What Is Tulsi Gabbard Up To?

1. Tulsi Gabbard

So what’s the plan here?

The Hawaii congresswoman has latched onto a strategy of alienating most Democratic Party voters in order to secure a foothold among those few she hasn’t alienated (as well as with any Republican voters who might want to monkey with the Democratic primary in states that allow crossover voting). She continued to milk her feud with Hillary Clinton—even as Clinton has long since forgotten she was in a feud with Tulsi Gabbard—writing an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal this week arguing that she could defeat both Trump and the “Clinton Doctrine.” Whatever bump in attention she’s gotten from attacking Clinton and from numerous Fox News appearances has produced a slew of decent polls that put her on the verge of qualifying for November’s presidential debate. One of those qualifying surveys, a CNN poll of New Hampshire—where the primaries are open to voters of both parties—showed Gabbard earning 5 percent. The cross tabs of that poll, though, showed that only 23 percent of the state’s Democrats viewed her favorably, compared with 59 percent of its Republicans. Maybe Gabbard can ride New Hampshire polls to a few more debates, but pissing off Democratic voters is ultimately not a good long-term strategy to win the Democratic presidential nomination. It could be, though, that running for president as a Democrat isn’t really the goal, and making a third-party run that could throw Donald Trump the election is.

from Slate Magazine https://ift.tt/2oATN3T
via IFTTT