Eeeeh, it's been a gradual thing. I believe I mentioned starting to like Bernie Sanders better after watching the October debate wherein Warren offered a conflicted stance on our then-recent pullback from Northern Syria, contending that that shouldn't have happened on the one hand, but that we need to "get out of the Middle East" on the other. I'd always felt that both Sanders and Warren were naively pacifistic candidates more so than I am (I think it's obvious that I'm not really the leading dove of this forum), and Warren's criticism of the Trump foreign policy in Northern Syrian indeed came off as insincere to me in that debate. Sanders though seemed more robust and sincere on the issue. That's something I've felt strongly about. But yeah, the health care issue has been another one that's helped cement me in the Sanders camp overall.

There's not that big of a difference between them really and it's not really a big deal in my mind as to which to support. I remember the days when the most leftish type of candidates who could poll as well as either of them were like Howard Dean and John Edwards. I am chill with this situation. Which one to support isn't life and death to me.

Why Biden over Klobuchar, you ask? Eh, that also is not a big deal to me. Klobuchar reminds me a lot of Hillary Clinton and how she talked about issues. She just seems highly plastic, scripted, and overly cautious. Biden's not too much different really, but uhh, whatever. I don't really care that much, I'm not going to vote for either of them in the Texas primary anyway.

Well by SJW, I typically mean somebody who is to my right on economic policy and to my left on cultural policy, and that's most of the Democratic candidates really, so it's a little subjective, but for our purposes here I went with "Feels more strongly about who should and shouldn't have access to Twitter than about who should and shouldn't have access to health care."

I disagree with your first premise. Pete's running as a technocratic, practical mayor, not an aggressive culture warrior. He does not go around insinuating that his rivals are bigots or anything of this nature.

The appeal of Pete Buttigieg of late to me lies in that, as he has jokingly mentioned, he's the poorest candidate in this race and he does not speak in canned lines. Authenticity matters to me in art (including films and games), in people, and in politics. It's not the only thing, but it is A thing.

And he doesn't think that drug cartels on the southern border should proliferate unrestricted like a certain other candidate in this race does. (Sorry. As people here know by now, drugs, both the legal and the not, are a very serious and personal issue both for myself and my community.)

You know, time and time again I see examples like this where Sanders makes a better case for himself by just getting a chance to explain himself that any of his supporters do. His authenticity comes through and wins people over. A lot of us fans just get too...passionate...like the "doves" you've spoken of in this forum. I don't know what to call that level of isolationism but dove is not the animal I think of when I read what they have to say. I generally align with you on foreign policy, it's naive to think you can just pull out of a conflict instantly without some very innocent people getting hurt. Sanders' "let's just avoid getting into conflicts in the first place and take responsibility for what we started" philosophy strikes the right balance of being anti-war but not isolationist for me. I want out of Afghanistan and Syria, but not at the cost of the freedom of the Kurdish and Afghani people.

Uh, I always had a somewhat cloudy understanding of what I understand being a SJW. But this is clear and simple and very much helps me with a definition: Someone who cares more about the question if a man holding the door open for a women is sexist than about a homeless starving in the streets.

EDIT: I realize that puts it very harshly. To make clear: I think social injustice issues are important and should be addressed. I only think that people which I refer to as SJW have their priorities mixed up. But probably not out of malice or something, but naivite and that they most likely grew up in an environment without poverty. Which is why they don't really emotionally connect to people that are suffering through poverty.

I always found it interesting how the term sjw is being used as an insult nowadays, like pursuing social justice is somehow bad or something.

Technically an sjw is just someone who promotes socially progressive views, so most of us would be put in that category.

Colloquially, it's seen as a pejorative now because it's been co-opted by socially conservative individuals and more often then not it's used by them to undermine substantive socially progressive claims/arguments. I've seen it almost always used by the socially conservative against feminists to discredit feminism entirely as just a vapid, self-aggrandizing ideology.

Don't throw fuel to the conservative fire, imo being a sjw ain't really a bad thing.

Yeah, you're right, SJW is therefore a bad term in itself. Anyways, I feel there is a group of people usually described as SJWs that actually exists. And as I said, I don't see them as full of malice or anything, but misguided or with misplaced priorities. I shouldn't call them SJWs, but I see this group of people existing. Maybe I should just coin a new term.

One thing I noticed recently. As you may remember, I said before that in the endorsement race it is still early, as most potential endorsers stayed on the sidelines. This is still partly true, but endorsements have picked up a bit of steam. Especially Joe Biden started to collect endorsements recently. Just look at 538s endorsement tracker and look who got how many endorsements in November (as a proxy for recently).

https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2020-endorsements/democratic-primary/

Joe Biden gained six more endorsements in November. That is more than any month before except April (as he started his campaign). Booker and Klobuchar in comparison got no new endorsements, Harris and Buttigieg got two each. Maybe we see a movement that leads to a decisive lead in support by party establishment.

Ahh but I think there's already a word to describe those people my friend, it's the "privileged."

That's not enough. Privileged, but interested in social issues based on identity while still unaware or ignorant towards the questions of wealth distribution. Privileged people could easily fall into other categories: privileged people who use their privileges to discriminate against other groups, privileged people that are overall ignorant of power structures or privileged people that have informed themself of the struggles of poor people and support them.

Having Tim Ryan endorse him probably resulted into some of these new endorsements.

But while Biden got many in November, he didn't get much in October, especially compared to someone like Sanders. Win some, loose some. I wouldn't make a trend out of it just yet.