Here's How the Democratic Presidential Nomination Will Go

[babylonsister]

https://prospect.org/article/heres-how-democratic-presidential-nomination-will-go

Here’s How the Democratic Presidential Nomination Will Go
Paul Starr
March 6, 2019
A much-too-early scenario


Since the Democratic presidential nomination is wide open and will have more than a dozen serious candidates, it is foolhardy and premature to speculate about how the race will play out. So let’s be foolhardy and premature and do exactly that.

In the early polls—to which, of course, we should pay no attention whatsoever—Kamala Harris has broken out of the pack of new candidates and is running third, behind the two old guys with the widest name recognition, Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders, both of whose support may be soft.

That trio does make a certain degree of sense in terms of the party’s make-up. As an African American and child of immigrants (from Jamaica and India), Harris may win particularly strong support from people of color. Sanders’s biggest appeal is to white progressives and others who want to shake up the status quo, while Biden is the candidate of continuity, moderation, and familiarity, though he hasn’t yet said whether he’s running.

Leaping ahead, let’s say that three principal candidates emerge from the early primaries and that Harris is one of them, especially because California and the southern states vote in early March, which should give her a boost (assuming Stacey Abrams stays out of the race).

Sanders may have to duke it out with Elizabeth Warren because they appeal to many of the same voters. Both will also be expected to do well in New Hampshire, which has often given an edge to candidates from neighboring states. A recent national NBC-Wall Street Journal poll found that being a “socialist” and “over 75” were the two characteristics respondents identified as least desirable in a presidential candidate. But Sanders has a devoted core following, which may be larger than Warren’s. So let’s suppose Sanders wins the battle in New Hampshire and other early states, forcing Warren to suspend her campaign. (I’ll come back to the opposite possibility later on.)

Let’s call the third main surviving candidate from the early primaries Candidate B. That could be Biden, or Beto, or Booker, or Brown, or even a candidate whose name somehow doesn’t begin with B like KloBuchar. Candidate B is by no means a conservative but is perceived as more moderate than Sanders or Harris. (If Candidate B is Sherrod Brown, that may not be true.) There could even be more than one Candidate B if a candidate who is running fourth or fifth decides to stay in the race because none of the top three is winning a majority of delegates.

snip//

Yes, you’re right, it’s way too early to engage in this kind of speculation. I should be using my time and yours more productively—don’t we all have more urgent things to do? Besides, it’s not as if the future of the world depended on the Democratic nomination.

Oh, wait … it does.

[pwb]

1. We ran the strongest woman of our time in the last election.

She lost to a horrible bully who is probably running again. I think Joe Biden can beat Trump with a woman vice president and she could run in 2024 and win and be our first woman President. That is how i would like to see this election play out.

[redstateblues]

2. K&R

[LongtimeAZDem]

3. +∞