Gene Lyons: Everything else being equal, a Biden/Klobuchar ticket would be hard to beat

[highplainsdem]

Even though Lyons really hasn't endorsed anyone -- and he's said he thinks Biden. like Sanders, is too old -- I thought DUers who like Biden and/or Klobuchar would find this column interesting.

And even DUers who don't will like what Lyons says about Trump.


https://chicago.suntimes.com/columnists/2020/1/9/21059045/joe-biden-democratic-presidential-election-nomination-gene-lyons

-snip-

Writing in The Atlantic, Johns Hopkins political scientist Yascha Mounk puts it this way: “Maybe it’s not that voters prefer the candidate they would rather have a beer with; maybe they prefer the candidate who would rather have a beer with them.”

Biden appears to like almost everybody. When campaigning, he has to be restrained from hugging total strangers. He whispers in voters’ ears, listens to their confidences, takes down phone numbers, promises to call them back, and then actually follows through.

Sure, he sounds like a throwback, as Timothy Egan points out, with his talk of “record players and malarkey and pushup challenges.”

Indeed, Biden strongly reminds me of my late father, an Irish-Catholic working stiff from the Northeast with an assertive personality and a terrific smile. “Malarkey” was one of his favorite words, Irish-American slang dating to the 1920s. It basically means “nonsense.”

Or “donkey dust,” another phrase he liked.

However, if my father were alive, he’d be 108. So yes, as I’ve written previously, Joe Biden’s too old to be president. And so is Bernie Sanders. Some people think Biden’s lost a step. But then it’s not my decision, is it?

(As for pushup challenges: Donald J. Trump couldn’t do even one. He’d need a forklift to get back to his feet.)

Anyway, here’s the thing: The whole state of Iowa is a throwback, not to mention its outsized role in our absurd, anachronistic way of choosing presidential candidates. From the Mississippi to the Missouri, it’s populated by rural and small-town Midwestern communities of a kind they aren’t making anymore: approximately 91% white.

As somebody who until quite recently lived down a gravel road in a county with more cows than people, I’ve no issues with the hayseed lifestyle. Indeed, I prefer it. But it’s not much like today’s America.

Maybe that’s a good thing right now. See, Iowa’s a lot like Minnesota, Wisconsin and large parts of Michigan — crucial Midwestern swing states Democrats need to win to prevent Trump from slipping back into the White House on another Russian-sponsored Electoral College fluke.

Biden’s cornball folksiness plays with Iowa voters precisely because it’s real — a quality shared by Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar, who would be my candidate if I had one. (I’ve never participated in politics at any level.) She too comes across as what my wife calls “real people.”

Klobuchar makes me smile. I like her self-deprecating humor, even if she’s said to have a temper. Her memoir is called “The Senator Next Door.” I like how Klobuchar talks about politics — putting together coalitions and passing bills — as opposed to bickering about the details of plans that have zero chance of being enacted by Congress.

She wins counties Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton didn’t.

I like it that Klobuchar’s a wiseguy who made crybaby Brett Kavanaugh look foolish when he tried to engage her on the subject of blackout drinking. She’d eat Trump alive in a debate.

Everything else being equal, a Biden/Klobuchar ticket would be hard to beat, if somewhat blindingly white, ergo highly improbable.

Reporters covering Iowa have found Democratic voters in a distinctly pragmatic mood. According to The Washington Post’s Michael Scherer: “Strategists say they have been surprised by how fluid voters in Iowa have been in moving between candidates with very different ideological profiles.”

That’s certainly how Democrats I know are thinking. In what most see as an existential crisis for our democracy, they’re feeling more practical than ideological. The big question isn’t who can describe a platonically perfect health care plan, but who can win?

Based upon his attempts to frame Biden in Ukraine, the president evidently fears him. And after this week’s brush with war against Iran, it may also be significant that a November 2019 poll found that Biden was most trusted by Democrats to handle foreign policy by 48%, to Bernie Sanders’ 14%.

-snip-

[UniteFightBack]

1. I'd be good with this. I want the VP nominee to have a bit of pit bull in them and I think Amy has

an answer for everything.

[squirecam]

33. Yep

Im fine with them as the ticket too.

[Mme. Defarge]

2. BINGO!

Yes, yes, yes.

That said, I will vote for the Democratic ticket in any event.

[BeyondGeography]

3. Boring

[LanternWaste]

4. So boring you actively engaged in the thread.

(space provided free of charge below to rationalize the irony as something else)

[BeyondGeography]

5. So boring, yes

[DemocracyMouse]

14. And, ugh, kind of ugh, ugh, ugh, post Reagan corporate

[Eliot Rosewater]

26. So boring you wont vote in November if this is the team?

So boring that if this is the team you will HOLD your nose?

[LongtimeAZDem]

6. Good; I've had enough excitement coming out of the White House lately

[DemocracyMouse]

15. We want excitement! America SHOULD be exciting!

Has someone let the air out of the Model-T?

We need new blood and better ideas. Boring goes along with "I've shut my mind off."

[LongtimeAZDem]

24. Insult accepted

[highplainsdem]

9. No more boring than Warren/Sanders or Sanders/Warren, both of whom bore me to tears.

Of course, Biden could always gin up noisy enthusiasm from the same younger voters swayed by promises of free college and forgiveness of student loan debt, no matter how high, no matter whether the student can afford to repay those loans.

But that would be such a transparent ploy.

I find politicians who focus on achievable progress, rather than dramatic promises that would require an imaginary revolution to deliver, much more interesting than the Sweeping Promises R Us crowd.

I like fantasy at times, but in fiction or TV or film. Not in politics.

[DemocracyMouse]

17. So..... you DON'T want to bring tax rates back to when the US was booming?

You don't want to tax the rich along Democratic tradition, but rather along post-Reagan Republican tradition? That is, insufficiently to update our infrastructure of schools and bridges to compete with China?

[Eliot Rosewater]

27. I sure want to do those things, we cant of course without winning WAY more seats than the WH and

WAY more seats in the Senate.

Cant even really do much of ANYTHING without way more power, but if we take the WH back

BY

VOTING BLUE NO MATTER WHO

we can at least prevent the imprisonment or killing of untold possibly MILLIONS of people here and elsewhere...but is that boring or something?

[oasis]

10. After 4 years of Trump, voters will eagerly embrace "boring". nt

[Cha]

25. lol@"boring". I find Winning Democracy BACK

VERY EXCITING!

[Bok_Tukalo]

7. There's an #OscarsSoWhite joke in there somewhere.

<OPE>

[Green Line]

8. This is my favorite ticket

[DemocracyMouse]

18. Why?

[BigDemVoter]

11. A little too "glow in the dark"?

[rickyhall]

12. Stabilization but no progress.

But that's so much better than it is now.

I say that because Mr. Biden is too backward to end the Prohibition. But if he gets things running smoothly, we can try Progress in the next election.

I will vote for whoever gets the nomination, but I'd prefer Progress.

[DemocracyMouse]

19. Why is progress so hard for some to understand?

Is it an age-based phobia?

[squirecam]

34. I'm more than happy

With the progress Amy will bring to the White House.

[LiberalLovinLug]

23. Yup.

Democrats "hold the forte" or implement watered down compromised advancements that are easily reversed. For fear of not being seen as "moderate". Then R's get in and reverse and then implement their own massively radical right wing "progress" bills one after the other. bang bang bang. Repeat and rinse.

Why some don't see how we are just repeating 2016, if we vote in Biden, I don't understand. Someone traditionally popular with Democrats, part of the stable establishment who stresses caution in regard to anything progressive. They have to understand that a candidate who has a lot of internal Democratic party respect MEANS NOTHING IN A FEDERAL ELECTION. Because you will have, as last time, a candidate who's record in positions of power can be combed through to find fake scandals to be used by Putin and GOP trolls. A suppression of enthusiasm from younger voters, and new voters. A susceptibility for independents to be swayed by trolls that the establishment candidate is too much a part of the "swamp", whether fair or not, and will see Trump as being less so. Once again, all it will take is one carefully placed sabotage, (like Comey's "new email revelations" ) to put the nail in the coffin.

Biden Democrats, and the MSM, do not get it. That kind of candidate will never win against the Trump machine who play by no rules. We need a candidate that runs on infallible, unrepentant ideals and ideas that will help average Americans. And not just say that, but has the record to prove they will do it.

[Red Oak]

13. If you want hope and little change, then, yes

Think this ticket would really address money in politics?

How about real change in health care costs?

Foreign policy re-direction?

Biden/Klobuchar would be more of the same Democratic 3rd way politics that I am tired of.

I sure would like change for a change.

[Eliot Rosewater]

28. This BASHING of our party STINKS

[squirecam]

35. Yes

It truly does.

[booley]

16. Didnt we see this before?

two centrist kinda conservative Democrats against trump.

That sounds awfully familiar.

[Doremus]

20. Why yes, yes we did. Not that long ago either.

The centrist candidates couldn't muster up just 80k more votes in 3 "safe" rust belt states. Go figure.

Seems our collective memories are failing much sooner these days. But then, so are a lot of other things.

[Eliot Rosewater]

29. Sick of this BASHING of our candidates and BASHING of our party

GOP KGB talking points no less

this CENTRIST bullshit makes me really FUCKING FURIOUS

CORPORATE DEM CENTRIST

THESE ARE KGB GOP TALKING POINTS

WHY IS THIS

shit allowed here?

[cry baby]

41. Agreed. nt

[bucolic_frolic]

21. I've been saying this since April 2019

Klobuchar is very measured in her positions and sounds very much normal, like old times pre-Trump, to people, and the Geographic balance of such a ticket is pretty darn good.

[sandensea]

22. It could well be unbeatable in theory

Unfortunately, Klobuchar's hair comb incident pretty much scuttles any presidential or vice-presidential chances for her - which is a shame.

[Bettie]

30. It would ensure that if they won

there would be zero change in anything beneficial to actual humans. But, probably no movement backward either. Probably.

As to the excitement level? Lukewarm plain instant oatmeal.

And yes, I'd vote for them. Plain instant oatmeal is better than poison.

[highplainsdem]

31. You really believe a public option would be "zero change in anything beneficial to actual humans"

since it isn't MFA?

And none of the other progressive changes we know Biden and Klobuchar are for would matter, and only Warren being nominated and winning could results in "anything beneficial to actual humans"?

Wow.

[Bettie]

32. There won't be a public option

It is very likely that there will be no ACA after the Texas case.

Oh, and I never said only Warren. But, Biden has made it very clear that he likes everything the way it was before Trump.

He's better than Trump, but he's not the second coming of perfection either.

I'd like to see bold ideas, not "well, maybe if the Republicans don't mind. we could tell them what the very least we could accept and then accept significantly less in the interest of cooperation. I'd like to see someone actually fight for change, not just for the status quo.

But I get it. The investor class doesn't like bold ideas, they like ideas that keep them in power and the rest of us hoping we can keep our heads above water for another month.

I don't expect to see my candidate get anywhere, I expect that I'll see Biden and Romney.

[squirecam]

36. This crap

Is why I can’t support Warren or sanders. It’s this constant nothing is ever good enough nonsense. Both sides are equal bullshit. And it comes directly from those claiming to be Dems.

[totodeinhere]

37. People of color need not apply. Right?

[lunasun]

38. Nothing against either candidate but a lot of this editorial is like alternative MAGA wishes

[creeksneakers2]

40. It would be even better with Amy at the top of the ticket.

[squirecam]

42. I'll take

4 years of Amy as VP and then 8 as president.

[creeksneakers2]

44. I'd like that too.

[The Valley Below]

43. Biden/Klobuchar looks like the winning ticket.

[Buckeyeblue]

45. I think it'll be someone who didn't run in the primary

Someone from the midwest or southwest. Someone like a Gretchen Whitmer.