[ Posted Monday, March 4th, 2019 – 18:52 UTC ]
And then there were twelve....
It's been a few weeks since I last wrote about the Democratic presidential field, and we've had a few announcements in the meantime, so it's time once again to quickly run down who is running for president and who is not. If you think the answer to that first question is "pretty much everybody," well, you're not alone in thinking that. We're likely only about halfway through the announcement season, and we've already got a wealth of Democrats to choose from. It's already gotten to the point where sitting down with a blank piece of paper and listing them all is tough for even the wonkiest among us to do (I just tried this, even after I had been browsing the Wikipedia page on the subject, and I only managed to remember 11... I forgot to list Gillibrand...). And this is likely only going to get harder to do, as more and more people decide to jump in.
Read Complete Article »
[ Posted Friday, March 1st, 2019 – 19:11 UTC ]
In a bizarre development this week, President Donald Trump brought unity to all the politicians in Washington. He managed this feat by failing to get any deal out of his much-hyped summit meeting with North Korea's murderous dictator Kim Jong Un. When news of this failure on the international stage reached Washington (in [...]
Read Complete Article »
[ Posted Monday, February 25th, 2019 – 18:58 UTC ]
Democrats are, if the political media is to be believed, in a soul-searching phase right now, deciding what exactly the party stands for and what they should run their next campaign on. They are deeply divided, the pundits tell us, between the "far left" and the pragmatists who don't want to win the primaries only to lose the general election. They can't even agree on which demographic will be the key one to delivering victory in 2020.
Read Complete Article »
[ Posted Friday, February 22nd, 2019 – 18:25 UTC ]
The news media -- once again -- has been in a frenzy over the possibility that Robert Mueller will wrap up his investigation next week and issue his long-awaited report. They've gone down this road before, as have President Trump's legal advisors (who have been telling Trump the whole thing is going to be over very soon now for almost a solid year and a half). So you'll forgive us for not being all that convinced that this is indeed the time that Lucy won't pull the football away, and we'll finally get to kick it thumpingly down the field!
Perhaps we're being a wee bit too cynical? Maybe. But then again, maybe not. We'll see what next week brings.
Read Complete Article »
[ Posted Wednesday, February 20th, 2019 – 18:17 UTC ]
When looking ahead to the 2020 Democratic primaries, many pundits are suffering from a lack of imagination. Either that, or they just don't remember the 2016 Republican primary race, for some reason. Because unlike the last two close-fought Democratic primary seasons (in 2016 and 2008), this time around it will not be a binary process. There will not be a single frontrunner challenged by a single underdog. The field is already too big for that to happen. What this means in practical terms -- the thing that most haven't grappled with -- is that the winner of the early primaries and caucuses could win not with a majority of the votes but with a smallish plurality of the votes. Even winning 30 percent might be enough, with so many others in the race splitting the remaining votes among them.
Read Complete Article »
[ Posted Tuesday, February 19th, 2019 – 18:19 UTC ]
Will American voters "feel the Bern" in 2020? We're soon going to find out the answer to that question, since Senator Bernie Sanders just announced he'll be making a second run for the Democratic presidential nomination. To mix a few pyrotechnical metaphors, Bernie certainly caught fire once, but the question is whether lightning will strike twice for him again.
Read Complete Article »
[ Posted Monday, February 4th, 2019 – 17:25 UTC ]
It has been a few weeks since we last took a look at the ever-expanding 2020 Democratic presidential primary field, so I thought it'd be a good time to update the first article I wrote on the horserace.
Read Complete Article »
[ Posted Friday, February 1st, 2019 – 19:38 UTC ]
The biggest news on the Democratic side of the aisle -- as it will be from now until at least the spring of 2020 -- is the presidential contest. The race is getting bigger, as more and more people toss their chapeaux into the ring.
Read Complete Article »
[ Posted Friday, February 1st, 2019 – 18:29 UTC ]
There's something new in the air in Democratic politics, or at the very least something old that is now getting a whole lot more attention now than it has in a long time. Nothing shows the pivot in the Democratic Party away from Clintonian centrism (or corporatism) back to the party's workingman roots as much as the newfound eagerness to tax the rich. So far, the only real disagreements among Democrats are how to tax the rich, not over whether they should be taxed more at all. This is a sea-change from what the party stood for back in the 1990s, when being "business-friendly" was something Democratic politicians strove for.
Read Complete Article »
[ Posted Tuesday, January 29th, 2019 – 17:17 UTC ]
We're barely through the first month of 2019 and the 2020 presidential race is already heating up. The biggest news this week came from the flirtation of former Starbucks C.E.O. Howard Schultz with an independent run. This has caused much consternation on the left, because most Democrats see a Schultz independent bid as nothing short of a spoiler effort which may put Donald Trump back in the White House for another four years. Personally, I'm not so sure the electoral equation would be that simple, though.
Read Complete Article »
