Since we are doing a poll on the 2016 Republican nominee, it’s only fair to do a poll on the Democratic nominee. Click on ‘comments’ to vote.
Please explain your reasoning.
About The Author
BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
I had thought Brian Schweitzer was a good possibility, but no more.
Why?
Forgot to explain. Schweitzer has come out of the gate lambasting the Obama admin in a recent interview. To me, that was incredibly stupid. Don’t see how that plays with the Democratic base, and especially, minority populations.
It plays to me.
Yeah, you and 15% or so of the Democratic Party.
His Obama bashing doesn’t even appeal to 10% of the party. He’ll get fewer votes than Kucinich did in Iowa especially when liberals find out his views on the environment and gun control.
Liberals don’t control the Party. Neoliberals, i.e. DLC, control the Party.
Explain Obama’s defeat of Hillary in ’08, then.
He can be president of FireDogLake…
Yeah, I wrote him off after seeing that. And I’m far from being an uncritical Obama cheerleader.
I mostly wrote him off after seeing his convention speech in 2008… it wasn’t Jindal rebuttal level-bad, but it didn’t exactly scream “future Presidential candidate” either.
O’Malley. After Hillary decides not to run.
Hillary. Because everything. Also, the Republicans are still too strong for the Democratic base to risk a party split by supporting… whom? Nobody except Warren leaps out, and I very much doubt she even send out feelers about running.
I also believe Warren is not interested in higher office. Warren and Sanders are Vox populi in the senate. She is far more effective if she does not dilute her message. Raising money for a national campaign will steal your soul.
agree she’s not interested
Yes, Hillary has always wanted it. Age is not a factor, barring tragedy she will be healthy and sharp. If she runs, she will be suddenly surrounded by “opponents” who are really interviewing for a VP spot. Hopefully she has the guts to choose someone with some personality.
Assuming she runs, it’s Hillary’s. Even this far out. Nobody else has remotely near either the following or the ability to raise money. She’s smart enough to have learned from her frontrunner mistakes of 2007-08, and even then she’d be president now had she not run into a historically well-run campaign and a historically gifted campaigner in Obama. Those don’t come along often.
If she doesn’t want it, the Dem bench actually isn’t very strong. Warren is the only one with serious enthusiasm within the base, and even if she wanted to run – which I doubt – the money that would to go whomever was best-positioned to take her out would be formidable. Each of the other names on this list has serious weaknesses as a candidate, and in all likelihood a gifted newcomer could beat out any of them.
And for possible progressive alternatives to a reluctant Warren, keep an eye on Sherrod Brown.
I love Sherrod, and am thankful he’s my Senator, but I don’t think he has the chops to be a strong national candidate. His appeal is very specific to Ohio.
Glad he’s my Senator, too. And he does have a specific Ohio appeal. Having had the opportunity to talk with some of those close to him, I don’t get a sense that he is even remotely interested in being anything but a Senator. I think he is flattered that he has that level of enthusiasm behind him, but he is content with what he is doing.
Excuse me, but as a life-long Californian (with the exception of four miserable years in PA), Sherrod Brown’s appeal isn’t provincial. Whether natural or developed, his political campaign chops are first rate. Far better than Obama’s. A bit cooler and softer on the tough guy stance that Schweitzer and Dean in 2003 present, and an integrated political orientation that Schweitzer doesn’t and Dean never managed to have.
Everything you say makes sense. I especially remember her caution while running in classic front runner mode. But I think a number of things are going to be harder for her in 2016.
So I’m going with Brown. Thanks for the suggestiong!
Hillary will get it. Rahm Emanuel probably returns to the White House after being ousted as Mayor of Chicago and the Rightward rush continues.
She has never been all that fond of Rahm and her WH will be way too dysfunctional for him. I’d guess he runs for IL-Gov next time it comes up and wins re-elect as Chicago Mayor quite easily until then.
Emmanuel, like Walker in WI and for many of the same reasons, is going to have all he can handle to win re-election. The only way he can hold on is if he puts up a spoiler to split the anti-Rahmbo vote.
He’s pissed off the teachers, city workers, unions, and residents who don’t like speed cameras and hellacious parking fees that go to a private company instead of city services. He’s closed schools, pissing off parents that have to send their kids into different gang turf to go to school besides long bus rides instead of the neighborhood schools. It’s hard to think of a voting group that does approve of him.
I’m trying to remember the last time a non-incumbent ran the tables from 4 years out. I have a hunch that this “Hillary Is Inevitable” thing will work against her. I don’t know who it will be – if Joe Biden asks for it then he will have my unwavering support – but I don’t think it will be Hillary.
A second poll of who posters here would actually want to see become President would be interesting…
I’d like to see Warren run in the primaries, even though she won’t do it and she wouldn’t win if she did, but it would be good for a number of reasons:
I can’t think of any good reasons against a Warren candidacy except the obvious, that she isn’t personally interested in running. That would be a shame, because it likely means she’ll never be interested, and that’s a tremendous loss for all of us.
Assuming a continuing enrollment in Obamacare – past 20 million by Spring 2016 and a sense of “understanding” about the IT rollout issues, would Sebelius be a decent candidate?
It’s possible. But there are a number of possible candidates like that whom I assume are probably Hillary backers and waiting for her to announce before making any decisions.
There won’t be an outsider with Obama’s organizing capability this time. Only Hillary deciding not to run can stop her from being nominated. Which doesn’t make me happy, since any issue I have with Obama I expect to have even more with her.
I think I have recognized that unless a president does not believe in democracy, the position is merely a figurehead. (Although it is an important cultural position in the case of President Obama.) The republican party refuses to play a fair game of representative democracy. Until 98% of the voters vote in their best interests, gerrymandered districts are outlawed corporate personhood political money is illegal and journalism is widely practiced in mass media, the president has power to effect little real change.
Better efforts be spent on the House and Senate candidates. I don’t think
we should take any progressive working member out of the Senate and House.
I would like to have Elizabeth Warren as President.
Why ?
Because Ms. Warren has the ability to explain to most complex concepts/ideas in a way that is understandable to the average person.
Also: Harvard does not hire dummies to teach in their law school.
a record for getting stuff done.
For all of Hillary’s PR spin, she did nothing while in the Senate for 8 years and Kerry is already on his way to getting more done than Hillary did in her stint at SoS. She’s mediocre in everyway. Hell, even Amy Klobuchar has done more in the Senate than Hillary ever did.
O’Malley strikes me as the only one who stands a chance at beating Hillary. His views align with the Dem base. He can tap Dem donors who aren’t aboard with Hillary. He has an interesting life story and seems young and hip compared to Hillary who is too damn old to be president.
Deval Patrick would be another awesome choice but he isn’t going to run unfortunately.
The Maryland health exchange fiasco won’t do much for his reputation for getting stuff done, I fear. Shame because he’s an attractive candidate in many ways.
I’m beginning to wonder if there is an expiration date on criticisms about exchange rollouts – state level and federal level. The main thing is that all these Dems supported Obamacare and by 2016 Obamacare will have added 20+ million people to exchange policies or expanded medicaid. I would think that fact far supercedes the short lived rollout concerns. Also it seems to me that the fact that so many exchanges had IT problems tells us more about the difficulty of the challenge than about any criticisms of incompetence.
Target just had records of 100 million customers stolen and that type of incident isn’t new. People are getting used to problems with IT systems.
But I don’t know the specifics of the Maryland exchange…
I have difficulty seeing either Hillary or Joe Biden as the candidate. Why would they want to put themselves through that grind once again? And then only be able to do four years?
Schweitzer seems to be going isolationist and hitting hard on civil liberties while at the same time hitting more conservative positions on issues generally associated with rural areas. He has to catch fire in what are considered more Republican areas of the West, Midwest, and even South to be a viable candidate.
Warren’s best place is in the Senate, but if there is a vacuum of good candidates she likely will run.
Cuomo’s a non-starter in huge parts of the country and turns progressives off completely. Only Wall Street could love him.
O’Malley’s unknown and not yet making himself visible. Helping Democrats win in the midterms could both build a supporting base of politicians and test whether he could catch fire with the voters.
Warner’s another non-starter. Too smarmy.
Klobuchar would have to swing some midterm campaigns outside of the Midwest to be viable. Making waves in Georgia, Kentucky, and Texas would be good showcases for her.
Deval Patrick would be a viable candidate were not Barack Obama President. He would have to show some impressive political skills in moving folks to a “get used to it” position. But building turnout in 2014 would give him a chance to test the waters and see what he could do. My guess is that 2016 is not his year, but I cannot figure out where he parks himself until his year comes up and how he gets publicly noticed.
I know people are all over Schweitzer now after his comments earlier this week. If you think O’Malley is the answer instead, I suggest you look at his actual record and what he’s said lately. He can’t even get a minimum wage hike passed in MD. He also has unkind words for you maryjane lovers. And that’s only for starters.
Schweitzer’s comments this week didn’t bother me and I’m pretty opposed to Obama bashing in general – does look like he’s running and he can move closer to Obama later in the campaign when Obamacare begins to show it’s positive stripes in the rural areas.
vis a vis education and gun control he’s been interestibgly constructive, [for some reason he’s been labeled anti-environment, which is inaccurate from what I’ve read]
I have no idea really who will be the nominee – but I think Hillary has health issues that will be a problem for campaigning
also, Schweitzer’s environmentalism was the first thing I heard about him some years back – go figure
Why would they only be able to do four years?
I think I’ll steal from Geov and go with Sherrod Brown. Progressive on domestic issues and doesn’t come with the militaristic tone of Hillary.
HRC.
Because I hope the progressives and liberals who might naively sit the election out realize they can probably get a bunch of progressives and liberals elected to all sorts of offices because of her coattails.
Who I’d like to see?
Sanders/Warren or Warren/Sanders. Which of course has no chance of happening.
I didn’t vote. It’s too early. Who knows what political and life events take place in these and other candidates’ lives between now and July, much less 2016?
The nonstop campaign is uninteresting to me. Yet, I acknowledge the perception that it exists does affect reality. I’ve just grown aware that supposedly earth-shaking political events are often small or nonfactors by the time the primaries come along.
I don’t even trust that the Christie scandal will kill his chances for the GOP nomination. Then again, I never believed he would be a strong general election candidate anyway, so I’d be fine with Republican Party primary voters and caucus attendees deciding they want another Asshole-In-Chief.