If You Were A Democratic Candidate, Who Would You Most Want On The Top Of The Ticket?

Newt Gingrich, once House speaker, was driven out of Congress in 1997 by his fellow-Republicans who joined the Democrats in voting for one of the 84 ethics charges against him. He was formally reprimanded and forced to reimburse the House for the $300,000 he had embezzled. Only 28 Republicans voted no, the reprimand passing 395-28. He was the first-ever speaker to be reprimanded on an ethics charge. House Republicans told him he would be ousted as speaker if he didn't resign, so he called the Republicans in Congress "cannibals" and he not only resigned as Speaker, but also told his constituents, who had reelected him the day before to go do-- and pay for-- another election because he was to embarrassed to go back to Congress as a regular-- albeit disgraced-- member.

Newsweek doesn't see him as a disgraced pariah and allowed him to weigh in on the Democratic primary yesterday, where he wrote that Biden is dead meat and Republican Mike Bloomberg would take over the conservative lane of the Democratic contest. His starts by reminding his readers that the big loser in Iowa was Biden and then reminding Biden that you can't claim to be the front-runner and the one person with the electoral strength to beat Señor Trumpanzee when you come in a distant fourth in Iowa. "Biden may stay in through South Carolina, but with each passing day, he will have less money and momentum."

There's no arguing with his next assertion, that "Biden is going to have an extraordinarily difficult time raising money going forward. He has run a tremendously expensive campaign and burned through a lot of funds. Furthermore, he has tended to raise his money from large donors, so many have already given him the legal maximum. By contrast, Sanders has the largest number of small donors and can go back to them month after month for $10 and $20 donations. These add up to millions. It is hard to imagine Biden competing on Super Tuesday in expensive states like California and Texas, because he simply won't be able to buy statewide ads."

The B team

Gingrich noted that as he was writing, "Bloomberg has announced that (in light of the Iowa caucus results), he is going to double the amount of money he is spending. He will certainly start picking up support just from the sheer weight and quality of his advertising. No one in politics should underestimate Bloomberg's understanding of public opinion and his willingness to use the best experts that money can attract. Bloomberg made part of his billions out of Bloomberg News. He won the mayoral race in New York City three times (the last time spending an estimated $200 per vote). He has more than $60 billion in net worth. This means he could spend $2 billion or $3 billion on a presidential campaign and not even notice it.

[T]he Democrats have a proportional representation beginning at 15 percent. This means that every candidate who can get 15 percent or more of the vote will have an incentive to stay in the race.

Furthermore, Bloomberg has some weaknesses that will be hard to overcome in a Democratic primary. His stop-and-frisk policing policy was seen as racist and was deeply resented. Large parts of the black community may go to Warren or Sanders rather than Bloomberg (Buttigieg seems to have a similar problem and gets little support from African Americans). Bloomberg was a registered Republican when he ran the first time for mayor and later ran as an independent. Yet he tends to dictate what people can do (he proposed outlawing Big Gulp cups in New York when he was mayor). He has been so aggressively anti-gun that in some areas there will be moderate Democrats deeply opposed to him.

Finally, Bloomberg carries the burden of being a big billionaire. He is so wealthy, he is almost a model for the kind of rich person Sanders and Warren dislike. For the increasingly radical Democratic Party to nominate a former Republican billionaire purely because he is willing to spend what it takes to buy the nomination would probably lead to a massive revolt at their convention in Milwaukee this summer. It is a little hard to imagine Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the Squad passively accepting Bloomberg as their standard bearer.

If everyone who can get 15 percent (and therefore some delegates) stays in the race-- and if an assault on Bloomberg keeps him from breaking 50 percent-- then it is entirely possible the Democrats are headed toward a wide-open convention. This means the super delegates (who are incumbents and officials with no real legitimacy except their titles) could come into play on the second ballot.

He concludes by telling whoever reads his stuff to buckle their seat belts because, as is the hope of the White House and the Kremlin, "The Democratic race could become incredibly turbulent."

Of course, the people Biden is paying-- immensely-- to run his campaign are not taking this lying down and are not ready to see their fat pay checks and expense accounts dry up. One especially annoying staffer, who most of the country is ready to never hear yammering again, is floating conspiracy theories about the data.

"This is shockingly irresponsible. Biden’s staff is essentially trying to foster unreasonable doubts in order to cover for the fact that he didn’t do well there," wrote Mother Jones news editor Patrick Caldwell. "Despite technical issues with that app that was supposed to transmit results to the state party, there is absolutely zero reason to believe that the final results will have been skewed. There are many, many problems with how caucuses are conducted, but one upside is that they are near-foolproof when it comes to preventing election-rigging, because the process unfolds entirely in public, giving each side’s supporters a chance to call foul if any numbers don’t add up. When I was in Iowa earlier this week, I watched more than 1,000 voters in downtown Des Moines gather into clusters on different sides of the room designated for each candidate, assess how many voters were in each camp, redivide amongst themselves, and then call it a night. Not only that, each person had to fill out a card marking their preference, creating a lengthy paper trail. If that site-- which elected delegates only for Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and Pete Buttigieg-- magically was reported as electing a ton of delegates for Andrew Yang, there would be hundreds of witnesses who could flag the irregularity."

Status Quo Joe was in New Hampshire, where he is also polling terribly-- and with negative momentum. So he decided to go negative against Mayo Pete and Bernie. The huge loss in Iowa has made Biden desperate and shrill. Tara Golshan wrote that he's sharpened his "tone on the campaign trail. He questioned rival Buttigieg’s credentials, and dared the former mayor to directly criticize the Obama administration."

“Is he really saying the Obama-Biden administration was a failure? Pete, just say it out loud,” Biden said at the rally. “I have great respect for Mayor Pete and his service for this nation, but I do believe it’s a risk-- to just be straight up with you-- for this party to nominate somebody who’s never held office higher than mayor of a town of 100,000 people in Indiana. I do believe it’s a risk.”

His campaign reiterated the sentiment on Twitter, responding to a common Buttigieg talking point about the “old failed Washington.”

Buttigieg’s relatively short resume has been easy fodder for rival Democratic presidential campaigns to question his qualifications for office. (Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota went after the former Indiana mayor on the debate stage over it.) But Biden hasn’t notably engaged in the criticism until now, largely shying away attacking his fellow Democratic presidential candidates.

That strategy might be changing. Biden also went after Sanders at the New Hampshire rally, questioning whether Sanders’ self-proclaimed belief in democratic socialism is a risk for the party.

“If Senator Sanders is the nominee for the party, every Democrat in America, up and down the ballot-- blue states, red states, purple states, easy districts, competitive ones-- every Democrat will have to carry the label Senator Sanders has chosen for himself,” Biden said. “So what do you do about who is going to be at the top of the ticket? Donald Trump is desperate to pin the label ‘socialist, socialist, socialist’ on our party. We cannot let him do that.”

Sanders has long come under scrutiny for identifying as a democratic socialist-- which he has more recently defined as a continuation of a Franklin Delano Roosevelt, New Deal kind of politics. The label has certainly become a bogeyman on the right.

Trump repeatedly invoked socialism the State of Union address Tuesday night, saying “socialism destroys nations” and censuring lawmakers who “have endorsed legislation to impose a socialist takeover of our health care system”-- a not-so-veiled jab at “Medicare for All,” Sanders’ most central policy proposal to move every American onto a single government-run health care system.

But the label hasn’t hurt Sanders with primary voters yet. He is looking well-positioned to win the popular vote in Iowa, and has widened the lead in New Hampshire. Sanders’ and Buttigieg’s campaigns did not respond for comment.

Biden has long made his electability the centerpiece of his presidential campaign, focusing his campaign speeches more on Trump-- and his belief that he is the best positioned to beat him-- than any policy platform. Coming in fourth in the first contest, however, isn’t the best look for a candidate making the pitch that they can win elections."

I asked some top congressional candidates who they would rather see on the top of the Democratic ticket this fall. The first candidate I spoke with was Eva Putzova, the progressive in the huge Arizona district that takes up most of the state. "As far as I am concerned," she told me, "the candidate at the top of the Democratic ticket must be Bernie Sanders or we face the prospect of losing to the most corrupt, incompetent President in our history. Only Sanders has the ability to gain the support of Trump voters in the key swing states that we must win to prevail in November. Sanders is winning the support of the diverse coalition of voters we need to transform the country-- workers, people of color, youth, climate activists, and seniors worried about losing their Social Security and Medicare from Republican efforts to privatize those programs. Elizabeth Warren is also a champion for many of the same progressive issues as Bernie, but Bernie has the longer and more consistent track record and is my first choice. None of the other candidates have inspired much enthusiasm in the Democratic base and are unlikely to do so."

Two top-notch candidates from the opposite ends of New York, Shaniyat Chowdhury from southeast Queens and Robin Wilt from Rochester, each had perspectives not unlike Eva's Neither is eager to see a status quo candidate like Biden at the top of the ticket. Shan, who is running against a corrupt New Dem, very much like Biden-- Gregory Meeks-- told me that in his district,"If Bernie Sanders is not the Democratic nominee, there will be hell to pay. If Bernie Sander is indeed the nominee, then there still is hell pay against the democratic establishment. They just don’t get it. The people want Bernie because he’s the only one fighting for the working class in blue and red states. If anyone can bring the country together, it would be him. The people see it. The corrupt politicians on both sides of the aisle do not.

Robin Wilt, a former Bernie DNC delegate, said that  "For me, it is an easy choice whom I would like to see at the top of the Democratic ticket. Biden is a problematic candidate not just for his dubious policy decisions-- such as his support for the Iraq war or for the repeal of Glass-Stegall-- nor simply for his cynical relationship with wealthy donors, nor for just his notorious verbal gaffes. Biden’s biggest problem is that he does not inspire. In Monroe County, a local NPR radio host has spent weeks trying to identify enthusiastic Biden supporters and come up empty-handed. If Democrats are to defeat Donald Trump in the general election, we must energize young voters. Already burdened with tremendous student debt, young Americans will be inheriting the sins of our past: an exorbitantly expensive and dysfunctional health care system, a deeply schismed political dialogue, a climate crisis, unsustainable income inequality... Whom do they look up to? Who inspires them? Bernie Sanders does, and with good reason. Bernie has held durable sway among the vast majority of voters under 35. Senator Sanders stands out for his unwavering support for everyday Americans, and that is the allure for youthful voters, who see the bedrock of our democratic institutions under threat as they come of age. Despite what may be politically expedient, Bernie has the political courage to stand up for social and economic justice. His message clearly resonates and has inspired a movement. The ultimate demise of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign was an enthusiasm gap among a critical bloc of young voters. We cannot afford to make the same mistake in 2020. That’s why I support the only Democrat who can generate enough enthusiasm to take back the White House. I support Bernie Sanders.

Indiana progressive Jennifer Christie told us that the policies that she supports-- a Green New Deal, Medicare For All, Wealth Tax for Income Equality, Education For All-- "all of these are Bernie’s policies too. So having a progressive, like Bernie, at the top of the ticket would give us the opportunity to advance on these important issues. We know that Bernie will deliver on his key policies because he has consistently said so for many years. I also believe that progressive solutions are appealing to working people across the entire political spectrum. The notion of electability is not about how 'moderate' one is; it’s about how much bold vision you have to inspire real change. The politicos didn’t think Trump was 'electable' in 2016 either... they are out of touch."

Historian Liam O'Mara is the progressive Democrat opposing Trump puppet Ken Calvert in Riverside County. This morning he told us that "The question facing Democrats, and the nation, is whether we continue to repeat the mistakes of the past, or listen to history and learn from those mistakes. Trump will be extremely hard to beat, and might win against anyone we run, but there is no excuse for giving him a major advantage by running an easy target." Liam continued:

When was the last time Democrats won the White House more than twice in a row? Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the chief model for Bernie Sanders's political persona. Contrast that with how badly Democrats have been doing since they turned conservative in the 1990s. Bill Clinton, who was farther to the right than Eisenhower, failed to get more than half the vote in either of his elections. Far from being a great success story, Clinton's entire presidency may come down to Ross Perot's presence as a spoiler.

It is worth noting something important about Perot-- he was running as a populist, and his time in the spotlight was the beginning of a major realignment in US politics. Obama later managed to win two terms largely on the basis of attracting a sufficient number of populist swing voters. Hillary Clinton's failure to win in the key MidWest states was down to, you guessed it, the populists, some of whom voted for Trump, and others of whom stayed home.

This populist swing vote is what matters in choosing our standard-bearer. Biden was never the "electable" choice-- his earlier campaigns for president collapsed because he is a blatantly sub-par candidate, and he is in even worse shape now because so much of the electorate is aware of his history with mass incarceration, foreign wars, and systemic racism. Buttigieg is hardly better in this area, and benefits mainly from one of his greatest weaknesses-- a very short résumé. In that time, though, he has antagonized minority communities in South Bend, and sketched out a blandly "centrist" vision which again leaves him at best an Eisenhower Republican.

Bloomberg, on the other hand, is an off-the-charts disaster of epic proportion for the Democratic party. Do we really want to run an oligarch with no interest in speaking to or courting the voters? Do we want to let someone runs advertisements and buy the White House? Bloomberg chose not to contest the early states. He chose not to solicit donations so that he could debate-- and thus be vetted by the electorate. He is running as a nakedly authoritarian figure, comfortable with by-passing our most sacred democratic traditions. This, too, fits a historical pattern-- does anyone remember how he dealt with Occupy Wall Street? Hint: It involved ignoring court orders and using overwhelming force.

If the Democrats want to win in November, they need both to energize non-voters, and to bring on board those populist swing voters who took a chance on Obama but were disappointed by how little he actually did for them. We cannot afford to run another all-talk candidate, and we cannot afford to run another conservative. Taking out Trump will be a hard fight, and the candidate best positioned to mobilize enough voters to do that is Bernie Sanders.