Jason Johnson's Weekly 2020 Presidential Black Power Rankings

[George II]

Interesting read.

https://www.theroot.com/buttigieg-needs-more-people-harris-salon-game-has-no-e-1839351848

This week in the Power Rankings are just messy. We’re talking Real Housewives of Atlanta-TMZ-Get her, Jade-level of messy. As we round into the final pre-holiday weeks of the campaign preseason, the gap between the political haves and have nots gets bigger and the knives come out. Campaigns and their surrogates have been coming for each other publicly and privately, and the committee has had more opposition research dropped in our DMs than ever; we feel like Olivia Pope and every candidate out there is Selina Meyer.

This week has questionable firings of black staff, leaked documents, awkward defenses of Tulsi Gabbard and more. The committee is convinced that we’ll find out half of these candidates have gone full Pierre Delecto and created burner Twitter accounts for themselves just so they can attack each other. That being said: We LOVE IT.

Black folks have a particular cultural appreciation for playing the dozens and shade, and if campaigns want to come for necks and snatch wigs in the name of distinguishing their policy goals and outlining what they will do for black voters, have at it. Just about every campaign did something this week that focused on African Americans, some in ways that they shouldn’t be proud of, and some in ways that might make them real contenders this spring. Get your popcorn ready: week 15 of the Power Rankings is going to be interesting.

This week’s big riser is Beto O’Rourke, who jumps up four spots with a few plans that we didn’t know he had in him. This week’s biggest drop is a tie between Bernie Sanders, who had this coming for a while, and Julian Castro, who continues to be a committee heartbreaker. Wondering how we calculate the black power rankings? Check out our method below.

How do you rank a campaign’s Black Power? Well, we have our “FLEX” rating, aka:

Finances: Are you paying black staff, advertisers, consultants?

Legislation: What legislation are you pushing or have passed for black people?

External Polling: No matter how good you are for black people, if your poll numbers are terrible we can’t rank you that high!

X-Factor: What’s your rhetoric like? How do you handle a crisis or the kinds of events and scandals that directly impact black lives?

(much more...)