I could maybe see Amy Klobuchar catching fire with Democrats during the 2020 primaries. It’s not impossible. The nation is not doing much to indicate it deserves her, however.
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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.
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The nation has the president we deserve. H.S. Thompson was correct way back in 72. That being said, Klobuchar was great, and it’d be awesome if our primary was filled with a bunch of bad ass women like her and all the old ass crackers stayed home.
. . . The shaming was called for, not because it will have any direct effect on those shameless, old, white, male Banana Republican senators, but as a form of very publicly bearing witness.
I think the Dems have a lot of good candidates for 2020, Warren, Harris and Klobuchar among them. That’s why I get a bit exasperated when the press pushes names like Sanders, Biden and Bloomberg, each of whom would turn 80 before their first term was half done.
Warren, Harris, Klobuchar, Gillibrand are a lot of names to be dividing up votes. Meanwhile, Sanders and Biden are front runners because name recognition, both of whom I can happily do without, especially Sanders.
I could have happily done without Hillary Clinton, but I still voted for her.
A president needs to be able to maximize her leverage against a belligerent opponent. What I saw on Thursday was Klobuchar maintaining her composure.
Sanders doesn’t have the depth, Harris has too little foreign policy experience, Warren is great on paper. I’m afraid Biden is too old. There’s no one obvious, but I’m open to Kerry.
Biden can hardly argue against Kavanaugh, given his role in the Anita Hill disgrace.
Composure is great. I want to see that but this will be a fight with roid rage. Better be able to give a good dose back and better have some real program to keep the middle class in the game.
She’s my preferred candidate, and has been for some time.
Among her many pluses–A new generation. Well educated. Informed. Articulate. Admirable temperament. Courage. Honest.
It’s going to either be Avenatti/Oprah, or Oprah/Avenatti. Make your peace with it.
All people want is a celebrity and/or someone who gets up in Trump’s grill.
I’m already hearing ‘Trump proves you don’t need a politician to win. You do want do win, don’t you?” from people who should know better.
The “Get the parties out of politics. Get the politicians out of politics. Get the politics out of politics” crowd is booted, spurred and ready to ride.
On both sides of the aisle.
This is the 21st century.
Policy and shit is irrelevant. Give me feels.
Not Oprah, please.
Why not? 100% name recognition. Can self-fund. Very popular. Woman of color.(No more white guys, amirite?) Entrepreneur. Hands out cars the way Trump hands out paper towels.
Most importantly, she has no background in politics.
That will be very important in 2020.
I could go there if she shows her stuff in a good primary. I want toughness and someone who will really help carry the platform. I don’t see her as that person. So convince me. Besides, Avenatti is the bulldog.
More proof that satire is now impossible!
Had not seen this before I composed my little item below, haha.
Ugh. Oprah’s pseudoscience or Avenatti’s narcissism would kill me. Just please no.
“Tell me how you feel about that?” – every news anchor everywhere
I sometimes think we’re a country full of feelings vampires.
Klobuchar would make an excellent candidate: calm, cool and very intelligent. Not sure if she’s interested in the job. Personally, the old white guys need to understand they aren’t really electable, at this point no matter what their policy positions are.
While we talk about our next savior, it is just possible Trump wins again with the same formula. So whomever we choose had better be able to take the heat and give some back. Except for Avenatti, I haven’t heard the name yet.
It’s equally possible that Trump will be a) dead by 2020 b) severely mentally disabled or c) so unatractive to all but the “27%” that he doesn’t get the renom. He could also be impeached and removed by then (probably unlikely but we’re in uncharted territory). He could also decide that he’s had enough and quit.
That, of course, puts him at probable risk of staate prosecution for oh so many things. So maybe he flees to Russia.
Point is that we are now living in a highly volatile political environment where confidentlly predicting anything is doubtful. One month ago, who knew that Kavanaugh would be a major controversy. I didn’t even know who he was.
She seems generally to work and talk about issues on the margins of public policy. If she’s got essentially bottomless political capital and is unassailable in her home (Blue) state, shouldn’t she be leading the Dem charge on a couple of the great issues of the day?
And if she only has that 70% approval capital because working the margins is how she builds it, what use is it ultimately? What happens when she has to start being the advocate for the Dem platform of 2016? Or would that platform be jettisoned as too lib’rul? Good luck running to the right of it in 2020.
The left is still in the position of having no Dem governor to coalesce around (the traditional spawning ground of prezes), so it’s apparently back to the US senate, a traditional perch for losing prez candidates. Has there be a prez from the House since Lincoln? Ford, I guess, but he came in via the Veep’s office like his bossman, Nixon.
The Founders doubtless thought the senate or cabinet(s) would be the proving ground for the nation’s prezes, but it didn’t really work out that way. Today, however, we have nothing but senators thinking they will replicate (Senator) Obama’s magic. Perhaps the next step in the process (not to say collapse) will be additional celebrities (reality or otherwise) seeking to have lightning strike, ala Trumper.
Why progressive Sherrod Brown is never put in the mix is a mystery to me. A multi-term, consistently populist senator from a critical deep Purple state. Seems a no-brainer, so he must simply have not the slightest interest. In a floundering, paralyzed and collapsing nation the job likely is quite an Excedrin headache…
Sherrod is where feels go to die.
Politics is now all about the feels.
I think it’s just chance that we haven’t had too many Senators elected to the presidency. The 17th amendment making Senator an elected position was only ratified in 1913, so prior to that it wasn’t a great springboard to a national elected office. Since then we have had three Senators advance, plus two come close (Kerry and Hillary). There have been several cases of Senators running and losing badly (Dole, Mondale, McGovern, Landon) but I don’t think their being Senators hurt their chances. All were in basically unwinnable races. There’s several governors that got walloped too (Al Smith, Dewey in 1944, Stevenson, and Dukakis).
Add in the nationalization of politics, which raises the profile of Senators, and I think the Senate is at least as good a springboard for the Presidency as Governor. At this point I think very few would care whether somebody’s governmental experience was in the Governor’s mansion or the Senate, especially considering the alternative is Trump.
The deal with Governors is you know better where they stand on issues. What they’re willing to veto or sign into law. It’s not as easy as with Senators.
James Garfield was direcly elected from the HOR. A Republican from OH and a genuine reformer. He was the one that started the move to create a professional Civil Service and would have probably done much good but was assassinated his first year in office. VP Chester Allen Arthur (I know, who?) succeeded him and though he had been a corrupt Customs Judge from NY did implement Garfield’s reforms much to the anger of corrupt pols.
But Garfield was obviously a fluke. It’s been governors and senators ever since until…Dump.
Thanks to you and curt for these informative comments. Perhaps Garfield was an omen for election directly from the “passions” of the House!
It does seem that we should draw a distinction between election “direct” from the senate and senators who subsequently served as Veeps or cabinet members. Unless I’m miscalculating, under this categorization we have Kennedy and Obama as our senator prezes–both Dems, I would note.
I agree that there certainly shouldn’t be any kind of practical bar to senators as prez candidates, they certainly have a very close understanding of the office and more importantly how it works with the Congress. But as I recall the “conventional wisdom”, it was that senators had no “executive experience” and had taken “too many votes” that were hard to explain and were an ocean of fodder for negative ads. But since every campaign now devolves into a Repub mud-slinging contest, it’s hard to care about how much ammo the Repubs theoretically have.
And after the wholly unfit imbecile Trumper, one certainly never need speak about “qualifications” for the office ever again (or at least we should never hear that argument from “conservatives” ever again!) Not to mention any supposed requirement of personal integrity—our American Talibaners jettisoned that with Der Trumper as well!
Harding was also straight from the Senate. I’d agree that somebody who was later VP would count in the VP category since to most voters that’s a much more salient post even though officially it carries little power. That leaves Hillary as the remaining “does she count as a Senator” case and I don’t think that’s an easy answer, although of her three national positions (First Lady, Senator, and SecState) her actions as Senator seemed least important during the campaign.
Thanks for teaching me this. I though Harding was a guv.
Although the atrocious track record of senator Harding as a (failed) prez could also have been seen as an ill omen for electing senators. At least when it comes to Repub senators!
I still believe that part of the reason Clinton and the Democrats lost was because they failed to reckon with what a sexist pig of a country America is. I do not believe that any Democratic woman can win in 2020 or even in another 50 years. Thus, I have been looking at the younger Democratic men for candidates; and, here is the list I have started: Eric Swalwell, Adam Schiff, Chris Van Hollen, Chris Murphy, and possibly Chris Coons. I like Corey Booker a lot; but, we have already learned how much the other side hates blahs of either sex. The Republicans can only win if they cheat; thus, we need to get that blue wave at 2018 so we can dig into how much Russia has impacted our election process; and, take actions to combat the Russian interference–and any other interference that may be found.
A woman could be elected President of the U.S. The traumatic win by Trump in 2016 was achieved by paper thin margins in four States and was achieved despite the fact that the woman who ran against him gained three million more votes from Americans than Trump did.
Hillary Clinton did not have to make the “deplorables” so self-conscious. Instead, she could have one charm tour through the Middle West, and her historic job would had been complete.
Right now, GOP and FBI are calculating how much more backlash will the #MeToo earnestness earn.
Oh. Really.
BUT SHE DIDNT GO TO WISCONSIN. CHECKMATE BRO.
Is this it? Far from adequate to know what was hitting.
Obama should have nominated her for SCOTUS, looking back. I know you advocated for it, but seeing how they treated Sessions for AG, I’m having a hard time imagining they refuse hearings on one of their own.
They wouldn’t. That’s just the thing. Look at how they treated Hillary when she was actually nominated for Sec. of State. And look at the confirmation vote:
http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=111&sessio
n=1&vote=00006
The only no votes were “Diapers” Vitter and Jim “Demented” DeMint.
Yes, I think you are probably right. It really would have highlighted the Republican hypocrisy in denying Obama’s pick as she sits on the Judiciary committee and so there would be a constant reminder of their Supreme Court seat theft. She obviously has the right temperament to sit on the court as well. But, unfortunately, Obama completely miscalculated the politics and incorrectly assumed that pre-compromising with Republicans would gain him an advantage and so he picked a judge the old Republican party would have supported and, in turn, Democrats weren’t terribly excited to support. But, in the end, this only aided Turtle Mitch’s obstruction. It garnered him exactly zero support among Republican Senators, who now have become so emboldened that they near unanimously support an explicitly partisan nominee, who in fact was a loyal Republican hack, that they are determined to ram him through with the most partisan confirmation process in probably our entire history, regardless of the damage (or maybe even because of) they are doing to the court.
At the time, you weren’t her best fan due to copyright issues. Booman laid it out why it would have made sense, though, and I think it would have been seen as prescient had it been done. I guess I didn’t think it’d have mattered, and maybe it wouldn’t have — but seeing Flake/Coons and how Sessions (imo) sailed through despite the fact he should have been nowhere near AG, I think she’d have been confirmed.
Interesting take, and you are surely correct about the catastrophic O’Kavanaugh affair. But it seems to me that the Garland nomination was another instance of Obama’s statesmanship, which, if respected and not contemptuously shit upon, would have spared the now almost certain dis-unification of the country.
But the “conservative” movement simply had to undertake a strategy to completely destroy the credibility and legitimacy of the Court, so here we are. They haven’t the slightest qualm about what they are poised to do. I only hope that we can have some elected Dems start to utilize an effective rhetoric of the disastrous effects of this gambit by Der Trumper and his National Trumpalists. But since Dems quail from mentioning that electoral college Trumper hasn’t any popular mandate (at least as understood in democratic terms), I’m not hopeful. The simple reality is that the Trumper Court is not legitimate.
There is 0 chance Klobuchar will ever catch fire with me.
A couple years back my sister went to Taiwan as part of an exchange program. Shortly before my parents applied for passports in-case anything catastrophic happened. Because they were poor brown people born in south Texas in the early 1950s, the records were not all they could be. My mother received her passport easily enough, but my father had to jump through a ton of hoops. Seeking help they called our senators.
Klobuchar’s office hemmed and hawed and blew them off.
Franken’s office promised they’d help and actually DID work with them to help communication between my parents and the government. My father obtained information and got his passport. Thankfully my sister’s exchange program went off perfectly and she had a great time and returned without incident.
Fuck Klobuchar.
Was that Klobuchar’s fault or her staff’s. Seems out of character actually.
It’s just the kind of neoliberal thing neoliberals do.