Six on 2020 Election(s): Who has qualified for the January Democratic debate 2020; Can Ranked-Choice Voting Save American Democracy?; FAIR: CNN’s Sanders Hit Piece Doesn’t Pass the Smell Test; It’s Bernie’s moment. But it’s Bloomberg’s race; 2020 Pr
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Drutman believes that some form of proportional representation with ranked-choice voting could lead to an increase in the number of viable parties, which would in turn reduce partisanship, and eventually gridlock and extremism. Ranked-choice voting, of course, means that voters’ second and third choices matter, too, giving candidates incentives to not alienate their opponents’ supporters. (Hendrik Hertzberg has written extensively for The New Yorker on ranked-choice voting and other potential electoral reforms.)
I recently spoke by phone with Drutman, who is a senior fellow at the New America Foundation. During our conversation, which has been edited for length and clarity, we discussed whether one party is to blame for the current crisis, why ideologically incoherent voting can benefit democracy, and the place of right-wing conservatism in a multiparty system.
It seems as if you are arguing that the problems with our democracy are as much structural as political, if that makes sense—that the politics can be fixed by changing the structures. Is that a fair way of putting it?
I wouldn’t say that politics can be fixed. I think it’s always going to be messy. But a lot of the problems that are most dire in this particular moment are a product of having a genuine two-party system. There is no overlap between the two parties, which is something that I think is quite new in this moment and that is at odds with our political institutions, which demand broad compromise, not zero-sum trench warfare. And it also drives us all crazy, because it really plays into us-versus-them thinking that is inherent in our hardwiring."
FAIR: CNN’s Sanders Hit Piece Doesn’t Pass the Smell Test
"The article, by CNN correspondent MJ Lee, is so journalistically shoddy that someone reading only the first few paragraphs would end up believing that it is a fact that the current top-polling candidate for the February 3 Iowa Caucus actually said that. Never is Sanders’ “quote” prefaced with the term “allegedly.”
None of the four anonymous staffers/friends making the charge of Sanders sexism were actually witnesses who were apparently in the room that day. Two, according to Lee, spoke to Warren “shortly after” that meeting. The other two “sources” were described only as people who “knew about the meeting.”
CNN (1/13/19) on Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren: Let’s you and him fight.
Sanders issued a blistering denial to CNN, saying, “It is ludicrous to believe that at the same meeting where Elizabeth Warren told me she was going to run for president, I would tell her that a woman couldn’t win.” He added:
It’s sad that, three weeks before the Iowa caucus and a year after that private conversation, staff who weren’t in the room are lying about what happened. What I did say that night was that Donald Trump is a sexist, a racist and a liar who would weaponize whatever he could. Do I believe a woman can win in 2020? Of course! After all, Hillary Clinton beat Donald Trump by 3 million votes in 2016.
So far, Warren has not commented on the story, either to confirm or deny it.
The timing of this poorly sourced and poorly written story, appearing the day of a crucial candidates’ debate and days before the start of the actual primary season on a network that has been hostile to or dismissive of Sanders for years, is a journalistic outrage.
On its face, the claim allegedly made by Lee’s four anonymous sources makes no sense. Sanders is in fact on the record as far back as 1988, saying, “In my view, a woman could be elected president of the United States.” As Sanders points out in his debunking of CNN’s story, since then a woman has actually won the popular vote for the presidency; Hillary Clinton, whom Sanders campaigned for, could have won the electoral college as well, if she hadn’t neglected campaigning in key battleground states like Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan."
"What people don’t yet seem to have grasped is this: Bloomberg is going to spend an astronomical amount of money on this race. Probably at least $1 billion. Maybe twice that. Possibly even more. Numbers like that upend every model of every presidential race in history. He can buy every news adjacency on cable and local television stations from now until November and not make a dent in his net worth. U.S. politics has never seen such financial throw weight in a presidential campaign.
Look at it from the point of view of the “down ballot” Democratic candidates. If you’re running for the U.S. Senate, or in one of the 100 “competitive” House races, or for governor or state senate, it’s likely that one of Bloomberg’s many super PACs is going to put vast amounts of money behind your campaign with “issues” TV advertising, digital advertising, voter-registration drives and organizational support. Buttressing that will be his national campaign infrastructure, staffed and financed at a level never before seen in presidential politics.
Well, you say, so what? Bloomberg can’t possibly win the nomination of this Democratic Party electorate, the one that almost nominated Sanders over Hillary Clinton (and wishes it had). The one that loves Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), celebrates Medicare-for-all and campaigns for transgender bathrooms. The one that’s woke, whatever that means.
That Democratic electorate, however, isn’t the Democratic electorate. Yes, that first group gets all the ink, but it doesn’t have as many votes. Someone who unifies more moderate, pragmatic Democratic voters will win virtually every big state beginning on Super Tuesday.
And as it happens, that’s when Mike Bloomberg’s campaign begins.
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