What do you think I’m talking about? Yes, her performance in her Senate race may be a bad sign for a Presidential run. Well, it is a bad sign but not the only thing to think about.
You called that “another”. It is not another. It is the same claim. 538 alluded to it.
And 89 percent of her own state wants someone else to be the nominee. People, this isn’t hard. Nominating her would be a colossal blunder. Make her Labor Sec’y or something.
Not quite. The 538 article was focused on incumbent advantage, ranking Warren last, the CNN article was talking about all the candidates, placing her 6th from the bottom. Are you saying they used the exact same formula to reach their conclusions (538 says they did their own calculations)? Is an incumbency advantage of -14 the exact same as saying she should have won by 7 more points?
If you mean they are both analyzing the same election results, then yes I get that.
I don’t think there’s any way of slicing those numbers that doesn’t lead to the conclusion that she’s not very good at winning elections. She’s good enough, for a Democrat in Massachusetts, but that’s not good enough for a nationwide race.
Which is a shame, as she’s in the top two, probably #1, for my magic wand choice (i.e., if I could wave a magic wand and make the person of my choice President, who would it be). But I don’t have a magic wand, and whomever I help pick in the primaries will still have to go up against Trump.
Very well said!
BTW, if I were a Democratic bigwig in Massachusetts I would not be at all unhappy about having her as Senate nominee. I think it’s good not to “waste” extra Democratic votes in a deep blue state. Put someone in there who can win 60%, but they don’t have to win 70%. Get more progressive value out of the opportunity. But that is quite different from choosing a presidential nominee.
CNN is airing ads for…its coverage of the draw to determine which candidates will appear on which nights in the July 30/31 debates. The list of candidates will be announced on Wednesday, and the draw covered live (presumably) at 8 PM Eastern on Thursday.
I’ve heard that the procedure for determining which candidates are on which nights has been leaked:
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Each candidate’s name will be placed on one of 20 balls.
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The 20 balls will be placed into a bowl or other receptacle from which one ball at a time can be drawn randomly.
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Each of the 20 balls will be drawn, one at a time; the candidates on the first, third, fifth, and so on balls will debate on July 30, and the candidates on the second, fourth, sixth, and so on balls will debate on July 31.
The - hold on…what? I did what? Oh, I knew I forgot something…
- CNN, in possible cooperation with the Democratic National Committee, will keep the balls in temperature-controlled environments prior to the draw. Yes, that says “environments,” as in “plural,” as in, “The balls representing Biden, Sanders, and Warren will be kept much colder than the others, to make it easier for the person performing the draw to identify them by touch,” as in, “Did you really think they would keep the three of them separate this time?”
BTW, in a fair draw, there is a 4/19 chance that the three of them are on the same night, and a 5/19 chance that any particular pair of them are together without the third one.
Exact same? No, obviously as they have different results. And CNN does’t give their formula. But neither addresses the issue that makes me dismiss that particular bit of data as anything very meaningful. My WAG is that actually did use almost the exact same formula but made different assumptions for how to determine “partisan lean”
But the CNN article is the only one who is actually making the argument that the lack of an incumbency advantage in her last election by that measure is a sign of weakness for the a general presidential run. 538 references that as a possibility, as raised in the CNN article, but does not actually advance that argument itself.
And again, there is other home state evidence that gives me greater pause and that I see as of greater significance, with similar sorts of evidence for Harris. Neither has home state voters exactly rushing to say how great they’d be as president. Each has home state voters so far choosing others first.
Let me ask my question more broadly, and this is ONLY to those who currently would choose Biden is their primary was today: Who is your second choice and why? If something happened to him, struck by lightening, turned into a frog and didn’t get better, whatever, and he was no longer a viable choice, who would you choose?
I grant him one sub-par debate performance as he figures the balance between showing how he can fight and not wanting to scrum in “the circular firing squad”, knowing that he will be criticized for hitting back or for not hitting back both. But he has to demonstrate he some fire and if does not then I need someone else I can vote for. Of the others Warren has the best case to make, in my mind.
I’ve said it before: Anyone who is sponsoring a debate should just invite whichever candidates they think are worth serious consideration, arranged however they think is appropriate given their assessments of the candidates. And they should do this perfectly openly, and without any more justification than they feel like giving. Anyone who doesn’t like this, is perfectly free to sponsor their own debates, with blackjack and hookers.
I understand people’s frustration with the large field but comments like this are silly. If a network wants to host a DNC sanctioned debate, they have to work with the DNC’s rules.
In fact, forget the debate and the blackjack!
I don’t get why CNN or the DNC would bother rigging a contest that is wholly unnecessary in the first place.
If the DNC’s rules prohibit any sort of favoritism, then they should change those rules. The DNC is an inherently political organization, and there’s nothing to be gained by pretending that they’re not.
Why even have primaries then? Just as the wise men of NBC can pick which candidates are “real”, so could the DNC.
sounds like they are going to use the cold technique that was alleged to be the way Patrick Ewing was sent to the Knicks in the rigged NBA draft lottery
What I’d like would be for the party to winnow down the candidates to a reasonable number of serious contenders, and then for the voters to choose from among them. And if the party makes bad choices in that first cut, then the solution is to form a new party (or at least, replace enough of the decision-makers in the current one).
Isn’t that pretty much the point of having the “first four” states (Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, Nevada)?
Is there a cite for the cold ball thing CNN is allegedly doing? I find it hard to believe they would actually pull something like that or even admit to it. Though I wouldn’t put it past CNN or the DNC at all.
It would be easier for CNN just to declare a Top Ten and a Kiddie Table based on poll numbers and contributor totals. No grumbling that way.
It’s called a “joke.”
I’m not even sure what method they’ll use. If they really want to make it hard for anyone to claim shenanigans, they should use a method similar to the one eventually used for the military draft, and have two “bowls” - one with closed capsules containing the names of the 20 candidates, and the other with 10 capsules containing “Day 1” and 10 with “Day 2”; draw a capsule from each one simultaneously, then open them up together.
And yes, I was thinking of how the NBA allegedly did the same thing with the New York Knicks’ envelope in the first NBA draft lottery when I said it.
So would the DNC be eliminating the rule that candidates can’t debate each other outside of approved debates?
That might be an interesting change. In the past, MSM was the only place to get information out to people quickly. If formal debates could be held at non-approved venues without DNC approval, that might change how a lot of this is done.
I’m going to guess that the DNC wouldn’t go for it.