Democratic Candidate for President 2020 - 2 Electability

Dear Friends,

I am driven to write by the constant media reports and conversations about who is the most electable Democratic candidate for President.  Virtually daily there is some new article or analysis in the media attempting to define "electability".  Following are just a few that I have read lately:

"Nobody Knows Anything About 'Electability'" by Peter Beinart in the Atlantic (here)
"the electability trap" by Linda Hirshman in The Washington Post (here)
"The Problem With 'Electability'" by Perry Bacon, Je. at FiveThirtyEight (here)
"Opinion: The Real Electable Democrat is Kamala Harris" by Bakari Sellers at BuzzFeed.News (here)  [I am not supporting or opposing Kamala Harris, but I found the article interesting.]
"How to Choose the Most Electable Democrat in 2020" by Bill Scher at Politico (here)

There are three things that I want to highlight from all of the discussions about "electability".

First, who a person views as "electable" is phrased as others will not support that candidate because she is a woman, because she/he is a person of color, because he/she is too far left/right, etc.  Essentially what that person is saying is I'm not racist, sexist, etc. but the rest of the electorate is.  This approach essentially means that straight, white, Judaeo/Christian, upper class, male centrists are electable and others are not.

Second, often an electable candidate is defined as a candidate who can attract swing voters.  I am sure there are probably a few million swing voters, but the person to attract is the non-voter.  The percentage of eligible voters voting hit a high in the 2008 Presidential election with about 62% of the the eligible voters actually voting.  In the 2016 Presidential election 59.2% of eligible voters voted for President. In 2016 there were just about 231 million eligible voters which means that the three percentage point difference in the eligible voters that voted represented almost 7 million voters.
Elections are won by turning out the people who will vote for your candidate.  There is no doubt that if 62% of the voters had turned out in 2016 instead of the 59% that did, Hillary Clinton would be President now.
There are approximately 25 developed countries with higher voter turnout than the United States, with Belgium topping the list with 87% of its voting age population voting.  The United States has about 250,000,000 age eligible voters.  If 87% of those people voted in 2016, we would have had almost 81,000,000 more voters.  If a candidate can get 10 million of those people to the polls, that candidate will win.

Third, the Democratic establishment has been pushing "electable" candidates on us for years.  Since the 1976 election, three Democratic candidates have won the presidency and five Democratic candidates have lost the presidency when running for a first term.
The Democratic candidates that have won are:
Jimmy Carter - age 52 when ran, 4 years as a Georgia state senator and 4 years as the governor of Georgia
Bill Clinton - age 46 when ran, 2 years as the Attorney General of Arkansas and 11 years as governor of Arkansas
Barack Obama - age 47 when ran, 7 years as an Illinois state senator and 3 years as US Senator from Illinois
The Democratic candidates that lost are:
Walter Mondale - age 56 when ran, 4 years as Attorney General of Minnesota, 12 years as US Senator from Minnesota and 4 years as Vice President
Michael Dukakis - age 55 when ran, 8 years in the Massachusetts House of Representatives and 12 years as governor of Massachusetts
Al Gore - age 52 when ran, 8 years a member of the House of Representatives, 8 years as US Senator from Tennessee and 8 years as Vice President
John Kerry - age 61 when ran, decorated Vietnam War veteran and 28 years as US Senator from Massachusetts
Hillary Clinton - age 69 when ran, 8 years as First Lady, 8 years as US Senator from New York and 4 years as Secretary of State (she was far and away the most experienced and qualified person to run for President probably forever)

What are the lessons from this data?
Democratic presidential candidates who are political outsiders win.  All of the losing candidates had at least 20 years of public service before running for President (if you count Hillary Clinton's time as First Lady).  Except for Dukakis, all had been US Senators for at least 8 years.
The oldest winner was 52 when he ran and the youngest loser was 52 when he ran.  Based on this sample younger candidates do much better.
Except for Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, all are white men, and in that category four lost and two won.
I would categorize all of these candidates as to the right of center in the Democratic Party and in that category five lost and three won.
So from this data one could say that a younger candidate who has not been in public office for very long is the best bet.

Next time you talk about the electability of a candidate or you talk to someone else about it or you read/hear an analysis in the media, ask what do you really mean by electability.  Since the "experts" continually get it wrong about who is the most electable candidate, please do not rely on those "experts".  If an "expert" thought that Donald Trump was not electable and Hillary Clinton was, there is no reason for you to give that "expert's" opinion any weight in your decision making.

The most electable Democratic candidate is the one who can attract a lot of the nonvoters without losing too many of the traditional Democratic voters who voted for Hillary Clinton.  Simply holding on to those voters who voted for Hillary Clinton and adding a few swing voters will not even come close to assuring victory in the general election.

Thanks for reading and please comment,
The Unabashed Liberal