal attack campaign against his opponent. I don't believe in bringing a briefing book of policy papers to a gunfight.
I wonder how many of Trump's voters know about
his war on workers? Robert Reich had an excellent article on what he is doing to destroy worker's rights. And the right wing and unqualified judges that are being appointed are going to destroy many other rights that we have fought for. This is just two things that the media isn't covering.
His war on the environment is eventually going to affect most of us. Eventually. Relaxing air pollution controls will kill more and more people every year. Deregulation of the banks is going to cost everyone because of when congress authorized them to bail themselves out with the money we have in their banks. This crash is coming...but not one member of congress is talking about it. Shhh...
So yeah there are lots of things democrats could tell Trump voters, but.... they want them to happen too. This is why they'd rather see him reelected than let Bernie win. We all know it.
Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.
Most people don't hear that.
They hear "More free trade with China" and "Let more people from Mexico into the USA".
There are nuances to the arguments, but they are not winning issues except in California.
The (D) nominee has to focus on the "stolen" Midwest and address why those blue collar voters went for Trump over Hillary. Hint: It wasn't Putin or Facebook ads.
Bernie can address them. So can Tulsi. I'm afraid that Warren just doesn't understand and the DNC types don't want to understand.
I've seen lots of changes. What doesn't change is people. Same old hairless apes.
Spot on!
That certainly sounds like the Democratic Party message to a lot of people. Nuance, if there is any, is lost in translation.
What Democrats tell Trump voters...
Quid pro Joe melt down in New Hampshire
As if on cue, this story showed up just now. I simply cannot wrap my mind around the scene that took place in this New Hampshire this gymnasium.
Tweets appear at the source:
.
Just saying, I never for a moment took a poll with Biden in the lead seriously.
That's just not going to happen.
I am in strong agreement with the author. The people want their issues solved. Period. They are fed up with the American bullshitocracy. If that's what is on the Democratic ticket, they will stay home. Some will vote for Trump out of spite.
That being said, a Democratic win is actually a long shot against an incumbent president.
The only way that is going to happen is if Bernie Sanders is the candidate. Only then will the silent majority materialize to cast their votes for a Democrat.
____________________
The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato
Not against
an incumbent with consistent 42% approval ratings.
Trump won the Presidency
...with a 39 percent approval rating. Hillary's was higher.
Nothing works the way it used to when Trump is involved. But glad for your opinion. Hard to believe we are still a year away. The future is fraught with possibilities. The only easy predictions to make at this point are the losers.
____________________
The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato
Disagree and agree.
The approval numbers I noted relate to job approval as president. He wasn't prez in 2016.
As I recall, historically such low numbers leading into re-elect year mean the incumbent is in trouble.
Agree though that with wildcard madman Donald, many of these historical indicators need to be taken with a grain of salt.
It's worth remembering though that it took a very unusual poker Royal Flush type of outcome for Donald -- taking WI, MI and PN -- for him to win, barely in those states, in 2016.
Will lightning strike twice for this often lucky con man? Possible, but I'm betting against.
Might depend on who's running 3rd party
Johnston got twice as many votes than Stein did in those states, but she's the one everyone blames for Hillary's loss.
But I believe people who say that if Bernie doesn't win they will stay home and not vote. If democrats choose to rig the primary again then it's cuz they have no problem with Trump being president.
Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.
Lots of videos are floating around on Twitter
The Trump campaign just needs to run a few ads with photos and videos of Joe touching kids and women and Joe would have a hard time defending himself. The evidence doesn't lie.
Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.
That is just so weird.
Didn't the Democrats ever pick up on this? He's hovering on the edge of full-blown senility. It's not a good look. I feel bad for him. Reagan was foisted on the country just like that. He was symptomatic when he was governor of California.
I suppose the CFR selects for that. They get a lot of people embedded in high places when the president is impaired.
____________________
The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato
Interesting too
that both Bernie and Bootajudge have recently made electability arguments against Joe Biden, on his Iraq War vote.
The electability argument re Biden cuts both ways.
Bernie made his comments during an LAT recent interview. That paper chose not to cover his rally with AOC a week ago at Venice Beach, which attracted 15k people. For laidback L.A., that is a huge crowd and an obviously newsworthy item. Bernie alone would have been worth covering. But Bernie and AOC -- the oversight is very suspicious.
OT: I know I shouldn't engage with gun nuts
so I got the reply I deserve.
lol
The last reply..queertards commit mass shootings in gun free zones...
Umm wasn't the last shooting in an area where guns were allowed?
A good guy with a gun stopped a bad guy with a gun and died anyway. There is no way to think that more guns are the answer.
Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.
Lmao...
Bingo. ByeDone got lots of legislation passed during a democratic presidency than the republicans could. Just say no to Joe.
Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.
The "very serious centrist" argument
seems to go over very well with the corporate news media, but I've never heard a single person in my daily life argue for "serious centrism".
The people I talk to want things to get done, unless they're very wealthy and/or religious nut bars, and those loons will vote republican no matter what.
"The enemy is anybody who is going to get you killed, no matter which side he's on." Yossarian
You haven't looked at DK lately have you?
Lots of them are voting for ByeDone, Pete and Amy and they are very sad that Kamala dropped out. She said it's because she couldn't get billionaires to support her campaign, but the kids are blaming sexism and misogynism for it. This is what they say about every woman that doesn't make it. Except for Tulsi. They say some very sexist and misogynistic things about her. And a few people say, "f'ck Tulsi." And get recs instead of flags.
Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.
You guys gotta let DK go
the site isn't anything anymore but a mouthpiece
for Brock and 17 agencies company.....it's all propaganda,
meet anyone on the street and they say they'd vote for
Biden? Buttgig? Kampala? Bloomberg? nope it doesn't happen.
Watch for what fits the narrative and then what fits reality
one's a feature one's a bug
I never knew that the term "Never Again" only pertained to
those born Jewish
"Antisemite used to be someone who didn't like Jews
now it's someone who Jews don't like"
Heard from Margaret Kimberley
I'm pretty sure it's a laboratory
...for studying political psychology. The site got substantial funding for improved software to serve researchers, from a Third Way think-tank at some point during the Bush years. At least, that was the buzz in some circles. But now, that can't be the case anymore, can it? They are too stuck on domestic issues, a realm where folks have been successfully brainwashed and triggered, for quite some time. That's what I've gathered from what Snoopy has said. Plus, they lack curiosity in international economics and geopolitical strategies — the lack of knowledge in this realm in the US has been another propaganda success. So, if they are not discussing the US global strategies that are driving the unfortunate domestic political situation in the US, that would seem like slim pickings for a think-tank Fellow looking for breaking trends.
On the other hand, as lab rats go, we probably give off conformist vibes in the c99 maze, too. The striking difference between the communities, I am guessing, is probably the wide spectrum of topics and views that can be entertained here without causing group psychosis. Oh yes, and the absence of an activist dynamic here is interesting — everyone involved seems to have a different voting strategy (subject to change) and different attitudes about US-style democracy.
Looking back at 2019
I now believe that the rapid shake-up of the familiar pathways to people's favorite news sources, the absence of these common news sources in search results from Google, and the continuing suppression of most alternative news journalism, made staying informed with credible news in 2019 a real effort. I suspect it impacted people more than they realize. There was a psychologically profound change in society when the tech giants abriuptly began hiding the news from people, taking away the links that pointed to the news sites that folks relied on for accurate information about the events in their world..
The fact is, people were so busy adapting to the loss of news signals by finding workarounds, that the emotional significance of this did not take hold right away. If a character in a novel I was reading was suddenly confronted with an unannounced and disorienting shift in reality, much like the narratives in Orwell novels, I would feel alarmed for the character. The news can and will be turned off, going forward. When I asked people what they thought about the skimpy results that Google was returning, results that came from just a few approved sources, some people would say they didn't notice that at all. This was also disturbing because was not a subtle change. Were they in denial? Or was it me?
People have not really discussed this experience, this change, this loss of access to published information. Did you find it strange?
Anyway, that's how I'll remember 2019, heading into a New Year.
____________________
The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato
Test tube politics
If it works in the labs, why can't they apply it to the streets?
Things are not as they seem.
Good points about access to 'real news'.
Access to informative views has become verboten.
Therefore, lazy minds stop seeking answers.
The rest of us go underground, as we did in the 60's.
Truth is still out there, just gotta dig for it.
Ummm. I get a different message
Google is a public utility and the Internet is a human right.
These proclamations must be enacted before any more progress is possible.
For a time I lived in a country under martial law, and that's what it looked like. It was not a functional society. People carried newspapers that were now monitored by the state, and they would casually gather in spots pretending to read the paper and conversing. But they were not talking about the newspaper. They were trying to find news they trusted and connect with their shared reality. There were curfews and people carried their important papers with them when they went out. But the thing that really bothered them and made them feel insecure was the absence of real news. News about anything at all from someone they tursted. One man told me that they could never trust the newspaper again. They were trapped in time and could not even consider the future.
Antitrust laws and a prohibition on the formation of monopolies made capitalism tolerable. Google needs to be nationalized or managed by a public commission. They can never be trusted again with the people's information.
____________________
The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato
Google is a public utility and the Internet is a human right.
The air waves, aquifers and minerals under the ground also are public property.
Access to information should be an inalienable right as well.
Capitalism does not view things that way.
Whenever you see a 'no trespassing' sign on
government property
you get it
Bingo, Pluto
And this..
Just about everything. No matter what has been debunked they still say it's true and that is how everything happened. And of course no matter what does happen anywhere in the country that's bad is because of Russia or because Trump is trying to please Putin. It's definitely a laboratory to study group hypnosis and group think.
Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.
I got banned from DailyKos about a year ago
I don't really pay much attention to what goes on there, but I'm not really surprised that they don't want to take on the billionaires and the religious nut bars.
The political commentators on DailyKos seem to be pretty comfortable with the right wing establishment.
They banned OPOL, Buhdydharma and pretty much every other voice I used to follow on DailyKos.
I've noticed Laurence Luis/Turkana became as far to the center right as could be possible once his friends were banned.
"The enemy is anybody who is going to get you killed, no matter which side he's on." Yossarian
We'll see how
strong Biden's support is, after he loses Iowa and NH and fails to win in NV, which I think Bernie is poised to take after winning NH.
I think he's been running high on name recognition and a lot of elderly black SCians who have some soft feelings for him from Obama.
Meanwhile, speaking of Biden possibly considering a Repub for his VP, though he couldn't name one, we now have Tulsi Gabbard saying yesterday in NH that she would want to put Rs and Indies into her admin if elected president.
Such nice sentiments of bipartisanship were fine 60 yrs ago when a Dem was elected by a razor-thin margin and the GOP still had a liberal wing to select non-crazy people from. It doesn't work so well now that the GOP is the Trump Party and has gone far right, long ago having purged nearly all its sane liberal-moderate members. Would be interesting to hear from her some names of Rs she would consider.
Funny, you never hear Republicans
say, "We need to reach out to leftists and give them a voice."
Glad you liked Yang
In many polls his supporters second choice is Sanders. I gave him a buck to get his contribution numbers up and qualify for the first debates, my only contribution this go round. I like a lot of his stuff and I especially like his attitude. The two big, well three, things I disagree on are immigration and the export of jobs, both have had a severe affect on blue collar wages and employment. The third thing everyone is silent about so I'll go along.
There should be twenty people running with unconventional ideas to shake up the whole mess. It's pretty sad that we have to depend on a guy who should be retired and with his feet up instead of running around the country.
Yang is playing an important role
...in this election. Not many people can pick up on it now, but they will one day.
He's an agent of evolution or "fifth business' as they call his character in opera. He is a message carrier and he is expanding the political spectrum for everyone. He represents the future and understands the concept of 'change or die.'
It wouldn't break my heart if he were to win, but I know from experience that this US is not that lucky.
____________________
The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato
Yang is good.
Yang is good.
I like Tulsi
That's my preference.
"The enemy is anybody who is going to get you killed, no matter which side he's on." Yossarian