theatlantic--2020-01-10--The Story Elizabeth Warren Isn’t Telling

The question for her , then , is whether she ’ s willing to try turning a weakness into a strength by dusting off a piece of her past and making it not merely a whispered admission , but a central part of the story she tells voters .
Yes , I was a Republican , and this is why I ’ m not anymore .
Warren ’ s reluctance so far suggests she thinks that chapter is something to apologize for .
Perhaps she should embrace it instead .
The conservative streak that Katrina Cochran remembers was still with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , the young law professor made the biggest jump of her fledgling academic career and moved from the University of Houston to the larger and more prestigious UT Austin .
Indeed , Warren ’ s conservativism might have helped her land the job in the first place .
Russell Weintraub , then a law professor at UT Austin , recruited Warren after seeing her teach .
He told colleagues that “ she was the smartest person in Houston , and we should hire her if we could , ” Johnson recalled to me @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ways , Johnson said .
She did not graduate from Harvard or Yale , where UT Austin usually recruited from , but from Rutgers Law School , in New Jersey—an institution whose reputation for activism had earned it the nickname “ the People ’ s Electric Law School.
” It was , as Johnson put it , “ a left-wing former night school in the downtown of Newark with a left-wing faculty and a left-wing student body.
” Warren was decidedly not left-wing .
She had studied under the conservative legal scholar Henry @ @ @ @ @ @ @ free-market “ law and economics ” discipline he founded , which “ became something of a fad , ” says Julius Getman , a UT Austin law professor who was a friend and jogging partner of Warren ’ s .
( It was at a conference known as Manne Camp that Warren met her second and current husband , Bruce Mann . )
Johnson , who has stayed intermittently in touch with Warren over the years , told me he suspected that UT Austin hired Warren in part because it wanted the law-and-economics @ @ @ @ @ @ @ I think we looked down our nose at her because she ’ s from Rutgers , ” he said , “ and we [ hired ] her because she [ wrote ] well with supply-and-demand curves from a conservative point of view.
” When Johnson arrived at UT Austin , in 1981 , he lived about a block away from the house Warren was renting , and the two of them spent their morning commutes fiercely debating economic policy as Mann drove them to work .
“ We would have no social niceties @ @ @ @ @ @ @ would immediately get into largely bashing each other , ” he said .
“ Bruce is a sweet guy , and he would drive , but he never said a word .
It was just Liz and I going at it.
” On the surface , the recollections of Warren ’ s colleagues about a young woman in the early ’ 80s fiercely defending the primacy of the free market suggest that the senator now trying to grab the Democratic mantle was a supporter of Ronald Reagan , who won the presidency on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it ’ s hard to imagine a Democratic Party that has re-embraced a central role for government nominating a former Reaganite as its candidate .
But Warren told The Intercept last year that although she voted for the Republican Gerald Ford in 1976 , she backed President Jimmy Carter ’ s reelection in 1980 .

Katrina Cochran can still remember clearly how her close friend Liz Herring would needle her about her liberal politics when the two would sit next to each other at Northwest Classen High School in Oklahoma, and during the years after.
“Besides the Democratic Party,” Herring, whose success on the debate team would win her a college scholarship, would say, “what other subversive organizations are you a member of?”
A half century later, Liz Herring is now Elizabeth Warren, and she’s running for the presidential nomination of the party she once derided. Warren’s upbringing in Oklahoma is a major part of her stump speech: She talks about how her father’s poor health forced her mother into the workforce in the 1960s and nearly cost the family their house; how she married at 19 and lost her first teaching job after she became pregnant; how her Aunt Bee saved her when she was struggling to balance the demands of motherhood and her burgeoning career in academia. She discusses her three older brothers, making sure to note that all of them were in the military and that two of them are Republicans. What Warren rarely—if ever—mentions, however, is that during this entire formative period of her adult life, she herself was a conservative. “She was very against a lot of governmental controls,” Cochran, who remained close with Warren through her 20s, told me. “She thought people should have the right to make all the money they could.”
Among longtime liberals, Warren’s political history could present a liability as the race nears its first votes. Unlike some of her top rivals, she cannot claim to have been fighting in the trenches of progressive politics for decades. Yet that very fact could, at the same time, be appealing to less ideological voters who may know little about Warren’s biography from before she burst onto the national political scene. Hers is the story of a convert, not a zealot. The decision to become a Democrat was anything but a default choice; she came to it only after years of study that challenged her more conservative assumptions about how the economy and the government worked. And as Warren seeks to expand beyond her liberal base, that rarely mined part of her past could serve as a comfort to Democrats who worry about her electability, or as a point of connection with independents and moderate Republicans who may not know that, for a long time, she was actually one of them.
Read: A nation of pundits
Warren has this in common with the previous Democratic presidential nominee. Hillary Clinton, just two years older than Warren, famously began her political life as a “Goldwater girl” in high school in the 1960s. But while Clinton’s flirtation with the right was brief, Warren’s was not. Though she was not politically active, well into the ’80s Warren was espousing the views of an ascendant conservative legal movement that championed free markets over the intervention of government regulation, her colleagues from the time told me. In scholarly papers and policy debates with her law-school comrades, Warren regularly took the side of corporations over consumers. “She drank the Kool-Aid. She definitely believed in that,” recalled Calvin Johnson, a law professor at the University of Texas at Austin and a former neighbor and commuting buddy of Warren’s.
Though Warren’s views began to shift in the mid-’80s, she did not become a Democrat until 1995, when she was 46 years old. She was, in comparison to her top rivals in the presidential race, a Johnny-come-lately to progressivism: By the time Warren finally made her switch, Joe Biden had already run for president once and spent a quarter century as a Democrat representing Delaware in the Senate. And while Bernie Sanders, in the early ’90s, was fighting as a member of the House for a “national health-insurance program” like the one Warren is now embracing, she was still a registered member of the party that successfully defeated it.
It’s hardly surprising that Warren wouldn’t broadcast her history of economic conservatism as she tries to win over a primary electorate full of progressives. And so far, Warren’s rivals haven’t brought it up directly; instead, they’ve lightly criticized her past work for corporate clients. But with the contest intensifying, it may be only a matter of time until Warren’s fellow Democrats weaponize her GOP history.
The question for her, then, is whether she’s willing to try turning a weakness into a strength by dusting off a piece of her past and making it not merely a whispered admission, but a central part of the story she tells voters. Yes, I was a Republican, and this is why I’m not anymore. Warren’s reluctance so far suggests she thinks that chapter is something to apologize for. Perhaps she should embrace it instead.
The conservative streak that Katrina Cochran remembers was still with Warren when, in the early 1980s, the young law professor made the biggest jump of her fledgling academic career and moved from the University of Houston to the larger and more prestigious UT Austin. Indeed, Warren’s conservativism might have helped her land the job in the first place.
Russell Weintraub, then a law professor at UT Austin, recruited Warren after seeing her teach. He told colleagues that “she was the smartest person in Houston, and we should hire her if we could,” Johnson recalled to me.
But Warren stood out in other ways, Johnson said. She did not graduate from Harvard or Yale, where UT Austin usually recruited from, but from Rutgers Law School, in New Jersey—an institution whose reputation for activism had earned it the nickname “the People’s Electric Law School.” It was, as Johnson put it, “a left-wing former night school in the downtown of Newark with a left-wing faculty and a left-wing student body.”
Warren was decidedly not left-wing. She had studied under the conservative legal scholar Henry Manne and was a follower of the free-market “law and economics” discipline he founded, which “became something of a fad,” says Julius Getman, a UT Austin law professor who was a friend and jogging partner of Warren’s. (It was at a conference known as Manne Camp that Warren met her second and current husband, Bruce Mann.)
Johnson, who has stayed intermittently in touch with Warren over the years, told me he suspected that UT Austin hired Warren in part because it wanted the law-and-economics discipline represented on its faculty. “I think we looked down our nose at her because she’s from Rutgers,” he said, “and we [hired] her because she [wrote] well with supply-and-demand curves from a conservative point of view.”
When Johnson arrived at UT Austin, in 1981, he lived about a block away from the house Warren was renting, and the two of them spent their morning commutes fiercely debating economic policy as Mann drove them to work. “We would have no social niceties, no small talk, and we would immediately get into largely bashing each other,” he said. “Bruce is a sweet guy, and he would drive, but he never said a word. It was just Liz and I going at it.”
On the surface, the recollections of Warren’s colleagues about a young woman in the early ’80s fiercely defending the primacy of the free market suggest that the senator now trying to grab the Democratic mantle was a supporter of Ronald Reagan, who won the presidency on that platform. Forty years later, it’s hard to imagine a Democratic Party that has re-embraced a central role for government nominating a former Reaganite as its candidate. But Warren told The Intercept last year that although she voted for the Republican Gerald Ford in 1976, she backed President Jimmy Carter’s reelection in 1980.
She has described herself as politically disengaged at the time. “When I was a young mom, I was struggling to keep up with my job, get dinner on the table, take care of my two little ones,” Warren said in response to written questions I sent her about her voting habits and political views over time. “I had been a policy person for a long time, but I didn’t think much about politics.”
Warren’s colleagues told me that although they frequently engaged in wonky discussions about economic policy, they didn’t talk much about national politics, and never heard her say whom she voted for. “She certainly was a conservative, but very much of a moderate one,” recalled Jay Westbrook, Warren’s longtime research partner and co-author. “She was a person who cared about people, who cared about the government looking out for people who needed help. But at the same time, she was somebody who was not in favor of high government spending and that sort of thing.”
More than three decades later, Johnson remembers Warren arguing that courts should not intervene to settle contract disputes, and taking the side of public utilities that didn’t want to pass along to consumers the benefits of a generous tax break. It was, he said, “industry pap.” Johnson told me he was surprised that a former Rutgers student came down so firmly on the side of industry. “Nobody at that school would take that side,” he said. “Everybody should have been on the side of the consumer, and she was anti-consumer. She bought the industry position hook, line, and sinker.”
Read: Elizabeth Warren’s definition of capitalism
But within just a few years, Warren’s political conversion began. Her shift from skeptic to staunch consumer advocate is one that she has been willing to speak and write about over the years—including during this campaign. After becoming a full-time professor at UT Austin in 1983, she began working on bankruptcy research that would not only catapult her to the top of her field, but also transform her view of consumer rights, the very issue on which she built her political career.
Bankruptcies were increasing in the ’80s, and Warren, Westbrook, and the sociologist Teresa Sullivan set out to study their causes. In her 2014 memoir, A Fighting Chance, Warren acknowledged that she brought certain preconceptions to the research. “I might not have said so at the time, but I think I was on the lookout for cheaters and deadbeats as a way to explain who was filing for bankruptcy,” she wrote.
What they found shook the future lawmaker: After reviewing thousands of cases of family bankruptcies, going to bankruptcy courts, and consuming heart-rending questionnaires in which people described in detail the reasons for their financial ruin, “we learned that nearly 90 percent were declaring bankruptcy for one of three reasons: a job loss, a medical problem, or a family breakup,” Warren wrote.
“She went through what I think is the most powerful transformation, which is actually doing research and discovering that what you believed was wrong,” Getman told me. As Warren told an interviewer in 2007, “I did the research, and the data just took me to a totally different place.”
If the data changed Warren’s views on bankruptcy, it was the opposition of the credit industry, and ultimately members of Congress, to reform proposals inspired by the same data that appeared to shift her politics over a longer period of time. Warren’s introduction to Washington, D.C., did not come until 1995, when she joined Harvard’s faculty. She reluctantly agreed to a request from an old Oklahoma friend, Democratic Representative Mike Synar, to serve on the National Bankruptcy Review Commission, which was charged with making policy recommendations to Congress. The culture she discovered is the one she now rails against: The consumer-credit industry, its lobbyists, and its allies in Congress—some Democrats, but mostly Republicans—wanted to reduce, not strengthen, protections for people declaring bankruptcy. “It made her deeply unhappy,” Westbrook told me. “She felt that these were a lot of half-truths and flat falsehoods, and that got her dander up.”
It was during this period that Warren officially changed her registration and became a Democrat. “When Congress was working to reform our nation’s bankruptcy laws, I watched as every single Republican lined up with the big banks and a lot of Democrats joined them too,” she told me in her written responses. “But it was also only Democrats who stood with people who have lost everything because of medical problems, job loss, or family break-up.” (Her campaign would not provide a detailed history of her party registration and voting habits before she registered as a Democrat for the first time, in 1995, saying only that she was an independent “at times” and a registered Republican at others.)
By the time Warren fully emerged as a public figure more than a decade later, in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, she left no doubt about where she stood politically. She sparred with Republicans—and some business-friendly Democrats in the Obama administration—as the appointed watchdog of the federal bailout of banks and large financial firms. She became a hero to progressives after she came up with the idea for—and fought hard for the creation of—the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. And when Senate Republicans made clear that they would block her nomination to lead the new agency, she went home to Massachusetts to run for the Senate. Three decades after Warren arrived at UT Austin singing the gospel of the free market, the last strains of her conservatism had long since faded away.
After The New York Times published a piece on Warren’s political history, in late August, Johnson emailed her the article, in which he is quoted describing her progressive transformation as “Saul on the road to Damascus.” He included a note saying that he thought the piece would win her votes, he told me.
Warren, however, did not see it that way. “Why did you have to call me ‘savagely anti-consumer’?” the senator replied, according to Johnson’s retelling. Ever the debater, she defended her views from decades ago, arguing that she “was trying to help out consumers through the free market.” After another round of emails, Warren told her old sparring partner, “Well, we'll just have to work it out during another semester of commuting in.”
It’s easy to see why Warren would be so defensive—and so hesitant to broadcast her ideological evolution. Her life before politics has been the source of her biggest political headache: Warren’s claim of Native American ancestry over the years erupted as a controversy during her first run for the Senate, in 2012, as Republican Senator Scott Brown ran ads accusing her of lying about her ethnicity. The flap resurfaced briefly again in 2018, after she released the results of a DNA test in an attempt to prove her claim. (According to a Boston Globe investigation that year, there’s little evidence that Warren’s ancestry claim helped advance her academic career.) And with Donald Trump having given her the racist nickname Pocahontas, it promises to reemerge this year if she’s the nominee.
While the controversy over her lineage hasn’t torpedoed her career, it does illuminate how Warren’s unorthodox path to political stardom makes her both an outsider at the age of 70 and an object of mystery.
Not only did she enter politics relatively late in her career, but Warren was not even a public figure for most of her adult life. Americans did not grow up with her voice as the soundtrack to their Sunday-morning breakfast, as Biden’s was for so many viewers of Meet the Press or Face the Nation. Nor were they likely to have read glowing profiles of her business success, as they did in the case of Trump or Michael Bloomberg.
That previous anonymity has allowed Warren more freedom to introduce herself to voters, but it has also led to criticism (which her fans see as sexist) that she has been overly selective, and even deceptive, in the way she tells her story. Her Republican past goes unmentioned not only in her stump speech, but also in her 2014 memoir and other books of hers that contain considerable biographical detail. She’s discussed it in the occasional interview, but rarely voluntarily.
“I think the Native American thing has robbed her of her ability to talk about” major parts of her past, Colin Reed, a Republican strategist who served as a top aide to Brown, told me.
Yet her reticence to dive more fully into her political transformation could be a missed chance to tell a compelling story of the converted: how a young academic studied the data and went from being suspicious of, if not outright hostile toward, the rights of consumers to conceiving and then building an entire federal agency devoted to protecting them. Warren did mention her shift on the narrow issue of bankruptcy policy when she released a plan this week to overhaul federal laws in favor of consumers. But that was as far as she went; she made no reference to her affiliation as a Republican or her broader conservative worldview at the time.
Read: Where does Elizabeth Warren actually stand in the race?
The question of whether Warren should talk more about her past conservatism is admittedly a tricky one; she wouldn’t, for example, want to give progressives who are still torn between her and Sanders more reason to be suspicious of her. One old Warren colleague doesn’t think much of the idea: former Representative Barney Frank, the retired Massachusetts congressman and liberal stalwart who worked closely with Warren as he was developing the bill that created the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. “That’s not a good way to win over Democratic voters,” Frank told me when I asked him if she should talk more about her Republican past. “I don’t think that makes any political sense at all.”
Yet some political strategists I spoke with said that Warren should embrace her political conversion.
“For Elizabeth Warren, this is a tremendous opportunity to reach beyond her progressive base,” Daniel Schnur, a longtime Republican strategist, told me.
Schnur said that Warren’s move left reminded him of Reagan’s move right. A longtime Democrat who led the Screen Actors Guild as a Hollywood actor, Reagan famously explained his political evolution by saying, “The Democratic Party left me.” By the time he ran for president, he was so deeply aligned with the conservative movement that his liberal past helped him win over Democrats and independents more than it hurt him with lifelong Republicans.
“A more centrist Republican would have been attacked for a history in the Democratic Party,” Schnur said. “But a more conservative leader, like Reagan, was able to use it to soften his edges with swing voters without sacrificing his credibility with the Republican conservative base.”
The same could be true for Warren on the Democratic side. Her raft of detailed and deeply progressive policy proposals has given her credibility on the left, but there’s evidence that her agenda is scaring off more moderate voters. And it may limit her ability to reach suburban voters—many of whom may be current or lapsed Republicans—who have become disaffected with Trump and whom Democrats are targeting in 2020. It’s that pool of voters in particular that was so crucial to the Democrats’ victory in the House in 2018 and for whom Warren’s political-conversion story could be most appealing. Many voters who see her only through the prism of her recent biography—the Harvard professor turned progressive senator—may see themselves in a once-conservative woman who moved to the center and then further left over many years.
“It's finding that common ground,” says Katie Paris, a Democratic strategist unaligned with any 2020 candidate. “I think that by talking about the change that happened in her life, she creates permission for others to also have change in their own lives.”
Paris, who recently founded the group Red, Wine, and Blue to mobilize suburban women in Ohio ahead of the 2020 election, told me that many of the women who have switched to voting Democrat in the Trump era were, like Warren, not particularly engaged politically earlier in their life and shifted their views after learning more about the issues. Warren’s story, she said, “could potentially really resonate with a lot of women because they're going through a similar process themselves right now.”
Whether a deeper focus on Warren’s biography can overcome the concerns that centrist and swing voters have about her policies is a tougher question. Her rise to the top of the Democratic primary polls has stalled recently. “I was stupid and then I became educated isn't a great political narrative,” says Matt Bennett, an executive vice president of Third Way, a centrist Democratic think tank. “The biggest thing she's got to do, quite frankly, is jettison Medicare for All.”
Warren’s commitment to a detailed policy agenda makes the idea that she’d ditch one of her core proposals nearly impossible to fathom. And while that would surely threaten her support among staunch progressives, a bigger focus on her political history might not. “To the extent that it's brought up by others, it actually reinforces the electability argument for Elizabeth Warren,” says Adam Green, whose Progressive Change Campaign Committee endorsed her candidacy early on in the race, “by making clear that while her progressive bona fides on challenging corporate power and standing up for workers is unquestioned, she also has the additional cred in the general election of having once affiliated as a Republican, as having cross-party appeal.”
Perhaps Warren is saving the story of her political transformation for a later moment in the campaign, if and when she dispatches her competitors and can move on to the broader electorate. Perhaps she’ll weave it into her stump speech, another layer to her journey from Oklahoma to Harvard, and from academia to politics. Or maybe Warren sees this all differently, and this part of her backstory is exactly where she wants it—offstage and in the past, a personal relic that’s not to be embraced or spun, but simply left aside.


theatlantic--2020-01-12--Bernie Sanders Has Something New to Talk About

Sanders is already putting more of an emphasis on his foreign-policy platform .
Last Saturday , the senator kicked off a campaign event in Dubuque , Iowa , by calling for immediate action from Congress to prevent a war with Iran .
He ’ s especially contrasted himself with Biden , his biggest 2020 rival , who , notably , did vote to support the Iraq War .
The former vice president , Sanders argued in an interview with CNN ’ s Anderson Cooper on Monday , “ helped lead the effort for the war in Iraq , the most @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of this country.
” Voters should expect Sanders to stay on this point , his campaign has said : “ Bernie Sanders has a proven record of fighting for the right thing at the right time—on the first instance , not on the second , third , fourth , or fifth try , as the case might be with Joe Biden , ” Sanders ’ s campaign manager , Faiz Shakir , told Vanity Fair on Tuesday .
“ So yes , you ’ re going to hear a lot more about his @ @ @ @ @ @ @ The conundrum facing Democrats about America ’ s role in the world Conveniently for Sanders , such an emphasis could find an audience in Iowa specifically , the first state to vote in the 2020 primary election , and where recent polling shows him with a narrow lead over his rivals .
“ Iowa has a history of being dovish , ” Jeff Link , a Democratic strategist based in the state , told me .
Voters there have elected anti-interventionist lawmakers to Congress in recent decades , including former Democratic Senator Tom @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
And in 2008 , Barack Obama upset Hillary Clinton in the state by running , at least in part , on his vote against the Iraq War .
“ It ’ s been a recurring theme over the years [ that ] Iowans pay close attention to foreign policy , ” Link said .
“ From that perspective , it ’ s smart for Sanders.
” Sanders ’ s anti-interventionism could also help him beyond Iowa : Polls show that the majority of Americans , including most Republicans , do not support @ @ @ @ @ @ @ He could potentially pique the interest of a new swath of supporters , including younger Americans who have spent their formative years observing military intervention in Iraq and Afghanistan , and even Trump voters who supported the now-president for his own promise to get U.S. troops out of the Middle East .
“ [ Trump ] doesn ’ t have a rudder on these things ; it ’ s whatever he ’ s feeling at the moment , ” Link said .
But Bernie “ is crystal clear .
If we were judging @ @ @ @ @ @ @ clarity on who they are and what their message is , Bernie wins.
” Yet it ’ s not totally crystal clear that Sanders will gain an advantage : A poll from FiveThirtyEight and Ipsos , released in September before the Soleimani strike , showed that very few Democrats are prioritizing foreign policy in choosing a candidate , and The Washington Post reported that Iowans haven ’ t been asking many questions about Iran at campaign events .
It ’ s also possible that , if there is no further escalation after Iran @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on Tuesday , Sanders ’ s anti-interventionist stance may lose its salience .
And Sanders isn ’ t the only candidate who sees the Iran conflict as a potential campaign boost , though in a different way .
Biden has spent the last week promoting his own foreign-policy experience as vice president .
“ Biden ’ s been in the Situation Room before .
Buttigieg has been shot at before , ” Paul Rieckhoff , the host of the Angry Americans podcast and an Iraq War veteran , told me , noting the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ Those are the kinds of things that are going to resonate with the American people.
” But with just three weeks to go until the Iowa caucuses and no obvious front-runner in the state , a new way for Sanders to distinguish himself from his rivals could be exactly what he needs to pull ahead .
After all , Americans already know Sanders as the guy who advocates for universal health care and shouts about the billionaires .
They may not have heard as much about Sanders the anti-war activist .

Bernie Sanders has been making the same pitch for a long time.
During his first presidential bid, in 2016, the senator from Vermont’s trademark policy proposals were Medicare for All and free college. This time around, those two ideas are still positioned front and center in his presidential platform. Four years ago, Sanders was shouting himself hoarse about Wall Street and the 1 percent, and his 2020 bid features the same language: oligarchy, income inequality, billionaires. Even his 2020 logo—the white Bernie on a blue background with swooshes and a star dotting the i—is identical to the one he used in 2016.
To critics who have called him a broken record, Sanders has countered that of course he’s repeating himself: His message is the same because America’s problems are the same. But unlike in 2016, Sanders is no longer the only candidate running on ambitious, left-wing ideas. Six of the 14 remaining Democratic candidates support some version of Medicare for All, and four support a form of free college. As his ideas have permeated the rest of the field, Sanders’s own candidacy appears less radical—or at least less exceptional.
But with the Iran crisis, Sanders has found something new to talk about. Last Thursday, U.S. forces killed Qassem Soleimani, Iran’s top military general, raising the possibility of a military conflict and thrusting another aspect of Sanders’s platform into the spotlight: his staunch anti-war position. The stance could give him another way to differentiate himself from his 2020 rivals, just in time for the Iowa caucuses a few weeks away.
Read: It’s foreign policy that distinguishes Bernie this time
After news reports began to trickle in about the death of Soleimani, Democrats mostly responded in a similar fashion: They contended that while Soleimani was a bad guy, killing him risked all-out war with Iran. They rebuked Donald Trump, but they also condemned Soleimani. “Soleimani was a murderer, responsible for the deaths of thousands, including hundreds of Americans,” Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts said in a statement. “But this reckless move escalates the situation with Iran.” Former Vice President Joe Biden started his response by denouncing Soleimani’s “crimes against American troops and thousands of innocents” before warning about the “hugely escalatory move.”
Sanders, though, offered no such qualification. “Trump’s dangerous escalation brings us closer to another disastrous war in the Middle East that could cost countless lives and trillions more dollars,” the senator said in a statement. “Trump promised to end endless wars, but this action puts us on the path for another one.” (Two other 2020 candidates, Andrew Yang and Representative Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii, offered similarly unequivocal responses.)
The difference might seem like mere semantics, but it helps underscore how different Sanders’s approach to foreign policy is from that of his competitors. “Putting it in context of how awful Soleimani is is taking [the focus] off of where the focus should be, which is two decades of horrendous U.S. policy,” says Medea Benjamin, the co-founder of Code Pink, a women-led anti-war organization. “This is a time that Bernie is going to be able to distinguish himself as somebody who understands the horrific consequences of U.S. policy.”
From his willingness to speak critically of Israel to his forceful rebuke of a “coup” in Bolivia, Sanders has challenged the bipartisan foreign-policy consensus in a way that most other candidates, including other progressives, haven’t. The Sanders campaign views workers’ rights as a “global struggle,” and the senator has aligned himself with leftist leaders around the world. Unlike Warren, the other progressive heavyweight in the race, Sanders voted against the implementation of sanctions on Iran in 2017. Warren “has voted against U.S. intervention in many cases, but she hasn’t made that a key component of her political trajectory overall the way Bernie Sanders has,” says Phyllis Bennis, a fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies, a progressive think tank.
Sanders has a long history of anti-war activism. He applied to be a conscientious objector during the Vietnam War, and in 1991 he voted against the Gulf War. He also voted against the invasion of Iraq in 2002, and has recently been an ardent critic of America’s involvement in the Saudi-led conflict in Yemen. In one of his first tweets after the killing of Soleimani last week, Sanders took a virtual victory lap: “I was right about Vietnam. I was right about Iraq. I will do everything in my power to prevent a war with Iran. I apologize to no one.”
Sanders is already putting more of an emphasis on his foreign-policy platform. Last Saturday, the senator kicked off a campaign event in Dubuque, Iowa, by calling for immediate action from Congress to prevent a war with Iran. He’s especially contrasted himself with Biden, his biggest 2020 rival, who, notably, did vote to support the Iraq War. The former vice president, Sanders argued in an interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper on Monday, “helped lead the effort for the war in Iraq, the most dangerous foreign-policy blunder in the modern history of this country.” Voters should expect Sanders to stay on this point, his campaign has said: “Bernie Sanders has a proven record of fighting for the right thing at the right time—on the first instance, not on the second, third, fourth, or fifth try, as the case might be with Joe Biden,” Sanders’s campaign manager, Faiz Shakir, told Vanity Fair on Tuesday. “So yes, you’re going to hear a lot more about his Iraq vote from us.”
Read: The conundrum facing Democrats about America’s role in the world
Conveniently for Sanders, such an emphasis could find an audience in Iowa specifically, the first state to vote in the 2020 primary election, and where recent polling shows him with a narrow lead over his rivals. “Iowa has a history of being dovish,” Jeff Link, a Democratic strategist based in the state, told me. Voters there have elected anti-interventionist lawmakers to Congress in recent decades, including former Democratic Senator Tom Harkin and former Republican Representative Jim Leach. And in 2008, Barack Obama upset Hillary Clinton in the state by running, at least in part, on his vote against the Iraq War. “It’s been a recurring theme over the years [that] Iowans pay close attention to foreign policy,” Link said. “From that perspective, it’s smart for Sanders.”
Sanders’s anti-interventionism could also help him beyond Iowa: Polls show that the majority of Americans, including most Republicans, do not support another war in the Middle East. He could potentially pique the interest of a new swath of supporters, including younger Americans who have spent their formative years observing military intervention in Iraq and Afghanistan, and even Trump voters who supported the now-president for his own promise to get U.S. troops out of the Middle East. “[Trump] doesn’t have a rudder on these things; it’s whatever he’s feeling at the moment,” Link said. But Bernie “is crystal clear. If we were judging this contest on who has the most clarity on who they are and what their message is, Bernie wins.”
Yet it’s not totally crystal clear that Sanders will gain an advantage: A poll from FiveThirtyEight and Ipsos, released in September before the Soleimani strike, showed that very few Democrats are prioritizing foreign policy in choosing a candidate, and The Washington Post reported that Iowans haven’t been asking many questions about Iran at campaign events. It’s also possible that, if there is no further escalation after Iran retaliated with military strikes of its own on Tuesday, Sanders’s anti-interventionist stance may lose its salience. And Sanders isn’t the only candidate who sees the Iran conflict as a potential campaign boost, though in a different way. Biden has spent the last week promoting his own foreign-policy experience as vice president. “Biden’s been in the Situation Room before. Buttigieg has been shot at before,” Paul Rieckhoff, the host of the Angry Americans podcast and an Iraq War veteran, told me, noting the former mayor’s military experience. “Those are the kinds of things that are going to resonate with the American people.”
But with just three weeks to go until the Iowa caucuses and no obvious front-runner in the state, a new way for Sanders to distinguish himself from his rivals could be exactly what he needs to pull ahead. After all, Americans already know Sanders as the guy who advocates for universal health care and shouts about the billionaires. They may not have heard as much about Sanders the anti-war activist.


theatlantic--2020-01-13--The 2020 U.S. Presidential Race: A Cheat Sheet

Who is Cory Booker ?
There are really two questions here .
One is snarky—Does anyone know who this guy is ?
As the president noted , Booker never managed to get much attention in the race .
The other goes a little deeper .
The senator from New Jersey ’ s struggle to define himself , especially against the rest of the Democratic field , helps explain why his campaign never took off , and why he suspended it today .
The bookend for Booker has been coming for quite some time .
In mid-September , his campaign released @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ t raise $ 2 million by the end of October , he ’ d leave the race .
That ultimatum worked , in the immediate term : Booker got his cash .
Another last-ditch plea for help , during a November debate , qualified him for the December meeting .
But he still didn ’ t have enough money or support to compete with the front-runners .
With another debate scheduled for tomorrow night , from which he ’ d be absent , Booker pulled the plug .
Booker gives off the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ been running for president since middle school or so ( as do many candidates , to be fair ) , and he ’ s been lauded as a great Democratic hope for years , since he was mayor of Newark .
How did someone groomed for so long stumble so badly in the race ?
For one thing , Booker sometimes comes across as a phony .
The problem was serious enough that Booker decided to address it in a friendly New York magazine profile in 2018 .
“ My closest friends say @ @ @ @ @ @ @ conversations with people , they ask that question : “ Is he for real ?
” ’ Which I don ’ t understand .
‘ Is he real ?
’ ‘ Is he for real ?
’ I don ’ t understand where that question really comes from.
” Booker , in that interview , and his supporters , elsewhere , suggested that racism plays a role in that question .
There may be something to that .
There ’ s no denying that racism remains a potent factor in politics , and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ only nonwhite candidates remaining in the Democratic race are Andrew Yang , the ur-outsider ; Tulsi Gabbard , whom mainstream Democrats distrust ; and Deval Patrick , whose such an afterthought in the race that I initially omitted him from this list .
Neither seems likely to qualify for future debates , while the establishment ’ s minority candidates , Kamala Harris , Julián Castro , and Booker , have all left .
In this respect , it ’ s useful to compare Booker with Pete Buttigieg .
As I wrote in April @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s playbook : a Rhodes Scholar , mayor of a mid-size city , employing Barack Obama ’ s uplifting rhetoric with a side helping of religiosity .
Unlike Buttigieg , Booker also has years of experience in national politics as a senator .
Although Buttigieg has attracted some of the same accusations of phoniness that Booker has , he has also done comparatively well in the race .
Booker ’ s effort had some other problems .
His attempt to run a campaign on “ love ” flopped , which came as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Hillary Clinton try and fail to do the same .
And notwithstanding his complaints about racism , Booker—like Buttigieg , and like nearly every other Democratic candidate—never managed to seriously challenge Joe Biden ’ s dominance among black voters , the essential Democratic bloc .
And as my colleague Peter Beinart has written , Booker tried to tack left early in the primary , robbing him of the chance to run against Biden on his moderate record .
( That flip didn ’ t help the phoniness charge , of course . )
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ to see Booker ’ s name on a lot of lists of predicted running mates for the eventual Democratic nominee .
( He was a top contender for Clinton ’ s No .
2 spot in 2016 , too . )
Booker is 50 , which seems hard to believe : On the one hand , he seems too perpetually youthful to be that old ; on the other , he ’ s been around so long , that seems too young .
His age means there ’ s a good chance he @ @ @ @ @ @ @ White House again .
When you ’ ve been running this long , why stop now ?
As the primaries progress , this cheat sheet will be updated regularly .
Who is he ?
The billionaire former mayor of New York , Bloomberg is a Democrat turned Republican turned independent turned Democrat again .
Is he running ?
Yes .
Having ruled out a run in March , hizzoner changed his mind in early November and officially launched his campaign on November 24 .
Why does he want to run ?
For starters @ @ @ @ @ @ @ d be better and more competent at the job than anyone else .
Bloomberg ’ s bid will likely center on his pet issues of gun control , climate change , and fighting the more fiscally liberal wing of the Democratic Party tooth and silver-plated nail .
Who wants him to run ?
What , is his considerable ego not enough ?
Though his tenure as mayor is generally well regarded , it ’ s unclear what Bloomberg ’ s Democratic constituency is beyond other wealthy , socially liberal , and fiscally conservative @ @ @ @ @ @ @ as if he needs their money to run .
Can he win the nomination ?
Probably not .
Bloomberg previously toyed with an independent run , but said that would only help Trump in 2020. Who is he ?
Patrick was governor of Massachusetts from 2007 to 2015 , after serving in a top role in Bill Clinton ’ s Justice Department .
More recently , he ’ s worked at Bain Capital .
Is he running ?
Yes .
Patrick officially entered the race on November 14 .
Why does he want @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of course .
But having passed on a run earlier , Patrick reconsidered because of worries that no one in the Democratic field has strong momentum and can unite the party .
Who wants him to run ?
There ’ s an appetite for new candidates among some in the Democratic donor class , though there ’ s little sign that voters are so eager .
Patrick is close to Barack Obama , but the former president has stayed out of the primary .
Can he win ?
We ’ re not saying @ @ @ @ @ @ @ employee can ’ t win the presidency , but recent history isn ’ t encouraging .
But take it from Patrick : “ I recognize running for president is a Hail Mary under any circumstances .
This is a Hail Mary from two stadiums over.
” What else do we know ?
Patrick ’ s estranged father played in the alien jazz great Sun Ra ’ s Arkestra .
Who is he ?
A retired California hedge-funder , Steyer has poured his fortune into political advocacy on climate change and flirted with running @ @ @ @ @ @ @ No .
He announced on January 9 that he would sit the race out .
Lol jk !
Steyer decided to get back into the race on July 9 after all .
Why does he want to run ?
Impeachment , baby .
Who wants him to run ?
There must be some # Resistance faction out there that does .
Can he win the nomination ?
Nope .
Who is he ?
The Coloradan was appointed to the Senate in 2009 and has since won reelection twice .
Is he running ?
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ May 2 .
Why does he want to run ?
Like his fellow Rocky Mountain State Democrat John Hickenlooper , Bennet presents himself as someone with experience in business and management who knows how to work with Republicans .
Who wants him to run ?
Probably some of the same people who wanted Hickenlooper to run .
Bennet gained new fans with a viral video of his impassioned rant about Ted Cruz during the January government shutdown .
Can he win ?
No .

Justin Amash took up the Libertarian Party’s standard late in the race. Then he abruptly decided to put it back down again.
When new candidates enter the presidential race, they do so by announcing an “exploratory committee.” That’s pretty much always one of those weird fictions of politics: They’re not exploring anything; they’ve already decided to run.
But Justin Amash has always been different.
Amash, the Republican turned independent congressman from Michigan, announced last month that he was launching an exploratory committee to run for the Libertarian Party nomination for president. Barely two weeks later, on Saturday, Amash announced that he won’t run after all. “After much reflection, I’ve concluded that circumstances don’t lend themselves to my success as a candidate for president this year, and therefore I will not be a candidate,” Amash tweeted.
What a weird sequence! For one thing, third-party candidates in the U.S. practically cannot win. It’s the law—well, it’s a law in political science, named for Maurice Duverger, who formulated it. While Amash insisted that he was in the race to win it, realistic observers understood that though he might affect the political debate or even the outcome of the race, he was not going to be the next president. For another, it’s hard to imagine what Amash learned in the last fortnight about his chances that he couldn’t have considered in mid-April.
Amash’s presumptive entry set off extensive scrutiny about how a third-party candidacy might sway the race: Would he take more votes away from Donald Trump or Joe Biden? Could Amash garner enough votes in his home state, a potentially decisive swing state, to decide the presidency? My colleague Abdallah Fayyad examined these theories in smart detail. Amash’s exit will at least relieve Biden supporters who were terrified that the Libertarian would play spoiler, though it’s not clear how much of a prospect that ever really was.
But Amash’s withdrawal could be a pivotal moment for the Libertarian Party. After years of toiling at 0.5 percent of the popular vote or less, the party has had a breakthrough the past two cycles, both times with former New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson atop the ticket. In 2012, the ticket drew 1 percent; in 2016, with widely loathed candidates atop both major-party tickets, Johnson drew 3.3 percent.
The Libertarian vote was almost certainly going to dip in 2020: The stakes of this election are different, the Democratic candidate is different, and the pandemic complicates third-party bids. Still, a high-profile candidate could have drawn on that momentum. Without Amash, the Libertarian Party probably doesn’t have that. The second-highest-profile contender was, uh, Lincoln Chafee, and he dropped out in early April, citing the pandemic. It’s never too late to get back in and turn the Libertarian Party into the vehicle for mandatory metric-system adoption, though.
Should there be new developments in the race going forward, this cheat sheet will be updated.
* * *
The Democrats
(Jeff Roberson / AP)
JOE BIDEN
Who is he?
Don’t play coy. You know the former vice president, senator from Delaware, and recurring Onion character.
Is he running?
Yes. After a long series of hesitations, Biden announced his campaign on April 25, 2019.
Why does he want to run?
Biden has wanted to be president since roughly forever, and he thinks he might be the best bet to win back blue-collar voters and defeat President Trump in 2020. (Trump reportedly agrees.)
Who wants him to run?
Biden’s sell is all about electability, and his dominant win in South Carolina—after a poor showing in the other early states—rallied the Democratic establishment to his side.
Can he win the nomination?
Indeed, he will.
(Yuri Gripas / Reuters)
BERNIE SANDERS
Who is he?
If you didn’t know the Vermont senator and self-described democratic socialist before his runner-up finish in the 2016 Democratic primary, you do now.
Is he running?
No. Sanders became the last Democratic rival to drop out, conceding the nomination to Biden on April 8, 2020.
Why did he want to run?
For the same reasons he wanted to run in 2016, and the same reasons he’s always run for office: Sanders is passionate about redistributing wealth, fighting inequality, and creating a bigger social-safety net.
Who wanted him to run?
Many of the same people who supported him last time, plus a few converts, minus those who are supporting Sanders-adjacent candidates like Elizabeth Warren or Tulsi Gabbard.
Could he have won the nomination?
It sure seemed like it there for a bit, huh? The parlor game of wondering if a few different choices—attacking Joe Biden head-on, for example—might have carried Sanders to victory will continue for months if not years.
(Simon Dawson / Reuters)
MICHAEL BLOOMBERG
Who is he?
The billionaire former mayor of New York, Bloomberg is a Democrat turned Republican turned independent turned Democrat again.
Is he running?
No longer. He ended his bid the day after a disappointing finish on Super Tuesday, having collected only a few dozen delegates.
Why did he want to run?
He was convinced that he’d be better and more competent at the job than anyone else, and he really wanted to light some money on fire. Bloomberg’s bid centered on his pet issues of gun control, climate change, and fighting the more fiscally liberal wing of the Democratic Party tooth and silver-plated nail.
Who wanted him to run?
What, was his considerable ego not enough? Though his tenure as mayor is generally well regarded, it’s unclear what Bloomberg’s Democratic constituency was beyond other wealthy, socially liberal, and fiscally conservative types, and it’s not as if he needed their money to run.
Could he have won the nomination?
Apparently not.
(Matthew Putney / Reuters)
TOM STEYER
Who is he?
A retired California hedge-funder, Steyer has poured his fortune into political advocacy on climate change and flirted with running for office.
Is he running?
Not anymore. He dropped out after finishing third and earning no delegates in South Carolina on February 29, 2020.
Why did he want to run?
Impeachment, baby.
Who wanted him to run?
Steyer managed to gain ground among African American voters in South Carolina. It was pretty threadbare beyond that.
Could he have won the nomination?
Nope.
(Aaron P. Bernstein / REUTERS)
AMY KLOBUCHAR
Who is she?
She has been a senator from Minnesota since 2007.
Is she running?
She did, from February 9, 2019, to March 2, 2020, when she abruptly dropped out on the eve of Super Tuesday and endorsed Biden.
Why did she want to run?
Klobuchar represents a kind of heartland Democrat—progressive, but not aggressively so—and she hoped to have widespread appeal both in the Midwest and elsewhere. She tended to talk vaguely about middle-class issues.
Who wanted her to run?
She built a constituency among mainstream Democrats. Her exchange with Justice Brett Kavanaugh during his confirmation hearing won her a lot of fans.
Could she have won the nomination?
No.
What else do we know?
Sadly, she did not use this fly logo.
(Jonathan Bachman / Reuters)
ELIZABETH WARREN
Who is she?
A senator from Massachusetts since 2013, Warren was previously a professor at Harvard Law School, helped create the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and wrote a book on middle-class incomes.
Is she running?
She suspended her campaign on March 5, 2020, two days after amassing just a few dozen delegates on Super Tuesday.
Why did she want to run?
Warren’s campaign was tightly focused on inequality, her signature issue since before entering politics. She proposed an “ultra-millionaire tax” on people worth more than $50 million and a major overhaul of housing policies.
Who wanted her to run?
People who backed Senator Bernie Sanders in 2016; people who were Bernie-curious but worried he was too irascible; people who didn’t like Bernie but are left-curious; Donald Trump.
Could she have won the nomination?
No.
What else do we know?
She’s got a good doggo.
(City of South Bend, IN)
PETE BUTTIGIEG
Who is he?
The 37-year-old openly gay former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, and Afghan War veteran went from near-anonymity to buzzy-candidate status in his first couple of months in the race.
Is he running?
Not anymore. He dropped out on March 1, 2020, and later endorsed Biden.
Why did he want to run?
Buttigieg’s sell was all about generation. He’s a Millennial and thinks his cohort faces new and unusual pressures and dilemmas that he is singularly equipped to resolve. Plus, it was a useful way to differentiate himself from the blue-haired bigwigs in the blue party.
Who wants him to run?
Buttigieg had slowly climbed in the polls, grabbing attention for crisp answers and an almost Obamaesque demeanor; he had the support of some Obama alumni. He hoped to reach midwestern voters who deserted the Democrats in 2016.
Could he have won the nomination?
For brief moments along the way, it seemed possible.
What else do we know?
It’s “BOOT-edge-edge,” and it’s Maltese for “lord of the poultry.”
(Marco Garcia / AP)
TULSI GABBARD
Who is she?
Gabbard, 37, has represented Hawaii in the U.S. House since 2013. She previously served in Iraq.
Is she running?
Not anymore. Gabbard dropped out on March 19, 2020, long after it became clear she wouldn’t win.
Why did she want to run?
Gabbard said her central issue is “war and peace,” which basically means a noninterventionist foreign policy.
Who wanted her to run?
Gabbard hoped to draw support from Sanders backers. She supported Bernie in 2016, resigning from a post as vice chair of the Democratic National Committee to do so, and she’s modeled herself largely on him.
Could he have won the nomination?
Naaaaaaah.
What else do we know?
If elected, she would have been the first Hindu president.
Brian Snyder / Reuters
DEVAL PATRICK
Who is he?
Patrick was governor of Massachusetts from 2007 to 2015, after serving in a top role in Bill Clinton’s Justice Department. More recently, he’s worked at Bain Capital.
Is he running?
No. Patrick entered the race on November 14, 2019, but left on February 12, 2020.
Why did he want to run?
To be president, of course. But having passed on a run earlier, Patrick reconsidered because of worries that no one in the Democratic field has strong momentum and can unite the party.
Who wanted him to run?
There was an appetite for new candidates among some in the Democratic donor class, but no sign that voters agreed.
Could he have won the nomination?
We’re not saying that a former Massachusetts governor and Bain employee can’t win the presidency, but recent history wasn’t encouraging. Take it from Patrick: “I recognize running for president is a Hail Mary under any circumstances. This is a Hail Mary from two stadiums over.”
What else do we know?
Patrick’s estranged father played in the alien jazz great Sun Ra’s Arkestra.
(JOSHUA LOTT / AFP / Getty)
ANDREW YANG
Who is he?
Yang is a tech entrepreneur who created the test-preparation company Manhattan Prep and then Venture for America, which tries to incubate start-ups outside New York and the Bay Area, and which is based in New York.
Is he running?
No. He filed to run on November 6, 2017, but dropped out on February 11, 2020.
Why did he want to run?
Yang was a 360-degree sprinkler of policy proposals, but his best-known idea was a $1,000 a month universal basic income for every American adult.
Who wanted him to run?
A motley internet movement, including many fans of Joe Rogan’s podcast.
Could he have won the nomination?
Nope.
(Samantha Sais / Reuters)
MICHAEL BENNET
Who is he?
The Coloradan was appointed to the Senate in 2009 and has since won reelection twice.
Is he running?
No. Bennet announced his campaign on May 2, 2019, but dropped out on February 11, 2020, following the New Hampshire primary.
Why did he want to run?
Bennet presented himself as someone with experience in business and management who knows how to work with Republicans.
Who wanted him to run?
James Carville. Bennet also gained new fans with a viral video of his impassioned rant about Ted Cruz during the January 2019 government shutdown.
Could he have won the nomination?
No.
(KC McGinnis / Reuters)
JOHN DELANEY
Who is he?
A former four-term congressman from Maryland, he might be even less known than Pete Buttigieg, who at least has a memorable name.
Is he running?
No. Delaney announced way back in June 2017, hoping that a head start could make up for his lack of name recognition, but dropped out on January 31, 2020.
Why did he want to run?
Delaney, a successful businessman, pitched himself as a centrist problem-solver.
Who wanted him to run?
Unclear. He all but moved to Iowa in hopes of locking up the first caucus state, but didn’t even crack 1 percent in a recent Des Moines Register poll.
Could he have won the nomination?
Nah.
(Joshua Roberts / Reuters)
CORY BOOKER
Who is he?
A senator from New Jersey, he was previously the social-media-savvy mayor of Newark.
Is he running?
No. He launched his campaign on February 1, 2019, but dropped out on January 13, 2020.
Why did he want to run?
Once a leading moderate, Booker has been big on criminal-justice reform, including marijuana liberalization in the Senate. He also embraced progressive ideas, including Medicare for All and some sort of universal nest egg for children.
Who wanted him to run?
Not nearly enough voters. He aimed for Obama-style uplift and inspiration to attract voters, but was edged out by other candidates on both sides.
Could he have won the nomination?
Not this year.
(Amy Harris / Invision / AP)
MARIANNE WILLIAMSON
Who is she?
If you don’t know the inspirational author and speaker, you know her aphorisms (e.g., “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.”).
Is she running?
No. She announced her candidacy on January 28, 2019, but left the race on January 10, 2020.
Why did she want to run?
It’s a little tough to say. She wrote on her website, “My campaign for the presidency is dedicated to this search for higher wisdom.” She criticized Hillary Clinton for coziness with corporate interests in 2016, and she ran for the U.S. House in 2014.
Who wanted her to run?
Williamson has a lot of fans, but whether they really wanted her as president was another question.
Could she have won the nomination?
Stranger things have happened, but no.
(DEPartment of Housing & Urban Development)
JULIÁN CASTRO
Who is he?
Castro was the mayor of San Antonio, Texas, before serving as secretary of housing and urban development under Barack Obama from 2014 to 2017.
Is he running?
No. He announced his bid on January 12, 2019, in San Antonio, but dropped out on January 2, 2020, and endorsed Elizabeth Warren four days later.
Why did he want to run?
Castro began the career searching for an Obama-style message, but evolved into a more aggressive, left-wing candidate, especially on immigration and police reform.
Who wanted him to run?
Castro attracted a small but passionate following.
Could he have won the nomination?
No. “I am not a front-runner in this race, but I have not been a front-runner at any time in my life,” Castro said during his announcement.
What else do we know?
Castro’s twin brother, Joaquin, who serves in the U.S. House, once subbed in for his brother in a parade during Julián’s mayoral campaign, so if you go to a campaign event, ask for proof that it’s really him.
(Dimitrios Kambouris)
KAMALA HARRIS
Who is she?
Harris, a first-term senator from California, was elected in 2016. She was previously the state’s attorney general.
Is she running?
No. She declared her candidacy on January 21, Martin Luther King Jr. Day, but ended her campaign on December 3, 2019.
Why did she want to run?
Harris thought that a woman of color who is an ex-prosecutor would check a range of boxes for Democratic voters. She tried to stake out a broad platform, trying to appeal to a wide swath of the party, but ended up without a clear identity.
Who wanted her to run?
Harris briefly became the great hope for Democrats who weren’t strong lefties but worried about Biden. But she was unable to maintain and build her momentum, and she sank from third in the race to the single digits.
Could she have won the nomination?
Perhaps with a different campaign approach Harris would have had good luck—and she’s young enough that she may have another shot. But she didn’t have the right stuff for 2020.
(Matthew Brown / AP)
STEVE BULLOCK
Who is he?
Bullock is the governor of Montana, where he won reelection in 2016 even as Trump won the state.
Is he running?
No. Bullock launched his campaign on May 14 but withdrew on December 2, 2019.
Why did he want to run?
Bullock portrayed himself as a candidate who could win in Trump country and get things done across the aisle. He’s also been an outspoken advocate of campaign-finance reform.
Who wanted him to run?
Unclear. The Great Plains and Mountain West aren’t traditional bases for national Democrats.
Could he have won the nomination?
Nope.
(matt rourke / ap)
JOE SESTAK
Who is he?
A former vice admiral and two-term member of Congress from Pennsylvania, he twice ran for U.S. Senate.
Is he running?
No. He announced on June 23 but bowed out on December 1, 2019.
Why did he want to run?
Sestak’s announcement focused on his long career in the military and the importance of American foreign policy. It was a little evocative of retired General Wesley Clark’s 2004 campaign.
Who wanted him to run?
It’s a mystery. Sestak said he delayed a campaign launch while his daughter was treated for cancer, which is praiseworthy, but there wasn’t even a murmur about him running before his announcement. Sestak is best known these days for losing Senate races in 2010 (in the general election) and 2016 (in the Democratic primary).
Could he have won the nomination?
No.
What else do we know?
This logo, boy, I dunno.
(City of Miramar, FLorida)
WAYNE MESSAM
Who is he?
Many people thought a young black mayor from Florida would run in 2020. They just thought it would be Tallahassee’s Andrew Gillum, not Miramar’s Wayne Messam, who was elected in 2015.
Is he running?
No. Messam announced his candidacy on March 28 but dropped out—having never showed much sign of a campaign—on November 20, 2019.
Why did he want to run?
He had a lot of standard rhetoric about the fading American dream. “The promise of America belongs to all of us,” Messam said in his announcement video. “That’s why I’m going to be running for president. To be your champion.”
Who wanted him to run?
Bueller?
Could he have won?
Sure, Messam won a national championship as a wide receiver for the 1993 Florida State Seminoles. The presidency? Um, no.
(Kathy Willens / AP)
BETO O’ROURKE
Who is he?
The man, the myth, the legend, the former U.S. representative from El Paso and Democratic candidate for Senate in Texas.
Is he running?
No. O’Rourke dropped out on November 1, 2019.
Why did he want to run?
O’Rourke struggled to figure that out. After the August El Paso massacre, he announced a new approach of attacking the Trump presidency head-on.
Who wanted him to run?
A lot of live-stream watchers and thirsty tweeters, a coterie of ex–Obama aides, and a bunch of operatives running the Draft Beto campaign.
Could he have won the nomination?
No. After a fast start, O’Rourke never regained the momentum of his announcement.
What else do we know?
This video is very important.
(Jonathan Bachman / Reuters)
TIM RYAN
Who is he?
The Ohioan is a member of the House, representing Youngstown and America’s greatest city, Akron.
Is he running?
No. Ryan jumped in the race in April 2019 but dropped out on October 24, 2019.
Why did he want to run?
Ryan is a classic Rust Belt Democrat and friend of labor, and he’s concerned about the fate of manufacturing. He is also an outspoken critic of Democratic leadership, mounting a quixotic challenge to Nancy Pelosi in 2016.
Who wanted him to run?
Ryan had some support in the Rust Belt, but never managed to grow his national profile or support.
Could he have won the nomination?
No.
What else do we know?
He’s big on meditation.
(Mike Segar / Reuters)
BILL DE BLASIO
Who is he?
The mayor of New York City.
Is he running?
No. He dropped out of the race on September 20, 2019.
Why did he want to run?
De Blasio was the harbinger of the Democratic Party’s leftward shift on economic issues, and they’d be at the center of his campaign, though the movement seems to have left him behind.
Who wanted him to run?
Practically no one. By the time he dropped out, de Blasio was polling at 0 percent even in New York.
Could he have won the nomination?
No.
What else do we know?
De Blasio was the tallest candidate since Bill Bradley, in 2000. Both men are 6 foot 5.
(mary Altaffer / AP)
KIRSTEN GILLIBRAND
Who is she?
Gillibrand has been a senator from New York since 2009, replacing Hillary Clinton. Before that, she served in the U.S. House.
Is she running?
No. Gillibrand dropped out of the race on August 28, 2019, after failing to qualify for the third debate. She had launched her campaign officially on March 17.
Why did she want to run?
Gillibrand emphasized women’s issues, ranging from sexual harassment in the military and more recent #MeToo stories to equal pay, and her role as a mom is central in her announcement video. Once a fairly conservative Democrat, she has moved left in recent years.
Who wanted her to run?
Vanishingly few voters. While Gillibrand entered the race as a big name, she struggled to gain the polling or donors needed to stay in debates, much less make a play for the nomination.
Could she have won the nomination?
Nope.
What else do we know?
Just like you, she hated the Game of Thrones finale and is mad online about it.
(Brian Snyder / Reuters)
SETH MOULTON
Who is he?
A third-term congressman from Massachusetts, Moulton graduated from Harvard, then served in the Marines in Iraq.
Is he running?
No. Moulton, who announced his campaign on April 22, 2019, left the race on August 23.
Why did he want to run?
In an interview with BuzzFeed, he said he felt the Democratic Party needs younger leaders and, alluding to his military career, “someone … for whom standing up to a bully like Donald Trump isn’t the biggest challenge he or she has ever faced in life.”
Who wanted him to run?
Almost no one. Moulton never gained much attraction, and some polls found him polling at precisely zero.
Could he have won?
No.
(Mary Schwalm / AP)
JAY INSLEE
Who is he?
Inslee is a second-term governor of Washington, and was previously in the U.S. House.
Is he running?
No. Inslee announced on August 21, 2019, that he was ending his campaign.
Why did he want to run?
Climate change. That’s been Inslee’s big issue as governor, and it will be at the center of his campaign for president, too.
Who wanted him to run?
Inslee generated excitement from climate activists, but never gained enough attention from the broad Democratic electorate to gain traction.
Could he have won the nomination?
No.
(Lawrence Bryant / REuters)
STACEY ABRAMS
Who is she?
Abrams ran unsuccessfully for governor of Georgia in 2018 and was previously the Democratic leader in the state House.
Is she running?
No. Abrams will instead focus on advocating against voter suppression, The New York Times reported on August 13, 2019. She’s likely to be mentioned as a running mate for the eventual nominee, too.
Why did she want to run?
Throughout her career, Abrams has focused on bread-and-butter issues such as criminal-justice reform and education, and since losing a 2018 election stained by problems with ballot access, she’s made voting rights a special focus.
Who wanted her to run?
Abrams has drawn excitement from young Democrats, the liberal wing of the party, and African Americans. Her rebuttal to President Trump’s 2019 State of the Union address won her new fans, and the former Obama aide Dan Pfeiffer says she should run.
Could she have won?
No.
(Department of Labor)
JOHN HICKENLOOPER
Who is he?
Hickenlooper was the governor of Colorado until January, and previously held the most Colorado trifecta of jobs imaginable: mayor of Denver, geologist, and brewery owner.
Is he running?
No. Hickenlooper is leaving the race on August 15, 2019.
Why did he want to run?
Hickenlooper branded himself as an effective manager and deal maker who has governed effectively in a purple state while still staying progressive. He said he worried the Democratic field could be too focused on grievance and not enough on policy.
Who wanted him to run?
Not nearly enough people. Hickenlooper was never able to get out of the low single digits in polling, and was at precisely zero in one late poll.
Could he have won the nomination?
No.
(Alex Wong / Getty)
MIKE GRAVEL
Who is he?
Gravel, 89, represented Alaska for two terms in the Senate, during which he read the Pentagon Papers into the Congressional Record and fought against the Vietnam War. These days he’s probably better known for his 2008 presidential campaign.
Is he running?
No. After launching on April 8, 2019, his campaign announced it was ending on August 5, and Gravel has endorsed Bernie Sanders.
Why did he want to run?
Gravel was running to bring attention to his pet issues: direct democracy, nuclear nonproliferation, and a noninterventionist foreign policy.
Who wanted him to run?
This is where it gets weird. The committee is the brainchild of three students in college and high school who have basically created a Draft Gravel movement. But Gravel decided he liked the idea and went along with it.
Could he have won the nomination?
No. He initially said he didn’t even want to, though his campaign—worried it might be disqualified for Democratic debates—then said he was running for real. He didn't qualify anyway.
What else do we know?
Gravel produced the greatest presidential spot this side of the “Daisy” ad—and then he remade it this cycle.
(J. Scott Applewhite / AP)
ERIC SWALWELL
Who is he?
Swalwell, who is 38, is a U.S. representative from California’s Bay Area.
Is he running?
No. Swalwell left the race on July 8, 2019, exactly three months after he announced his candidacy on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert.
Why did he want to run?
Swalwell was running on a gun-control platform. He also says the Democratic Party needs fresh blood. “We can’t count on the same old leaders to solve the same old problems,” he told The Mercury News. “It’s going to take new energy and new ideas and a new confidence to do that.”
Who wanted him to run?
Not nearly enough people. Swalwell never busted through the 1 percent threshold.
Can he have won the nomination?
Clearly not.
(Phil Long / Reuters)
SHERROD BROWN
Who is he?
By statute, I am required to mention the senator from Ohio’s tousled hair, rumpled appearance, and gravelly voice.
Is he running?
No. Brown told the Youngstown Vindicator on March 7, 2019, that he will not run.
Why did he want to run?
Brown’s campaign would have focused on workers and inequality. He’s somewhat akin to Bernie Sanders, but his progressivism is of the midwestern, organized-labor variety.
Who wanted him to run?
Leftist Democrats who though Sanders is too old and Elizabeth Warren too weak a candidate; lots of dudes in union halls in Northeast Ohio.
Could he have won the nomination?
Possibly.
What else do we know?
Like Warren, Brown has a very good dog.
(Mark Tenally / AP)
TERRY MCAULIFFE
Who is he?
Once known primarily as a close friend of Bill Clinton’s and a Democratic fundraising prodigy, McAuliffe reinvented himself as the governor of Virginia from 2014 to 2018.
Is he running?
No. McAuliffe said April 17, 2019, he wouldn’t compete.
Why did he want to run?
McAuliffe holds up his governorship as proof that he can be a problem solver and deal maker across the aisle, and his Clintonesque politics would have contrasted him with many of the candidates in the field.
Who wanted him to run?
McAuliffe himself concluded he just didn’t have a big enough constituency in the wide Democratic field.
Could he have won the nomination?
Probably not.
(Yuri Gripas / Reuters)
ERIC HOLDER
Who is he?
Holder was the U.S. attorney general from 2009 to 2015, and he’s currently leading a Democratic redistricting initiative with help from some retiree named Barack Obama.
Is he running?
No. After toying with the idea, he wrote in The Washington Post on March 7, 2019, that he would not run.
Why did he want to run?
Holder has three big areas of interest: redistricting, civil rights, and beating Donald Trump by all means necessary.
Who wanted him to run?
Tough to say. Obamaworld isn’t really lining up behind him, and he’s never held elected office, despite a successful Washington career.
Could he have won the nomination?
Probably not.
(Faith Ninivaggi / Reuters)
MITCH LANDRIEU
Who is he?
Landrieu served as the mayor of New Orleans from 2010 to 2018. He was previously Louisiana’s lieutenant governor.
Is he running?
It seems unlikely. “Probably not, but if I change my mind, you’re going to be the first to know,” he told the New York Times editor Dean Baquet in December.
Why did he want to run?
Like the other mayors contemplating a run, Landrieu considers himself a problem-solver. He’s also become a campaigner for racial reconciliation, taking down Confederate monuments in New Orleans, and staking a claim for progressivism in the Deep South.
Who wanted him to run?
Not clear.
Could he have won the nomination?
Probably not.
(Jeenah Moon / Reuters)
ANDREW CUOMO
Who is he?
Cuomo is the governor of New York. He was formerly the secretary of housing and urban development under Bill Clinton.
Is he running?
No. Though he's long toyed with the idea, Cuomo said in November 2018, "I am ruling it out." Then again, his father was indecisive about running for president, too.
Why did he want to run?
One can adopt a Freudian analysis related to his father's unfinished business, or one can note that Cuomo thinks he's got more management experience and success, including working with Republicans, than any Democratic candidate.
Who wanted him to run?
Practically no one. Cuomo's defenders bristle that he doesn't get enough credit, but his work with Republicans has infuriated Empire State Democrats without winning any real GOP friends.
Could he have won the nomination?
No.
(Yuri Gripas / Reuters)
ERIC GARCETTI
Who is he?
Garcetti is the mayor of Los Angeles.
Is he running?
No. Garcetti flirted with the idea, visiting South Carolina and naming a hypothetical Cabinet full of mayors, but said on January 29, 2020, that he would not run.
Why did he want to run?
Garcetti’s pitch was that mayors actually get things done and that his lack of experience in Washington was a positive.
Who wanted him to run?
Garcetti was reelected in a landslide in 2017, but he had no apparent national constituency.
Could he have won the nomination?
Doubtful.
(Andrew Harnik / AP)
HILLARY CLINTON
Who is she?
Come on.
Is she running?
No, she announced on March 4, 2019, that she wouldn’t. But until she issues a Shermanesque denial signed in blood—or the filing deadline passes—the rumors probably won’t die.
Why does she want to run?
She doesn’t.
Who wants her to run?
Pundits, mostly.
Can she win the nomination?
See above.
(Mike Blake / Reuters)
MICHAEL AVENATTI
Who is he?
Formerly Stormy Daniels’s lawyer, he’s now facing a dizzying array of federal charges.
Is he running?
Haha, no way. He now says he might once again, but he won’t. And if he does, it won’t matter.
Why did he want to run?
Attention, power, self-aggrandizement
Who wanted him to run?
Some very loud, very devoted fans.
Could he have won the nomination?
No, and his comment to Time that the nominee “better be a white male” was the final straw.
REPUBLICANS
(Leah Millis / Reuters)
DONALD TRUMP
Who is he?
Really?
Fine. Is he running?
Yes. He filed for reelection the day of his inauguration.
Why does he want to run?
Build the wall, Keep America Great, etc.
Who wants him to run?
Consistently about 35 to 40 percent of the country; a small majority consistently says he should not.
Can he win the nomination?
Yes. While his low approval ratings overall have stoked talk of a primary challenge, Trump remains very popular among Republican voters, and as president has broad power to muscle the GOP process to protect himself.
What else do we know?
You may have heard that in December 2019 he became the third president to ever be impeached.
(Stephan Savoia / AP)
WILLIAM WELD
Who is he?
Weld, a former Justice Department official, was the governor of Massachusetts from 1991 to 1997 and was the Libertarian Party’s vice-presidential nominee in 2016.
Is he running?
He dropped out on March 18, 2020, after Trump effectively clinched renomination.
Why did he run?
Calling President Trump “unstable,” Weld has said, “I think our country is in grave peril and I cannot sit any longer quietly on the sidelines.”
Who wanted him to run?
Weld always inspired respect from certain quarters, and the 2016 Libertarian ticket did well by the party’s standards, but Weld’s unorthodox politics and hot-and-cold relationship with the GOP probably didn’t help his support.
Can he win the nomination?
No.
What else do we know?
This logo is so cool.
(Carolyn Kaster / AP)
JOE WALSH
Who is he?
After a strong run in the James Gang, Walsh joined the Eagles as lead guitari—wait, no, wrong guy. This Joe Walsh was a Tea Party congressman from Illinois from 2011 to 2013.
Is he running?
No. Walsh said on August 24, 2019, that he would run against Trump, but dropped out on February 7 after drawing just 1 percent in the Iowa caucus.
Why was he running?
Once a strong Trump backer, Walsh has undergone a strange political transformation over the past three years and now routinely attacks Trump, whom he sees as insufficiently conservative and too deferential to Russia.
Who wanted him to run?
Clearly, not many people. The tireless but hapless Bill Kristol encouraged Walsh to run, but that was about it, based on a February Twitter thread in which he said that he had “that my Republican Party isn’t a Party, it’s a cult.”
Could he have won the nomination?
Absolutely not.
(Kevin Lamarque / Reuters)
MARK SANFORD
Who is he?
Sanford was governor of South Carolina from 2003 to 2011 and a U.S. representative from 1995 to 2001 and 2013 to 2019.
Is he running?
No. Sanford announced his campaign launch on September 8, 2019 but suspended it on November 12.
Why was he running?
Sanford has been an outspoken critic of Donald Trump. “I think we have to have a conversation about what it means to be a Republican,” Sanford said on Fox News Sunday, adding that the GOP “has lost our way.”
Who wanted him to run?
Lots of reporters who are eager to make bad Appalachian Trail jokes. There must have been some Never Trump fiscal conservatives who didn’t want Trump but wouldn’t vote for Weld. Not many, though.
Could he have won the nomination?
No. “I don’t think on the Republican side there’s any appetite for a serious nuanced debate with impeachment in the air,” he said as he left the race.
(Elizabeth Frantz / Reuters)
JOHN KASICH
Who is he?
Kasich recently finished up two terms as governor of Ohio, previously served in the U.S. House, and ran in the 2016 GOP primary.
Is he running?
No, and it seems he won’t. “There is no path right now for me. I don’t see a way to get there,” he said May 30, 2019. “I’ve never gotten involved in a political race where I didn’t think I could win.”
Why did he want to run?
Kasich has long wanted to be president—he ran, quixotically, in 2000. But Kasich has styled himself as a vocal Trump critic, and sees himself as an alternative to the president who is both truer to conservative principles and more reliable and moral.
Who wanted him to run?
Maybe some dead-end Never Trump conservatives. It’s tough to say.
Could he have won the nomination?
Even he doesn’t think so. Kasich previously ruled out an independent or third-party run, but has since reopened that door.
What else do we know?
John Kasich bought a Roots CD and hated it so much, he threw it out his car window. John Kasich hated the Coen brothers’ classic Fargo so much, he tried to get his local Blockbuster to quit renting it. George Will laughed at him. John Kasich is the Bill Brasky of philistinism, but John Kasich probably hated that skit, too.
(Patrick Semansky / AP)
LARRY HOGAN
Who is he?
In November, Hogan became the first Republican to be reelected as governor of Maryland since 1954.
Is he running?
No. After some flirtation, he ruled out a run on June 1, 2019.
Why did he want to run?
Hogan is a pragmatic, moderate Republican who has won widespread acclaim in a solidly Democratic state—in other words, everything Trump is not.
Who wanted him to run?
Never Trump conservatives; whatever the Republican equivalent of a “good government” type is.
Could he have won the nomination?
As long as Trump was running, no.
(Official Senate PhotO)
JEFF FLAKE
Who is he?
The Arizonan, a former U.S. House member, decided not to run for reelection to the Senate in 2019.
Is he running?
No. When he took a contributor role with CBS on January 23, 2019, he said he was not running.
Why did he want to run?
Starting in 2016, Flake was perhaps Trump’s most outspoken critic among elected Republicans, lambasting the president as immoral, unserious, and unconservative.
Who wanted him to run?
Liberal pundits.
Could he have won the nomination?
No. Flake retired because he didn’t even think he could win the Republican Senate nomination.
THIRD PARTIES AND INDEPENDENTS
Public domain
JO JORGENSEN
Who is she?
An activist, a psychologist, and a businesswoman from South Carolina, Jorgensen was the Libertarian Party’s vice-presidential nominee in 1996 and ran for Congress in 1992.
Is he running?
Following Justin Amash’s exit from the race, Jorgensen locked up the Libertarian nomination for 2020.
Why does she want to run?
Jorgensen’s platform is mostly standard Libertarian views: against big federal programs, against mass incarceration, against foreign military operations. She has also said, “It is not enough to be passively not racist; we must be actively anti-racist.”
Who wants her to run?
Libertarians.
What else do we know?
Since she’s the highest-profile woman in the presidential race, Jorgensen has borrowed Hillary Clinton’s 2016 slogan, “I’m with her.” Her running mate, Spike Cohen, previously ran for the LP nod promising a Waffle House on every corner, and if that’s not a winning platform, what has gone wrong in this country?
Getty
HOWIE HAWKINS
Who is he?
A Green Party founder and longtime environmental activist, Hawkins ran for New York governor as a Green in 2010, 2014, and 2018. He did not win.
Is he running?
Yes. On July 11, Hawkins was officially named the Green Party nominee. He’s also the Socialist Party USA nominee.
Why does he want to run?
Hawkins’s platform includes some familiar Green and progressive priorities: Green New Deal, Medicaid for All, and a guaranteed minimum income.
Who wants him to run?
Greens and Socialists.
What else do we know?
“H’20” is a truly great pun, especially for a Green Party nominee.
Lexi Browning / Reuters
DON BLANKENSHIP
Who is he?
The former CEO of the coal company Massey Energy, Blankenship was convicted of conspiracy to violate mine-safety laws over an explosion that killed 29 miners in 2010. He ran for U.S. Senate in West Virginia in 2018.
Is he running?
Yes. Blankenship announced on November 11 that he’s running for the Constitution Party’s nomination, and won the nomination in May.
Why does he want to run?
Blankenship is billing himself as a man who can actually do what Trump promised. The men share many political views as well as a general coarseness and bigotry. “President Trump means well, but he simply cannot get it done because he is too busy mending his self-inflicted wounds and tripping over his ego,” Blankenship said in a statement.
Who wants him to run?
Beats us. For what it’s worth, it took two ballots for him to win the Constitution nod.
(OFFICE OF JUSTIN AMASH)
JUSTIN AMASH
Who is he?
Amash has represented a Grand Rapids, Michigan-area seat in the U.S. House since 2011.
Is he running?
No. On April 28, 2020, Amash announced an exploratory committee to run for president on the Libertarian Party ticket, but he decided against a run on May 16.
Why did he want to run?
Amash has cut a path as a strong libertarian in the House, especially in recent months as a critic of President Trump. On July 4, he announced he was leaving the Republican Party, feeding presidential speculation.
Who wanted him to run?
Libertarians, duh. “There’s a lot of people who consider Amash to be the best congressman from the perspective of a libertarian,” Libertarian Party Chairman Nicholas Sarwark told MLive. “They think he’s the best congressman for our goals since Ron Paul.”
Could he have won the nomination?
Probably.
Gary Cameron / Reuters
LINCOLN CHAFEE
Who is he?
The failson scion of a Rhode Island Republican family, Chafee served in the Senate as a Republican (1999–2007); as governor, as an independent and then a Democrat (2011–15); and then ran for president as a Democrat in 2016.
Is he running?
No. He filed papers to run for the Libertarian Party nomination on January 5, but dropped out on April 7.
Why did he want to run?
It’s time to go metric, baby.
Who wanted him to run?
¯\ _(ツ)_/¯
Could he have won the nomination?
Given that he dropped his bid even without any serious rivals in the race, apparently not.
(JASON REDMOND / Reuters)
HOWARD SCHULTZ
Who is he?
That guy who used to sell you over-roasted coffee. Schultz stepped down as CEO of Starbucks in 2018.
Is he running?
No. Schultz officially ruled out a run on September 6, roughly four months after laying off most of his staff and announcing he’d take the summer off due to health problems. “I have concluded that an independent campaign for the White House is not how I can best serve our country at this time,” he wrote in a message.
Why did he want to run?
Personal pique over Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s support for a 70 percent marginal tax rate. No, seriously. Schultz has offered some vague platitudes about centrist ideas and bringing the country together, but most of it aligns with standard Democratic positions.
Who wanted him to run?
Donald Trump.
Can he have won the nomination?
The great thing about being a billionaire self-funder as an independent is that you don’t have to win a nomination. The downside is that you still have to win votes eventually.
(Darrin Zammit Lupi / Reuters)
JOHN MCAFEE
Who is he?
He’s the guy who made your antivirus program turned international fugitive turned unsuccessful 2016 Libertarian presidential candidate. A typical politician, basically.
Is he running?
He says he’s going to either vie for the Libertarian nomination again or run as an independent, though it’s probably worth regarding what he says with some skepticism.
Why does he want to run?
To promote cryptocurrency, brah. “See, I don’t want to be president,” he told a crypto trade publication in November 2018. “I couldn’t be … no one’s going to elect me president, please God. However, I’ve got the right to run.”
Who wants him to run?
Rubberneckers, disaster enthusiasts.
Can he win the nomination?
“No one’s going to elect me president, please God.”
What else do we know?
You want to see what it’s like as the opposite sex for three hours? What being kissed by God feels like? You want the infinite experience of freedom? Knowledge of yourself? Eroticism that incinerates you? A simple good time? Forgetfulness? He’s your man.


theatlantic--2020-01-13--The Atlantic Politics Daily: Not All Rhodes Lead to Washington

Even into early 2019 , the 48-year-old Los Angeles mayor was still toying with the idea of a presidential bid .
But while seemingly every other Democrat in America had entered the race , Garcetti decided not to .
His day job running the second-biggest city in the country was seen as a major impediment .
Around that time , Pete Buttigieg , who was running a city a fraction of the size of L.A. , was just announcing his exploratory committee .
Does Garcetti have regrets about his decision ?
In an interview with Isaac , he denied any @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of wistfulness .
Chances are you know how to pronounce Buttigieg without thinking twice .
That alone is a testament to the meteoric rise of “ Mayor Pete , ” who until this month , had been mayor of a city with far fewer people than Los Angeles or Newark .
When Buttigieg officially launched his presidential campaign last April , he ’ d understood that “ this is a long shot , or maybe a loooong shot.
” Here ’ s what Isaac wrote then : Three months ago , Buttigieg and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ restaurant in New York , and no one knew who he was .
A month ago , he was still being laughed off as the guy with the weird last name .
He was running less of a campaign than an amazingly aggressive press operation .
These days , he ’ s the sensation with the weird last name : “ In the Era of the Impossible , this could be happening .
But can anyone pronounce his last name ?
” Matt Drudge tweeted .
Now Buttigieg is in an entirely different @ @ @ @ @ @ @ which it ’ s no longer so fantastical to imagine ‘ President Pete.
’ 1 .
“ The difference might seem like mere semantics , but it helps underscore how different Sanders ’ s approach to foreign policy is from that of his competitors.
” After the Iran crisis dominated headlines last week , Senator Bernie Sanders took a victory lap by talking up his anti-war record and untraditional foreign policy .
The moment gave him a boost with Americans who know little of him beyond his reputation as the candidate who rails @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , Elaine Godfrey reports .
2 .
“ And this is the real reason the Trump impeachment trial will be boring : the president himself.
” Don ’ t expect any fireworks in the Senate ’ s impeachment trial : It will be mostly pageantry and a matter of form , and even if the GOP allows for witnesses to testify , they will be few and controlled , Quinta Jurecic and Benjamin Wittes write .
Still , there 's one figure who might introduce some surprise .
The Origins of the Celebrity @ @ @ @ @ @ @ The candidate : John Charles Frémont , of the brand-new Republican Party .
Thousands of men elbowed for space as they shouted for their candidate to emerge onto his iron balcony .
The nominee stepped out and gave a short speech , but after he withdrew , the crowd wanted more .
“ Mrs .
Frémont !
” someone cried , then others took up the refrain .
“ Madam Frémont !
Jessie !
Jessie !
Give us Jessie !
” Nothing quite like this had happened before .
“ For a lady @ @ @ @ @ @ @ crowd like this is an innovation , ” observed a young man in the crowd .
Disapproving , another man beside him tried to hush the calls for Jessie , but his was a lonely voice as many shouted louder .
A man appeared on the balcony and tried to explain why Jessie should not come out : “ Such occasions as this are apt to disconcert ladies , ” he called down , but the crowd refused to leave .
At last , to “ a universal shout , ” Jessie appeared @ @ @ @ @ @ @ newsletter was written by Saahil Desai , an associate editor on our Politics team and Christian Paz , a Politics fellow .
It was edited by Shan Wang , who oversees newsletters .
You can reply directly to this newsletter with questions or comments , or send a note to politicsdaily @ theatlantic.com .
Your support makes our journalism possible .
Subscribe here .

Cory Booker drops out; Eric Garcetti endorses Biden. Plus: The coming impeachment trial may turn out to be routine and predictable, but one figure might introduce some surprise.
It’s Monday, January 13. In today’s newsletter: Cory Booker drops out. Plus: The coming impeachment trial may turn out to be routine and predictable, but one figure might yet introduce some surprise.
*
« TODAY IN POLITICS »
(Jeff Chiu / AP)
He has mayoral credentials. He’s a former Rhodes Scholar with political ambitions that transcended City Hall.
I’m talking about Pete Buttigieg. No, wait, Cory Booker. Actually, Eric Garcetti.
Of millions of American students, 32 land a Rhodes Scholarship each year. Yet Rhodes scholars are certainly … healthily represented in politics: Other names you might’ve heard of include Bill Clinton, Bobby Jindal, Susan Rice.
Despite their similarities on paper (Booker and Garcetti even overlapped at Oxford), Booker, Buttigieg, and Garcetti have now gone very different directions in 2020:
1. Cory Booker drops out.
The public support—and fundraising—never materialized, leading the New Jersey senator to end his campaign, a few weeks before the Iowa caucuses, and a few weeks before the Senate impeachment trial.
Booker seemed to check all the boxes of a potential Democratic star. Young-ish? Check. Not too lefty; not too centrist? Check. Not a white guy? Check.
But, as my colleague Edward-Isaac Dovere wrote:
Booker’s campaign is perhaps the oddest phenomenon in the 2020 primary race … Why, when Booker consistently gives the best, most uplifting, most audience-electrifying speeches, does that energy not translate into higher poll numbers?
Still, his name might resurface. Booker is almost surely going to end up on someone’s VP shortlist.
2. Eric Garcetti stays out.
Even into early 2019, the 48-year-old Los Angeles mayor was still toying with the idea of a presidential bid. But while seemingly every other Democrat in America had entered the race, Garcetti decided not to. His day job running the second-biggest city in the country was seen as a major impediment.
Around that time, Pete Buttigieg, who was running a city a fraction of the size of L.A., was just announcing his exploratory committee.
Does Garcetti have regrets about his decision? In an interview with Isaac, he denied any regrets, even as he flashed pangs of wistfulness.
3. Pete Buttigieg stays near the top.
Chances are you know how to pronounce Buttigieg without thinking twice. That alone is a testament to the meteoric rise of “Mayor Pete,” who until this month, had been mayor of a city with far fewer people than Los Angeles or Newark.
When Buttigieg officially launched his presidential campaign last April, he’d understood that “this is a long shot, or maybe a loooong shot.” Here’s what Isaac wrote then:
Three months ago, Buttigieg and I sat for two hours at a restaurant in New York, and no one knew who he was. A month ago, he was still being laughed off as the guy with the weird last name. He was running less of a campaign than an amazingly aggressive press operation. These days, he’s the sensation with the weird last name: “In the Era of the Impossible, this could be happening. But can anyone pronounce his last name?” Matt Drudge tweeted.
Now Buttigieg is in an entirely different phase of his campaign, one in which it’s no longer so fantastical to imagine ‘President Pete.’
—Saahil Desai
*
« IDEAS AND ARGUMENTS »
(LOREN ELLIOTT / REUTERS)
1. “The difference might seem like mere semantics, but it helps underscore how different Sanders’s approach to foreign policy is from that of his competitors.”
After the Iran crisis dominated headlines last week, Senator Bernie Sanders took a victory lap by talking up his anti-war record and untraditional foreign policy. The moment gave him a boost with Americans who know little of him beyond his reputation as the candidate who rails against billionaires and supports universal health care, Elaine Godfrey reports.
2. “And this is the real reason the Trump impeachment trial will be boring: the president himself.”
Don’t expect any fireworks in the Senate’s impeachment trial: It will be mostly pageantry and a matter of form, and even if the GOP allows for witnesses to testify, they will be few and controlled, Quinta Jurecic and Benjamin Wittes write. Still, there's one figure who might introduce some surprise.
*
« EVENING READ »
(NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY, SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION; FREDERICK HILL MESERVE COLLECTION)
The Origins of the Celebrity Political Spouse
The year: 1856. The candidate: John Charles Frémont, of the brand-new Republican Party.
Thousands of men elbowed for space as they shouted for their candidate to emerge onto his iron balcony. The nominee stepped out and gave a short speech, but after he withdrew, the crowd wanted more. “Mrs. Frémont!” someone cried, then others took up the refrain. “Madam Frémont! Jessie! Jessie! Give us Jessie!” Nothing quite like this had happened before. “For a lady to make her appearance before a political crowd like this is an innovation,” observed a young man in the crowd. Disapproving, another man beside him tried to hush the calls for Jessie, but his was a lonely voice as many shouted louder. A man appeared on the balcony and tried to explain why Jessie should not come out: “Such occasions as this are apt to disconcert ladies,” he called down, but the crowd refused to leave. At last, to “a universal shout,” Jessie appeared on the balcony.
Steve Inskeep on the remarkable Jessie Benton Frémont, political spouse.
*