I cannot watch political debates without playing out in my mind what I would have said. Long before the first debates between the painfully swollen field of Democrats, I’d composed a line in my head that went something like this: “I want to say for the record that everyone here on this stage with me is extraordinary, and it gives me great hope for our future that so many talented, intelligent people are vying for the nomination. And if I may add, I make a promise here: if I am so fortunate as to earn the nomination for the presidency, you can bet that everyone on this stage with me will have a role in my administration.”
Of course, there’s a certain amount of bullshit packed into that platitude: I would be deeply suspicious of anybody, for example, who employed Marianne Williamson. But in broad strokes, I think that sentiment works. What I’ve listed here is my ranking of the Democratic candidates, in order of my preference, but also with the jobs I think they should have going forward.
1. Elizabeth Warren and Kamala Harris: President.
Yup, these two are in a dead heat for me. Prior to the first debates, I was totally Team Warren. I still mostly am, but watching Kamala Harris vivisect Joe Biden was a good reminder of her intellect and, perhaps more importantly, her killer instinct. I’m now of the mindset that, even if Harris doesn’t get the nomination, she should still debate Trump: because that is something we all need to see.
I love Elizabeth Warren and have loved her since the first moment I saw her interviewed. She makes billionaires’ bowels turn to water, and in the present moment, that’s a great thing. She’s fearless, she’s brilliant, and she loves a good fight. I think the most endearing moment for me of Hilary Clinton’s campaign was when Hilary got excited over a question posed during one of the debates, and gave a delighted smile and a little shoulder wiggle. That few seconds is Elizabeth Warren ALL THE TIME. She’s basically Hermione Granger as a presidential candidate.
I do not, however, see them sharing a ticket. I think that if it ends up being President Harris, Elizabeth Warren needs to be either Treasury or Commerce secretary—ideally with the Consumer Protection Bureau once again under her aegis. If it’s President Warren, then Kamala Harris needs to be Attorney General. That’s just science.
2.Pete Buttigieg: Vice President, or, conversely, Governor of Indiana.
Mayor Pete has been a breakout candidate, largely due to the fact that he’s hellishly impressive. He’s also a wee bit callow and unseasoned, and needs time in an office not oval-shaped to grow into his potential. At the age of thirty-seven, he has an awful lot of years to do so. Practically speaking, I’d like to see him parlay his newfound visibility into a gubernatorial run, which would benefit the Democrats more than almost anything else he could do. On the other hand, the prospect of watching him debate Mike Pence almost overrules practical concerns for me.
3. Cory Booker: Attorney General? I guess? Or possibly VP?
Cory Booker’s an odd figure, for me … I always want to be more impressed with him than I am. He’s a compelling person with an inspiring message, but he lapses too often into vague appeals to love. It’s not that I don’t find that inspiring, it just makes me wonder what’s going on behind the curtains. Early on, I thought of him as Barack Obama’s heir apparent—a telegenic African-American man with a general message of positivity, but he lacks Obama’s gravitas, and Obama’s obvious grasp of the more granular aspects of policy and history.
4. Amy Klobuchar: stay in the Senate.
Before his ignominy, I listened to Al Franken’s book Giant of the Senate on audiobook, and one of the key take-aways was just how impressive Klobuchar is. This was well before she was bandied about as a presidential possibility—indeed, at the time Franken was considered a more likely candidate—so when she rose to prominence during the Bret Kavanaugh hearings, I already felt like I had a good sense of who she was. The picture painted in Franken’s book is of a frighteningly competent legislator. I would not object to her nomination as candidate, but my general sense is that she does enormous good where she is (reported temper tantrums with he staff excepted).
5. Julian Castro: Secretary of Homeland Security.
Julian had a good debate night, and I quite like him. I don’t think he has any traction for the big job, but he’s obviously talented, ambitious, and very smart. I’d be happy to see him run for Senate or take on the task of repairing all the damage Ben Carson’s done at his old post as HUD secretary, but his powerful words on immigration during the debate make me think he might be just the right person to fix all the shit perpetrated by the current administration, starting with the radical reformation or outright abolition of ICE.
6. Bernie Sanders: take one for the team and retire.
Left-wing American politics owes a massive debt to Bernie Sanders: his insurgent challenge to Hilary Clinton in 2016 did more to move the center of political gravity leftwards than anything since FDR. Let’s keep in mind that nothing Bernie proposes is genuinely “radical” or even technically socialist, but tends to conform to the status quo of most of the democratic world. He recently outlined the ways in which his self-applied label of “socialist” applies, but ultimately what he described makes it clear he’s really a New Deal liberal. Which is not of course a problem, except that it highlights the degree to which he relishes his outsider status and relies upon a combativeness that he substitutes for policy substance.
He’s a brilliant rabble-rouser, but would make a terrible president.
7. Kirsten Gillibrand: stay in the Senate.
I have always been underwhelmed by Gillibrand, and continue to be. I think her most useful role is to stay right where she is.
8. Joe Biden: respectfully: please just go away. I love you. But seriously.
I was once at the gym, listening to a podcast that replayed, in its entirety, a speech that Biden delivered to an audience of military families who had had relatives killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. He went off-script in the first few minutes, sharing with the people there his own story of grief, of how his wife and child were killed in a car crash just after he had been elected to the Senate. Come on, people, he said, his voice getting husky, commiserating with them how useless and impotent others’ expressions of grief—however well-meaning—are in the face of such enormous loss.
As I said, I was at the gym as I listened to this, and had to stop what I was doing and face a wall to hide the fact that tears were streaming down my cheeks. And I thought to myself: this is a politician? I had not understood Obama’s decision to go with Biden until that moment, and I have had an abiding love for the man ever since.
But. He might have been a useful and possibly necessary balance to Obama’s cool, but everything Obama brought to the office (i.e. the main reason Biden is still leading the polls), Biden lacks. Even leaving aside his legislative baggage and lack of message discipline, the very premise of his candidacy—that Trump is an aberration and he can return comity to Congress—is, or should be, disqualifying. For one thing, it suggests he wasn’t paying attention during his eight years as Obama’s VP, when congressional Republicans turned themselves into unrepentant obstructionists. His problematic callbacks to halcyon days of cooperation are bizarrely amnesiac.
His choice to make his campaign all about Trump is similarly obtuse. The biggest threat liberals and leftists face—in terms of their own thinking—is to imagine that any one person is the problem, whether it be Trump in the U.S. or Doug Ford in Ontario. Simply removing Trump from office doesn’t return us to a prelapsarian state of bliss and balance. Anyone who doesn’t grasp the fact that Trump is the symptom and not the disease needs to take a powder.
9. Jay Inslee: Secretary of Climate.
So far there has been distressingly little discussion of the climate crisis among the Democratic candidates. If we’re being charitable, we can chalk that up to the fact that there’s probably a consensus that it is a crisis and requires significant governmental action, and hence the candidates understandably choose to put their focus elsewhere. If we’re being uncharitable—which I think is the wiser choice—they’re avoiding the issue because practical solutions lose traction with voters the moment they understand what the cost will be. People want action on climate in the abstract, but become far more reluctant when it means paying more at the pump.
I like that Jay Inslee is in the race as a single-issue candidate. My sense is that he knows he has no chance, but he’s determined to make everyone pay attention to his issue. Good on him. I hope he sticks it out as long as he can, and forces the front-runners to speak to his issue. Hopefully one upshot is the creation of a new cabinet position: a secretary dedicated to climate solutions.
10. Andrew Yang: Secretary of Tech.
Climate is one issue that deserves its own cabinet enclave; the tech industry is another.
One of the things that has become painfully obvious in the past few years is that the tech industry has completely outstripped government’s capacity to understand it. Some of the most cringe-inducing moments of political theatre in recent memory involved septuagenarian lawmakers asking inane questions of people like Mark Zuckerberg. The key part of the problem is how few people—both within government and without—genuinely understand the nuances of Silicon Valley. Elizabeth Warren’s plan to break up such monoliths as Facebook and Amazon is a pretty good start, but I’d say it’s past time there was a part of government solely dedicated to the tech industry, staffed with people who actually understand its ins and outs, but also—and this is a crucial thing—aren’t acolytes of its utopian promises.
Is Andrew Yang that person? Quite possibly. Whenever I see him interviewed, I find myself nodding along to a lot of what he says, while also thinking to myself that he would be a catastrophic president. Like Jay Inslee, he’s too much of a single-issue guy, but has obviously thought long and in great depth on that issue. He’s a tech dude who’s obviously developed a healthy skepticism about tech, which is the kind of thing the world badly needs.
11. Beto O’Rourke: honestly? I don’t care.
This bit is actually an edit, as I forgot about Beto on my first go-around. I think he’s more impressive than most of the field of bland white guys, but at this point? Not by much. He did a great job campaigning against Ted Cruz, and mobilizing a moribund progressive electorate in Texas, but he hasn’t shown much substance since throwing his hat in the presidential ring.
12. Tulsi Gabbard: Secretary of Defense
Hear me out on this one: she’s a veteran, and made her anti-war sentiments quite plain during the debates. Possibly someone who could shake up the Pentagon in ways it dearly needs. She wouldn’t be my first choice for SecDef, but it would be far preferable to have here there than in the Oval.
13. Miscellaneous white men (Tim Ryan, Bill De Blasio, John Delaney, John Hickenlooper, Michael Bennet, Eric Swalwell, Joe Sestak, Steve Bullock, Seth Moulton, Wayne Messam): RUN FOR SOMETHING OTHER THAN PRESIDENT.
I don’t like lumping all of these guys into a single undifferentiated category, as it’s obvious many of them have talents and intelligence not so obviously on display in such a crowded field, but SERIOUSLY. Democrats have been living the nightmare of having focused so specifically on presidential races for too long. Who’s in the Oval Office matters less and less depending on how many senators, House representatives, and governors—to say nothing of the composition of state legislatures—are the opposing party.
14. Marianne Williamson: You’re perfect where you are, don’t change.
Honestly, people: can we in all good conscience allow such a sensitive soul to inhabit the punishing office of the presidency?
it's all narrative 