The Next President of the United States

[nirvana]

Watched a few highlights from the debate.

Feels like the democrats are going down the same path as Labour here. Think they'll lose again against the biggest open goal in US politics for a long time.

If they choose Sanders I'd be certain they'd lose. Warren and Biden, a flicker of hope but ultimately defeat.

I guess the wild card is that, for all the ad hominem stuff on Johnson, he's really not that far outside the norms for generations in the UK whereas Trump....

He's a few parts genius and many parts fruit loop so the Dems gotta hope he really does something catastrophic

I thought advocating grabbing women by the pussy would be catastrophic but apparently not.

That's my point in a nutshell really - it should be an open goal. Unforch for the American people, the Democrats taken en masse, are a posturing, whiney, it's all so unfair, special interest, student protest, rabble led by people who want to reflect their nonsense rather than lead. Reminds me of another party

[MintTrav]

We already looked at the billionaires. Here's some detail on some of the others (again excluding the big three).

The Senators

Amy Klobuchar. Amy Who? Unlike some of the others, Klobuchar has scarcely ever been mentioned on UK TV. She is a prominent Senator who had over 100 pieces of legislation passed in the last Congress, more than any other Senator. She was the first female elected there from Minnesota and has been in place for 14 years. She isn’t a no-hoper, but needs something major to happen to become a contender, and it hasn’t happened yet. She used to be on the right of the party but has moved to the centre over the years, and is seen as safe now. She has qualified easily for all the debates, without doing much memorable in them, and remains tucked in no-man's-land, well below the top four, but well ahead of everyone else. If Biden takes a fall, his supporters might come to her but, otherwise, she’ll have to drop out at some point. Though she should go soon, I'd expect her to continue her anonymous campaign for a while in case Joe trips over his feet.

Click to see full-size image.

Amy announced her candidacy in a typical Minnesota blizzard

Julian Castro was Mayor of San Antonio for five years, before resigning to join Obama's Cabinet. He has run a highly progressive campaign, highlighting various minority issues and forcing the more prominent candidates to adjust their positions. His statements on homelessness, police violence or immigration decriminalisation come across as authentic and he has moved from being a genuine-chance candidate to a highlighting-issues one, which I guess gives him a reason to stick around.


Castro visited Skid Row last week to highlight homelessness

Cory Booker has been New Jersey's first Black Senator for seven years, immediately following seven years as Mayor of Newark. He was a high-profile Mayor, with many initiatives to tackle Newark's problems and a kind of Superman image, personally shovelling snow from driveways, allowing people to sleep at his house after Hurricane Sandy and literally saving someone from a burning building. He turned down an offer of a senior position in Obama's White House due to his commitment to Newark. Before he was Mayor, as a Councilman, he went on hunger strike for ten days and lived in a tent and then a motor-home near drug-dealing areas to draw attention to the homelessness and drug-dealing problems. He is a star Senate performer, with emphasis on 'performer'. He gets emotional about injustice and the way some Republicans behave, but it sometimes looks contrived. He is very progressive (third most liberal Senate voting record) and popular in sections of the party but the elephant in the bed is his lack of a wife. I'm surprised he has managed to get to be a mayor, a Senator and the age of 50 without one, but it is surely not feasible to take on Trump like that.

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Booker and Harris have worked together a lot, but were too similar for both to last

I thought Castro and Booker would have packed it in by now, but they are still there. Both of them tick a lot of boxes - they are young ethnic achievers with stellar academic records, who have both been mayor of their cities and gone on to star in national roles. However, they just haven't attracted support and have been overshadowed throughout the race. Their polling, fundraising and debating have been under par and they haven't qualified for recent debates. There are several candidates still running who have no chance of winning, but are continuing in order to influence the debate, promote themselves, or just because they can afford it. Castro and Booker are not like them. These two ran because they thought they had a genuine shot at winning. The same applied to Bill De Blasio, Beto O'Rourke and Kamala Harris - all genuine contenders who got out when it became apparent that they wouldn’t win. Castro and Booker have hung tight despite underperforming against expectations. As a somewhat similar Black liberal high-profile Senator, Booker has seen his donations improve since Kamala's demise. However, any stray Black votes will be going to Biden, who has a lock on that demographic, even over Black candidates. To get into the next debate, they need to clock up 5% in four national polls or 7% in two early-State polls and have had 225,000 donors, with at least 1,000 in twenty States. Neither of them have reached the 5% or 7% bar even once, but Booker has passed the donor threshold. Their best (only?) chance of qualifying is to blitz one or two early States with advertising and hope to hit two 7 percents. They both also have legit VP chances, either supporting Sanders or Warren, or as a counterweight for Biden, so that might be why they are keeping their name out there.

[MintTrav]

The Crazies

Marianne Williamson is a spiritual leader and author, four of whose books have been New York Times number one bestsellers. She has founded and led several social care and peace organisations that have unquestionably done substantial good work. However, while she is an inspirational speaker, the content occasionally strays into beliefs rather than facts. She has also shared questionable opinions that seem to overvalue spiritual well-being in illness treatment, though I think she has always stressed that medical care is essential. Her position on vaccinations is very nuanced and hard to pin down. All-in-all, she is a bit cuckoo and having her waste everyone’s time in the early debates, at the expense of serious politicians, was madness. The qualification system has has a lot of criticism, but at least it has got Marianne off the stage.

"Visualize the oil spill plugged. Close your eyes for 5 minutes and see angels coming over it, filling it with sane and sacred thoughts." #fb  — Marianne Williamson (@marwilliamson) May 30, 2010




Tulsi Gabbard has movie-star looks and voice and has an attractive calmness about her, never flustered by challenging questions. She has the tools to be a great candidate - but she has no policies that I am aware of. I have followed her for a bit and heard her give many interviews and they all follow the same script.

She only has two subjects that she ever speaks about. Firstly, she is a military veteran. If you didn’t already know, you will within 30 seconds of hearing her begin speaking. And secondly, she is opposed to most of the overseas military ventures the US gets involved in, ‘regime-change wars’, as she calls them ad nauseam. Every interview, speech or debate consists of her banging on about regime-change wars, her military service, Hillary Clinton being a war-monger and, occasionally, how the US government is covering up Saudi Arabian involvement in 9/11. And that is the complete content of every speech and every interview I have ever heard from her. I still have no idea on her policies on anything that matters regarding running the country. It’s a shame that such a potentially good candidate is wasted by obsessing on one issue to the exclusion of all others. I can’t believe that she is allowed to get away with this, rather than being challenged by interviewers to get onto other subjects. Because of her contrarian positions and her antipathy to Clinton, she is Republicans’ favourite Democrat, and gets a lot of airtime, appearing on Fox more than any Democrat, and getting a very friendly reception. YouTube comments on her appearances are full of “I’ve never voted Democrat but I’d vote for her” stuff from conservatives. She has by far the highest score of voters who would vote for her but are not considering any other candidate. Independents are allowed to vote in some early State Primaries, which will help her, but she is only polling at 1-2% nationally.




Andrew Yang is a businessman who is running for President because........well, I’m sorry, I haven’t been able to figure out why. He has some unusual ideas, which are quite radical, but they’re not going to make such a difference that you would think it requires you to run for President. His big thing is that he would give everyone $1,000 a month, which he would pay for by introducing VAT. He says ‘everyone’, but it is aimed at the middle classes, as people on benefits don’t get it (but very wealthy people do). He has cultivated an image of being a super-intelligent Asian maths boffin and is an odd character with a habit of laughing awkwardly for an uncomfortably long time at random moments when he thinks something is really funny and everyone else is looking at each other wondering what he is doing. He has gained a lot of support and a lot of donations, beating a lot of the experienced professional politicians, presumably because he is running in a less crowded lane and picking up unique supporters, whereas they are competing with each other for the same votes, so he will keep rolling on. Like Tulsi, he gets a lot of support from Republicans and Independents, as well as the very Progressive stream, but less from mainstream Democrats.



None of these three will be President, but none is likely to pull out soon. Williamson is trying to sell books and her movement, and the other two are promoting ideas (and themselves). Tulsi is just about divorced from her party at this stage and I don't know where her future lies. Of the three, Yang has, unexpectedly, gained a lot of support and raised an awful lot of cash. I think they'll all be getting in the way for a while and Yang could be hang around almost to the end, despite having no chance.

[MintTrav]

I left Michael Bennet off the list of Senators still running. He is a worthy moderate Senator from Colorado, whose father and grandfather were part of Clinton and FDR's governments. He has no chance and I don't know why he is bothering.

Bennet hit the headlines with a powerful and emotional speech attacking Ted Cruz, which quickly became the most-watched Senate speech in history. He got a lot of 'This is a politician we can admire' feedback from that speech, so maybe it has gone to his head. He went on a bit (he mentions that he's on his final point at two and a half minutes, and then goes on for thirty) but watching the first couple of minutes will give you a flavour. I bet you watch more than that though. The background is that Cruz was trying to get payments released for Coastguard and other 'First Responders' during the most recent government shutdown, but Bennet let loose his pent-up feelings about the time when Cruz caused the last shutdown.

[booder]

Looks bloody cold in that Castro pic.

[nirvana]

Looks bloody cold in that Castro pic.

Impressive deductive skills :-)

[Marky147]

HNY, MintTrav!!

Thanks for all your efforts ITT. These posts are great insight for those of us who like to follow the US elections.

Signed Tulsi's No1 fan

[MintTrav]

Thanks Marky, Tulsi is great value, entertainmentwise. She’s the first Hindu to get to Congress and the first Samoan-American. She’s a crowd-pleaser, always ready to sing and, coming from Hawaii, she’s an expert surfer. She always sounds so confident and convincing, and I could listen to that voice all day. It’s just the things she says and her repetitive focus on one or two topics that I have a problem with. I do love the strange way she says ‘Hawa-hi ’, which I assume must be the correct way.

She consistently tops the unliked polls within her party and, if she hadn’t already cut any route back into favour with the party leadership, she did so for sure by being the only House Representative to vote ‘Present’ on the impeachment vote, effectively abstaining. She put up a Youtube video explaining her contorted reasoning, but it didn’t help. She has lived in New Hampshire for the last couple of months and is aiming for support from Independent and Republican voters (who are allowed to vote in some of the early Democrat Primaries) to keep her in the race and give her campaign credibility. That strategy might pay off, though Yang is aiming at the same group. They make the point that attracting those voters would give them the edge against Trump, which seems valid.

Click to see full-size image.

Tulsi went surfing in New Hampshire on New Year’s Day. Hawaii it ain’t.

[4KSuited]

Great stuff Mint. Now that we’ve heard a Trump and smelt the stench, surely anything’s possible in US politics. I’m with Marky, let’s hope we get Tulsi in charge for a term 😉

[MintTrav]

Castro has gone!

The least surprising withdrawal has finally been confirmed. As one of the most progressive candidates, Julian moved the discussion, but didn't have enough support among the general Party members. They don't hate him, but there were always others around who got more attention. Donations dried up, so he had less than $1m left at the end. He's not finished though - he says he recognises it's not his time but that he will continue to work for the issues he believes in, which we can take as code for a future run.

One selling point, as used by Bill Clinton in the past, is that you get two for the price of one. His campaign has been chaired by his identical twin brother, who is in the House and was on one of the impeachment committees. They went to Stanford and Harvard together and worked at the same law firm before starting their own. Perhaps next time it will be Joaquin's turn.

[Marky147]

Thanks Marky, Tulsi is great value, entertainmentwise. She’s the first Hindu to get to Congress and the first Samoan-American. She’s a crowd-pleaser, always ready to sing and, coming from Hawaii, she’s an expert surfer. She always sounds so confident and convincing, and I could listen to that voice all day. It’s just the things she says and her repetitive focus on one or two topics that I have a problem with. I do love the strange way she says ‘Hawa-hi ’, which I assume must be the correct way.

She consistently tops the unliked polls within her party and, if she hadn’t already cut any route back into favour with the party leadership, she did so for sure by being the only House Representative to vote ‘Present’ on the impeachment vote, effectively abstaining. She put up a Youtube video explaining her contorted reasoning, but it didn’t help. She has lived in New Hampshire for the last couple of months and is aiming for support from Independent and Republican voters (who are allowed to vote in some of the early Democrat Primaries) to keep her in the race and give her campaign credibility. That strategy might pay off, though Yang is aiming at the same group. They make the point that attracting those voters would give them the edge against Trump, which seems valid.

She has been on Rogan a couple times, and comes across very well. There aren't many that don't, when speaking, though. I saw her rendition of 'Imagine' on youtube over Xmas, and that was pretty good.

Yang was on Rogan as well, and he seems like a very smart guy, albeit a little crazy.

[Karabiner]

I'm guessing Donald's put his bid for the Nobel Peace Prize on the back-burner for now..

Some interesting stuff emerging about Trump's Deutsche Bank loans being underwritten by a Russia state-owned bank too.

[MintTrav]

Bloomberg has been consistently polling a distant fifth, competing with Buttigieg for fourth and occasionally matching or pipping him, but that’s been it. Now he has suddenly leapt to joint-third with Warren in a new Hill-Harris poll. This may be an aberration, but it’s a real surprise anyway, and a testament to the power of money. Liz and Pete continue to slide.

The bizarre thing is that we won’t see him in any of the debates, no matter how well he polls, as he is funding his campaign entirely himself, so won’t pass the donor benchmark. It’s a bit peculiar already, with only five out of fifteen candidates on the stage, but it would be bizarre if we eventually got down to Biden, Sanders and Bloomberg, and only two of them could take part.

Click to see full-size image.

[MintTrav]

What time is it?

[MintTrav]

Marianne Williamson is running low on finance, so she has laid off her entire campaign team and has..........not dropped out. She is going to stay in the race without any staff and struggle on with a few volunteers. Her staffing is believed to have peaked at around 45 people a while ago, not that many compared with some others (Warren and Sanders have 500-600 on their payrolls). Williamson will struggle to register with voters without any staff, but she was on 0% with them, so she may as well not waste the money. After she made it into the second debate, Ted Cruz' campaign manager tweeted that Republicans should donate $1 each to her campaign to help keep her on the stage for future ones, and quite a few did. It would be a pity if she does drop out - there is a fair amount of mileage still to had from her.