In hyperbolic, hyper-partisan America, some Democrats fear the country as they know it will disappear if Donald Trump is re-elected; some Republicans fear civil war if he isn’t.
If electability is the test, then here’s a statistic Elizabeth Warren or Amy Klobuchar might have found handy in their argument for a female nominee at Tuesday night’s Democratic debate: the last two white men to win the party’s presidential nomination — Al Gore in 2000 and John Kerry in 2004 — both lost in the subsequent general election.
The most Gore/Kerry-like candidate in this Democratic primary happens to be the front-runner, former vice-president Joe Biden. So the beauty of the argument, at least for Warren and Klobuchar, is that they wouldn’t even have to mention his name while they tried to vaporize his perceived advantage.
It speaks to how all-important the ability to win is in this primary season, which kicks off with the Iowa caucus and New Hampshire primary in a couple of weeks.
And no, primaries aren’t always like that.
When their short-term prospects have looked dismal, both parties have indulged in passionate soul-searching primaries about what they will stand for in the long run. (See the Democrats and Jesse Jackson against Ronald Reagan in 1984 or the Republicans and Pat Buchanan against Bill Clinton in 1996.)
But winning is definitely what this primary is about. That’s partly because Democrats believe they can win in November and partly because they believe they must win.
In hyperbolic, hyper-partisan America, some Democrats fear the country as they know it will disappear if Donald Trump is re-elected; some Republicans fear civil war if he isn’t. To borrow the football line, in 2020, winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing.
WATCH | ‘The only people on this stage who have won every single election they’ve been in are the women’ — Elizabeth Warren makes her electability argument:
Sen. Bernie Sanders denied at a Democratic presidential debate Tuesday evening in Des Moines, Iowa, he told Sen. Elizabeth Warren in a private 2018 meeting that a woman couldn’t win the presidency. ‘I didn’t say it.’ On the debate stage, Warren argued the real danger for Democrats ‘is picking a candidate who can’t pull our party together.’ 2:55
Biden popular with African-American voters
So for all the talk of health care, income inequality and left versus further left, it’s no wonder the struggle for the soul of the Democratic party is, for many Democrats at this moment, a struggle that can wait until after they’ve rid the White House of Trump.
And how is that project going anyway? It looks like it might come down to how the African-American vote, crucial to winning the nomination, is already sizing up.
Thus far, two of the three African-American candidates, senators Kamala Harris and Cory Booker, have dropped out of the race before the first ballot is cast, and no one can see a credible path forward for the third: former Massachusetts governor Deval P