Atlantic Sentinel

Tag: US Democratic Primary 2020

  • Joe Biden Is a Stronger Candidate Than You Might Think

    Joe Biden Barack Obama
    Vice President Joe Biden and President Barack Obama meet in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington DC, August 27, 2014 (White House/Pete Souza)

    Joe Biden might look out of sync with today’s Democratic Party. 76 years old, Biden is a Third Way-style liberal who used to be “tough on crime”, voted for the Iraq War and now faces his own #MeToo accusations.

    Yet he is the frontrunner for the party’s presidential nomination.

    RealClearPolitics has Biden’s support at 39 percent, 23 points ahead of the runner-up, Bernie Sanders.

    We’re still almost a year away from the first primaries. Polls are not usually predictive at this point in the contest and say more about name recognition. But Biden is also ahead in the endorsement primary, as measured by FiveThirtyEight. The former vice president has already convinced eighty prominent Democrats to support him against 55 for California senator Kamala Harris. (Who I think is actually the second strongest candidate at this point. Read Frank Bruni’s column about her in The New York Times.)

    What explains Biden’s popularity? (more…)

  • Why It’s Fair Not to Treat Sanders Like the Democratic Frontrunner

    Bernie Sanders
    Vermont senator Bernie Sanders takes part in a protest in Washington DC, November 17, 2016 (Lorie Shaull)

    NBC’s political team asks if it is fair to treat Bernie Sanders as an insurgent rather than the legitimate frontrunner in the Democratic presidential primary, given his high name recognition and the fact that he has raised more money than the other candidates.

    I think so. (more…)

  • Democratic Primary News

    • Joe Biden — who still hasn’t officially declared his candidacy — is fending off accusations that he has been too affectionate toward women in the past.
    • Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Indiana is having a moment in the sun. He is a progressive who can appeal to the center, but the last time a mayor was nominated for the presidency by a major party was in 1812.
    • Bernie Sanders is moving up in the polls (although, keep in mind, those are more about name recognition than support at this point) and raised the most money by far ($18 million) in the first three months of 2019. (more…)

  • Democratic Primary News

    • Former Texas congressman Beto O’Rourke is running for president.
    • Ohio senator Sherrod Brown has decided against seeking the Democratic nomination.
    • Former vice president Joe Biden — who still hasn’t declared yet — is ahead in the polls, but that is more about name recognition than anything else at this point. Only geeks like us are paying attention. Most voters don’t start to think about the election until a few months before the Iowa caucuses.
    • Democrats have chosen Milwaukee, Wisconsin to host their 2020 convention. (more…)

  • Democratic Primary News

    • 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. (more…)

  • Democratic Primary News

    • Bernie Sanders has made it official and is running for the Democratic nomination a second time.
    • New Jersey governor Phil Murphy has endorsed Cory Booker, the junior senator from his state.
    • Tim Walz, the governor of Minnesota, has endorsed his state’s Amy Klobuchar.
    • Kamala Harris has won the endorsement of Governor Gavin Newsom and a slew of California state legislators.
    • Klobuchar is not endorsing Medicare-for-all and free college education, positioning herself as a “straight-talking moderate“. (more…)

  • Democratic Primary News

    • Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota has announced a presidential bid. The three-term senator from a state Hillary Clinton nearly lost in 2016 could help win back the sort of blue-collar Midwestern voters who left the Democratic Party for Donald Trump. Although Klobuchar’s voting record is more left-wing than her image, she has notably not (yet) endorsed universal health care.
    • Elizabeth Warren has officially launched her presidential campaign with a combative speech focused on making life better for the American working class.
    • The Democratic political community is broadly and deeply pessimistic about Joe Biden‘s potential candidacy, McClatchy reports. (more…)

  • Democratic Primary News

    • 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. (more…)

  • Invisible Democratic Primary News

    Is it really the invisible primary anymore when so many Democrats are officially running for president?

    • New York senator Kirsten Gillibrand has formed an exploratory committee.
    • California senator Kamala Harris has skipped the exploratory phase and announced she is running.
    • Former vice president Joe Biden has apologized for supporting tough-on-crime laws in the 1990s that disproportionately affected African Americans. (more…)

  • Invisible Democratic Primary News

    • Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren has formed an exploratory committee to run for president and is visiting the early voting states of Iowa and New Hampshire.
    • California senator Kamala Harris has closed her state campaign committee and is on a publicity tour for her new book.
    • Senators Sherrod Brown of Ohio and Kirsten Gillibrand of New York are planning trips to Iowa.
    • Many in the media continue to advise Joe Biden against running, most recently The Boston Globe, The Economist, Vox and WGBH.
    • Independent Vermont senator Bernie Sanders is shaking up his staff to make it less male and white. (more…)

  • Democrats’ Invisible Primary Underway

    White House Washington
    View of the White House in Washington DC from a helicopter, January 15, 2015 (White House/Pete Souza)

    The “invisible primary” in America’s Democratic Party is underway.

    In this phase — between the most recent congressional elections and the first official announcements — presidential hopefuls quietly court donors, party bosses, friendly journalists and affiliated interest groups.

    Here are some of the latest developments: (more…)

  • A New Generation of Democrats Is Waiting in the Wings

    Kamala Harris
    Democratic senator Kamala Harris of California listens during a meeting in Los Angeles, April 21, 2017 (Office of Senator Kamala Harris)

    America’s Democratic Party looks old. Former and likely future House speaker Nancy Pelosi, former vice president Joe Biden and former presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders are all in their seventies. Elizabeth Warren, the Massachusetts senator who is expected to seek the presidency in 2020, turns seventy next year. The Democratic leader in the Senate, Chuck Schumer, is 67.

    But a new generation is waiting in the wings.

    As the “invisible primary” gets underway — during which presidential hopefuls test the waters with donors, fundraisers, party leaders, political operatives and sympathetic journalists — it is worth taking a look at the party’s potential future leaders. (more…)

  • Now the Battle for the Democratic Party Begins

    Democratic voters Davidson North Carolina
    Democratic voters in Davidson, North Carolina listen to a speech, October 12, 2016 (Hillary for America/Alyssa S.)

    Up until now, I think rumors of a Democratic civil war have been exaggerated. Democrats have wisely nominated center-left candidates, like Ralph Northam, in Republican-leaning territory, such as Virginia, and progressive candidates, like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, in safe Democratic districts, for example in New York.

    But as Democrats will need to coalesce around a single candidate for the 2020 presidential election next, the battle between the center and left could burst out into the open. (more…)