Not only that, Beto losing by a small margin against a major Republican in Texas is nowhere near the beast that a Beto running for President with national level funding.

In addition, Beto would more than likely rip through Hillary (considering she's much less popular now than she was in 2015/16) and will be boosted heavily by defeating her in the primaries.

Elizabeth Warren, from a policy perspective, and the fact that she seems more intelligent than the others, seems to me to be the best candidate - but given the nature of the US, she is clearly not. As I'll explain:
A large part about it has to do with the view of women in politics, almost every single woman is hugely maligned given enough time. It doesn't matter how trivial the reason, it can be blown up into the biggest thing in the world. The Elizabeth Warren DNA thing should have no significance; basically, she said she has a native ancestor, and the DNA test showed that she did have one, but because it somehow didn't translate into most to all her DNA being native, it was a scandal blown up to significant volumes. This is not unique for Elizabeth Warren, but true for all women in US politics until perhaps the most recent election; it seems any woman who is a known commodity in US politics only has negative news against her after about a 1-2 year period. The US, prior to 2018, in terms of women in politics was distantly behind the other western nations. Things began to catch up only in the recent midterm elections. Prior to that, they were even behind some Islamic Middle Eastern Countries, including Iraq - countries which Americans criticize for having too much of a patriarchal society. So while Elizabeth Warren may have a chance down the road, it does not look like it will be the next election as Americans seem to genuinely believe she is evil, and for no good reason.

Beto, on the other hand, is on fire. I think he's the appropriate candidate.

Ojeda won't work. He's a great guy, but he'd be much better for Dem Governor or Senator for WV than for President. He can't represent the whole party because he's too pro-coal. Great for a WV Dem, bad for a national Dem, especially since climate change will only get worse, and coal is on its way out due to market forces alone. 

As for President by popular vote, it's not impossible. Check out the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact.

Bernie could win. Some say he's old, but Biden is the person being floated as a possible candidate the most frequently, and he's only a year and change younger. He would represent change from the status quo, which I think people are still craving as Trump has only rigged things for powerful interests even further, and people are sick of it. Bernie has been on the right side of things since the 70s. Even Trump's own supporters are saying they want an end to American overinvolvement in foreign wars, and to stop selling arms to Saudi Arabia (at least they said that when it was Clinton in Saudia Arabia's pocket). Bernie represents an authentic voice for that sort of change, for courage to stand against the war industrial complex. He also senses the growing authoritarianism around the world and wants to counter that, which should appeal to pro-democracy types, people who want to spread American values across the globe, and libertarians alike. He has enough libertarian appeal that when Rand Paul dropped out of the 2016 race, the pro-Bernie reddits were flooded with Paul fans that switched sides. I think he could be a very uniting force. The main fear against him I see are people afraid of his "socialism", but their idea of socialism and his idea are two different things, and I think many people afraid of it now would get over that fear and embrace him once they saw him in action.

Warren seems pretty good, and would be an amazing President. She seems like basically what I wanted Obama to be, but he disappointed me. She really saddened me by not having the courage to stand for something in the 2016 primaries. If she'd endorsed early enough, it could have changed the whole primary, and we might not be in this mess right now. Since the election however, she's been reminding me why I loved her before. Warren would have trouble winning though. It's not fair, but while women won a ton of seats in this election, there's still a clear bias against them in government, and it would hurt her. People who see a huge difference between her and Bernie are imagining things. The main difference is she still believes properly regulated capitalism can deliver for human progress, whereas Bernie thinks direct but democratic interventions in markets are necessary. He isn't entirely anti-market however, and for that has gotten a lot of criticism from communists and straight socialists, and even some democratic socialists. Many argue he's more of a social democrat, and based on his actions and disregarding his rhetoric, they'd pretty much be right. Warren is also a social democrat, so if a social democrat is what you want, you might as well go for Bernie, because he will push for pretty much the same policies as her (higher wages, Medicare-For-All, free public education extended down to preschool and up to community and other public college degrees, better regulation and even breaking up of big banks, more action on climate change) while avoiding sexism. Again, it's not fair, but it is reality, and the cost of losing, for both America and humanity, is just too great. If you want a girl for the sake of history making, however, Warren is probably your best bet. Bernie or Warren, these policies are popular and anyone with the courage to fight for them on the national stage and the ability to communicate them properly will do very well, and no Dem girl has more popular policies more clearly communicated than Warren at this point.

Beto may have lost his most recent race, but he could also be a great choice. He has an amazing ability to reach across the aisle despite clearly not being a moderate. For that, he's been compared to Obama, who won the Presidency after just one term in Illinois as Senator and also tried to reach across the aisle with some initial success. But Obama did that before the Trump era, before the sudden, rapid polarization of the country, and Beto did it now, in the peak of our polarization, and he did it in TEXAS of all places. Sure he lost, but you know who else was a member of the U.S. House of Represenatives, ran for Senate, barely lost, then went on to run for and win the Presidency, uniting our country at its most divided? Abraham Lincoln. That's right, Abraham Motherfucking Lincoln. He was a Representative for Illinois, ran for Illinois Senate in 1858, lost, but went on to win the Presidency in 1860. I'm just saying, it's happened before, and it worked out pretty damn well, preserving the Union in the only time in it's history more polarizing than this one. He also united fractious wings of the new Republican Party, from the ravenously liberal Radical Republicans, to the more moderate and conservative wings, all the way to the ex-Democrat wing of people who recognized that the Democratic Party of the time was actually an anti-democratic force. Beto could do the same with the progressive and moderate wings of the Democrats, as well as the Never Trump Republicans, by giving everyone a charismatic, positive figure to rally around, someone to vote for who represents the earnest, honest values of America, as opposed to merely voting against Trump's hate. I'm not saying you need to go all out for Beto, just that I find the Beto-Lincoln parallels really exciting. Another thing to keep in mind? Beto WON amongst native Texans.

Other candidates who will run, but probably shouldn't:

Kamala Harris: She's not a bad lady, but she'll rightfully be seen as having shifted away from corporations only when it was convenient. This will cost her in authenticity. She'll attract a lot of progressives and split the progressive vote, largely because of being a women of color and from California, so home state advantage in a major Dem state plus she'll get a good chunk of the identity politics people.

Kristin Gillibrand: She's another one that suddenly sprinted left and away from corporations when it was politically convenient, except even worse than Harris. She's positioning herself as the most anti-Trump voter in congress, even more so than Bernie and Warren, but it's fake and many people know it. She's basically Hillary with a different face and name. She'll draw the rest of the identity politics crowd, some liberal Hillary fans, and a few progressives whose main passion is women's issues.

Cory Booker: Another "progressive" hero that still occasionally cozies up to corporate interests, he hasn't moved as much since the election, but also didn't have as far to go. His successful effort as one of the few Democrats that voted to stop imports of cheaper Canadian medicine doesn't fit with neither the free trade Democrats nor the "think of the common man" Democrats, and reeks of corporate interests. His authenticity is damaged and he doesn't have the time or platform to repair it. He'll just drag down the progressive vote further.

Joe Biden: Would he win? Probably. But would he solve anything with how divided the country is right now? Probably not. Like really, sure Joe is a likable enough guy that would probably beat Trump as someone the white working class would feel comfortable voting for, but Democrats are accused of not standing for anything, and Joe would perpetuate this problem, and would look like more of the status quo. Even if he'd win, he's not what the Democrats or America needs right now. What's the point of Joe?

Cuomo: Something something experience, something something infrastructure. Whatever, he reeks of corruption. Trump is corrupt too, but we need a clear contrast. He'll probably run anyway.

People who might run, might not, but shouldn't.

Bloomberg: See Cuomo above, just with a different billionaire flavor.

Clinton: Blech. I don't think she will, but people keep saying she might. Only advantage is she'd draw away from Biden's vote, and I guess that goes for Bloomberg too. I still think they shouldn't run. They'd just make our whole side stink. Clinton has lower favorability now than when she first came to the White House as a relatively unknown First Lady. She still has her rabid followers though, and people that feel they need to defend her to justify their vote for her. If she wants to weigh in on issues or candidates, whatever, but she shouldn't ever run for any office ever again.

Haha!
I was thinking that he might have too much of a "corrupt mafioso" look to him =D

Understand that with ICE, the plan isn't simply to abolish it, it's to basically reboot it with a new organization that would do the same thing, but finding a way to keep white supremacists out and preventing other systemic racism from creeping in. The details are definitely sparse though. She has time to come up with them though. She has 6 years before she can even run.

Same with the jobs mandate. It's a good idea, in some ways, as a way to totally eliminate unemployment, but it needs more detail on how it deals with certain issues. The issues are

1)what do you do in a major economic depression when there isn't enough work for the countless newly unemployeed people,

2) what do you do to prevent everyone working in the private sector from wanting to switch to the public sector because they know they'll get a job, and know it'll have great benefits, since this could cause turmoil in the private sector and mean you'll have to make jobs for a lot more people, and

3) if people don't flood in from the private sector, you're drawing from the most unemployable people in the whole job market, in theory, so what kind of work can they reliably do?

The solutions have time to work themselves out, but generally go along the lines of

1) when there's a depression, the economy needs government spending to get money into the hands of regular people to get it going again anyways as well as infrastructure investment so government infrastructure projects are a proven way to solve all these issues, as seen with FDR's public works projects in the Great Depression.

2) you actually want to draw some talent from the private sector to avoid the lack of talent mentioned in issue 3, you just don't want to overdo it, and furthermore the competition from the public sector forces the private sector to offer better pay and benefits to compete, which is good for people, but also the economy as it gets more money into the hands of the consumers that drive the economy. To not overdo it, find ways to fund the best benefits, like healthcare, on a national scale, like Medicare-For-All, and from there just raise the minimum wage to whatever the "guaranteed government job" wage is, probably $15 an hour if this is coming from Ocasio-Cortez, and if we were due for $15 an hour in 2015 when they started talking about it, we'll definitely be due for $15 an hour in 2025 when Cortez would start her first term. Then the disruption to the private sector will be minimal and probably even beneficial.

3) in regards to drawing from the least employable people, most of these people are only so unemployable because they lack the proper training in a skill relevant to today's job market. For example if you lost your coal mining job, where do you go? The solution here is for the job guarantee to come with job training. This has the added benefit of making them more employable when they go back to the private sector, and some kind of government job training is pretty needed regardless because so many jobs are going obsolete so fast right now due to automation. This takes care of the bulk of these difficult to employ people, but obviously there's a very small percentage that are just shitty workers, and there needs to be a way to fire these people and cut them off from the guarantee, as well as a way to earn the guarantee back. Maybe a three strikes law to lose it (fired from three jobs and you're out), then a referral to resources to help you get your life back on track from whatever was making you such a shitty worker (drug addiction maybe? Here's a rehab referral), then some way to measure that you've improved (maybe hold down a temp job for 6 months or something).

Then of course the final issues are what would the jobs be and how to pay. The easy solution is again infrastructure, which in the US is estimated to be a $10 trillion dollar backlog of needed work, so plenty of work for the foreseeable future that no simple "infrastructure bill" could ever take care of. The jobs would be quite varied, as some of this infrastructure would include the power grid, internet infrastructure, and if Ocasio-Cortez gets her way, a "Green New Deal" that would overhaul all U.S. Infrastructure from the ground up to be more eco-friendly, so you'd need all sorts of technicians and engineers and coders and construction workers and more. For additional variety you could allow states to commission other kinds of work depending on the state's needs, like social workers for public programs or something like that. Should be a way to get something for everyone.

As for paying, it will require a new tax. It's just too much to simply add to the deficit outside of an economic emergency like a depression. It would probably be some kind of infrastructure tax since most of the jobs would be infrastructure related. Such taxes have been sold to the public successfully before, like California's and Pennsylvania's gas taxes that pay for road repairs (doesn't work for PA because the money gets misused on traffic cops, but still, California just massively voted in favor of keeping it in a referendum, so they can be popular), so I think it's doable politically, but that's probably the biggest issue. Making the tax clearly and directly connected to infrastructure makes it easier to swallow. Then states could pay for the jobs based on states needs I mentioned.

But I don't know what Cortez wants to do, just what I've read that makes sense to me. If you're worried that it's asinine, don't, because these are achievable goals, they just need the details hammered out. She has six years minimum to do so, and tons of potential allies to help her do it. I'd certainly be crazy excited to have her as our first woman President.

I am in agreement with you on Warren.

IMO - she'd make the best President out of any politician I am aware of in the US.

At the time of nominations, I think it seemed obvious that her endorsement of Bernie would have been redundant. Saving it for the winner of the Democratic primary was ultimately the best strategy. The problem is that Bernie Sanders actually lost. If she had endorsed Bernie and he still lost the primary, that would have hurt Hillary's chances even more in the general. HOWEVER, I wasn't considering gender politics as relevant in that time, and her endorsement of Bernie could have alleviated the female resistance vote against him. She couldn't exactly run in the primaries either; while it would have hurt Hillary for her to do so, it would have hurt Bernie more. It was a strategic miscalculation on Warren's part, but I don't think it should be held in any way against her.

As for political reputations. It's unfortunate that these little tiny brownies have been blown up into behemoths. It's unfortunate the "Pocahontas" name is something that holds sway given how ridiculous of a label it is. From the media and comments I see of Warren, even amongst the left, her reputation is effectively ruined for 2020. 2024 would be a different story, by then I think people will clearly consider Bernie too old, and wouldn't hold it against Warren if she ran as the leading social-democrat in his stead; in 2020, if she ran instead of him, I can see a lot of dissenting "We want Bernie instead!" people. I also hope the culture around women in politics changes, otherwise, Ocasio-Cortez is going to be deep in the mud  before she's even old enough to be on the ticket.

Bernie Sanders has described himself as a Democratic Socialist even though he is running a Social Democrat platform. Some people (left wing media sources like Secular Talk and David Pakman Show) assume he is just confusing the two terms, but I don't think that's the case. " human beings have the right to control their own lives. And that means that you cannot separate the political structure from the economic structure. One has to be an idiot to believe that the average working person who’s making $10,000 or $12,000 a year is equal in political power to somebody who is the head of a large bank or corporation. So if you believe in political democracy, if you believe in equality, you have to believe in economic democracy as well." - that's Social Democracy. I think what trips people up is that they assume social democracy refers to the systems used in the USSR and PRC; but if you look at his statement, it is clear that isn't the case - he's far more Westernized than that. In the 80s he was very optimistic that the USSR would return to attempts to implement the pre-October 1917 philosophies before the downfall.

If you go against a demagogue like Trump, you can't win with someone nice.
The task of the democrats will be to find somebody "evil enough" to counter Trump in his own territory while not alienating the voter base. That's a tough task, good luck with that.

Yeah, that's one thing that I don't agree with him on. We've gotta move away from coal. I understand that's what he grew up respecting but I can't support that.

It is indeed tragic that seemingly every woman gets dragged through the mud over ridiculous things like that Pocahontas bullshit. Certainly seems to happen to every woman anyway, regardless of where on the political spectrum they are. I do think with the pro-woman trends we saw in this midterm election that it won't last. There is huge appetite to elect a woman President for the sake of proving that "no really, we're not just saying we'd elect a woman President if we liked her politics, we really would elect her!" It'll just take a woman with the right politics that matches the national mood, as well as a dying off of certain older, more sexist demographics. I'd say either the 2028 or 2032 elections will produce a woman President. 2036 at the latest. 2024 if Trump wins a second term and drives women further into the Dem camp with his sexism.