June 27 Poll Report
Good morning everybody. To begin with, yesterday’s poll was relatively unexpected; Cory Booker beat the book. The standings of the four men in yesterday’s poll, before the poll was taken, were:
Cory Booker 405
John Hickenlooper 233
Bill Weld 185
Eric Swallwell 96
Which created the following expectations for the poll:
Cory Booker 405 44%
John Hickenlooper 233 25%
Bill Weld 185 20%
Eric Swallwell 96 10%
But, in fact, Booker took points away from everybody else; Hickenlooper finished down 7, Swalwell down 4, Weld down 1, and Booker up by all 12%:
Scores
|
Hickenlooper
|
233
|
Swalwell
|
96
|
Weld
|
185
|
Booker
|
405
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Predicted
|
Hickenlooper
|
25
|
Swalwell
|
10
|
Weld
|
20
|
Booker
|
44
|
Actual
|
Hickenlooper
|
18
|
Swalwell
|
6
|
Weld
|
19
|
Booker
|
56
|
That doesn’t have huge impact on the poll, because the other three candidates don’t control enough points that beating them will move you up by a whole lot. Booker edges up from 405 (yesterday) to 422 (below):
Rank
|
First
|
Last
|
Current
|
1
|
Elizabeth
|
Warren
|
2008
|
2
|
Joe
|
Biden
|
1227
|
3
|
Pete
|
Buttigieg
|
1184
|
4
|
Kamala
|
Harris
|
796
|
5
|
Amy
|
Klobuchar
|
483
|
6
|
Bernie
|
Sanders
|
434
|
7
|
Cory
|
Booker
|
422
|
8
|
Beto
|
O'Rourke
|
367
|
9
|
Stacey
|
Abrams
|
342
|
10
|
Donald
|
Trump
|
324
|
11
|
Kirsten
|
Gillibrand
|
296
|
12
|
John
|
Hickenlooper
|
222
|
13
|
Andrew
|
Yang
|
220
|
14
|
Jay
|
Inslee
|
215
|
15
|
Julian
|
Castro
|
205
|
16
|
Bill
|
Weld
|
182
|
17
|
Tulsi
|
Gabbard
|
157
|
18
|
Michael
|
Bennet
|
126
|
19
|
Jeff
|
Flake
|
114
|
20
|
Howard
|
Schultz
|
97
|
21
|
Eric
|
Swalwell
|
87
|
22
|
Steve
|
Bullock
|
84
|
23
|
Seth
|
Moulton
|
83
|
24
|
Tim
|
Ryan
|
82
|
25
|
Mike
|
Gravel
|
66
|
26
|
Marianne
|
Williamson
|
61
|
27
|
John
|
Delaney
|
56
|
28
|
Bill
|
de Blasio
|
43
|
Since yesterday:
Joe Biden is up 31 points as a result of the removal of the May 7th poll from the data considered relevant.
Elizabeth Warren picks up another 26 points as a secondary correction. This pushes Warren over the 2,000 level, which means that 20% of my voters now support Warren more than any other candidate.
Corey Booker is up 17 points as a result of yesterday’s poll.
Pete Buttigieg is up 15 points as a "correction"; a secondary effect from other polls.
Jeff Flake is down another 5 five points, to another record low for him.
Julian Castro and Kirsten Gillebrand are down 6 points each as a secondary effect, Andrew Yang is down 7 points and Stacey Abrams is down 8.
Eric Swalwell is down 9 points as a result of yesterday’s poll.
John Hickenlooper is down 11 points as a result of yesterday’s poll, and
Howard Schultz is down 22 points as a result of the removal of the May 7th poll. On May 7th Biden beat Schultz 68-14, about a 5-to-1 ratio. Based on subsequent polling, Biden would beat Schultz more than 12 to 1, so that old poll was helping Schultz, hurting Biden, and getting rid of it helps Biden, hurts Schultz.
I’m not normally trying to use this space to politic or to advance my personal reactions, but a few thoughts about last night’s debate, if you will permit me. The three candidates from last night that I was most comfortable with are Amy Klobuchar, Tulsi Gabbard and John Delaney, with Cory Booker fourth. I thought Gabbard probably helped herself more than any other candidate. She was dignified and courteous, and my guess is. . .well, we have had a few years of a President who is neither dignified nor courteous. Some of the candidates are reacting to that like "Yes! A President no longer has to be dignified or courteous! I can cut loose." My guess would be that after dealing with off-the-cuff insults and petty feuds with third-rank celebrities, there is a hunger in the public for someone who is more the other way. Which, really, most of the candidates were; all of them behaved appropriately except Inslee and de Blasio and Castro, but Gabbard stuck out in that way.
I think, in a general election, Gabbard would probably be the toughest candidate for a Republican to beat, because she is closer to the center than most of the others, but that for the same reason she almost certainly cannot get the nomination. She gets beat on for coming from a conservative personal background, which I don’t care anything about. She takes heat for meeting with Bashir al-Assad, which I actually think is appropriate; the universe is filled with bad guys, and you have to do business with them. She took some criticism last night for saying that the Taliban (or people very much like them) have been in Afghanistan for a long time and are going to be there when we’re gone, but that’s just speaking truth to power; they ARE going to be there when we’re gone. I don’t know a lot about her and I’m not supporting her, but I like her, as I like Delaney, although I doubt that either has a real chance.
Jay Inslee, I thought, made a complete ass of himself, first by pretending to be the only person on the stage who cared about women’s rights and second, his main argument for the nomination is that he can scream louder about climate change than anyone else can, because he’s a big strong man with a loud voice. De Blasio seemed. . . maybe not as bad as his reputation, but you could kind of see what it is about him that people don’t like. And Julian Castro; whereas Inslee was more of an asshole, Castro was more of a jackass. His attack on Beto O’Rourke over exactly which section of legal code must be corrected to improve things at the border was silly; what is necessary to improve things as the border is a broad-based agreement to improve things at the border. It isn’t LAWS that are creating this problem; it is bad faith, on both sides of the political aisle. Castro’s kicking off his campaign in Puerto Rico, which is not a state, is offensive, and his citing as proof of his ability to get things done some obscure, miniscule things that he did years ago as mayor of San Antonio was. . .WHAT? That’s why you think you should be President?
Not saying that I wouldn’t vote for either Inslee or Castro; I just didn’t see much that I liked. Tim Ryan does not seem to have the skills necessary to run a strong campaign, but he made perhaps the best point of the night in arguing that the Democratic Party, to win the White House a little more often, needs to be careful about projecting an elitist image. The last three Democrats to win the White House—Obama, Clinton and Carter—were all very good at projecting an everyman image, while the last five to lose—Hillary, Kerry, Gore, Dukakis and Mondale—all came across as snobs. Hillary’s background is similar to her husband’s, and to Obama’s—modest family background, but went to an elite university at a young age, but whereas Obama and Bill Clinton retained a sense of being grounded, Hillary adopted without reservation or restraint the manners and belief systems of the academic class.
Elizabeth Warren clearly seems to understand this. I’ve never much liked Warren; I was in Massachusetts when she launched her political career, and I didn’t much like her then. I think, frankly, that she’s a chameleon, adopting the colors she needs to wear for the environment she is in. That’s not an endorsement, but it’s normal for a politician; at least she seems to be pretty good at it. She is talking about being from Oklahoma and being raised in a poor family, rather than talking about being a Harvard Law professor. This is, in my view, very good judgment on her part. The people who care about her being a Harvard Law Professor will vote for her anyway; the people she has to win over are the people who would prefer to vote for an Okie from Muskogee. My problem with it is that I don’t think it is authentic. I think that, as much as Hillary or even more, she actually HAS worn the coat of a costal elite for so long that she can no longer take it off.
Cory Booker was OK except for that idiotic comment about gun buy-back programs. Gun manufacturers LOVE gun buy-back programs; it’s basically the government pumping money into the purchase of weapons. Otherwise I thought that Booker had a good night.
Other than John Delaney, nobody said one word about what I regard as the most serious issue facing our country, which is the partisan divide. Anyone who says, "We can crush those evil Republicans, we can render them powerless, we can take all the money away from the rich people who fund them, and we can win all of the elections and run everything. . ." well
(a) Republicans are not evil; they just have different ideas than you do, and
(b) No, you can’t.
You’re NOT going to win all of the elections. And if I thought you were going to win all of the elections and run everything, I’d vote against you; I’m happy with you winning some of the elections, but not all of them. Rich people are really, really good at defending their interests in the political universe. I don’t actually believe that you can stop them from doing this.
I live in the Midwest. I don’t see that a lot of people around here hate the Democrats or hate their ideas or want them driven into the ocean. But almost all of the people who are close to me, here in Lawrence and around the country, HATE the Republicans and HATE their ideas and want to just get rid of them. This is very unhealthy. All of the candidates except Delaney and Gabbard, it seemed to me, were pandering to the worst elements of their party. We don’t need anger; we need leadership. The plan that Elizabeth Warren needs most is the only plan she doesn’t have: a plan to work with the Republican party in governing the country, not against them. And I would have the same message to all of them: if you really want to be President, you need to recognize that Lindsey Graham and Nikki Haley and Joni Ernst and Mitch McConnell and Marco Rubio and John Roberts and Samuel Alito and Rand Paul are not evil people and are not racists and are not troglodytes. They are leaders, and we need for you all to work together.