I always do. Tonight’s going to be a shitshow. Buckle up.
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The debate moderates are: Lester Holt, Chuck Todd, Hallie Jackson, Vanessa Hauc and Jon Ralson.
I’m pretty sure that’s debate moderatORS…but maybe not. 
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And the best way for them to do that is probably for one or two of them to drop out, which ain’t happening. Face it…the majority of the country is being put in a position of either being governed by a minority candidate from the far right white nationalist dominionist fringe OR a minority candidate from the far left belligerently “woke” cancel culture fringe.
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I do not see Sanders being able to arrive at the Democratic Convention with all the delegates he needs.
I also do not see him looking any more electable either.
Center Left is where we are. And where we will be.
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This is right, Sanders is the biggest threat to Biden, Amy, Pete, and Bloomberg, they should be locked onto him; if they spend all their energy on Bloomberg they will not take Sanders down for the NV voters. Sanders will be Sanders and tumble with everyone who says anything that he disagrees with, he’s likely to talk about billionaires a lot and yell a lot.
The person who has the best chance here is Warren…Bloomberg is the antithesis of her economic programs (which he’s trying to mitigate by copying them in his plans), and he’s said a bunch of stuff in the past that leaves him vulnerable. Warren is the one person on the stage who doesn’t have racial or sexist baggage, so she can hit Bloomberg on both fronts. And, she’s the other person up there who was a Republican, so she can talk about why she switched and how she really switched, where Bloomberg sort of did a Trump and changed to a party he thought he would do better in. She won’t win out if she’s not given the chance to speak though, or if everyone else is also hitting Bloomberg…and, the way the press has been disappearing her (and NBC did that in their last poll) she’s really in danger of being left out. She has to break through now, change the minds of NV voters, if she’s going to carry forward.
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They are the biggest threats to each other. They are splitting more of the vote 4 ways than Sanders and Warren are arguably splitting 2 ways. Polls I’ve seen are conflicting on where the votes go when one or the other drops out, but on its face, that seems to be the case.
One way for Biden to force Pete/Amy to drop out is to use this debate to persuade their supporters that they’re not viable and will only throw the race to either Sanders or Bloomberg. All Joe needs is about 8%-12% of the moderate white voters who are currently parked with Amy/Pete to move to him. Given how volatile late movement was in both IA/NH, there’s no reason there can’t be a similar shift in Biden’s favor (for a change). He has to make it happen, have a little luck, and take advantage of opportunities presented by the other candidates. Klobuchar’s performance in NV has not been as strong as in NH/IA. She has had a lot of Veep like moments
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That may be true. I haven’t had a chance to study more recent numbers for Nevada, but I do know one thing: we’re shooting ourselves in the dick with this many candidate remaining at this point instead of having just one or two, maybe three, left in the race. We should be trying to build a unified coalition by now and helping whoever feels butthurt to accept that they need to be part of it. Instead we’re feeding more and more division and writing Faux News’ and the GOP’s scripts for them.
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It’s your impression that the non-Bloomberg candidates are looking (or should be looking) only at the Nevada caucus?
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Newest poll shows Sanders adding to his lead:
Sanders advanced to 32 percent support among Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents in the latest ABC News/Washington Post poll, up 8 percentagepoints from late January. Biden fell to 17 percent, down 11 points to his lowest of the campaign. And Bloomberg, who takes the stage for the first time in tonight’s debate in Nevada, now has 14 percent support, up 6 points
ABC NEWS/WASHINGTON POST POLL: 2020 PoliticsEMBARGOED FOR RELEASE AFTER 6a.m.Wednesday,Feb. 19, 2020
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I kind of hope they come after Sa ders.
His main strength is how he can answer questions like he’s held that belief his whole life. There isn’t a last-years video of him crying about having to change all of his positions to run.
Nobody takes a question better than the smooth way Bernie always works it back to his game plan.
Voters can sense when candidates stand sniffing the wind before answering. Other candidates blow their authenticity by tailoring the message to the crowd.
Biden, Warren and Buttigieg have all went for Bernie and tumbled. Bloomberg is an easier target.
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If we do not take the Senate, we can still be in the position of having gotten rid of Mitch McConnell, having won the Presidency and (because we did not ALSO take the Senate, in spite of knocking off McConnell) still be in a disadvantaged position for the legislation and policy we need.
What is Sanders doing down ticket?
That is a legitimate question and, besides getting rid of Trump, one of the main ones.
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I believe the strongest candidate for winning across the nation will be Sanders. His unflinching sincerity holds him well outside this cloister.
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In electoral authoritarianism as we see in Russia, the function of the opposition, which consistently has the rug pulled out from under it, is to confer legitimacy on the Great Leader. Trump has been obsessed with his legitimacy, and as we have seen, is willing to go well beyond the limits of the law to bend the result. The Democrats have to win this time around, otherwise they will be painted as doofus opposition that is tolerated, but only to the extent it plays to Trump’s strengths. I would like to hear a bit about this model, since one party seems hell-bent on taking us there.
I have seen my share of emeriti speaking…and, sometimes a Professor’s words have a weight that an instructor’s do not.
Biden is the only candidate who can lay claim to being a Statesman. I almost wish he had taken that tack much earlier rather than trying to imitate Mayor Pete.
Mayor Pete does a good graduate student/assistant professor run-down on grown-up topics, but the wisdom of a man who has seen more is different, and it can matter.
But that kind of delivery takes a willingness of Biden’s handlers to suggest it…and, apparently they did not (or have not done it yet).
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Tip for Bloomberg when talking about “delegate math”: Everything multiplied by ZERO is still ZERO.
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My deepest condolences!
(Also I don’t know that you’re right about the choice people will have to make.)
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I’m not sure I can watch this shit tonight. Its been completely billed as a take-down of Bloomberg. One thing I do know is that NBC has a real hard-on for Bloomberg. They love Wall Street as do all the major corporate media conglomerates. Plus, they have a real dislike for Sanders. Not to mention, they’ve erased Warren completely, and for some stupid reason they’ve elevated Klobuchar, who hasn’t broken out of single digits in popularity yet, but is now their go-to female candidate because of her last debate performance. I’m convinced NBC’s honchos, the Joe and Mika Show (that mention Warren repeatedly with a negative association to try to bring down her numbers), along with all the never-tRumpers, want Bloomberg over everyone else. They pimped tRump to the public and now they want to sell Bloomberg to us. He is good for their bottom line after all due to all that ad money he’s given to the media.
On Super Tuesday (in two weeks), approximately a third of the delegates will be allotted as I understand it. Its still anyone’s game, at least in the top four. Bloomberg doesn’t have any delegates so far. He is so repellent as a candidate to the Democratic party imo. If he’s against so-called socialism in the US and that’s the reason he’s running, how does he feel about social security, TANF, Medicaid, SNAP or “food stamps”, SSI, the Earned Income Tax Credit and housing assistance? For fuck’s sake, aren’t people making a little too much about how awful socialism is anyways. All those programs are supported by the Democratic party last time I checked. So enough of that shit. We are a capitalist society with elements of socialism by way of social programs that address problems that can’t be solved by markets and free enterprise. Its just so stupid that people go round and round on those inanities when they should know better.
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Shit. I just realized I have to figure out who I’m going to vote for.
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Ouch and very good I might add.
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