Well, Elizabeth Warren has now had polls of her leading in Iowa, New Hampshire, and California (California now being a Super Tuesday state so that's actually kind of important).
She was someone I wanted to get big nationally for years, cause when she nails it she really nails it,
Like when she grills the Wells Fargo CEOI wanted her to get big enough to be a contender, and early in the primary it looked uphill (Bernie, Biden, and even Beto O'Rourke had more name recognition for a long time) but she's sliding into more of a frontrunner position now; and that means that there's a lot more dirt getting dug up about her. Am I still feeling good about her?
Mmm...mostly? Attacks being thrown at her...the one with actual genuine substance, that's worse than I thought it was is claiming native american heritage.
a 1986 Texas Bar registry card surfaced where she handwrote herself as American Indian surfaced this year. And...yeah, that's...quite a bit worse than the stuff we knew before.
Is it a dealbreaker? Ehhhhh.... Nobody who has 40+ years of stuff in the political record books looks completely clean on racial issues for their entire career. Joe Biden campaigned as pro-segregation back in the day, and Bernie used the N-word in his 1997 book. The perfect candidate doesn't exist. Well...no that's a lie. The perfect candidate does exist, but she's 29 right now, so can't run for president until 2028. But enough about AOC....
Other attacks on Warren seem really mild; like she took PAC money as a senator; I checked Open Secrets, and yeah...like...5% of her campaign donations was PAC money, mostly from PACs that support women candidates and from labour union PACs.
The one part about Warren I find a bit strange, and I can confirm this both from interviews I've seen with people at her rallies and with coworkers of mine who lean more moderate is that while her politics lean relatively far left (usually aligned with Bernie Sanders) a lot of her supporters seem more moderate, with a lot of her supporters being to the right of her. So like...that's interesting. Although I'd certainly prefer that the moderate wing of the party flocks to her rather than Biden (Biden is a big old bucket of problems).
Other candidates...Bernie's very clearly third in the latest polling. I think he has a lot of lasting power though; he's raised more money than any other candidate (spread among more donors than any other candidate). He's got a lot of very loyal followers, who are increasingly mistrustful of...any non-Bernie candidate that polls above 2%. Bernie's still fine, but he could work on messaging. Like...Warren put forth a wealth tax bill, and that got a lot of media attention cause it turns out "tax multimillionaires and give stuff back to the public" is popular among most people who aren't multi millionaires. That said, it's not like Bernie's never had this idea; he's proposed a wealth tax in the past, it just wasn't part of his 2020 campaign yet. So...in the past week he released his own wealth tax proposal, and news companies are picking it up like "oh he's copying warren". (Which...is kind-of not great reporting on their part, but on the other hand, I can't blame them for not knowing about pre-2016 Bernie policies when he was very fringe).
Biden is noticeably bad. Like...to the right of me sure, but is just flubbing stuff. Answers in debates where he rambles about record players.
Andrew Yang...I mean, I can't help but like him on a personal level; his campaign slogan is MATH, and he makes dad jokes during debates, and he used to play Starcraft II. Much like Bernie I don't think he's going away--his fanbase really loves him. Actually, I see Yang mentioned on my twitter feed more than any other candidate, which is weird for someone who's mostly polling at 2%. Honestly...he reminds me of Ron Paul in some ways. (UBI is popular on the right and the left; popular among libertarians who are like "let's just cut back on welfare and do UBI instead". His version of UBI is a lot closer to the libertarian version). Which I mean...being to 2020 what Ron Paul was to 2008...dirty secret but I kind of liked Ron Paul in 2008, disagreed with him on a lot of issues, but he was refreshing being effectively a third party, and I like third parties; they just bring under-debated subjects to the debate table.
Beto surprised me and kind-of caught my attention in the latest debate with some of his answers on, for instance gun control and reparations. In debate 1 and 2 he had really forgettable answers where he did the politician thing (not really answer the question). Suddenly in the third debate he's speaking confidently on some really risquee political positions. So points for that I guess.
Underwhelmed by the people who did give non-committal politian answers (Butigeg, Harris, Booker etc). Maybe they'll actually do something to get my attention in debate #4.
