{"id":797682,"date":"2019-07-16T09:07:31","date_gmt":"2019-07-16T15:07:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.summitdaily.com\/?p=368838"},"modified":"2019-07-16T09:07:31","modified_gmt":"2019-07-16T15:07:31","slug":"opinion-mike-littwin-tom-steyer-cant-win-democratic-race-even-as-we-admit-we-have-no-idea-who-can","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/local-news\/opinion-mike-littwin-tom-steyer-cant-win-democratic-race-even-as-we-admit-we-have-no-idea-who-can\/","title":{"rendered":"Opinion | Mike Littwin: Tom Steyer can\u2019t win Democratic race even as we admit we have no idea who can"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
Mike Littwin<\/strong>
The Colorado Independent<\/em><\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

Note to Tom Steyer: This apparently comes a little late, but you should know there is absolutely no chance that Democrats will nominate a billionaire to run against President Donald Trump \u2014 who claims to be one himself; of course, he also claims to be a stable genius \u2014 in the 2020 election.<\/p>\n

I say this as confidently as I said back in 2016 that there was no chance, zero chance, that Trump could ever be elected president.<\/p>\n

The truth is that no one knows anything right now, which is why there are 25 Democrats, many of them with legitimate resumes and at least one with new age crystals, in the race. You would think that the number of Democrats running would reflect fatal weakness on the part of the incumbent.<\/p>\n

But the real reason everyone is running is that everyone is scared to death that the obvious and glaring weaknesses on the part of the incumbent somehow, inexplicably, won\u2019t matter a whit. It\u2019s true that his approval ratings are so far under water the Secret Service should probably bring along a lifeguard. But, let\u2019s face it, if Access Hollywood didn\u2019t beat him last time, what does?<\/p>\n

There actually is one certainty in my thinking \u2014 that the last thing Democrats want, or think they need, is more candidates. The culling is coming soon. Many among the many 1 percenters, which include more than half the field, who don\u2019t get a boost in the second debate will have to give it up. (See: Hickenlooper, John.) The money will run out. And the qualifications for getting into the third round of debates seem daunting for much of the field. (See: Bennet, Michael.)<\/p>\n

You require a particularly large ego \u2014 you can put a check by Steyer\u2019s name here \u2014 to think that 24 candidates aren\u2019t quite enough, particularly when many of the the issues you\u2019re fighting for already have front-running champions (See: Warren, Elizabeth.)<\/p>\n

And another thing I\u2019m still sure of \u2014 if Steyer spends anything like the $100 million he vows to spend, and which he can afford to spend, he will make himself a factor. He\u2019s already made a $1 million TV buy in four early states. I\u2019ve interviewed Steyer. Spent a very enjoyable hour with him. He is extremely smart, obviously ambitious and eager to be in the center of things. Wasn\u2019t it just a few months ago he promised he wouldn\u2019t run for president and was still working, instead, on spending millions of dollars toward Trump\u2019s impeachment?<\/p>\n

But the news about Steyer \u2014 who was immediately hit by both Bernie Sanders and Warren as the billionaire come lately who shouldn\u2019t be allowed to buy an election \u2014 obscures the real news about the Democratic race. If you believe, as most Democrats do, that the single most important factor in the nomination is to find the person most likely to defeat Trump in 2020, the questions remain: Who is that person? And what kind of candidate should that person be?<\/p>\n

No one knows. No one. And the real worry for Democrats is that no one will know with any confidence before the election.<\/p>\n

I was just reading a New Yorker piece by the reliably great Amy Davidson Sorkin on the now-ex-British ambassador and his embarrassing \u2014 to Trump and apparently to the UK \u2014 leaked cables. She cited a cable from Kim Darroch saying Trump had \u201ca credible path\u201d to reelection thanks to his huge, unswayable base. And despite the dysfunction that defines the Trump years, Darroch wrote it\u2019s possible he\u2019ll \u201cemerge from the flames, battered but intact, like Schwarzenegger in the final scenes of \u2018The Terminator.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

It depended in large part, he wrote, \u201con who the Democrats choose.\u201d<\/p>\n

If that seems obvious, note that Darroch didn\u2019t say, with his trained professional eye, who that person should be because, to repeat myself, no one actually knows.<\/p>\n

We know who the front-runners are because we are inundated with polls \u2014 meaningless national polls, semi-meaningless match-up-with-Trump polls, slightly-more-meaningful early-state polls. But taken together \u2014 as you can see on, say, Real Clear Politics \u2014 the top tier is clearly Joe Biden, Sanders, Warren and Kamala Harris. The second tier seems to be (on some days more than others) some combination of Pete Buttigieg, Amy Klobuchar, Juli\u00e1n Castro, Cory Booker and Beto O\u2019Rourke. And then everyone else.<\/p>\n

All the so-called front-runners are running ahead of Trump or are basically even in head-to-head polling, which should give no one comfort. Forget the electability issue, which usually goes something like this: How could a woman win when Hillary lost? I mean, how many men have lost? But there is this: Trump isn\u2019t running against any of them yet. With the big field, the right-wing noise machine hasn\u2019t settled on anyone. The Russian bots haven\u2019t geared up. The deepfakes are still in the planning stages. And ask yourself, is the fact that Biden\u2019s lead has been shrinking due to Biden\u2019s poor debate showing and his somewhat problematic Senate past or is that Trump has reserved most of his Twitter invective, to this point, for him?<\/p>\n

The Dems, meanwhile, are divided, which is natural, and not simply because they\u2019re Democrats, although you can\u2019t discount it. Again, a lot of it is about electability. Would impeaching Trump help or hurt in 2020? Can you afford to call for impeachment \u2014 as Nancy Pelosi warns \u2014 if you think it will hurt Democrats in the long run, with Trump getting to claim vindication if the Senate, as it would, fails to convict him? Or, how could you credibly say that Trump\u2019s tenure is a long assault on our democracy without impeaching him?<\/p>\n

But here\u2019s where the argument gets weird. Nearly every Democrat running for president is calling for Treasury Secretary Alex Acosta to resign with news of his role in the sweetheart deal given Jeffrey Epstein, the serial abuser of underage girls, back in 2007. But Pelosi, who strongly calls for Acosta\u2019s resignation, also says it\u2019s up to the president to deal with him. Because \u2014 and here\u2019s the catch \u2014 how can she impeach Acosta for what she called an \u201cunconscionable\u201d deal if she refuses to impeach Trump for his unconscionable conduct?<\/p>\n

And that\u2019s where we are. And here\u2019s a prediction: It won\u2019t get any easier from here.<\/p>\n

Mike Littwin writes the biweekly column \u201cFair and Unbalanced\u201d for The Colorado Independent. He previously worked at The Denver Post, Rocky Mountain News, Los Angeles Times and Baltimore Sun. Contact him at<\/em> mike@coloradoindependent.com<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

via:: Summit Daily<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mike LittwinThe Colorado Independent Note to Tom Steyer: This apparently comes a little late, but you should know there is absolutely no chance that Democrats will nominate a billionaire to run against President Donald Trump \u2014 who claims to be one himself; of course, he also claims to be a stable genius \u2014 in the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[99],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-797682","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-local-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-18 00:30:18","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSMT The Mountain","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/797682","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=797682"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/797682\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=797682"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=797682"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=797682"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}