The Bulwark: A warning, and an appeal

americana, politics 1 Minute

Sarah Longwell, The Bulwark:

Remember 2015? It was an exciting year for Republicans. There were 16 candidates running for president and a slight majority of them looked (at the time) like pretty good options. I remember spending a lot of time trying to decide which candidate in that distinguished pack would earn my vote. It was the rare election where Republicans weren’t going to have to choose between lesser evils. Whoever I voted for was going to be pretty solid. Maybe even great! 

… 

And then there was this clown Donald Trump who has that NBC show I’d never watched and was once married to that woman with the accent who does the cameo in First Wives Club. What a joke. Ignore.

… 

You know how this story ends. But in retrospect you can see where everything went wrong. And therein lies the cautionary tale for you, my Democratic friends.

Sometimes too much choice can lead to unpleasant results. Trump took me by surprise, just as he did Sarah Longwell. I dismissed him for good reasons, yet here we are.

I’m hopeful that by the time we hear Christmas music in stores we’re also down to three or four strong contenders for the Democratic nomination. Bernie Sanders will have enough of a war chest to stay in it until the Democratic convention. The same will be true for Joe Biden if he runs. I imagine Elizabeth Warren and Kamala Harris can, as well, given the breadth of their small-donor support. I’m unsure about the rest. I’m also unsure egos won’t prolong otherwise non-viable candidacies.


(Like Longwell, I’d like to see a Republican primary challenge to Trump, though I suspect he’d squeak through. Not enough conservatives will abandon the incumbent president.)


#trump #democrats #choice #candidates #convention #bernie #kamala #warren #biden

Published by Andrew

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