There are a couple of interesting takeaways though: 1) Despite the month-long Warren boom in the pages of The New York Times, the Massachusetts senator is not nearly as high in the polls as I imagined. FiveThirtyEight lists her combined polling average as 8.7%. That's 20-points south of Biden's combined polling average, and ten points behind Bernie. 2) Democratic operatives fear and hate Tulsi Gabbard more than any other primary candidate. What does that tell you about the Democratic Party's commitment to the war machine? I'd say it's at least 69% pure.
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Tonight is the first Democratic presidential debate; it can be streamed on NBC News. Elizabeth Warren headlines a crowd of also-rans, and I include Booker and Beto in that group. I'm interested to see if Tulsi Gabbard can spotlight, however briefly, the suicidal nature of the U.S. perpetual war machine; also, if New York City mayor Bill de Blasio can distinguish himself from the pack.
The story of the last month is definitely Elizabeth Warren. The amount of attention she has been receiving in the "newspaper of record" is noteworthy. She graced the cover of the Magazine this past Sunday, and in yesterday's national edition there was Sabrina Tavernise's (a reporter I like)
"How Elizabeth Warren Learned to Fight" (the photo -- a pre-cultural revolution 1960s high school Betsy clutching her debate trophies -- alone is worth a bounty of votes).
It's hard to say at this point whether The New York Times is boosting Warren because the paper's cognoscenti realize that Biden is another putrid cadaver of the Hillary type who needs to be incinerated before fouling the general election and ushering in a second term for Trump or if the paper is using Warren as a cat's paw to dash Bernie's hopes.
Given Warren's penchant for a modest redistribution of wealth, my bet is that it is the latter.
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