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This is a sign of how shallow the Dem bench has become. What do they have lining up? Pritzker? Warren (lol)? Mayor freaking Pete? Not Harris for sure. I did say I like Gretch because she ties up MI and isn't otherwise disqualified.
I'd take Roy Cooper again any of them, but really the story here is that the Dems need to spend some effort on the bench and they need to elevate more swing-state folks.
My favourite conspiratorial explanation for this is that the HRC team knew that she was such an unlikeable and unpopular candidate they went and kneecapped all her prospective challengers to make sure she'd have an easy time getting the nomination.
I think it's most likely that Dems just don't have enough people to run every institution they've seized, and the old political office pipelines look unappealing relative to, say, chairing a billion-dollar NGO you can use as a personal slush fund.
See the "embattled" mayor of Oakland and all those others for examples of how poor their pool of low level politicians is; they can't even do the minimum effort to hide their embezzlement enough for Dem prosecutors to ignore it.
Whereas Republicans who didn't go the federalist society judge route are pretty much stuck with starting a political career as mayor of Cowpatsie, Idaho. They don't even get defense contractor work now; it all goes to regime-friendly guys like the motte's Netscape or whatever.
Like, a Democrat Thomas Massie would have gone a very different direction after MIT, and reached a much more profitable office than junior representative in charge of sponsoring DOA livestock bills.
But there's definitely a crab bucket effect too, made stronger by the party's power over the bureaucracy. Much easier to sabotage a potential competitor when you can literally order their subordinates to undermine them.
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I think Pritzker is probably their best choice now. He’s very bland. He did an ok job in Illinois. You can just run the election on Trump bad again. Illinois seems to be a better spot for the left to find their candidates than the coast.
That being said Newsome is running if he can get the nomination. You don’t pass up a chance to run when it comes even if it’s not an ideal time. I think he has a lot of personal characteristics that won’t play well in battle ground states.
A fat man cannot be prez.
My prediction anyway.
Trump is fat, he is the third heaviest president ever, I think he lost some weight since he was president though. William Howard Taft was famously rotund. Grover Cleveland was fat. More Americans, and especially republicans, are fat, and would identify with a fat candidate. I wouldn't say it improves anyone's chances. But the fact that Chris Christy even took a stab at it shows it isn't outside the overton window these days.
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