LOVE. THIS. SO. HARD. @BobbyBigWheel & @Futurenow are tracking every time that Dem presidential hopefuls have helped state legislative candidates—SO crucial to winning back power. Gillibrand & Warren are in the lead: https://t.co/4fMJH3jaW5 pic.twitter.com/YOzCJwfToC
— David Nir (@DavidNir) July 11, 2019
More here from @ByMattStevens https://t.co/v2OoAfmRHa
— David Nir (@DavidNir) July 11, 2019
… The idea is that rebuilding the party nationally depends on the hard work of winning seats in state legislatures around the country. With that in mind, the two-year-old Future Now Fund, working with the progressive think tank Data for Progress, is trying to apply pressure to the 2020 Democratic presidential candidates by ranking them in terms of who is doing the most to help Democrats win state legislative races…
Future Now Fund and Data for Progress ranked the 2020 Democrats using a point system that assigned different values to a range of actions taken. For instance, candidates earned one point for boosting a state legislator through social media, two points for citing a state legislator or candidate in emails to their national campaign list and three points for appearing in person with a state legislator at a public event. Those points were doubled if a 2020 Democrat showed support for a candidate or lawmaker outside the early-voting states of Iowa or New Hampshire.
The groups started tracking candidates’ activities May 1, and officials say they will release updated rankings each month until the Democrats select a nominee for president.
John Halpin, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, a progressive think tank that was not associated with the ranking project, said he found the methodology employed by Future Now Fund reasonable and praised their work.
“With all the money and energy going in to the presidential election, the need to develop and support the Democratic bench at the state and local level too often gets ignored,” Mr. Halpin said. “This project provides voters with a good sense of who is putting in the effort to help state political voices and who is not.”…
Details behind the rankings at the link, if you wanna argue.
Paul Waldman, at the Washington Post, “The Democratic primary is starting to take shape”:
Presidential primary campaigns are not fair. Well-qualified candidates struggle to get their message out. Demagogues find a ready audience. Self-fulfilling prophecies by the media elevate some and kneecap others. The campaign is often absurdly disconnected from the actual job that a president does. When it’s over, we almost never say, “Well, that went well.”
The purpose of the whole thing is for a party not just to pick a champion but to decide who it is and what it wants for the future. And in that way, as messy as the process is, it usually works. Donald Trump really did represent who Republicans were and what they wanted in 2016, just as Barack Obama did the same for Democrats in 2008.
And right now — still with 6½ months to go before the first vote — the field of 25 Democrats running for president is coalescing into a shape…
Saturday Morning Open Thread: Gauging the Harsh RacePost + Comments (162)