So...what's the draw of Biden?

[marylandblue]

139. No. Because first of all, the so-called lopsided and unfair assessment of Hillary is irrelevant

She lost. She lost for a lot of reasons. There's rarely just one reason for anything. Some reasons are fair. Some are unfair. Some are under the candidate's control. Some are not. We need to deal with that. Understand the prior loss as best we can, and make adjustments.

Buttigieg, has, IMO, developed a strategy that takes into account what went wrong in 2016 and some of the factors that he can control. He bases his strategy in political science, psychology and history. I can go into the details if you want to, but it would be a pretty long post, and you might find it boring. But maybe it's just enough to point out that his strategy is working so far, as he went from nothing to contender in 30 days. It wasn't an accident.

Biden has, as far as I can tell, done none of this. He already fell into the Hillary trap twice, and he's still got a year to go before Trump and the Russian bots start using those things against him. That's assuming other Democrats don't shoot him down first. Which they will do because they always shoot at the front runner. They already have. He looks like he's basing his campaign on "Trump sucks," and "I'm an experienced nice guy from Scranton." Or something like that. I really can't tell if it's anything more than that. It doesn't seem like enough. It's never been enough before. Of course, Trump is different from every other incumbent ever, but that doesn't make him easy to beat. It makes it much harder. We underestimated him in 2016. In many ways, we are still underestimating him. Well I'm not making that mistake again.

Of course, I could be wrong. I feel I need that disclaimer because a lot of the Biden supporters act like they have a crystal ball. Not saying you are acting that way, but some are. They don't have a crystal ball, and I sure don't

I was wrong in 2016. Weren't most of us? But at least I know why I was wrong. I think I learned from my mistakes. I'm a lot more careful this time. I'm paying attention to things I ignored before. My biggest surprise so far is that there is a candidate who came to the same conclusions I did about how to win 2020.

But you don't have to believe me. If I'm right, Buttigieg will continue moving up in the polls. If I'm wrong, he'll sink to zero, and I'll switch to someone else. Maybe Biden, if I'm wrong about him too.