More Tulsi Thoughts

I started out this cycle liking her more than Bernie Sanders, but over the last couple of months, I’ve gotten more disenchanted with her. She has some right-wing opinions, but in the main she is progressive, and she doesn’t take corporate money.

I trust her. She is something that many of the people running for president right now aren’t. She’s principled. I can imagine very few of her opponents in the current primary dropping out of the race for two weeks for National Guard duty, but she did, for the whole two weeks right before the third debate. Would Kamala Harris do that? Would Cory Booker? I have my doubts that even Mayo Pete would do it.

Though she missed the third debate (largely because she was unable to campaign) she found her way back onto the stage for the fourth debate, even though the DNC hates, hates, hates her*. While I don’t think she had the best night (it was the weakest of her three debate performances so far, in my opinion) she was still the #1 google search the night of the debate, as she has been for each debate she’s appeared in.

She may have been weak on that debate stage because she considered boycotting it. Her numbers went up in the weeks after that third debate she missed, so it seems less crucial for her to be on that stage. With the Russian bot accusation, her numbers are going up again in Iowa. She got the Hillary Hates Her bump!

Because the DNC has been so rotten to her, and because she can’t turn away from a fight, she’s been turning up on right wing media, such as the Tucker Carlson show on Fox. Because of that, she’s doing something virtually no other Democrat has managed in a long time: she’s building a profile among conservatives and independants. Because the DNC has forced her to be an outsider, she has embraced the role and is building strength in what conventional wisdom (read: the DNC) would tell us is an impossible demographic.

Considering that she’s never going to be popular with centrist Democrats, I do wonder how she plans to win enough support to prevail in the Democratic primary, but I speculate that this may not be a reason to step out of the race. She could conceivably be a strong running mate for the most progressive-left candidate in the primary, should that candidate survive. Winning influence among conservative and independent voters might make her a strong addition to a Bernie Sanders ticket.

*Another reason I like her!