John Delaney is a rich guy who bought himself a House seat in Maryland in 2012. After the state legislature made MD-06 nearly impossible for a Republican to win again, Delaney spent $4,423,738 against Republican incumbent Roscoe Bartlett's $1,362,902. Only $33,172 of Delaney's money came from small individual contributions. The biggest chuck came from his personal bank account: $2,370,556. He won a 5-way primary with 54.2% of the vote and then the general election 181,921 (58.8%) to 117,313 (37.9%). I asked a top Maryland Democrat which was the bigger factor in Delaney's 2012 general election victory, all the money or the gerrymandered district. "It was absolutely the new lines the General Assembly gave him. The money wouldn't have done it under the old boundaries," he told me.Delaney only had to spend $937,912 of his own fortune in 2014 to win reelection and just $354,125 in 2016. He didn't run for reelection last year. Instead he sold his seat to another rich clown, David Trone, and moved to Iowa to run for president.Delaney had gone on to be one off the most undistinguished back-benchers in the House, a worthless Wall Street suck-up with no future in politics. Moving to Iowa didn't do him any good at all. In his little world, it's worth celebrating if a poll comes out showing him cracking the 1% mark among voters there. It's even worse in New Hampshire, where he never goes beyond 0%. His old-school conservative platform in unattractive to voters.It's still very early in the process but it's satisfying to see that voters have already definitively rejected Delaney. And he isn't the only politician putting himself forward who voters have turned down already. So far the candidacies not catching fire-- let's define "catching fire" as getting around 5% in polling surveys-- are mostly politicians who appear most self-serving and ego-driven-- with no real reasons for running that can be seen as impacting anyone's lives but their own. Not taking off:
• John Delaney• John Hickenlooper• Sherrod Brown• Kirsten Gillibrand• Michael Bloomberg• Pete Buttgieg• Tulsi Gabbard• Cory Booker• Amy Klobuchar
That leaves 5 candidates in serious competition: Bernie, Biden, Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren and Beto. Bernie's the honest, well-liked reformer with the great platform. Biden is a hero for low-info voters looking for a return to normalcy and an Obama substitute-- or for voters who actually want a doddering conservative and corporate whore. Elizabeth Warren is brilliant and kind of the next best thing to Bernie, policy-wise. But she's faltering, possibly because she fell into Trump's vile Pocahontas trap and can't seem to get out of it.Kamala Harris is the ultimate identity politics candidate and that seems to be working for some people incapable or unwilling to go beyond the most superficial attributes in looking for a candidate to give their heart to. And Beto... something like that too, except he's a white guy who his followers want to sell as the reincarnation of JFK.So, let's see... Bernie serves a term--2021 to 2025. Vice President Warren serves from 2025-2033. AOC turns 30 this coming October. So she'd be eligible to run in 2024-- if Warren doesn't work out-- and assume office in 2025, the first woman president, the first Latina president, the youngest-ever president. Teddy Roosevelt was the youngest president when he took office (42) but that's because McKinley was assassinated. The younest elected presidents were JFK (43) and Bill Clinton (46). AOC would be 35. That would be good.
