So, here we sit, all of us dreading the next Democratic debate. Because honestly, how bad are their candidates?
They’re all so bad.
That’s not said with any satisfaction. Anyone who wants Trump out of the White House has reason to feel furious with the Democrats. They have known for a touch over three years that they’d need to find a good candidate to defeat Trump.
The presidential election hasn’t crept up on them, like some kind of surprise. They have one every four years. It’s in the diary. They don’t move the date around like we do.
It’s been coming and the Democrats have known it and they are woefully and probably fatally ill-prepared.
Because who do they have, lined up and ready to take on Trump? Well, amongst the remaining contenders, basically nobody. Not one of the candidates taking up space during the debates is, on current form, electable.
Bernie Sanders? He’s the hope of the side if you’re eighteen. But he’s a socialist. He’s also about one thousand years old. He’s run at least a million times before. His own party keeps turning him down. Maybe not this time. But America surely will.
He’s a billionaire, and apparently he’s offended some women in the past, so there’s a joke that goes around: he’s our Trump!
Except that he has spent something like half a billion dollars on his campaign, and he’s basically gotten nowhere.
He performed so badly during last week’s debate. How does a man come back from that? From the allegations that he’s insulted women? He must have known those questions were coming and he was not prepared.
Bloomberg will not appear on ballot in South Carolina, which is probably a good thing after the spectacle in Las Vegas. Maybe he’ll do better on Super Tuesday, but let’s be honest: he has money, but guess what?
He has no charisma, and he can’t buy it.
Nobody can.
Elizabeth Warren? Also a socialist. And she’s run before and gotten nowhere, so why would things be different this time?
Again, none of this is said with any satisfaction. There are so many people, including many Republicans, who want Trump out of office, and they all have reason to be furious not with him, but with the Democrats.
It is fairly common for US voters to give their presidents two terms: Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama.
Trump is on track to do the same. There is simply no-one on the horizon.
The former vice-president, Joe Biden? He’s too old, and too closely aligned to the Obama administration. Voters aren’t going back there.
After the debate this Tuesday, the candidates have got the South Carolina primary and Super Tuesday contests. Sanders is going to try to win in South Carolina, and thereby amass a lead that may well prove insurmountable, ahead of Super Tuesday.
Good luck to him. It won’t do much to assuage doubts about his electability.
The former mayor Pete Buttigieg narrowly won the Iowa caucuses, but that was such a shambles, you’d be leery of the result. His base is not diverse enough to take him much further.
Also, they’re all white. Which is odd, given how woke they pretend to be. Maybe they should change that up, think about a black candidate. There is one name that keeps coming up. Oprah. She is a billionaire, and a businesswoman, and she is probably the most popular American not only in the US but in the world, and she has been for three decades.
So of course they won’t run her. Never mind that precisely such a candidate stormed the White House last time. Winning doesn’t seem to be want the Democrats want to do.
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