From the 2007 Democratic Primary campaigns:

Rasmussen Reports Poll
June 25–28, 2007

Hillary Clinton 39%, Barack Obama 26%, John Edwards 13%, Bill Richardson 5%, Joe Biden 3%, Dennis Kucinich 3%, Chris Dodd 1%, Mike Gravel 0%, Undecided 9%

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nationwide_opinion_polling_for_the_2008_Democratic_Party_presidential_primaries


President Obama did not lead in any national poll until Feb 1-3 2008.

To date, in 2019 no candidate has broken away from the field. The 2020 nomination remains wide open.

President Obama did not take the lead in ANY major poll until Feb1-3 2008.

He did not start taking the lead permanently in all major polls until March 13-14 2008.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nationwide_opinion_polling_for_the_2008_Democratic_Party_presidential_primaries

So, calm down. Stop declaring winners and losers.

No consensus candidate has indisputably emerged yet.

I was told that they don't actually call people, at least not for their `"16,000 registered voters interviewed" weekly poll.

I was told it's some sort of online poll and that it's not a truly random poll.

I have been trying to find out how people are selected to participate, but I can't find that info anywhere.

Do they "interview", whatever that means, the same people over and over?

Can any registered voter participate?

How are the people selected?

I keep asking this question and have not got an answer yet.

If we are all going to keep quoting the results of this poll, as I have myself, shouldn't we at least all know how it works?

What's wrong with Republicans?

To delegitimize her and her life story of growing up black and the daughter of a single mom, they spout this nonsense:

Kamala Harris isn't black enough...

Kamala Harris' parents were too smart...

Kamala Harris wasn't poor enough...

Kamala Harris wasn't bussed enough...

Kamala Harris played the race card...

Kamala Harris plans her attacks...


What bothers me most though, is that many of these right wing talking points have been used in varying guises here on DU since the debate.

That should really stop.

What Happened With Merrick Garland In 2016 And Why It Matters Now

To recap, Garland was nominated to fill the 2016 vacancy on the Supreme Court created by the death that February of Justice Antonin Scalia, an icon of conservative jurisprudence.

President Barack Obama quickly named Merrick Garland, then 63, to fill the seat. Garland had long been considered a prime prospect for the high court, serving as chief judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit — a frequent source of justices that is sometimes called the "little Supreme Court."

Widely regarded as a moderate, Garland had been praised in the past by many Republicans, including influential senators such as Orrin Hatch of Utah.

But even before Obama had named Garland, and in fact only hours after Scalia's death was announced, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell declared any appointment by the sitting president to be null and void. He said the next Supreme Court justice should be chosen by the next president — to be elected later that year.

https://www.npr.org/2018/06/29/624467256/what-happened-with-merrick-garland-in-2016-and-why-it-matters-now

So, all these threads about how we can return to civility and work with the Republicans seem to have forgotten this?

The Biden Campaign says Joe Biden can restore civility and restore bipartisanship if he is elected president.

But Joe Biden, as vice president, was PRESIDENT Of THE SENATE when Mitch McConnell stole a Supreme Court appointment from President Obama and the country. Biden presided OVER the Senate as VP.

If he couldn't "work with" Republicans then to just get a hearing for Merrick Garland, why should we think he could do better now?

Exploring Elizabeth Warren's 'Okie' roots
by Holly Bailey

OKLAHOMA CITY — When Elizabeth Warren returned to her home state of Oklahoma last year to film a biographical video that defended her claims of Native American ancestry, she was shown briskly walking through an older neighborhood of modest bungalows in Norman, a suburban college town south of Oklahoma City, the place where she lived until she was 10.

But the episode that has become the emotional touchstone of Warren’s political career and her quest for the Democratic presidential nomination actually happened in a quaint, two-story Colonial revival in a now historic middle-class neighborhood in central Oklahoma City to which she and her parents moved in 1960.

As Warren has recounted in books and now on the campaign trail, her father, Donald Herring, had been outside working on the family car on a cold November afternoon in 1961 when he quietly walked into the house. A carpet salesman who was always busy doing something, he was eerily still — except for his hands, which “shook,” Warren recalled in her 2014 memoir, “A Fighting Chance.” Her father had suffered a heart attack. He was 50. She was 12.

Warren has described her dad’s heart attack as “the minute I grew up.” “My mom and I thought he was going to die,” she told voters in Des Moines last month. “He was in the hospital for a while. And then he came home, but he couldn’t work, and so the bills piled up. We lost our family station wagon, and at night, my mom would tuck me into bed, and I’d hear them talk. I learned words like ‘mortgage’ and ‘foreclosure’ — heavy words for a kid.”

https://news.yahoo.com/exploring-elizabeth-warrens-okie-roots-153323346.html

The pundits tend to paint her as a Harvard Professor, the wonkish intellectual, but Elizabeth Warren has deep roots in the working class and the heartland. And it shows.

When history looks back on the first round of debates among Democrats in the 2020 presidential cycle, it will see a generational milestone.

Both nights of the twin bill in Miami put the spotlight on a national party in transition, loosening the bonds of its past and looking ahead to new personalities to propel its future.

Parties are about people, and also about ideas. The ideas openly discussed this week included free tuition at public colleges, new taxes on wealth and radical action to address climate change. They also included universal health care, medical coverage for undocumented immigrants and the phasing out of private health insurance.

All these would have been regarded as outside the mainstream not too long ago, and Republicans will surely argue they are still outside the mainstream today.
[snip]

The new faces on stage personified the change. Three were in their 30s, four in their 40s, with six women, five people of color and an Indiana mayor whose first answer included a mention of his husband.

The contrast could scarcely be starker with the party of President Trump, who has said his e-election campaign theme will be "Keep America Great." And it is not just the president who sounds the theme and hearkens back to the America of earlier generations. The crowds at his rallies and the ranks of Republicans in Congress also continue to be dominated by older white males.

https://www.npr.org/2019/06/29/737055755/the-democratic-party-attempts-to-pivot-to-the-future-ready-or-not

Marianne Williamson, mocked by pundits as a "self-help guru slash Oprah fave", made a profound statement in her closing remarks in the debate

“I have an idea about Donald Trump,” Williamson said in her closing remarks. “This man has reached into the psyche of the American people, and he has harnessed fear for political purposes. So, Mr. President — if you’re listening — I want you to hear me please. You have harnessed fear for political purposes, and only love can cast that out. So, I, sir, I have a feeling you know what you’re doing. I’m going to harness love for political purposes. I will meet you on that field, and, sir, only love will win.”

She is right, Trump did harness fear for political purposes.

She is right, he did reach in to the psyche of the American People.

She is right that more than political plans are needed to cast Trump out.

She is right that only our love for each other can repair the damage Trump has done to our country.

Mock her all you want, but try listening to the heart of her message. She isn't wrong.

A series of posts, that I think are divisive, have been criticizing Harris for saying she was the only black person on stage and wanted the opportunity to address a question just asked on race.

Now Be Blasio is being criticized for saying he was the only person on stage that had a black son in the same context.

The following comment, which to me just seems divisive, made me want to address this here:

"Remember when Obama said he had black kids?!?
Me neither! "

Well, I DO remember when President Obama said he had black kids and much more than that on race.

I want those people attacking Harris and De Blasio for daring to mention their personal connection to racial issues to read THIS:

"I am the son of a black man from Kenya and a white woman from Kansas. I was raised with the help of a white grandfather who survived a Depression to serve in Patton's Army during World War II and a white grandmother who worked on a bomber assembly line at Fort Leavenworth while he was overseas. I've gone to some of the best schools in America and lived in one of the world's poorest nations. I am married to a black American who carries within her the blood of slaves and slave-owners - an inheritance we pass on to our two precious daughters. I have brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, uncles and cousins, of every race and every hue, scattered across three continents, and for as long as I live, I will never forget that in no other country on Earth is my story even possible."
-President Barack Obama

The divisive attacks on both Harris and De Blasio on this issue simply have no meriit.

MIAMI, Florida—There is blood in the water and the campaigns know it.
For weeks, Democrats involved in the primary have privately warned that Joe Biden was a paper tiger—a frontrunner, for sure, but one with clear vulnerabilities and a defensive campaign approach. On Thursday night, in front of the largest primary audience thus far, they found their vindication.

The second night of a back-to-back debate in South Florida, the first of a dozen, featured four of the five top-polling candidates in the sprawling 2020 field. But it was a five-minute exchange between Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA), the only African-American candidate onstage, and Biden that changed the tenor of the two-hour broadcast and perhaps the course of the primary itself.
Harris’ blistering and personal critique of Biden’s position on school-desegregation busing in the 1970s placed the former Veep on the defensive. It also put the biggest dent yet into his greatest political asset: the aura of electability and inevitability that he has tried to build during his time on the trail. In the hours that followed, the other campaigns in the race rushed in to make the point that the man many perceive to be best equipped to defeat President Donald Trump was, in fact, not so formidable.
[snip]

Even those more ideologically predisposed to rush to Biden’s defense acknowledged on Friday that the evening had been a let down.
“It wasn’t good,” said Matt Bennett, Vice President for Public Affairs and a co-founder of centrist-Democratic think tank Third Way. “He seemed unprepared—it reminded me of Obama’s first debate with Romney. And my guess is that it was the same dynamic—a very experienced guy semi-ignores the prep thinking he is ready, and he’s not. He can certainly recover from this, and I expect that he will, but it’s going to take some work.”
[snip]

Statistically, the damage that Biden’s candidacy endured on Thursday night is hard to quantify, in large part because the data is not complete. But preliminary surveys show a complicated picture. Data compiled by the Democratic polling firm Democracy Corps showed Biden’s favorability with African-American voters actually going up a net 18 percent after the debate. Stan Greenberg, the longtime party pollster, chalked much of that improvement up to defensiveness over the perception that the attacks on Biden were attacks on the Obama-Biden legacy. But the same survey also showed that the percentage of people who would vote for Biden and consider voting for him went down 11 points from 81 percent to 72 percent.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/other-candidates-sense-blood-in-the-water-around-joe-biden-after-democratic-debate