I often count boring as a positive in a candidate - I mostly prefer policy wonks :p. Sadly, I get that the electorate as a whole does not.
Ah, well - at this point, barring a catastrophic fumble, I think a Biden presidential candidacy is starting to approach inevitability. Not my preference, but better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick.
No, please, don’t throw me in that briar patch!
I’m not ready to go there yet. As he’s been in the lead since the beginning, I can understand such a view. But, assuming Warren, Sanders, and Harris stay at the top as they are now, I’d want to see where each’s supporters go when only one of them is left standing, being that they represent the more progressive wing of the Democratic party, while Biden is much closer to the center.
It was his to lose from the beginning, and I don’t see anyone ready enough for prime time to take it away from him. However, he is a gaffe machine and he is getting older. I wouldn’t describe him as feeble or having dementia, but he has lost a couple of steps.
Harris is almost there, but she allowed herself to get flustered. You could tell that the attacks were working because she was in an unfamiliar position. As a prosecutor, she is used to attacking and she looked like an amateur when she got nailed.
Booker is an Obama wanna-be, but he just is missing something. He, again, is almost there, but he seems like he just did a giant line of crank off of the podium ten seconds prior to answering any question. The dude is always amped up to the max and is exhausting to listen to. I’ll bet he would tell his doctor about his bowel movement that morning in the same anxiety filled way.
Gillibrand is just a one trick pony: women, women, women, women having abortions, women. Biden nailed her and made her look terrible for bringing up his old op-ed.
I was impressed with Tulsi Gabbard, but I think only her family has heard of her. And she’s just too damn nice to make it this cycle.
Everyone but Biden has a fatal flaw. Biden is the only one that is ready. I don’t think that portends well for Dems because of his age. If Biden was 15 years younger, Trump should be scared.
Hahaha…why I do believe references of that sort are nigh on criminal these days. Pity.
By what percentage? 0.00001% or 0.0000000000000001%?
Sanders is popular without Russian interference, Sanders is popular due to horrific policies such as a progressive tax rate on the rich or healthcare free at the point of use which all other developed nations have a version of.
The Dems probably LOVED it when Trump won the primary, and then were subsequently horrified when he won.
Looking ahead, only 7 candidates have already qualified for the September round. It’s not going to be easy for any others to reach the hurdles, although O’Rourke has, granted. These might be your semifinalists for reals:
Former Vice President Joe Biden
New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker
South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg
California Sen. Kamala Harris
Former Texas Rep. Beto O’Rourke
Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders
Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren
Also,
That makes sense and no doubt that’s the hope. I’m just not sure that a.) a unified progressive wing will coalesce and b.) that all of them would unify behind one of these three. I mean I suspect Harris for example is getting some centrist support herself as a “moderate” ex-prosecutor.
But you’re right I shouldn’t be so fatalistic, it’s still pretty early in the silly season. A lot could still change.
At this stage it’s still just a minority of American voters who are paying attention. And that minority tends to be of the type recently described as “woke Twitter.” These are the folks who are making donations and otherwise keeping these candidates afloat.
So they are the ones being appealed to with bad-for-the-general positions such as “tax the hell out of the rich”; Woke Twitter loves that stuff.
People watch highlights and commentary on the debates. If only woke twitter was paying attention, there would be zero movement in the polls after a debate.
Maybe by nothing. But they did during 2016, it’s a fact.
Yep. yep.
Tell that to Jimmy Carter, who served on nuclear submarines (but was not, I just discovered, a nuclear engineer).
I grew up in Minnesota in the 1960s and 1970s, and I pronounce it nuk-u-lar, and I assume that is because most every one around me was saying it the same way.
My emphasis. I didn’t claim “only”.
I think my point still stands. If a significant number of people weren’t paying attention, we wouldn’t have seen the bumps and troughs that happened after the last debate. I don’t think they are super important, polling changes seem mostly transient, but a wide group of people must be paying attention. Otherwise, we must assume that pollsters are only contacting a minority that tends to be of the type recently described as “woke Twitter.”
Take it with a grain of salt, but Klobuchar’s campaign is saying she’s close on the fundraising piece. Since it’s number of donors not dollar totals she can still push the send me a dollar type campaign that some candidates have used. She could even go full Gillibrand and run a small donor pay for access lottery. (Gillibrand held a drawing from among donors to have a whiskey with her.) The poll requirement is harder to influence without a lot of cash to throw around. Unless someone back in the pack found an audience during this week’s debates they may well be done.
We’ll see. If her campaign isn’t lying Klobuchar’s path to the Sept. debate probably isn’t that hard. I threw her a dollar today just to try and keep her on the debate stage.
Isn’t that the year that everything we think do and say is in the pill we took today?
You mean Bernie “honeymooned in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics where he sang This Land Is Your Land, This Land Is My Land with his Soviet hosts” Sanders?
The only Republican who doesn’t want to run against Bernie Sanders is a candidate for City Council in Berkeley, California.
Well, I served on nuclear submarines and was actually a nuclear-trained engineer, and I don’t pronounce it that way. It’s pronounced /ˈn(y)o͞o-klē-ər/.
The first two syllables of nuclear /ˈn(y)o͞o-klē-ər/ and nucleus /ˈn(y)o͞o-klē-əs/ are pronounced the same. The /yo͞o/ sound is simply not there in the second syllable in either word.
Well, you’re all pronouncing it wrong, then. (Or to be charitable, you’re all using a nonstandard pronunciation.) The second /yo͞o/ in the nonstandard pronunciation likely arose by metathesis.
As the preferred but not only pronunciation.
Regional dialects are a thing.
But as Bernie has explained many times, that’s fake news. He didn’t honeymoon in the Soviet Union, jeez. He just went to the Soviet Union with his wife immediately after his wedding and called it a “honeymoon” many times after that, until shortly before he ran for president when he set the record straight. It’s amazing, the lies the MSM will tell to try to stop progress in this country, and prop up the big banks or something. 
Ayup. And then the Bernie backers will complain about the mainstream media selling them out, and also somehow the DNC and Democratic donors decided they would rather have Trump to preserve their Wall Street perqs, so they sacrificed Bernie, blah blah blah. Anything but admit that Bernie does the opposite of packaging progressive policies in a palatable way.
This.
LOL! I cringed so hard for those long moments while she tried to get it together after being surprised to be called on. What I kept thinking of, more than Gillibrand herself, is what her campaign staffers watching in the wings must have been thinking and saying to each other.
I don’t find him boring, and I think he is the best qualified candidate running. Not only does he have excellent executive experience, but he was in Congress for a while too so he knows the federal government. He is also a former jock who is very tall and imposing. I think he would be the safest bet to beat Trump, as long as he had a diverse running mate.
I agree with you about both his pros and cons; however, I think he would pivot effectively in the general election. He would still visit black neighborhoods to drum up turnout, but the rhetoric we are hearing now would disappear, guaranteed.
There are a number of candidates running who could be very good nominees, but almost all of them are mired in the low single digits. Democrats say beating Trump is the most important thing this year, but either they are not acting like it or they don’t really understand what that entails. :smack:
I’m glad someone in the media pointed this out.
Interesting. This matches up with what I said to my wife immediately after the debate which was that it was the most boring of the four so far.
Wait, what? Gillibrand stood out in passing your “eye test”? Are the letters on that test 10 feet tall? 
I don’t see it, but my wife said the exact same thing! She will feel validated when I tell her this.