Too Soon To Start Thinking About 2020? No, it's 2020!

[GreenGoo]

He shrunk!

Or

Honey, I shrunk the (former) President!

[Kurth]

Listening to a 538 podcast about Biden’s entering the race. Panelists are wondering how Biden will answer questions about reparations and voting rights for incarcerated felons.

Are you kidding me? Why are we focusing on these questions?!?!?!?

[pr0ner]

Listening to a 538 podcast about Biden’s entering the race. Panelists are wondering how Biden will answer questions about reparations and voting rights for incarcerated felons.

Are you kidding me? Why are we focusing on these questions?!?!?!?

Because these are hot button topics in the age of super progressives couching everything in terms of racism and white supremacy.

[Malificent]

Listening to a 538 podcast about Biden’s entering the race. Panelists are wondering how Biden will answer questions about reparations and voting rights for incarcerated felons.

Are you kidding me? Why are we focusing on these questions?!?!?!?

Because these are hot button topics in the age of super progressives couching everything in terms of racism and white supremacy.

To be fair, racism and white supremacy has been screaming at the room, asking for increased attention.

[Kurth]

Listening to a 538 podcast about Biden’s entering the race. Panelists are wondering how Biden will answer questions about reparations and voting rights for incarcerated felons.

Are you kidding me? Why are we focusing on these questions?!?!?!?

Because these are hot button topics in the age of super progressives couching everything in terms of racism and white supremacy.

To be fair, racism and white supremacy has been screaming at the room, asking for increased attention.

Of course, but focusing on things like reparations and voting rights for incarcerated felons and holding them up as some kind of litmus test is not the right kind of attention.

These are fringe issues. They are so far away from the central planks in what should be a winning Democratic platform.

Again, maybe I’m a prisoner of my own social media universe, but I feel like things are seriously out of whack.

[Jaymann]

Listening to a 538 podcast about Biden’s entering the race. Panelists are wondering how Biden will answer questions about reparations and voting rights for incarcerated felons.

Are you kidding me? Why are we focusing on these questions?!?!?!?

Because these are hot button topics in the age of super progressives couching everything in terms of racism and white supremacy.

To be fair, racism and white supremacy has been screaming at the room, asking for increased attention.

Of course, but focusing on things like reparations and voting rights for incarcerated felons and holding them up as some kind of litmus test is not the right kind of attention.

These are fringe issues. They are so far away from the central planks in what should be a winning Democratic platform.

Again, maybe I’m a prisoner of my own social media universe, but I feel like things are seriously out of whack.

Completely out of whack. He just needs to come up with a non-committal "that's something we are looking into" and move on so he doesn't start sputtering over his answer. This is one advantage Trump has, he just spouts the most bigoted answer in unintelligible terms, and nobody bats an eye.

[GreenGoo]

Kurth's question is a legitimate one. That said, Sander's platform is less of a priority right now as well, but he seems to be doing well anyway.

Watching from the outside, my question is "how do these issues get injected into the mainstream conscience and take root in the first place?" I don't mean why are they an issue, I mean why are they "the" issue all of a sudden?

People are so weird.

[Zarathud]

Manipulated by bots and angry people.

[Kraken]

Listening to a 538 podcast about Biden’s entering the race. Panelists are wondering how Biden will answer questions about reparations and voting rights for incarcerated felons.

Are you kidding me? Why are we focusing on these questions?!?!?!?

I don't think most of us "focus" on them, so much as use them to gauge where someone is on the progressive <-> centrist spectrum, and especially to watch older politicians react to newer ideas. Biden needs to overcome his image of being a throwback. That doesn't mean embracing issues like these so much as being conversant in them. If he gives uninformed answers or dodges entirely, that's a problem for him. IOW, (for most of us) it's fine to be against reparations and prison voting if your position is thoughtful and well-reasoned.

[GreenGoo]

I don't think most of us "focus" on them, so much as use them to gauge where someone is on the progressive <-> centrist spectrum, and especially to watch older politicians react to newer ideas. Biden needs to overcome his image of being a throwback. That doesn't mean embracing issues like these so much as being conversant in them. If he gives uninformed answers or dodges entirely, that's a problem for him. IOW, (for most of us) it's fine to be against reparations and prison voting if your position is thoughtful and well-reasoned.

It wouldn't hurt for politicians to focus (that's what only asking them about these questions on a public forum means) and discuss the issues currently at hand. Ditto the electorate.

[Holman]

https://twitter.com/lachlan/status/1123013699994836992

The combination of ratfuck lying and homophobia in this scheme should make Wohl a pariah until the day he dies.

Instead, he'll probably wind up as President Don Jr.'s press secretary.

[pr0ner]

It's amazing Wohl hasn't been arrested yet.

[Defiant]

Sanders has an app that allows you to insert data on people you know (or have the names of) to their database of information of voters, which already sounds like a bad thing privacy-wise (and ripe for abuse). But it looks like private information from the database had been publicly available until it was fixed.

https://twitter.com/madisonvking/status ... 4677141505

[Holman]

Looks like we have our front runner.

https://twitter.com/jimsciutto/status/1 ... 2855077888

That's quite a bump. Biden and Sanders were neck and neck before his official announcement.

[Defiant]

That's quite a bump. Biden and Sanders were neck and neck before his official announcement.

Apart from one poll, which showed Sanders in the lead, they weren't neck and neck - Biden was 7 points up in the average of polls.

But yeah, two polls - one showing a six point bump and another showing an 11-point bump - show a pretty big bump for him. (Though I imagine he'll probably give some of that back within a month. Post announcement bumps are usually only temporary.)

It also shows him strong among women and African Americans.

[YellowKing]

Well Biden has the significant advantage of Obama nostalgia. That's going to be hard for any candidate to overcome.

[Holman]

Warren has made significant gains in recent polling. Seeing her at third is something new.

If it's Biden/Warren, sure, let's do it.

The polling is actually kind of weak for Sanders. Being in the mid-teens with 100% name recognition is (they say) Not a Good Sign.

[El Guapo]

https://twitter.com/NateSilver538/statu ... 1852114944

[Pyperkub]

Warren has made significant gains in recent polling. Seeing her at third is something new.

If it's Biden/Warren, sure, let's do it.

The polling is actually kind of weak for Sanders. Being in the mid-teens with 100% name recognition is (they say) Not a Good Sign.

IMHO, we really need some CA blood in the WH, which is why I'm a bit more in favor of Harris on the undercard (or Brown/Newsom, though Brown's getting too old).

Frigging Warren should have run in 2016.

[Defiant]

I think Warren's biggest weakness may be that Democrats aren't confident she can win.

By this metric, Warren rated as the weakest general-election candidate: Just 21 percent thought she would beat Trump, and 33 percent thought she would lose to him.

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/de ... st-choice/

[El Guapo]

I think Warren's biggest weakness may be that Democrats aren't confident she can win.

By this metric, Warren rated as the weakest general-election candidate: Just 21 percent thought she would beat Trump, and 33 percent thought she would lose to him.

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/de ... st-choice/

Electability is sort of a funny thing, though, since it's voters assessing how other voters will vote in the general. On the 538 podcast Nate Silver has talked about how that can shift over time if an "unelectable" candidate starts to do well - once voters see Unelectable Candidate A doing well in polls, winning / doing well in some primary states, etc., they'll start to think that maybe they're electable after all, and that candidate can gain further ground. Which in some ways gives Warren room to grow (and creates risk for Biden that he'll start to lose ground unless he dominates early).

[Defiant]

Electability is sort of a funny thing, though, since it's voters assessing how other voters will vote in the general. On the 538 podcast Nate Silver has talked about how that can shift over time if an "unelectable" candidate starts to do well - once voters see Unelectable Candidate A doing well in polls, winning / doing well in some primary states, etc., they'll start to think that maybe they're electable after all, and that candidate can gain further ground. Which in some ways gives Warren room to grow (and creates risk for Biden that he'll start to lose ground unless he dominates early).

Sure (See Obama as an example of someone for whom it took time for him to gain electability in the eyes of voters). I would imagine Warren would be more likely to pull votes from Sanders than Biden, though.

[El Guapo]

Electability is sort of a funny thing, though, since it's voters assessing how other voters will vote in the general. On the 538 podcast Nate Silver has talked about how that can shift over time if an "unelectable" candidate starts to do well - once voters see Unelectable Candidate A doing well in polls, winning / doing well in some primary states, etc., they'll start to think that maybe they're electable after all, and that candidate can gain further ground. Which in some ways gives Warren room to grow (and creates risk for Biden that he'll start to lose ground unless he dominates early).

Sure (See Obama as an example of someone for whom it took time for him to gain electability in the eyes of voters). I would imagine Warren would be more likely to pull votes from Sanders than Biden, though.

On balance, sure, but she could well wind up taking significant votes from Biden as well, especially among people who are more progressive but at least initially support Biden because of electability concerns.

[Defiant]

This is kind of sad, but at least she looks like she's having fun?

https://twitter.com/PhilipWegmann/statu ... 7055969281

[msteelers]

The President is losing his mind over a firefighter union coming out in support of Biden. He must have sent out over 60 retweets between 5:50 and 6:20am this morning. At one point I had 53 notifications on my phone from twitter.

[pr0ner]

The President is losing his mind over a firefighter union coming out in support of Biden. He must have sent out over 60 retweets between 5:50 and 6:20am this morning. At one point I had 53 notifications on my phone from twitter.

This is one he retweeted.

https://www.twitter.com/gIamourizes/sta ... 2874067973

[El Guapo]

This is kind of sad, but at least she looks like she's having fun?

https://twitter.com/PhilipWegmann/statu ... 7055969281

Bored Iowa Town Trying To Convince Kirsten Gillibrand It Local Tradition To Eat Live Tarantula.

[msteelers]

The President is losing his mind over a firefighter union coming out in support of Biden. He must have sent out over 60 retweets between 5:50 and 6:20am this morning. At one point I had 53 notifications on my phone from twitter.

This is one he retweeted.

https://www.twitter.com/gIamourizes/sta ... 2874067973

That's beautiful.

[Kurth]

The President is losing his mind over a firefighter union coming out in support of Biden. He must have sent out over 60 retweets between 5:50 and 6:20am this morning. At one point I had 53 notifications on my phone from twitter.

I think if I ever got a notification from my phone about a Donald Trump tweet, I would take a hammer to it.

[msteelers]

The President is losing his mind over a firefighter union coming out in support of Biden. He must have sent out over 60 retweets between 5:50 and 6:20am this morning. At one point I had 53 notifications on my phone from twitter.

I think if I ever got a notification from my phone about a Donald Trump tweet, I would take a hammer to it.

Sadly, I need it for work. He's broken news on Twitter a number of times.

[Defiant]

And then there were twenty-two

This is reaching satirical level of absurdity. I hope, after the first few debates, a bunch of the minor candidates drop out when they don't gain any traction.

[malchior]

And then there were twenty-two

This is reaching satirical level of absurdity. I hope, after the first few debates, a bunch of the minor candidates drop out when they don't gain any traction.

On top he had surgery for prostate cancer...weeks ago. Our political class does not seem to be well ordered or even borderline realistic about their chances anymore.

[pr0ner]

And then there were twenty-two

This is reaching satirical level of absurdity. I hope, after the first few debates, a bunch of the minor candidates drop out when they don't gain any traction.

On top he had surgery for prostate cancer...weeks ago. Our political class does not seem to be well ordered or even borderline realistic about their chances anymore.

I'd say there are only 5 Democrats with a legit chance - Biden, Buttigieg (legit may be generous here), Harris, Sanders, and Warren. The rest just are at best putting focus on other Democratic/liberal ideas, and at worst muddying the waters. Hopefully people start dropping out soon.

[Defiant]

I'd say there are only 5 Democrats with a legit chance - Biden, Buttigieg (legit may be generous here), Harris, Sanders, and Warren. The rest just are at best putting focus on other Democratic/liberal ideas, and at worst muddying the waters. Hopefully people start dropping out soon.

I think that's a reasonably good list of most likeliest candidates (a week ago, I might have switched Beto with Warren, and a week or two before then I wouldn't have included Buttigieg, so it's not set in stone yet), but I can see two major ways of others having a legit chance. One is that one of them manages to hit the right spot for the electorate and gain traction - I think that's likeliest among someone with low name recognition that people haven't yet heard from (mirroring Buttigieg's rise), although it's not implausible that someone people are aware of captures people's attention by saying the right thing at the right time.

Another is, if one of the top candidates falters or drops out, in which case there's a chance that one or two similar candidates (probably one of the better known candidates in below that top tier) might gain ground to fill up that void.

[El Guapo]

https://twitter.com/NateSilver538/statu ... 2405430272

I think Nate Silver's tiers are pretty reasonable.

[Holman]

One thing is that most Americans, even most Democratic voters, aren't paying attention yet.

There's usually a culling after the first debate, especially of those candidate who didn't make the cut for it.

--

Speaking of candidates, I hate that Stacey Abrams has decided not to run for Senate. She might have had a chance to flip the seat.

I hope it's not that she's holding out to be someone's VP pick (as she very well might, even though she brushed off Biden's premature overture). Senate is far more important.

[Defiant]

Make room for 23

https://twitter.com/ForecasterEnten/sta ... 3684833280

[malchior]

De Blah-sio? Really?
#Trumped

[Kraken]

Well, this is a deal-breaker for me: Watch Biden praise Dick Cheney.

[El Guapo]

Well, this is a deal-breaker for me: Watch Biden praise Dick Cheney.

Really? All he says is that he likes him and that he means well. It's not like he said he loves his policies.