For some of the most frequently mentioned 2020 possibilities, like Booker, Gillibrand, Warren, Cuomo, Castro, etc., where would you place them on these dimensions? I’m interested more in how you think they’ll run in 2020, which isn’t necessarily the same as what you think is deep in their heart:
left vs. right on policy positions
emphasis on economic issues vs. emphasis on social issues
driven by ideology vs. driven by partisanshipE.g., to take a few examples:
In that recent NY Times story that we talked about in the Tea Leaves thread, they lump Biden in with both Sanders and Warren in one respect: Emphasis on economic issues as the party’s path forward. Biden might be “establishment” whereas Sanders is “insurgent”, but for both of them, their pitch is thought to be more on the economic side. They have all of the standard left-of-center policy positions on abortion, guns, policing, immigration, etc., but those aren’t the things they talk about first.
Whereas Gillibrand, for example, has more of an “all of the above” approach, where she divides up her attention more between economic and social issues, and if anything talks more about the latter.
Gillibrand has also shifted left across the board on policy, but she’s more of a promoter of the Democratic Party as an institution than a Sanders or a Tulsi Gabbard, and so I’d still put her more in the “partisan” camp rather than an ideologue.
The ideology vs. partisanship difference is something I also talked about here, in the context of those Dems engaging in total opposition to Trump vs. those who talk about working with him on certain issues:
His position here isn't really any different than Bernie's.
There does seem to be a split between partisanship and ideology: Gillibrand, for example, is more in the "partisan" camp, in calculating that total opposition to Trump is the smart political strategy, either for herself, the Democratic Party, or both. OTOH, you have people who are nominally more interested in advance a particular policy program, and so jettison the total opposition posture in favor of working with Trump on any issue on which they might agree. (Though that in itself could be a political calculation, just a different one from the one Gillibrand is making.)
