That article blaming the Democratic Party for the opinions of the masses is a load of horse shit. The Democratic Party was in favour of taxing the wealthy to fund the economic structure of the New Deal Era. But then the US people voted in Reagan and neo-liberalism. Afterward, the US people voted against the progressive policies of Mondale and Dukakis in favour of Reagan term two and Bush. Even after Reagan's economic crash. It wasn't until the Democratic Party put up a moderate neo-liberal with Bill Clinton that they saw success again.

How long has Steyer even been in this and he already has that many donations? He's using so much of his own money, there's no reason he actually has to net anything from the donations, he can just spam ads with personal cash begging for pennies on the dollar until enough people contribute to make the cutoff. It won't be hard. The polls are harder to buy, but he got into the October debate, so with just a bit more effort I think he could manage the December debate. Which would be infuriating, because fuck him and his money, but I think it's a real possibility.

I know Klobuchar is nominally ahead with one poll, but I just don't think she'll get enough, there's just nothing that she stands for really, nothing her campaign is about, no identity to her base, no clear reason why she's here, aside from maybe being a lesser known, slightly more progressive, slightly less gaffe prone female Biden that thinks she can win over Trump voters.

O'Rourke is weird, I think his momentum is probably dead but he did have a sort of movement at one point. Even I got caught up in it when he was a Senate candidate for Texas. But I think that movement is dead now. It's more than Klobuchar has though, which is why I count him out just ever so slightly less than I do her. Yang on the other hand might stand a better chance than either of them, because there's a genuine reason for his campaign's existence that's still relevant.

Everyone else has stalled. Look at that sad NH poll that was just posted where three different people got 5 percent. There's no way they're getting 6, and I doubt they'll all get enough 4+ polls in the short time they have left. They should drop out now.

Bennet, Bullock, Sestak and Messam should never have entered. Delaney's and Williamson's time was up months ago and should have dropped out already. Booker and Castro feel like their time is just now running out, and Gabbard probably too, though maybe she could wait and see if she makes the debate to drop out.

The UNH poll is an excellent example of how outliers might make or break candidates. That is, unless you believe people in there between 34 - 45 are indeed 2 - 4 times more likely to support Gabbard or Yang than any other age bracket. Compare it to an earlier FP University poll (an even more reliable pollster, but with same sample sizes) that gave 1% to each.

Just putting this article out there. Warren continues to Gaslight on Medicare for all.
https://www.peoplespolicyproject.org/2019/11/01/warrens-perpetual-medicare-head-tax-is-unworkable-and-bad/

In other news Beto has dropped out

O'Rourke? Interesting. I mean Bennet, Bullock, Sestak, Messam are all still in the race, but Beto O'Rourke drops out?

My guesses are mostly towards Castro (within Texas) and Buttigieg (outside of it).

O'Rourke was last between 2% and 3%. That is actually something substantial. But yeah, polling suggest the frontrunners are most likely to sponge up the support of lower polling candidates that drop out. We have no actual data about O'Rourke (many pollsters poll for the second choice of the frontrunner supporters), but it is mostly the frontrunner. And also these second choices polls show, that ideology-leaning is far less important than one would think. So I expect Warren and Biden to get his support and to a lesser degree Sanders. This may change if O'Rourke officially endorses another candidate.

Also, O'Rourke has 19 points in the 538 endorsement-tracker (from 8 endorsers). This is substantial, as a comparison, between Sanders and Warren are 11 endorsement points. So it is also not irrelevant, there these endorsers look to next.

Here is 538s take on him dropping out: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/why-beto-orourkes-pivot-didnt-work/

I chose Buttigieg because he was rising fast in the polls lately, so I expected him to gain some simply because he's gaining votes right now as opposed to most everybody else.

And that endorsement tracker is broken imo. Those from the same state they are working as the respective candidate as a senator or governor should get their vote weight reduced. Booker, senator of New Jersey, is in front of Warren with 59 points, but remove all of those from New Jersey and he drops down to a paltry 3 points.

It's now been long enough since the last debate that we can begin to assess the impact. Here's the current Real Clear Politics average of the seven most recent national polls, all of which were conducted between October 21st and the end of the month; that ten-day period:

Biden: 29.1%
Warren: 20.3%
Sanders: 17.1%
Buttigieg: 7.1%
Others: Under 4%

This last summer, I audaciously went ahead and proclaimed Joe Biden the eventual winner of this nominating contest. That prediction still stands, and I think here you can see why that is. Biden is among the least favorable options in my opinion, but let's be honest: he's coasting to victory with minimal effort here. He's basically not campaigning. He was largely ignored in the last debate. You get the picture. He doesn't even have to try. In fact, the evidence so far indicates that trying is bad for him. More exposure = drop in the polls. Avoiding the limelight appears to be a smart strategy for him.

I got a little big hopeful for just a minute in this campaign there in early October when Warren momentarily overtook Biden in the polls, but we can now see the Warren fad is coming to an end and we're rapidly getting right back to normal. It's clear that Warren's inability to be clear about her plan to fund a single-payer health care system in the last debate damaged her badly. She had at one point been at 26.6% in this same average of polls, slightly ahead of Biden.

Addressing her main shortcoming in the last debate, Warren has recently released her plan to fund her Medicare-for-All system. And the bottom line is that she manages to avoid proposing any new taxation of middle-income Americans, notably in contrast to Bernie Sanders' funding plan, which includes a bit of a payroll tax hike for those making more than $29,000 a year. (Told you that's what she would do, by the way.) This gives her an answer to that crucial query that plagued her in the last debate, and a pretty good one all in all. This financing plan will probably have broader appeal than that of Bernie Sanders, which will only appeal to low-income Americans really. Still, it will be some time yet before she'll have the opportunity to present this plan to millions of Americans on a debate stage. We'll see I think after the next debate if this added dose of clarity makes a difference for her. Maybe. We'll see.

Really though, I think Biden's got the race in the bag. That one blip on the radar that briefly had me believing that maybe, maybe this race could be won by a progressive afterall notwithstanding, this is a downright boring nominating contest with an uninspiring, teflon frontrunner who can't be damaged and can't be beaten.