How to Evaluate a US Presidential Candidate

I see a lot of people making claims about how left wing or progressive various Democratic candidates or potential candidates are. Most of the time, I think these claims are flimsy. Commentators like to judge candidates on three core metrics:

The rhetoric they use–whether the candidate talks in a way that makes the commentator feel good.
The policies they claim to support–whether the candidate has gotten behind particular policies, like Medicare For All, Green New Deal, Abolish ICE, or whatever floats your boat.
Their identity–whether the candidate is a person of color and/or a woman and/or LGBTQIA+

I want to argue that these metrics are largely useless. Instead, I want to give you a much better toolkit for assessing candidates–one that most journalists don’t know how to use.

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Beware Arrogant Candidates Who Can’t Win But Will Split the Vote

As I look at the 2020 Democratic primary field, I’m reminded of the 2017 French presidential election. Do you remember? In the first round, the Left Party’s candidate, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, got 19.6% of the vote, failing to secure the 21.3% he needed to beat Marine Le Pen and advance to the second round. Mélenchon just narrowly missed the boat because he didn’t command the whole left block. 6.4% of French voters instead picked the Socialist Party’s candidate, Benoît Hamon. A further 1.7% of French voters chose the candidates of the Communist Union or New Anticapitalist Party. The left could have commanded as much as 27.7%. It only needed about a fifth of these additional left-leaning voters to slip past Le Pen. But these left wing candidates refused to drop out of the race, and the result was a depressing second round, in which the only alternative to France’s status quo was right nationalism. So when I look at the Democratic Party’s field, I ask myself–who is the Mélenchon, and who are the Hamons?

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What Would Happen if We Returned to the 70% Top Tax Rate?

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) has been shopping the idea of a 70% top rate of tax on earnings above $10 million. It’s popular proposal, with initial polling showing a solid majority of Americans in favour. While this policy can’t pass this congress, it’s indicative of the kinds of reforms we might see if we organise to elect more politicians like AOC in 2020 and beyond. So what would happen if we elected more AOCs and they enacted this policy?

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Elizabeth Warren is Not Left-Wing

I recently had the pleasure of returning to the Dead Pundits Society podcast, anchored by Adam Proctor and Aimee Terese, to discuss Elizabeth Warren’s presidential candidacy. That podcast was recently pulled, but I have my own contributions to it, which you can still hear:

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Why We Cannot Nominate a Young Person in 2020

Whenever I tell people that we need to run Bernie Sanders again, they tell me he’s too old. Don’t we have young people who can take what Bernie started and run with it? Unfortunately, the “Magical Young Berniecrat” is not yet a viable presidential candidate. Why? Because the young Bernies are still too young. There is an age gap between the Bernie base and Bernie Sanders himself, and there is no one in American politics who is ready and able to fill that gap in 2020. Continue reading “Why We Cannot Nominate a Young Person in 2020” →