2020 Election Update: Democratic Primary Race
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President Donald Trump is still the odds-on favorite to be elected POTUSA in 2020 at top sites such as Bovada.
The latest headlines abound with the word impeachment. Whether the President gets impeached or not, the polls could be skewed by differential nonresponse bias. We'll have to wait and see if this Ukraine Call and Impeachment story gets enough heads turning to shift the weight of Trump supporters. FiveThirtyEight says it's not there yet, but it's getting closer.
So there is a ton of drama happing on the Republican side of things at the moment. But what about the Democratic party's race for the primary? Who will come out on top? And what is Joe Biden's platform, anyhow?
The Front-Runners
Unlike the Republican candidates, there is a whole slew of Democrats in the running: Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris, Cory Booker, Amy Klobuchar, Bernie Sanders, Pete Buttigieg, Beto O'Rourke, Julian Castro, Steve Bullock, John Delaney, and more ...
But, according to the latest polls, the front-runners are Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, and Elizabeth Warren.
According to the NY Times, Joe Biden is taking up 26% of the polls, but trending down. Elizebeth Warren is at 20% but trending up, and Bernie Sanders is holding steady at 16%. One interesting thing of note is the fact that Kamala Harris is polling at around 5%, but she is the second-most endorsed candidate with 92 points.
So, in the long run, will Kamala Harris catch up to Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren or will the fact that she's pretty much left out of the national news coverage be too big of a factor to overcome.
Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren have been going back and forth in the polls for some time. Not only that, depending on the poll you check will show a different person in second-place to Joe Biden. Yet two separate CNN polls of likely voters show two vastly different outcomes. Their South Carolina poll shows Joe Biden to be clearly in the lead at 37% with Warren at 16% and Sanders at just 11%. However, their Nevada Poll shows Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders to be tied at 22% with Elizabeth Warren in third at 18%.
So, will the Democrats shoot themselves in the foot again by remaining divided? Will they split the vote again?
Let's take a quick look at some of the key points of Biden's platform.
Joe Biden
Biden is an interesting case because he does have the best resume by far. That said, he is also known for passing policies that the democratic base isn't necessarily inline with. He wants to 'turn back time' but probably not back to 2007 when he said of Obama, "I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy,"
And certainly not back to 1975 when he said, "I don't feel responsible for the sins of my father and grandfather. I feel responsible for what the situation is today, for the sins of my own generation, and I'll be damned if I feel responsible to pay for what happened 300 years ago."
Biden has recently come under fire for racially insensitive statements such as these, but what are his other political views. Well, he's against the death penalty and wants to abolish it. He also wants to get rid of cash bail reform. He would like to eliminate private prisons and end minimum sentencing reform as well.
Federal minimum wage should be set at $15 dollars per hour and according to Biden the hot topic of reparations should be studied, though not paid out just yet. With regards to education he believes that two years should be free and we should work on debt-relief programs for existing student loans. How about guns? Well, he is in favor of universal background checks and would support a voluntary buy-back program. He isn't as pro-choice as you might think as he would like to impose 'some limits' and is also against medicare for all. Biden also thinks that Marijuana should be decriminalized.
What about defense? If you think that we put too much into the military, Biden probably isn't your guy. He wants to boost defense spending and keep the troops deployed overseas. Oh, and we shouldn't worry so much about China.
