“The great mismatch that’s happening right now is Biden looks like he could beat Trump on paper but not in person,” said Mr. Jentleson, the Warren-supporting strategist, “and Warren looks like she could beat Trump in person but not on paper.”
NYT, Elizabeth Warren Seeks a Second Act After Slip From the Top
Elizabeth Warren has effectively disqualified herself and should do everyone a favor and bow out, or we have a very likely second term of Trump.
“According to Senator Warren’s website, the law would have six basic provisions . . . a third provision would insist that employees choose 40% of corporate boards.” See https://www.forbes.com/sites/miltonezrati/2019/02/05/senator-warrens-accountable-capitalism-bill-has-big-problems/#18776d9a471b.
Absolute insanity. Her campaign slogan may as well be “workers of the world unite.” Raising taxes some and giving us government services in return is one thing. Taking away 40% of a corporate board from the capitalists who bought and paid for their investment is too much (to say the least). And unless the economy crashes in the next 10 months, which no one should root for, moderate business minded voters will suddenly find themselves thinking that Trump isn’t so bad. After all the Dow is up something like 40% since Trump was inaugurated, and unemployment remains at record lows. Its the economy, stupid.
Anyone who really wants Trump out of the White House should be screaming for a centrist traditional candidate. If Biden were just a little bit younger, I think that a Biden/Romney ticket (or even better, a Romney/Biden ticket (I know, its fantasy land)) would run Trump out of DC on a rail with a huge landslide victory. Trump’s core supporters would still vote for him. But a moderate, traditional, white male ticket with some known and trusted names would give people who voted “against Hillary” (as opposed to “for Trump”) all the cover they need to leave Trump’s tent.
To follow the pizza analogy from one of your earlier posts, which was great, Biden/Romney (and even better, Romney/Biden) gets a lot of the “anything is better than pizza” voters who saw Hillary as that pizza they just couldn’t stand to eat. And when the lizards/space alien voters are standing alone, they seem that much crazier to the voters who don’t pay much attention. So, we go from three votes to two in favor of killing and eating you, to four votes to one in favor of pizza. (I absolutely love this pizza politics analogy)
A Warren ticket looks and feels an awful lot like a Hillary ticket to the right and to people who aren’t paying attention. And Warren v. Trump (or Sanders v. Trump) suppresses or splits the moderate vote. I, personally, voted Hillary (16), Obama (12), Obama (08), Kerry (04), third party (00) in the last five presidential elections, and I would have been pretty happy with either Romney (12) or McCain (08) (those were good elections for America). But if Bernie or Warren are at the top of the ticket, I don’t know how I would vote. Maybe a third party protest vote? I could never for for Trump. But I might not vote against him either if Warren or Bernie are the other choice.
I know that a Romney/Biden ticket is about as likely as a leprechaun riding a unicorn down Pennsylvania Avenue, but a guy can dream. But Biden/Romeny, or even Buttigieg/Romney, is not so far fetched.
Yes, the Warren proposal on employer representation on Boards is so crazy that the Germans have been more or less doing it for years and it has totally destroyed their economy, making Germany an anti-capitalist wasteland!!!
Oh, wait….
PS. The Dow (a poor measure but they’re mostly all up) is up (1) because the Fed created a lot of money that wanted to go somewhere and with bonds paying peanuts there was nowhere else, and (2) because of the bubble caused by money trapped in 401(k)’s that has to be invested in limited classes of assets. Not clear how we get out of the first bubble; the air will leak out of the second as more and more Boomers retire and draw down their savings.
All you have to do is look at what happened in the UK yesterday. That’s a preview of Warren v. Trump.
I generally agree on the DOW issues. But that doesn’t change how the electorate will view it.
Nonsense. UK polls predicted a Tory victory at all relevant times. US polls predict a Trump loss or a toss up in had to head matchups with all the major Democrats. Generally polls improve for a challenger after they have the nomination. So the situations are not similar at all.
US polls predicting a Trump loss? Seriously? That’s your position? Did nothing get learned from the 2016 election and the polls leading up to it? One of the smartest men I’ve ever known once lamented to me after losing in trial, “the trouble with being the smartest guy in the room is that you never believe anyone when they tell you you’re wrong – even when you are.”
Putting Warren on the ticket against Trump is (returning to the pizza analogy) like the vegan pizza topping guy insisting that the only possible meal is vegan pizza to the point that he pushes even the cheese pizza roommate into the “kill and and eat you” camp.
As for the UK, I think Josh Marshall has it right: “if your party literally takes no position on the great issue of the day (Brexit, in this case) and has a party leader considered toxic by a significant swath of the electorate, you’re probably going to have a pretty bad election outcome.”
As for the US, polls got the national vote pretty much right; they broke down at the state level and Trump got an electoral college victory based on very narrow margins in three states. Now more than 50% of the country says he ought to be impeached; that’s a heavy burden to carry into an election even if it isn’t evenly distributed. Indeed we might see that as “a party leader considered toxic by a significant swath of the electorate”…
But before we go further down the rabbit hole of psephology, let’s be clear about the difference between (1) invoking polls writ large to explain why the coming US election will not be much like the UK election, which I think is easy and obvious; and (2) parsing polls to predict the outcome, which is both hard and largely premature.