Former Uber advisor: Let 'an open marketplace' pick the Democratic nominee
Instead of trying to get pundits to pin down who the next Democratic presidential nominee will be, Bradley Tusk, Founder and CEO of Tusk Ventures, says we need to have “the primaries serve as an open marketplace” and “let voters decide.”
“Ideally, all 24 candidates stay in for as long as they possibly can,” Tusk, a former public policy advisor for Uber and author of the book, “The Fixer: My Adventures Saving Startups from Death by Politics,” told Yahoo Finance’s “The First Trade” on Tuesday.
“And rather than the party or the media trying to put their finger on the scale and say, OK, it's Harris, it's Warren, it's Buttigieg, or whoever the flavor of the moment is, let the market work the way it's supposed to,” he adds. “Let the voters decide. Because if you do that, whoever emerges will almost definitionally be the strongest candidate to take on Trump.”
And after last week’s two-night debate, Senators Kamala Harris and Elizabeth Warren may be making steep gains with voters.
The latest CNN poll’s results by SSRS, conducted after the debates, found that among voters with some Democratic affiliation 22% are backing Biden for the nomination, 17% Harris, 15% Warren, and 14% Sen. Bernie Sanders. Other candidates in the 24-person race didn’t hit the 5% mark.
Biden’s numbers declined by 10 points since the last CNN poll in May, Harris saw a 9-point increase and Warren’s numbers were boosted by 8 points. No other candidates’ numbers made significant moves.
But even as the polls continue to signal “who the flavor of the moment is,” Tusk says the “reality is we don't know,” who the Democratic nominee will be. “We have no idea where the economy is going to be or what the voters are going to want in 15 minutes.”
One thing’s for sure though: “The candidates that feel manufactured because they're trying to read the polls and come up with a perfect statement that doesn't offend anybody, whether that was Hillary or Biden right now, they never win,” he says.
Marina is a production assistant at Yahoo Finance. Follow her on Twitter at @marina9527.
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