NOTE: While I did support certain candidates in the 2019–20 Democratic primaries because of their ideas (e.g. UBI, anti-war, broad tent approach), it doesn't mean I endorse their other positions.
TaraElla: Hi everyone, welcome again to the fifth season of the TaraElla Report. Today, I will be having a chat with my friend Ashley, who is considering which 2020 US Presidential Candidate should be her favorite.
Ashley: You know, I am a bit frustrated with the current state of political discussion in much of the West right now, and especially regarding the 2020 US Presidential race. There's a lot of talk about policy, but there's not a lot of talk about the effect of specific platforms on how people can be brought together or else divided. In my view, and I know it's going to be controversial, specific policies matter less than their effect on the shifting alliegiances of people. In my experience, first as a pro-SJW left-liberal, then as an anti-SJW right-liberal, and then as a more neutral observer of everything, the people shape a movement and its response to future developments more than any specific policy. That's why, when I look at candidates, I want to focus on what coalition of people they can bring together, and how everyone else reacts to them, rather than any of their specific policies.
TaraElla: So how are you viewing the 2020 candidates? Who, in your opinion, has the potential to bring the right coalition together, and who, in your opinion, is hopeless at that?
Ashley: I tend to look for candidates who can bring together diverse and unusual coalitions. They tend to be the winning ones, after all. The other thing is, looking at history, we only achieve progress on anything when we can bring people on all sides to work together. Knowing all this, I think a candidate is only good if they can build a diverse coalition. I know many people don't like Donald Trump, but I think his victory in 2016 was just to be expected, because he could bring a diverse coalition together with his cross-over appeal, while Hillary only brought in the usual Democratic voters, also minus some that went to Trump's coalition. Of course, Trump is also quite divisive, which I think has a bad effect culturally, and this makes him unable to generate consensus to fix things and change things. Even his fans hope that he would tone down on his rhetoric, but unfortunately he just won't, and this might be his undoing. As for the 2020 Democrats, I think Tulsi Gabbard, Andrew Yang, Marianne Williamson, and also Mayor Pete Buttigieg are all interesting, because they appear to have cross-over appeal to some extent. I think Tulsi and Yang are especially strong here. I guess their platforms, their personalities, and the culture of their fanbases all contribute to this ability to build a broad-tent. As for those who definitely don't have cross-over appeal and therefore are as uninteresting as Hillary, I think this category would include Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren, Cory Booker, and honestly, most of the others as well. They're just hopeless.
TaraElla: I think it's interesting that you have brought up the role of various factors contributing to whether a candidate can build a broad tent with cross-over appeal or not. I guess we can see it in the case of both Gabbard and Yang. For Tulsi Gabbard, her campaign starts with the core message of ending the endless wars. This is a message with a very broad appeal, resonating with people across the political spectrum. Both 2016 Bernie Sanders supporters and 2012 Ron Paul supporters have been attracted to her campaign's message, for example, and Sanders and Paul are often thought of as poles apart on the political spectrum. Then there's the personality factor. Tulsi is a calm, rational and friendly person, and her speech has a de-polarizing effect on people, which can be seen in how self-identified left-wing and right-wing people often begin to get along better once they become Tulsi supporters. This is opposite to how groupings of Trump supporters often get very hostile to leftists, or groupings of Hillary or Warren supporters often get very hostile to conservatives. Finally, there's a broad-tent culture to the Tulsi fanbase as well, because her fans come from all across the political spectrum. A broad tent culture naturally develops in response to the need to get these diverse people working together. I would even say that, if you want to escape the echo chambers of mainstream media, if you ever needed a reminder that progressives and libertarians can still be on good terms these days, the Tulsi fanbase is a good place to go to.
The factors of platform, personality and fanbase culture also contribute to Andrew Yang's broad spectrum appeal. Yang's campaign is built around the idea of reforming capitalism to serve the needs of humanity, and the centerpiece is the signature policy of a UBI for all. This is a policy that has broad appeal to many people from diverse backgrounds, and is able to get them to rally behind it despite their previous differences. Yang himself has a friendly personality, and he sets an example for his supporters by getting along well with people across the political spectrum, people with all sorts of different views, people from all walks of life and all kinds of backgrounds. Being generally shut out from mainstream media, Yang has instead reached out via alternative media like podcasts and web-based shows, and he's been to many such outlets across the political spectrum, picking up fans and supporters as he goes along. This again creates a support base of great diversity, with a broad tent culture naturally developing over time as these people get working together to support Yang and his vision.
If you look at the factors of platform, personality and fanbase culture and apply this analysis to Pete Buttigieg's campaign, I think you'll see why he wasn't as successful as Yang or Gabbard in building a broad tent. While I would give credit to Mayor Pete for trying to build a broad tent, which is more than can be said for many of the other 2020 candidates, his attempt hasn't been successful in my opinion. Polls have shown that Mayor Pete's support remains disproportionally dominated by highly educated people with a cosmopolitan-liberal outlook, which may also explain why his support is not growing much. Now, don't get me wrong, I actually like Mayor Pete a lot as a person, because he has the kind of personality to bring people together. His calm rejection of the campaign to boycott a certain food outlet was Pete at his finest, in my opinion. But what was missing from his campaign? Firstly, he has no signature policy around which a broad spectrum of people can rally around. Much of his platform is generic Democratic stuff, which independents and conservatives reject almost out of habit. His platform gives independents and conservatives no reason to pay attention to him. Secondly, he has not made a particularly strong effort to bring in a diverse support base. He has not been on right-leaning media much, and he has spent too much time on establishment media and not enough time on web-based media. He also cares about what the irrelevant elites think too much, for example those activists who say that he's 'not gay enough' or 'not the right kind of gay', and doesn't seem to care enough about the fact that he is not registering among many independents and skeptics of the progressive establishment. This is why people like Yang and Gabbard are picking up these votes, but Buttigieg isn't, despite his goodwill towards working across the spectrum. I think there's still time for things to turn around at this point, and Mayor Pete should really reconsider his direction.
