I agree with everything you said there. But part of me wonders whether the electorate really is sick of “politics as usual” and might not respond to a Sanders pitch? I know at least one Trumper who claims he would’ve voted Sanders if Sanders had been the nominee. I agree we probably can’t afford an experiment like this. But part of me still wonders…
If the center left field continues to be split, you might not have to wonder. I’ll go hide under a desk for a few months if that happens.
“He’s been saying the reason we’re in the problem we’re in now is because of the recent past,” Biden said. “That’s eight years of Obama and me."
While Pete was just getting settled in behind the mayor’s desk:
Joe Biden made an aggressive entry into the 2012 campaign Thursday, calling out Mitt Romney and the other Republican presidential hopefuls by name for their failure to support the auto bailout…“If you give any one of these guys the keys to the White House, they will bankrupt the middle class,” Biden said at a United Auto Workers hall…Biden was greeted at the union hall with chants of “Go Joe, Go!” (CNBC, March 15, 2012).
Biden played no small role in the successes that Pete, South Bend, and auto manufacturing throughout the entire Midwest have enjoyed since 2012 – and the millions of workers whose jobs, families, futures, and cities were saved have a pretty good memory of who was doing the heavy lifting for them.
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TPM Correct this post - Warren placed 3rd in Iowa. I love your reporting but hate to see these types of factual errors.
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Biden did a good job making these points in the debate. The ad is killer in this respect. It’s a good set up and he has been consistent for the last few days. His challenge is to stay well funded enough through Super Tuesday. Bernie has the edge on money.
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All things being equal, it’s obviously better to have experience with large public organizations on some level, learning how to balance the desires of various constituencies and so forth. I’ve written about the activities of small government entities off and on for more than 30 years. For an insightful person, those experiences could well inform a jump into the big leagues, and Buttigieg is a formidable intellect. And everyone agrees there’s nothing that could really prepare you to be president. So the upshot is of course wide experience is good, but having the chops and being a ferociously quick study is even better. Buttigieg would do fine. That’s what I think.
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Just guessing about character here but I think if anyone could come from behind it would be Warren. She strikes you as a determined plugger type. I liked her from the start and I’m not writing her off.
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I think it’s a kind of big deal to have some degree of executive experience, even if it is only as a mayor, rather than being a cog in the wheel of a deliberative body all your political life. I’d be OK with Pete. I’ve already resigned myself to not having someone to vote for with joy in my heart. I got that privilege twice with President Obama, and I don’t expect it to happen again.
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Yes, and all my college students and many of my peers are the Sanders equivalent of madly for Adlai. I can’t stand the thought of 5 months of “he’s going to take away your money, your cars and your hamburgers,” I really can’t, and I think that the Dems have got to consider the center righters because elections are usually won in the center. And there’s the reality of history–we don’t do big change except in exceptional or traumatic circumstances. But, as Matt says, things are not possible until they suddenly are.
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Buttigieg is brighter, better educated and better intentioned than Trump. That said, Trump is demonstrates beyond a doubt that inexperience in the White House is a bad idea.
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I think Pete could attract some top talent in key jobs…that counts for something.
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A point which Pete enthusiastically made himself this morning.
Buttigieg responded that he “had the Obama White Houses’ back time and time again because they were doing the right thing” which “wasn’t always easy as a mayor in Indiana.”
“You know, in fact my first campaign statewide was on a platform of defending the Obama administration’s decision to rescue the auto industry because I knew what that meant to my state,” Buttigieg said.
Granted, Pete did refuse to give Biden complete and sole credit for the accomplishments of the Obama administration, so you can hold that against him. Who knew that Obama was just a figurehead and it was Joe Biden who was actually getting everything done?
And Biden’s “If you don’t vote for me it means you hate Barack Obama” routine is starting to look kind of pathetic.
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I’d hardly argue in favor of presidential inexperience but that’s the least of Trump’s deficits. He’s severely mentally ill, for starters. He’s profoundly ignorant, in the late-middle stages of dementia at least, and he’s a career criminal. He’s a racist demagogue, functionally illiterate, and profoundly lazy. I can keep going—have we mentioned he’s the most gullible consumer of conspiracy theories we’ve seen in public life?—so stop me when the comparison with Buttigieg starts to seem inapt. 
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So far the parallels are stunning!
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Haha seriously they’re like examples of two different species.
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I don’t think that’s possible, any more than their ability to defuse the fact that Sanders is 78 years old, or that he sounds like Brooklyn. He’s vulnerable on multiple fronts, and is fundamentally unelectable.
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Not a great argument. Trump showed us what inexperience gets us. I think that is everybody’s point.
So did Obama. So did Lincoln for that matter.
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Edited for accuracy.
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True, but he’s not deflecting the attacks he’ll receive as a nominee by saying in that linked clip in the article that “In many respects we’re a socialist country,” and then pivoting to Trump’s tax breaks for his real estate business.
What he’s saying is true, but you don’t calm the frightened horses in the electorate by saying that we’re a socialist country. That ain’t gonna work in a general election.
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