So, I decided it would be a good idea to go over the three major candidates on the left in the general that I'm considering voting for to see who is the best, and if Biden isnt the best, if a protest vote is actually worth it. I've done some napkin math before, but I do want to get more thorough.
Also, I'm excluding RFK from these analyses since he doesn't seem to have solid enough positions to even criticize, and given that I have little to no interest in supporting him anyway.
Metric 1
Biden- 61/100
Williamson- 72/100
West- 58/100
So, this metric is one I've used before, I've modified it for 2024 slightly to account for the spoiler effect, as I do value keeping trump out of office this election cycle.
Support for basic income- 10 points
Support for medicare for all- 10 points
Economic policy- 10 points
Social policy- 10 points
Foreign policy- 10 points
Overall ideology- 20 points
Consistency/commitment to progressive ideological goals- 10 points
Experience/competence- 10 points.
Doesn't act as a spoiler- 10 points
Without further ado, let's look at the candidates.
Biden
Support for basic income- He supported an expansion to the child tax credit which is a lot like a basic income, but is much smaller and only applied to children. Still, he deserves some credit here: 1/10
Support for medicare for all- He's an outspoken opponent of medicare for all, but he did support a public option in 2020. However, he did not seem to do a whole lot to advance this, and only did a couple tweaks around the edges. 1/10
Economic policy- Biden has been decent on general economic policy. He supports a $15 minimum wage, build back better, free community college, some student debt relief, free childcare, preschool, etc. However, he could go much further at times, and he also did a couple things like force striking railway workers back to work. Still, based on his intentions, he's largely been decently progressive, although not as far as I'd like him to be. I think I'll give him a 6/10 here.
Social policy- Biden has largely been decent on social policy. He opposes the death penalty, is pro LGBTQ rights, pro choice, and has a fairly balanced immigration policy. However, there are also some black marks worth mentioning. He is too anti gun for my tastes (most lefties are), he hasnt pursued legalization of cannabis, and he has kind of done some inhumane things with immigration early on, although those might not be directly his fault. He has given some symbolic concessions to the woke on some things, but these don't really factor in much either way as they're kind of just annoying virtue signalling but are largely harmless (thinking juneteenth and stuff). All in all, I think a 7/10 is also worth mentioning here.
Foreign policy- Here I'm really impressed with Biden. Long story short, he got us out of afghanistan, however messy of a withdrawal that was, and he's doing a great job in Ukraine. Basically, whatever policies I'd be pursuing on foreign policy, he's doing. I have nothing bad to say about him here, and only positive. 10/10.
Overall ideology- While Biden has moved left to appease progressives somewhat, he's still the candidate of "nothing will fundamentally change", and I have a mixed opinion on him. He's nowhere near as progressive as I want, especially on economic issues, and has fallen way short of my ideal political agenda there. However, he is fairly good socially, mostly hitting the right notes, and on foreign policy he's unimpeachable in my eyes. All in all, I'll give him a lukewarm 12/20, since I mostly focus on economics here.
Consistency/commitment to progressive goals- I mean, it's joe biden. He's not much of a progressive in all honesty. But he has done a relatively recent job in fulfilling at least some campaign promises, and most of his shortcomings come from congress. There are areas where he has fallen short even of goals he himself stated, I can't say he's really a progressive champion here. 4/10.
Experience/competence- At the same time, Biden is unimpeachable in terms of political experience and competence. I know people think he's old and braindead, but in all objectivity, I don't think he's senile or braindead. I think he's one of the most competent and experienced politicians in Washington, and I have nothing bad to say here. 10/10.
Doesn't act as spoiler- Biden is the presumed democratic nominee. 10/10.
That said, adding it all up, Biden gets a score of 61/100. This put him on the high end of the neolib scale by 2020 standards, and right around candidates like Elizabeth Warren and Tulsi Gabbard, who also scored in the low 60s. For reference, I gave Biden a score in the high 30s or low 40s in 2020. So he's gone up a lot and being fair to him, I think he's doing a pretty decent job.
Marianne Williamson
Support for basic income- Williamson has declined to endorse a UBI this election cycle, but still supports at the very least the same child tax credit Biden does. So she gets the same number of points. 1/10
Support for medicare for all- She supports medicare for all full stop. 10/10.
Economic policy- She wants to bring back FDR's second bill of rights and has her own version of it. She does lean too hard into traditional liberal solutions like a green new deal, welfare, etc. However, she has a pretty solid platform and given UBI isn't a central focus here as this is a catch all for everything else, I have to give her a strong score. 9/10.
Social policy- She's right on most positions as lefties are. But she does have cringe moments. Her immigration policy is more reasonable than I thought it would be. Humane, but still not for open borders and crap. Guns. She pushes reparations and the like hard. Guns, like all lefties. Still, I have to say she's an overall improvement over Biden. 8/10.
Foreign policy- I did look up her Ukraine position and she did seem to understand that we need to fight back vs Russia's aggression, but otherwise she leans a bit too hard into defunding the military and pushing a "department of peace". I think leftists often get very high minded about the military, but given I'm a bit of a stone cold pragmatist on foreign matters, I do think Biden has a much better approach here. 6/10.
Ideology- She is based in a lot of ways, she is pushing her own new deal and economic bill of rights, but we clearly diverge on some topics. Socially she seems solid but has some cringe moments there too. Foreign policy I kinda cringe with her. I also think she leans a bit too hard into her brand of spirituality and has a kind of "feels over reals" mindset sometimes. All in all, I'm gonna give her a 15/20 though. She's decent. But not perfect.
Consistency/commitment to progressive goals- Eh, I think she means well, given her spirituality and the like. And I think she will remain relatively consistent, but I could see her shifting on some things. She did in just 4 years last time she was for UBI and no longer is. So I can't give her full credit here. 8/10.
Experience/competence-I mean on the one hand, I don't think she's qualified. She seems weak on some issues, she doesn't have the professional experience to be a president, but I have to give her some points for actually coming up with such a well polished platform, so I don't think she would be useless. 5/10.
Doesn't act as spoiler- Well, she's running on the democratic ticket. As long as she wins that way she gets 10 points. If she runs third party later we can reduce her a bit, but yeah. 10/10.
Overall, this gives her a 72/100. She's ahead of Biden, but not by a ton. I do prefer her. Let's be clear. And on policy metrics I expect her to stand out more, but on a well rounded metric, eh, she has some weaknesses. Especially on foreign policy and her experience for the job. I dont think she's the best candidate, and this is where the difference between her and say, bernie sanders, is most stark. Bernie had almost the same platform, but being more experienced and more grounded ideologically, he would've gotten probably somewhere in the 80s on this metric. So we can clearly see Williamson is weaker. Still slightly stronger than Biden overall for me, but yeah, I'd prefer someone more experienced and grounded ideally.
Cornel West
We discussed Cornel west more recently, so this is still fresh in the mind.
Support for UBI-While west has expressed support for UBI in the past, he does not seem to be prioritizing it this time. He does seem to support the child tax credit though. But still, his "poverty abolition" mindset seems to be based on more traditional leftist metrics rather than a UBI. 1/10.
Medicare for all- He supports medicare for all. 10/10
Economic policy- He's a "poverty abolitionist" and supports very aggressive economic policy in pushing to end poverty. BUT, it's still more in the traditional leftist mold. 9/10.
Social policy- Seems to support a lot of the right things, and actually seems more moderate on gun control, but there are questions. What is his immigration policy? And of course he seems for reparations and the like. So some cringe there. But still, I have to say he's not bad here. 9/10.
Foreign policy- here he faceplants hard. He basically calls for drastic cuts to our military and immediately ending the war in Ukraine, which basically means capitulations to the Russians. Lefts are cringe on foreign policy tbqh. 0/10
Ideology- I like a lot of aspects of his ideology. I like his strong anti poverty stances. I just wish his policies were more reflective of mine. He's probably a little too far left for me on other areas of policy, especially foreign policy where he totally loses the plot. But I have to say I'm fairly positive toward him here. 16/20.
Ideological commitment to progressive ideals- I think west is unimpeachable in this sense. 10/10.
Competence/experience- He's very well read and very good as an activist and a scholar, but idk if I'd want him as president. Especially given his extreme foreign policy views.He also has not outlined specifics on policy, which I don't like. 3/10.
Doesn't act as spoiler- he's running on the green party. 0/10.
Overall. Adding it all up, I'm actually impressed with West. I know I kinda dismissed him the other day, but looking at his views more in detail, west tends to be strong here in terms of policy. I just wish the dude endorsed UBI. I mean he used to it seems but it's missing from his platform and given his support for both medicare for all and a green new deal, I'm guessing right away he's not gonna endorse the policy and gonna go the more leftist route. Still. All in all, this guy gets a 58/100. He scores just slightly below williamson in the grand scheme of things, but being third party hurts him here.
Overall thoughts
All in all,this seems to reinforce my general strategy of backing Williamson in the primary but Biden in the general. I mildly prefer more left wing candidates, but let's face it, the difference isn't HUGE here. Even williamson scored only 8 points higher than Biden, due to her lack of experience, wonky worldview, and weaker foreign policy. And west, well, forget it, given he's running third party and i do value keeping trump out of office, he's in last place.
Don't get me wrong, I support the left in my heart, but this time I do place value on keeping trump and desantis away from office, so given that, Biden has more of an edge than he'd otherwise have in the general.
Still, I would like to see how Williamson and West do when I focus exclusively on policy. Let's look at that next.
Metric 1.1
This is just metric 1, but with focused mostly on policy. I'm removing the ideological commitment, experience, and spoiler effect metrics from this and focusing mostly on ideas. So this one will be out of 70.
Biden- 37/70
Williamson- 49/70
West- 45/70
Here,Williamson expands her lead over Biden, and now West beats Biden. Still, given the obvious flaws leftist candidates seem to have, the difference still isn't HUGE in practice. Biden does have advantages that williamson and west dont, and even though I focus primarily on economics in my votes normally, this broader metric does reduce the difference quite a bit.
Anyway, this is still a broad snapshot. The next two more detailed metrics will focus more on domestic policy concerns and I expect Williamson and West to do an even better job here.
Metric 2
Biden- 30/100
Williamson- 60/100
This is the abridged big four metric in which I look solely at my top five priorities: UBI, M4A, free college, climate change, and housing program. This was originally the big three, but given climate change is of existential importance, I added that too. And I have expanded my reach into housing in recent years
That said, here's the weighting (max score: 100).
Basic income- 40 points
Medicare for all- 25 points
Free college/student debt forgiveness- 15 points
Climate change- 10 points
Housing program- 10 points
No one's gonna score super good on this since no one is for UBI, but we'll see who does the highest.
Biden
UBI- Biden does not support a UBI, but does support the child tax credit. I'll give him 5 points here.
M4A- Biden does not support medicare for all. He supported a public option in theory which could've probably net him up to 10-20 points depending on implementation, but given he has not made any serious moves toward that and has only done minor stuff around the edges, I give him 5 points.
Free college/student debt forgiveness- He's pushed for free community college and up to $10-20k in student debt. Kind of incremental but it's something. I'll give him 7 points.
Climate change- To be honest, I really like build back better, so I give him 10 points.
Housing program- He pushes a lot of incremental ideas for housing policy. I'll give him 3 points.
As such, counting it all up, Biden gets a 30/100. This is where Biden falls apart really. On my most precious concerns on the economic front, he's not very strong. He was around 70/200 on the old version of this, which amounts to 35/100 on this, but given the different weighting and adding of a housing program, yeah, he does worse now. So, very lackluster, but what do we expect from Biden?
Williamson
UBI- Williamson doesn't support UBI either but supports CTC. +5.
M4A- Williamson supports M4A. +25.
Free college/student debt forgiveness- She supports it. +15.
Climate change- she supports a green new deal framework, which I see as a massive waste of resources and is more about pushing a new deal via jobs programs as opposed to UBI. +5.
Housing- supports building millions of units as part of a green new deal. +10.
Overall- Williamson gets a total score of 60 points, which is about the max a non UBI supporting leftie will get under this metric. Here we see a starker contrast from Biden than the more generalized metric. While Williamson only scored 6 points higher than Biden on Metric 1, and 12 points on 1.1, here she doubles Biden's score, going from a 30 to a 60. Yeah, that's what I'm mostly looking at most when I voted in 2016 and 2020. I was mostly narrowly focused on these kinds of issues. And lefties do a lot better, even if they're not perfect. So yeah, Williamson definitely gets a primary vote on this metric.
West
UBI- West has historically supported UBI but as I noted in metric 1 his platform both avoids mentioning it, and shows signs of going with UBI's competitor policies instead. Still, he supports the CTC expansion so +5.
M4A- West supports M4A. +25.
Free college/student debt forgiveness- west supports both. +15.
Climate change- West supports a green new deal framework like Williamson. +5.
Housing- He supports a "housing for all" plan, but the details are not well known. +5
Overall- West does worse, if only because of ambiguity of his ideas. Unlike williamson who laid out specifically what she wanted and I could judge her better. West wrote significantly less and is more vague. It's very possible his housing program is as good as williamson's but because I cant know the details, West will do a bit worse here. He scores 55 while williamson scores 60. Still way better than Biden, and it's really splitting hairs here, in all honesty.
Overall thoughts
Im not sure if this metric will reflect my wishes if a UBI candidate entered the fray. The thing is, UBI is normally such an important concern it overrides the others, where the next 4 ideas are equally as important to me combined as a well designed UBI plan is alone. This is because of the philosophical differences between me, a UBI oriented indepentarian, and traditional liberals and leftists. BUT, given Yang is not in the race, and we dont have a staunch pro UBI candidate, this concern is moot.
Biden is fairly milquetoast on policy. As I said, he has supported some of my concerns. But, Williamson with her economic bill of rights, and cornell west, with his campaign against poverty, are MUCH stronger candidates on my most central concerns. Williamson makes an overwhelmingly strong case vs Biden measuring this stuff in this way. And West is almost as strong, and only loses points because, well, that's what happens when you put your entire economic policy in a single paragraph rather than allowing me to judge details. And this is also why RFK is not being measured. if I have trouble nailing down west on policies, imagine how hard it is to nail down the guy who doesn't seem to care about policy at all.
So yeah. Under a normal voter cycle, I would probably support williamson in the primary and west in the general. I can't even say that the results are within the margin of error this time. On my most important concerns, williamson and west are almost twice as good as Biden, and while not perfect they are stronger candidates. It's really not wanting trump to win and understanding that biden is at least giving us SOMETHING that keeps me voting for him. Like really, once I shift away from just looking at economics alone, Biden becomes a lot more compelling to me. But in this metric, the leftists are very compelling.
Now let's look at a bigger picture economic platform.
Metric 2.1
Biden- 40/100 (35-45)
Williamson- 58/100 (possibly up to 68)
West- 53/100 (possibly up to 68)
This metric is something that I was working on that has an expanded list of my priorities. Given I already had an abridged big 5 and this is just an expanded version of that that covers seven priorities, it really doesn't deserve its own number designation. Basically it tracks somewhat with my recent economic bill of rights, and is broken down into achievable legislative goals.
The weighting is as follows (total: 100 points):
UBI- 30 points
M4A- 20 points
Climate change- 10 points
Free college/student debt forgiveness- 10 points
Minimum wage increase- 10 points
Housing program- 10 points
32 hour work week- 10 points
Biden
UBI- Supports CTC, +3.
M4A- Minor stuff around edges, +4
Climate change- Supports build back better, +10
Free college/student debt forgiveness- Supports community college and some student debt forgiveness, +5
Minimum wage increase- supports $15 minimum wage, +10
Housing- supports incremental ideas, +3
32 hour work week- Biden has not supported it officially, but there is a bill in congress supported by some democrats, and I presume he would not sign it. +5
Total- 40/100
With the extended metric, Biden does better than with the more limited metric. Interesting. Also, did not go into this thinking he supported a 32 hour work week. To be fair Im not sure if he does, but given his party has introduced a bill on his watch, I have to give him some credit here regardless. Still, only giving half credit since I dont know which way he will go on it. As long as congress can't pass anything, it's a nonissue.
Williamson
UBI- Supports CTC but not UBI, +3
M4A- Supports M4A, +20
Climate change- Supports GND, +5
Free college/student debt forgiveness- Supports it, +10
Minimum wage increase- Supports $15 an hour, +10
Housing- Supports it via GND, +10
32 hour work week- Never mentioned supporting it, might, but unclear. Tentative 0 (only gave Biden credit because a bill was introduced in congress on his watch).
Total- 58/100
Williamson still does better than Biden. And if williamson embraces a 32 hour work week, she would get up to 68.
West
UBI- Supports CTC, UBI unclear but unlikely, +3.
M4A- Supports M4A, +20
Climate Change- Supports GND, +5
Free college/student debt forgiveness- Supports it, +10
Minimum wage increase- He mentions supporting a living wage and I could see him supporting at minimum $15 an hour, so he get full credit. +10
Housing- Supports something, but unknown details. +5
32 hour work week- Doesnt have an explicit position on it, +0
Overall- 53/100
Once again scores slightly lower than williamson with no explicit details to housing plan. Also unclear where he stands on the 32 hour work week.
Overall
Much like with the abridged metric, Williamson and West are generally speaking a significant improvement to biden. Still, Biden is no slouch. He aligns with my views by around 40%, while the competition only aligns by around 50-60% (although possibly up to almost 70%, depending on places where I'm unsure of positions).
And that's the trick with these metrics. No one is really aligning a MASSIVE amount in these metrics. Out of scores of 100, and trust me that 100 is literally just...my own platform, possibly downgraded to 90-95 if certain aspects aren't feasible (and I thought ahead on that), and the best candidates are only aligning around 60%. Not great. A lot of this is because I dont really align perfectly with leftist candidates any more and my priorities as explicitly stated have diverged as I started thinking about what I REALLY wanted this past election cycle.
If anything, these leftists are often closer to Biden than they are to my ideal. And Biden is kinda underwhelming as expected, but there still are some points of agreement here.
Generally speaking, yes, the leftists are better, and I would support them in the primary, but I'm not sure that West is really worth a protest vote. Especially when you go into metric 1 and 1.1 where I discuss my goals more broadly and include things like social and foreign policy, experience, and the spoiler effect.
Discussion overall
I think that it's clear, based on these arrays of metrics, that the no brainer option as of now is supporting williamson in the primary. She's better across the board, and while she has flaws, she still scores the highest in raw scores. She has a solid economic platform, better than Biden's, and her downsides aren't so bad that they really close the gap with Biden.
Still, by the broader metrics 1 and 1.1, the gap between Williamson and biden isn't massive. Williamson has some serious deficits in experience, is weaker on foreign policy, and all things considered, only beats biden by a relatively small margin. Especially in the broadest metric 1.
In metric 2 though, which focuses on my highest priorities this election cycle, Williamson is a more significant upgrade to Biden, scoring 1.5-2x higher than Biden does.
West scores slightly below Williamson, mainly because of his lack of policy details making it hard to know where he actually stands on specific issues, but he still also scores ahead of Biden. However, on metric 1, he does a worse job because of his complete and utter lack of a sensible foreign policy, and the fact that he is running as a spoiler. I like West's convictions at times, but all things considered, West and Biden are just about neck and neck here. As such, I will be waiting out the democratic primary and I'll make a more firm decision closer to election time. My mind says go Biden, my heart says go west. Let me put it that way.
But yeah. That's where I stand. All in all, Williamson is a clear cut choice for the primary, but the general between biden and west it could go either way and I will not endorse anyone at this time.
Also if other challengers jump in, I may try to measure them if possible. But yeah.
As for RFK...well again, can't really measure his positions, don't really care. Suffice to say he's gonna do worse than Biden and isn't really worth expending effort on.
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