Candidate John Delaney

John Delaney

     "Guess what, my friends. The United States of America is a gigantic purple district. The 2020 election will be won in the center." 

John Delaney is running for president and he has been doing so for over a year. He has a plan to win: the Early State Strategy.

I have followed John Delaney around in New Hampshire for two days. He went to six different small towns in New Hampshire on Monday. At noon, he was 70 miles north of Manchester, in the “North Country” where the ponds were frozen over on April 15. North Conway New Hampshire is two hours and ten minutes up country roads from Manchester, the population center of the state. He spoke to 23 people. Then, later that afternoon he raced for an hour down to Plymouth State College, where I saw him again.  He finished his public schedule back up in the North Country.

Delaney's Early State Strategy has required 71 days like this one, so far. He isn't giving audiences quick, memorable sound bites. He gives complex, informed answers to policy questions. He is informative and persuasive, but not oratorial. He speaks of policy solutions to American problems. 

Health care: Universal yes. Medicare for All, no, because it would provide insufficient income to preserve our health care system.

Climate: A four part program, including a carbon tax with the proceeds rebated progressively back to the people, and creating a market in carbon recapture.

Immigration: Comprehensive reform, a path to citizenship, and assistance to the source of crisis amnesty-seeking immigrants, the Central American countries in crisis.

He is earning New Hampshire votes, but it will take more than meeting twenty people at a time, six times a day. He needs to exite and inspire people so they go home and say "this guy is the one" and my sense of the audiences was that this was not happening. They liked him. They respected him. He gave direct answers to questions. 

He is doing what people say they want--a straight shooting leader with real answers to real problems--but in the current political/media environment it isn't what people watch on TV or show up in multitudes to see. He would be a safe choice, but he might not be their first choice, either in contributions, what they tell polls, or who they vote for.  

That may not be what will win primary election votes. People have so many choices they get to pick someone with a clear, distinct niche. He well isn’t known, and he doesn’t have a natural identity-constituency nor an obvious issue-constituency. Jay Inslee has climate, Bernie has the progressive socialists. Warren has financial corruption, Harris has California and black and female. Beto O'Rourke and Pete Buttigieg may have a better shot at the Millennial vote. The students at Plymouth State college told me about who had been to the campus so far, eight or ten names so far.  Faces lit up when listing Beto O’Rourke. “He’s all over social media, he is young, exciting, we relate to him,” the students told me.

He does not need to be the first place finisher in New Hampshire. In 2016 Trump won the New Hampshire primary with 100,000 votes. John Kasich and Ted Cruz came in next with just under 50,000 votes. The Democratic scrum will have been whittled down by January, 2020, and Delaney has the capacity to stay in the race until then. He can self fund. He was a very successful entrepreneur who brought 2 companies public.  Wikipedia estimates his net worth at perhaps $250 million dollars. 

But to be a viable candidate at some point he needs to be the candidate that people call their first choice and vote for and he probably needs 25,000 of them to be in that first tier of candidates who get real attention. The students meeting Delaney said that when Beto O'Rourke came there were 100 attendees. When Elizabeth Warren came there were 300 attendees. They had star power. They were celebrities. People the students had seen on TV. John Delaney isn't there yet.

Plymouth State gathering

Delaney calls himself a "practical idealist." That covers both bases of the fractured Democratic electorate, where some people are looking for a hell-raising populist, and others a someone who seems safe, unifying, and able to govern. If he gets noticed, he has a message that fits the moment.

Delaney's strengths and weaknesses were revealed in this meeting with Plymouth State students. He handed the retail politics well, greeted them warmly, remembered their names, sat at their level, and treated them like the serious voters they are. 

They were interested in the college affordability issue, but he didn't give the answer proposed by Bernie Sanders, that public college should be free. That would have been clear and memorable. They could have told their friends what he said: "free college, great guy."

Instead, he he addressed this issue like the complex, three part issue it is. 

1. He said we should start education earlier, with early childhood education. We should also make community college free for two years. In short, America should realize in the current era we should not have K-12, but instead have pre-K through 14. Added to that, he said, we should reduce loan interest rates down to the government's actual cost of money, currently 2 to 3 percent, instead of the current 7 to 9 percent. That would make a signification reduction in costs, but would not make it free. Free, he said, would create the perverse incentive for college attendance by people who would be better served by learning direct job skills in apprenticeships or something other than college. Plus, he said, students should have "skin in the game." 

2. And these changes would have one other addition, a program of voluntary gap year national service, which would provide tuition scholarships as a benefit. He explained his gap year proposal.

3. He then explained the some of the causes of high costs of education, with the expansion of administrative personnel at colleges, technology requirements, the need for institutional assets to meet matching fund requirements for science department grants, all issues that he said were significant. Still, he said he was reluctant to second guess college administrators and say they costs were necessarily out of line.

I consider his message thorough, responsible, and reasonable, the kind of answer someone would give if their goal was sound governance.  However, it is complex, tedious to summarize even here, and not one likely to make him the memorable and favorite candidate. 

No one stood up and cheered. It doesn't fit on a bumper sticker. It isn't mentally "sticky." 

At the conclusion of the fourth meeting in 2 days he approached me in the hallway and asked me how I thought he had done. I answered honestly, that I found him very impressive but that he had a problem. He isn't personally distinctive, and he isn't presenting an exciting, mentally sticky idea that will drive up enthusiasm. Maybe you will get lucky, I said, and Donald Trump will turn on you and criticize you bitterly. Then people would give you the attention you deserve.

Here are three links to John Delaney videos. Watch to get a feel for his message and style:

Delaney on immigration: 2 minutes

Delaney path to victory through the center: 2 minutes

Delaney: Why I am running: 3 minutes


Tomorrow: a report on Jay Inslee, who met with environmental groups in Hollis, New Hampshire.