The post Is this the latest disqualifier to run for president – no hardship story to tell? appeared first on Occasional Planet.
]]>Is this what it’s come to? Someone running for office must have a background story that is so gripping that we think that he or she came out of a Dickens novel. If the candidate can’t wow the socks off voters with how compelling his or her “womb-to-candidacy” story is, she might as well forget about running.
Former HUD Secretary Julián Castro announced on Saturday, January 12 that he is now a candidate for president of the United States. So, what does he want you to know? Here are some of the essential points to his story and how he tells them, in the order in which they appeared in his speech:
In no way do I want to discount the hardships that Castro faced nor the significance of his accomplishments. But this is the story that we hear repeatedly from so many candidates running for office. It’s as if Beaver Cleaver could never have run for office. Neither could anyone else in his family, or in his neighborhood, or in the world as he knew it. The same would be true for Ricky Nelson, or for the Cosby kids or virtually anybody who grew up in a semi-functional family which was not living paycheck-to-paycheck.
There is a third category of “life stories” that does not involve the kind of hardships that a Julián Castro or Barack Obama faced or the idyllic life of fictional TV families. It is the lives that most people live, where a lot of things go well, and frequently “shit happens.” Sometimes that shit involves an absent parent, or a close family member with addiction problems. It might mean going to school with a learning disability which is never diagnosed. It might mean feeling bullied, even though that would be invisible to almost everyone else.
It might be just the process of living a life in a very complicated world, where the pressures to succeed in school, in peer relationships, in the workforce, in child-rearing, and in navigating one’s way through everyday challenges is frequently fraught with difficulty, as it is for most people.
The people who live these lives have stories too. They may not include rags to riches or first generation-in-the-family accomplishments. But they are stories of lives that are difficult, because none of us has it easy. If we did, there would be no stories of privileged people who live in mental and emotional torment.
I wish Julián Castro well in his campaign for president. But I want to know about his political positions, and even more importantly, how he might be different from so many of the failed office-holders we have in our world. How is he going to handle the insidious role of money in politics? How is he not going to talk down to voters? How is he going to make time to continue to study issues, all the while being there for his family and friends? Could he prepare himself to deal with the harshness of political battles better than Jimmy Carter or Bill Clinton? Would he be able to add a little bit of Lyndon Johnson know-how of dealing with Congress to the tremendous strength of character that Barack Obama had?
There is so much to know, and politics has a way of obscuring most of it. Mr. Castro, we’ll give you a pass on the first speech, but now it’s time to patronize us less and level with us more.
The post Is this the latest disqualifier to run for president – no hardship story to tell? appeared first on Occasional Planet.
]]>The post 2020 Potential Democratic Contenders: A Closer Look appeared first on Occasional Planet.
]]>The race for the 2020 Democratic nomination began at 11:30 PM, November 8th, 2016 when the networks projected that Donald Trump would carry the state of Florida. Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Minnesota, and New Hampshire were all still too close to call. Hillary Clinton was not going to be President, and one has to wonder what was going through the minds of Democratic governors, senators, congresspersons, and business leaders across America. At first maybe there was anguish over the loss, but there must’ve been a bitter-sweetness to it all. Dozens of Democrats had been sidelined by Hillary Clinton in 2016, and expected to wait until 2024 before looking at the White House. But now President Trump provided them an opportunity that another President Clinton couldn’t have.
A previous article mentioned 44 possible democratic contenders for 2020, but if that number sounds ridiculously large to you, that’s because it is. If you recall in 2016, at one point there were 17 candidates vying for the GOP nomination, but sources listed up to 55 possible candidates. Of course, all of those people didn’t run, but even if they did, just because a candidate runs does not mean they’re likely to secure the nomination. George Pataki, was never going to win the Republican nomination. As for the Democratic side, something tells me people were not exactly fired up about Lincoln Chafee.
In a previous piece we devised a metric for measuring not necessarily who is the Democratic front runner, but who in a vacuum should have a better than average chance of being nominated. Listed below are the seven most likely Democrats to be nominated, not according to any particular poll or bias of mine, but according to their scores. I don’t agree with a few potential candidates who have earned top spots, but I’ll explain their attributes and potential weaknesses nonetheless. You can find my article explaining these scores here.
Some articles have suggested that there are front-runners: Bernie Sanders, Cory Booker, Joe Biden, and others. But I’m not so sure there is a front runner at the moment, it’s important to remember we are as close to the first debates of 2019 as we were to the debates of 2015. This time last cycle, the conventional wisdom was that Chris Christie and Jeb Bush were the GOP frontrunners. So, with that in mind, take my estimations and of others with a grain of salt.
Notable Absences & Discrepancies
The post 2020 Potential Democratic Contenders: A Closer Look appeared first on Occasional Planet.
]]>The post Suggested disqualifiers before Campaign 2020 begins appeared first on Occasional Planet.
]]>Illinois Senator Tammy Duckworth ranks first in our list of viable Democratic candidates for 2020.
If the Democratic Party is truly going to be progressive, it is important that those who seek the presidency in 2020 walk the progressive walk instead of just talking the talk. Specifically, this means that hypocrisy must be reduced to a level that is equal to or is less than that of Jimmy Carter when he ran for president in 1976.
One of the reasons why Hillary Clinton was easily dismissed by so many Democratic voters was because of her coziness with Wall Street and her comfortability in shilling for money. Similar behavior by Barack Obama undermined his support among progressives. It would behoove any Democrat running for the presidency in 2020 to use the Bernie Sanders method of raising small dollar amounts from millions of people. In this case, integrity and practicality go hand-in-hand.
This means that Cory Booker must kiss the pharmaceuticals good-bye and Adam Schiff the same with Parsons Corp. “The Hill” reports that Kamala Harris is now the darling of the “Democratic donor class” and that brings with it all kinds of hazards which serve to unravel a progressive persona.
For 2020, a candidate needs to commit him or herself to spending time with voters who have little or no connection to the financial elite.
Recently, we analyzed some basic demographic information on 44 possible Democratic candidates for president in 2020. These candidates come from a list constructed in early June, 2017 by the Washington Post and The Hill.
We have established four basic criteria for suitable candidates for president in 2020. They are:
1. A candidate must have progressive bona fides. The Democrats are not going to win by being “Republican-lite.” More importantly, a “Republican-lite” agenda is not good policy. Democrats must understand that good policy makes good politics. It worked for Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson. Among other things, they both addressed issues of income inequality and that may well be the number one issue that the nation faces now.
2. Not only does a candidate need to restrict from whom he or she receives financial support, but it is equally important to not subsume oneself in the world of the rich and mighty. Yes, there are very wealthy people who have a balanced view of society such as Warren Buffett . But these are people who would rather meet with you in their own living room or office rather than for cocktails at a club in the Hamptons.
3. The candidate has to be youthful. As a septuagenarian, I realize this is a disqualifier for my contemporaries, but with the exception of Bernie Sanders (who will be 78 in 2020), it is difficult to find progressives who understand Millenials and those younger. These are the people who Democrats need to bring into the fold in order to win and also to educate for long-term policy initiatives.
4. Psychological fitness. Nothing is more difficult to quantify than this and we know that the American Psychiatric Association has adopted the “Goldwater Rule” which states “it is unethical for psychiatrists to give a professional opinion about public figures they have not examined in person.” But the experience that we all are having with Donald Trump as president shows us that ideology and even character become irrelevant when someone is psychologically unstable and dangerous to others.
What do we mean by psychological fitness? Here are three factors for starters for political candidates:
a. Being aware of hypocrisy. This means that a person needs to be on the “irony channel” – having the ability to see the absurdity of much of the behavior that is presently part and parcel of politics. Perhaps the best example of someone who has this awareness is Minnesota Senator Al Franken.
b. Being confident, but not arrogant. A good example of this would be California Congressman Adam Schiff, ranking member on the House Intelligence Committee.
c. Being comfortable in one’s own skin. Since FDR, there seem to be only two presidents who meet that criterion, John F. Kennedy and Barack Obama. Jimmy Carter would be a runner-up.
So, from the list of forty-four, here are seven to consider who might qualify. Unfortunately, with most of them there are already tight ties with entrenched moneyed interests. We’re hoping that they can realize that in the internet era, campaigns can be very inexpensive. The web also presents the best opportunity for a campaign to go viral. It should be a badge of honor to not snuggle up with the “Democratic donor class.”
With humility, here is a list of “magnificent possibilities,”
1. Illinois Senator Tammy Duckworth
2. Minnesota Senator Al Franken
3. California Senator Kamala Harris
4. California Lieutenant Governor Gavin Newsom
5. California Congressman Adam Schiff
6. Former Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick
7. New Jersey Senator Cory Booker
Feel free to share your thoughts with us.
For additional thoughts on this topic, see Reece Ellis’s post in Occasional Planet.
The post Suggested disqualifiers before Campaign 2020 begins appeared first on Occasional Planet.
]]>