This is amazing

About time, could have done so months ago as he was going nowhere with it.

Yikes, that really puts it into perspective, yeah... X_X

I just feel like I need to say it anyway because even some Europeans in this thread think the traditional political strategy is enough. When the opposition party is an extremist laissez-faire capitalist, theocratic, white supremacist party, compromise is simply not an option, no series of half-measures will ever get us there. Given Warren's recent plans, I'm beginning to think that a Warren presidency with a Sander's VP just wouldn't work. She just doesn't get it. I thought maybe with a spot as VP he could do the strategic outreach to the progressive movement while Warren could get the establishment in line with her connections to them, and they could accomplish major change together. Now I'm thinking with Warren at the helm, it'd be a mess, because she doesn't understand the strategy necessary to win. She'd end up being like Obama, a good president, but one that didn't come near to the vision they campaigned for because they fucked up the political strategy. Bernie would be wasting his time being her VP. It has to be Bernie as president, Warren as VP, for the right strategy to be implemented.

So literally nothing happened today.

Oh well, at least I got another nice moment:
https://twitter.com/NBCNews/status/1197366904530317313?s=09

Biden: The only black female senator supports me.
Harris: I'm standing right here!

Yeah, seems like Biden forgot she even existed (Harris is the second black female senator in the US).

You're right. Buttigieg is no Kamala Harris nor Tim Ryan and had a clever response for her. He is a good debater.

Who?

I didn't even know he was running until I saw the ticker tape announcement on CNN yesterday that he was ending his campaign.

Another Buttigieg and Klobuchar win, it seems? I haven't watched it, but that seems to be the prevailing sentiment. Also, Booker.

Well, Booker has been declared the winner so often, but looking at actual data (which I did, because I want to update my tier list) it is shocking how badly Booker actually goes in all regards: polls, donations, media attention. The only thing going for him are endorsements from party officials, and this looks differently once you realize, that all but two or three are from his home state New Jersey. I call it: Booker is not going anywhere.

Klobuchar on the other hand… In the beginning I was thinking she will run out of steam fast. But she proves to be resilient and although she is not at the top she keeps holding her ground, keeps improving her numbers. So she might stay until Iowa actually.

First of all, I'd like to point out that most of what I predicted yesterday about certain candidates and the media coverage in fact came true last night, which is kind of pathetic and a testament to how predictable some of these candidates and the press are.

Predictability was, in fact, I'd say the theme of the evening. There wasn't much substantively new on offer in terms of policy last night. It was almost exclusively stuff we've all heard before from the various candidates. It's no wonder few people are still watching these debates so much as just digesting the snippets the press highlights as distinguishing afterward. To this end, I'd say the winner was the candidate who came across as the most human and real, and that was definitely Pete Buttigieg for me. I think last night will only help him more in the polls.

In fact, I'd go as far as to say that there has emerged something of a difference between the candidates I agree with the most policy-wise and the ones I've come to like the most as people.

Let me just say that the Green New Deal is an absolute dividing line for me in this election. No candidate who is proposing what I consider to be an inadequate response to the genuine climate emergency that stands before us right now demanding action that is very swift, bold, and in fact transformational is the right candidate for this moment in time as far as I'm concerned. Lots of people here are hung up insisting on a specific sort of path to an unpopular health care policy (the fact is that while 69% of Americans believe Medicare should be available to everyone, only 34% currently believe it should be the only insurance option people have), the intricate minutia of Liz's versus Bernie's timeline on that is hardly the most compelling issue on my mind considering that no Congress, however Democratic, is going to send the next president a single-payer health care bill to sign in the first place anyway. M4A is a dividing line for me, but single-payer for me is what I like to call a preference, not so much something that will singularly decide how I vote in the Texas Democratic primary. What IS a dividing line for me is saving the planet. No candidate who has yet to get on board with the Green New Deal can possibly be the best candidate for this moment as far as I'm concerned.

But there's emerging a difference between the candidates who are embracing the kind of bold action that needs to be taken on the climate in particular on the one hand and the ones who sound like real people to my ears on the other.  People have probably noticed me saying that I've found Andrew Yang to be someone I really like just as a person. At this point, I feel that same way about Mayor Pete too. In fact, I'd say Pete Buttigieg was the only candidate who generally talked like people I know do last night. Warren and Sanders (especially the former) most of the time came across to me as ideologues, by which I mean that they were very predictable overall. No one should underestimate the appeal of Buttigieg defending smaller communities the way he did last night or of his joke about being the poorest candidate on the stage. I'm telling you first-hand that working class people from those sorts of places heard that and paid him more attention afterward. It got somewhere with me anyway on a visceral level.

Also, nobody should underestimate the basic patriotism of most ordinary working people, including myself. It's not an exaggeration to say that Pete was definitely the winner of that late-evening exchange with Tulsi Gabbard that she predictably initiated (being the candidate who's all about peace, civility, and mutual respect like she claims to be after all ). By a mile. It wasn't close.

A few other things about the debate that I thought were worthy of mention:

-I liked the position that Bernie Sanders articulated on Afghanistan. He proposed to organize an international peacekeeping force to replace our continued military occupation of that country. That's perhaps the best and most coherent solution I've heard a candidate articulate so far!

-I also thought the discussion of housing policy and urban gentrification was something fairly new we haven't heard too much about in these debates and that Warren and Booker brought out some excellent proposals. In fact, Booker's proposal for an automatic tax refund for renters who pay more than 30% of their income in rent, analogous to how we treat homeowners in this country, was an outstanding idea!