DEMS/ELECTION/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “Democrats across the Midwest are opting for a conventional cast of technocrats and long-time public officials in the party’s first response to Donald Trump’s 2016 victories — a rebuttal of sorts to the party’s lunge leftward in the run-up to 2020. It began with the governor’s race in Ohio in May, when Democratic voters picked Richard Cordray, the former head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, over the leftist firebrand Dennis Kucinich. Later, a businessman and former state Senate leader won primary contests in Iowa and Michigan, respectively. And in Minnesota and Wisconsin on Tuesday [8-14-18], Democrats pinned their prospects on Tim Walz, a six-term congressman from Minnesota, and Tony Evers, Wisconsin’s 66-year-old state education superintendent in those states’ gubernatorial contests. Two years after a bombastic Trump swept through the upper Midwest, Democrats are arming themselves with general election candidates widely considered palatable to a broader electorate than the party’s progressive base. In the run-up to the 2020 presidential election, their victories serve as a reminder of the weight that establishment credentials still carry in the Midwest.”
–David Siders, “Midwest Democrats’ answer to Trump: White, conventional and boring,” Politico, August 15, 2018 5:29 am