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Democratic Primary News

Hickenlooper and Inslee are in, Bloomberg and Clinton are out.

  • Former Colorado governor John Hickenlooper and incumbent Washington governor Jay Inslee are running. The former is relatively moderate, the latter more left-wing and focused on climate change.
  • Joe Biden has hired the head of the influential Latino Victory Fund in what Politico describes as “the latest sign he’s running.”
  • Kamala Harris is elbowing out rivals as she courts wealthy Democratic donors in California.
  • Cory Booker, Harris and Amy Klobuchar are ahead in the “endorsement primary” as measured by FiveThirtyEight.
  • Michael Bloomberg and Hillary Clinton have decided against seeking the nomination. The former warned Democrats not to allow the primary process to “drag the party to an extreme” that could help reelect Donald Trump.

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  • Jonathan Bernstein on Texas Democrats potentially blowing their chance of defeating incumbent Republican senator John Cornyn by allowing former San Antonio mayor Julián Castro and former congressman Beto O’Rourke to run for president. This is a particularly American problem. “In parliamentary systems, running for the legislature is a precondition to running for prime minister, not an alternative to it.”
  • Ronald Brownstein and John Halpin and Ruy Teixeira on Democrats’ two paths to victory: win back Rust Belt Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin by appealing to white working voters or expand the Democratic coalition in the Sun Belt by mobilizing nonwhites. This is essentially the “Ohio versus Arizona” debate I wrote about out in 2017.