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I’m gotta get downvoted and cause a stir with this. Here goes anyway for the all of 5 people it might reach.
I would love. FUCKING LOVE for a candidate like AOC to get elected president of the United States. Love it.
HOWEVER.
Until there is enough power transferred in the senate and the house to candidates that would remove the current structure of how we elect the executive office; they are not electable.
See, you read that sentence thinking what I said was an opinion and pessimism. It was not. It was based in the statistics of how Americans vote and how strong the votes in various states are in a first past the post electoral system that uses an electoral college.
As it stands, and Nate Silver backs this math as well, the electoral college requires a moderate democratic candidate to overcome a 3.7 point disadvantage. That might sound small. It isn't small. It’s the margin of victory in many races so, you effectively need to more than double the current margin of victory for a candidate, and so it when further left candidates have a harder time than that.
Jeff Jackson could make a run for office in 2028-2032 and be a candidate that historically could get elected. Statistically.
AOC is just not electable in the current structure of the electoral college and state first past the post voting that still persists in most states.
You run the virtue candidate and lose the election.
The same was true of Harris in 2024. Not because we don’t deserve a black woman president or that she couldn’t do the job.
She wasn’t fucking electable in this racist, sexiest voting base.
I get we want better candidates, but you can go too far and effectively give the election to the fascist asshole, and frankly the country can’t have that happen again post Trump. It will be the end of democracy as we know it if It does.
I know that isn’t what folks want to hear but the math is the math.
Harris lost on more than just the racism and sexism vote though?
She was bland. Did nothing to distance herself from Bidens unpopular policies AND was running against someone who made promises that they never intended to keep. She had zero interest from voters BEFORE the campaign started.
AOC already has a name for herself and what she stands for. She doesn't need to compete against lies, because they've already shown their ass. It won't be effective the second time around. She's popular among a much larger amount of demographics. She won't be up against Trump either, who has repeatedly demonstrated that he's the pillar on the entire R platform. The only pillar.
Yeah, I agree. I can understand why people think America “isn’t ready” for a woman president; two women losing to Trump isn’t great. But also, a part of me thinks maybe America is ready for a woman president, just not Clinton or Harris. Neither was ever a particularly popular candidate, and as you say, Harris never even won a primary
I have optimism because of the fdr effect. After a really shitty far right, we have hopes of electing a leftist
People said Trump was statistically unelectable, too 🤷
Not anyone with a stats background.
In fact it was his election to lose.
I’m telling you that Democratic party operatives whose entire job is electoral statistics assured me that he was unelectable. I disagreed, and it turned out I was sadly right.
I respect your respect for statistics and statisticians, but I don’t believe their predictions are as accurate as they were a few decades ago given the current political reality. “Winning elections based off of statistics” has been the Democrats entire thing since like literally the Tammany Hall days and it isn’t as consistently reliable as it used to be for a lot of factors that could be sumed up as the increasing complexity of political society.
The difference is he proved that a huge population is very racist, sexist, and okay with rapist and pedophile being elected.
The election system is rigged against large blue states/ cities with how the senate and house are calculated
Not to be that guy but people kinda knew about Bill Clinton and still championed his politics. Like it wasn’t just a cheating scandal he was in a position of power and groomed an 18 year old, was close with Epstein, etc.
I think America has long proved that it was willing to vote for rapist pedophiles, or racist far right supremacists (Reagan).
While it is pretty blatant and specifically bad in Trump’s case, idk how you could support someone who is so obviously guilty of pedophilia, All victims of the Epstein racket deserve closure and justice, even if that means cracking down the hammer “on both sides”, with Chomsky, Clinton, Trump, etc.
If bill did anything with epstein he should go down too. The fact they pulled him and Hillary into testify and nothing happens makes me think he's clean there.
I think there’s no way anyone that involved with Epstein like bill was is “clean”. You have to be willfully ignorant to believe that. He groomed a teenager as president.
Why would he testify against himself? Why would you testify against your spouse? You have a lot of faith in someone heavily involved in a pedophile ring. I wouldn’t ever suggest Trump is innocent because he wouldn’t testify, of course he wouldn’t!
Stats only work until they don't. Statisticians are great with simple logic, not so great when some of the same people that voted Trump voted Mamdani and AOC. The political calculus is shifting in this country and now is the best chance we have of a sudden takeover. You are right that political shifts usually need to be senate and congress first (and states and counties and cities) but I think the normal political rules don't hold as strong right now. If she can win a primary, she can win the presidency. Harris couldn't overcome racism and sexism because she had little to offer.
I worked in Dem politics for the first Obama election. He was so popular that he regularly had racists committing to voting for him. When we got regional or national polling we would regularly hear from polling companies that people would answer polls with (paraphrasing) "I'm voting for the n-word, I might be racist, but I'm not stupid". Also we had a white lady volunteer in one of the local county campaign offices that regularly used racial epithets like the n-word and she was sent home cause no one knew what to do about it.
Don't expect predictable logic from voters.
there's more nuance than that. If AOC support is coupled with heavy (and popular) DSA representation in both chambers she may actually stand a chance. So the focus right now should be elsewhere which is not to say AOC endorsement should seize, but that for that to become reality a lot of things have to fall into place. Also, just as Bernie's "failed" candidacy did AOC challenge will force DNC to acknowledge it's leftmost side and incorporate it's agenda.
Harris had to run a half a campaign. I feel that was the bigger factor. you aren't wrong about the rest of it though.
Agreed. The US electorate has far too many ignorant bigots and the current power structure likes it that way. HOWEVER, this is kind of a self-solving problem - if AOC were actually able to get through a primary with most of the Democratic and all of the Republican party apparatus gunning against her, she actually would have a chance. So best option is to run her in the primary, and any other progressives in the future, to gauge whether the US electorate is still full of rotten people.
I don't want to hear it but I'm glad you said it.
You talk about statistics and you say you would love her as a president, but then you call her a "virtue candidate", and your real opinion is showing. You may as well have called her DEI.
One of us doesn't know what "virtue candidate" means, and I'm pretty sure it's you. I understood it to mean "the candidate with high ethical standards" or "the candidate that focuses on integrity and decency for all constituents rather than attacking the opponent". Idk what that has to do with DEI.
I read that with a positive connotation, at least towards her.
That is, the virtue candidate is the most virtuous one. The best person. The one the world needs. The one you choose when you don't want to game theory your way into your vote.
But they are not the person the world WANTS, presumably.
The negativity is cast more on the person choosing AOC, the way I initially read it. By choosing the virtue candidate, they are virtue signaling their purity of leftness or whatever. They refuse to compromise and join a coalition behind somebody electable. (again, I'm just discussing the term reflecting more positively on her in my interpretation -- I am NOT arguing that she is in fact a virtue cabdidate or unelectable. )