| HylianSwordsman said: Don't count on it. He definitely has the biggest chance, but only because the progressive vote will be split at the minimum three ways between Bernie, Warren, and Harris, possibly further by Gillibrand, if she can shake her corporatist brand, and Booker, at least until they drop out, by which time Biden will have a huge lead. A progressive's inability to win the 2020 nomination has nothing to do with the party picking Biden and everything to do with the centrist/moderate establishment having the connections to clear the field of major moderate candidates while progressives are a nebulous group without that ability. About half of the primary voters will go to moderates and half to progressives. Biden gets all the moderates, the progressives get split into smithereens by the flood of progressive candidates. If any more than two progressive candidates are running by the time the first primaries roll around, Biden wins. If the progressive wing can narrow down their choices to two or one by that time, Bernie, Warren, or Harris have a chance, if they're still around and not all three of them are there. If Harris is there, her winning depends on how early California is and how much she crushes the competition there. Warren depends probably most likely on Super Tuesday in New England, and Bernie on how much his previous movement carries over. But regardless Biden isn't set in stone. Hell, if his health is poor enough he may not run.
As for progressives being unable to win statewide nominations, what do you think Stacey Abrams is? As for senators, we have several elected progressive senators already. Something tells me you're feeling sore about El-Sayed, and I guess depressed about de Leon's and Nixon's chances? Those are a couple of contests, not the whole party, and weird things are going on in each case. First, these are all incumbents or well known people vs. unknown challengers. Incumbents are hard to beat, becoming known is hard to do, combine the two factors and it becomes very hard. El-Sayed got progressive endorsements too late, and not much campaigning from big names, while Whitmer is hardly all that moderate and had major endorsements from unions, Emily's list, and a few progressive groups. It was amazing that he got as far as he did. Kevin de Leon is losing because of the jungle primary system that is boosting Feinstein with Republican votes, he actually has the support of state Democratic party, so even if he loses, the party knows what the future is. Nixon v Cuomo is a special case too. Nixon is a celebrity, but not a particularly well known one, running against someone with great name recognition and tons of proven experience. People in NY don't want to trust a celebrity after seeing Trump, so if the first thing they hear of her is that she was on Sex in the City, it doesn't leave a good impression, and they tune out. So she has a hard time increasing her profile against Cuomo, who is well known and, to be frank, has one of the most corrupt and powerful political machines in the country backing him. So don't get discouraged by those three races. The future of the Democratic party is progressive. Neoliberalism is almost as dead as conservatism (the pre-Trump, Reaganesque kind, not the post-Trump reactionism). Give it a decade or so, but the Democratic platform is only going to get more progressive and so will its politicians and the policies they produce. |
Very thoughtful and smart analysis! I do have one disagreement though:
Regarding your first paragraph, I don't know that a Biden victory in the nominating contest depends on division among progressives. I mean look at how 2016 turned out. Progressives were united around a single candidate in Bernie Sanders and he still couldn't come within 14 percentage points of the party leadership's preference in the overall popular vote (which was 57% for Clinton, 43% for Sanders overall nationwide). It wasn't just about superdelegates. Progressives have a very basic-level problem. We appear to be just simply outnumbered overall. I mean I'm a left wing Texan. I'm used to being outnumbered politically. I can recognize what that looks like.
I would also agree with you though that the overall balance of opinion in and around the Democratic Party may be headed in more of a left-leaning direction over time. Compared to the party's platform in 2012, the platform in 2016 had definitely made a qualitative shift leftward, and that may happen again in 2020. But we're not seeing those shifts matched in terms of which faction actually emerges victorious on a bigger scale than individual districts as yet. Nate Silver's FiveThirtyEight group did an analysis of the primary contests since 2016 to date and found that party leadership-backed candidates defeated any progressive opponents they faced 89% of the time. You can even see at the chart the difference in the likelihood of candidates endorsed by say Bernie Sanders' Our Revolution group and the Justice Democrats, or even the Working Families Party, on the one hand and those endorsed by Democratic Party committees on the other (and there's rarely any overlap) winning. Emily's List has a good win rate (72%), but they don't decide endorsements factionally; they endorse "pro-choice, Democratic women", period, so that doesn't really count in terms of a factional argument. Same goes with Indivisible; they've got a pretty good win rate in terms of endorsements (65%), but they're not really a factional group per se either.
I mean my preference would be Kirsten Gillibrand, whom I feel has reformed well in recent years and embodies my own worldview and priorities somewhat more than the rest of the prospective competition, but I think we both know she hasn't got a snowball's chance in hell. I'm just curious as to whether any progressive candidate does, and I don't think so.
Last edited by Jaicee - on 16 August 2018
