Castro forms presidential exploratory committee

[Mr. Morden]

https://www.dallasnews.com/news/politics/2018/12/12/former-san-antonio-mayor-julian-castro-takes-step-toward-2020-presidential-run

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[Vega]

I was hoping that Ted Cruz and 2016 killed the point of these.

[Mr. Morden]

Here's his website:

https://action.julianforthefuture.com/page/content/exploratory-committee

And here's the announcement video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9EdmaN-pZ4

[Xeuma]

I don't understand why people think he'd make a good candidate. I'm not against him per se, but there's nothing to prove that either of the Castro brothers would be good candidates.

[Skye]

Someone really wants that VP spot.

[Comrade Funk]

I don't understand why people think he'd make a good candidate. I'm not against him per se, but there's nothing to prove that either of the Castro brothers would be good candidates.

Hardly anyone thinks he'd make a good candidate. Was embarrassing how the media hyped him as the 'Hispanic Obama' in 2012.

[Former Dean Phillips Supporters for Haley (I guess???!?) 👁️]

Someone really wants that VP spot.

Then he had better move to a new state and establish residency quickly. He can plausibly change his residency to MD/DC/VA (whichever he lived in while being HUD secretary).

[History505]

Here we go...

[NYSforKennedy2024]

CASTROMANIA

[Zaybay]

aaaaaaand thats 3 house members that are likely confirmed running.

[America Needs R'hllor]

aaaaaaand thats 3 house members that are likely confirmed running.

It's Julian.

[Free Bird]

I 'member when Atlas was slobbering over him and Joaquin

[Zaybay]

aaaaaaand thats 3 house members that are likely confirmed running.

It's Julian.

Even worse

[Frozen Sky Ever Why]

Absolutely garbage candidate. No charisma, no platform to run on. Beto is our man from TX.

[America Needs R'hllor]

Here's his website:

https://action.julianforthefuture.com/page/content/exploratory-committee

And here's the announcement video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9EdmaN-pZ4

A pretty low-energy video.

[Joey1996]

Someone really wants that VP spot.

Then he had better move to a new state and establish residency quickly. He can plausibly change his residency to MD/DC/VA (whichever he lived in while being HUD secretary).

Why would he do this? Unless you're saying Beto will be the nominee.

[lfromnj]

Someone really wants that VP spot.

Then he had better move to a new state and establish residency quickly. He can plausibly change his residency to MD/DC/VA (whichever he lived in while being HUD secretary).

Im guessing this is your Beto shtick and your Beto nomination assumption and the problem with a VP and prez from the same state and something about the electoral college.




Anyway also lol at Julian Castro. WTF has he even done. No huevos. Beto made a suicide run and raised millions of dollars and completely rebuilt a party. Castro couldn't even run for Lt governor.

[henster]

I know it's early but his announcement video only has 4K views and looks like 10K engagements on twitter (2K retweets, 7K likes) and he's not even trending on twitter. Needless to say I don't think he'd do much better than Delaney at this point, Ojeda may end up doing better than him.

[Spiffy]

Not sure what that creepy deep whisper thing is that he kept doing.

[Wang]

Absolutely garbage candidate. No charisma, no platform to run on. Beto is our man from TX.

I agree that Castro is a bad candidate, but how can you justify believing that Billionaire Beto is any better?

[Mr. Morden]

Needless to say I don't think he'd do much better than Delaney at this point, Ojeda may end up doing better than him.

My hunch is that Castro is more likely than Ojeda to end up as enough of a realist to drop out before Iowa when it's clear that he's going nowhere.  Therefore, Ojeda might be more likely to get more votes than Castro simply because Castro is more likely to drop out before people start voting.

And Delaney's independently wealthy, so his campaign going broke is less of a worry.  And so again, he's probably more likely than Castro to still be in the race when the voting starts.

That said, I think Castro is more likely than either of them to be invited to the first debate.  Honestly, if you only need something like 2% or whatever in the polls to be invited to the debate, then just having a Latino last name might get you most of the way there.

[Amenhotep Bakari-Sellers]

He's the ethnic minority backup candidate, if Booker or Harris doesn't run. I am looking forward, to when Harris announces her candidacy, should she do it. Otherwise, if she doesn't run, its Castro or Booker for me.

[NYSforKennedy2024]

Albeit only an announcement for an exploratory committee, the announcement video has under 5000 views halfway through the day, and his channel hasn't even reached 100 subscribers yet.

Yikes.

[Rookie Yinzer]

Absolutely garbage candidate. No charisma, no platform to run on. Beto is our man from TX.

[NevadanAtHeart]

Leave it to the faux intellectualism of Atlas to dismiss a candidate out of hand. I'm no Castro supporter, but it's really hard to be a "bad candidate". Except maybe Delaney, but that's more of a bad campaign than a bad candidate. What makes a good candidate?

Solid public speaking skills? Most politicians don't actually have this, based on even a 30 minute look at C-SPAN, but certainly Secretary Castro has a good amount of it. People clearly liked and were energized by his DNC speech. Just saying "I don't like how he speaks" is a BS way to call out somebody's public speaking skills. Plenty of people didn't like Secretary Clinton's speaking style, but clearly it worked for her. Just saying "he's low energy" is remarkably Trumpian, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but there's literally proof of the opposite at one of the largest Democratic events of the decade. He's no Beto or Bernie, but he's definitely no slouch either.

Policy knowledge? This probably isn't sufficient to be a good candidate (ex. Martin O'Malley) but it's definitely necessary so as to avoid policy gaffes and questions about experience. He's managed and governed in a city with a diverse population and was involved as the head of one of the most public-facing Cabinet departments. He probably knows more about policy than Beto or pretty much any Representative. Maybe most governors too. He's got a unique perspective (being executive rather than legislative) than the litany of Senators usually don't have. Maybe it's not necessarily more valuable, but it's hardly comparable at least. It's just different.

Background or story? Okay. If you value this, then it's awfully ignorant to disregard growing up in a single-parent household with minority parents who were themselves first-generation Americans. Like I said, there's a lot yet to be determined with how he sells it, but if background is something that matters for you, then you got it here.

Other electoral x-factors like geography? I mean, he's probably less likely to win in Texas than Beto. But where he grew up informs a lot of his worldview. So see above.

You don't have to like him. You don't have to support him. But calling somebody who wants to shape their country for the better and seems to be guided by a self-imaged "why" a "garbage candidate", a "backup candidate", and things like that is some awful combination of lazy, privileged, dismissive, and arrogant.

People always like to ask why Democrats lose despite having good policies, why anti-intellectualism is so strong in America, why politics is broken. This thread (and most threads on this site) are a pretty good example of why. They just can't resist s#!tting on somebody from their self-constructed intellectual or moral ivory towers if they don't believe the "right" things or aren't the "right" candidate. This type of holier-than-thou argument is what leads to coronations and "inevitable" candidates.

TL;DR: Wait until you see the campaign to judge the candidate.