Which Democratic Candidate Can Beat Trump

Willie Brown: Still No Democrats Can Beat Trump

Former California State Assembly speaker and San Francisco mayor Willie Brown has declared, in the wake of the first Democratic Party presidential primary debate, that there is still no candidate who can beat President Donald Trump.

Brown made his observations in his most recent column for the San Francisco Chronicle on Saturday, titled, Bad news for Democrats none of these candidates can beat Trump.

Brown wrote:

The first Democratic debates proved one thing: We still dont have a candidate who can beat Donald Trump.

California Sen. Kamala Harris got all the attention for playing prosecutor in chief, but her case against former Vice President Joe Biden boiled down in some ways to a ringing call for forced school busing. It wont be too hard for Trump to knock that one out of the park in 2020.

Trump must have enjoyed every moment and every answer, because he now knows hes looking at a bunch of potential rivals who are still not ready for prime time.

Read Browns full column here.

Browns criticism included Sen. Kamala Harris , whom he infamously dated in the 1990s, appointing her to state jobs commanding significant salaries. He wrote in January:

The title of his column on that occasion: Sure, I dated Kamala Harris. So what?

A Stable Race Is Suddenly Not

For the past year, the race orbited reliably around Joe Biden. He was in a tier by himself. Candidates in the tier below him traded positions and some dropped out, but nothing about the fundamental structure of the race changed. Mr. Biden may still bounce back, but the force he exerted on the race appears to be a thing of the past.

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Who Can Beat Donald Trump

Edward Keenantimer

WASHINGTON, DCThree weeks from the launch of primary season that will choose the Democratic candidate for U.S. president, the ballot question has been well-established: Who can beat Donald Trump?

The question is clear the answer less so, though the available options are becoming clearer.

A candidates electability is always a concern, but this year it has taken on a new urgency for the party and for many disaffected Republicans offeringadvice and support to their rivals surpassing the considerations of policy and character that so often dominate debates. A poll conducted by Ipsos for the website FiveThirtyEight shows two-thirds of primary voters say ability to beat Donald Trump is more important a consideration for them than shared stances on issues.

The field of candidates has narrowed considerably in the past month, leaving five contenders with a shot at winning, who represent two different strategies for beating Trump.

One train of thought is that you promise a return to normal with minimal drama. The thinking is that Trump, despite the feverish support of a substantial following, is unpopular. More than 50 per cent of the population disapproves of him, consistently.

The job of the candidate, then, is to not do anything that would scare away centrist swing voters and disaffected Republicans.

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Why Dont We Know Which Democratic Candidate Can Beat Trump

We seem to know less than we did at the beginning of the primary.

Mr. Jentleson was a deputy chief of staff for Senator Harry Reid of Nevada.

The Democratic presidential primary is starting to feel less like a political contest and more like an existential experiment. In the era of big data and after a year of micro-analyzing every little twist and turn, we seem to know less than we did at the beginning. In an era when were supposed to know everything, we somehow seem to know nothing.

The frustration is compounded by the feeling that were not asking all that much. Most Democratic voters arent asking a lot of questions. Theyre just desperate to know the answer to a single, simple one: Who has the best chance of beating President Trump?

With more public polls than ever, more data scientists on the payrolls of major news organizations and a preponderance of poll-aggregating and analytical sites, it feels entirely reasonable to expect to know the answer by now.

Yet despite all the data and all the analysis, the universe appears dead set on defying our simple wish for an answer, and gleefully raising more questions instead. To the extent that we can put our finger on any reliable facts, many of them are slippery and two-sided.

Lets review what we know.

There Are Other Mysteries

Turnout is down, based on Iowa except that it might also be up, based on New Hampshire. More moderate candidates are more electable, based on a study of congressional candidates except that the leftier candidate might also be more electable, judging by Barack Obamas dominant win in 2008 after beating Hillary Clinton for the nomination. Twitter is not real life, based on the composition of the Democratic electorate except when it is, foretelling Mr. Bidens fall and Mr. Sanderss rise. There are two lanes, progressive and moderate except when there arent, as Ms. Klobuchars surge in New Hampshire took voters away from both Ms. Warren and Mr. Biden.

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Who Can Beat Trump Who Knows

The Democratic candidates are all debating a singular issue. New polls offer insights, not answers.

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By Giovanni Russonello

Hi. Welcome to On Politics, your guide to the day in national politics. Im Giovanni Russonello, your morning newsletter writer taking over your afternoon edition.

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At Wednesday nights Democratic presidential debate, the candidates bickered and battled over health care policy over Michael Bloombergs record and his right to represent a party that he only recently rejoined over the possible dangers of nominating a democratic socialist.

But in a way, it all seemed like just window dressing around one big question: Who has the best chance in November? Every policy critique seemed to lead inexorably back to this issue of electability.

In his very first comments at the debate, Mr. Bloomberg didnt just criticize Senator Bernie Sanderss plan to create a single-payer health care system he said it would cause Democrats to lose the general election.

I dont think theres any chance of the senator beating President Trump, Mr. Bloomberg said. You dont start out by saying Ive got 160 million people, Im going to take away the insurance plan that they love.

Mr. Sanders shot back, arguing that Mr. Bloomberg, the former New York mayor, was a billionaire saying that we should not raise the minimum wage or that we should cut Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.

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Entrance Poll Shows Demand For A Candidate Who Can Beat Trump

The rest of Sanders’ 2016 voters were divided among Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts former Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Indiana and former Vice President Joe Biden.

The data pointed to a generational divide as voters under 30 said they supported Sanders while voters ages 65 and over said they favored Biden.

The entrance poll found Sanders capturing the support of about half of caucusgoers ages 17 to 29 48 percent with Buttigieg, Warren and Biden trailing well behind.

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Political polls offer one answer. Most show the various candidates beating Mr Trump by wide enough margins nationally that they would be favoured to win an electoral-college majority. But the election is a long way away, and these polls may not be good at identifying who will actually vote, making them unreliable as measures of candidates strength.

Political-betting markets offer another answer to the electability question. Using data from the past 14 months of trading on PredictIt.com, a stockmarket of sorts for betting on political outcomes, The Economist built a statistical model to figure out which candidate has the best chance against Mr Trump. Contenders are weaker if an increase in their odds of winning the nomination corresponds to a boost in the odds of the presidents re-election and stronger if the probability of their victory dents the presidents. After controlling for various factorssuch as the chance that Mr Trump does not finish his first term in office, his approval ratings, the value of the S& P 500 and the recent outbreak of covid-19our model highlights a clear difference among the candidates.

If Bernie Sanders wins the nomination, Mr Trump is likely to be re-elected, with a probability of 58%. But if the president is up against Joe Biden or Mike Bloomberg, he is likely to lose the probability of his victory drops to 46% and 49% respectively.

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White Male Candidates Viewed As Having Easier Paths To Victory

• 58% of Democrats said it would be difficult for a woman to beat Trump, and 52% said the same of a socialist.

• Democrats were most likely to think a gay or lesbian presidential candidate would have difficulty facing off against the current president.

• 70% said a man would have the easiest road to victory, and 67% said a white candidate would.

Following a public debate over electability that pitted female candidate Elizabeth Warren against self-avowed socialist Bernie Sanders, a new Morning Consult/Politico poll finds that more than half of Democratic voters are skeptical about whether a person holding either of those traits can beat President Donald Trump in November.

According to the Jan. 17-19 survey, 58 percent of Democratic voters said it would be difficult for a woman to beat Trump, and 52 percent said the same of a socialist. The margin of error for Democratic responses was plus or minus 4 percentage points.

The poll comes after Warren said in a statement that Sanders, a self-described Democratic socialist, told her in 2018 that he did not think a woman could beat Trump. Sanders has denied Warrens account of their meeting, and the rift between the two of them spilled onto the debate stage in Iowa on Jan. 14.

Democrats were most likely to say it would be easy for a man to win in November, followed by 67 percent who said a white candidate.

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The Reason Sanders Appears Equally Electable

These Bernie or bust voters that come off the sidelines for Sanders in our survey are almost entirely limited to one group: Democrats and independents under age 35. These voters are about 11 percentage points more likely to say they would vote for Democrats if Sanders is nominated and almost all of them say they would not vote at all or vote third party if hes not on the ballot.

However, the Bernie or bust phenomenon appears almost entirely limited to left-leaning young people, who are usually a small share of the overall electorate. This stands in contrast to many theories of Sanderss electoral appeal: For example, whites without a college degree a demographic some speculate Sanders could win over are actually more likely to say they will vote for Trump against Sanders than against the other Democrats. The same is true of the rest of the electorate, except left-leaning young people.

This finding in our data mirrors many other surveys: Morning Consult finds dramatic increases in young Americans stated turnout intentions when asked how they would vote in matchups between Sanders and Trump.

A Divided Democratic Camp

Biden, initially expected by many Americans to blaze ahead as the Democratic nominee, trailed rivals Sanders, Pete Buttigieg and Sen. Elizabeth Warren in the Iowa caucuses last week. Polls in New Hampshire, which will hold its primary Tuesday, show Biden on the verge of another relatively weak finish, according to a RealClearPolitics polling average.

And new national polls show Sanders pulling ahead of Biden for the first time.

Bloomberg, meanwhile, joined the race late in the game and won’t be appearing on any ballots until Super Tuesday on March 3, but he’s rising in the polls after pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into his campaign. In a recent poll of small-business owners, the billionaire businessman was the only Democrat to top Trump. The poll, conducted in January, showed 52% of respondents said they favored the former New York mayor, according to Gallup and payments tech firm Square.

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Its Up To Democratic Voters To Decide Electability For Themselves

Naturally, moderate candidates will argue that the further-left candidates are too extreme to win, while Warren and Sanders will argue that taking bold positions will better ensure victory by giving people a reason to show up and vote, as Warren put it.

The elision in Warrens argument was that she didnt want to acknowledge that the Democratic nominee could be hurt by taking left-wing stances that are unpopular among the public. Of course, the nominee could also be hurt by taking centrist positions that arent particularly popular. But CNN was laser-focused on those left-wing issue positions on health reform and immigration, and they would surely be major topics in the general election as well.

The odd thing about the case from moderates like Delaney, Ryan, and Hickenlooper is that their play-it-safe arguments could essentially be interpreted as making the case for Joe Biden, the current frontrunner, who wasnt onstage . Biden has his flaws as a candidate, but the other moderates havent managed to be particularly inspiring either.

The debate stage isnt really the best format for such a discussion, since everyones arguments on who would be most electable are so self-interested . Voters instead have to read between the lines and decide for themselves.

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Chris Matthews Expresses Worries: Democrats ‘need To Find’ Candidate Who Can Beat Trump

MSNBC host Chris Matthews declared Monday that he’s “not happy with the field” of 2020 Democratic presidential candidates.

Matthews, a former speechwriter for President Carter, said he did not think Democrats had a candidate who could defeat President Trump

“What are my thoughts? Im not happy. Im not happy with this field. I think they have to find a candidate for president that can beat Trump,” Matthews said during a panel discussion Monday on “Morning Joe.”

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The telecast from Des Moines, Iowa, took place on the morning of the state’s caucuses. Sen. Bernie Sanders has emerged as the favorite to win the caucuses.

But Matthews was pessimistic on Sanders’s chances in the general election.

“Bernie Sanders is not going to be president of the United States,” he said.

Mathews then compared the excitement around the Sanders campaign to that of 1972 Democratic nominee George McGovern, who lost in a landslide to President Nixon by a 520-17 margin in the Electoral College while only winning 35 percent of the popular vote.

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