Meh, strip the exemption and let MLB run their business as they see fit.

Listen to two good interviews today. Cory Booker on Pod Save America was interesting. It really laid out the issue happening right now with the lack of diversity on the top of the polls. It does just come down to older AA voters being completely in on Biden. Harris and Booker were/are both polling in the single digits among blacks. They both are doing poorly among the more liberal oriented young AA (Bernie is winning there). I really like Cory, but don't be surprised if he is out if he doesn't make the debate stage.


The second was The Daily with Bernie Sanders. It was a nice retrospective and interview about his beginnings in politics. I really think it was interesting how questions about him meeting with Daniel Ortega (Sandinista leader) during the 80's nearly shut down the interview. I think he fears being beaten up by it, and he probably should. He just seems to vulnerable because of his extreme positions.

Stuff like that, Ortega meeting, going to the USSR on his honeymoon, etc. is going to get asked constantly if he wins the primary. He better get used to it.

Not exactly on this point... but I can't help feeling that the inability of other candidates to break into the Biden hold is a function of simple "who's paying attention to this campaign" at its heart. I could be proven wrong, surely, but I feel like (in this case) a lot of black voters aren't really watching all these 12-person super-early debates, they are mostly driven by name recognition and vague associations... like "he was with Obama."

If that's true, then there easily could be a lot of black voters, and others, who show up in polling today as Biden supporters who, once they plug in and see the candidates who remain viable, and conclude "oh, geez not Biden, what else you got?" And perhaps, some of them will be asking "where are all the candidates of color?" at that point.

Not sure how you could keep it from happening, but an 18 month plus campaign cycle puts most of the attention into the hands of the small share who are deeply committed... lets Twitter Democrats sound like they are The Democrats, and that's pretty rotten (for both parties).

That is very true. "Democrat Twitter" is definitely the far left of the rest of the party. They are the most engaged, mostly college educated whites. What's funny is how they are pointing out the lack of diversity the most, but almost to the person saying, "while I didn't support Kamala..." or "While I don't support Cory...".

But Democratic Twitter is also completely flabbergasted as to why Biden continues to do well. I think older African-Americans who may not have been paying that close attention will generally trust their leaders at that point, a lot of whom have endorsed Biden. Endorsements do matter somewhat (why 538 tracks them)

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some truth there, too, agreed

Yang qualifies! 7 now so may start paying real attention

Yang polled through!

Ugh that guy needs to go away with his used car sales shit.

I just looked at isidewith.com again and Bloomberg is at the top of my list overcoming Yang.

Warren is the bottom.

Same 87%, but Yang only has Trump below him for me

I had Booker at 93%. I'd never really thought too hard about him. I think there's some lingering anti-vegan bias inside me from my previous life. But then my logical side asks me WTF it matters what my favored candidate's diet is? Then again, Trump well-done steak and ketchup is an abomination.

My second candidate made me LOL. Marianne Williamson at 90%.

I could probably take the test a few months from now and get different results.

I'm Buttigieg and Booker at 95%. Most of the rest of the Dem field between 90 and 94. Then Bloomberg in the mid 80s and Trump at 3%.

I had Tulsi Gabbard at 78%

Then Delaney and Yang at 70%

Warren was at the bottom with 50%

My results ...

82% John Delaney (... who?)
79% Michael Bloomberg
71% Andrew Yang
68% Donald Trump (must be the immigration questions)
65% Joe Biden
65% Pete Buttigieg
58% Tulsi Gabbard
49% Cory Booker
49% Amy Klobuchar
38% Marianne Williams
34% Bernie Sanders (not feeling the Burn)
29% Elizabeth Warren
29% Julian Castro

Trump, Delaney (I agree ...who??), Bloomberg, Yang, all in the 70-80 range. Big drop off after that. Warren takes rock bottom at 20%.

Trump - 91%
Delaney - 55%
Bloomberg - 49%
Biden - 33%
Yang - 29%
Gabbard - 25%
Klobacher - 25%
Booker - 17%
Buttigieg - 17%

I think most of this stemmed from my don't spend more and tax less viewpoint. But, the %s line up with my current voting preference. Although I am not nearly 91% on Trump due to personality, integrity, morality, etc.

EDIT: The other item I find interesting, is where it pegged me on the spectrum, which is right wing, but I am definitely more libertarian in bent. I think my Pro-Life stance, my answers regarding drug use (which I answered based upon current laws pushed me far to the right), and gender answer pushed me in that direction. My answers regarding incarceration are not terribly strong, I am very Pro-Life, but it is not a major presidential issue for me as I do not see the laws changing at a Federal level any time soon, the only strong opinion was regarding transgender. I fail to see how this is a major issue and for the most part would be treated as a gay couple. In the case of a guy, he decides he wants to catch gets the op, he is a woman from now on. Girl decides she wants to pitch, gets the op, she is a guy from now on. I don't see the big issue.

I also did not drill down to the nuanced answers which in hindsight might have mitigated some of my views and would likely have moderated things a bit, maybe 5-10%.

87% Amy Klobuchar
86% Bernie Sanders
86% Julian Castro
85% Andrew Yang
85% Tulsi Gabbard
84% Elizabeth Warren
83% Marianne Willamson
83% Pete Buttigeg
82% Cory Booker

and then it drops off in to the high 70s for other Dems, followed by 27% Trump.

Probably because I left everything pretty much at Somewhat because I couldn't be fussed to be nuanced in weighting. I'll admit I didn't expect Klobuchar to be on top, given I'm very much in the Bernie/Warren wing of the party. But it's splitting hairs pretty much.

That said, I do have some right wing stances, but on the areas most vital to me (where I did click a rating), I'm quite far left.

Ahhh, how soon we forget Congressman Delaney, the darling of the moderates after the first debate.

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Wow, talk about consistency ... you are solidly left leaning for sure!

Well since all the cool kids are doing it - FWIW I did not "drill down" (ie, click for more questions), but only selected the original ones presented.

95% Cory Booker
94% Elizabeth Warren
93% Julian Castro
93% Marianne Williamson
93% Bernie Sanders
92% Pete Buttigieg
90% Amy Klobuchar
86% Andrew Yang
82% Tulsi Gabbard
81% Joe Biden
81% Michael Bloomberg
76% John Delaney
6% Donald Trump

Well, they definitely got my top 2 right and the Trump number - LOL!

This was interesting and was surprised by some of the results:

92% Bernie Sanders
92% Amy Klobuchar
91% Pete Buttigieg
91% Andrew Yang
91% Julian Castro
90% Elizabeth Warren
90% Tulsi Gabbard
90% Cory Booker
87% Marianne Williamson
85% Joe Bidden
83% Michael Bloomberg
82% John Delaney
22% trump

And not surprisingly, if I answer more of the questions, everybody plummets. Highest I get is Delaney and Bloomberg at 80 and 79, two people who have absolutely zero shot at becoming President. Nobody else is above 70%.

These quizzes always feel off to me both because there's a lot of questions that don't have any relevance to what I want in a president, and because I'm not sure how or if they determine what the candidate's priorities are (something I've never been able to figure out on my own), so, this time I didn't answer questions that I felt like were irrelevant.

I got:

Bloomberg
Kobuchar
Gabbard
Buttigieg
Yang
Williamson
Booker
Delaney
Biden
Sanders
Warren
Castro
Trump

That feels more accurate with Sanders and Warren at the bottom (they both tend to end up on top if I force myself to answer everything) Though I'm not voting for Bloomberg either. Thought Biden would be higher.

Top 4 were Buttigieg, Warren, Sanders, and Booker.

Warren and Sanders up there only because there was no option for "no more septuagenarians."

OTOH it had Biden at the bottom (77%) just above Trump (7%), so at least it got THAT right amongst the oldsters.

Pete's been the guy I've been pulling for all along, so not shocked he led the pack for me.

95% Booker
94% for Warren, Sanders, Castro and Buttigieg


Biden is the lowest democrat candidate at 78%. Trump 4%.

Bloomberg at 85% which is way way way too high.

I got Mayor Pete at the top spot (82%), followed by Andrew Yang, Kobuchar and then Booker.

Trump at the bottom with 25%

Anybody still think Tulsi is seriously trying to win the Democratic nomination?

Well she was not going to win the nomination the way things were going for her. So I guess she thinks she's the closest ideologically to the middle, the undecideds and Never-Trump Republicans, so why not try to appeal to them? I'll be curious to see her poll numbers change in the next couple weeks. I'm just glad she's not running for re-election.

Tulsi would have been a Republican if there was any chance that she could win an election in Hawaii as one. It's about as easy as being an Idaho Democrat.

Buttigieg 77%
Yang 76%
Bloomburg 75%
Biden 59% (Who I would vote for)
Trump 54%

It's crazy how some of you guys got Trump at like 2%. I mean you toe the Democratic Party line on every single issue?

It's nice that they finally got down to a manageable core of 7 of the next debate. The other 8 can't seem to take a hint.

I feel like most of the questions that generate the most trump support are on the extreme edges like building a wall, keeping brown people aggressively out of the country, and refusing to budge on any gun law changes. There were some questions I answered that lined up stronger with republican voters than democrat ones that didn't seem to move the bar at all on trump

"Should foreigners, currently residing in the United States, have the right to vote?"

That was about 50/50 among democrats and 93/7 against for Republicans, I selected no as my answer, but i guess that doesn't move the bar on trump any.

I personally tend far left of many democrats on this board based on the discussion in this thread and score poorly on Biden, for example. Call that toeing the party line if you want, I guess?

Wait, I know it's not really the point of your post but did the site really indicate that half of Democrats want non-citizens to have the right to vote?

Hell, I was embarrassed I got as high as 6% for Trump.

I will say in previous isidewith polls, folks like Romney or McCain got at least 20% or so.

And I would argue does 'toe the Democrat Party line' equal backing Biden? or backing Sanders? Because those two have vastly different views.

What I meant is that I consider myself fairly Libertarian but also kind of saw what they were getting at with some of the questions. Somehow I still matched Sanders on like 30%, just either find that people are saying what they think the site wants them to say or the site is pretty extremely slanted against Trump if people are only matching less than 5%. On a cell phone and it's too hard to research but would be interested if people were 3-5% on Bush or McCain when the board did this years ago because besides being an asshole and the whole wall.thing Trump seems to just have typical Republican views so they should be the same for them unless like I said the site switched methodology or people are intentionally answering every question just to not match Trump.

What does it mean that I got Tulsi Gabbard as my number one candidate?

Easily the best of the debates tonight. Crazy that the smaller field brought better discussion.

I don't think anyone really did poorly, but I felt Biden probably had his best night and Klobuchar and Bernie both did well. Bernie brought a little less Bernie and focused more on broader issues rather than driving the same couple of points home over and over again and he also had a few great one-liners.

Biden successfully navigated the reparations minefield and didn't get killed on healthcare. That's a huge win for him. Overall he was just consistently good which is a big change from the previous debates.

Klobuchar is a little like Booker. She's consistently strong, but doesn't seem to get any traction.

Warren seems to be getting lost in the shuffle. She seems to be trying to pivot a little on health care to differentiate herself from the field but I'm not sure it's really going to work.

Buttigieg is an outstanding counter-puncher and I thought he handled the attacks on wealthy donors really well.

Yang is Yang. He's an entertaining guy that's become more comfortable on the stage, but has no chance. One of things that hurts him is he allows himself to get lost in the debate when things get heated.

Steyer surprised me with what I thought was a solid night. I'm not sure he does anything at all that stands out from the crowd, but tonight shouldn't have hurt him at all.

You're a 4-chan troll or a Russian agent.

As I've gotten older my views have become far more liberal so I know my views have shifted further away from the republican party. There's just not much of anything left in the GOP that I feel represents me. I was in the military during the Bush administration so I very likely was a bit more to the right at that point in my life.

I'd argue that the focus on immigration, the border wall, healthcare for all weren't really talking points during the Bush administration or when McCain ran though. I also think the traits you look for in a President question pushes my views further away from Trump. My views align closer to Warren and Sanders, but I think my traits selections likley pushed Buttigieg above those two.

Biden, Klobuchar, Sanders did well. I think Buttigieg did punch back well enough, but that "wine cave" thing is already becoming a meme and is going to hurt him (and 4 years ago private fundraisers with wealthy donors killed Hillary). Yang started off well but disappeared late. Warren had good points and meh points over the night. Steyer was ok. No one did poorly.

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Buttigieg 95
Bernie 94
Castro 94
Warren 93
Klobuchar 93
Williamson 92
Boooker 90
Yang 87
Biden 87
Gabbard 83
Bloomberg 81
Trump 15

Most of mine are lumped together in the 90s. Guess I'm a good Democrat.

Looks like all the 4Q Fundraising numbers have come in. Sanders had an eyepopping $34.5mil. Buttigieg had $24.7mil. Biden had $22.7mil. Warren just announced she got $21.7mil.

And surprisingly Yang got $16.5mil and Klobuchar got $11mil!

That's Biden's highest Quarter, FWIW. Buttigieg stayed about the same (I think 3Q was $25mil). Warren dropped a bit.

The national polls (according to 538) are showing Biden still in #1 with 27.5% (actually going up 0.5% since the last debate), Sanders solidly in #2 (17.7%), while Warren lags behind in a stable #3 (14.9%) after dropping A LOT from where she was in October, and Buttigieg started to drop a little from where he was in early December in #4 (7.6%).

The other thing interesting in the national polls is Bloomberg is a solid 5.3%, while Yang and Klobuchar are still around 3% and Booker is at 2%. You'd have to think those three are going to drop after the first 4 contests if they can't find any traction.

National President: Democratic primary Polls | FiveThirtyEight

This is what is going to make the Bloomberg experiment interesting: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/202...tates-n1110791


500 staffers over 30 states, concentrating in Super Tuesday states. is national numbers are already trending up with his media blitz. Can a primary just be straight bought?

His polling numbers are rising a bit. Will be interesting to see how far he can get - but he's going to be hurt by not being in the early states.

Also Julian Castro dropped out and endorsed Warren for President. Not sure if that will help her, but it can't hurt.

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538 just put out a very pretty Democratic Primary Statistic Analysis Forcast:

Who Will Win The 2020 Democratic Nomination? | FiveThirtyEight

Tom Steyer just qualified for the January debate one day before the qualifying deadline. That makes 6 very white candidates for this stage.

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And Booker just dropped out of the race. It's sad that he didn't get more traction.