“The Hillary Clinton of 2020.”
By Nathan Robinson
The Guardian (1/4/20)
Supporters of Joe Biden are unlikely to be persuaded by most of the common criticisms. They know he can be rambling and unintelligible. They know his record is unimpressive and that he doesn’t really have “policy proposals”. None of this matters, though, because to them he has the most important quality of all: he can beat Donald Trump. Nothing you can say about Biden’s record, platform, or mental state matters next to the argument that he is the best hope Democrats have of getting Trump out of office.
His electability is a myth, and when we look honestly at the facts we can see that Biden is actually a dangerously poor candidate to run.
There’s just one problem: it’s a myth. It is a myth just as it was a myth that Hillary Clinton was a good candidate against Trump. Biden is not, in fact, the pragmatic choice. He would not beat Donald Trump. He would lose. And we must say this over and over again. Forget his flubs. Forget his finger-nibbling. Biden would be crushed by Donald Trump. If you want Trump out of office, don’t support Biden.
Last time round, Clinton supporters lived in a strange kind of denial. Anyone could see she had unique vulnerabilities Trump could exploit. She was a Wall Street candidate, and he was running to “drain the swamp”. She was under investigation by the FBI, and his pitch was that Washington was corrupt. She had supported the catastrophic Iraq war, and he portrayed himself as an outsider opponent of those wars. Trump could “run to her left” and make criticisms she would be unable to respond to, because they were accurate. Clinton’s attempts to attack Trump as an out-of-touch, reckless billionaire sex criminal would fail, because Trump would point out that she herself was out of touch, bought by billionaires, and had an unrepentant alleged sex criminal as her husband and chief campaign surrogate.
Joe Biden will face many of the same problems. …
*****
Centrist Democrats Need A 2020 Reality Check Before It’s Too Late
In obsessively pursuing white, middle-class midwestern voters, Democratic leaders are setting their party up for disaster.
By Cas Mudde
The Guardian (1/2/19)
Let’s start the new year with a reality check. Remember that dad, uncle or neighbor, who told you over Christmas how much he dislikes Trump’s rude language and that he might vote for the Democrats, if only they nominate a “moderate” candidate and not a “socialist”?
Well, he is going to vote for Trump.
This election year will be (again) filled with columns and op-eds from #NeverTrump Republicans giving (unsolicited) advice to the Democratic party. They will argue that the Democratic party can win the presidential elections, but only if they nominate a “moderate” Democrat, who can win over the many Republicans they know that are appalled by Trump. But you can forget about these Max Boots, Jennifer Rubins, and (particularly) Bret Stephenses. These pet conservatives of the liberal media represent no relevant electoral base.
You can also ignore the reports from “non-partisan” thinktanks …