What are the thoughts on candidates after the recent debate?
The way this has been playing out has been surprising.
Primary voting starts in February, so it seems likely that nobody new is going to successfully jump in at this point. (Though you never know.) These candidates seem to have no chance at this point: O'Rourke, Booker, Gabbard (sadly), Klobuchar, Castro, Steyer, Bennet, Williamson, Ryan, de Blasio, Delaney, and Bullock.
I'm shocked at how poorly Biden has been performing/campaigning. He looks like a senile old man. I would've thought that his campaign would've been able to prep him enough and pump him full of enough stimulants to at least make him look like some boring Mitt-Romney-esque politician-man, which is really all he needs to probably win. Even doing as poorly as he is, he might
still win the primary because the competition is so far-left, but it's hard to imagine him winning against Trump in this state.
The actual voters are more centrist than most of the candidates seem to think, especially when you consider that many states allow independants to vote in the Democratic primaries. Maybe they're not as far right as Biden (who could pass as a Republican), but stuff like forced gun confiscation, abolishing ICE, and giving illegal aliens free healthcare will seem quite extreme to even the average Democratic voter.
I'm also surprised that Harris has been doing so poorly, since she clearly was (and still is) a media/establishment favorite. But she comes off as
so fake/pandering/shapeshifting, to the point where even the average Joe notices it, and the pro-Harris propaganda hasn't seemed to stick much.
I still can't help but think that one of those two will end up winning regardless of anything else, since the establishment favors them so much. Maybe Biden will end up dropping out before or during a brokered convention, and will assign his delegates to Harris. Maybe this is already the plan. (Also, note that in a brokered convention, which is almost certain, superdelegates matter, and the vast majority of superdelegates will support the establishment favorite.)
Buttigieg seems to be positioning himself as a power broker / compromise candidate in a brokered convention. He's a possible VP for whoever wins.
Warren is pro-war, so the establishment doesn't hate her as much as Sanders. She'd be uniquely weak against Trump, though. Sanders has performed very well in all of the debates and in his campaigning, but the media/establishment hates him quite a bit, which is hurting him.
Andrew Yang is doing well. The UBI raffle thing is a great campaign idea. Him winning is a crazy longshot still, though.
My current ratings:
Candidate | % to win the primary | % to win the presidency assuming they win the primary - no recession | % to win - recession | My preference |
Joe Biden | 70% | 15% | 65% | 4 |
Bernie Sanders | 4% | 50% | 90% | 1 |
Elizabeth Warren | 7% | 5% | 25% | 6 |
Kamala Harris | 15% | 35% | 75% | 5 |
Pete Buttigieg | 3% | 75% | 95% | 3 |
Andrew Yang | 1% | 70% | 80% | 2 |
(And I give a 40% chance of a recession being well underway by the general election, so this implies a 61% chance of Trump winning.)
Preference-wise:
- I hate Sanders' economic policies, but he's anti-war and pro-civil-liberties, which are the two areas that a president has the most control over anyway. Also, if it's Trump vs Sanders and Sanders loses, this'd be a great blow to socialism. Trump vs Sanders would be win-win in some ways.
- Elizabeth Warren is both openly very hostile to capitalism
and generally supportive of wars and the establishment. A worst-case scenario.
- Biden and Harris are authoritarian neocons. Note that everything Harris says on the campaign trail is a total lie: she doesn't actually believe in anything but personal power.
- Andrew Yang is a bit of a wildcard, but he seems kind of libertarian-leaning, I guess.
- Buttigieg went to Harvard, which ties him deeply to the establishment. But he might also have some real beliefs. He might be similar to Obama.