Talk Elections

Which Democrats in 2020 will be able to unite the country?

Someone we've never heard of.

None, the US is so polarized that it's impossible for anyone to unite the country.  Basically the two sides are so far apart that no matter who becomes president a large chunk of the country will hate them.

Jed Bartlet

There's no Democrat who can unite the party let alone the country.

The only reason we are so heavily favored is because Trump is a corrupt, traitorous buffoon. If Pence suddenly became President, we likely lose, something which likely will enter the calculations of a Speaker Pelosi.

Either we nominate a Booker, Cuomo, Gillibrand, Biden, Bullock and tick off Bernie Bros, or we nominate Warren, Sanders or Gabbard and tick off pro-Clinton voters.

Cooper is a Southern Dem who just announced that hell remove Confederate monuments. Not well knowledged on Bullock though.

Who can:
Cory Booker
Steve Bullock
John Bel Edwards
Kamala Harris
John Hickenlooper
Amy Klobuchar

Who can't:
Stephen Colbert
Mark Cuban
Eric Holder
Bernie Sanders
Adam Schiff
Elizabeth Warren

I think the only one who could would be John Bel Edwards, but he'd never win the Democratic primary anyway.
Out of realistic potential Democratic nominees, the least divisive I think would be Joe Biden by far.

Ron Wyden, James Stavridis, or Gavin Newsom seem the most likely.

Delaney LOL

Delaney has the potential to win 538 electoral votes and nearly 90% of the popular vote.

Nobody can ever unite the country. They can only cobble together a decently sized chunk of it for a certain period of time.

I think a true independent could unite the country. Maybe if James Mattis ran for President he could unite it, but I think he has no interest in being president.

Just crown that man king already and bow to his majesty.

I don't think it is possible.  A good 1/3 of Americans are solid right wing and anybody who isn't unabashedly right wing they will hate, but if you choose someone unabashedly right wing you alienate over half the country.  Likewise there is a growing chunk of progressives who want the president to be a true progressive not centrist, but the US is still a centre-right country so if one tries to copy progressive parties in Canada and Europe you will lose support from the majority.

Possibly a unity ticket of Joe Biden and Susan Collins.

I think that the Democrat would have to be someone less polarizing, and would have to accept a Republican as VP as a Unity Ticket. 

This, maybe a few other names....

Sherrod brown or al Franken probably with someone like Harris as VP.

A general with Bernie-like views is the best bet at this point.

If McRaven ran with a Warren-esque platform...

Settle for uniting the left and center.

I don't get how people see Booker of all people uniting the country. If Obama couldn't do it, what makes you think Booker can? Both are left of center black men, but Obama is by far the better speaker and has stronger working class and geographical appeal. Booker would be an awful choice for unifying this country.

The country's so divided that divisions have divisions (Hillary VS Bernie, Trump VS the Republican establishment VS "true" conservatives) so this would be a tall order.

Steve Bullock seems the best positioned, since he's been outside of national politics, and has governed a state where he can't be a culture warrior, so his participation is limited in contentious national debates. Though many on the left won't be happy with another white guy in the White House.

Seth Moulton, Tammy Duckworth, Jason Kander.

This.  We have entered an era of intense polarization, and I fear it may only become worse.  Based on current trends, I suspect the US in 20 years will be hyper-polarized, with the parties in a South African type system (i.e., racial stratification by party- there will be the "White" party, and then the party for everyone else).  All debates will eventually lead back to identity politics.  There will be debates over other stuff, like economics and national security.. but they will be on the periphery.  Sorta like global warming now- sure, it comes up now and then, but no one really cares.  I have a projected long-term electoral map for this scenario here (https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=268830.msg5769450#msg5769450).

I suspect this will be the case, boomers or no boomers, because I think some of the trends driving polarization (e.g., geographical self-sorting, social media, 24/7 news cycle, tendency of media to sensationalize stories or add a racial lens, etc.), are not going away any time soon.

No one candidate can "unite the country."  Even JBE wouldn't be able to do it.  This is something that goes way beyond any one person's ability to fix.  And certainly not someone like Harris or Booker.  McGovernForPrez is right; if Obama couldn't, then they won't either.

What it will take is some catastrophic event to restore a sense of common purpose, national brotherhood, shared sacrifice, etc., that cuts across class and racial lines.  Maybe a severe depression would?  A war on the scale of WW2 probably would, where people are being drafted in the millions, and for a minute you're thinking just about survival.  Stuff like racial tensions aren't exactly on the mind when you're landing on the shores of Normandy trying not to get shot.

I'm not advocating for a war of that size, but just making an observation.  We would need something on that scale, truly society changing, to take us out of this "funk."

Of course, we don't need to de-polarize for the Dems to win again (and vise versa).  With the right candidate, Dems can just boost minority turnout in Detroit and FL, flip them and win in 2020.

I fixed what you indited. Will we be allowed to lynch the dissenters, or will they merely be interned?

Honestly, I think the 'uniter' candidate would have to be a Republican. The division is being driven by white conservative cultural anxiety and only a Republican President could assuage it. Someone like a Nixon figure.

This is why Trump is so incredibly damaging to the US, he's blocking the rational aufhebung of the right's anxiety and is instead fanning the flames.

That's putting the cart before the horse.  Politicians don't create or drive anxiety, they are products of anxiety and the prevailing background culture that existed before them. 

Trump or no Trump, current anxiety isn't going to just disappear.  It was there before him, it'll be there after him.  Only in a certain climate could a Trump-like figure even appear in the first place.  If it wasn't Trump himself, it would've been someone else that emerged out of the woodwork.

There will be no "uniter."  I said it before and will say it again- this is a structural problem in society that no one man can fix.  There won't be some "Nixon figure," that just appears on the scene, snaps his fingers, and like a deus ex machina- all this polarization disappears.

Thinking such is incredibly naive.  Sorry, but that's the simple truth, whether you choose to accept it or not.

That was a very good analysis, you're probably right on that

You're putting words in my mouth.

Source on that, Cenk? Then I'll respond.

Aren't you one of the ones advocating a nuclear war with North Korea? As much as I hate polarization, I'd prefer polarization to tens of millions of people dying, thanks. I've already said I'd rather the Republicans control things for 100 years than that.

Also, since no one will attack us, we'd have to start it, and I'd caution the risks of turning into Nazi Germany for the sake of uniting the country. The long term consequences of such a thing are not just gonna be a repeat of the fairy tale past.

Or not, just wanted a source for your claims on Cory Booker "being a shill for Big Pharma." :)

"Leftists" don't make up a majority of the Democratic Party as indicated by Sanders' performance in the primaries, while racial minorities do. Booker's appeal to minorities, combined with appeal to center to center-left (and even pure liberals) voters, will help him carry the south, the midwest, the northeast (minus Massachusetts, Vermont, and maybe New Hampshire + Maine), and secure the nomination. From there, as Booker is a moderate Democrat, he could run a dynamic campaign on working with both Democrats and Republicans and using Trump's low approvals to help boost support with moderate Republicans. The only groups that are alienated are the far-right and maybe the far-left, but those groups can never be pleased unless someone "ideologically pure" from their belief set is elected. Now granted, this is easier said than done in a much more polarized and partisan America, but Booker has the potential to pull it off. Conversely, he has much greater potential to unite the country compare to someone like Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren could (or for the right, Jeff Sessions or Mike Pence).

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/democrats-havent-learned-cory-booker-chooses-wall_us_5879119ee4b077a19d180d45

No, I'm not.  You had two points; a) that the type of candidate that could end the anxiety would have to be a R, and b) that Trump is not helping matters by "fanning the flames."

My response to (a) was that no such R either exists now, will exist, or even can exist, and in fact, as the problem is greater than any one person can effectively do anything about, your hypothetical is meaningless, even as a purely academic thought exercise.  But I suppose, if it makes you happy, I would agree that yes, in the infinitely small probability that this messiah emerges.. even though this is all rather silly and quantifying such a thing is impossible.. he very well may be more likely to be a R.

My response to (b) was that, while perhaps true to some degree, is a bad case of missing the forest for the trees.

Beet, I think you have me confused with someone else.  I have not advocated for a nuclear war with North Korea.

Impossible for anybody to "unite the country" short of another 9/11. Each side will demonize the other side mercilessly. I give credit to Republicans who claim that Democrats would call any GOP President racist, let alone Trump. While I think Trump is uniquely bad, in a way that Bush or Reagan were not, it's true that no matter who becomes President, Democrats and Republicans will find a way to demonize them regardless.

Someone like Sherrod Brown or Tammy Baldwin. Midwestern progressives with establishment connections. Cory Booker has no chance with the activist base (Despite the borderline Republican beliefs of Blue Dog Moderate, who seems fine with Democrats being right-wingers). Same goes for people like Manchin (who's nomination WILL trigger a left-wing third party challenge).

But even then, it'd be an uphill battle for them. There are always going to be unsatisfied people.

This is absolutely delusional. This country'so right wing would never vote for Booker. We've already learned this lesson through Obama. Racial divides in America are still too large for a black man to unite the country. Obama is a way stronger candidate than Booker so if he couldn't do it why the hell could. Booker? There's no guateentee Booker could even unite the Democratic party nevermind the entire country. He's already alienated himself from the Sanders base and it isn't like he has the name recognition and popularity to get all of the Clinton voters. The Democratic party is moving left side he'll end up in the dust.

Bloomberg could unite the country in opposition to him.

"Borderline Republican" lmao that actually made me laugh. I didn't know I pissed you off that much that you have to follow me around and take a piss on Cory Booker and Joe Manchin. Sorry for not blindly subscribing to Sanders' """revolution"""" that appeals to a very small, but loud, political minority in the Democratic Party.

Oh, and by the way, this whole rise in ideological purity perpetrated by people like that Australian guy is what cost the GOP their strongholds on New Jersey, Connecticut, and other moderate suburban areas back during Gingrich's """revolution""" with his ideological purity.

Sanders also brought an interesting coalition of the Democratic doves, activists, progressives, democratic socialists, blue dogs, libertarians(particularly on the Federal Reserve, guns, and privacy/spying), and nationalists, most of which are usually at opposite ends from each other.

I don't know that many blue dogs who like Bernie.

Bernie is to Blue Dogs as Gingrich is to Rockefeller Republicans.

John Delaney (the first democrat to announce a run for the presidency in 2020) and Joe Machine. That's pretty much it.

Well put.  Completely agree.

No, we don't "need" a horrific crisis. Better one person die in Charlottesville than another 9/11. And don't forget that the country was not very polarized in the 1920s, except for a tiny segment left over from the Civil War. There isn't really any example of a crisis "healing" polarization. Usually one side totally wins and the other loses.

I didn't say the Democrats would unite the country in 2020. I just said even a major crisis isn't likely to unite the country in that way. After all, look at the Civil War. It was a major crisis if there ever was one, one side had a decisive victory if there ever was one, yet.... here we are, still debating Confederate statues 150 years later.

The last very polarizing era in American politics was the 1960s. How did that end? Well, it just sort of fizzled out. The center retook control in the early 1970s and the radicals were ridiculed into oblivion. All that's needed is for centrism to reassert itself.

The GOP actually moved to the center in a lot of ways in 2016. They toned down their hawkishness, their religious conservatism, and their small-government ideology. In every area of policy, they moved to the center, and that is why they won. It was the classic Bill Clinton strategy.

The Democrats, on the other hand, rushed to the left, and this hurt them. It is true, in some ways, the Democratic program on the left is becoming more popular-- but this is mainly in the realm of economics. In the realm of social issues, it is not so. The SJW left must be relentlessly attacked and crushed, and if it is I don't see an internal conflict. The Democratic media establishment has been fanning the flames of identity politics for years, and bear the bulk of the blame for where we are today.

Manchin cannot unite the party. If he were to get the nod, then there would be a left-wing third party challenge, likely from Sanders or Warren that would cost him the election.

Given that Clinton very publically targeted suburban Republicans (without much success), it seems more a case of her dragging down the whole party.

Uncle Joe, but he's too old.

Maybe someone like Amy Klobuchar, but I think she is too boring to actually get elected.

Well, I think Techno Timmy's 'generations/economic systems' theory actually has a pretty good answer to that.  With the caveat that I don't want to put words in his month (so please, correct me if I'm wrong TT), but my understanding is he argues that neo-liberalism essentially emerged as the solution to the economic problem of the day (i.e., stagflation), and after a couple decades of strong growth, became the prevailing economic system for both parties.  This paralleled the ascendancy of the Boomers, who coming into peak power during a time of economic consensus, naturally shifted to the culture wars/social issues.

So I guess it 'fizzled' in a manner of speaking, but I think that sorta obfuscates the fact that it didn't just happen out of nowhere, like an unpredictable weather pattern or something.  But rather it was the confluence of certain factors given the times.

I think one thing you're missing (and again, I don't wanna speak for TT here), but at least when I'm saying a crisis has to happen, I'm not advocating for one (and I assume TT isn't either).  But rather I'm making an observation about what I think would be required to disrupt the system to the degree necessary in order to change the current consensus.

Let's take Trump for instance.  Yes, you are right that his positions were not just unorthodox, but in some ways opposite from the "Reagan GOP," but consider this- first, he had to fight the establishment tooth and nail on these issues (and they still hate him), and second, I don't see some seachange in the way business is done.  Neo-liberalism as the consensus economic ideology is very much alive and well, Trump or no Trump (and quite frankly, whether Clinton had been elected as well).  So the battle lines are drawn on the social issues instead.

You talk about how the Dems drive identity politics, and while they are certainly focused on that (I won't disagree with you there), I think you're putting the cart before the horse a little.  Are identity politics prevalent because the Dems push it, or do Dems push it because identity politics are such an important issue for the base?  See what I'm getting at?  Dems push these issues because they are the issues a lot of folks in the D base are emotional about and they're the issues that matter so much to them.  Now in a world where there wasn't such an economic consensus, or where some other catastrophic crisis was center stage, then perhaps that's where the fault line would be, but since that's not the case, the fight is currently one of primarily ethnic identity and related sub-issues, and I don't see that disappearing anytime soon.  The Dems are very much the yin to the GOP's yang- they may not agree on much, but what they do agree about is what to fight over.

This may all sound very pessimistic, but I'm a realist.  Hyper polarization is here to stay my friend.  I wish it would just 'fizzle,' I really do.  But I don't think that's in the cards.

You can unite your party. You can unite your base, but there is no way one can unite the country.

Now do you understand why I suggested that Hillary should've won in 2016? She should've beaten a normal republican, while Trump would've made his voice heard akin to Fillmore '56 or Roosevelt '12 as a third party candidate. Then, come 2020, you would've had a unifying GOP candidate similar to someone like Cotton who would've capitulated to some Trumpian positions on trade, immigration and some centrist positions on healthcare.

Someone who couldn't make it out of a D primary.

Wouldn't that also imply that, if a national crisis occurred, we couldn't even agree with our interpretation of it? For example, if another 9/11 type event occurred, then we'd have divisions over the proper response (military vs. diplomatic, immigration restrictions vs. their opposition, etc...), the cause ("they hate us for our freedom" vs. "we provoked them by being in their lands"), and perhaps even the details of the event (inside job/conspiracy theory vs. acceptance of government/news reports). That similar division could be applied to practically any crisis, whether it's terrorism, natural disaster, economic crisis, or whatever.

So, no, there is no Democrat, Republican, or anyone that could unite Americans.

Bernie Sanders it the base of the Democratic party. He has 80%+ favorability & 80%+ of the base agrees with his issues. And most of the them are sensible common sense issues implemented in major Western countries around the world.

You however are an extremist. You were hailing Steve Bannon & wanted him to tame his social views & join the Democratic Bandwagon. Forget Big Pharma sellout Cory Booker (who can appeal to Moderates) but supporting a Climate Change denier like Joe Manchin automatically makes you a radical extremist. Future generations would look at such people the way they look at Ann Coulter or Donald Trump.

@ Topic - No-one. There is too much ideological, racial, cultural polarization. No Democrat or Republican has united the country in almost 30 years. And it is just not possible now. Perhaps in 2024 with a Sanders like personality, but not anytime soon.

Again context is important. You can't pick & chose data here. Minimum Wages hike won huge in ballot measures. Marijuana won big in ballot measures. Coloradocare failed because close to half of the party (Clinton/Obama wing) didn't want to abandon the ACA (The Gov, Senator came out against it, they were Dems). And it was worded poorly & financing was also not done well. There were some taxes on seniors & so on. I know many diehard Bernie supporters who opposed Coloradocare in its present form. And state wide Single payer is probably harder to implement for a smaller state especially when Dems are campaigning on ACA.

Prof 61 got 45% odd votes which is good considering Pharma spend 120M $ on negative ads & it was an insurgency campaign. None of the Dem establishment came out for it big. The Bernie wing was reeling under the loss & Sanders was everywhere, campaigning for multiple issues. Our-Revolution was not even born. 45% with little support from Dems was a good result. Next time, it possibly would win.

Change never comes in 1 day. The Tea party didn't win 1 fine day. Slowly establishment GOP embraced them. A large chunk of establishment Dems will also have to embrace the left wing ideology (Today 75% of the Dem caucus support a 15$ Min Wage as an example). Feingold didn't tun a great campaign but the DSCC pulled ads when they saw him leading big while he was up against 100M $. Clinton never campaigned for him. He won more counties than Clinton did but never had some of the high margins in core Dem counties of Clinton (those voters didn't bother & turn out to vote for him).

Progressives haven't swept the slate but I don't think they will either. It will be a gradual process & by 4 years, the Dem party will be a LOT different compared to 2016 (& it already is to a large extent). You have to judge for a longer duration.

He lost latinos overall in his FL senate race, he got defeated by the same standard margin w/ non-cuban latinos GOP normally gets (lost by two-thirds). Even in the primary, he couldn't even win NV hispanic republicans, he lost them to Trump of all people. As has been pointed out by others, Hillary purposely implemented a GOP outreach strategy her own DNC warned against, on top of that, in the states she targeted like TX and AZ she was effective in improving margins, which suggests that had she focused on WI instead, she could've held it. Hillary normalized Paul Ryan w/ her strategy.

Actually, Trump is willing to sign any GOP bill, the problem is that the GOP itself can't send any such bill to him since the GOP is effectually unable to govern due to the internal contradictions in the party, which if anything, suggests that they were not supposed to placed in a position of governance to begin with.

I'm sure you have taken a look at the actual post-election data.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/15/upshot/the-obama-trump-voters-are-real-heres-what-they-think.html

There have been a number of studies that have concluded the median swing voter to essentially be economically liberal + culturally conservative. The GOP establishment plan for 2016 was to run the opposite platform, Kasich was the only candidate who tried to rehabilitate compassionate conservatism and appeal to centrism.

The GOP establishment model was to run a hardcore Ryanite platform on economic issues, and then run to the cultural left on immigration + political correctness/police brutality issues, etc.

So yes, running as a progressive on econ issues is preferable to praising paul ryan and rehabilitating ryanism, actually.

Maybe you should look at how the GOP actually won 1920-1932, they won by appealing to hardcore nativism, which no GOP candidate was wiling to do besides Trump. The Southern Strategy actually started in the 1920s.

Those seats lost during 2010 and 2014 were mostly blue dog seats, and guess what? They were replaced by Tea Partyers. Why would seats held formerly by moderate democrats go to the hardest of right republicans? It's because the motivation for voting for those Tea Party candidates was never about their economic positions, it was about their cultural positions.

If you praise Republicans as a campaign strategy to distance them for their nominee, does that not rationally suggest that such a strategy would have outsized impact on the downballot? Why was the DNC so concerned about Hillary trying to distance Trump from the GOP?

This was a campaign refrain used in GOP congressional campaigns, and it was further emboldened by the Clinton campaign itself which suggested that 'normal republicans' were good, and that Trump was a unique evil.

To be fair, Obama inspired even more or at least just as much hysterical hatred.

He ran as a progressive populist - after he abandoned that agenda, the GOP responded with the populist Tea Party movement. You had a ton of Koch-bankrolled candidates pretending to be populists as a response. This contradiction exists to be exploited (like it was by Obama who was relatively more economically populist than his opponent) because the establishment/Kochs refused to give concessions on economic issues.

^ By the way, in 1920, Mcadoo was the progressive running, Cox ran as as conservative dem who distanced himself from Wilson and we know Davis in 1924 was a conservative as well. In contrast, Hillary was basically running as an extension of Obama, she had fully embraced his platform.

Making comparisons to 1920 doesn't work because Hillary didn't run on her '08 platform, she ran as an extension of Obama.

What I'm saying is that relative to who they would be against, they would be well-positioned. They would struggle against even centrist-adjacent republicans like Huntsman/Kasich, and Obama's team was particularly worried about Huntsman in 2012, but relative to the crop of right-wing tea party republicans, their positioning is easier to take.

^ That's why pre-Lehman Brothers, Mccain polled much better swing state wise than Romney ever did.

I think any notion of "uniting the country" has to come with the understanding that the primary electorate does not equal the general electorate, and that most Americans aren't a.) all that passionate about politics or b.) particularly ideological. Someone like Booker, at least in terms of messaging, would do extremely well with a general electorate and fare poorly with an activist base, whereas Sanders/Warren would do extremely well with the Democratic base but poorly with the general electorate.

I'll chip in and say that I think Sasse (not a Democrat, obviously) would do extremely well in a general election, particularly with people who don't vote.

If Bernie Sanders has an 80% approval rating (which he doesn't) why did he lose to a woman (Hillary Clinton) who had a 57 percent disapproval rating who then went on to lose to a guy (Donald Trump) who had in June of 2016 a 70 percent dissaproval rating?

That's a complete flat out lie! The establishment GOP has never once embraced the tea party! The establishment Republicans hate the tea party and always have.

Agree with everyone who says that the country can not be united in its present state by any figure from any party.  As to which Democrat can appeal to the electorate, there are perhaps a few out there (Brown, maybe Hickenlooper), but they have not been "out in front" of the political scene, they don't have serious name recognition.  Apart from Sanders, who I don't think can win a general election, the Dems effectively have an empty bench at the moment.  Obama could only manage to use whatever political capital he gained for himself, and the decks were mostly cleared for Clinton in 2016, and now there is just a vacuum.  At the moment, I'm not the least bit optimistic for Dem general election prospects in 2020.

Somewhat true.  Although back in the early 90s, there was a group of moderate Republicans called the "92 group" that were strongly behind Gingrich.  This was not so much because of Gingrich's ideological purity as the fact that these folks did not accept the concept of the Pemanent (Democratic) Congress and sought to win.  This group was made of Republicans who had actually governed; who had been part of majorities in their state legislatures and state houses, and who had experience being "bi-partisan" to get mundane things done that make government work because they would be held responsible if those mundane things didn't work.

The issue that really pushed the suburbs and the Northeast to the Democrats was the religious conservatism that became a GOP power base in the 1990s.  The GOP was able to win over Evangelicals to the GOP up and down the ballot, but this alliance cost them the support of secular Republicans who were conservative on economics, but socially liberal.  Even New Hampshire, a state that has always been fertile grounds for tax revolts, trends Democratic these days. 

Thank you.

There are so many people on the web who think that Trump was the problem, rather than the symptom, and that if he was never elected we would have had ZERO tensions in the United States.

Why can't you be popular with both? Obama certainly was popular with activists and average Joe's alike. On the flip side you can be neither. Hillary wasn't popular with activists nor was she very popular amongst average Americans either. I think Booker would fall much more the way of Hillary than Obama. Nothing about Cory Booker yells average American to me.

Firstly he's black so that automatically makes it a challenge for him to connect to the broader electorate. Obama did it, but even he struggled. Obama spent his entire career crafting an image which made him popular with working class whites. His success in downstate Illinois in his 2004 Senate race translated into his success with the WWC nationally. Do you really think Booker will have the same image as Obama had? Booker isn't from Illinois he's from New Jersey. New Jersey is a stereotypical coastal elite type of state. It's very wealthy and urban making it rather difficult for him to have the same image as Obama. Let's also not forget that Obama was a once in a generation speaker, and that also helped him have broad national appeal.

Just because Cory Booker is "fiscally moderate" doesn't mean he automatically dips into this magical pool of "moderate" voters. Electoral politics is more complicated than a simple battle of being more left leaning or more right leaning. Cory Booker has serious image problems which would prevent him from ever being capable of being a nationally uniting candidate. He's a wealthy technocrat and most Americans can't identify with him. There are certainly ways to change that image. Donald Trump managed to break loose from it, but it took a long time of careful planning and imaging. Cory Booker could try and shake of his image problems but I don't see him doing that anytime soon.

This sounds about right to me.

I think a Brown or Baldwin type would be the perfect nominee in 2020 for the Democrats, and I've been saying that for a while. Harris also mostly fits the bill (although she's not from the Midwest, so she could still get the brunt of "coastal elite" criticism) of "progressive with establishment connections".

No, Obama swept through downstate because his opponent wasn't a real Illinoisan; he established residence in Calumet City a few months before the election and was really from the East Coast. Check out the Chicago Tribune's 2004 endorsement of Obama to see just how out of touch his Republican opponent (Alan Keyes) really was with Illinois. The GOP couldn't find anyone who wanted to run against Obama. Also, since Keyes entered late, Obama had already consolidated his base in Chicagoland and had plenty of time to campaign downstate. Furthermore, downstate Illinois was a lot more swingy and more apt to split ballots (Bush still won the area) than it is now. Rod Blagojevich's corruption scandal was what (I think) really turned downstate red for good, and that didn't happen for another six years.

Also, a career in government hardly screams "crafting an image to connect with the working class". If Obama wanted to do that, he'd have been in the pipe fitters' union or the UAW.

Anyway, I'm not sure whether this changes your mind on Booker, but I thought I should at least set the record straight.

That is certainly some interesting info that I wasn't aware of about Illinois politics. I think my point overall still stands, though. Obama was popular with white midwesterners, and he did that through being anice incredible speaker and crafting a strong image.

Booker doesn't have that same working class appeal. He's too wealthy and technocratic. Wealth isn't so much the problem as plenty of wealthy people can connect to the middle class. It's that technocratic image that'll really do him in. American voters don't like technocrats and that a fact. Look at Gore, Kerry or Clinton (Hillary). They were all generally conceived of as being out of touch with the people. So wrapped up in the minutia of their policies that they couldn't see the real frustrations of Americans. Cory Booker will come across that way too. He's not an Obama tier speaker, and I don't think he's as charismatic as Bill Clinton. He'll even have trouble getting the activist base excited as they all already hate him for the most part.

Booker also doesn't seem to be trying very hard to change this either. He's tried shoring up the activist base by introducing Marijuana legislation, but it hasn't gotten much hype. He introduced a bill to remove confederate statues from the Capitol despite the country and even his own party being highly divided on the issue. The dude just seems politically clueless.

Joe Biden is the only one that comes to mind

As nice and likable as Biden is, no one is uniting the country, regardless of their party or ideology.

What is "unity" anyway? It seems to be a way of saying "winning elections easily." I mean, the "uniter" Presidents Franklin Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan still had four-tenths of the country vote against them.

Nobody can unite everyone, but I can see him at least uniting democrats.

Other that Brown and Biden, I think John Kitzhaber would be able to appeal to progressives and the WWC. The biggest problem I could see him having is with the criminal investigation into allegations of corruption that forced him to resign, but...

Kitzhaber's statement regarding the investigation (https://www.facebook.com/johnakitzhaber/photos/a.1675851755964258.1073741830.1675664025983031/1914780365404728/?type=3&theater)

The investigation is over and he has stated that he's willing to get back into politics. I think he will be a very strong candidate if he decides to runs.