Doodle Dee. Snickers wrote:I tend to think that there are three main 'lanes' for the primary right now. There's the "I alone can fix it" lane which would be occupied by your Sanderses, Warrenses, and hobbitses O'Rourkes, where it's less about what you plan to do and more about your soaring rhetoric. Then there's the "triangulation" lane which could benefit Booker, Harris, and potentially (though unlikely) Gillibrand, where it's a game of efficiently maximizing demographic groups to come out on top. Lastly, there's the "Do you want to beat Trump or not?" lane, which I would see Biden and Klobuchar (and maybe Inslee, if he caught fire) occupying.
Going to have to push back on some of these:
Warren and Sanders both have lots of specific proposals about what they plan to do. Warren in particular never shuts up about them; one of the criticisms of her is that she is
so policy focused that she can be tedious to listen to. (Hello, John Kerry.)
I think Booker is closer to the pragmatic moderate camp with Biden/Klobuchar/Buttigieg than the "woke", diversity-focused one, which I think consists mainly of Harris and O'rourke plus some of the more fringe candidates. (I don't think Booker would admit this if you asked him, because he does obviously want to build appeal with black voters, but he also talks a lot about working across the aisle.)
Inslee is more of a "boutique," conversation-starter candidate than anything else. He's been pretty open that he's running as the climate change guy. If I were putting him in a lane I would group him with Yang (the UBI guy) and Gravel (the "make the DNC look silly" guy).