News

Democratic Primary News

Booker is running. Candidates are embracing Medicare-for-all.

  • New Jersey senator Cory Booker, formerly a mayor of Newark, is officially running.
  • Booker, Kirsten Gillibrand, Kamala Harris and Elizabeth Warren have thrown their support behind Bernie Sanders‘ proposal to replace private health insurance in the United States with Medicare-for-all.
  • Harris is hiring veterans of Hillary Clinton’s failed presidential campaign.
  • Big Democratic donors aren’t writing cheques yet.

Not running

  • Pennsylvania senator Bob Casey.
  • Los Angeles mayor Eric Garcetti.
  • Connecticut senator Chris Murphy.
  • Former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz, who may run an independent instead.

Earlier, Michael Avenatti, the celebrity lawyer, Andrew Cuomo, the governor of New York, Martin O’Malley, the former governor of Maryland, Deval Patrick, the former governor of Massachusetts, and Tom Steyer, a billionaire hedge-fund manager, decided against bids.

Some twenty major candidates are still in the mix. Eight have officially announced campaigns.

Read more

  • Jonathan Bernstein on Democrats’ strong field of presidential candidates.
  • David Marcus argues Harris is overcompensating for her not-exactly-progressive record as a prosector.
  • Josh Putnam on superdelegates withholding endorsements this year.
  • Dylan Scott on Medicare-for-all and Jonathan Chait on the political risks for Democrats.
  • Geoffrey Skelley on the challenges for third-party candidates.
  • Ruy Teixeira recognizes that the Democratic Party is moving to the left but cautions that the young anti-capitalist left is only part of that movement. “As leftism goes, the current Democratic iteration is of a fairly modest variety, approaching, at most, mild European social democracy.”