Why I hope Senator Warren stays in the race...Everybody's second choice.

[NNadir]

It now seems certain that the major candidates will be septuagenarians or in Sander's case - should he actually be elected as the "lesser of two evils" an octogenarian when he takes office.

This is, I think, unfortunate, since the decisions made in the next Presidential term will have severe consequences for the generation greatly injured by what we have already done to them.

A great deal was made when President Obama was "President-Elect" about his reading of Doris Kerns' "A Team of Rivals," something he took to heart, by bringing Ms. Clinton into his cabinet, where she served ably and well and of course, VP Biden, a perennial candidate for the Presidency. Here is the thing about why, in my opinion, he was able to do so: He was, and is an intellectual, one with a very human face and very little stuffiness and coldness, and not very full of himself.

It is possible that Ms. Warren might still make it to the nomination, especially in a dead locked convention, should one occur. There are probably some Sanders supporters with enough sense to support her since she is seen as being on the left, and enough moderates like myself who would be gratified that she's not Senator Sanders, that she is a Democrat.

A point in Kearn's book and other biographies of Lincoln is that he came to the 1860 convention as "everybody's second choice," and managed to beat out the front runner, Senator Seward, who served Lincoln very ably as Secretary of State.

Among Presidents who were intellectual, most have been judged well by history, beginning of course, with Abraham Lincoln, who, despite a lack of a formal education was very much one. Ms. Kearns - if I recall correctly, remarked on how men with better formal educations, notably Charles Sumner and Salmon Chase, who had better formal educations took personal hubris because Lincoln assumed - albeit with perfect justification - that he was smarter than they were, which in fact, he was.

Thomas Jefferson was a slave holder, of course, and is rightly so judged a troubling figure in our history, and yet he is still judged not only on his actions in American History as a great President overall. His pragmatism in engineering the Louisiana purchase despite his misgivings over Federal power left a legacy of a continental democracy that survived intact until 2016.

James Madison is not judged necessarily as a great President, but the Princeton graduate was a primary engineer of a workable constitution that survived intact until 2016.

John Adams and John Q. Adams have also been judged kindly by history, the younger Adams, the son, particularly after his Presidency, for his outstanding principles when he went to the House of Representatives. Lincoln knew and admired him. Both father and son have been well judged by history.

Woodrow Wilson was a racist, and perhaps something of a failure as a President, but he put the world on the path to a United Nations, a forum that has served humanity well, even if his initial aspiration, the League of Nations was a failure. He did bring America to status as a world power on the world stage.

John F. Kennedy was probably not really an intellectual, but was certainly sold as one, and at least had the guts to surround himself with intellectuals. Say what you will about his frat boy ways, he did stand down the Soviet Union.

Bill Clinton, also a bit of a frat boy, managed the country well, and came to us with a solid Rhodes Scholar background.

Finally there was President Obama, who in my opinion was hands down the best President of my lifetime.

Our choices in the 2020 election are now these: A billionaire, a bankrupt dotard snake oil salesman, a well experienced and well regarded man, a fossil who has not changed his mind about a damned thing since 1969 and can simply tell other people, much in the fashion of the dotard, what is wrong with them rather than what is right about him, and a woman, an intellectual woman with an active history of changing her mind.

That is what I have admired about Senator Warren all along: She takes a position, tests it - that's the important point she tests it, and if she was wrong her position, changes her mind.

I am not supporting her as a candidate - in the primaries I'm strictly ABS, "anybody but Sanders" and in the election "anybody but Trump - but I very much admire what she brings to the stage.

Senator Warren and I disagree strongly on the issue most important to me, the need to embrace nuclear energy as the last, best hope of the human race in ameliorating climate change; we have obviously already failed to stop it; and no matter what we do, it will get worse. She embraces so called "renewable energy" which I strongly oppose on the grounds that it is environmentally unsustainable because of its low energy to mass ration and not even, really "renewable."

Still...still...

This said, as much as Richard Nixon may have been the most criminal President before Trump - who makes him seem like something of a boy scout in criminality - it was only Richard Nixon, career long fiery anti-communist who could have opened the door to what was then "Red China." Only he could have the credibility to do that, and that opening has served the world well, in spite of Nixon and who he was.

Too much has been made of her as being identical with Senator Sanders, but I think that's ungenerous to her fine mind. It is true that her stated opinion on climate change - which is regrettably nearly identical to the nonsense spouted by Senator Sanders on this point - is an anathema to me, but it is also true that in 2008, I said the same about the candidate Senator Obama. Although he made a grievous mistake by putting a myopic man like Gregory Jaczko at the head of the NRC late in his Presidency, he also hired initially the scientist Steven Chu, whose policies were quite enlightened with respect to climate change.

Obama was not able to stop or even slow climate change but he laid a foundation at least. After he came to the White House, we heard no more of the coal to oil Fischer Tropsch nonsense that remained from the Carter years.

So I want Senator Warren to stay in, because although she is of an older generation - a failed generation, my generation - I think of all the players on the stage, she has the youngest and most flexible mind and of all the candidates on the stage, I think she may be clearest thinker. She served the Obama administration well, and her presence serves the country well.

Stay a while Liz, and chat some more...

I like your thinking.

[LAS14]

1. I'm absolutely getting excited about her being the compromise at...

... a brokered convention. She's the only one who has support on both sides.

[dhol82]

2. Well, actually she's my first choice.

[NNadir]

3. I'm fine with that. It speaks well of you.

[MoonlitKnight]

8. Mine too

And there is a path not requiring a brokered convention.

Nobody will lock it up tomorrow. Once she is on stage with Joe and Bernie the choice will be clear.

[guillaumeb]

4. Recommended.

You wrote:

That is what I have admired about Senator Warren all along: She takes a position, tests it - that's the important point she tests it, and if she was wrong her position, changes her mind.

And this mental flexibility, as well as the courage to admit that it might be necessary to change, is crucial in a leader, and completely lacking, as is so much else, in Trump

[rainy]

5. I'm all in for Elizabeth!

[underthematrix]

6. BLOOMBERG is my second choice

And y sisters second choice. And my husband's second choice and my nephew's second choice.

[NNadir]

7. Well look, I didn't mean it literally. I took the cue from the description of Lincoln in 1860.

His manager in the 1860 campaign, Judge David Davis, positioned Lincoln in that way.

Obviously there were many other second choices than Lincoln, among them Chase to Seward, for certain, but this was the rhetoric of Judge Davis as I understand it.