Your next 2020 Democratic presidential primary thread: Now we're serious

A good way to get on camera is to stand near the front runner.

"Impeachment is forever bye" <-- I thought for a second this was the Gravel Twitter account

Donald, you're just jealous nobody wants to say hi to you.

no shortage of people who want to say heil tho

well well well

This morning’s NH Democratic Primary poll from @WBUR is going to get a lot of attention. It shows @BernieSanders moving into a big lead:

-Sanders 29%
-Buttigieg 17%
-Biden 14%
-Warren 13%
-Klobuchar 6%
-Yang 5%
-Gabbard 5%
-Steyer 2%

Sanders is +14 since December. pic.twitter.com/daLcFE7ScF

— John Nichols (@NicholsUprising) January 23, 2020

Good for Sanders. As Nate Silver pointed out yesterday, his early state polling was lagging his national polling, and it really wasn't clear if one was right and one was wrong.

get a load of that klobmentum tho

I would be extremely worried if I was Sanders and I wasn't leading in NH

otm

although NH is traditionally much more conservative than Vermont

They still hate MA so any other New England candidate should be getting a hometown boost

Still good news that he is winning by more than he was last month.

would be very good to see biden land in 3rd place in both IA and NH

I'm guessing the effect of the heart attack and the 'too old' worries have faded further to the background for now, while the contrast between him and the other candidates is growing sharper in voters' minds.

Meanwhile:

GREENVILLE, S.C. — Julius Stephens is 74, black, and calls himself a liberal.

Standing outside Big Rod’s Barber Shop in North Augusta after watching Joe Biden surrogates rally on behalf of the vice president last week, Stephens gushed about a different candidate: Elizabeth Warren. The Army veteran cited her health care plan and said he “like(s) a lot of the things Warren is saying.” He also praised Bernie Sanders’ policies.

Voters like Stephens will determine the Feb. 29 contest in South Carolina, the first primary with a large population of black voters. He also represents the dilemma of the three Democrats trailing Biden nationally: After rolling out endorsements from black activists and elected officials, and releasing policies that explicitly address systemic inequality among African Americans, Sanders, Warren and Pete Buttigieg have little to show for it in South Carolina.

With voting kicking off in just a few weeks, the three find themselves in much the same spot they began the campaign: Needing Biden to perform so poorly in the first few states that black voters start to doubt whether he can win and migrate to another candidate.

For Nov., this isn't the splintered party we read about, incl. for Sanders.

I mean, yeah. Lots of online people went ape about the NYT endorsement of Warren and Klobuchar as if it represented a hopelessly incoherent mindview to rate these two candidates above the rest. But no! The median position of an American Democrat would be to be extremely delighted, with no reservations, if Elizabeth Warren, or Joe Biden, or Bernie Sanders, or Amy Klobuchar, or any of these Democratic candidates, became President! Democrats like Democratic politicians, that's why they're Democrats!

the three find themselves in much the same spot they began the campaign: Needing Biden to perform so poorly in the first few states that black voters start to doubt whether he can win and migrate to another candidate.

For better or worse, ime the political landscape often shifts considerably after Iowa and NH have shown their hands. Then the new narrative emerges rapidly and starts to solidify before Super Tuesday. In mid-January it's much harder to predict or get a fix on how the campaign will shake out.

2012 was harder to read than most campaigns, because Mitt Romney was so consistently in second place everywhere, with zero consensus among the hard right as to who would displace him.

2016 was fairly clear about Trump's emergence as the leader, but no one was willing to believe it for a long time, because wtf? HRC looked unexpectedly weak against Sanders, but her modest lead over him was never in real doubt.

2016 was fairly clear about Trump's emergence as the leader, but no one was willing to believe it for a long time, because wtf?

it was like if herman cain's brief lead in 2012 would have never ended

The median position of an American Democrat would be to be extremely delighted, with no reservations, if Elizabeth Warren, or Joe Biden, or Bernie Sanders, or Amy Klobuchar, or any of these Democratic candidates, became President! Democrats like Democratic politicians, that's why they're Democrats!

I did that WaPost who do you agree with more test and I scored very highly with all of these candidates. I scored the lowest with Gabbard and Sanders (9 + 8 out of 20 respectively) but that's still pretty high compatibility!

my result was a tie between warren and sanders, something like 18-18, which i was like “jesus christ, of course”

via HOOS

Foreign policy is the biggest thing that is at stake in a practical way in the primary, and in my view a good reason to favor Sanders precisely because he stands out from the pack here. https://t.co/sbxRZpZkm7 pic.twitter.com/qmAaIg5QVk

— Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) January 23, 2020

sorry, that's from 1/7, so likely linked before

I want to point out that right now Morbius and I actually kind of agree on the direction US foreign policy needs to go.

Or at least we’ve met in the middle, not necessarily agreed.

Good hate read

A few hours after Cory Booker dropped out last week, Pete Buttigieg called his top Iowa endorsers. For some of them, it was a "gut punch" amid a "grieving period." A look at how personal & raw this race has been and will be for losing camps in two weeks: https://t.co/5kbZtrs8rC

— Ruby Cramer (@rubycramer) January 23, 2020

A grieving period? The dude is still totally alive, sheesh.

And by the time he dropped out it was clear he wasn't going to even come close to winning.

it is clearly callous to call up people that fast when they have a personal connection to their candidate, but also, imagine getting/being that emotional about Cory Booker

Cory Booker >>>>>>>> Buttigieg >>>>>>> Klobuchar

I'd go Klobs > Buttigieg for comedic value alone

Just down the street, there's a little old lady whose snowy lawn recently began to feature a funeral stand bearing an 8" x 10" Buttigieg photo cut into the shape of a heart, ringed by vinyl roses. it looks like a memorial, and I don't hate it. But also, I don't understand it.

tbrr it looks like she's commemorating the life + times of an anthropomorphized ferret

lol

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/23/us/politics/kamala-harris-joe-biden-endorsement.html

cool!

what's not "cool" is Jonathan Martin's disgraceful comb-over.

Alfred you need to live in Jersey for a decade to apprec Booker's place in the insect world

yes yes I know his background but he said all the right things using a disgraceful timbre

I think “how do you pronounce t-i-m-b-r-e” should be a debate question

I do not think they would fall for it

Has bruenig actually written anything for the Times yet? It figures that the one socialist who gets to write opinion pieces for the papers of record would be a pro-life weirdo

― bold caucasian eroticism (Simon H.), Tuesday, January 21, 2020 8:56 PM (three days ago) bookmarkflaglink

Here's what appears to be her first column:

"Bernie Will Have to Fight Dirty"

I just noticed that she's described as a "staff editor in Opinion," so it doesn't sound like she's been added to the Op-Ed stable.

Get Dirty, Bernie

liz bruenig otm in this instance

bernie pls oil up and wrestle me in the marketplace of ideas

biden tryna muscle in on klobuchar's staffer-abuse action

The Biden campaign pushed its Iowa staffers to drive in hazardous conditions, telling them: “If it feels like unsafe driving conditions, then talk to me separately but frankly I don’t want to hear any complaints because you know how important this is”https://t.co/PM490sj60b pic.twitter.com/B86HpbQY0m

— Ken Klippenstein (@kenklippenstein) January 24, 2020

"adaptable, flexible" -- the jargon of business.

guys if you don't put your life on the line for joe you're not gonna get a job once he's he nominee! c'mon get behind the wheel!

joesus take the wheel

don't give me this "black ice" malarkey

my understanding is that all the roads in iowa are flat and straight; how dangerous can it be

to be followed by scraping joesus off the wheel

if you skid off the road, there's at least a chance you wind up in the field of dreams.