There are a lot of Democratic presidential candidates at the moment. A main reason for this is that the incentives at the moment create good reasons to run for president even when you have no chance of winning.* So I wondered: if I could wave a magic wand and force a bunch of candidates to drop out, who would I leave?
Criteria
To make this more objective, I'm establishing a handful of criteria for what I want the field to look like:
1. Qualification. There are two acceptable paths here:
(a) Insider Path. A candidate can hold or have held elected or military office on the level of senator/governor or higher.
(b) Outsider Path. Alternatively, the candidate can never have held elected or military office at all. Only one candidate in the field can qualify using the outsider path.
2. Path to Victory. Each candidate should be running to win and should have a plausible (not necessarily likely) path to victory.
3. Uniqueness. No two candidates can have essentially the same policies or the same "meta-message," as defined by this edition of Silver Bulletpoints for FiveThirtyEight. (I'll get back to this.)
Trimming Down the Field
The way I'm going to do this is take all the candidates and start eliminating them. We'll only use the candidates at the debates, since the rest are easily eliminated by the Path to Victory criterion.** We have:
Joe Biden
Kamala Harris
Elizabeth Warren
Bernie Sanders
Pete Buttigieg
Cory Booker
Amy Klobuchar
Beto O'Rourke
Jay Inslee
Kirsten Gillibrand
Julián Castro
Tulsi Gabbard
Andrew Yang
Marianne Williamson
John Delaney
Tim Ryan
Bill de Blasio
Michael Bennet
Steve Bullock
John Hickenlooper
Tom Steyer
The First Elimination: Buttigieg, O'Rourke, Gabbard, Delaney, Ryan, de Blasio
Several candidates (Mayor Pete Buttigieg, Former Rep. Beto O'Rourke, Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, Former Rep. John Delaney, Rep. Tim Ryan, and Mayor Bill de Blasio) fail on the Qualification criterion, since they are not seasoned enough to be an Insider, but can't claim to be an Outsider.
I want to comment on one candidate on the chopping block here: Pete Buttigieg. As some of you will know, he is my favorite candidate for president, and I'm not walking that back. For Buttigieg, the reason he's not in my ideal field is simple: he has to continue adding experience before he "should" run for president. I believe that if the incentives were right, he would be running for a position like senator or governor and coming back in 2024 or 2028.
But think about it this way: imagine your friend decides to start a business, and you think that's a stupid idea and they won't succeed. However, you still support your friend's business, and want to make it succeed, because you know it's the best business in town, and it deserves to succeed, because your friend is great. That's what I'm saying here, and this shouldn't dissuade you from supporting Buttigieg, or any other candidate I remove.
(Note: the order in which I chop candidates is somewhat arbitrary.)
So we have:
Joe Biden
Kamala Harris
Elizabeth Warren
Bernie Sanders
Cory Booker
Amy Klobuchar
Jay Inslee
Kirsten Gillibrand
Julián Castro
Marianne Williamson
Andrew Yang
Michael Bennet
Steve Bullock
John Hickenlooper
Tom Steyer
Interlude: Meta-Messages
Before I get to the next elimination, I want to get back to the Uniqueness criterion. The article I mentioned says this about the four meta-messages, and I think they're a good model:
"I think there are four major meta-messages that the 2020 hopefuls are taking. By meta-message, I mean an overall rationale for why the airbender is running and why you should choose him or her:
Meta-Message No. 1: Liberal Policy Wonk. 'I want to move the country to the left, and I have a lot of ideas for how to do it.'
Meta-Message No. 2: Coalition-Builder. 'I can unite the different factions of the Democratic Party and reflect the diverse identities of its voters.'
Meta-Message No. 3: Outsider. 'I may not be a traditional candidate, but I have a different perspective and some fresh ideas for how to shake things up.'
Meta-Message No. 4: Electability & Experience. 'I have a track record, and I know how to get stuff done — and I can beat Trump.'"
So let's return to the list, but categorized by meta-message. This will help with the process of eliminating duplicates under the Uniqueness criterion.
Joe Biden (Electability and Experience) Amy Klobuchar (Electability and Experience)
Michael Bennet (Electability and Experience)
Steve Bullock (Electability and Experience) John Hickenlooper (Electability and Experience, I guess)
Elizabeth Warren (Liberal Policy Wonk)
Bernie Sanders (Liberal Policy Wonk***)
Kirsten Gillibrand (Liberal Policy Wonk) Jay Inslee (Liberal Policy Wonk, with a splash of Electability and Experience)
Kamala Harris (Coalition-Builder) Cory Booker (Coalition-Builder) Julián Castro (Coalition Builder)
Marianne Williamson (Outsider)
Andrew Yang (Outsider)
Tom Steyer (Outsider)
The real spice is coming next week, so stay tuned for that.
–beautifulthorns
Next: Part 2
*The two main ones are to promote your agenda and to promote yourself. In 2016, Sen. Bernie Sanders did both. His liberal ideas are now a mainstream part of the conversation, and he has virtually 100% name recognition.
**I am adding Tom Steyer, since he has a decent chance of making it to the third debate.
***A lot of his messaging actually skews Outsider, but he has been a senator for decades, so he doesn't qualify for the Outsider path. Therefore, I'm including him under the Liberal Policy Wonk, where he doesn't fit horribly.