The Columbus, Ohio debate among 12 Democratic Presidential candidates will likely start the winnowing of the field, which is much too large.
As things stand now, Senator Elizabeth Warren and South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg seem like the candidates that are gaining.
Warren is taking support away from Bernie Sanders, who is recovering from a heart attack, and will be watched closely on Tuesday for signs of weariness. Sanders knows Warren is a problem for him, and has pointed out that she is a believer in capitalism, and is not a Socialist, which actually helps Warren’s image.
Mayor Pete is likely the major moderate Democratic alternative to Joe Biden, who has to deal with the issue of his son, Hunter Biden, and Ukranian connections, although it seems clear there is no corruption involved, at least as far as we know at this point. Also, Joe Biden is coming across, sadly, as not quite up to par mentally at times, a very worrisome situation for him. Meanwhile, Mayor Pete continues to make a great impression, including in the CNN gay-lesbian-transgender debate this past Thursday, and has gained a lot of financial support.
Whether Kamala Harris can recuperate from a decline in support is debatable. Beto O’Rourke and Julian Castro have also failed to take off in recent months, and have made some errors that harm them.
While Cory Booker gained enough financial backing to stay in the race, it still seems unlikely that he is going to be a serious candidate for the Presidential nomination.
Andrew Yang has had unexpected good fortune, but still it seems a real long shot that he can get anywhere gaining enough support to move forward.
Amy Klobuchar so far has not made much of a dent, and Tulsi Gabbard and Tom Steyer, in their first debate, do not seem likely to make any real move toward serious contention.
So Tuesday’s debate will likely narrow the field as we move closer to the Iowa Caucuses and New Hampshire Primary four months from now.
This cycle’s Democratic Primary is as much of a farce and a scam as the last one.
Your nominee will be Hillary Clinton whether you like it or not.
HAHA, Alexis, what hallucinogenic drug are you on? LOL 🙂
I hope you realize that you are coming across in an unflattering manner, but that is if you are capable of understanding reality, which like Donald Trump, I think you are not capable of.
@ Ronald
Again, let’s make a gentlemen’s bet. $1 says Hillary will be your nominee and you will never even get to cast a vote against her because it will be foisted on you at the convention.
Alexis, that is NOT how the national conventions operate anymore.
You are in the distant past of American history, when that could happen, but that has NOT happened in a long time!
And Hillary is NOT running, and someone else will have a majority of the delegates by late Spring at the latest!
@ Ronald
How many political conventions have you been to as a delegate? I’ve got seven under my belt, so I do have some idea of how conventions work.
Furthermore, I know specifically how the DNC works. When none of this incredibly weak field of fringe candidates manages a first-ballot majority, all bets are off, the superdelegates can vote, and Clinton will have almost all of them making her an instant front-runner. It will be trivial, from there, to flex her continued control over the national party to gain herself the nomination.
There simply isn’t anyone in the Democratic Party with enough stature and influence to stop it. She wants it, she’s been telegraphing that for quite some time. She will have it.
So… $1 bet? Doesn’t even have to be a real dollar. We can bet in “respect dollars”. If I win, you give me $1 of respect, in whatever form you know it. Maybe I can even get you used to the habit.
Alexis, I am not going to waste my time with you, as you are truly being totally delusional.
The scenario you see will NOT happen, I assure you, and were it to happen, the Democrats would be blowing the election, and I believe they have the upper hand to win.
There is more likelihood of Trump resigning than Hillary becoming the nominee.
So I will ignore this, as I have better purposes to use my time, than on silly conjecture which is outside the realm of possibility.
So write if you wish, but no further comment on my part!
So… if I can correctly predict a candidate who is not even running in the primary as the winner of a convention that you believe I do not understand, and do this 8 months in advance, that prediction cannot even earn a single respect-dollar from a professor of political science?
I dare say, Professor, I am sensing that you are making yourself obstinately impossible to please.
What feat of magic would earn one respect dollar from you, Professor?
Alexis, when what you say has a dose of reality.
Your comments have not demonstrated that!
There is not one commentator or analyst who has this “conspiracy theory” you promote, and I am not a believer in conspiracy theories!
At the last debate, I noticed Bernie’s voice was hoarse.
Rational Lefty, I believe Bernie Sanders will rapidly decline as a serious contender, benefiting Elizabeth Warren!
I’ve vowed that if Dumb Dumb Trump wins another 4 years, I’m turning off the news until he’s gone.
Oh Ronald, you still don’t get it. This election was lost the day the Democratic Party passed Obamacare without a single GOP vote.
The elections intervening completely wiped out a generation of centrist Democrats, leaving nothing but people who have been trained out of going “wait, wut?” when someone proposes eating babies.
Warren is not viable after that “struggle session” style CNN town hall. GOP will destroy her with independents by playing that transgender 9 year old segment. Really, everyone who participated in that panderfest is done, GOP can make hay out of any of those performances.
Hey here’s your candidate who is so off her rocker she states her pronouns. Here’s another who wants to make all Abrahamic religions illegal. This one humors child abuse. This one stands there like a dork while some crazy person goes on an emotionally unhinged rant. The whole thing was a gift from God to GOP ad teams and Warren’s was the worst of them!
Alexis, I have given you too much publicity by responding.
You truly sound off your rocker, as you clearly think it would have been better to have ZERO health care for millions, and rant and rave like a lunatic, with your ridiculous conclusions about Democratic candidates for the White House!
You would rather endorse a mentally ill, dangerous, horrific excuse for a human being, to be reelected!
Why did not your glorious conservatives propose concern for people to have health care, a sense of social justice, and offer an alternative to ObamaCare, which was based on RomneyCare in Massachusetts and the Gingrich-Dole Plan of 1993-94 as an alternative to Hillary Care back then?
Oh wait, you do not believe in social justice, rather selfish, greedy and uncaring about anyone but yourself! 🙁
I will not respond any further to your ridiculous utterances! 🙁
How much health care are those millions of homeless in California getting under Obamacare, Ronald?
Let’s face it, you don’t have any candidates. Bernie Sanders is downright centrist in relation to this Democratic field.
You got all your hopes pinned on Warren but there’s no way she’s going to live down having claimed native heritage for career advancement while literally being whiter than Ivory soap. The little popular support she does generate is of the do-I-really-have-to variety.
But even better than that, we can take her famous lecture “The Coming Collapse of the Middle Class” from 2008 and use it to decimate the completely different version of her she’s trying to sell the public. A million people have seen it… I’m guessing you are not yet one of them.
I’m proud of these good people. They are all just great. What a contrast with you know who in the White House, the hate mongerer.
The rest of us rational people here second that! 🙂
Southern Liberal, I totally agree with you!
It amazes me the evil that lurks in many people, and the lack of concern for common decency, human rights, and social justice!
Alexis Rose Blank, in a comment to Ronald (but also one that can be applied to the 2020 Democratic Party), writes, “ Let’s face it, you don’t have any candidates. Bernie Sanders is downright centrist in relation to this Democratic field.â€
Several months ago, I wrote there are two 2020 Democratic presidential candidates—and they are still in the race—who have the ability to unseat Republican incumbent United States president Donald Trump. They are: Bernie Sanders and Tulsi Gabbard.
I mentioned to Ronald, in the prior blog topic, that it would be good to have an anticipation and/or prediction topic, one year from the scheduled 2020 presidential election [Tuesday, November 3, 2020]. Ronald responded with stating it is his intention. So, when that time comes, I will write even more about this to go along with anticipation and/or prediction.
@ D
My assessment is not dissimilar.
I’d rule Sanders out now due to his health.
I would add Yang just because we’re really scraping the bottom of the barrel and he’s the only one offering any creative innovation that would provide a rationale for a candidacy.
Gabbard is the only sane one among a field of lockstep Marxists, but there isn’t a majority in the Democratic Party for cool-headedness.
There’s no one there with a broad enough appeal to gain a majority of delegates to the 2020 DNC. Unless someone can show a realistic delegate path for one of these candidates, this thing is going into the second round and all those superdelegates who threw the 2016 DNC to Hillary will be voting delegates.
All delegates are free after the first round… their candidate pledges no longer bind them.
It will then come down to a matter of who has the most power in the Democratic Party, and overwhelmingly that person is Hillary Clinton and there is no close second.
Democrats are stuck with Clinton until the day she dies or until they get the cojones to toss her and her crooked cronies out.
Notice, D, and my other readers, how someone who sees Hillary as the most corrupt candidate ever to exist, has no issue with Donald Trump, who is more crooked than any President in American history.
Notice how the term Marxist is used, just as Trump uses the term Socialism, to attack his enemies, a la Joseph McCarthy and Roy Cohn. Trump learned well from Cohn, now didn’t he and it has spread to others who hurl such ridiculous accusations!
And notice the word sanity, which one must chuckle at, coming from that someone!
Just as Trump is using projection, so is someone else! 🙁
Alexis Rose Bank writes, in response to my prior comment, “I’d rule Sanders out now due to his health.â€
No.
It wasn’t massive.
And, of course, this is one reason why we have a vice president of the United States.
Ronald,
Thanks for editing the incorrections of my first comment response to Alexis!
I do notice.
It is not a tactic which always works. And that has been on going on for a many years of my life. It’s part of U.S. politics pushing fear. But, elections are not won based on fear.
Thanks, D, for your comment.
We do not always totally agree, but you are a true gentleman, and do not throw around crazy and ridiculous statements that make one wonder about your character.
We need more of this in America, but loose statements have become a norm from the right wing, sadly!
I don’t like that Tulsi has been chummy with Assad. If supporting dictators is considered being “progressive”, count me out of that club.
Our family used to attend a Baptist church in our community. We walked away from church because they’ve moved away from the central tenets of Christianity – love and acceptance.
Biden Holds Steady, Warren Surges, and Iowa Looms Large
https://washingtonmonthly.com/2019/10/14/biden-holds-steady-warren-surges-and-iowa-looms-large/
I think Nate Silver makes a good point when he says that there are some candidates in the contest for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination who are doing better than expectations but only Joe Biden and Elizabeth Warren are actually doing well. They’re really the only ones who can be satisfied that they’re meeting their own expectations for progress. We’re almost to the point that we can begin to think of this as a two-person race.
In looking at national polls pre- and post-September 23 (the date Silver uses as the beginning of the impeachment process), there are a few interesting observations we can make. The first is that Biden is actually slightly up despite having his name dragged through the mud. It would probably be fairer to say that he’s holding steady, but there’s no sign in erosion. This appears to be the case for most of the candidates, too, as the majority of them, like Biden, are up or down less than a point.
But that doesn’t mean the polls have been static. Elizabeth Warren has gained a substantial 5.7 percent and is now nearing parity with Biden. Almost all of her gains appear to have come from Kamala Harris (down 2.6 percent), Cory Booker (down 1.3 percent) and Bernie Sanders (down 1.1 percent).
Sanders is actually weathering the fallout from his heart attack surprisingly well, but his campaign has been losing slow and steady ground to Warren for a couple of months now. He’s now looking like a second tier candidate, albeit the only second tier candidate in the race. The real news here is that Kamala Harris has fallen to 4.7 percent in the national polls. This appears to be fatal to her campaign hopes, as she really need to move upward into the teens to sustain a serious operation.
I suspect Harris doesn’t have much time to right her ship, but there is one small hopeful sign. She’s seems to have lost the battle with Warren for voters who were undecided between the two of them, but she’s also the logical landing point for these voters if Warren’s campaign badly falters in the coming months. I think her model was more reliant on Biden faltering so she could pick up some fleeing moderates, but at this point I think she’d need both Warren and Biden to collapse to get back into contention.
National polls only tell part of the story, of course. In Iowa, Warren has led in two of three recent polls and Sanders remains very much in the running. In New Hampshire, Warren had led in all three of the most recent polls and Sanders has slipped into a distant third place. Yet, Biden enjoys a narrow lead in Nevada (where Bernie Sanders looks competitive) and a massive lead in South Carolina.
Since there’s an advantage to winning the earliest contests, I think Warren looks like she’s in the best position right now. But she doesn’t have Iowa locked down by an means (RCP Avg. Warren 22.7, Biden 19.3, Sanders 16.0).
For both Biden and Sanders, it would be a very bad development if Warren were to win Iowa because it would probably solidify her advantage in New Hampshire and give her a sweep of the first two contests. Sanders would be effectively knocked out, I think, because it will kill his chances in Nevada and any chance of coming in second place in South Carolina. Biden is in a better position to recover from losing the first two (or even three) battles because of his strong lead in South Carolina. If he were to lose in Iowa and New Hampshire (and perhaps Nevada as well), I’m not sure that his lead in the Palmetto State would hold up, and it certainly would narrow.
While Sanders probably needs to win Iowa in order to survive, Biden would be in a decent position losing there provided that the winner were anybody other than Warren.
I suppose there is still plenty of time for the top three candidates to stumble or for a lower tier candidate to catch fire, but the eventual dynamics of the race seems to be coming into view. Iowa looks huge. As I wrote back on September 19, Kamala Harris has put all her chips on Iowa, so it will be decisive for her campaign. That appears to be the case for Sanders, too. Warren will be sitting pretty if she wins the Hawkeye State but in much more of a dogfight if she does not. And Biden really needs to avoid an outcome where Warren carries the first two states.
This is a very stupid way to decide a nomination. I’ve written that the Iowa caucuses are a fraud and should be doomed. It’s a subject that I will no doubt return to many times before Iowan Democrats turn out in the cold next winter to decide the fate of the country.
For now, I’ll just remind you of what happened in Iowa in 2012.
[…an initial and preliminary count of the votes indicated that Mitt Romney had won the caucuses by eight votes. And that is how the media reported it. Yes, Rick Santorum had come out of nowhere to finish a shockingly strong second place, but he hadn’t won anything. Romney, who had suffered the indignity of lagging behind in the polls (at one time or another) to everyone in the race except Santorum, had managed to right his ship and avoid a bad stumble out of the gate. This was hugely helpful to him as the contest moved to Romney’s home turf in New Hampshire. Remember, not only had he served as governor in neighboring Massachusetts, but he owned a home in New Hampshire.
Two weeks later, however, and after Romney romped to victory in the Granite State, the Iowa Republican Party had to make two embarrassing announcements. The first was that they had finalized counting the votes and that it turned out that Rick Santorum didn’t have an eight vote deficit but instead a 34-vote lead. The second announcement was that it was impossible to actually declare a winner [because results from eight of 1,774 precincts could not be located for certification]
…In 2012, Iowa had 28 delegates at the convention, and according to the New York Times, Ron Paul got 22 of them, Romney got five, and Rick Santorum got zero. One vote is listed as undetermined but probably went for Romney…
…you can justifiably say that Santorum won Iowa because he had the most votes in the certified count, or that Romney won because he benefited the most from the result, or that Ron Paul won because he actually got almost all the delegates, or that no one won because the party refused to declare a winner.]
The Democratic caucuses operate with slightly different rules in Iowa, but it remains a beauty contest where the delegates are not decided or committed to any candidate regardless of results. It literally does not matter who wins in determining how the delegates will be awarded. Yet, the perception that someone won has a gigantic impact on the media coverage, and next year this looks to be truer and more consequential than ever.
Women voters will make the difference in 2020…And they DESPISE Trump:
Trump approval rating by gender via new Quinnipiac poll:
Men:
48% approve
46% disapprove
Women:
35% approve
61% disapprove
Jennifer Rubin mentioned that on her Twitter – @JRubinBlogger
“14 points under water with white women; he won this group in 2016. If that doesn’t change he loses. Period.”
Wow, Warren was really out of touch on issue of automation. It’s not just trade only, Liz.
I’m liking Cory Booker the more and more I see him. Buttigieg as well.
Agreed about them. I’m liking Klobuchar as well. Too bad she has yet to catch on.
Good to see Mayor Pete slap down Tulsi on foreign policy.
Mayor Pete wins the foreign policy part of the debate, hands down. He shows real depth of understanding.
Biden keeps fumbling his words and making mistakes.
I agree with Pete on the gun issue — the buyback thing is playing straight into the Republicans’ hands.
Castro talked about the issue of police violence against black and brown people. Great moment for him.
Here’s why the Right supports Gabbard: https://washingtonmonthly.com/2019/10/15/why-the-right-supports-tulsi-gabbard/
[The central message of Gabbard’s campaign is that she stands against the foreign policy establishment as the anti-war candidate. But as Shikha Dalmia points out, that is deceptive.]
[Gabbard, an Iraq war veteran, has made opposition to war her signature issue…But that doesn’t make her a peacenik; it makes her an America-Firster, just like President Trump. Indeed, although she went out of her way to condemn Trump as a “warmonger,†there isn’t much daylight between her position and his — which is no doubt why the former White House aide Stephen Bannon, the notorious architect of Trump’s America First campaign, interviewed her for a position in the administration.]
Kamala wants Twitter to shut down Trump’s account. Go Kamala!
Klobuchar has the right answer. The way to deal with BigTech is to use antitrust.
I loathe twitter and facebook, but I actually think breaking them up would make the spread of disinformation infinitely worse, because competition would drive a race to the bottom. Whether we break them up or no, we need to regulate them like any other media company. That’s the only solution.
Kamala Harris on reproductive justice — SUPERB.
They used Ellen and GW Bush to ask about friendship. Castro’s answer nailed it best so far.
Tulsi is a friend of Trey Gowdy. Yet another reason not to vote for her.
There are un-American Republican Senators and Congressmen. This be nice once elected doesn’t cut it.
Watching this part of the debate feels a little like watching the part of a pageant where contestants tell how much they want to help puppies, kittens and old people and bring about world peace. It’s too easy to tell they all practice using variations on every type of closing question to switch to talking about their agenda. I’d rather have a closing statement.