Seems to me huge swathes of the voting public will vote for her…She will go with her strength, Her voting public.
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She will have no problem in pulling together a coalition. She has been extremely careful in maintaining positive relationships will all major candidates, and will have no problem getting surrogates from across our alliance to help a campaign to defeat Trump. Who really thinks Stacey Abrams or Corey Booker or Kamela Harris, or Julian Castro is going to sit on the sidelines during a Warren for President general election campaign?
If you think Biden is going to win the Southeast…or any Democrat…you are living in a dreamworld. Florida is going to be tightly contested, as always…and maybe Georgia and NC (more so NC) will be in play. That’s it. Everything else goes republican. And as far as FL goes…its worth noting that the more centrists candidates for Governor lost to the most progressive candidate, Gillum. Who came within 30,000 votes of winning outright in the General.
Arizona is in play, doesn’t matter who the candidate is. Kelly-McSally is going to be the big draw to the ballot there, and I like his chances.
The map to 270 already starts at over 270 for Democrats, and we have more opportunities to expand upon it, than republicans do. They are the ones with an extremely narrow path to victory. Lose AZ, lose FL…and its over for them. We can lose either or both, and still be over 270 EV. Oh, and now they are going to have to spend money in TX, GA and NC.
You see the pattern? Republicans have to DEFEND states that are traditionally theirs. Even Trump’s campaign is folding their tents in Michigan…one of our states they flipped in 2016.
You are looking at it wrong. In a general election, her position on HC becomes…making Trump defend trying to take healthcare away from millions of Americans, with no plan to replace anything. On trade, she simply has to make Trump defend fighting a tariff war which is destroying America farmers and costing American taxpayers billions. On Foreign Policy, she simply has to make Trump defend cutting and running on close allies.
This general election is not going to be some larger, existential policy argument. Its going to be an increasingly erratic Trump trying to defend what is indefensible to the majority of Americans. “Do you like what Trump is doing on XXX? Yeah, me neither.I will stop that”
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I don’t think she’s been lucky with press coverage (CNN and MSNBC went with the conservative narrative completely on her DNA test). The focus has not been on the Democratic candidate yet. Once the primaries are done there will be plenty of time to knock the Democratic candidate down, whoever it is. That’s what the media does - even more so when it comes to making sure a ratings bonanza like Trump gets another term.
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“Do you like what Trump is doing on XXX? Yeah, me neither.But Soshalizms!!!”
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Re the horse race numbers, FiveThirtyEight ran an interesting discussion yesterday (or day before) with Nate Silver and his colleagues. Nate said that the press was - in my words, not his - essentially in Warren’s pocket. One example of that was that they were glombing onto polls that “show” a Warren surge, while ignoring those that don’t. He speculated on the reasons for that, but I’ll let you read it, if you are interested.
Nate also appended a list of the credible polls to support his point. However, when I looked at the list, I noticed something that Nate didn’t mention. With almost no exceptions, the polls were sharply divided in one critical way: Registered Voter polls vs. Likely Voter polls. The “Warren Surge” was “found” in the Registered Voter polls. The stable large Biden lead was “found” in the Likely Voter polls.
Which one is right? I don’t know. But, I do know that in polling today with regard to a general election, it is probably better to use Registered Voters, because there is so much time between now and the general. But does that hold for predicting caucuses and primaries coming up in a relatively few months; I’m not sure it does. Time will tell, but I think prognosticating today based on polls, without understanding what the polls are measuring is, shall we say, polling malfeasance, if not malpractice.
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Any of them. Gore won against that in 2000. Kerry came within a whisper of winning against that in 2004. Obama won against that in 2008 and 2012. HRC won against that in 2016.
The data are the data.
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Her position on SP magically changes? You think the GOP is gonna forget it or something? Take away health insurance for millions vs. take away private insurance for millions. That’s a battle the GOP would relish. She’ll utterly kill the Dems on the health care issue and cede the advantage we have. Sorry, but this is naive thinking.
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Agreed. Much like 2016, it was a toxic stew of many factors, but any one of which falling out may have changed the outcome (and much that followed).
Oh, and 2004, too. 
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Warren isn’t like them.
Overall Warren keeps getting better - but with some major issues. At this point she is the front runner. But she has taken positions that will do her major harm in the general election. Perhaps she was listening too closely to the left Twittosphere. The majority of Americans don’t want private health insurance abolished. The majority of Americans reject the notion of open borders. Even Norway won’t pay for government health care for illegal immigrants. And, unfortunately and in this America, you can lop off 3%-5% just by being a woman. I’m not saying she can’t win - but she has some major issues, more than readily appear on the surface.
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I agree. Notice that I said “no better than even” instead of claiming that Warren was the front runner. We only have a rough estimate of the situation, not any precise measure of it.
But the trend for Warren vs Biden should have predictive value.
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No. Nader did it on purpose. It is not to be excused or minimized.
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you honestly think single payer is going to be the central plank of her General election campaign?
It’s not.
The central plank is going to be anti Trump. On healthcare, Trump has an atrocious record, and the GOP got its collective ass handed to it on that issue in 2018. She doesn’t have to make an argument for single payer…she merely has to say she believes Americans deserve health care instead of bankruptcy…a case she is actually pretty good at making, with tons of those anecdotal examples that personalize the argument.
I am not a big Warren fan myself, but I think your criticism of her having trouble discussing policy below 30,000 feet really misses the mark. She has shown skill at turning those discussions, not into wonky detailed white paper discussions, but personal struggles that individuals like “you the voter” face everyday. She does this far better than HRC did. Quite honestly, I’ve been a bit surprised at how well she does it, because going into this, I had the same concerns.
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Biden is already campaigning like he’s in the general. As such he’s more concerned with moderates than the democratic base. So you can expect the day late and dollar short strategy to be in play on pretty much every issue. It’s not likely the base is going to sit this one out…
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Biden doesn’t have that big an advantage at attracting white voters recently. His popularity among black voters is obvious though.
Her central plank is going to be what the media makes it, not what she makes it. Its going to be all single payer, higher taxes, and her responses to Fox’s endless Pocahontas jokes.
Its a dicey choice, honestly. Generally speaking, Likely Voters are what should have precedent. But a lot of that has to do with very deep dives into the voting patterns of Registered vs. Likely Voters. If a person says they are definitely going to vote, but…and assuming they aren’t young and just registering for their first election (see? lots of variables)…they are very sporadic voters, then my instinct is to not count on them to show up, and put them on the list of people I am going to have to hold their hand and walk them to the polls.
Old saying in campaigning and reading data like that…People can be relied on to do two things…Lie and Die. Voters who vote reliably every single election…you can usually trust that they are going to vote for who they say they are going to vote.
And then there is the newly registered voters, which is a thing here in Florida this year. We have been working hard registering young voters for quite a while now. This is the election cycle where we will see the gains by the March For Our Lives people. This is also the election cycle where we will have expanded the franchise for ex-felons…not as much as we had wanted, but there is a significant number of them now on the polls that weren’t in previous years.
These factors can get lost in Registered vs. Likely Voter polling.
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I agree that Biden had the toughest decision to make about announcing support for impeachment, because the charges directly involved him and none of the other candidates. It required a bit of a tightrope walk to speak on principle and not as a knee-jerk reaction. But he still waited too late. It’s never a good thing to appear indecisive when you’re a Presidential candidate. It also feeds directly into Trump’s “sleepy” narrative.
That’s one knock I have on Harris, although she’s been my favorite for a while. She waffled back and forth on her healthcare position before finally deciding what it would be, and that’s not a good look.
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Sounds like you need to change the channel from Fox yourself.
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Boy this is really reminding me of Dukakis (who was also overwhelmingly favored to win in the election, until he lost).
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