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Tag: democrats 2020

  • From Bernie Sanders to Theo Von: These Democratic Kingmakers Will Anoint the Next Obama

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    In some particularly tortured living rooms across America, people are playing a parlor game called Who Is the Next Democratic Leader? Its central premise is that someone will save Democrats specifically and democracy more generally. Maybe that’s true, maybe another Obama will spring from the head of Zeus fully formed and serving in the Senate, or maybe it will be a big messy primary à la 2016 or 2020.

    But before asking who the next leader of the party is or will be, it helps to ask who are today’s Democratic kingmakers who can anoint an upstart with legitimacy, who can help shepherd a chaotic Democratic Party apparatus behind a rising star. Some of the faces are familiar, some are newcomers wielding tremendous power.

    When I asked Dan Pfeiffer, my favorite of the Pod Save America guys, he essentially rejected the premise of my question. “Given how most Democrats feel about the party these days, endorsements from establishment leaders are likely to be net negatives, and people will be clamoring for the support of party outsiders.”

    I heard something similar from Bradley Tusk, a venture capitalist who previously served as a deputy governor of Illinois and as a campaign manager for Mike Bloomberg’s 2009 mayoral campaign. “I feel like that world doesn’t exist anymore. Party machines are mainly dead,” Tusk wrote to me. “Endorsements typically don’t matter much because people have so little faith in institutions. The candidate with the most money doesn’t necessarily win so having rich donors isn’t enough. I think now it’s a cult of personality rather than being blessed by a kingmaker.”

    These responses capture the wider frustration with the Democratic Party, but I don’t necessarily agree that this sentiment negates the influence that powerful figures could potentially wield.

    I got much more fulsome responses when I granted sources anonymity. “I think Nancy Pelosi still plays a big role,” one young congressional staffer told me. “Mike Bloomberg and Bill and Melinda Gates. Donors: George Soros, Laurene Powell Jobs, and Future Forward PAC. Rachel Maddow.” She added that Obama is still very much a kingmaker in the party, and that his endorsement was helpful to Kamala Harris’s campaign. Similarly, a famous writer told me that “despite being old and tired, you gotta say that [Chuck] Schumer and [Hakeem] Jeffries are still kingmakers—helps to have their support.”

    It also seems inevitable that the next Obama will almost certainly need the support of a broad podcast coalition. In the 2024 election, Kamala Harris’s campaign didn’t end up doing Joe Rogan’s show. “There was a backlash with some of our progressive staff that didn’t want her to be on it, and how there would be a backlash,” campaign adviser Jennifer Palmieri said, according to the reporting by the Financial Times. But next time, the young congressional staffer told me, things will be different. “In an upcoming election, a Joe Rogan endorsement could mean almost as much as an Obama endorsement.”

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    Molly Jong-Fast

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  • “He’s Running, There’s Almost No Doubt in My Mind”

    “He’s Running, There’s Almost No Doubt in My Mind”

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    On the eve of President Joe Biden’s second State of the Union address, Inside the Hive’s Joe Hagan talks to Chris Whipple, author of The Fight of His Life: Inside Joe Biden’s White House, which takes us inside the last two years of his presidency—from January 6 to the pandemic, Afghanistan to Ukraine—and offers insight into his future. 

    Biden, Whipple says, is running for president again, age and document investigations be damned. For Biden’s new chief of staff, Jeff Zients, however, Whipple has some stern advice on managing Biden’s age: “He’s an octogenarian, he’s running for reelection. Zients has got to make sure that he’s rested enough to do it.”

    Biden was surprised, Whipple says, at the staying power of MAGA after the 2020 election and he is taking no chances, gearing up for the inevitable wave of Trumpism in 2024. “They believe that democracy is very much on the ballot in 2024,” Whipple says. 

    The following transcript excerpt has been edited for clarity and length.

    Vanity Fair: Biden has succeeded on so many levels, and yet his image remains somewhat muted, you know? 

    Chris Whipple: Joe Biden is not gonna electrify the populace. He’s not Ronald Reagan, he’s not JFK. But this guy has been underestimated time and time and time again in his political career, most recently during the midterms, as we all know.

    To bring the progressive wing of his party to the table, to keep them coherent, especially as we came into the midterms. How did that happen? He had Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema on the one hand, but he was also stuck with the other side, a very loud and very demanding progressive wing.

    I think the answer is a twist on the old expression. “Republicans don’t belong to any organized political party.” Those are the Democrats. They’re now an organized, disciplined party. And you have to give a lot of credit to Biden, but also to Ron Klain, who has all of the attributes of some of the great chiefs of staff, the Jim Bakers and the Leon Panettas.

    Biden has a new chief of staff, Jeff Zients, without that deep personal relationship that Klain had. I wonder what you think that might mean for the White House?

    He has a world-class temperament just like Klain, which is one of the attributes of the great chiefs like Baker and Panetta. He’s got all of that. What he lacks is political savvy and knowledge of Capitol Hill and those relationships, and this long relationship with the boss. He has a good relationship with Biden, but, you know, we’ll see whether he has the kind of relationship where he can sit down and second-guess Joe Biden’s political instincts. That’s a tough one, I think. There’s been much speculation that Biden will therefore now rely more heavily on Steve Ricchetti and Jen O’Malley Dillon and Mike Donlan and Anita Dunn for political advice. But I think it would be a real mistake to go that route because I think that yes, of course you can get their advice, but presidents learn, often the hard way, that you cannot govern effectively without empowering your chief of staff as first among equals.

    Regarding Jill Biden, what do you think the conversation is between her and the president right now?

    Well, she’s the only person who could talk him out of it. He’s running, there’s just almost no doubt in my mind. And I haven’t heard anybody suggest that Jill Biden is against it. If she is, then he may not go there, but I don’t think there’s any evidence that she is, and I think they’re talking about it. I suspect she’s saying that “if you feel you want to do it, you should go for it,” is my guess.

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    Emily Jane Fox, Joe Hagan

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