week eight graces us with a particularly large edition of This Week in Election Night, 2020. a lot of candidates have been in the news, for good reasons and bad, and there's a bunch of stuff to go through. no opinion pieces this week, since i didn't end up compiling any particularly good ones and this is going to be pretty long already.

the usual note: common sense should be able to generally dictate what does and does not get posted in this thread. if it's big news or feels like big news, probably make it its own post instead of lobbing it in here. like the other weekly threads, this one is going to try to focus on things that are still discussion worthy, but wouldn't necessarily make good/unique/non-repetitive discussion starters as their own posts.

Week 1 thread • Week 2 thread • Week 3 thread • Week 4 thread • Week 5 thread • Week 6 thread • Week 7 thread

News

General Stuff

• from NBC News: As Biden predicts a shorter race, rivals dig in for long fight. we begin with a prediction by biden, and disputes by everybody else, basically. this could honestly go either way, and it's really contingent on what happens on super tuesday in 2020. so many states vote on that day (13 states, falling on march 3) and they represent such a large share of delegates (almost half of them in total) that if anybody takes super tuesday decisively they're pretty much a lock for being the favorite at the convention--however, if super tuesday isn't decisive, it could very well come down to the wire.

• from the Guardian: California: why the cash cow state will take center stage in the 2020 race. in that vein, the biggest crown jewel of the super tuesday states will by far be california, having something obscene like 500 delegates. any candidate which decisively carries california is setting themselves up well for the convention (and incidentally in this respect harris has an inherent advantage since it's her homestate), so expect candidates to really target this state as we get closer to primary day and try and build a ground game there for the future.

• from Fast Company: Black women are the key to victory in 2020. Stop ignoring them. i said in the last thread that this was unlikely to go away, and unsurprisingly it remains an issue. see also last week's Women of color want 2020 Democrats to work for their vote and week 6's Black female voters to Democrats: 'You won't win the White House without us'.

Joe Biden

• from Reuters: Exclusive: Presidential hopeful Biden looking for ‘middle ground’ climate policy. we begin on a high note, with joe biden deciding... well... this: "Democratic presidential hopeful Joe Biden is crafting a climate change policy he hopes will appeal to both environmentalists and the blue-collar voters who elected Donald Trump, according to two sources, carving out a middle ground approach that will likely face heavy resistance from green activists." as far as details, this appears to be the most we have so far:

The backbone of the policy will likely include the United States re-joining the Paris Climate Agreement and preserving U.S. regulations on emissions and vehicle fuel efficiency that Trump has sought to undo...
The second source, a former energy department official advising Biden’s campaign who asked not to be named, said the policy could also be supportive of nuclear energy and fossil fuel options like natural gas and carbon capture technology, which limit emissions from coal plants and other industrial facilities.

• from VICE: A Biden Presidency Would Be a 'Death Sentence,' Climate Activists Warn. to put it lightly, biden's plan is getting fucking obliterated by climate activists. activists are unsurprisingly worried that biden, by trying to seek a middle ground, is basically just going to bring us into hellworld--a likely prospect, honestly, just going off what we have. VICE also expounds on just how unhelpful and non-specific biden's climate policy is so far with this detail:

Biden’s campaign website contains only three sentences about the greatest crisis ever to face humankind, and these are located midway down a secondary page. “We must turbocharge our efforts to address climate change and ensure that every American has access to clean drinking water, clean air, and an environment free from pollutants,” the site reads.

• from Mother Jones: The Planet Is Heading to Catastrophe and Joe Biden Apparently Wants to Take the “Middle Ground”. Mother Jones also has some other reporting which expounds on the amazing fact that biden somehow was the first person to really introduce climate change into the political arena, and yet his policy on it is borderline regressive nowadays. not the best look, although i doubt it'll change votes

• from POLITICO: Bernie Sanders: Biden’s reported climate plan ‘will doom future generations’. if you thought this criticism stopped at voters though, you'd be wrong, because sanders is just as unimpressed with this plan, and i'd imagine he is not the only candidate like this. this is probably about as strong of a rebuke as you'll ever see this early on: “There is no ‘middle ground’ when it comes to climate policy,” Sanders tweeted Friday. “If we don't commit to fully transforming our energy system away from fossil fuels, we will doom future generations.”

• from POLITICO: Florida takes shape as Joe Biden’s firewall. on a lighter note for biden, he is--for now anyways--the solid frontrunning candidate. florida in particular looks like a key state for him to win, which would be good news for him since it'll give him an advantage in the later half of the primaries (it will, in 2020, be one of the last large states to vote on account of not being a super tuesday state). given its demography, if he's on track to lose in this state, don't count on him realistically winning the primary.

Bernie Sanders

• from Roll Call: Bernie 2020 becomes first unionized presidential campaign in history. bernie sanders made history earlier this year by having his staff unionize (tildes discussion), and this seems to have finally been completely formalized this week. will this be a forebearer of a future presidential standard? i dunno, but it doesn't look like anybody else is going to pick up the idea this cycle, at least as things currently are, so probably not.

• from Pacific Standard: Bernie Sanders Says His Campaign's New Sexual Misconduct Policy Is the 'Gold Standard'. this was an issue in sanders's last presidential campaign (and it's also increasingly a campaign issue in general), so unsurprisingly sanders has rolled out a sexual misconduct policy this time around. this article mostly focuses on dos and don'ts, i should note; the original reporting here was done by the guardian o'er yonder and you can find the actual document for the campaign here.

• [LONGFORM] How Can Dems Win Back Rural America? Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren Agree on the Answer. this is both a sanders and a warren piece, focusing mostly on their commonalities in agricultural policy. this has been a theme for the both of them early on; sanders has a very comprehensive set of proposals; of course so does warren. this article also goes into the general background of the issues they're trying to tackle.

Elizabeth Warren

• [LONGFORM] from TIME: 'I Have a Plan for That.' Elizabeth Warren Is Betting That Americans Are Ready for Her Big Ideas. i don't have a whole lot to say here. we have a tildes discussion on this piece, as it was posted earlier this week, so i would encourage you to post there if you have thoughts on this one like i did.

• from POLITICO: Trump backers applaud Warren in heart of MAGA country. warren's been hustling around a bit in the past week and change, even stopping over in rural west virginia on friday to talk about the opioid crisis and other socioeconomic factors which have been massively fucking over the region. pitstops like these presumably aren't going to be swinging things blue in west virginia again anytime soon, but as the article notes: "...Warren was here to try to send a message that she’s serious about tackling the problems of remote communities like this one." also, in case you're curious, you can find her policy on the opioid crisis here.

• from Reuters: Democrat Warren confronts 2020 electability question head-on in Ohio. she was also over in ohio this weekend, where she barnstormed on similar issues of tackling income inequality and the likes of that.

• from Slate: Warren Has Earned Her Wonk Reputation. this article from Slate is mostly an overview of the many, many policies that elizabeth warren has proposed just over the course of the campaign so far. it's a lot! the article does note that currently she seems to lack detailed policies on many of the big issues prioritized by democratic voters, but we're still pretty early in the campaign so i assume she'll roll those out in the future.

Kamala Harris

• from NBC News: Kamala Harris blows past Democratic rivals in fundraising in communities of color. kamala harris has been relatively quiet on the media for the past bit, but she's making headlines this week for her fundraising. she seems to be the significant frontrunner among minority communities as far as that goes. NBC finds that:

Harris pulled in at least $1 million from ZIP codes where most residents are not white, about two-and-a-half times the total of former Rep. Beto O'Rourke of Texas, who was second to Harris, raising more than $408,000 from the same set of neighborhoods, the analysis showed. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., was third, about $1,400 behind O'Rourke, and Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., was fourth, with at least $391,000.

• from CNN: Kamala Harris eyes black voters, women in campaign tour to win over Midwest. aside from fundraising, harris spend most of last week swinging through the midwest barnstorming in minority communities; her current angle seems to mostly run through women and minorities, and while she's doing relatively poorly in polling, people do seem to have interest in her campaign. CNN's most recent polling found "...Harris at 5% but leading the field at 23% among those polled when asked which candidate they'd most like to hear more about."

• from Reuters: Kamala Harris stood up to big banks, with mixed results for consumers in crisis. one of harris's signature points on which she's been campaigning is, in Reuters's words, "the $20 billion relief settlement she secured as California attorney general for homeowners hit hard by the foreclosure crisis"; this article proceeds to pour a bit of cold water on how this played out in practice, though, as harris's actions didn't prevent significant damage to many people's livelihoods.

Amy Klobuchar

• from The Guardian: 'Iowa slingshot': Amy Klobuchar plots midwest route to victory in 2020. klobuchar has also been pretty quiet (and been polling quite badly), but she's also gotten some attention this week. as this article talks about, her path to the presidency has always been basically the same: win over midwestern voters which democrats have been collapsing with since obama cleaned house in 2008. she has the electoral history to back this up: despite relatively close races up-ballot being pretty regular in minnesota since 2000, klobuchar has regularly destroyed her republican opponents statewide and won otherwise-republican-voting white people.

• from Politico: Klobuchar says she isn't worried that older white men are leading the 2020 race. she's also pretty optimistic about her chances. she notes that her campaign is still in the early stages and that despite the dominance of white men, there's still harris and warren in the top-eight, which suggests that she too could have capital as her campaign continues.

• from the Huffington Post: Amy Klobuchar On Female Presidential Candidates: ‘Discount Them At Your Own Peril’. and of course, she notes that discounting female candidates is something to be done at your own peril--female candidates have been particularly successful in recent electoral cycles.

• from Reuters: Klobuchar pitches pragmatism as she seeks to carve identity in Democratic presidential field. klobuchar's main ideological approach so far has been to be the "pragmatic" female candidate, advocating for a more incremental tackling of the issues instead of sweeping progressivism as advocated by people like warren. no signs of this changing, although she does openly consider herself to be a progressive in the same vein as people like warren and sanders.

Pete Buttigieg

• from POLITICO: Mayor Pete blindsides Kamala Harris in California. california has been a state targeted by just about every candidate so far, but the one with probably the biggest impact relative to how they poll has been buttigieg, who is putting a lot of people who might otherwise be donating to or endorsing harris in an interesting position with where they're going to place their support. LA mayor eric garcetti, who appeared at an event with buttigieg on thursday, might summarize this best:

“We have a lot of people who are very candidate curious,” Garcetti notes. “Kamala has a ton of love up and down the state, but people might say, ‘That doesn’t mean I’m not going to shop around … Maybe I’ll keep her as my senator and go with somebody else as president.’”

• from CBS News: Could Pete Buttigieg make history in LGBTQ-friendly Nevada?. buttigieg is also, obviously, hoping to make history with his candidacy, and he's been making overtures toward LGBT organizations accordingly. on saturday he was a headliner at the human rights campaign gala in nevada--nevada it should also be noted has a pretty large LGBT population, which is likely to help him significantly in the state.

• from NBC News: Buttigieg is the only top 2020 candidate not offering staffers health care yet. however, buttigieg hasn't had all good headlines this week. NBC news highlighted his campaign's failure to offer healthcare to staffers, an ignominious feat for him and something which stands in contrast to the rhetoric he's espoused on the campaign trail so far. NBC reports:

Buttigieg’s campaign currently has 49 workers, but has been staffing up rapidly, and plans to hit the 50 mark imminently.
“Crossing this threshold will put us in a position to get a good multi-state group plan, which we are currently negotiating,” said Buttigieg press secretary Chris Meagher.
In the meantime, the campaign is giving salaried staffers a $400 monthly stipend to buy health care themselves. That’s just enough for a single adult with no children to cover a “silver plan” through the Obamacare exchanges, according to national cost data analyzed by the Kaiser Family Foundation.

Everybody Else

• from Buzzfeed News: Beto O’Rourke Has Hired The “Unsung Hero” Of Obama’s First Campaign. beto o'rourke scalped jeff berman, one of obama's most important staffers, which seems like pretty good news for him given that his campaign has been a bit of a mess with staffing in the past few weeks. berman was integral to obama's first presidential campaign, and was also on clinton's staff in 2016.

• [LONGFORM] from The Guardian: The astonishing disappearing act of Beto O’Rourke. of course, o'rourke is still in a great deal of trouble, having slid back into middling popularity with the democratic base, and this piece by The Guardian goes into detail both on his past, his current, and what he's hoping will be his future.

• from the Huffington Post: Kirsten Gillibrand Vows To Only Nominate Judges Who Uphold Roe v. Wade. despite only polling at like, 2%, gillibrand is still pushing the resistance angle. in contrast to donald, she is pledging to only nominate pro-choice judges.

• from CBS News: Cory Booker unveils "Justice Academy" to recruit, teach volunteers. cory booker meanwhile is kicking up his campaign organizing, setting up training camps for volunteers and all that fun stuff. the purpose of these: "Volunteers ... will learn community organizing techniques to engage supporters around a wide array of Booker's main campaign issues, including criminal justice reform, gun violence prevention, and health care."

anyways, feel free to as always contribute other interesting articles you stumble across, or comment on some of the ones up there.

week seven comes a bit early this week again because this week offers up what might be the most articles that i've covered in one of these so far. no [LONGFORM] articles this week, but we do have a lot of policy stuff, mostly from the secondary and lesser candidates!

the usual note: common sense should be able to generally dictate what does and does not get posted in this thread. if it's big news or feels like big news, probably make it its own post instead of lobbing it in here. like the other weekly threads, this one is going to try to focus on things that are still discussion worthy, but wouldn't necessarily make good/unique/non-repetitive discussion starters as their own posts.

Week 1 thread • Week 2 thread • Week 3 thread • Week 4 thread • Week 5 thread • Week 6 thread

News

General Stuff

• from NBC News: Democrats face defining 2020 question: Does defeating Trump outweigh all else?. this is possibly the biggest question democrats have to answer this election cycle, and it's not a question that is readily or easily answered since a lot of it ties into other problems like representation and electability. expect this to continue to be a major theme since it's already been one from the beginning.

• from Pacific Standard: The 2020 Democratic Candidates Are Split on Letting Incarcerated People Vote. one low-key issue that seems to be becoming a defining issue is the matter of incarcerated people voting. i imagine this is an issue that is not going to receive much coverage, nor be center fold in most candidate's platforms, but nonetheless, some people have already taken stances on it (sanders is a yes, buttigieg is a no).

• from Vox: Women of color want 2020 Democrats to work for their vote. this was also a point of note last week in the Guardian (see Black female voters to Democrats: 'You won't win the White House without us' with the 'She the People' forum, and i anticipate this is not an issue that's going to go away.

Joe Biden

• from NBC News: Biden is the Democratic front-runner, but a vulnerable one. we begin with NBC News and their big takeaway from biden's entry to the democratic primary:

Bottom line: 96 hours in, Biden looks more like John Kerry of 2004 (the slight front-runner in a volatile Democratic field) than Al Gore of 2000 or Hillary Clinton of 2016.

• from Jacobin: Joe Biden Is Not a Blue-Collar Candidate. jacobin offers up this take, arguing that biden is not a blue-collar candidate because his voting record suggests he sells out the working class often, and while he is generally acceptable at representing the white working class, he fails to really represent minority working class voters and therefore cannot be a properly blue-collar candidate.

• from the Atlantic: Biden Is Betting on Unions. They Might Bet on Someone Else. biden is of course angling for the union vote and union endorsements, which he's already winning to some extent with an endorsement from the (admittedly in the biden tank) International Association of Fire Fighters (membership: 300,000). he's going to have a hard time garnering labor endorsements, though, because he is far from the only candidate with union ties. as the article notes, among the other candidates vying for the backing of the unions are sanders, warren and harris, and each of them have arguably just as much claim to the working-class as biden does (see also last week's Democratic presidential candidates seek union support at workers' forum).

Bernie Sanders

• from CBS News: Bernie and Biden: Fighting for Trump voters. one of the side effects of how this primary is being waged is that obama-trump voters are being targeted significantly by just about everybody involved. this targeting by the two ends of the primary (and the related issues involved with that) is the subject of this article by CBS News.

• from Reuters: Bernie Sanders promises help for family farms, rural residents on trip to Iowa. policy-wise, sanders has focused on rural communities in recent weeks, promising among other things to "strengthen anti-trust laws to block new corporate agriculture mergers and break up existing monopolies" and "changes to farm subsidy programs to shift the benefits away from bigger farms to smaller and mid-sized operations".

Everybody Else

• from Buzzfeed News: Almost Two Months In, Beto 2020 Is Still In Flux. Staffers Know They’re Behind. despite looking like a relatively early frontrunner in the race, beto has been worse-than-stagnant in the past few weeks, dropping back behind warren, harris, and buttigieg. things aren't looking up either: as the article notes, the campaign is still in the process of trying to fill positions and not lose people (see also, week 5's somewhat related A Top Adviser To Beto O’Rourke Has Left His Presidential Campaign).

• from CBS News: Elizabeth Warren bets big on policy to break through crowded Democratic field. warren's focus on policy so far has been well documented, and this CBS news article mostly focuses on that in comparison to other candidates, who barely have sketches. it also tackles the electability issue, though, which it notes could be a problem that weighs down warren's prospects (cf. last week's Can a woman beat Trump? Some Democrats wonder if it's worth the risk):

New Hampshire is a state where Massachusetts candidates like Warren typically do quite well, but a Suffolk University survey of Granite State Democrats released earlier this week had her in fourth place behind Biden, Sanders, and Buttigieg. When asked why, nearly 1-in-5 non-Warren voters said the main reason they don't support her is because they doubt she can beat Mr. Trump.

• from the Atlantic: Mayor Buttigieg Is Working Remotely Today. this article mostly focuses on the interesting issue buttigieg has--which is, of course, that he is still the mayor of south bend while he's out campaigning. since buttigieg has state he has no intentions of stepping down from the mayoral position he holds (and his term expires in november), this is probably going to be an interested background note of his campaign for the next little while.

• from POLITICO: Gillibrand proposes public campaign financing plan. kirsten gillibrand has policy too, folks! admittedly, i have no idea why her policy takes this form, but she nonetheless proposes that:

...eligible voters could opt into her “Democracy Dollars” program and register for vouchers, provided by the Federal Elections Commission, to donate up to $100 in a primary election and $100 in a general election each cycle. Each participant would get $200 for each type of federal contest: House, Senate and presidential elections.
But there would be limits on both donors and candidates in order to use the public voucher program. Voters could contribute only to candidates in their state — including House candidates outside their district but within their state. In order to accept the public money, candidates would have to restrict themselves to accepting only donations of $200 or less.

• from Roll Call: Klobuchar plan to combat addiction draws on experience with her dad. klobuchar also has policy! this mostly focuses on addiction and mental health, and a summary was helpfully provided by a press release i don't have on hand:

“Amy will support incentives for state governments to enact ignition interlock laws for those convicted of drunk driving to help reduce repeat offenders. Since problems with alcoholism often start early, Amy will support educational initiatives that focus on the risks of alcohol as well as early identification and treatment of alcoholism,” a summary said.

supplemental reporting by CBS News also notes the following: "The Minnesota Democrat wants to pay for treatment for those addicted to opioids by charging a two-cents-per-milligram fee to companies that make the drug."

• from Vox: Cory Booker now has the most ambitious gun control proposal of any 2020 candidate. cory booker meanwhile is focusing on gun policy. as vox writes:

His plan includes the typical Democratic proposals: universal background checks, an assault weapons ban, better enforcement of existing gun laws, and more funding for gun violence research. But Booker’s plan goes further by requiring that gun owners not just pass a background check but obtain a license to be able to purchase and own a firearm. It’s a far more robust gun control proposal than any other presidential candidate has proposed.

in many respects this is similar (but more comprehensive in some respects and les comprehensive in others) to the current gun policy of massachusetts. booker's plan also includes a national database for tracking firearms, and also limits on purchases to prevent things like resale. vox's part of the writing here also has info on the underlying research and statistics with respect to whether or not these policies work (for the most part, they seem to).

• from CBS News: Jay Inslee unveils plan for 100 percent clean energy by 2030. jay inslee is a lower-rung candidate, but that hasn't stopped him from pushing the limits on climate policy. among other things, his ideas include: "100 percent clean energy, mak[ing] all new vehicles zero-emission, and [eliminating] the carbon footprint for all new buildings." you can find his policy specifically here.

• from Grist: A tale of two Washingtons: How Jay Inslee aims to take his climate plan nationwide. Grist goes into more detail on inslee's policy, mostly focusing on how they're being implemented in washington, inslee's home state, and how they compare to the other climate policies in the race already like beto's.

• from CBS News: 2020 hopeful John Hickenlooper unveils plan to "re-energize trade with the world". john hickenlooper has hitched his wagon to trade, of all things. the main planks of his policy on fair trade, which is possibly one of the least energizing seminal issues a campaign can run on, are:

• Ensure trading partners adopt and enforce fair labor and safety standards
• Ensure the protection of IP rights of American companies
• Require trading partners to enforce environmental and climate standards
• Ensure U.S. firms enjoy equitable and comparable investment rights abroad
• Ensure U.S. workers have assistance to adjust to job displacement from trade

if you're interested in that sort of thing, CBS also helpfully embedded the five-page outline going into more detail on those planks in the article.

Opinion/Ideology-driven

• from Pacific Standard: There's No Good Way to Determine Electability Other Than Holding Elections. this is an interesting piece which is hard to summarize, but probably the best summary of it is what it concludes on the matter of electability:

...the discussion around the topic is fraught, particularly for the Democratic Party, which has defined itself in recent decades as the party that embraces and seeks inclusion and diversity. If you're going to assert that a white man is better qualified for a job (the party's nominee) by virtue of being a white man, you really need to be sure on your facts. And the facts just aren't there.

• from Jacobin: Stick With Bernie. this jacobin piece argues that progressive/leftist types need to rally behind bernie given biden's strength, or else they risk a biden v trump general election which would likely (in their view) go the same way as clinton v trump did in 2016. it's pretty much impossible to tell this far out, but honestly, it's pretty easy to see their point here given biden's circumstances.

• from Truthout: The Era of “Centrist” Establishment Democrats Is Over. this op-ed from Truthout strongly rebukes the "centrist" tendency of the democratic party, arguing that there is basically no place for that tendency anymore and that it simply does not and cannot produce a winning coalition at this point. bold and new ideas which buck the traditional orthodoxy in this view are the only way to mobilize and produce a winning coalition, because otherwise either too many people stay home, or not enough people vote democratic.

• from the Guardian: Bernie Sanders needs black women's support. So what's his plan to win us over?. bernie's biggest failing so far between his two presidential runs has almost certainly been his failure to appeal to minority voters, particularly black women. this is of course an issue because he likely needs black women to win the primary and the general. as allison writes here: "Black voters and women of color do not want another president who does not see or value us. Sanders needs to let us know that he understands deeply how frightening, difficult and dangerous this political moment is for us, and for the entire country."

• from the Guardian: Joe Biden wants us to forget his past. We won't. perhaps the biggest failing of biden on the other hand is his absolutely god awful track record, for which he is raked here and will likely continue to be raked. the main crux of the op-ed:

As times have changed, Biden has expressed retrospective misgivings about some of those earlier actions and stances. For example, he very recently attempted to offer an apology of sorts, more like an unpology, to Anita Hill, which she quite understandably rejected. And he remains a pure, dyed-in-the-wool neoliberal, as much as ever a tool of Wall Street and corporations. We deserve better than a candidate who wants us to look past his record and focus only on the image he wants to project and, when that tack fails, can offer progressives only a “my bad”.

• from the Guardian: We can't save the planet with half measures. We need to go all the way. this is one part an op-ed written about climate change, one part an op-ed responding to beto o'rourke's climate plan. on one hand, it does note that o'rourke's plan is good--but it also notes that "good" is not nearly enough to avert the problem, and it's also a downgrade from what o'rourke originally endorsed, which was net-zero emissions by 2030.

• from the Guardian: Is Elizabeth Warren's college plan really progressive? Yes. this op-ed is pretty straightforward and argues against the somewhat-weird position that warren's college plan isn't progressive because it also helps middle-and-upper-class people that's been advanced by a few people.

anyways, feel free to as always contribute other interesting articles you stumble across, or comment on some of the ones up there.