Get lost, Joe.
His chances are poor … according to the RNC.
He has been a good enough governor. Mostly it is just whee another old white guy…
I’m laughing that the RNC felt required to say that he had zero chance of winning. If they really thought that was true, why say anything?
That was a panic reaction to placate their petroleum lords and masters.
Since senators and congresspeople have a very poor track record of defeating incumbent presidents, having governors throw their hats in the ring is not a bad thing. Hickenlooper wouldn’t have been my first choice, but he’s not bad.
IMO, anyone who steps into the 2020 ring still thinking that the problem is that nobody’s sat down with Mitch McConnell in his office to chat about his problems is patently unqualified.
We don’t know what he thinks. We know what he said, and if he believes it then that probably makes him ridiculously naive, but it isn’t a terrible thing to say for someone positioning himself a certain way.
TBH I don’t know a whole lot about Hickenlooper, but he seems to be a mildly progressive governor who has been very successful in a central state encompassing a broad political spectrum, so I’m not in a hurry to write him off.
Hickenlooper is on the board.
Meanwhile, Klobuchar continues to underwhelm me.
Hickenlooper and Inslee seem pretty interchangeable at first glance, although I can’t say I have looked into them much. Governors have the experience the position demands, probably moreso than Congresscritters, but I am not sure these guys will have the name recognition to get much of a look at all regardless of their actual positions.
If Trump is true to form and repeatedly makes fun of Hickenlooper’s name, everyone will know it come primary time.
Right now I think having many declared and potential candidates is a strength for the Democrats, as it diffuses the criticism. It will be interesting to see who makes it past the culls in Iowa and New Hampshire.
You’re right, I can only judge him by what he says. And anyone who launches a presidential campaign on the back of the revolutionary, never-before-attempted strategy of “I’m gonna talk to Mitch McConnell” is an idiot for two reasons. One, Mitch McConnell has no interest in talking to a Democratic president unless it’s to tell them to go fuck themselves, and anyone with a single functioning neuron knows it. Two, absolutely zero percent of the Democratic party’s energy is coming from “can’t we all just get along” centrists and moderates. “Let’s try being nice to Republicans” is about as successful a campaign message in 2018 as Schultz’s “stop being mean to billionaires the differently-financed”.
I can’t wait to watch John “why hasn’t anyone thought of talking to Republicans yet?” Hickenlooper and Joe “Mike Pence is a decent guy” Biden duke it out on the debate stage for the seven votes in that constituency, though.
If it hurts his primary chances, then so be it, and if that’s his biggest failing, then he’s probably in better shape than most of the other candidates who have declared so far.
You know, it just occurred to me that Mark Dayton is no longer governor of Minnesota, and therefore available to run for president. Yes, he’s quite wealthy, but he raised his own taxes to put out the flames of the dumpster fire economy left in the wake of Tim Pawlenty. He doesn’t have great name recognition outside the Great Lakes, but sure would make a better candidate than the Senator from MN.
Some people close to Mr. Trump have privately predicted that he will ultimately choose to seek a second term in part because of his legal exposure if he is not president. While there is no legal consensus on the matter, Justice Department policy says that a president cannot be indicted while in office.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/05/us/politics/trump-michael-cohen-checks.html
I could be confident in 2005 that [recession] stabilization should be the responsibility of the Federal Reserve. That you look at something like laser-eye surgery or rapid technological progress in hearing aids, you can kind of think that keeping a market in the most innovative parts of health care would be a good thing. So something like an insurance-plus-exchange system would be a good thing to have in America as a whole.
It’s much harder to believe in those things now. That’s one part of it. The world appears to be more like what lefties thought it was than what I thought it was for the last 10 or 15 years.
