There's been an angry Twitter response to this piece by @AnnieLinskey & @mviser on Dems looking for a savior presidential candidate.Pieces like this are written every cycle so I don't put a ton of stock in these complaints. Having said that ... THREAD washingtonpost.com/politics/anxie… ...
But the notion that this unease is being driven solely by big-pocketed donors strikes me as a bit misleading. Linskey & Viser say they spoke to 17 state and national party leaders.
On the record, they quote Elaine Kamarck who is a political scientist, Rev. Joe Darby from S Carolina and the head of the Democratic Party in Dubuque, Iowa (who complains as every local party chairman does that the candidates aren't paying them enough attention).
In @jmartNYT's piece on "Dems in Disarray" he quotes Leah Daughtry, Axelrod, Mitch Landrieu, Harold Ickes and Connie Schultz (who is married to Sherrod Brown). These are deep-pocketed donors either (though they tend to be more moderate, Schultz excluded) nytimes.com/2019/10/22/us/…
The unease among Democrats is not just coming from the donor class. Again, this is probably just quadrennial hand-wringing of which Democrats are legendary. BUT Democratic Twitter is making a mistake if they simply dismiss these concerns.
It's certainly true that much of the unease is being driven by Biden's uneven performance and the fear that the party will be perceived as having moved too far to the left by nominating Warren or Sanders.
There's no doubt some of that is donor driven .. and also fear-driven. "If we look too liberal we lose" etc. Again, this is routine for Democrats. But I think what's primarily driving this is concerns about Elizabeth Warren
I think she is running a very good campaign and she's an excellent politician and would make a formidable nominee. But, she is more to the left of a usual Democratic nominee - and she has vulnerabilities on Medicare for All among other issues.
I'm not saying that the party leaders and activists who were interviewed in these two pieces are correct about her. BUT unlike Woke Twitter, they might have a better sense of what plays among voters in their states. People should listen to them. Warren should listen to them.
Moreover, if you look at what happened in 2018, more moderate or centrist candidates tended to do better. Their concerns might be wrong, but they are not completely unfounded.
So point being it's mistake I think for Democrats to simply dismiss the unease described in these two articles. There's something to it and it needs to be addressed, particularly by Warren who is either the frontrunner or the co-frontrunner.
