2020, the election campaigns have begun

[Labster]

Another candidate list update:

1) Elizabeth Warren
2) Kamala Harris
3) Julián Castro
4) Jay Inslee
5) Cory Booker
6) Michael Bennet
7) Bernie Sanders
8) Pete Buttigieg
9) Joe Biden
10) Eric Swalwell
11) Bill de Blasio
12) Steve Bullock
13) Beto O'Rourke
14) Kirsten Gillibrand
15) Deval Patrick
16) Andrew Yang
17) Marianne Williamson
18) John Delaney
19) Amy Klobuchar
20) John Hickenlooper
21) Tim Ryan
22) Michael Bloomberg
23) Tom Steyer
24) Tulsi Gabbard (was 15)

One last entry in the race, former Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick.  Who?  Right.  I slotted him in at #15, which is the place formerly occupied by Tulsi Gabbard.  In my ratings, she's been demoted to the very bottom of the list.  It's just that, the more I hear her talk, the more I think that she's probably a Russian asset.  She has strange issue combinations that seem like they're designed to drive a wedge through the Democratic Party, and to attack the leaders.  The fact that she worked at her family's gay conversion clinic doesn't help matters either.

Our two billionaires are racing up the polls because of how they are bankrolling their own campaigns.  Steyer's ad spending dwarfs all his competition, combined.  Bloomberg is spending about double that.  I actually like Steyer better than Bloomberg, but I am really not going to set up an election to trade one political novice billionaire for another.  And if one of them wins... it basically means we'll never see poor people elected president again.

For everyone else, the race is coalescing around a Final Five: Bernie, Biden, Buttigeg, Klobuchar, and Warren.  All white people there, you racists can finally relax.  No one really wants to go hard on the attack, because all candidates would rather beat Trump than win personally.  (Except Tulsi, and yeah...)  We lost quite a few candidates recently, many of whom we would have thought would be popular and viable.  Elections are weird.

We are two weeks and two days from the Iowa Caucuses.  Finally: Real votes from real voters who can afford to take the evening off work, and then tell everyone in town exactly who they voted for, and then elect a person to go represent them in the county seat, and repeat the process.  "Fun"!    Iowans expect to meet candidates in person, because they're just worth it, which means that the Senators in the group are going to lose out.  They'll be stuck in Washington DC doing an impeachment trial, where they can't talk and have to sit there for weeks.  Advantage: Joe Biden, Pete Buttigeg, and Mike Bloomberg.  Mixed: Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders both have great ground games.  Disadvantage: Amy Klobuchar.