It's Biden. (16th and Final Look at the Democratic Horserace.)

I.  The Race Is Over.

Joe Biden's nomination has been inevitable for about a month. Now it is certain. Bernie Sanders suspended his campaign for president last week. Earlier today, he endorsed Joe Biden during a charming live stream where both men basically shit on Donald Trump.  There is an obvious camraderie between them that probably comes from Biden being nice to Bernie when he first became senator. Politicians need to be many things but charming is an underrated quality that Biden has an abudnance of.

The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted the process but did not change the outcome.  So I will take one last look at the field, with an eye towards who helped and hurt their long term prospects.

I will go through each candidate and assign a grade for how they performed-the grade will factor in their performance this year and what it means for the grade going foward. I will go in order of votes received.

1.  Joe Biden-the Nominee.

 All vice-presidents start with universal name recognition and a fundraising base. But Biden is probably the only white candidate to ever enter the field with such strong popularity among black voters. His status as the loyal and popular vice-president of the first black president positioned him to dominate the African American base in a way that made the races before South Carolina slightly irrelevant.

It's possible that 2020 will be the last Democratic race of its kind. The party should abandon caucuses next time and I don't see how Iowa and New Hampshire can possibly maintain their divine right to be the first states to vote. But four (or eight) years is a long time and maybe people will forget about the clown show in Iowa but the racial demographics of the party demand that the early state lineup be changed.

      Biden did not raise a lot of money. He underwhelmed in the debates and he performed poorly in Iow and New Hampshire. But he bounced back to a respectable second in Nevada and then rolled to victory in South Carolina. He deserves credit for not panicking and for working the right levers to get the rest of the moderate candidates to coalesce behind him when there was only alternative.

     I think he's a slight favorite to win in November. He should win back Pennsylvania and Michigan. Then he needs one more state-Wisconsin, Arizona, North Carolina and Florida are his best options. A lot will happen in the next 209 days, so all we can do is hope for the best.

Final Grade: A He won.

2. Bernie Sanders-the Runner-up.

Biden's popularity with black voters made him the front-runner and inevitable nominee. Bernie's popularity with young people made him the equally inevitable runner-up. Bernie had 35% of the party with him from the start. When the field looked fractured, he obviously thought that he could cruise to the nomination with a health plurality of delegates. But then the field wasn't fractured and he had no ability to grow that 35% into anything close to 50%. In 2016, Bernie Sanders won the Michigan primary but about 2 points. In 2020 he lost it by 16 points. He didn't win a single county in the entire state.

Some of this reflects the fact that Joe Biden is more popular than Hillary Clinton, particularly among rural white voters. (This was on display most cruelly in Vermont, a state that Bernie won but with 51% of the vote instead of the 86% he got against Clinton for years earlier.)

Bernie Sanders did not have a plan B. That is inexcusable political malpractice. He so believed in his revolution that he just assumed his time had come and that Biden was too weak to beat him. He was the only Democratic candidate to skip an event in Selma, Alabama the Sunday before Super Tuesday.  Black voters noticed. He got crushed on Super Tuesday and his campaign was effectively over.

Bernie Sanders is 78 years old.  He might be tempted to run in 2024, either against Biden or in an open Democratic field.  I see no sign that he has stopped believing that his way is the future. And he seems incapable of grooming a successor or even acknowledging the need for one.  But he will never be president and he will never be the Democratic nominee. He did worse than he did four years ago because he was too stubborn to reach out to anyone who wasn't 100% behind his agenda.

He will be 83 years old the next time his seat is up.  I hope he faces a legitimate Democratic candidate in the next senate race. But he can probably keep that seat for as long as his heart keeps beating. The party will probably move to the left in the years ahead.  Next time the race will probably be more favorable to black and Latino candidates. The biggest question will be whether he turns his "movement" into something durable and distinct with a new leader or if the Millennials who have now supported him twice blend into the mainstream of the Democratic party.

Final Grade: C.  He got a lot of votes, but he blew a legitimate chance to be the nominee.

3.  Mike Bloomberg- the Spender.

Well, he got what he wanted-a moderate nominee. But he spent a ton of money to get something that he probably could have had for free.  He got nearly 3 million votes and 55 delegates. He even won the vaunted American Samoa primary. Bully for him.

Final Grade: C-.  He transferred a lot of money from his pocket to various television stations. And he was humiliated by Elizabeth Warren on national television.

4.  Elizabeth Warren- the Planner.

She worked for it. She worked for as a retail politician and she worked for it as a policy wonk. Hillary Clinton is the only woman to get more vote for president than her. She won 81 delegates and did quite well in the debates. But her biggest plan was to split the difference between Biden's institutional support and Biden's insurgent popularity. Turns out there were not enough votes there to win any contests. But I think she elevated her name and will probably be a high-profile senator for years to come.

Final grade: B.  She was harmed by people who were afraid to nominate another woman against Trump but she put up a good fight.

5. Pete Buttigieg- the Little Engine that Could.

As time passes, it becomes easier to see what a colossal joke it was for 37 year old mayor of South Bend, Indiana to run for president. But he maximized his effort by saying yes to everything, including appearances on Fox News and by mastering the art of fund raising in a way that had to catch the eye of the national party.

His next move will depend on the result in November. I think Joe Biden will want him in the administration, although I don't think he will get a really plumb job like State or Defense.  Maybe he could be UN Ambassador or CIA chief. If not, he should take a job in media. Work in Manhattan, but live in New Jersey.  He can run for Senator Menendez' seat in 2024.  Maybe by 2032 or 2036 he will have enough experience to make a credible run for president.

Final Grade: A-.   He won Iowa and he damn near won New Hampshire. That is crazy.

6. Amy Klobuchar- the Alternative.

Hard to believe it, but there was a moment where it looked like she might spring to the front of this pack. After Iowa ended in a debacle, she went to New Hampshire and had the best single debate night of any candidate in the field. That translated to a solid third place in New Hampshire and a thought that she might be the centrist alternative to Joe Biden.  But she never gained ANY traction with black voters and remained unable to even offer an explanation of why they should vote for her.  That spelled doom and she got crushed in South Carolina. It then seemed like she would stick around for Super Tuesday and hope for the hometown win in Minnesota.  But then she made a pretty gutsy choice-she dropped out, endorsed Joe Biden and turned her machine into a Get Out the Vote operation for Joe Biden. It was both selfless and mature.  Her presidential candidacy will be forgotten, but she might wind up being the Vice-President or Attorney General of the United States.

Final Grade:  B. She elevated her profile and might wind up with a plumb job. But the race also showed her limitations politically. Her best moment was losing graciously.

7. Tom Steyer - the Fantasy Camper.

He spent $200 million dollars on a midlife crisis. Maybe he will end up with some cable news appearances. There are cheaper ways to get those.

Final Grade: F.

8. Tulsi Gabbard:  the Enigma.
She was stubborn enough to stay in the race even while finishing behind perennial candidate Rocky De La Fuente. And then she endorsed Joe Biden, so I guess she wasn't just running to spoil the race for Democrats?  She is a deeply weird person. I still have no idea what she was trying to accomplish.

Final Grade: D-.   She had a moment in the Joe Roganasphere but her performance as abysmal.

9. Andrew Yang: the Upward Failure.

Another deeply unserious person who ran to become a celebrity. Sadly, he succeeded at this to the extend he landed a talking head job on CNN.

Final Grade:  B-.  He knew when to quit and the CNN gig was about as good an outcome as he could have expected.

10. Michael Bennet;  the Tall.
Not a lot to show for this. He got the coveted James Carville endorsement, which got him some air time on his way to getting crushed in New Hampshire.

Final Crade: F.  He probably ran his way out of the Veep stakes, unless you think Biden was always going to pick a woman, in which case no harm done.

11. Julian Castro: the Soldier.

Julian was a mediocre candidate but I want to give him props for one thing-he was the only candidate to drop out before the voting began and then actively mobilize for another candidate.  He seems to be right in the heart of the party-to the left of Biden and to the right of Bernie. His work for Elizabeth Warren was commendable, if ultimateley ineffective. I don't know what his future holds. He could try to run for governor of Texas, but that feels like a reach. He also could get a job in the Biden administration, but I'm not sure whee he fits best.

Final Grade: B-.  He at least proved himself to be willing to carry water for somebody other than himself. That's an important trait in politics.

12. Corey Booker: the Non-Starter.

I was not a fan of Senator Booker at the start of this race and I never became an outright supporter. But he was good in the debates. He is the rare politician who can manage to be funny without being mean and to be self-effacing without seeming phony.  But he just never got a groove.  I think that being unmarried held him back. And I think Biden's popularity with African American voters denied him a core of fund raising opportunities that might have allowed him to run a more robust campaign early.

Final Grade:  C+.  I can't tell you where he went wrong, but he never got going. It seems unlikely that he will ever be the nominee, although a wife and kid or two might help.


13. Marianne Williamson: the Space Ghost.
There can be only one.
Final Grade: F.  Get the fuck out of here, Space Ghost.

14. Deval Patrick: the Regrets Avoider.

He probably could have made a credible run if he committed early but he waited until the last possible moment and then got crushed. The best news for him is that he joined so late that he never got in a debate and can probably hold out some hope that no one will remember he ever ran.

Final Grade: D. He might have been a Veep candidate if he never ran but could still wind up in the cabinet.

15. John Delaney: The Millioinaire With an M.
Sort of a mini-Bloomberg. He spent $14 million dollars and got humiliated by Warren in one debate, instead of two.
Final Grade: D. Each of his four kids has three and a half million reasons to be mad at Dad.

16. John Sestak: The Admiral.
Final Grade: F. He's an admiral, you know.

17. Kamala Harris: The Failed Plan.
Harris was a great candidate on paper and she got some traction after the first debate. But she did poorly after that and had the good sense to drop out before the voting started. (It should be noted that she is this low on the list because she actively removed herself from ballots in many states. Most candidates do not bother to do that. I think Klobuchar is the only other candidate to do that, although it was too late for her to do it in the Super Tuesday states.)

Harris' major strategic error was to base her campaign on a middle class tax cut that nobody was clamoring for. It forced her to be more modest in spending proposals and didn't really inspire anyone. Doing this poorly from the lofty heights of a California senate seat is inauspicious. But the good news is that she didn't seem to make any enemies along the way. She is on the short list for Vice-President. If she doesn't get that she will probably be in the cabinet. Or she can be a senator for as long as she wants.  Final Grade: C+.

18. Steve Bullock: The Future Senator.
He really didn't want to be a senator, but it looks like that is what fate has in store for him. He is in some ways the anti-Bernie. He would have been a very good general election candidate but he just wan't liberal enough to catch fire with the base.  He is a modest favorite to win the senate election and I think he has a bright future.  Final Grade: C.

19. Jay Inslee: The Competent.
His presidential campaign didn't do much for his reputation or future but his role in handling the first major breakout of COVID-19 sure is.  He may not be a good fit for any cabinet posts but if Trump is re-elected, he might be the 2024 front-runner.  The recent pattern in this country is to elect a president for two terms and then elect someone who is the opposite of that president. And if there is one thing Donald Trump ain't, it is competent.  Final Grade: C.

20. Beto O'Rourke.  The Face.
He may have expended some of his political magic on this race, but guys like Beto do not go away. He probably can't win a state wide race but Biden obviously likes him and that puts him in line for a good job. Hopefully he can avoid being stuck at HUD or Transportation. He should push for UN Ambassador or the Commerce Department.  Final Grade: D.


21. John Hickenlooper.  It's True. He Ran. Final Grade: D.

22. Kristin Gillibrand: The Forgotten.
She vanished in this campaign. Like Harris, she had a position that should have made it easy to raise funds. She also aggresively staked out anti-Trump bona fides with senate votes against all of his cabinet nominees. But she never got anywhere. I don't think she ever got a crooked number in a single poll.  That is staggering. She wasn't ready for this race and she probably doesn't quite fit in the party nationally.  Unlike Harris, she seemed to step on a few toes and there are resentments against her among the donor class.  (Some of these are unfairly rooted in her principled stand against Al Franken. Others seem more personal than substantive. But it feels permanent.)

She can become a solid if not spectacular back-bench senator or maybe run for the governor's mansion if we assume that Cuomo will decline to run for a 4th term.  Frankly, I'm not sure she would win that primary. Her low profile in 2020 suggests to me that she's not sure what to do next.  Final Grade: F.

The Other Failures.

23. Eric Swalwell.  Has been a good sport on social media. Maybe he can rebound, but it will take a while.
24. Tim Ryan. A nice enough guy.
25. Seth Moulton. Probably not cut out for national electoral politics but he has a lot to offer the country, in some capacity.
26. Wayne Messam.  He once raised $5 dollars for an entire quarter.
27. Bill de Blasio.  Might want to give him an F-. It's hard to finish behind a guy who raised $5 for a presidential campaign in an entire quarter. But this race was quixotic to begin with and since he ended, he bet on the wrong horse (Sanders) and failed to prepare his city for the COVI-19 pandemic.  He is thankfully term-limited as maory and he feels toxic at the moment.

II. A Quick Moment of Accountability.

One of my many peeves with punditry is that the professionals are never held accountable for their terrible projections and opinions.  What follows is just my attempt to grade my own handicapping. It's not a very lively subject, so feel free to skip.

I did my first look at the field on December 30th 2018. It took 501 days for there to be only one candidate left standing. Here is how I ranked them then, with their final finish in parenthesis. Shoutout to all eigh prospects who never ran.

1. Bernie Sanders (2)
2. Joe Biden  (1)
3. Kamala Harris  (17)
4. Elizabeth Warren (4)
5. Corey Booker (12)
6. Beto O'Rourke (20)
7. Amy Klobuchar (6)
8. Sherrod  Brown
9. Michael Bloomberg (3)
10. Krsitin Gillibrand  (27)
11. Eric Holder
12. Andrew Cuomo
13. Terry McCauliffe
14. Chris Murphy
15. Eric Garcetti
16. Mitch Landrieu
17. Steve Bullock (18)
18. John Hickenlooper (21)
19. Jay Inslee (19)  Nailed it!
20. Tim Ryan (24)
21. Howard Schultz
22. Tom Steyer (7)
23. Pete Buttiegieg. (5)
24. Some Dumb Celebrity (Let's give this slot to  Marianne Williamson)  (13)

When the race started I gave Bernie an 18% chance of being the nominee and Joe Biden a 14% chance. I think I understated both possibilities.  They were the front runners in their respective lanes. The only questions were would they run and would a younger candidate emerge to knock them off their respetive totems.

I knew that Bernie would run. I was less sure that Biden would. He hesitated a bit and did not start strong. But he found his groove and the party was waiting to receive him. 

There were three women who I thought might have moved up to the front of the pack. None of them caught fire, each for slightly different reasons. But I am willing to say that they all suffered from the democratic basse being skittish about nominating another woman to run against Trump. I am glad that Biden has committed to selecting a female running mate.  It simplifies the process. There are several good options and it will be at least some measure of progress.

As time passes and our lives become dominated by COVID-19 it really is remarkable that the 37 year old mayor of a college town put himself in the top tier. He won Iowa and damn near won New Hampshire. He did this by building a good oranization and an even better brand. He was the gay veteran who shared the values of the typical white moderate voter.  His campaign will be a case study on both the strengths and limitations of branding in politics. 

Meanwhile, three perfectly competent and popular sitting governors ran to nowhere. Jay Inslee, Steve Bullock and John Hickenlooper all crapped out before the first caucus. That should be a case study too.  Whatever party lose the 2020 election would do well to give a long hard look at governors in 2024. They will have a lot of crisis management on their resume and a lot less of the Washington media circus on their breath.

I can't exactly brag about my predictions. Bernie and Biden were the obvious front-runners. I thought that Bernie was popular enough with the larger party that his very enthusiastic base would make him tough to beat. But the party looked at the result in SC and decided they knew who needed to be the nominee.

I think Joe Biden is a good man. He has flaws, and they could cost him this election. But he has charm and style and people like him. There is only one opponent left for him to beat. And anyone who really opposes authoritarianism, should do whatever they can to help him do so.




III.  Monotous Details:

I had Bernie in first for the first four post.  Biden was second each time.  I moved Biden to first after he officially entered the race and moved Bernie to second.  For the eight post (October 2019), I moved Warren up to first followed by Biden, then Bernie. For the 9th, I moved Biden back to first, Warren down to second and kept Bernie 3rd. In January, I moved Bernie ahead of Warren and kept Biden in the lead.

In my 12th post, just after Iowa,  I put Bernie back in front, with Biden in 2nd and Buttigieg 3rd. After New Hampshire, I got really spooked. My 13th post had Bernie first and Buttigieg second. I also bought the Amy Klobuchar boomlet and placed her third. I had Biden down in sevent.

I was still a little skittish after South Carolina. My 14th post still had Bernie in front, but Biden was back up to second. Warren, Klobuchar and Bloomberg rounded out the top five. After Super Tuesday, I of course put Biden back in first and Bernie in 2nd.











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Four Tuesdays in March (Democratic Horse Race, Take 15)

Seven days ago, Bernie Sanders was a two-to-one betting favorite to be the Democratic nominee.  As I type these words today, Joe Biden is a roughly seven to one favorite.  So yes, a lot happened.

First, the scale of Biden's South Carolina victory came into focus. That caused Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar drop out of the race and endorse Vice-President Biden. Beto O'Rourke got in on the game too at a rally in Dallas.

Then we started to get results from the Super Tuesday states and Joe Biden started to win in places that he had barely campaigned and had almost no physical presence. He won throughout the south, but also in Maine, Massachussetts and Minnesota.  He even took five delegates from Bernie in Vermont.

When all of the Super Tuesday votes are counted, Joe Biden probably be ahead of Bernie Sanders by about 70 delegates. A week before it looked likely that he would trail by at least 100.

I. The Kim Wexler Effect.

Before getting into the remainder of this race, I want to say a word about two candidates who left the races since my last post- Senators Amy Klobuchar and Elizabeth Warren.

When Barack Obama became my president, my friend bought one of those placemats that has all the presidents on it.  He showed it to his three year old daughter, going through all 45 pictures and telling her a little bit about who they were.  He was curious whether she would remark on the fact that only the new guy was black.  When they were done, she asked her dad two questions 1. Why were they all boys? 2.  Why were so many named James?

As of Thursday, we know that they will continue being all boys for at least one more cycle. The earliest that can be remedied is 2024.  She will be old enough to vote in that one. For the moment, it seems likely that she will not have to vote for a James.

Warren's departure has prompted a lot of hand-wringing and genuine lamentation that this was not the year to elect a woman.  One particular piece by Matthew Yglesias got a lot of traction in my social circle.  The premise is that educated liberals are much more likely to support a woman president than any other demographic.  That's a frustrating idea, but it's hard to deny.  There are multiple factors behind this, including the fact that Hillary's loss in 2016 has scared a lot of people into thinking that the country is not ready to elect a woman. At the risk of being reductive, I have to say that I agree this far-the white working class is not ready to vote for a woman.  For some reason, women who come from that demographic seem to lose their street credibility along the way to accumulating the bona fides to run for president.

There was a story line on this week's episode of Better Call Saul that illustrates the dynamic pretty well. In the first part of the episode Kim Wexler is excitedly spending a day working with her pro bono clients in several criminal cases but has to leave those duties to an associate when she gets called away by her primary client, Mesa Verde Bank. She then has to drive out to the sticks and "negotiate" with a squatter who has built a home on land that belongs to the bank.  All of his neighbors have been bought off, but he will not budge.

The squatter is about 70 years old and if the story were not set in 2006, very well might have been wearing a Make America Great Again hat.  Kim attempts to be empathetic and to offer him more money than he is legally entitled to receive. She is polite and dignified, even as it becomes obvious that this older man is unimpressed by her offer. He tells her off, saying that she is the kind of hypocrite who spends one day a year at a soup kitchen to feel better about spending her working days screwing over the little guy. He describes how the bank sent her out to be "the big gun...with a pony tail."

 Eventually, she snaps and tells the guy he has 24 hours to accept a less generous deal or get nothing. As she storms off, her boss praises her for ending the confrontation.  On the drive back into town, Kim pulls over the car and takes stock of what just happened. When we see her next, night has fallen and she is back knocking on the guy's front door. When he answers, she shows him real estate listings that she found. These are homes he can afford with his buyout money. Nice homes. Homes with ameneties like nice views.  She even offers to pay for his movers and to take a day off from work to help herself.

He is still unimpressed.  She explains that she can't relate to what she is going through, because she has never owned a home. As a child, she had to move in the middle of the night, one step ahead of the sheriff and the landlord. We in the audience know she is telling the truth, because we have been learning her story over the course of five seasons.

He responds by telling her that she is willing to say anything to get what she wants.  He goes back inside, turning his back on the one person who was willing and able to help him. The audience knows that Kim sacrificed hours of her time trying to help him because she cared. But to him, she's just a pretty blonde with an educated vocabulary, expensive shoes, and a great skincare regime.

Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren all grew up in the working class. Voters see this in Brooklyn Bernie even though noone quite seems to know what he did for a living in his 20s and 30s.  As for Scranton Joe, he just exudes the mores and culture of a car salesman's son. 

But to thos same voters, Elizabeth Warren will always be the Harvard prof who probably benefitted from identifying as a Native American based on negligible ancestry that never affected her day to day life. Bernie can own three houses and Biden can be famous for 40 years, but they are still of the working class.  Betsy Herring of  Oklahoma City, is just Professor Warren from Harvard.

No matter how much she pledge to work for the working man and woman, they never got comfortable with her. She didn't make the sale. And I'm not sure she ever could have. She finished third in the state she represents in the senate and fourth in the state of her birth.

As for Klobuchar, her failures are more specific. She never connected with black or brown voters. As each debate went by, I wanted her to find a specific believable reason she could give for why minority voters should choose her from among the many realistic options they had before them. It did not happen.  A strong third place finish in New Hampshire gave me hope, but she dropped like a rock in Nevada and South Carolina.  Her smartest move was to get out when she did and to deliver her home state for Joe Biden. Klobuchar competed against Warren in four states. The each got just over 100,000 votes.  Neither will be president this time, although Klobuchar remains a plausible option for Biden' running mate.

For a variety of geographic and pragmatic reasons, Warren is not that. Third place is not much consolation. But having run a good and honest campaign built on specific policy ideas and committed to inclusion and helping people from backgrounds like her own should be. Even if too many of those people never appreciate what she tried to do.


II.  The Horse Race.

1. The Front Runner-Joe Biden

The day before Super Tuesday, Biden was favored to win six of the 14 states. He won ten. And the party has continued to coalesce behind him in the days since then. He has weaknesses, but the people of South Carolina chose him so resoundingly that Buttigieg and Klobuchar knew it was time to get out.

He is popular and decent. The institutional party likes him and he is riding a wave of goodwill that is rarely seen in politics. His weaknesses are well documented and a lot can wrong in eight months. But after the next few weeks, he will probably be on track to win the nomination with a couple hundred delegates to spare.

2. The Stubborn Independent- Bernie Sanders.

A week ago Bernie had good reason to expect that he would win a fractured primary to emerge with a clear plurality of delegates. An out right majority was possible, if things fell into place. But then the party came together and turned out in large numbers for Biden.

Bernie staked his candidacy on a very specific theory-he is a strong candidate because he can turn out voters who did not turn out in 2016. He claimed that he would motivate large numbers of young people to vote.  We've now had 18 states test that theory and there is no evidence to support it.

So far, Bernie does not appear to have a plan B. He has not shifted his message to the center and he not hired anyone from the exiting centrist campaigns or gotten the support of Elizbeth Warren.

He does not seem capable of strategic change. And the delegate math looks brutal for him. Super Tuesday was his chance to run up the score.  The coming Tuesdays will deliver blowouts in Florida and Mississippi and likely losses in Illinois and Ohio.  It does not look good.

3. Tulsi Gabbard is still running for some fucking reason. She has two delegates. I hope they are friends, because it will save them some hotel money in Milwaukee this summer.


III. When Will This End?

1. The Rest of March

Six states vote on March 10th.  Bernie is the betting underdog in all six. Idaho and Washington might be close, and a win in either of those states would at least let him claim to be winning the western states. But if he really wants to make the race competitive, he needs to win Michigan, which was the site of his biggest upset victory in 2016. 

Bernie is sure to get crushed in Michigan and Mississippi, so even if he holds his own in MI and overperforms out west, Biden's delegate lead will probably grow.

Bernie claims to be more popular than Biden in the states that the Democrats need to win in November. Michigan will be his best chance to test that theory. It des not look promising at the moment.

If he doesn't win Michigan, he won't really have a plausible path forward to a delegate majority. But he will keep fighting, because Bernie is about building a left wing movement in America and he's not going to let something as silly and capitalist as math get in the way of that.  (He will also have, theoretically a shot at a plurality, so okay, fight on.)

After those six states vote, there is a debate scheduled for March 15th. Bernie will be on the attack and Biden is vulnerable to a bad night. But  March 17th is where it gets really ugly for Bernie.  He will lose Ohio and Arizona and get hammered in Florida. I suspect Bernie will focus on Illinois and hope for a win in a big state. It could revive his candidacy, at least for awhile.

But then we get to the 4th and final Tuesday of the month-March 24th. Only one state votes that day, but it is Georgia. Unless something really radical changes in the race in the next 16 days, Biden will cruise to another blowout and the delegate math will start to look really hairy for Bernie.

2. COVID-19.

In the days leading up to Super Tuesday a friend who supports Bernie told me that the Corona Virus could hurt Biden, as it will sour people on the status quo.  That day may well come. But my operating theory is that for now, the virus makes people want stability.  If it gets really, really bad, then they might want to burn the system down.

Tomorrow is Monday March 9th. It looks like the stock markets will take a blood bath in the morning. Maybe more bad news will come tomorrow and it will shake up the race enough to give Bernie life.  But a more likely outcome is that people will turn out on Tuesday so that the Democrats can put this fight behind them and begin to face the Orange Menace.


I do not expect Bernie stop campaigning until all of the primaries have been held. As in 2016, he will  slowly realize that the nomination is not to be his, but he will keep building his "movement." The best result fo the Democrats is that the rest of March becomes so bad for Bernie hat he looks ridiculous campaigning in the spring.

Not that that will stop him either.

IV. The Final (?) Power Rankings.

1. Joe Biden (Up from 2)
2. Bernie Sanders (Up from 4 thanks to Klobuchar and Warren leaving the race.)
3. Tulsi "DFL" Gabbard.

Pour some out for Liz and Amy.  If anyone wants to borrow my copy of Under the Dome, let me know.

The End of the Beginning (Democratic Horse Race, Take 14)

Does the name James Rassman mean anything to you?  Probably not.

On March 13, 1969 James Rassman was embarked on a swift boat in the Mekong River delta. During a firefight, he went over the side, falling into the Bay Hap River.  John Kerry ordered the boat to turn around, back into enemy fire.  When Rassman was unable to pull himself onto the boat, Kerry went down and reached for him, pulling him to safety.

Rassman lived a mostly quiet life after getting home from the service. But one day in 2004 he got on  a plane to Iowa and showed up at a John Kerry event to tell that story. Kerry was already rising in the polls, but this pushed him over the top. He won Iowa and New Hampshire on his way to a relatively easy nomination that summer.

Most politicians do not have a story like that. There are only so many war heroes to go around. Joe Biden has a hell of personal story.  When Joe Bide was 30 years old and a senator-elect, his wife and infant daughter were killed in a car accident. Last week during a CNN Town Hall Reverend Anthony Thompson asked Biden a question about his faith. Rev. Thompson's wife was murdered by a white supremacist during the mass shooting of a black church in Charleston, South Carolina in 2015. Vice-President Biden responded to the question in direct and personal terms, as seen above.

And yesterday, Biden swamped the South Carolina primary with nearly 50% of the vote. He won 39 of 54 delegates and the race now feels like a two-man contest. If Biden holds his own on Super Tuesday, and winds up winning the nomination in Milwaukee, the moment with Reverend Thompson might be seen as the turning point of what recently looked like a doomed campaign.

So where does this leave us?

I. Early State Analysis.
After four contests, the race stands as follows:

1. Joe Biden, 30% of the vote, 1 win, 54 delegates.
2. Bernie Sanders, 24% of the vote, 2 wins, 2 second places finishes, 60 delegates.
3. Pete Buttigieg, 15% of the vote, 1 win, 1 second, 1 third, and 1 fourth. 26 delegates
4. Elizabeth Warren 10 % of the vote, 8 delegates
5. Amy Klobuchar 10% of the vote, 7 delegates.

II. The Horse Race: No More Tiers.

1. The Front Runner-Bernie Sanders.

Bernie leads in delegates and after Tuesday will probably have the popular vote lead too. He is the front-runner. He has done well with Latino voters and he remains the overwhelming favorite of young voters.  But he has only exceeded expectations once (Nevada) and a winnowing field probably helps Biden going forward.

I like Bernie's chances of winning a plurality of delegates. But to win a majority, he's going to need to course-correct a little. As moderates drop out, he should hire some of their staff because he needs to get better at messaging for the center of the country.

At the last debate he responded to every criticism of him with an angry harrumph. When called out on his support of Fidel Castro, he doubled down. This will not win him any votes going forward. He needs to think about the center more, not just to win the nomination but to be competitive in the general election.

2.  The Alternative- Joe Biden.

Biden just had the best night of his life. But nothing is guaranteed on Super Tuesday.  He needs to win the southern states and to make the delegate threshold in California. He's also an underdog in Texas, but he can probably control the delegate bleeding there.

But one good night does not erase his weaknesses. He is prone to gaffes and his fundraising has been poor. He can probably win a convention floor fight over Bernie, but only if the numbers are close to even.

3. The Persister-Elizabeth Warren.

Third in Iowa.  Fourth in neighboring New Hampshire. Fourth again Nevada, Fifth in South Carolina. She has under-performed and her trend is downward. But she retains a committed core of voters who like her debate style and her thoroughness. They have donated enough money to her campaign that she can keep competing through March.

Last night she was frank in saying that her plan going forward was to win as many delegates as possible. She knows the math does not exist to propel her to a delegate majority. But she also knows that every delegate she earns gives her leverage in Milwaukee. She is from the left wing of the Democratic party but she's also a believer in institutions. At the time of her choosing, she could endorse either Bernie or Biden and sell it with a straight face.

If she wins Massachusetts on Tuesday, she has a justification to stay on beyond that point. She will not be the presidential nominee. But she could be the most powerful broker at the first brokered convention of my lifetime.

4.  The Imperfect Pragmatist-Amy Klobuchar.

I have been with Amy for months. I still think she has the best resume to get elected and the best temperament to govern. But it's not going to happen this year.

She caught a break in Iowa. The confusion about the outcome and the poor showing of Vice-President Biden became the biggest stories coming out of the first caucus. By performing slightly better than polls suggested, she looked like a credible option. And then she had a great debate night in New Hampshire. This led to a respectable third place finish. Six delegates and 20% of the vote gave her momentum and boosted her fund raising.

But at the next debate, she got into a petty exchange with Buttigieg that took some of the glow off her earlier performance. She also completely failed to develop a narrative for why black and brown people should vote for her. So she bombed down to 5th in Nevada and all the way to 6th in South Carolina.

5-3-5-6 is not going to do it. But she is the betting favorite to win Minnesota on Tuesday, and I know that means a lot to her. Like Warren, she knows that every delegate is valuable.

Fun fact-the very first presidential candidate that I ever supported was Senator Paul Simon (D-IL). When I was 14 years old, I went to a Barnes and Noble and special-ordered his book about putting America to work through an infrastructure jobs program. I was too young to vote for him, but I followed him closely, including his surprise appearance on Saturday Night Live with the other Paul Simon. (No relation and no endorsement either.)

Simon won his home state Illinois primary that March.  I want Amy Klobuchar to do the same this week. And then, she needs to drop out.


5.  The Republican- Mike Bloomberg.
He has spent half a billion dollars on this campaign before his name ever appeared on a regular ballot. I don't blame him for staying around long enough to find out just how bad that investment is. There might even be a practical justification for competing on Tuesday. A lot of mail-in ballots were cast before his campaign was revealed to be the cynical joke that it is. So he might just get 15 percent of the vote in California. He certainly will get it in plenty of congressional districts.  That could cost Sanders some delegates, and if that prevents a Bernie nomination, well there are worse ways for a 78 year old man to spend eight tenths of one percent of his wealth.

6. Yeah, she's still running-Tulsi Gabbard.
One percent in South Carolina. One.  But she's still the preferred candidate of Fox News.


And pour a little out for Tom Steyer. He spent $250 million dollars so people could hear his opinions about various things. That's not as ridiculous as spending the percentage of free time that I spend doing the same thing.


Bonus Segment: I was drafting this posting when the news broke that Pete Buttigieg was dropping out of the 2020 race.  I'll leave this here, unedited for posterity's sake.  I am glad he accepted the reality of the math.  He has a bright future.

The Rookie of the Year-Pete Buttigieg.
Someday he might be the answer to the trivia question: Who won the last Iowa caucus?

Winning Iowa is nothing to sneeze at it. He had to overcome a lot of questions about his age and resume. He also had to convince a lot of people that the country was ready to elect a gay president. He followed this up with a very close 2nd place finish in New Hampshire.

But then the race turned to more diverse states, and he faltered. A respectable third in Nevada but a distant 4th  in South Carolina. At one point last night it looked like he might announce that he was dropping out today. But for now, his campaign goes on.

Maybe he has polling that shows him sucking up sizeable delegate numbers in places like Oklahoma and Colorado. But he is the one candidate who I think could enhance his career by dropping out early. You won Iowa, kid. If Biden becomes president, you'll probably have a plumb job this time next year.
Putting up a bunch of six to ten percent performances on Tuesday doesn't get you much.

III. The  Power Rankings, Take 13.

These are just my personal preferences among the remaining candidates:

1. Amy Klobuchar  (For old time's sake.)
2. Joe Biden 
3. Elizabeth Warren (Up from 4)
4. Bernie Sanders (Up from 6.)
5. Michael Bloomberg  (Same position numerically because Pete dropped out, but for the record I have moved him below Bernie Sanders.)
6. Tulsi Gabbard (Up from 8, but DFL is still DFL.)

Embrace the Uncertainty. (Democratic Horse Race Take 13)

Iowa and New Hampshire have Cauc-voted, and all we know for sure is that we don't know much.

I. New Hampshire Analysis.

My predictions were terrible but the polling averages were pretty accurate.  Let's compare:

1.  Bernie Sanders: Result 1st 25.9%.   Polling average 1st 28.7, Prediction 1st 28%.

Bernie did fine. He won and that's the most important thing. But his number was slightly lower than expected and as in Iowa, it does not seem that he brought out waves of young people to vote for him. The electorate is obviously focused on beating Trump and his electability argument is predicated on turning out young people to vote for him in unprecedented numbers. So far, we don't have evidence of that.

The optimistic take is that Bernie is the person most likely to wind up with a plurality of delegates. I am increasing skeptical that he will get through the process with a majority however.  Yesterday Nate Silver's model had him winding up with about 1,650 delegates. After NH the model has him winning 1,531. (1,990 are needed for a majority.)

2.  Pete Buttigieg.  Result: 2nd/24.4%  Polling average: 2nd/21.3%  Prediction:  3rd/16%.

Pete overperformed, slightly. His strategy officially paid off. By working IA and NH meticulously and accepting all free media invitations, he was able to get one gold and one silver. For the moment he has a negligible lead in delegates with 23. (Sanders has 21.)

Now he has to run nationally. He will get a lot of attention but I think voters will be concerned about his lack of experience. 

3. Amy Klobuchar  Result 3rd/19.8%  Polling average: 3rd/11.75  Prediction: 5th/11%.

No one can accuse me of being a homer. Klobuchar had a great night and will now get a lot of media attention. But she has to start running in places that have not paid much attention to her until very recently.   She had a fundraising windfall after the last debate and should have one today too. But she has to scale up in a hurry and I'm not sure what her campaign will focus on next.

She remains a huge long-shot. Nate Silver's model only has her winning 80 delegates. (Up from a project 57 before NH.)  That's two percent. She needs to start beating Pete and she has to worry that Bloomberg might get a lot of voters that otherwise would have voted for her.

I would advise her to keep pointing out the contrasts with Mayor Pete. She has the resume of a president. He does not.  But she also needs someone to go negative on Bernie. I don't think it's the right time to do that directly. But Biden and Warren might have to do that for their own interests.

4.  Elizabeth Warren  Result: 4th/9.3%.  Polling Average: 4th/11%  Prediction: 4th/14%.

It was not her night. Being from a neighboring state, she should have done better than 4th. But she can also claim with a straight face to have done as well as Klobuchar so far. (She in fact has 8 delegates, and Klobuchar 7.)  I think she is a pragmatist. Most years that would mean dropping out now. But this year looks like a fight for every delegate until Milwaukee. She will stay in until Super Tuesday, at least. Watch her fundraising. I think a lot of her donors might be drifting towards Amy Klobuchar today but I know Warren is a worker. She knows that she can still have a big say in who the nominee is and what the platform looks like.


5.  Joe Biden.  Result 5th/8.3%  Polling Average: 4th(tie)/11.0%. Prediction: 2nd/20%.
I thought NH would give Biden a comeback narrative. But his attack on Mayor Pete felt petty and he slid all the way down to 5th place. He skipped town before the voting was done.  But he does have an argument that will resonate with some-so far only white people have been voting. That can give him some hope but he's a wounded candidate and there will be a lot of money spent trying to deny him a win in South Carolina.  If he's going to be the nominee, he needs to have the best 18 days of his campaigning life.

I am starting to think that Trump's Ukraine/Hunter/Burisma fantasy hurt Biden. I don't think any Democrat believes this is a real scandal but there's probably some percentage who doesn't want to go through Hillary's emails again.  The unfortunate thing is that any candidate will have some version of that bullshit thrown at them by Trump and Fox News.  Biden's reputation is probably best suited to withstand it. But he got his ass kicked twice and I'm not sure how he turns that story around.

II.. The Horse Race.

The Top Tier (Front Runners)
1.  Bernie Sanders
2.  Pete Buttigieg (Up from 2)
3.  Michael Bloomberg (Up from 4)

Tier Two (The Alternatives)
4.  Amy Klobuchar (Up from 6)
5.  Elizabeth Warren

Tier Three: (The Wounded)
6. Joe Biden (Down from 2)

Tier Four: (Nothing Better to Do With the Lives)
7. Tom Steyer  He's already spent a fortune in NV and SC so he might as well stick around to see if he can get any return on it. I suspect not.
8.  Tulsi Gabbard  (Up from 9)

III.  The Power Rankings, Take 12
These are just my personal preferences among the remaining candidates.
1. Amy Klobuchar
2. Joe Biden (Up from 4)
3. Pete Buttigieg (Up from 5)
4. Elizabeth Warren (Up from 6)
5. Michael Bloomberg (Up from 7)
6. Bernie Sanders (Up from 8)
7. Tom Steyer (Up from 9)
8. Tulsi Gabbard (Up from 11)

Pour a little out for Andrew Yang, Michael Bennet and Deval Patrick. Bennet and Patrick would have been contenders for compromise candidates at a brokered convention. But I doubt that will happen now.

Andrew Yang will start a podcast and/or Multiple Level Marketing scheme any day now. His endorsement would be worth something, but I'm not sure who he would give it to. Without one, I suspect that the 3 percent of voters he got in NH will split pretty evenly, among Bernie and Pete.

This One Goes to Eleven (Handicapping the Democratic Field, Take 11 PLUS Iowa Predictions!

A few days ago, former Representative John Delaney dropped out of the race. He spent over $20 million of his own money and didn't even stick around long enough for the voting to start.  This is not a healthy system.

The big news this week was the Senate's capitulation to Donald Trump. The Republican majority refused to even have a proper trial with witnesses and evidence. They're just going to bit the bullet and stick with their man and hope that he lets them hold on to power for a few more years while the Baby Boomers take their resentment and entitlement to the grave.

In about 30 hours, the people of Iowa will caucus for the remaining 11 candidates.  I will go through each of those option, in the order which I rank their chances of being president. For each, I will say what is a Good Result, Adequate and Disappointing result tomorrow.

My theory remains that we will not know who is likely to be the nominee until Super Tuesday.  None of the early states is representative of the Democratic party nationally. Iowa and New Hampshire have almost no minority voters. Nevada has a lot of Latin voters, but not many black voters. Then South Carolina balances things out by having a disproportionately high number of black voters.  Only on Super Tuesday will we have a big enough sample to know where the country is going. 

And this years is the first time that a truly major candidate is skipping the early states all together. If Biden under performs in those early states, a lot of moderate will give Michael Bloomberg a long hard look. 

Here are my early state predictions:

Iowa:  1. Sanders (28%). 
            2. Biden (23%) 
            3. Buttigieg (17%)  
            4. Warren (14%) 
            5. Klobuchar (12%)


NH*    1. Biden  2. Sanders   3. Warren  4. Klobuchar 
NV       1. Sanders  2. Biden  3. Warren 
SC        1. Biden  2. Sanders 

* To clarify-I think Bernie/Biden will finish in the top 2 in IA and NH. The order will switch be NH has decided that their purpose in life is to veto the winner of the Iowa caucuses.

 The Top Tier (The Front Runners).

1. Joe Biden 
GOOD IOWA RESULT: Win
ADEQUATE IOWA RESULT: 2nd
BAD IOWA RESULT: 4th

2. Bernie Sanders 
Good: Win
Adequate: 2nd
Bad:  4th

3. Elzabeth Warren
Good: 2nd
Adequate: 3rd
Bad: 4th. 

4. Mike Bloomberg 
N/A

B.  Tier Two (The Alternatives).

5. Pete Buttigieg 
Good: Win.  (If he can't win here, he probably can't win anywhere.)
Adequate: 2nd
Bad:  4th.  He can probably justify a close 3rd place finish but if he doesn't make the medal table in Iowa, he might as well drop out. His national numbers have tanked and Indian doesn't vote until May. 

6.  Amy Klobuchar  
Good:  3rd
Adequate: 4th.  (Especially if she finishes ahead of Warren.)
Bad: 6th  She's beein in 5th place in Iowa for awhile now but she has had a couple good polls that have her in 3rd or 4th. Finishing ahead of Pete and or Warren will be a win. As an avowed Klobuchar supporter, I thin here best result looks something like Bernie 30, Biden 24, Klobuchar 15, Buttigieg 13, Warren 11.  Yang 4 Gabbard 3. 

C. Long Shots:

7.  Michael Bennet  

8. Deval Patrick.  (Up from 9)
Both of these guys have been focusing on NH.

D. Novelty Candidates.

9. Andrew Yang (Up from 10)
Good Result: 5th
Adequate Result; 6th
Bad Result:  If he gets under 5 percent, then we officially know he's just an internet meme. Anything over 5 percent or finishging ahead of Steyer and Klobuchar would suggest that he has more of a game ground than I suspected.

10. Tom Steyer (Up from 11) 
Good Result:  5th
Adequate Result: 6th
Bad Result: 7th
He has spent a ton of money in all of the early states. He needs to show a pulse in IA, but even a terrible result won't cause him to drop out.   He is angry at money, apparently.

11. Tulsi Gabbard (Up from 12)
It doesn't really matter. She's going to keep running. I don't know what her objective is, but I'm pretty sure it has nothing to do with being the Democratic nominee for president in 2020.

III. The Power Rankings, Take Ten.

These are just my personal preferences among the remaining candidates.

1.  Amy Klobuchar
2.   Michael Bennet   
3.   Joe Biden 
4.   Pete Buttigieg 

5.   Elizabeth Warren 
6.   Bernie Sanders (Up from 7)
7.   Deval Patrick (Up from 8)
8.  Tom Steyer

9.  Michael Bloomberg (Up from 10) 

10 Andrew Yang  (Up from 11)

11.   Tulsi Gabbard  (Up from 12)

We Didn't Deserve Marriane Williamson, or Democratic Field Take 10

It's been over a month since I updated my feelings on the Democratic candidates. We haven't really had a lot of news, but there have been three drop outs, so I thought I would do a quick update.

Bernie has had a good week of polling and that has translated into movement in the prediction markets. But I still consider Biden the favorite.

I have begun to realize that the early schedule makes this race hard to handicap.  February has the first 4-Iowa, New Hampshire each spaced out by about a week. But then there is only three days between South Carolina and Super Tuesday. On March 3rd, there are 15 contests with 1,344 delegates.  That schedule could favor Mike Bloomberg who is sitting out the first four states but has already been saturating the Super Tuesday states with advertisements. 

That schedule might also cause some candidates to hang around even if they do poorly in the early states. Colorado and  Minnesota both have primaries on that day. Amy Klobuchar and Michael Bennet might be tempted to hang around and see if they can vacuum up some delegates by hanging on for a few more days.

Here is my very early predictions for the February contests:

Iowa 1. Sanders 2. Biden 3. Buttigieg
New Hampshire:  1. Biden 2. Sanders. 3. Warren
Nevada:  1. Sanders 2. Biden. 3. Warren
South Carolina 1. Biden 2. Sanders 3. Warren

If anything close to this holds, then Biden, Sanders, Warren and Bloomberg can all claim viability going into Super Tuesday.

There are not a lot of big changes in the rankings, but the three drop outs did cause some ripples.

A. The Top Tier (The Front Runners).

1. Joe Biden 

2. Bernie Sanders (Up from 3)

3. Elzabeth Warren (Down from 2)

4. Mike Bloomberg (Up from 6)

B.  Tier Two (The Alternatives).

5. Pete Butigieg (Down from 4)
6.  Amy Klobuchar  (Down from 5)

C. Long Shots

7.  Michael Bennet  (Up from 8)

8. John Delanay.  (Up from 10)

9. Deval Patrick.  (Up from 11)

D. Novelty Candidates.

11. Andrew Yang (Up from 12)

11. Tom Steyer (Up from 13) 

12. Tulsi Gabbard (Up from 14)

III. The Power Rankings, Take Ten.

These are just my personal preferences among the remaining candidates.

1.  Amy Klobuchar
2.   Michael Bennet   
3.   Joe Biden (Up from 4)
4.   Pete Buttigieg (Down from 3)

5.   Elizabeth Warren 
6.  John Delaney (Down from 8)
7. Bernie Sanders (Up from 9)
8. Tom Steyer (Up from 10)
9.  Deval Patrick (Up from 11)

10.  Michael Bloomberg (Up from 12) 

11 Andrew Yang  (Up from 13)

12.   Tulsi Gabbard  (Up from 15)

5th Democratic Debate Grades

This debate felt very tired.  The stage is too big and the arguments they have are not new.  The whol event was of course overshadowed by the impeachment hearings. But, this is what we do here so let's get to it.



WINNERS

1. Pete Buttigieg  Tactical:  A-  Strategic A
Solid and poised, as always.

2. Cory Booker   Tactical:  A-   Strategic:  A-

Booker is good in these forums. He is smart on substantive issues and he manages to be funny without coming off like a dick.  These talents have not translated into any kind of traction in the polls as yet.

3. Amy Klobuchar   Tactical: A-  Strategic: A-

She had some good lines and got buzz on social media.  I was perhaps a little underwhelmed, only because I follow her closely and have heard some of those line rehearsed already.  She also seemed to shake, slightly.  I think it was something about her bangs hanging funny, but it was noticeable and a little distracting.

BREAK EVENS

4. Bernie Sanders  Tactical:  B+ Strategic:  B+

He played the hit and he seemed to look healthy again, which is good. He also looked younger than Biden, which is something. 

5.  Joe Biden    Tactical: B-  Strategic:  B

Joe had a few embarrassing moments but I don't think they will hurt him.  It's just hard to get fired up by him because you keep waiting for him to say something stupid.  That is a problem.

6. Kamala Harris  Tactical: B-  Strategic: B-
She seemed a little tired. But then again, so did I.

7. Elizabeth Warren   Tactical:  C+  Strategic:  B-
More of the same. I think she may have hit a ceiling of support.

LOSERS

8. Andrew Yang  Tactical: C  Strategic: C

Who gives a shit?

9. Tom Steyer:  Tactical:   C-  Strategic:  C-

Remember the episode of Seinfeld where Kramer goes to baseball fantasy camp? The Steyer campaign feels like that. He's old and he's rich and he's going through a divorce so he's spending a bunch of money to pretend he's running for president. His presence on the stage tonight was as if the Kramer was allowed to play a few actual major league games as a September call up.

10. Tulsi Gabbard  Tactical:  Incomplete  Strategic: Incomplete

There is something really, really wrong with her. And the way she wears that white suit every fucking day creeps me out.

The World and the Election Turn it Up a Notch (Eighth Look at the 2020 Democratic Field)

I last updated my rankings of the Democratic field on September 1st. A lot has happened since then, both in the race and in the world at large. Before I get to the rankings I want to take a moment to comment on what I think will determine the outcome of the election.

The election is in 54 weeks. I estimate that the Democratic party is a slight favorite to win. If I were to put it in probabilities, I would say the Democrats have about a 55% chance of winning and the Republicans about 45%.  But we're not sure who will be the nominee of well, either party.  I think a moderate Democrat (Biden, Klobuchar, Buttigieg) would have about a 60% chance and a more liberal candidate (Warren, Sanders, O'Rourke) would be in a very close election that would be decided by just one or two states. (If I had to guess, Wisconsin.)

Note: I think Harris is somewhere in between these two blocs idealogically and would be a very modest favorite to win.

I.  The Policies that Will Drive the Election Next  Year.

Before getting more specific on the horse race, I want to write briefly about the substance of the election. I now believe there are five issues that will shape the course of the race over these next 54 weeks, and I want to write about each of them in order of importance.

1. The Kurds, Syria and Iraq.  I thought that Trump's re-election campaign had one really solid policy arrow in its quiver-the claim that he defeated ISIS.  Now this isn't really true. The destruction of the ISIS caliphate was largely a result of carrying out the plans made and initiated during the Obama administration. But Trump did manage to not fuck that up. In fact he accelerated it a bit by arming a lot of Kurds in Syria to fight our common enemy.  Eleven thousand of those Kurds died in that fight.  Two weeks ago, for reasons still known only to him, he gave the government of Turkey the green light to slaughter them. The carnage and loss of life will be terrible.

The beneficiaries of this plan are Russia, the Assad regime in Syria and the Erogan government in Turkey. It is likely that ISIS will make gains too, although it's hard to say what form they will take. Today our soldiers left Syria for western Iraq. They were pelted with fruit on the way out of the country. The consequences of this betrayal will be extremely negative in the long run.

It is my hope that some principled Republicans repudiate President Trump over this betrayal. But only two Republican house members have done that so far. John Shimkus (R-IL) and Francis Rooney (R-FL).  Neither man is running for re-election next year.  For now, Trump is keeping the Republican party despite this pathetic fecklessness. That might hold. But it won't if things go really bad in Syria and Iraq.

2.  Impeachment.  Last week Mick Mulvaney took to the podium in the White House and admitted that the president withheld foreign aid from Ukraine unless they conducted an investigation of the president's mostl likely electoral opponent in 2020.  In normal times, this would cause a president to resign in shame. But Donald Trump is incapable of shame and he is pretending that there was nothing wrong in this decision.  The prediction markets have been pretty firm for over a week-there is about a 70% chance that Donald Trump will be impeached by the House but only about a 20% chance that he will be removed by the senate.

Today Bill Taylor gave his deposition and apparently drew a direct line from Donald Trump to a quid pro quo that conditioned Ukraine receiving aid to defend themselves from Russia on opening an investigation into Joe Biden.  This is rank corruption. If the Republican party were not so heavily in the bag for Trump, his removal from office would be a virtual certainty.

I think the odds of Trump being impeached are more like 80%. The house is gathering a lot of evidence and at least some of the people close to the president have been cooperating. But there are only two Republican senators that have even hinted that they might consider this impeachable conduct. To remove him from office, the Democrats will need at least 20 Republican votes. (Two Democrats, might waver due to political pressure in the states they represent, Alabama and West Virginia.)

If he is impeached but not removed, he will claim complete vindication.  But it's likely that the evidence presented at trial will damage his popularity among independent voters.

If he is removed, then the evidence was so strong that nearly half of the Republican caucus could not ignore the criminality. Under those circumstances, the Republicans probably nominate Mike Pence and lose big next year. If this all comes together soon, then there could be a competitive primary between Pence and Tom Cotton and or Nikki Haley. Ted Cruz will try to run because that's his only purpose in life now. If it happens as late as next spring, the party bosses might get to pick their nominee. They will be tempted to nominate Nikki Haley, although I still believe that the Republican base is incapable of embracing the daughter of Indian immigrants as their presidential candidate.

So the Democrats probably win if Trump is removed from office. If he is merely impeached, then the effect of the process will turn on the strength of the evidence presented to the public.


3.  Health care. I have watched most of the debates while scanning Twitter. During every debate so far, liberals on Twitter have complained loudly that the moderators spend too much time talking about health care. But the reason for this disproportionate time is simple-health care is the one issue that even casual primary voters care about. It affects their bottom line, so people pay attention during those discussion.

Most of the Democratic field have similar views on Donald Trump, immigration, and the need to increase taxes on wealthy Americans. There is even a lot of agreement on most matters of foreign policy, and the field even seems to agree that foreign policy is not worth talking about much. And they all want to move towards great health insurance coverage. But the most identifiable difference is between those who want to move to universal coverage through Medicare and those who support a more incremental proposal. That is the right versus left rift in the field.

Health care is a frustrating issue for a centrist. All of the data from every advance country tells us that our system sucks. And it would be greatly improved if the federal government got more involved in controlling price and making coverage available to more people. But the problem is that a majority of voters have good-enough coverage that they are wary of making big changes to the bloated, irrational system that we have built since World War Two.

Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders both want to go big here. They want to put all Americans on Medicare, effectively ending the private insurance industry and putting Uncle Sam in charge of it all. They have plenty of data to support the idea that in the long-term this will be more efficient and cheaper than the status quo.  But like any big idea, it creates problems.  These are the main three:

1. It probably can't pass. Even if the Dems take the senate with 50 or 51 seats, there will be moderates who don't want to vote for this in the caucus.
2. The courts as presently constituted will probably strike this down. Obamacare survived by the skin of its teeth. And the courts have move rightward since that decision. Neither Sanders nor Warren will acknowledge this fact, because they are running more on ideals than a pragmatic plan for how to govern the country.
3. If it were passed and somehow upheld by the courts, it would be extremely vulnerable to being gutted. The Republican party has not flinched in its mission to gut Obamacare, even popular elements of it, like expanind Medicaid coverage, have been resisted by the Republican party all across the country.  If a Medicare For All plan became law, it would still need to be funded every year. And the GOP would be dead set on choking it to death in its crib.

If the Democratic nominee runs on Medicare for all, it will be easy for the Republican candidate to scare voters into thinking that the Democrats are coming for their health care. And that's the fucked up thing about this Trojan Horse we call a health care system-people only really care about what will happen to their family. So the best we can realistically hope for are incremental changes.

Medicare for all is a political loser. That is why I think a Warren nomination will make the election too close to call.

4. The Economy.   Donald Trump raided the treasury to pay for a huge tax cut that endeared him to rich people. A lot of squishy Republicans who know he is a jerk might hold their nose and vote for him because they believe in the power of tax cuts as much as any junkie every believed in the drug that was killing them. This sounds pathological (and it is) but it describes a lot of Romney/Gary Johnson voters-the exact demographic that the Democratic nominee needs to win over.

Trump's economic record is mixed. The job market has remained strong. The tax cuts spurred some growth, but that has cooled down to 2.0 percent last quarter. Over the next year, I don't think it will get appreciably better than that. But we probably won't have a recession.

Trump's other economic stratagem has been a foolish trade war with China. The tariffs he placed on Chinese good caused retaliatory tariffs on our exports. Farmers in particular have been hurt by this. I expect Trump to find a way to end his trade war with China, call it a victory and lift all or most of the tariffs he put in place on them. China would be wise to reciprocate, and the farmers in Iowa and Ohio who have been suffering, just might be feeling better about their lot in life a year from now. This is an easy win for Trump, but he is not beyond blowing the opportunity.

5. Trump Fatigue.  Trump might escape being removed from office. The Republican party is in hock to him, and that could keep him in office. If he's still in office, he will waltz to the nomination. He is popular with a large enough swath of the public that he can make a race close, especially if the Democratic nominee runs poorly. But the plain fact is that the country and the world know that Donald Trump is an asshole.  And that counts. A lot.

Donald Trump thinks that life is a zero sum game, which is why he is obsessed with bilateral trade deficits.  This transactional  approach to life has caused him to align the United States with dictators and autocrats.  The world is seeing the price for this realignment, most acutely in Ukraine and Syria.

Ukraine is fighting off an invasion by Russia. Syria is fighting a civil war, where Russia and Turkey have enormous interest in who wins. Most Americans don't care about Ukranians or Kurds but we do care about being the good guys. At least we used to. And we ought to be rooting for the side of democratic freedom, especially where those freedoms meet the autocracies of the poorer world.  That is what Ukraine and Syria have in common. The best Democratic candidate might just be the person who can convince the people of Wisconsin, North Carolina and Arizona that they should want to be the good guys again. Convincing them that Donald Trump is a bad guy should be an easy first step.

II.  The Horse Race, Take Eight.

The candidates, in order of likelihood to be the nominee. Incredibly, only one candidate has dropped out in the past 53 days. (Bye-bye Bill de Blasio.)

A. The Top Tier (The Front-Runners)

1. Elizabeth Warren  (Up from 2)

She had a great month or so of polling and briefly overtook Joe Biden in the RCP polling average. That wave seems to have crested, perhaps in part due to her performance in the 4th debate. But the betting markets now favor her heavily, so I move her to the top spot.  But she has a lot of vulnerabilities and shouldn't get too comfortable here.


2. Joe Biden (Down from 1)

He's old. And it's showing.That's why he slipped.  He might rebound, especially if foreign affairs come to the fore, but he is not putting this race away. Not by a long shot.

3. Bernie Sanders

He's old. And he had a heart attack. But he looked lively in the debate and he got some good press out of an endorsement by Representative Ocasio-Cortez.  He has a loyal following and will probably vacuum up a lot of delegates. But his health is a concern and his shtick wears thin.

B. Tier Two (The Other Contenders)

4. Pete Buttigieg (Up from 5)

He could benefit if Bernie slips. He's done well on the stump and educated voters like him a lot. I first ranked the candidates on December 30, 2018. I ranked Mayor Pete 23rd, which was dead fucking last.  This is what I wrote at the time:  Mayor of the 4th largest city in Indiana. Like everyone who spends time in South Bend, he has an inflated sense of his own self-worth.

I was wrong. Pete is a serious and skilled politician. He deserves to be given serious consideration, even if his resume is imperfect.

5. Kamala Harris (Down from 4)

She's not just down one spot, she is down a tier. Her polling has been really rough for the past month. I still think she would be a good president but I'm not sure she can close this deal.


C. Tier Three (Those Guys)

6. Cory Booker (Up from 7)

Still not my favorite, but he has a good presence and might hang around long enough to capitalize on any chaos further up the chain.

7. Amy Klobuchar (Up from 9)

She has gotten a lot of chatter as the best moderate alternative to Biden. But this has not shown up in the polls yet and she might miss the next debate. I hope her buzz translates into improved polling numbers soon, because she's going to need a strong performance in Iowa to stay in the race.

8. Beto O'Rourke (Down from 6) and
9. Julian Castro (Down from 8)

The Texan boys have some talent but they don't seem to be of presidential timber. They both might already be thinking about a personal exit strategy but I'm not sure what either of them will do with their time after this race.

D. Tier Four (Long Shots)

10. Michael Bennet.
11. Steven Bullock

They probably would have been good VP candidates. Bullock might still be, but dropping out before Iowa might help him stay viable for that.

12. John Delaney

He should drop out and endorse Klobuchar. But he probably still has consultants willing to take his money and he must not be ready to give it up. I think he'll drop out after Iowa.

E. Tier Five (Novelty Candidates)

13. Andrew Yang

He will get votes. He will get delegates. He will birth a really annoying fringe political movement that gets out sized attention because it is mostly white and prosperous. But he will not be the nominee.

14. Tulsi Gabbard

She managed to generate some publicity this week by hopping on a report in the New York Times that inaccurately suggested that Hillary Clinton thought she was being groomed by the Russians. I can't imagine her dropping out and she might get some crossover fuck-you votes from Republicans. But she's an asshole and needs to go away.

15. Tom Steyer (Up from 17)
16. Tim Ryan (Down from 15)
17. Marianne Williamson (Up from 20)
18. Joe Sestak  (Down from 16)
19. Wayne Messam

The funnest fact of 2020 so far: Wayne Messam raised exactly $5 during the 3rd quarter of this year. That is one-half of a roll of quarters.


III.  The Power Rankings, Take Eight.
Here is how I rank the candidates just by my personal preferences.

1.  Klobuchar
2.  Harris
3.  Buttigieg (Up from nine)
4.  Michael Bennet (Up from 6)
5.  Steve Bullock (Up from 7)
6.  Elizabeth Warren (Down from 3)
7.  Beto O'Rourke (Down from 4)
8.  Julian Castro (Down from 5)
9.  Joe Biden
10. Cory Booker (Up from 11)
11. John Delaney (Down from 10)
12. Joe Sestak (Up from 13)
13. Tim Ryan (Down from 12)
14. Bernie Sanders
15. Wayne Messam
16.  Andrew Yang
17.  Tom Steyer
18.   Marianne Williamson
19.   Tulsi Gabbard