My niece and I were e-mailing about 2020
She wrote “I’m worried as well and can’t seem to decide which dem I think can win! Who do you think?” This was my response.
Thanks for the excuse of trying to unpack your question that’s on everyone’s mind.
From inside my Upper West Side liberal bubble it’s hard to get a picture of what’s going on west of the Hudson. The prospect of Trump winning is real, horrifying and sickening.
The thing about being retired is that I can do stuff like this on a Thursday morning before I spend the rest of my day writing unpublished letters to the editor, inquiries to various disinterested authors, spending hours on the phone talking to tech support kids, named John Smith, in Manila then rejecting requests for a brief survey on how the call went or trying to get an airline to waive the $60 charge to reserve an aisle seat because of my knee.Then there’s lunch somewhere between 12 and 12:03 and then before my nap I spend some time trying and failing to understand the incomprehensible stream of letters that arrive every day from Medicare.
Now on to your question.
The interesting overarching mystery to me is why any sane person would want that job.The answer is they would not because you have to be bat shit crazy to want to be President and really good at hiding it like Obama was.
The other factor and the only glimmer of hope is the extent of the damage being done to Trump and the Republican brand as the impeachment process exposes more of who he is,
long term the corrosive damage he has done to the country and more Americans inside the ReFoxican smoke machine get a look at the man behind the curtain.
The mobs of screaming Trump ReFoxicans, channelling their political ancestors in 1939 Berlin who wanted to make Germany great again, are hopelessly beyond the gravitational pull of Earth’s fact based atmosphere. The big question is whether any sectors of Republican voters, who are not knuckle scraping neanderthals, can be peeled away . [See my Warren wildcard prediction below].
As of Nov 1 there are 17 dems still standing. Ugh
The short list of key “holy grail” voting sectors that the dems need to mobilize to beat Trump seem to be;
1. the Republican “Colin Powell’ middle — who are nauseous and will never vote for Trump. The Dem needs to be someone who will make them want to come out from under the covers on election day.
2. black people. Motivating black people to vote for another white pol who suddenly shows up in their churches to hug the minister is a major problem for the Dems.
There is also the impact of the republican decades long Jim Crow 2.0, full court press to stop black and brown people from voting;
3. suburban women — college educated, physically revolted by Trump but hard to predict because they have internal bullshit detectors that are well honed from years of rangling their kids to do their homework. There is also the fact that at the end of a day of keeping a job and running a family they are too exhausted to do anything but have a glass of wine and go to bed.
4. Bernie’s army of active angry young people. Inspiring but I’m worried that they are quasi cultish and not big picture, eyes on the prize, flexible types who will join the fight when Bernie is not the nominee.
Warren is the best candidate although increasingly personally annoying. She is the only one I can see knocking the Orange Godzilla off his feet in the professional wrestling ring of a national debate. She also has an SNL problem because when she talks I keep seeing Kate McKinnon.
Now she has thrown her “hail Mary “Medicare for All” pass which may be the reason she wins or loses.
Maybe she will get votes from 3 and 4, less from 2. Votes from 1 is an open question. This depends on whether after she gets the nomination she can convince Wall Street that she is only about a level playing field, not Stalin.
Here is my Warren wild card prediction. Trump voters treading water in poverty level jobs living paycheck to paycheck without health insurance — one illness away from bankruptcy — are the Warren wild card.
Michael Moore warned us that Trump would win because these voters were tired of being shit on and just wanted to throw a bomb at the system. My fantasy is that these folks might have buyer’s remorse about having been bamboozled by a gold plated sociopath and want to throw another bomb at the system by voting for someone who really is in their corner.
Bernie — he changed the landscape of American politics but America will not elect a 78 year old angry Jew from Brooklyn. Plus his heart attack underscored what Fran Liebowitz told Bill Maher — Biden and Sanders are not only too old to be President, they should have their car keys taken away.
Bernie is not the humble drop out type He gets only 4
Biden — looking worse by the day and can’t seem to talk in full sentences that don’t end with the word “malarkey”. If he doesn’t drop out it’s all 1 and a sprinkling from 2 and 3. Also even without even a shred of an allegation that Hunter Biden did anything wrong, the Burisma stinking dead fish gift to the Refoxicans was unforgivably clueless. Trump’s, hopefully fatal, mistake was not to leave it alone.
Buttigieg — showing strong support in Iowa. He is a possible long shot with some serious brain power. Definitely 1 and 3 but trouble with 2 and 4 and the problem of getting people to vote for a 16 year old gay kid.
Harris — She would take from 1,2 and 3 but too nauseatingly self righteous with a sleazy record as a prosecutor where she was guided by political self interest and not doing the right thing. Watching her try to be folksy when talking to crowds of people by dropin’ the g at the end of words like thinkin’, watchin’, and hopin’ makes me feel like pukin’.
Booker — decent, unexciting guy and a likely VP
Love
Bob
Including this picture of you and me for no particular reason except cuteness The photo does beg the question — what is that thing is on your head?
