YIKES! I can't even imagine what it must be like to be Palestinian at a time like this! (Or any time in modern history for that matter.) The only sense in which I feel like I can relate to the struggles that you're describing is in the sense that I've struggled with depression for the vast majority of my life.

I have to admit to having not really thought about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a major voting issue. Foreign policy is a low priority on the radar of most Americans right now, I think. That said, whatever you may hear from our politicians, while it is unfortunately true to say that a lot more Americans lean toward the Israeli side when forced to choose one (one suspects substantially out of ignorance of the nature of the conflict), nevertheless the general opinion of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the U.S. is that there should be a two-state solution (50% favor the formal establishment of independent Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza compared to 39% who oppose) and that Trump hasn't done enough to foster one. (He's done the opposite objectively, as you well know.) So actual opinion is a bit more nuanced than one may realize.

I'm in agreement with the sort of positions you've articulated here and elsewhere in this thread. I'm in favor of a two-state solution and strongly against settlements. I'm also not an anti-Zionist (I believe that the Holocaust did indeed merit the creation of an autonomous Israeli state in some form) and have met enough people who describe themselves as anti-Zionist to know that anti-Zionism is basically an anti-Semitic position to take (e.g. most of them are Holocaust deniers and so forth). I do support the Palestinian Authority in particular. I'm less enthusiastic about Hamas. I don't know where I stand on BDS. I have mixed feelings about it. I'm basically completely neutral regarding the whole conflict...but I also think that actual neutrality does mean siding with the Palestinian side more often than not only because the Israeli government side has been way more aggressive.

Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, and Pete Buttigieg are the presidential candidates whose views of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict most resemble mine. They strike me as the most neutral. Most of the others I suspect would, in practice, embrace a view and approach to the conflict similar to Obama's, which wouldn't exactly be neutral, but would be marginally less one-sided than Trump's. I don't think the Palestinian could conceivably be worse served by anyone besides our current president. We haven't had the subject come up in the presidential debates yet, but it surely will, so we'll have more clarity on where each candidate stands on the matter very soon.

Actually, support started at the turn of the century, since back then the US already had a sizable group of Jewish people. It did really grew in the 1930's when many Jews started fleeing from the Nazis and their supporters, as going to the US was the logical conclusion - nobody knew if the brits could stem the tide, if other countries like Sweden or Switzerland would get dragged into Germany's sphere of influence and the Soviet Union didn't exactly have the perfect reputation to say the least.

At the same time, there were actually already a lot of Jews migrating to the region that was at the time (after WW1) the British mandate of Palestine. In fact, the Arab revolt in Palestine between 1936 and 1939 was mostly due to mass immigration of Jews into the region. That revolt btw might have been critical to the creation of Israel, as it pushed the Brits to lend their support to the Jewish militias instead of the Palestinian ones. It also weakened their numbers, as their losses were much higher than on the opposing side.

Yeah, I know that too. Perfect would be if the Democrats would control the House and the Senate so Trump would be unable to fuck up any further in that scenario, putting him pretty much into a gilded cage until Democrats could come with true reforms in 2024.

Otherwise, yeah, Trump would risk to make it worse for everybody, much worse if the republicans retain the Senate. On the other hand, that would maybe finally make the people wake up about him and the republicans in general... though I have my doubts about that.

A comprehensive overview of the democratic primary contenders

It is about a month since the last overview and a lot happended since then: the first debate influenced the race, Swalwell dropped out, Sestak and Steyer joined the race, the quarterly financial reports were released. And now the second debate will happen soon. So a new overview is in order.

For reference, here the first one from April and the second one from June.

I include my sources as links and also link the download of the gnumeric spreadsheet I used to collect the data.

There are also some other sites recommendable to get a great overview, which you should consider to visit if you want more information:

• The New York Times has a regularly updated site with an overview of polling average (including early state polling), campaign finances and news coverage, which is quite comprehensive.
• Ballotpedia has also an overvieew over the democratic field including campaign finance, debate qualification, endorsements, PredictIt market, congressional voting records with comparisons (for candidates who serve in congress) and poll averages.

As for the impact of the first debate, Fivethirtyeight together with pollster Morning Consult have collected some stats.

field overview

First of an table overview of the field.

I included everyone who is running and is considered by many media as major, the withdrawn candidacies of candidates who are considered major. I included only one undeclared candidate at this point, this is Stacey Abrams, as she announced a decision (for september) and is also included in some lists.

This list is ordered by the following criteria:

1. status of campaign (running, undeclared, withdrawn)
2. number of debate participations (max 2 at this point as participants for second debate are already announced; Swalwell and Bullock each only have one participation; Gravel, Moulton, Steyer, Messam, Sestak, Abrams and Ojeda have none)
3. The number of fulfilled debate qualification criteria. As so far criteria for three debates are known and each has two criteria (polls and donors) each candidate can reach six at most at this point.
4. number of media considering them major (included them in their lists)
5. the last name alphabetical (I considered de Blasio as starting with 'd')

To explain the columns: Name and status should be clear. Debate qualification for the three debates include criteria met. This doesn't mean they qualify in the end, for example Gravel met the donor criteria for the second debate but missed out because of the tiebreaker rules. For the third debate I colored the candidates orange that met only one criteria, as for this debate both must be met. The polls columns include the qualifying polls for the three debates, this means also deadlines, starting time (third debate only consider later polls) and value. Unique donors are counted as the current standing, but I included a column to signify for which debates these helped qualifying. And then the media outlets counting the candidates as major (by including them in their lists). The first column here counts the number of inclusions.

Most of the debate qualification data comes from Wikipedia.

The media included is:

• RS = Rolling Stones (has a ranking which I did not consider but mentioned)
• WP = Wikipedia (defines major as candidates who have either held public office, have been included in at least five independent national polls or received substantial media coverage)
• 358 = Fivethirtyeight (defines major as the candidates qualifying for at least one debate or have at least six of ten question answered with yes)
• CNN
• QZ = Quartz
• NYT = New York Times
• Reuters
• RCP = Realclearpolitics (I counted the 20 candidates listed in their average polling as major)
• MC = Morning Consult (which candidates they asked for in their survey)
• AJ = Al Jazeera
• ABC = ABC News
• BP = Ballotpedia
• DIA = Democracy in Action
• Vox
• Politico

polls

As so much candidates are running and if I included them all in one graph not much was to be seen for the lower polling candidates I decided to split the candidates in three groups for the graph.

First the frontrunners polling higher than 10%, then the middle field polling between 1% and 10% and at last the bottom of the field polling below 1%.

I included an weighted average I made myself based on the national polls 538 collects including only July-polls, only one poll from each pollster and weighting it based on the rating the pollster has. Also I included the average from Realclearpolitics and from 270 to win.

The frontrunners:

The middle field:

and the bottom of the field:

As the above graphs only catch the current standing not the movement over time, I include some more graphs from other sources.

This one is created by Wikipedia:

This is the running overview of Realclearpolitics average:

And the average from the New York Times:

endorsements

There is a running theory, that the endorsements (and therefore the will of the party establishment) has a major influence on the eventual candidate. That's why endorsements can be pretty interesting. Sadly so far I only found 538 tracking in a methodic manner the endorsements. Ballotpedia uses 538 tracking in the endorsements they show.

538 tracks endorsements of a pool of state and party officials. They give each one points based on their position, for instance 8 for governeurs and 3 for US house represenatives.

Based on that I made the following graph:

It includes the points 538 counts as well as the basic number of endorsements they track. This can lead to different results. So has Biden more points but fewer persons than Kamala Harris endorsing him. That is because his endorsees include more governors and senators.

campaign financing

With the new quarterly campaign finance report we have a new look on the money the candidates have got until end of June. based on the FEC-filings I made a breakdown of the sources of money for the last quarter:

The same can be done for their overall gainings for the whole run of the campaign:

And I also made a graph on how much each candidate made in each quarter to give an impression how it developed over time:

There is an more in-depth analysis about the fundraising in 538.

media coverage

538 tracks media coverage of the candidates. This is the table for last week:

The New York Times also tracked media coverage in major cable news, but not weekly but for the full of 2019:

other informations

Democracy in Action has an incomplete overview over the staff the campaigns hired.

Rolling Stones lists the major policy positions of the candidates.

New poll that counts towards September.
Biden 33%
Sanders 15%
Warren 12%
Harris 10%
Buttigieg 5%
Klobuchar 3%
Yang 3%
Booker 2%
Hickenlooper 2%
O'Rourke 2%
Everyone else at or below 1%
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/fox-news-poll-july-25

Updated Real Clear Politics polling averages for the last five major polls (all since the last average I posted):

Biden: 29.3%
Sanders: 15%
Warren: 14.5%
Harris: 11.8%
Buttigieg: 5%

(Do we really even need to keep track of those below 3%?)

Bottom line: the national situation has substantially reverted back to its pre-debate situation. That worries me. I mean in the sense of Biden seeming to be a teflon candidate.

I wouldn't consider you derailing the thread, this is an issue that affects the 2020 race and I feel much more enlightened about it now, thank you. The reason I recoil at the term Zionist is because I associate it with nationalism, which I don't like. I'm not a fan of nationalism in any form, though I consider patriotism an entirely different thing from nationalism. Affirming Israel's right to exist isn't enough to make you Zionist in my book. It's the desire to make Israel an explicitly Jewish state, as opposed to a secular democracy. That's the problem with nationalism as opposed to simple patriotism, it presumes identity as a prerequisite for patriotism. And that's why I abhor it in all its forms, including what I consider Zionism's real agenda to be. On the other hand, I support Israel's right to exist, because I think the cultural damage to the Jewish people caused by the diaspora and historical and ongoing persecution is something that can only be repaired through something like Israel. I think it has been a success in that sense. That certainly puts me in line with certain tenets of Zionism, but I don't share the support of Jewish national identity as a self-governing state. Such a state would be incompatible with liberal democracy, in my view.

All this said, it's wonderful to hear that Palestine is looking for the establishment of a secular country. I'd be thrilled if a secular Palestinian democracy were formed, especially if it would have a culture of interfaith peace from the start as your statements about Muslims and Christians in Palestine suggests. My concern, and I think the concern of the US government that prevents it from doing more to support establishing a secular country, is Hamas, and the fear of appearing to negotiate with terrorists, which they consider them to be. At the very least, Hamas is Islamist, and creating a secular Palestine is not something the US probably has a lot of faith in as long as Hamas is around.

I'm quite positive she's right. I've been expecting it for a while now. Part of me fears it could be the beginning of a new Great Depression. Especially if Trump is reelected. It'd be the second coming of Herbert Hoover, except worse because even Hoover was more competent than Trump, and even the 1920's Republican party was less corrupt than the current one, and I don't see Trump getting reelected in a scenario where they don't keep the Senate and probably take back the House. That said, I think it might happen sooner rather than later, and be apparent right in election season, which would actually be the best outcome for Democrats, and if it has to happen, that's how I'm hoping it goes down, because I think the kind of collapse we're about to see will make Americans yearn for a Green New Deal harder than the Americans of the 30s wanted the first New Deal. Of course, Americans are stupid and the universe is a horrible place so probably it'll all hit right after the Democrat takes office in 2021 and Americans will be stupid enough to blame the Democrat even as they try to fix the problem.

But yes, this piece right here is a huge credit to Warren, and shows why she'd be a great president. The main reason I support Bernie more, despite their similarities and Warren's policy wonk credibility, is that she's too afraid to associate with socialism, and too quick to call herself a capitalist. She's the second coming of FDR, and that's fucking awesome, but to be honest, I think the world is about to get even worse than the last great geopolitical crisis that was the Great Depression and WWII, and I think not even FDR is enough this time. It's not enough to "save capitalism" as FDR is often credited with, or "fix" it or "reign in" its worst excesses as I see some people suggest we should do. Warren could do that, and would do it well, but that's not enough. It just kicks the can down the road, and I don't think would be enough to save the biosphere and stop the planetary crisis we're in to a degree I'd be satisfied with. Capitalism has shown that even at its best, it cannot be a responsible steward of the planet. I certainly don't want the totalitarianism of the communist and socialist systems we've seen throughout history, but capitalism doesn't allow the people to really hold power over the economy, only capitalist elites. As such, Bernie's vision for democratic socialism appeals to me over Warren's social democracy. In the short term, the policies look similar, but they have different long term visions that they would frame the direction of the country around.

Biden announcing his run gave him a huge boost that lasted until the debate, which put him below even his pre-debate standing. He's shown himself to continue to be the gaffe machine we've long known him as, and with this much time passed since the first debate, he has only managed to recover to pre-debate standings and doesn't look to be growing beyond that. Another poor debate performance might be something he can't recover from. There are major swaths of the party he has likely alienated and won't be able to get behind him for the rest of the primary. And the debate is looking to be a rematch between him and Harris, which isn't going to go well for him. She's the perfect one to take him on, as much as I'd like to see Warren or Bernie go after him. I think there's plenty of hope to stop him. We just need to end this stupid narrative that he's somehow the best to take on Trump because the rest will scare away the moderates, which is bullshit.

Not fond of Biden?

Yeah, I can see that also with the Morning Consult results, where he again won a point this week (from Sanders). At the same time, Harris is dropping again in most polls.

Do American voters have such a short memory span that the first debate is already fading away?