Dem strategists not worried about Biden staying in place
Barack Obama’s top strategist, David Plouffe, famously had a name for Democrats who fretted that the former president would lose his 2012 reelection bid: “bed wetters.”
They’re back this summer, triggered by Joe Biden surging well ahead of President Trump in national polls, opening up leads in swing states and improbably running even in long-Republican Texas, according to the RealClearPolitics.com roundup of major polls.
That’s too good to be true, say the fretful. They’re concerned that Biden’s stayinthebasement strategy is too cautious. Shouldn’t he be getting out on the road as much as the pandemic will allow, as Trump is attempting to?
The president is planning a trip to Texas later this month, where a payoff awaits: a fundraiser with tickets topping out at $100,000 per person.
Relax, says one veteran of several Democratic presidential campaigns.
“It’s fine. He’s fine,” said Jennifer Palmieri, who was Obama’s White House communications chief and a top adviser to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign. (Well, OK, maybe the fretful want to overlook that part.)
Democrats, Palmieri said, “always think the other team is smarter than us. And so it’s like, if Trump has been outrageous, the Democratic nominee should be outrageous, too. I don’t think that works.”
Palmieri, whose new book, “She Proclaims,” comes out Tuesday, told The Chronicle’s “It’s All Political” podcast that “another Democratic nominee could be in trouble in this situation, where Biden is not.” Biden, who came to Washington nearly 50 years ago, is a known quantity to voters and less susceptible to being defined by the other side, she said.
People “feel like they know Joe Biden already,” Palmieri said.
The primaries showed Palmieri that “there is a wealth of support for him, and there are people who really wanted him as the alternative to Trump. And even though, you know, he’s not the sharpest candidate, he is not the freshest face,” voters turned out for him.
Biden does need to continue to draw broad contrasts with Trump, she said. Palmieri praised Biden’s plan, announced Tuesday, to invest $2 trillion over four years in clean energy. Trump dismissed the proposal as part of “the most extreme platform of any major party nominee, by far, in American history.”
Yet perhaps mindful of predictions four years ago that Clinton would cruise to victory, Palmieri said that “I’m not suggesting that he is forsure going to win.” (One such prediction came from Plouffe, who said Clinton had a “100% chance” of winning.)
Palmieri knows her audience in California — she graduated from Aptos High School near Santa Cruz.
“The Bay Area is filled with bed wetters,” she said and laughed.
Veepstakes: Palmieri echoed the conventional wisdom in predicting Biden’s pick as vice president: California Sen. Kamala Harris.
Palmieri said Harris would be a “a good choice” not only because the former California attorney general has been elected three times statewide by a diverse electorate, but because she got nationwide exposure during her own presidential campaign last year.
“Sure, she didn’t win, but she more than held her own,” Palmieri said. “She stood up under fire. And this (vice presidential candidate) — whoever she is — is going to go through hellfire.”
Palmieri predicted that because “Trump has not gotten a ton of traction going after Biden,” he’s going to attack his female running mate even more ferociously because “he loves going after women. And so I think that you’re going to see the race change quite a bit.”
“I have a lot of faith,” Palmieri said, “in Kamala Harris’ ability to withstand that kind of hellfire.”
What’s on young people’s minds: The top concern of many young people, according to a new survey, isn’t student debt or jobs. It’s racism.
One in four Democrats and independents under 36 said racism was the most important issue facing the country, according to a new poll by GenForward, a nonpartisan organization that regularly surveys young people in affiliation with the University of Chicago.
Among young Republican adults, racism was the secondmost important issue, right behind the coronavirus. Police brutality was No. 3 for young Democrats and independents, after the pandemic.
It’s possible that young people’s concern about racism was heightened during the time the survey of 3,133 adults ages 18 to 36 was being conducted — May 29 through June 11, during the nationwide protests over the Minneapolis police killing of George Floyd, said Matt Fowler, a postdoctoral scholar with GenFoward.
But the results also show how priorities are changing. While Black people have long cited racism as one of their chief concerns, the survey showed that more whites agreed with them after Floyd’s death, Fowler said.
“More people are starting to see the reasoning behind the Black Lives Matter movement and are making the connections,” Fowler said. “Now you have people like Mitt Romney saying, ‘Black lives matter.’ ”
The survey also found that 27% of young Democrats thought Biden should pick Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren as his vice president. Harris finished third with 17%, behind the everpopular but alwayselusive “someone else,” with 22%.