2020 Democratic presidential primary

that was a weird iphone typo

This Ben Smith column is worth a skim.

These new politics look less like old presidential campaigns than like social-media fandoms: Beyoncé, Taylor Swift, Drake, the Marvel Universe don’t come and go. They’re eternal, as long as their protagonists provide a steady stream of content and mutual affirmation to growing groups of supporters. This is a snowball, not a narrative.

So what does that mean for the 2020 Democratic Primary?

Well, it could mean that the theory motivating most of the 20-plus candidates — that they should make their cases and wait for their turns in the sun of public attention — is just wrong. Under this theory, Cory Booker and Amy Klobuchar will never get their turns.

And the candidates who have found their social media and movement fandoms early — Bernie Sanders, who never let his go and Pete Buttigieg, who caught the moment, are the obvious ones — will become harder and harder for the others to dislodge, as they develop increasingly intense relationships with their core fans. There’s space for one or two more fandoms, and Elizabeth Warren and Kamala Harris seem closest to building them. And, perhaps, there’s enough space for a reaction against this new politics for Joe Biden.

Politics is the media business, and increasingly the media-criticism business. But spare a thought for the possibility that, as you judge the media’s coverage of the Democratic Primary, that we have a lot less to do with the outcome than we used to. The power that we used to wield has been handed over to the fandoms.

love this class-centered discourse

“Being middle class is not a number. It’s a value set,” Biden says.

— Sabrina Siddiqui (@SabrinaSiddiqui) April 29, 2019

disqualifying

Isn't the very definition of a number...

"being middle class is not a number. it's a set of numerical values"

srsly this is how the plutocracy defines middle class, straight up

from the Biden thread:

I turn on MSNBC before switching to Netflix and, sweet baby Jesus, Nicole Wallace and her chant of the ever-circling skeletal family devoted all of four minutes to praising Elizabeth Warren for not just knowing more policy than any candidate but being "electric" in a room.

Mayor Pete MeToo

huh -- i'm not finding anything about that?

I feel like the fact that the current vibe is "no one should tear down any candidate" plus the fact that there are like 57 candidates is just going to lead to a split field where no one is really all that differentiated and no one has momentum. I guess it's still early though.

Biden's remark about the middle class probably reflects how a very large fraction of Americans think about their class affiliation. iow, with a heaping dose of rationalization and self-delusion.

Almost everyone I meet thinks they're middle class, and only a few of them are right.

Exclusive: Jacob Wohl caught on tape trying to concoct a sexual assault smear against Pete Buttigieg and promising to make the accuser wealthy. Now the supposed victim says Wohl and lobbyist Jack Burkman made it all up. https://t.co/GAOW7OOdhe

— Will Sommer (@willsommer) April 29, 2019

this is the best press Mayor Pete could possibly have asked for

so weird. none of wohl's stunts work but he keeps at it.

everyone has their thing!

Before his Buttigieg smear, Jacob Wohl had already:

-Become the youngest person banned from futures trading
-Been under federal investigation for faking a similar smear against Robert Mueller
-Faked death threats against himself and reported them to police.

— Will Sommer (@willsommer) April 30, 2019

dude should be in prison but also it is amazing how bad he is at this

Wohl should team up with James O’Keefe and come up with more schemes

i blame jacob wohl's parents

he should have been kicking a ball in the street or something

he should be kicked in his balls in the street

does this idiot kid get discussed on cable news? or is he just a twitter thing?

This thing only ever made it to the RW press

more like jacob LOL amirite, etc.

Trump retweets him

It makes sense for two guys in the ‘pay people money to lie about who they did or did not have sex with’ business to be friends and colleagues

he's such a rascal that trump

He’s a downright fartknocker

always doing crazy stuff. trolling millennials. i have noticed.

like - and pls correct me if i'm out of line here - if there was some leftwing lunatic with a fairly sizeable (pre-ban) following trying to frame the special counsel investigating a sitting Democratic president or a somewhat high profile GOP candidate... it would be plastered all over cable news like 94/7? it would precipitate some Very Concerned op eds in legacy media outlets? or nah?

Trump retweets him

hahah FUCK i missed that

but i guess both sides, y'know

Points for Warren: https://m.chron.com/entertainment/restaurants-bars/article/Elizabeth-Warren-celebrates-husband-s-birthday-at-13804198.php?cmpi

the current vibe is "no one should tear down any candidate"

I actually heard "politics ain't beanbag" on NPR last weekend, a concept which apparently no rank-and-file Dems under 50 are acquainted with.

Man, ol' beanbag talked nothing but politics on here, before he was SB'd.

Stacey Abrams has decided against running for Senate from Georgia, a Democrat with knowledge tells CNN, and she met with Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schemer today to inform him of her plan.

— Jeff Zeleny (@jeffzeleny) April 30, 2019

!@#%!@#%

Running is damned hard work and she just went through it, so it is easy to understand her reluctance. But if she ran, she'd get some of my money.

some freudian spelling there

Biden's support among black women remains strong:

Biden has maintained his position as the front-runner throughout Morning Consult’s tracking of the nascent race. He’s led the pack in every Morning Consult survey of 2019, and unlike nearly all of his rivals — except for Sanders — his increase in support has not dovetailed with a rise in name recognition. As a fixture in American politics for the past several decades, the former senator is universally well known. Nine in 10 likely Democratic voters have opinions about Biden, and they’re mostly positive: 76 percent view him favorably, while 14 percent view him unfavorably.

Biden’s popularity has stayed steady, even amid a string of unflattering news stories in recent months, including his physical contact with women and a resurfaced debate over his handling of the 1991 Supreme Court confirmation hearings involving Anita Hill and Clarence Thomas when he was chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Any concerns that those stories may dampen his support with women and black women is not yet borne out by the data. If anything, Biden’s advantage over the field relies heavily on edges with those groups: Among women overall, Biden jumped 8 points in the last week, to 38 percent — driven by a 7-point bump with white women (to 36 percent) and a 10-point jump with black women, to 47 percent.

i still maintain his bse of support is softer than bernie's and once the negative ads start in early states he's gonna lose some support with women

i assume you mean biden's bse in the sense of bovine spongiform encephalitis, in which case otm

this clown sure loves right-wing talking points huh

"So if Bernie Sanders wants to get involved in a conversation about whether Dylann Roof & the marathon bomber should have the right to vote, my focus is liberating black & brown people & low-income people from prison.." @CoryBooker rejects Sanders idea https://t.co/w1xlpbKsMb

— Judy Woodruff (@JudyWoodruff) April 30, 2019

https://www.vox.com/2019/4/30/18522680/beto-orourke-2020-climate-change-proposal

good

That photo tho...

https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/SA9jDdiwDPONG1Qoa-5nBAnazdw=/0x0:960x736/1820x1213/filters:focal(326x273:478x425):format(webp)/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/63694908/Screen_Shot_2019_04_29_at_6.28.05_PM.0.jpg

Over/Under on the woman on the left taking a BetoButt pic?

nice to see Beto finally putting some policies forward. Time for Buttigieg (and...everyone else who hasn't, I guess. like hickenlooper hahahaha. ha.)

Over/Under on the woman on the left taking a BetoButt pic?

Maybe she’s in the market for a spackler

I think you guys have little to no understanding of black people

Is that in re: Abrams not running? or the Biden support Alfred posted? or...?