Tulsi is low key kinda hot

The DNC sounds as rigged as ever.

Interesting. I didn’t watch, but I see Drudge readers picked Gabbard overwhelmingly

Klobuchar was not my favorite candidate, but she came across and reasonable, seasoned, and informed without seeming unnatural.

Gabbard was terrible. Every answer was “I am/was active military and now I should be president”. I believe her first question was about income inequality and she didn’t even attempt to connect her answer about being in the military to the question and i sensed a palatable awkward silence by a complete change in topic from the moderator.

I will say that the debate showed unequivocally that O’Rourke is out of his league with these candidates. They all had something specific and forceful to say and he came across uninformed and like an empty suit. If you are positioning yourself as the new Obama I think you need at least some gravitas and knowledge of policy. What a train wreck. Castro are him for breakfast on immigration, Beto’s only truly attempted owned issue.

We’re a long time from voting, but those I stacked in the losers column would be those I could eliminate from considering next year in the primary.

As an aside, I care enough that I even took a night off the Bruce journey to watch!

Warren, Booker & Castro did well, I thought. The rest were meh. I agree with those who think Beto is annoying... ugh.

Beto needs to be the first to go after last night.

I don't think Beto presented well last night. But I think this is an absurd statement.

Warren, Booker, Castro are my top three of the night.

O'Rourke underwhelmed and de Blasio exceeded my expectations, though I still don't consider him a viable candidate long term. Klobuchar said a lot of things that I liked but I think her strengths belong in congress. Should would be my #4 of the night if I went past 3 in my ranking.

In 2018 it seemed like everybody loved Beto and he was the second coming of RFK. In 2019 all I've heard is that he's an annoying entitled white guy who doesn't know anything or have any substance. What happened?

I don’t think so. If his top issue is immigration, yet every candidate on that stage was more prepared to discuss that issue, it speaks to Beto as a candidate. The top concerns about him coming in centered around him not having the policy acumen to adequately compete against the other Democrats. He quite literally looked like he’s running because he’s the cool kid in town who apparently doesn’t need to do his homework. And in addition to that, he did not come across as charming but instead as forced and unprepared to answer questions so he offered worthless platitudes. If we’re going to start weeding out candidates so there’s less of a cacophony of candidate noise and we get down to making a real choice, let’s start with the candidates that can’t articulate a substantive reason to be here other than I ran in a close race for Senate.

Agreed

I think it should be centered that last night's debate was Warren and the also-rans. The writing is on the wall with most of these candidates--Beto is just the only one polling above 2% who should also drop out.

Now, Marianne Williamson on the other hand

Random thoughts:
--I thought Beto did OK. Not the best, but not as bad as some have been making him out to be.
--I always thought Castro was being underrated, and I thought he proved me right last night. Same with Booker, though he's been considered more upper tier for a while.
--Warren seemed to have three phases. The first one, where she just ran through a grab bag of all her ideas, I thought did not go off well. But in the middle, when she focused on one specific issue, she was more lasered in, and I thought that was compelling. And then in the third phase she mostly went silent. Not sure if that's bad, or if was good just to let her opponents beat each other up.
--Gabbard sounds like someone that could linger around for a while, despite her underdog status.
--Felt disappointed by Klobuchar and that she didn't stand out much among the crowd.
--The first one I'd eliminate from this group was Ryan, I really can't remember anything he said. At least Delaney and DeBlasio were valiantly trying to get into the debate despite being on the far ends.

Amy Klobuchar is not going to be fucking president I think we can dispense with that idea right now.

It's one HALF of one debate. I totally agree that he has issues as a candidate at this point and I agree that he under performed. He's got work to do. But we've also seen that he is able to do that work. If you want to throw all of his previous work away because of one early debate, then so be it. That's your call. I'm just not ready to do that, though.

Your points here are interesting and worthy of discussion. I don't necessarily disagree with much of it. I just think saying he "needs to be the first to go" when he shared a stage with Tim Ryan and John Delaney is completely absurd, regardless of how well you think Beto performed. There's no world in which Beto is the lesser candidate between those three. And it's AT LEAST those three. I'd personally throw Inslee and Gabbard on the pile as well.

But let's see what night 2 holds before we start saying who NEEDS to do anything.

Other than Klobuchar surprising me a little (admittedly due to SUPER low expectations) I agree with this. Totally on the same page.

If you're part of the Samantha Bee "run for Senate, goddamnit" brigade, then that's the only logical way I could understand tossing Beto first.

Good call