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Bill De Blasio is out. He didn't have an open category.
Democrats are shopping. They have twenty-something choices still. One fewer as of today.
I have seen Bill De Blasio on TV and in person. He is a pro. In theory he should be a strong contender:
He holds an important public office.
He is 58 years old, in the sweet spot for age.
He is new to national politics so he doesn't have difficult past votes to explain.
He is in the media capital of the country, both visible and battle-hardened.
He is pro-labor, populist but not socialist, progressive but not Bernie: another sweet spot.
He has a black wife and mixed race children, demonstrating racial woke-ness.
He is articulate and forceful.
He is 6 feet, five inches, and would tower over Donald Trump.
He got nowhere, for two reasons.
Bad first impression. The meme that immediately circulated about De Blasio upon his announcement was that people in New York City didn't support him. At a time when people know very little, consumers/voters start attaching qualities--descriptors--to a new brand. Unpopular-at-home was the first thing I heard about his national campaign.
No mental shelf space. Democratic voters have an array of candidates, and they are mentally organizing them, doing so in multiple directions. Consider how one enters a grocery store. One way to organize ones thinking is by current need: what will we eat today or tomorrow and what things are we missing in the refrigerator that we need to buy now. Another way to categorize is by food type: meats, dairy, produce, cleaning supplies, in which case we sort in another direction.
There wasn't a scale where De Blasio stood out. For example:
Who shares my policy views on a suite of issues--progressive, liberal, moderate.
Who shares or speaks to my sense of identity--college/non-college; racial; gender.
Who do I think is electable.
Who is a celebrity or billionaire or someone with a big existing brand.
Who is charismatic and makes me really interested.
There was no open category for De Blasio.
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De Blasio sounded almost as much of a progressive change agent as Sanders and Warren, but between the two of them, the "working people first" category is filled by people/brands who got there first.
De Blasio did not make identity of being a white male in a mixed-race household a big value point differentiator, and no one else made a point of it. If David Duke had gone on Fox and said De Blasio was disgusting and a traitor to his race, then De Blasio would have been noticed and would have got support as a courageous hero opposing prejudice but that didn't happen. Booker, Harris, O'Rourke, and Castro fill the category of racial mix wokeness.
De Blasio was not "the electable guy who checks off the boxes of Democratic acceptability" thanks to the bad start.
De Blasio was not a celebrity nor a billionaire with a big existing brand.
De Blasio was forceful and media savvy, and in the absence of Warren might have had a shot at being the peppy charismatic one, but Warren holds that spot now.
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There is mental room to keep track of the progressive two: Warren and Sanders.
There is room for the familiar qualified old guy, maybe too old: Biden. There is room for the young Wunderkind Pete Buttigieg.
There is still room for the black female prosecutor/senator: Kamala Harris.
This is five. Whew.
They fill the active spaces.There are some other candidates, on deck mentally. They are now understudies. We will consider Booker, Klobuchar, Castro, or O'Rourke if one of the top five becomes disqualified in some way. Five active choices and a few understudies fill all the available mental spaces.
The others are simply too much to remember.
6 comments:
I agree that there simply are too many candidates. Also, Democrats are currently turned off in a big way by a loud, tall guy from New York City.
The hit on Biden was unnecessary. I hope you will reconsider this type of comment. It is Ageist. The word "older" is less inflammatory, because it is a relative term. In our ageist culture, calling someone old is an insult, which I think you know. And then you had to add the follow up sentence to make it worse.
Why don't you just go ahead and tell us who you support? Or did miss that? Obviously it is not Joe Biden.
Your column gets me thinking about what shelf space Trump filled in the 2016 Republican primaries. I’m not going to use the word that best describes it, but it’s a Yiddish monosyllabic word meaning male organ.
I had thought that Michael Avenadi (Stormy Daniels’ Atty) could fill that role for the Dems, but alas, some allegedly questionable legal ethics issues got him off the shelf.
Al Franken would have been an interesting comic foil to Trump’s nastiness, but alas, his idea of a sight gag was a squeeze too far.
Trump’s advantage is that as ineffective and unpalatable as his product is, the packaging is never boring. Democrats need to add some pizzazz. Plain brown wrappers won’t make the sale.
Birthday Boys:
Joe was born in late 1941, Bernie was born in 1942, and Trump was born in 1946.
CORRECTION - My Apologies -Bernie was born in 1941 and Joe was born in late 1942. So Joe could have gone to high school with either of them.
I have praised Biden and said the meme of his being dotty is not what I observed. Quite the opposite in fact. I was critical of the N.Y. Times for pushing that agenda.
I like almost all the candidates. Not Williamson, who is a preacher and poet, not a real candidate.
All of those middle aged white guys kind of run together in my mind, but I seem to recall being turned off by De Blasio in the earlier debate. He seemed out of line with attacks, if I remember right.
And yeh, New York against New York would not work.
You forgot Yang in your last paragraph, who is out polling O'Rourke and Castro, and even Klobuchar.
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