Niko House posted a great video analyzing this a couple weeks ago. He goes even farther, noting who and most imporant where these establishment candidates with virtually no chance to win come from. I’ve added some to Niko’s list, but his analysis is what got me looking at this.
- Beto O’Rourke — Texas
- Julian Castro — Texas
- Kirsten Gillibrand — New York
- Kamala Harris — California
- Amy Klobuchar — Minnesota
- Tim Ryan — Ohio
- Wayne Messam — Florida
Now let’s add a couple other establishment candidates with zero chance of winning who are talking about running:
- Andrew Gillum — Florida
- Andrew Cuomo — New York
Every presidential general election, a candidate must win at least two of Florida, Texas, California and New York. The primaries have roughly the same dynamic. For 2020, Bernie is and will very likely remain the frontrunner. How to defeat him? A collection of favorite sons/daughters each pulling 5–15% of the delegates from the big four, with a couple of Rust Belt ringers thrown in for good measure. Voila, Bernie doesn’t reach 50% on the first ballot.
This is also one of the reasons the MSM is working overtime to keep down Tulsi Gabbard. She is the only person in the race as or more progressive than Bernie — who also happens to be young, a woman, a POC, a religious minority and a veteran. If Tulsi takes off like Bernie did in 2016, together they will easily have well over 50%. Tulsi only needed 653 more donations to get on the debate stage this morning!
The DNC and the Democratic establishment are going to pull out all the stops on progressives in 2020. We have to fight fire with fire. Getting Tulsi on that debate stage is the first step, and supporting both Bernie and Tulsi is the best way assure a progressive wins the Democratic nomination.
