Random thoughts, night two:
--Felt like greatest hits night for Bernie, he's likely to linger around for a while like he did in the last campaign.
--Harris didn't change my mind in that she should be a serious competitor.
--Alongside Castro, I thought Gillibrand was being underrated, and my mind hasn't changed there either.
--I feel like Biden the same way that I did about Beto last night: not great, but not terrible.
--I can see why Mayor Pete has been impressing people, he should have a long, bright future ahead of him in politics somewhere.
--Swalwell at least made things interesting and felt like he was serious about his campaign.
--I have no idea why the Colorado guys, Yang, and Williamson are here.

Once again, I largely agree.

Healthcare for illegals as well? Not sure that’s a winning position right now

It won’t win over Trump’s base but really nothing will. I think their theory is they won on health care in 2018 and they will keep hammering at it.

Biden's always going to be on the defensive. He's never going to be able to stake out a winning position and define his presidency.

I think the media representation of this as a horse race is ratings-considered and wrong-headed. This is an extended primetime hour of democratic talking points, consistent across candidates as far as public processing is concerned, which illustrates the difference between that party’s language and Trump/McConnell’s rewritten version of conservatism.

Republicans will talk up Biden, or a handful of others who are extra centrist, because they sense a loss in the making and nothing would make them happier than for it to be the most centrist Democrats on stage. The media will humor that, as they have. But the last two nights have illustrated how little “democratic disarray“ there really is, and how much 2018-level energy still rolls on.

Healthcare for illegals as well? Not sure that’s a winning position right now

Biden's always going to be on the defensive. He's never going to be able to stake out a winning position and define his presidency.

harris to me seems the clear cut choice

the problem is people are going to see her as overbearing and opinionated and get turned off by it because when those traits are in a woman its bad but in a male it's hes got his shit together

And there's likely not much he can do about it, he's been in politics so long that he's going to have plenty of votes or stances that his opponents can pounce on.

I think he’d have done well if he came out the gate with an attitude of “it’s a new America, and I want to be right there with it,” rather than “fuck yeah I go bowling with segregationists.” Past actions only ever play out as harmful if they are extra awful or if the actor appears to still embrace them (or, like last night, appear baffled as to why anyone else would feel otherwise).

His campaign so far has essentially just been a democratic version of “make America great again,“ and that fails to overlap the zeitgeist.