You can’t tell the players without a scorecard.
I’m not referring to the Milwaukee Brewers, who opened their spring training camp last week to kick off their inevitable march to the World Series. I’m talking about the ever-growing field of candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination.
At last count there were no less than 11 declared candidates. Well, actually there are less because four of those candidates are named Delaney, Gabbard, Williamson and Yang. No, you’ve never heard of them and you’ll never hear of them again.
But still, seven serious candidates this far out from the election is quite a crowd. And there are something like a dozen more candidates who range from certain to run to seriously considering it. It’s not crazy to think that there could be 20 or more folks competing in the Iowa caucuses, which would top the 17 candidates that crowded into the 2016 primary field for the Republicans.
If I were a Democrat (which some days I am) I would not especially care about the platforms of these candidates or their life stories, or their gender, race, religion or diet (Corey Booker is a vegan).
No, all I would really want is somebody who can beat Donald Trump. I figure that any Democrat would push for policies that would be better than those of the current administration and any one of them would be much less crazy. Winning, as Vince Lombardi used to say, is the only thing.
And who can win? Democrats could do worse than to follow the Tony Evers playbook. Evers won the Wisconsin governor’s race in large part because he is not flashy. He comes off as the high school principal that he once was. “Yeah, I remember Mr. Evers. He was hard on me sometimes, but I guess I needed it.”
There’s so much energy among Democrats who simply want to get Trump out of office that the biggest mistake the party could make would be to nominate someone who was inspiring to its base, because that would just excite an equal and opposite mobilization on the other side.
And, as long as we’re here, let’s revisit the whole concept of “the base.” Politics is supposed to be about addition. The base is supposed to be a group of core supporters who will hang with a party or a candidate no matter what. With that group secured, the party or the candidate is supposed to reach out to voters who can be persuaded to join the team.
But in recent election cycles the base (among both Democrats and Republicans) has come to mean a rabid group of ideologues and interest groups who must be whipped into a frenzy of volunteering, giving money and voting. Politics is no longer about addition. It’s about multiplication. Take the base and double down ... and down and down and down.
That’s why Evers was such a breath of fresh air. I have many friends in the Democratic base who voted for him in the primary not because they were inspired by him but because they just thought he was a decent guy who could beat Walker. And, guess what, he was and he did.
Evers uses phrases like “by golly” without being self-conscious about it. At a time when “authenticity” is so sought after that politicians will spend millions on polling and focus groups to carefully construct their façade of genuineness, Evers is the real deal. He’s authentic without trying to be, which of course is the very definition of the thing. By contrast, recall Elizabeth Warren’s cringe-worthy attempt to connect by popping open a beer during a social media event. Oh, for cryin’ out loud.
So what am I looking for as I sort through the plethora of choices? I’m looking for boring. Any candidate who can put me to sleep in the first two minutes of a speech goes up on my list.
From what I can tell at this early stage, these seem to be the top contenders for most dull:
Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio. A pasty, middle-aged white guy from the Midwest, he’s said to be among the worst orators in Congress. And he talks about the value of work as opposed to exciting ideas like a guaranteed income even for those who don’t feel like working, which (note to Green New Dealers) is not a winning political argument. He’s not yet announced, but seems likely to get in.
Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota. Because she’d be the first woman president she tiptoes up to being exciting, so that’s a concern. But she’s from Minnesota and she looks and sounds like it. Heck, she announced in the middle of a snowstorm. She came to a lot of people’s attention with her steely (not flashy) questioning of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, in contrast to the self-congratulatory performances from Booker and from Sen. Kamala Harris of California.
Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend. Like Klobuchar, Buttigieg would be a first as he’s openly gay. But putting that bit of excitement aside, he’s the mayor of a medium- sized Midwest city and he talks like it. I had dinner with him once at a mayor’s conference and he comes off as smart, sincere and self-effacing. And if you think being mayor of South Bend is not adequate preparation for the big job, let me beg to differ. I would argue that being mayor is much more relevant to being president than having been a U.S. senator. Senators don’t run anything. They vote on stuff. Buttigieg also has an unpronounceable last name, which I count as a plus.
And, along those lines, it’s encouraging to note that seven of the already announced or potential candidates are or have been mayors. Those include South Bend’s Buttigieg, Corey Booker (Newark), Julian Castro (San Antonio), Bernie Sanders (Burlington), Michael Bloomberg (New York), Mitch Landrieu (New Orleans) and John Hickenlooper (Denver).
By trade, mayors tend to be practical problem-solvers, not ideological bulldogs. Unfortunately, I’d say that Sanders, Booker and Castro were corrupted by later employment, and Bloomberg has always been a lightning rod. But Landrieu and Hickenlooper are appealingly low-key, and Hickenlooper has the added virtue of arguably having invented the brewpub.
A Democrat should win the White House in 2020 just by showing up on the ballot. Anyone who would inspire the base runs the risk of getting us four more years of Donald Trump. So if a candidate excites and inspires you just calm down, pop open a beer just like Elizabeth Warren and wait for the feeling to pass.
