#this was disproportionately hilarious to me when I first saw it as a child

[mermaidknight413]

Does anyone remember Kronk’s New Groove?

[touchmycoat]

blackwater arc reread: notes

okayo kayokayaokay

so several hundred years ago, baby qingxuan was born, and the White Thing was like, “you’re cursed!” the only way free of this super powerful Shit is if qingxuan becomes a god

shi wudu not only managed to find one person born in the exact same minute/hour as sqx, but also someone with the Xuan character in his name, and swaps the fates of sqx and hx

hx’s life falls apart and he loses everyone he loves to miserable deaths

sqx continues to be a golden child, and ascends to godlihood

the White THing haunts hx, but according to xie lian’s estimation, never really gets a meal from hx, ‘cause hx is just that steady, that hardcore—until the Confrontation with the White Thing, during which hx goes absolutely batshit, kills all the horrible people within reach, dies of his own power flipflop shit, and then turns around and swallows the white thing to boot

he’s so damn powerful he goes on to make it through Tonglu Mountain and become a Calamity

through swallowing the White Thing he learns the truth about the Shi brothers?

so as the Earth Master, the true Ming Yi is ascending, HX nabs that poor fucker, and takes his identity, and keeps him imprisoned to torture and extract information from

hx lives life as ming yi, hooks up with hua cheng somewhere along the way, and the two share singular purposes as they infiltrate heaven

sqx becomes determined to befriend hx

hx does not shy away from turning him down, but is, by xie lian’s later exposition (with pressing open his own wound to trigger the amulet), such an upstanding soul anyways that sqx is very, very determined to befriend him

all this while, hx is bidding his time. His goal is utter ruination for the brothers that destroyed his life, so he picks the time of swd’s third 天劫

he’s also been collecting live humans with miserable, miserable lives at his mansion

there are two possible outcomes he wants: 1) get a taste of your own medicine, sqx. you took a life that was not meant for you, now you’ll live among the most wretched.

(That outcome can only be realized by swd’s hands—so there’s a test for swd here as well, or more a taunt. Even when your little brother is desperate to repent in some kind of way, for both of you to survive, can you do it? Can you be the catalyst for giving sqx a life of suffering?)

2) go fuck yourself, swd. you can either make your baby brother miserable by giving him a wretched fate or make your baby brother miserable by making him responsible for your death. And sqx will live. He’s lived this long in blissful ignorance, hx will make sure he lives further in the most agonizing knowledge.

(This outcome wants sqx to stop choosing his brother.)

so he’s been collecting bad fates toward that end.

not long after xie lian’s third ascension, the real ming yi breaks out once and for all, sending up a help signal. hc and hx have an agreement, so hc goes to cover for hx, pretending like hx’s been undercover in his shit for years.

this is also when the real ming yi dies. hx puts the bones in his own mansion ‘cause where else can you put it.

(hc would drag hx to hell for his shit taste in interior decor)

The day hx enacts the plan, and has the White THing haunting sqx again, sqx tosses a wrench in his works by going to xie lian. Otherwise, hx probably just planned on scaring sqx a little (okay a lot), break his mind a little (a lot), and then take away sqx’s powers. Send him back to swd armed with the truth of what his brother’s done and see what sqx chooses.

(Over and over and over again, hx wants sqx to stop choosing swd.)

But. Okay. Xie Lian tags along. So hx puts his plan into motion, but has to keep swerving. Hence all the hide-and-seek, all the misdirection, all the gradual realizations in the black water arc.

He tries to ditch xl in the festival people, but surprise! xl can take over sqx’s body, and beats up hx’s kagebunshin no jitsu

(hc gets REAL mad at hx about this, which is frankly hilarious ‘cause hx is just like. “?!?!?!?! YOUR babe’s the one messing with OUR pl—” and hc’s like “shut UP dianxia does no wrong this is YOUR problem bITCH”)

hx goes to save sqx after swd has sqx tied up but surprise! xl is there again. they get to the rain master’s to hide. pm takes sqx to go see swd, and sqx agrees.

which hx takes as a confirmation of sqx’s complicity

but xl gets dragged along yet again, with hc’s insistent company. at blackwaters hx does his best to separate the group, taking the most important sqx. but fucking swd meets up with xl and they end up in the mansion together

so hx fakes being poisoned so he can send everybody away. hc helps him out.

so hualian are back at puji shrine. xie lian has everything pretty much pieced together, and so nyooms back into sqx’s body in a last ditch attempt to help.

he witnesses the entire shit show

hx is such a specific man, with such specific grievances. he wants vengeance. it’s hard to say whether this vengeance is proportional or not because what happened to him was so fucking disproportionate. he knows the main culprit is swd, and wants him brought down, wants him torn from his godly status. He succeeds in this by failing swd at his third 天劫, then basically going “I’ll tell everyone what you did”

sqx is more complicated. sqx is ignorant, but is the furthest thing from innocent.

but sqx knows it too. between the two brothers, he’s the one reacting with the most compassion. He acknowledges the horror of what’s been done, and knows there really isn’t anything he can say. He’s not here to beg for mercy, he doesn’t have the right.

hx asks if he’d die then

he says yes, but probably knows at this point that’s not something hx even particularly wants

sure enough the choices were put to them

sqx would’ve so very gladly chosen the fate switch. yeah, it’d suck, but honestly he knows it’s the least he deserves. god this is fucked. He’s been reaping the benefits of someone else’s ruined life all this time and he doesn’t even know how to begin making up for it. but hx gave them options! This is fine!

but swd wouldn’t take it. to his last breath swd is a stubborn prideful motherfucker, and refuses to let everything fall the way hx wants. so he’s determined to blast a third option onto the table—his own death, but not at sqx’s hands. and no fate switch either, if he’s relatively confident he’s the only one who can do it.

(swd would only die like that if he’s decently confident of hx’s character? if he saw through to hx’s bottom line in the options hx presented them—that hx’s not some mad fuck out for any desperate shred of revenge, but actually never once wants sqx dead. But, well, maybe swd just measured everything up and saw that if he lived for any longer, he’d only serve to bring further pain to himself and sqx.)

(sqx must be so fucking pissed swd wouldn’t let them choose the first option though)

so we get these through-lines of CHOICE. Isn’t it so fucking brilliant that SWD, with all his love for SQX, never once gave SQX a choice that matters, and HX’s pivotal introduction to SQX’s life is a choice. A choice that SQX made, by the way. I really do think that counts for something, and HX knows it.

IMPORTANT MOMENTS:

SQX calling the wrong name—symbolizing his ignorance. Not knowing is complicity too, when you’re the beneficiary.

“Do you have anything you want to say to me?”—this is the first thing HX offers SQX after SWD’s death. why?

[tialovestelevision]

Where the Wild Things Are

I know the premise of this episode, and that means I need to give some background on me. Hello, I’m Tia. I’m a 35-year-old transgender woman from the Deep South. I didn’t realize I was trans until my late 20s, but… well, that’s a story for if I blog something about the nature of gender. What’s a story for now is that, when I wasn’t quite a preteen, my parents converted from “nonpracticing conservative-but-vague Christian” to “hardcore fundamentalist Church of Christ Christian.” My mother, who had introduced me to Asimov and Tolkien and Hawking and Baum and to Meat Loaf and Led Zeppelin and these great, beautiful, PASSIONATE works of television (Star Trek!) and cinema and music and literature eliminated all of that from her life and replaced it, over time, with Bible readings and Carmen and goddamn Veggie Tales and did I mention Carmen? And my father, who’d ecouraged me to learn as much as possible even if he didn’t understand what I was learning, who brought me the Stones and Dylan and protest and war and gotten me my very first computer - a real PC clone! - when nobody else I knew had one because that was the future… he closed off to new information, to the world as a whole. I refused to homeschool even though I was badly bullied because I knew that school would keep me a link to the world. I played their sympathy to study astrophysics over the summer, and learned there to measure the distance to the stars and to see that the universe was far older than my preacher said it was. I was hit. Not as often as some others I knew. What my father did to me would not, under legal definitions, count as child abuse. What he did to my brother, who was far more obedient to what he wanted his children to be but far less able to play the part when he was disobedient, who couldn’t keep his mouth closed to keep himself safe, and who was younger and smaller… that might have. Probably did. But what he did to me still shaped me. The things I heard spoken from that pulpit changed me more, I think. I spent so long being taught the fear of God that it took moving away from faith and wandering through a dozen different belief systems before I could see the wonder of God. This is a story about spirits trapped by fundamentalist Christian abuse and possession. I don’t know how much the nature of that abuse is going to be relevant to what actually happens in the episode, but I think it’s important to know the context I come at this topic from. The author, they say, is dead - what the author intended to say with a work is far less important than what the reader or viewer takes from it - and the reader, the viewer, is very much alive, and comes to everything they read and watch with the context of the life they’ve lived hovering around them. Those are the glasses through which we see our entertainment. With that out of the way… we watch. 1. Previously On gives us a reminder of the romantic relationships so far in the show - Buffy/Riley, Anya/Xander, Willow/Tara. Then we get Buffy and Riley fighting a vampire and a demon. “You get Fang, I’ll get Horny.” Heh. Demon is dead. Vampire is staked. That was a workout. Vampires and demons don’t ever work together, except all the times we’ve seen them do so. But I think Buffy and Riley are going to have sex instead of telling Giles. Yep. . 2. We’re in a house. Is it the frat house? It is. Buffy and Riley are asleep in Riley’s room. Remind me to talk about the Kuzuis at some point - that’s a fascinating story of how the TV industry works. Riley heard a noise… dripping. Creepy music. He’s in the bathroom. His room doesn’t have its own. There’s a leaky faucet. He turned it off. We cut to an ice cream truck in a residential neighborhood. It’s Xander and Anya. Xander wants to go to a party at the frat house, but Anya is worried because the Initiative is there and she used to be a demon. Also, she thinks Xander doesn’t find her attractive because they didn’t have sex last night, which is the third time that’s happened. “I don’t understand. I’m pretty. I’m young. Why didn’t you take advantage of me?” And there are children outside the truck. Xander is very, very fired. 3. Buffy and Riley are talking about the demon and vampire. They think Adam did it, because duh. Giles wants them to see if they find any more odd pairings. Riley speaks Giles’s language when explaining the party, but Giles is going to the Expresso Pump for a meeting of grown-ups that will be of no interest to any of his friends. Buffy can’t keep her hand off of Riley. They’re going off for a quickie before Buffy’s class. 4. Sun’s down and it’s party time, I think. But Buffy and Riley are still having sex. They’re getting yet another condom. Building is unnaturally cold, but that doesn’t seem to be bothering Buffy and Riley. The fireplace just exploded and set an Initiative guy on fire. 5. Spike is trying to rob Anya, but she’s not afraid of him. Looks like the party’s still on even after someone being on fire. Buffy and Riley are at the party. The guy who got burned just lost his eyebrows. Willow and Tara and Xander are there. Buffy keeps staring at Riley and doesn’t hear anything anyone is saying. Anya, meanwhile, is hanging out with Spike. She’s commiserating. They’re both not scary demons any more, and everything is complicated. Love always ends badly. “I’ve seen a thousand relationships. First there’s the love and the sex, then there’s nothing left but the vengeance.” Spike suggested that they do vengeance together… Anya eviscerate Xander, Spike stakes Drusilla. Sounds like a lovely bonding moment. They’re not going to do it, though. 6. Now we get to watch painful minor character flirting. Yay? And one of the minor characters just had an orgasm while standing there and talking to the other. Three orgasms. Xander is talking to a girl. And flirting. He’s going to get eviscerated. So eviscerated. Buffy, meanwhile, wants to go have sex with Riley. The wall is making people have orgasms. Willow is with Tara and talking and they keep staring at each other. Tara loves to ride horses and invited Willow to go with her. Willow tried to touch Tara’s shoulder but Tara was suddenly disgusted. Tara look terrified and ran off to the bathroom. And Spike’s there with Anya. Xander feels all jealous, but Spike shut him up. Spike needs a drink. Anya and Xander fight hilariously. Xander found people playing Spin the Bottle. One is the girl he was flrting with earlier; she invited him to play. 7. Spike is drinking with an Initiative gut. The guy didn’t recognize him, but knows he looks familiar. Xander spun the bottle and it pointed at the girl from earlier. They’re going to kiss. Wow, she’s fairly aggressive with it. Now she’s horrified by what she just did and running away. Xander found the orgasm wall. And someone sobbing in a closet. It’s Julie, cutting her hair off. Willow is trying to find Tara. She went to the bathroom, where she washed her face then heard something from the bathtub. She’s checking it out. One of the guys… no, a ghost. Under the water. Drowning. Now he’s behind her. 8. Riley and Buffy heard Willow scream but aren’t getting up. Willow is searching for Xander and Willow. Found them both. Tara doesn’t like the house because it’s haunted. And now the bottle’s gone mad and exploded and seriously injured someone. They’re going to get Buffy. But Riley’s door just grew a tree that’ll keep them from getting in, and Buffy and Riley are still having sex. In… space? That’s a really long zoom-out shot of their bed. 9. Tara just walked away from the door, and there’s an earthquake. Tara’s on a balcony. The quake is emptying the room, but got strong enough that everybody fell down. And Spike’s strapped to a chair.Graham is possessed by a Fundamentalist spirit that’s preaching to Forrest. Forrest is getting him down to the Initiative, though. Anya’s still in the building and a screaming ghost just ran through her. And the quake is starting again. 10. Spike is trying to break loose of his chair, and Xander got Julie out. She’s mostly bald now. Forrest and Graham are locking the Initiative down. Xander and Spike are going to back inside… well, Spike talked himself out of it, so Xander’s going back in. And got thrown out by a spirit. “Or… it could get Watcher time.” 11. Giles is singing. “Behind Blue Eyes.” With an acoustic guitar. He’s… really good. Xander is creeped out, though. He wants to go back to the haunted house. Giles saw them, but is finishing his song. Willow once had a crush on him, and Anya is staring. Hard. Very hard. 12. Now the tree from Riley’s room has taken over the house, and Buffy and Riley are still having sex. 13. “In the midst of all that, did you really think they were keeping it up?” *awkward silence* “Oh, for a different phrasing.” THAT is writing. 14. Now we learn the backstory of the dorm. It was a house for disadvantaged children and adolescents run by Genevieve Holt. She’s still alive, so they’re going to visit her. “I treated them as if they were my own flesh and blood… gave them hugs and praise when they were good, and punished them when they were dirty.” Oh god, Anya’s face here. 15. Nitpick: I’m watching this with Netflix’s subtitles on so I can get all the dialogue. Netflix’s subtitles for the show miss out on a lot of capitalizations - they never capitalize Slayer, for example. Calling. Things like that. Here, they missed one that’s really important for the cultural context of the story. “Without me, they would have been shut out of the Kingdom.” They didn’t capitalize Kingdom. In Christian writing, you capitalize that when you’re talking about Heaven. 16. Anya’s face here. This is a woman who has committed incredible, often disproportionate, acts of cruelty. Who delighted in it. And listening to this woman describe what she did to children has her utterly disgusted. I think, even if I didn’t know this thing happens, even if I didn’t see the hints of it in my own youth… holy fuck, Emma Caufield, you are amazing here. Head and Brendon are also doing a good job, but wow. It’s Anya’s scene, and it’s almost all in her face, and she’s incredible. 17. The house isn’t haunted by actual ghosts - it’s haunted by the energy of what Holt did to the children there. Intense emotion, pain, sexual energy and repression. The poltergeists are draining Buffy and Riley’s life energy through the sex they’re having, while influencing them to have more sex. 18. Willow, Tara, and Giles are going to bind the spirits long enough for Xander and Anya to get Riley and Buffy out. Anya can sense the haunting, which is a neat talent. Willow and Giles and Tara have called the spirits to Tara’s room, so Xander and Anya really should be going in. Which they’re doing. The tree’s taken over - good thing Xander brought a machete. Wind kicked up when Xander tried to open the door. The spirits threw Tara’s table across the room, and they lost the spirits. Xander got dragged into the bathroom and Anya thrown off the balcony. Xander’s being drowned now. Anya’s up, and the spirits are screaming. She’s going up the stairs… her ankle’s hurt. Her hand got impaled by the tree but she’s tough as all fuck and got Xander out of the tub. Tree’s still attacking them as they head for Riley’s room. They're through the door, and just opened it. The tree’s gone and the house is safe. 19. The last scene was all right and wrapped things up. Overall: Emma Caufield. Anya makes this whole thing work. From the moment she’s having drinks with Spike, this is her episode, and she nails it hard. Seriously, she’s utterly brilliant here. Particularly in her scene at Holt’s house and in the frat house with the tree attacking them… she’s just wonderful. I’m not really sure what to say about the rest of the episode. Fundamentalist sexual repression is incredibly harmful, leaving those subject to it with both serious issues surrounding sex and badly incomplete information about it. That’s deliberate - Fundamentalist Christianity is the Christianity of judgement, or punishment for “sin.” In a world where suffering can leave an impression on a place, certainly that - plus decades of intense physical, emotional, and spiritual abuse of children - would do so. This episode is very triggery. But it’s also worthwhile, because it’s the first real time the writers have given a story to Anya to tell, and good God does she nail it.

[theliberaltony]

via Politics – FiveThirtyEight

Welcome to FiveThirtyEight’s weekly politics chat. The transcript below has been lightly edited.

sarahf (Sarah Frostenson, politics editor): At long last, the wait is over — former Vice President Joe Biden announced Thursday that he is officially running for president.

Biden enters the Democratic field as the polling front-runner and with some serious establishment credentials as both a long-time senator and former VP. But this doesn’t mean he’s a favorite to win. If anything, in a field with so many candidates, it’ll be hard for any one candidate to stand out and win over a significant chunk of voters. Which means that building a coalition and a base of support will be vital. So, how does Biden’s candidacy change the dynamics of the Democratic race? Let’s tackle this by talking through the following questions:

Which candidates are hurt by Biden’s decision to run?

Who is his biggest competition?

And, more generally, what does this mean for candidates looking to cobble together a winning coalition? How does Biden’s entry ease this or complicate it?

OK, let’s get started with question No. 1: Which candidates are hurt by Biden’s decision to run?

natesilver (Nate Silver, editor in chief): Maybe almost everyone is negatively impacted in some way, or maybe almost everyone except Elizabeth Warren.

For the more moderate white Democrats, like Beto O’Rourke, Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar, Biden is sort of running adjacent to their lane, if not actually in their lane.

He also has a lot of the black vote, so Biden’s candidacy complicates the ability of Kamala Harris and Cory Booker to win South Carolina.

perry (Perry Bacon Jr., senior writer): For all the candidates who are making electability an implicit (O’Rourke, Jay Inslee) or explicit (Klobuchar, Tim Ryan) part of their campaigns, Biden is a very big threat. Plus, black voters find him appealing, which could hurt those candidates I just mentioned, but especially Booker and Harris.

natesilver: If you’re Bernie, now you can’t really call yourself the front-runner. And if Biden is getting 30 percent, maybe your 20 percent or 25 percent factional support isn’t going to be enough.

clare.malone (Clare Malone, senior political writer): But at the very least, Biden probably weeds out some of those guys like Ryan and Seth Moulton sooner rather than later, right? That is, if we’re thinking about the field winnowing at some point.

sarahf: Ryan just qualified for the debate stage though, Clare!

clare.malone: Big day in Youngstown.

natesilver: Ryan is the one guy who really seemed to be running on a Poor-Man’s-Version-of-Biden platform. Some of the other candidates who might have done that (e.g., Michael Bloomberg, Andrew Cuomo, Terry McAuliffe) didn’t run.

I think others, like Moulton and Eric Swalwell, are just running because they like doing TV.

And they aren’t really affected by Biden because they didn’t really have a chance to begin with. (If Moulton or Swalwell wins the Democratic nomination, feel free to throw this back in my face, Internet.)

sarahf: Well, as our colleague Nathaniel Rakich pointed out, Nate, Moulton and Swalwell don’t have that much to lose by running — so why not run?

clare.malone: I wonder who of the top-tier candidates Biden sees as his biggest competition? I was pretty surprised to see that he hired Sanders’s 2016 press secretary.

natesilver: Biden probably sees Bernie as competition, although to some extent welcome competition because Biden probably wins a one-on-one showdown with Bernie because he has broader support among both elites and regular voters.

sarahf: What will you all be looking for as a sign that Biden’s candidacy is making a dent in the support of these other contenders?

perry: Biden already leads among moderates, voters over 50 and black people. So I will be looking to see if those leads grow.

geoffrey.skelley (Geoffrey Skelley, elections analyst): I don’t know if it’s so much about a dent as about them never getting off the ground. For someone like Klobuchar, is she just going to remain stuck in the polls at 2 percent? Does O’Rourke never consistently get into double digits nationally?

sarahf: I saw some speculation on Twitter that the first 24 hours after his announcement will be crucial for Biden as a test of whether his first-day fundraising number can compete with other candidates’:

We'll know if @JoeBiden is a name recognition front runner, or a real front runner, when he posts those 24 hour fundraising numbers. He can't just match @BernieSanders, he needs to obliterate him. In a call to supporters yesterday, Biden acknowledged as much. https://t.co/cHgBljmkKk

— Rachel "The Doc" Bitecofer (@RachelBitecofer) April 25, 2019

And on Friday, the campaign said it raised $6.3 million in the first 24 hours, which puts Biden ahead of both Sanders, who raised $5.9 million in his first 24 hours, and O’Rourke, who got $6.1 million.

perry: I actually don’t think fundraising is a great metric for Biden. That’s because he is getting more support from people who are moderate and black, which I don’t think necessarily is the type of person who gives money to candidates on Day 1.

clare.malone: Going after constituencies that are likely to be a bit more moderate is something that I think Biden will focus on. Another thing I thought was telling was this Spanish language ad he put out first thing on Thursday:

Hoy estoy anunciando mi candidatura para presidente de los Estados Unidos. Somos los Estados Unidos de America – y juntos no hay nada que no podamos hacer. Únete a nuestra campaña: https://t.co/9MBT8Qkyzd#Joe2020 pic.twitter.com/GhSYDci4dr

— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) April 25, 2019

That seems like a conscious play to a group of voters who might be more inclined toward a moderate candidate and might be ready to get active in a 2020 election against Trump, given the tenor of his first term — i.e., child separations that disproportionately affected Latino families and communities.

geoffrey.skelley: Latino voters seem like a wide-open voting bloc. Julian Castro seems like a potential fit. But he’s not attracting much tangible support in either the polls or fundraising so far among Democrats in general, so, as Perry wrote earlier this month, it’s not clear that he’ll be able to make significant inroads there.

natesilver: I don’t think it’s that interesting whether Biden gets a polling bounce, because those bounces usually fade anyway. But if he does get a bounce, I’d wonder how much of it comes at Bernie’s expense.

sarahf: Does it matter, Nate, that more of it come at Bernie’s expense than any of the other candidates?

natesilver: It matters in the sense that it would be quite bearish for Bernie if he fell to, say, 16 percent.

geoffrey.skelley: Well, looking way ahead — if Biden cuts into Sanders’s support, that could have real ramifications for delegates with the Democrats’ 15 percent rule (in each primary or caucus, candidates have to win at least 15 percent of the vote to win delegates statewide or by district). So sliding closer to 15 percent in the polls might signal that a candidate is going to fall short of that threshold in some states. But we’re a long way from thinking about that just yet. (Not that it will stop me from doing so!)

natesilver: If Bernie’s base is a solid 20 percent or 25 percent of the electorate, he’s reasonably interesting as a candidate. But if it’s really just like 15 percent, and the other 5 percent or 10 percent is just sort of foam-at-the-top name recognition, I don’t know that he’s a major player for the nomination.

sarahf: Well, to ask that same name recognition question of Biden, how will we know whether some of his popularity is just name recognition? I know he has higher favorable ratings than Sanders, but how should we think about his polling in the next couple of weeks?

natesilver: Given that there are more reasons to think his polling will decline rather than rise later on, I wonder if it will increase to the low 30s from the high 20s. That would give him more runway for stumbles later.

sarahf: Based on what you’re saying about which candidacies are threatened by Biden’s entry into the race, it seems as though he appeals to both the kinds of voters who’d support Klobuchar/Ryan/O’Rourke and those who’d support Booker/Harris, which is sort of a weird, in-between spot. And yet we don’t necessarily think of candidates like Klobuchar and Harris competing for the same voters.

So what is it about Biden’s candidacy that gives him appeal to different wings of the party? How could he play that to his advantage? And how could that backfire?

geoffrey.skelley: Well, Biden is going to lean hard into his connection to former President Barack Obama, who remains basically the most popular figure in the country among Democrats.

sarahf:

I asked Rihanna not to DM me https://t.co/p3TytePAjH

— Steadman (@AsteadWesley) April 25, 2019

perry: That was hilarious.

sarahf: Setting aside the 1,000 memes sure to follow, what do we make of Biden saying that?

perry: Obama is not going to endorse him, so that was a way to deal with that issue head-on.

natesilver: Nor is Obama going to endorse anybody anytime soon, although I do wonder if he’d weigh in if it came down to a contest between [Candidate X] and Bernie.

clare.malone: The way I’ve been thinking about it and the way I phrased it on Thursday’s podcast is that the Democratic Party has been having a big ideas meeting for the past two years — there are lots of new ideas, lots of people buying into them, and lots of talk about big, structural changes. But Biden is kind of offering the “if it ain’t broke” theory of things, which is that he’s here to remind people of the halcyon Obama days. A familiar face, familiar messages, that kind of thing. Which is how, I think, he could steal voters from a decently broad swath of candidates who are trying to differentiate themselves in this new environment.

natesilver: And a lot of messaging about how Trump is a historical anomaly, rather than being the inevitable culmination of the Republican Party’s drift toward populism.

geoffrey.skelley: Obama was never going to endorse this early, not with so many candidates running. But Biden has eight years of being his VP to use as evidence of his ability to lead the country, which isn’t nothing.

perry: I thought Obama’s spokeswoman’s statement praising Biden was great for him. It’s not an endorsement, but it’s somewhere between not endorsing him and endorsing him, and probably the best Biden could hope for at this stage. And Biden is already featuring pictures of himself with Obama.

Biden had a good campaign rollout in some ways. Pennsylvania Sen. Bob Casey endorsed him, which signals support in an important swing state. And a prominent, young black voice in the party — Symone Sanders — is joining his campaign.

natesilver: This was an interesting endorsement, too:

This is fascinating and surprising. Biden’s first NV endorsement is from progressive, young legislator, first Latina ever elected to state Senate. She also all but ran @RubenKihuen campaign that crushed @LucyFlores, who has accused Biden of invading her personal space in ‘14. https://t.co/INL3JHwnn6

— Jon Ralston (@RalstonReports) April 25, 2019

perry: Yeah, Biden’s endorsements aren’t just from white people, or moderates in the party, or people living in the Northeast.

geoffrey.skelley: Nevada state Sen. Yvanna Cancela hits three important demographics: Latina, union ties, and from a key early state.

perry: Biden wants to build a broad campaign, and all the first indicators are positive.

But what we are seeing right now was all planned I assume for his first day as a candidate, so what happens a month from now will be more telling.

natesilver: Biden’s announcement has made me think of Harris in a slightly different light. Like, why isn’t she getting more endorsements outside of her home state? I’d think she might have more success if she used an argument along the lines of: “The polls are now dominated by three white guys, none of whom really does a great job representing the whole Democratic coalition. I’m the best alternative to them, and it’s time to start building momentum before it’s too late.”

clare.malone: On a debate stage, I think a lot of people might go after Biden’s record. I’m curious to see how cutthroat the primary will get about his past and how much that will stick with the kinds of voters that he wants to win — moderates, including minority voters.

perry: Biden vs. Warren is going to be great.

clare.malone: Warren’s memoir calls out Biden for his opposition to some of her bankruptcy work. Kind of fascinating.

perry: Yeah. Warren has long been concerned about his record and, I think, is the person with the most incentive to take him on. She is the most policy-focused candidate, and he is the exact version of the Democratic Party she is trying to fight.

geoffrey.skelley: The thing is, in a crowded field, you don’t know what the ripple effects will be of attacking someone. This was one of the things that slowed GOP contenders from attacking Trump early on during the 2016 primary. They didn’t know if their attacks might help someone else instead.

clare.malone: Right. There’s some game theory involved.

Or something. I dunno. I was an English major.

sarahf: So, who do we think Biden sees as his biggest competitor? And vice versa?

perry: Harris probably has to win South Carolina. And I think Biden has to be worried about any candidate with the potential to do well with black voters and big donors in the party.

geoffrey.skelley: Harris has to be hoping Nevada is a possible win for her, too, given its proximity to her home state of California, where she is polling well.

perry: If I were Biden, I would be worried about Buttigieg or O’Rourke or Booker taking off and being seen as very “electable” to Democratic voters.

sarahf: As Nate wrote in our theory of the case for Biden, his “ratio of favorable ratings to unfavorable ratings is 4.8, which essentially ties him for second-best in the field with Harris and puts him only slightly behind the leading candidate, Buttigieg.”

Biden’s favorability ratings are near the top of the pack

Average of favorability ratings among Democratic voters in recent national, Iowa and New Hampshire polls

Morning Consult: U.S. Monmouth: Iowa Saint Anselm: N.H. Average Candidate Fav. Unfav. Fav. Unfav. Fav. Unfav. Fav. Unfav. Ratio Buttigieg 38% 9% 45% 9% 42% 6% 42% 8% 5.2 Biden 75 14 78 14 70 18 74 15 4.8 Harris 49 12 61 13 54 10 55 12 4.7 Booker 44 12 54 16 56 11 51 13 3.9 O’Rourke 47 11 60 13 46 17 51 14 3.7 Sanders 75 16 67 26 67 25 70 22 3.1 Klobuchar 28 13 51 10 31 13 37 12 3.1 Castro 28 12 36 9 24 8 29 10 3.0 Inslee 17 7 26 5 10 6 18 6 2.9 Warren 55 19 67 20 58 30 60 23 2.6 Hickenlooper 16 9 32 8 15 10 21 9 2.3 Delaney 14 9 31 12 17 7 21 9 2.2 Gillibrand 32 14 37 17 33 18 34 16 2.1 Gabbard 16 11 29 13 16 13 20 12 1.6

Only candidates whose favorability was asked about in all three polls are included in the table.

Morning Consult poll was conducted April 15-21, Monmouth University poll conducted April 4-9 and Saint Anselm College conducted April 3-8.

Sources: Polls

geoffrey.skelley: Sanders and Harris are my first thought as his biggest competition. Plus, as Perry said, someone like O’Rourke — and I guess Buttigieg, too.

natesilver: Every candidate should probably be worried about Buttigieg right now.

perry: Biden seems like the safe choice. But if other candidates seem like a safe choice but are also exciting, that might pose a problem for Biden. Democrats want a candidate who will be Obama-like, exciting and thrilling to vote for.

clare.malone: YOUTH

Although Biden is going after the youth vote pretty hard, tbh.

Currently on sale for $27 pic.twitter.com/kLu0KBlaMV

— Shane Goldmacher (@ShaneGoldmacher) April 25, 2019

perry: Yes, Biden served with Obama, so their connection is strong. But I’m sure that many Democrats would love to elect a first-in-history candidate, whether that be a gay man, woman, South Asian woman, Latino or black woman, if they are convinced that person can beat Trump and would be a good president.

geoffrey.skelley: Buttigieg isn’t that well-known, yet he is getting around 10 percent now in some polls. That is notable given how name recognition plays into early polls.

clare.malone: People like Buttigieg because he’s young blood. That’s central to his appeal, as is the “I’m a smart moderate” thing.

sarahf: But the one big thing working against Buttigieg is that some voters don’t seem ready to say they think he can beat Trump, even though there’s a lot of enthusiasm for him:

Even non-Biden voters think Biden could win the general

Average difference between share of Democrats who said each candidate was their first choice in a primary and the share who said the candidate had the best chance of winning the general election in two recent state polls

Quinnipiac (CA) Granite State Poll (NH) Candidate First Choice Best Chance First Choice Best Chance Average Diff. Joe Biden 26% 35% 18% 25% +8.0 Beto O’Rourke 4 5 3 3 +0.5 John Delaney 0 0 0 0 +0.0 Bernie Sanders 18 17 30 30 -0.5 Kirsten Gillibrand 0 0 1 0 -0.5 Cory Booker 2 1 3 2 -1.0 Amy Klobuchar 2 1 2 0 -1.5 Andrew Yang 1 0 2 0 -1.5 Elizabeth Warren 7 4 5 2 -3.0 Kamala Harris 17 9 4 2 -5.0 Pete Buttigieg 7 2 15 4 -8.0

Includes everyone who appeared in both questions in both polls, which means some people who have not entered the race are included and some declared candidates are excluded.

Quinnipiac sampled 482 Democrats and Democratic leaners; UNH sampled 241 likely Democratic primary voters.

Sources: Quinnipiac University, University of New Hampshire Survey Center

perry: I think most of Biden’s rivals need Democratic voters to think differently about electability and who is electable. But that’s not great for Biden — a part of his campaign is based on an opinion that the others can’t beat Trump, but that perception could change.

Obama himself has publicly said that people other than white guys can win. If I were one of the candidates, I might start noting that in public.

sarahf: Yeah … What’s the scenario where Biden’s electability argument falls short? Does that happen if that’s the only thing Biden can campaign on?

clare.malone: I’m really curious about what kind of campaigner he’s going to be in 2019! I don’t think we can underrate that.

natesilver: I’m not sure if it’s that Biden’s electability argument would fall short so much as that people become more comfortable with the other candidates. If there’s someone you think would make the best president, you tend to come up with rationales for why they’re the most electable, too.

perry: About 50 percent of Democrats are liberal, and about 50 percent identify as moderate or conservative. Plus, half of Democrats are 50 or older. One advantage Biden has is that there are currently not that many strong candidates appealing to this crowd.

sarahf: So if Biden is able to woo that portion of the party … might he have enough for a winning candidacy?

geoffrey.skelley: To win the Democratic nomination in a crowded field, you might only need a plurality of the primary vote — Michael Dukakis did it in 1988, for example. However, winning a majority of delegates with just a plurality of the vote is not easy in the Democratic primaries as there aren’t winner-take-all contests like there are in the Republican primaries. Still, I’d say there’s an opening for Biden if he ends up being a factional candidate.

natesilver: You need more than just plurality delegate support, though, to win the nomination — it’s the one contest where you need majority support (more or less), or else you have to endure a contested convention.

So I think it is worth thinking about how each candidate would fare at a contested convention. If Candidate X has 35 percent of the delegates and the next-closest candidate has 30 percent, does Candidate X tend to win the nomination at the convention?

For Bernie, I think that answer is “maybe not.” For Biden, I think it’s “probably so, but not sure.”

sarahf: 2-0-2-0 C-O-N-T-E-S-T-E-D C-ON-V-E-N-T-I-O-N!!

I don’t know how you do that, Nate, because that was terrible to type.

natesilver: CoNtEsTeD CoNvEnTiOn

clare.malone: The return of delegate hunting.

geoffrey.skelley: Also, SUPER DELEGATES RAAAHHH

Anyway, yes, it could happen, but I still wouldn’t bet on a contested convention.

sarahf: OK, we’ve talked about which candidates Biden’s candidacy threatens and from which candidates he faces stiff competition. What do we think will change in the field overall now that he’s announced and we continue to move closer to the first debates?

perry: Biden now has to figure out his position on like 50 issues that have emerged in the primary.

clare.malone: I was thinking about this during the CNN forum the other night. Candidates were asked about felon voting, and now it’s turned into a little bit of a kerfuffle.

I think people might start to give more hedging answers on some of these structural change questions that have been popping up — abolishing the Electoral College and the like.

That is, I think Biden could splash a bit of cold (moderate) water on some of these hot topixx debates.

natesilver: We may be in a relative period of stasis until the debates. We’ll see how much higher the “Buttibump” grows. We’ll see if Biden gets any bounce of his own and how good his initial fundraising numbers look, but there’s not necessarily a whole hell of a lot going on right now.

perry: The stances Biden adopts will help set the stage for the debates — i.e., how big is the ideological divide in the party? But I don’t think voters really are that engaged on policy.

However, at this stage, candidates are asked tons of policy questions by activists and reporters.

And Biden will have to give some answers, which will create fodder for activists, the press and the other candidates.

sarahf: Does Biden risk not offering enough of a vision? For instance, I’m thinking of Klobuchar, who dismissed the idea of free college tuition or canceling student debt by saying that it’d be impossible to pay for and without countering with a vision of her own. I could maybe see Biden finding himself in a similar situation.

natesilver: I think Biden offers a pretty clear vision — defeat Trump and restore America back to Obama’s America.

sarahf: But is that exciting enough for voters?

natesilver: It doesn’t have to be exciting. It just has to intuitively appeal to Democrats. And I think it probably does, and I think that’s more important than the policy specifics, at least to the sorts of voters that Biden is seeking out.

geoffrey.skelley: I guess one thing to keep an eye on is whether aviator glasses-wearing Biden shows up or gaffe-prone Joe shows up? Or is it a mix?

sarahf: I’d bet on the former given the screen-printed totes his campaign is selling.

perry: I don’t think Biden can run on electability solely. I expect him to have policy ideas — just not as many or as liberal as Warren’s. He will have gaffes, but the press will cover them less intensely if he is leading in all the polls.

Also. If the gaffes are really him being insufficiently woke, he might not care about them.

This will be a fascinating part of the campaign. There will be an “Anybody-But-Joe faction” of the party. And we will see if he can steamroll them.