You wouldn’t think that a man with Donald Trump’s baggage could possibly win a second term. But the Democrats are doing everything they can to make sure he defies the odds.
Before the Oct. 15 debate the massive Democratic field seemed to be winnowing down to two: former Vice President Joe Biden and Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren. But yet another meandering performance by Biden (yet his best meandering performance so far!) combined with the Warren surge in the polls opened the door for South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg and Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar to move in to challenge Biden for the moderate mantle.
Up until recently I had been a Biden guy myself. While Uncle Joe has moved too far to the left for me on some issues, I generally agree with his more centrist positions. And his relative moderation combined with his reassuring regular guy persona had made him more electable than anybody else on the stage.
But the Hunter Biden mess has turned me off on his father and it makes him less electable than originally thought. No, the Bidens didn’t do anything illegal — and that makes things even worse. Nobody believes that Hunter Biden would have pulled down $50,000 a month from a Ukrainian gas company if his dad weren’t Vice President with a portfolio that included the country. Hunter Biden knew nothing about the gas business, but his father knew that the company was taking care of his son. There was no obvious quid pro quo, but you’d have to be incredibly naïve to believe that Hunter Biden wasn’t paid off to endear the company to his father.
This is exactly what Trump voters and persuadable independents think of when they hear “the swamp.” It’s the cozy relationships and big pay days that elites get just for knowing one another. And the fact that it’s all perfectly legal as long as you have lawyers to fill out the annoying paperwork makes it all the more galling. It’s just another example of how the system is rigged against regular people.
But if Biden is damaged goods, Warren is George McGovern ’20. She is polarizing and has no chance of winning the Obama-Trump voters and Republican-leaning independents that Democrats need. Even suburban women, appalled by so much of what Trump says and does, would not be able to bring themselves to vote for a candidate as extreme as Warren.
Be honest. If the choice were between Warren, Biden, Buttigieg or Klobuchar, which of those would you think has the best chance of winning Wisconsin against Trump? And Wisconsin is the key to winning the whole ballgame.
Warren comes off as a scolding nun — and trust me, I went to Catholic elementary school and I know something about scolding nuns. Humorless, preachy and self-righteous, Warren is everything independents and otherwise reachable disaffected Trump voters think about liberals. And her plan to take away everyone’s private health insurance is likely to play poorly in a state with a long union tradition and a legacy of private health insurance benefits through company plans.
So, I’m looking for a third option. I like Buttigieg and Klobuchar. Both are hanging in there and on Oct. 15 they finally showed some fire and some passion. That can be a problem for centrists. Passionate moderate is kind of an oxymoron.
The trouble is that, assuming Bernie Sanders won’t get the nomination, virtually all of his Democratic support will go to Warren and that would give her a clear plurality in this field. It’s not that Warren can’t win the general election. It’s just that the odds of it are so much lower than for one of the moderates. Maybe the impeachment process will weaken Trump so much that any Democrat could beat him, but I wouldn’t count on that. The odds are just as good that impeachment will mobilize Trump’s base and he’ll tout his inevitable win at the Senate trial as vindication.
So, now is the time for practical Democrats who just want to defeat Donald Trump to move on from Joe Biden so that either Klobuchar or Buttigieg have at least some fighting chance at winning the nomination, though they’d still be a long shot. And perhaps even lefty Democrats will come to realize that Warren is a hard sell in the general election.
If not, the odds of four more painful years of incompetence, corruption and treachery are looking more likely. This election is the Democrats’ to lose and, so far, they seem to be doing just that.
