adonis said:
Who I look for in a candidate to support doesn't rank that question terribly high. Others like platform, philosophy, vision, etc matter more to me.
I picked Biden for the most likely to win, but Buttigieg is my top choice at the moment.
The Z Machine said:
I would prefer Harris over the field, but think that Klobuchae has the best shot at beating Trump.
So fascinating to hear all of these perspectives. I'm not saying any of you are wrong, but that's just totally different from how I approach these things. I can't ever really remember supporting a candidate I didn't think had a chance. Maybe that's because I'm just a frontrunner (though I supported Obama from the very beginning, even when he was way down to Hillary,
and I also thought he had the best chance to win the general election). Some of it is also humility; I don't pretend to know what other voters will like, so I just go with the person I like the best and assume that if I like them, maybe others will, too. (I know that sounds like the opposite of humility; what I'm trying to say is that absent any other criteria, I'll just stick to the one thing I know, which is my own preferences).
The couple counter-examples I can think of were unique circumstances. In 2004, I voted for Edwards even though I knew Kerry would win the nomination, but honestly, I thought both of them were underwhelming. In 2009 I voted for Bill Thompson for NYC mayor even though I thought Bloomberg would win and
wanted him to win. I very deliberately wanted to cast a protest vote against Bloomberg's move to overturn term limits after they had already been approved by voters, and figured it didn't matter since has was going to cruise to re-election. (The irony is that apparently others thought like me, and Thompson came very close to actually beating him).
Similarly, in last year's FL gubernatiorial primary, I voted for Andrew Gillum even though I expected him to lose to Gwen Graham. But even that kind of proves my point. I expected Gillum to lose, but I thought he'd be a better general-election candidate because I found Graham so boring and uninspiring, and I figured a bland centrist would have trouble boosting turnout. Again, more people agreed with me than I suspected and Gillum won the nomination. (As to whether my hunch about the general election was correct, it's really impossible to say; Bill Nelson ran that centrist playbook and he and Gillum ended up with almost the exact same totals.)
Anyway, the 2020 primary is pretty unique in terms of being the most open in my adult lifetime and in terms of not having any strong frontrunners. I've been leaning toward Harris from the beginning, and as much as I decry making decisions based on perceived "electability", I still would say that she's the most electable. That's not my primary reason for supporting her, but I suppose it probably factors into my calculations somewhat, even if only subsconsciously.
Good stuff as always.
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