I'm not sure this is the case, or if it is, it's only because he's an unknown. The challenges of elevating an unknown politician to a national race is that 1) stuff can come out that hasn't been previously disclosed, and 2) no national record to run on, so people can read into all sorts of stuff.
The last 3 successful Democratic candidates before Biden (Carter, B. Clinton, Obama) were all national unknowns with personal charisma who ran as (for their time) center-left candidates.
So, first of all, no, they weren't. Jimmy Carter was the closest thing to unknown, but he was still governor of a state. He won as a dark horse in a year that a stick painted blue would have won the presidency. Bill Clinton was governor of Arkansas, and had been for 8 years. He may have been unknown to the general public, but he wasn't unknown to the average Democrat, having been touted as a possible candidate in 1988 and having given a keynote address at the 1988 DNC. He spent 4 years building his national profile so that when he entered the 1992 primaries, he was well known by Democratic party voters, who very nearly rejected him anyway. Obama had very aggressively raised his national profile as well; he was given the keynote address at the 2004 Democratic National Convention and then as Senator basically spent the whole time running for President, even if he wasn't yet running for president, if you know what I mean.
Seems like you're moving the goal post here from "unknown politician" to "unknown-within-the-party politician". Very few people outside of engaged Democratic party members and people who lived in or next to the candidates' home states had any idea who these three people were before they launched their presidential primary bids. They might have heard Clinton's and Obama's names if they'd watched a lot of political shows on cable news during the previous presidential cycle, or if they were dedicated enough to watch the Democratic convention speeches in '88 and '04, but otherwise not so much. If you want to stick with "unknown-within-the-party politician" I'll concede the point, but I don't think the original comment holds up.
The health care point is true, though he also ran on energy independence (albeit including green energy in that push), and in 2008 he was formally against gay marriage. He wanted a "team of rivals" like Lincoln and he put Republicans in his cabinet. Those were some pretty centrist positions alongside his more left-leaning ones.
Well, that's pretty demonstrably not true. I think you're confusing the escalating ideological polarization of the active membership of the Democratic and Republican parties with the views of the general electorate. The people in general didn't become more extreme, but their major party representatives did.
Uh, you're the one who said "unknown politician", which to me, means a true unknown. Someone who has no profile outside of their local profile. Like a Chester Arthur rising to the VP spot in 1880, for example. I noted that the guys you called unknowns weren't unknowns within the power structures that they needed to exploit to gain national status.
You're really leaving out a lot of the left wing pieces he campaigned on. Closing Guantanamo (failed), pulling out of Iraq (failed), Repeal Don't Ask, Don't Tell (succeeded), improve financial regulation (succeeded), DREAM act (failed). His energy independence politics were never "drill baby drill" politics and were almost entirely around reducing domestic oil use and expanding green energy. And he did indeed put 2 Republicans in his cabinet to start, one of whom was the sitting DefSec Robert Gates, one of whom was a retired GOP congressperson (he nominated a sitting GOP senator as well for a position but Moscow Mitch managed to outmaneuver Obama on that one). I think it's not nearly as centre-left as he ended up going, which is why lefties feel like Obama betrayed them.
I absolutely believe that poll, because it's a meaningless one. People being open to a theoretical third party are fairly irrelevant, because once a party is established and picks positions, then there's something for people to dislike. I am sure they would check it out, then most people would go home and vote their usual party. And regardless of that, it has nothing to do with the actual reality, which is that the majorities won by Obama, Trump, and Biden came from motivating new/lapsed voters ideologically identified with their bloc, not by getting former Dems to vote GOP or vice versa. That stuff did happen, but it's not the key.
Is this true? I thought Virginia had trans people in the state Senate already.
Yep, Danica Roem. Not just that, she’s the first openly trans state senator in the entire southern US, which is a huge win. It’s not her first election though, she’s been in the VA House since 2018.
www.nbcnews.com
Now even David Axelrod is openly questioning whether Biden should step aside.
Former Obama strategist wonders if Biden should stay in presidential race
"What he needs to decide is whether that is wise," David Axelrod said of Biden.www.politico.com
Newsom or Phillips? Sure. RFK though? The anti-vaxx conspiracy nut whose many insanse statements are easily disprovable, yet he keeps doubling down on them? No way. That man isn't fit to be a politician of any position.
It seems more like Newsom is going to run in 2028. If he were to run for 2024 he would've started his campaign earlier.Looks like the Newsom Joe Rogan theory starts to make sense
That's not in any way a positive stance. He claims that vaccines cause autism for example. Not only is there no evidence, whatsoever, to support that claim; it has been thoroughly debunked for ages. I don't know about you, but I don't see the value in electing somebody who peddles debunked conspiracy theories for monetary gain. Such a person should not have any power, ever.
Vaccines causing autism isn't just a debunked claim, it was an out-and-out lie designed to enrich disgraced former doctor Andrew Wakefield, and he continues the grift to this day.
Do you think that just because you aren't aware of movements that they aren't trendy? The anti-vax movement began in 1998, and he hooked onto it in 2005.
They grift the rubes, man. They give paid speeches to crowds, to tell them how vaccines cause autism, and how COVID vaccines are designed to spare the Jews and the Chinese but not the poor lil white guy. They beg for donations on their radio show. They sell overpriced books about conspiracy theories around vaccines (and half of them go back to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion). There's lots of money in there for the well-connected grifter. After all, when PT Barnum said there's a sucker born every minute, he was underestimating the amount of suckers.
