“Am I ready to be president?” An alarming number of Americans are asking themselves this question, and, after a quick look in the mirror, deciding that the answer is yes. It is a large legion of astonishingly raw talent whose names we’ve never heard of and perhaps can’t pronounce.
They can’t wait to throw their hats in the proverbial ring. A bell goes off in their heads, and they begin forming exploratory committees. Losers from lower-level races imagine finding redemption as presidential wannabes. From tweets and selfie videos come presidential contenders. In no time, they are on the royal road, schmoozing the nameless kingmakers of Iowa and holding hands with Stephen Colbert.
Image: “Our future president” (c.1867),
from this source.
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Rather frightening actually! The continued left swing is likely to dilute the vote and help re-elect Der Fuerer.
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Yes, and what’s interesting is that, though everyone wants to part of a party, the parties are no longer doing the work of organizing voter blocs and coordinating talent as they once did. The whole idea of parties is to sustain viable ideologies–so that when the party attains power the ideas can be put into practice. If officials within a party don’t agree on what they want, that can’t happen.
Case in point, the tension between Speaker Pelosi and a certain bartender who is now in Congress.
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My goodness, who can even keep track of how many Dems have thrown their hats in the ring! Twelve to sixteen? By now, the number is larger than in 2016 when so many GOP hopefuls ran. . . . The Democratic presidential debates begin in mid-June! The “rule makers” decided that only those who have raised a certain amount of money will be allowed to debate. That “certain amount” has not yet been disclosed . . . . I do know one important fact: if the DEMS choose a far lefty, Rump will win again-UGH!
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I believe that at least seventeen Democrats have declared: Warren, Harris, Booker, Gillibrand, Klobuchar, Yang, Ryan (Tim), Castro, O’Rourke, Delaney, Gabbard, Hickenlooper, Inslee, Messam, Sanders, Swalwell, and Williamson (Marianne, a spiritual writer).
Buttigieg and Biden are likely candidates but haven’t formally committed to run.
It really is a mess. What happened to the Republicans in 2016 is happening to the Dems in 2020. The parties have lost control over who their nominees will be. This is not at all what the founders intended; on the contrary, it’s what they feared.
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It’s pretty clear to me that Buttigieg has wanted to be president since he was about 12. So, not a snap decision on his part, except in the sense that he quickly decided that now was the time.
Re the parties losing control of who their nominee will be, I don’t know. In the case of the democrats in 2016, Hillary came into the primaries with hundreds of pre-committed “super delegates”, which, in the eyes of Bernie supporters was an unfair “crowning” of the nominee. Not sure if the old system works anymore, but what will replace it is anyone’s guess. (I’m disturbed by Buttigieg promoting abandoning the electoral college. On the other hand, he can throw that idea out there, knowing full well that it will take a constitutional amendment to do so, so that the demise of the college would not happen quickly, and would not be his direct responsibility.)
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What is the expression? Chance favors the prepared mind? Certainly those vying for the Democratic nomination have pondered their choice and decided that it’s worth doing, just as Trump and Sanders did last time around. And yet they can’t all be right . . . the primary system is great in that it’s open to talent, yet it’s very inefficient in terms of how long it goes on and how many resources go into all those losing races. And the ideological independence of candidates for national office is leading to a loss of cohesion in the major parties after candidates are elected. (Think of how Nancy Pelosi and AOC are butting heads now that they are both where they want to be.) In the past, parties tried more strenuously to protect this cohesion. Now they’re giving up–at least that’s how I read things.
I hadn’t been following the DNC’s rules changes, but I gather that the party has stripped the superdelegates of their voting power (according to this article). They also have a rule requiring candidates to be Democratic party members and to serve the party afterwards (a kind of anti-Bernie rule).
As for the electoral college, let’s hear what its critics would replace it with. Currently, half of the nation’s population is concentrated in just 9 states, so it’s tough to imagine the majority of states that are less populous agreeing to get rid of the EC.
Thank you KW–I always enjoy knowing your views–
Susan
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