The only candidates who jazz me at this point are Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, and the latter has not even announced, though I recently read that his announcement is imminent. Of course, if he does enter the race, he will split the progressive vote with Warren, likely leading to the nomination of yet another centrist, corporate-funded, Clintonesque New Democrat nominee in the lineage of the two Clintons and Obama and in contradiction to the New Deal legacy that Democrats ought to be upholding and seeking to expand. Sigh.
The other candidates, so far anyway, leave me cold. I am baffled by the plaudits for Kamala Harris’s so-called rollout. In addition to her problematic prosecutorial history, I have watched her recent speeches and an online video she put up. The video consisted of bright, shiny things with blinking words lacking substance, and her speeches are all airy platitudes (“for the people,” “lift our voices,” yawn.)
Beto O’Rourke strikes me as another bright, shiny thing.
Corey Booker is another Wall Street water carrier, so far as I can tell. Gillibrand, as of now, doesn’t impress. Tulsi Gabbard? Don’t make me
Julian Castro? We’ll see.
Of course I’d vote for a pile of dog shit over Trump, but it would be so nice, for the first time in my life, to vote for someone I actually wanted to see as president. Not likely to happen, unless Warren or Bernie is nominated. But neither will be if they split the progressive vote. Sherrod Brown is a possibility, but I would like to see a woman elected on general principles.
Then there is Joe Biden. I hate to say it, but as of right now, anyway, ol’ Joe, warts and all (mostly warts), may be the Dems’ best bet. I can’t imagine him (or any Dem, for that matter) losing a single state the Hillary won in 2016. But I think Biden would be almost guaranteed to carry the Rust Belt states that Trump won in 2016, whereas the other Democrats, not so much. That alone would put him in the White House.
While it is (almost) certainly ridiculous to put much stock in polling at this point, the latest
presidential polls at FiveThirtyEight show a close race. Take note! The first listed polls (as I currently post, they change daily), which show Trump leading everyone but Biden, is in
Iowa only, which I did not realize until I took a second desperate look after contemplating suicide. (Nate, could you please, on this page, make the distinctions between individual state polls and national polls clearer, lest you prompt deaths by suicides, heart attacks, etc.?) Scroll down a little and in the national polls Trump is mostly losing, but in most cases not by much, reminiscent of how he was trailing Hillary and … won.
Gonna be a long national nightmare — well, it is already.