#who is either even better or much worse depending on whether nominative determinism was set to Regular or Ironic

[calandrinon]

A thought on listening to the TMS cricket podcast shortly after doing my Romanian homework

The existence of Jos Buttler implies that there also exists a Sus Buttler.

[degenerate-perturbation]

Chapters: 23/36 Fandom: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Origins - Awakening, Dragon Age II Rating: Mature Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence Relationships: Female Amell/Female Surana Additional Tags: Established Relationship, Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Self-Harm, Blood Magic, Prostitution, Drowning, Wilderness Survival, It Gets Worse Before It Gets Better Summary: Amell and Surana are out of the Circle, and are now free to build a life together. But when the prison doors fly open, what do you have in common with the one shackled next to you, save for the chains that bound you both?

Chapter 23

Garahel had served well enough at first. He didn’t know what to make of his commander, but he followed her readily enough. He had a soldier’s mind, regimented, ready to obey. It had hardly hurt him at all when Loriel had made him forget about the massacre Anders and Justice had left behind. She had even told herself that she was doing him a favor—who would want to remember something like that?

 That was one little nudge—it did no harm, just like the handful of times Loriel had borrowed Alistair’s mind did him no harm. His mind was not much like Garahel’s—flimsy like paper, not rigid like iron—but it was weak, and she had only done it twice. It did him no harm. She was sure of it.

 She never did figure out whether it was her fault after all, the way Garahel started to forget, to lose track, to be otherwise inadequate. It would not have shocked her, but perhaps it was that her own demands rose so sharply, in the months after. She could not afford to tolerate any mistake. That was her policy—things in her Keep were done right the first time, or they were done by somebody else.

 Garahel was better off back in the barracks, anyway. It was better for him.

 And that had left Loriel needing a Seneschal.

 Half a dozen men and women must have done the job incompetently until Brigit.

 Brigit had arrived in the second year as a pilgrim. She had been an orphan raised within the Chantry—Loriel suspected that her mother had been a mage—and when the Blight had struck, she’d been utterly wasted in the employ of some traveling Orlesian merchant. Within months of her coming to the Vigil she had made herself indispensable, as clerk, assistant treasurer, recordkeeper, and finally—when yet another candidate proved disappointing and had to be dismissed—as Seneschal. It had been a meteoric rise, one well-deserved. She was fervent, professional, and effective, and worth a thousand Wardens. Sometimes weeks and weeks would pass in which Brigit was the only person Loriel spoke to.

 Brigit still wore a Chantry amulet around her neck, and Loriel had never asked why—whether out of sentiment, or true belief. She never spoke of Andraste or the Maker, and it seemed likely that if she truly believed, it would have been impossible to conceal. Brigit believed with a fire like the sun,

 The only thing Loriel did not like about Brigit was the awed and breathless way she looked at her Commander. Brigit was a faithful woman. Loriel sometimes wondered just what she put her faith in.

 Loriel relied on her, depended on her, believed that anything she asked Brigit to do was good as done. But she did not trust her.

 It wasn’t her fault. Loriel didn’t trust anybody. A maleficar, even a famous and beloved one, could not afford to.

     tck  

 But after the fresh spate of assassins, she came as near to it as she ever would.

 Brigit had only had the job for a few months when it happened. Loriel was still nominally carrying out most of her duties as Commander and Arlessa. She had yet to build most of the Underkeep—wasn’t even calling it that yet.

 The assassin had caught her sleeping—or didn't catch her. He’d triggered one of the traps at the window as he’d come in, but somehow avoided the paralysis it was meant to bestow. It didn’t end up mattering—now Loriel was fully awake from her thin sleep. That there was a struggle at all shamed her, brief as it was. It ended with the unfortunate man smeared on the floor, splattered into the walls, sinking into the upholstery, dripping down from the ceiling. She’d panicked and reached for a messy spell. Embarrassing.

 The assassin was thoroughly dead, but she could feel an enchantment lingering at the edges of her consciousness. At first she worried it was a suicide-trap and moved to counter it—after all, if she were an assassin trying to kill a mage of her caliber, a suicide-trap is how she would have done it. Sacrifice a man to let the mark think she was safe, and only then spring the real trap. But it was only the assassin’s amulet. She dug it out from the remnants of a ribcage and probed it. This was an object of power; she admired the skill of whoever had made it. No wonder he’d almost entered undetected. Whoever had sent him equipped him well—but who? Someone from Tevinter, if she had to guess, for no Circle mage could have made something like this.

 While she stood in her nightgown, admiring the amulet and wishing she hadn’t killed the assassin quite so quickly, the door opened. Brigit stood there, one hand on the doorknob, the other loosely at her mouth.

 Outwardly, Loriel looked at her neutrally. Inwardly she shuddered at the thought of having to find a new Seneschal. Brigit was so good at what she did, absolutely one of a kind. There would be no point in bending her mind with blood magic; her will was too strong, her mind too sharp. If she tried to bend her mind, it would break, and she would be of no more use whatsoever. She wouldn’t kill her, but to make her forget would as good as kill her. Loriel was already regretting it even as she prepared to do it.

 “I...commander,” Brigit said, schooling her face. “I heard a disturbance. But I see you have it handled.”

 Loriel waited a beat too long to respond. “Most likely the Crows,” she said, then cleared her throat. “In the future, you will knock.”

 Brigit bowed her head. “Of course. I apologize for the intrusion.”

 “Accepted. Regardless, I thank you for your concern.”

 Loriel’s gaze bored into her, and she didn’t so much as flinch.

 Perhaps it wasn’t      obviously    a blood spell that had done this. She knew spells of pure spirit that could turn a man into a walking bomb. Brigit wasn’t a mage; how would she know that it hadn’t been ordinary, Chantry-sanctioned spirit magic? Of course she couldn’t.

 “You will be discreet,” Loriel said.

 Brigit inclined her head once, deeply. “I saw nothing, Commander.”

 ...no, of course she knew. She was not stupid. She knew there was something      not to see    .

 “Shall I have a more secure place for you to sleep made up?” said the Seneschal, surveying the remnants of the assassin as he dripped from the ceiling.

 “No. I prefer this attempt on my life not to reach too many ears, and servants will gossip.”

 It was a risk, of course it was. Perhaps a stupid risk. But there was no one like Brigit. She could hardly believe her luck in finding her in the first place. It would be foolish to waste her for something that may well turn out to be nothing.

 And truth be told, Loriel was      not    all that worried about what would happen if word got out about her, though she didn’t realize it until that moment. She was not a little girl cringing before powers greater than she anymore. She was the only power that mattered here.

 With a flick of her wrist the blood and viscera rotted and dried to dust, years of natural corruption compressed to moments. It was a good trick—not even blood magic. She’d learned it when she was twelve. The room was still a mess, but she didn’t much care. She didn’t intend to use it any longer.

     tck  

 After the first incident, Loriel moved her quarters to a room of not-quite-perfect security, a high tower just barely scalable by somebody very determined. The summer was hot, and the window left open. She didn’t have to wait long. When the next assassin came, she was careful not to kill.

 She peeled open the woman’s mind, but learned nothing of interest from it. She was indeed a Crow, and knew nothing of the man who had paid him to die in this fruitless attempt on the Warden-Commander’s life. She shaped the remnants of the the Crow’s mind into something bent on the murder of her master. Her body was finely honed; it could kill without thinking. She wouldn’t need her mind for that. Most likely she would fail, but Loriel didn’t need her to succeed. She only needed to send a message.

 Soon after she received word from Master Ignacio himself that the Antivan Crows would no longer be taking contracts for her.

 Message received.

 Of course, that did not mean that there would be no more assassins—only that there would be no more Crows. Though there was reason to believe that any mark that even the Antivan Crows would not touch, other players in the game would not go after, either.

 Regardless, Loriel would not be so foolish again. She slept only underground, so wreathed in enchantments that no assassin could even begin to hope to pass through. No more waking with the sun—she set a timed rune of light instead.

 At first she feared she would miss it—but after some months had passed like this, she found the sun to be as unnecessary as everything else.

     tck  

 Her work was stagnating.

 Months had passed since so much as a sighting of the Architect. Years since a real conversation. Each morning, she still asked—and each time, the answer was the same. How fine, how fitting, that      now    of all times, did she realize that the Architect was exactly what she needed to make progress.

 The Architect could control the Blight itself, without apparent effort, without apparent thought. Whatever the secret to curing the Calling, Blight-magic was part of it. Maybe the ancient creature could cure the Calling himself at will, and simply chose not to—or maybe he couldn’t, and something Loriel could do would make it possible. She had gathered everything there was to know about him, and the more information she had, the more confused she got. She just needed to talk to him—properly, not just the cryptic scraps of scrawled messages she managed to exchange with him via the Deep Roads. And now even those had dried up.

 She occasionally had news of the Messenger, wandering the countryside cloaked and hooded, saving farmers from bandits and doing all manner of good deeds—or some cockney story of that nature. On one occasion, she even managed to catch up with him and requested he get a message to the Architect. But the Messenger, it turned out, was no longer taking messages—he was no longer in contact with the Architect. He was his own man now, insofar as he was a man.

 Useless. She had nothing.

 Except the strange black crystal delivered to her by Velanna, years ago, now.

 That thing was all she had, and it drove her mad. She could make no sense of it. It had no structure that she could detect, no enchantment she could touch. It didn’t even rightly seem to be a crystal, not in any meaningful way. It was a piece of the Void itself for all she could divine of it.

 Why leave this to her? Was she supposed to know what it was and what to do with it? Was it a puzzle, a challenge? A joke? A mistake?

 Finally, despairing of making any progress herself, she brought it to Avernus.

 It was humiliating. Infuriating. The old man was not better than her, she could not stand to believe it.

 “This?” he said, peering at it hungrily. “Very well, seems simple enough. Disappointing that you could not manage it yourself, but always wise to know when to ask for help, eh?”

 “Shut up,” she said impassively. She simmered, but only a little; she was too relieved to finally have help. “I suppose you will be wanting my notes?”

 “Yes, yes,” said Avernus, and Loriel gave him her exhaustive and close-written account of everything that she’d used to fail to unlock the crystal’s secrets. He skimmed, and proceeded to try several things she already knew would not work.

 “I’m not an idiot,” she snapped, after thirty minutes of this. “Assume I already tried everything a fool might think of.”

 “Anyone can make a mistake when working alone, not only fools,” he replied flatly, without so much as looking up. “That I am diligent in my work has nothing to do with whether or not you are an idiot.”

 “If you have nothing to contribute, then what was the point of my coming here?”

 “Of course I do,      child,”    he said, snapping her notebook shut. “It is already quite clear to me just what this crystal of yours is.” But an hour later he was still muttering and rotating it before an enlarging glass. And hours later, maybe days—it was hard to tell when neither collaborator needed to sleep, eat or drink very often—the both of them surrounded by reference tomes and testing reagents, they understood, if anything, less.

 “Enough,” Avernus barked finally. “We will make no further progress like this. I have the vague beginnings of ideas, but nothing further yet. I’ll keep it here and try my guesses later, and maybe then I’ll make some sense of it.”

 Loriel’s head was full of cotton fuzz. She did not need to mind her mortal needs very often, but she did need to, and she was realizing she had found her limit. She couldn’t tell if she needed rest or food or water more—all she felt was deprived. Even so, at his words, she was suddenly fully alert. “Keep it here?”

 “Yes, child. Rest and go home, come back in a month. Or don’t come back—the journey is long. I’ll send word when I have something.”

 All tiredness fled from her. She was flint-sharp and cold as steel. “No. No, I do not think so.”

 “Don’t be foolish, child,” Avernus snorted. “You wanted my help, I’m willing to grant it.”

 “It was entrusted to me, and with me it will stay.”

 “I need the damn thing in order to help you with it.”

 What did he think he was playing at? Had he grown so bold as to steal from her? She couldn’t think of any reason he would want it—unless he meant to contact the Architect first? To conspire with him against her? Did he resent her hold over his life? “I am ordering you to give it to me.”

 His eyes flashed. “Ordering me?”

 “Yes. Indeed. Ordering.” She sounded manic even to herself. “As your superior officer. Not to mention the sole reason that you are still alive.”

 “What you are is a stubborn child, jealous and irrational.”

 Loriel had been gathering power almost without realizing it. The temperature in the room had dropped to near freezing. “Do not think,” she said softly, “that because I value your assistance in my work, that I also value your life. You are a betrayer and a murderer. There is nothing you know that I cannot find out myself, even if I had to rip it from your head myself. Do not push me.”

 For a moment he hesitated. Was that fear? Or was he merely judging his chances? For a moment, Loriel thought this disagreement might really escalate to a full-blown wizard’s duel.

 But it was not a long moment. Avernus scowled and bowed his head and submitted. “Very well. As you wish,      Commander.”  

 The haze passed. She was no longer sure why she felt quite so threatened. Why feel threatened? She was in charge here. Had always been so. Foolish to doubt it. Childish. Absurd.

 After that she did not hear from him for nearly a year.

     tck  

 Returning from Soldier’s Keep, a detachment of inconveniences awaited her.

 Brigit was waiting at the gates, standing pin-straight with her hands gripped tight at her front. She bowed as Loriel’s coach approached. “Commander. You have visitors.”

 “Get rid of them,” Loriel said irritably. “I am not available.”

 “I tried, ser,” Brigit said, distressed. “I promise I did, I’ve been holding them off for months. I didn’t expect them to come in person.”

 It occurred to Loriel then that Brigit was competent enough that if it was possible to get rid of these visitors, then they would already be gone.

 “And who are they?”

 “Emissaries from Weisshaupt, ser. They have questions for you.”

 Ah.

 “Can you hold them off for another hour? At least so I can change.”

 “Of course, ser. Will you—?”

 “I will not require assistance.”

 She changed into a less dusty uniform, washed her face, combed her hair. There wasn’t time for much else; Brigit was very good, but she wasn’t a miracle worker.

 This wasn’t the first angry communication she’d received from the Anderfels, but the first who had come in person. Loriel had been batting away their letters and ignoring requests to come to Weisshaupt for years. The First Warden was not terribly happy about her predecessor’s policy of transparency for new recruits. And she was      terribly    curious as to how Loriel had survived slaying an Archdemon.

 She just managed to seat herself at her desk when Brigit let the detachment in.

 Three of them, two women and a man. The man was a dwarf, the women both human. One was certainly a mage—Loriel guessed she mostly used primal magic, and classified her as a moderate threat—but the other was an unknown quantity. She was big, that was for sure—if she got her hands around Loriel’s throat she would have to act fast. They were blue and silver still coated with the dust of travel, and they didn’t look happy.

 “Wardens,” she said by way of greeting.

 “Commander,” the dwarf said eventually. He introduced himself and the two women, and spent nearly a minute on pointless pleasantries before saying anything of substance.

 “We came to speak of sensitive matters, Commander. Warden business.” His eyes slid to Brigit, standing off to the side in a protective stance, as though at any moment she would be called upon to defend Loriel with her body. “If you would?”

 “I trust my Seneschal completely,” said Loriel. “I can’t imagine there is anything we might speak of that she shouldn’t hear.”

 “Nevertheless.”

 Loriel sighed. “Very well. If you would, Brigit.”

 Brigit left, unable to resist glancing back as she did. Kind of her to worry—but it would be easier this way.

 The dwarf—Henrick—waited for Brigit’s footsteps to fade before fixing Loriel with his bright blue gaze. Loriel smiled back politely, utterly vacant.

 “The First Warden is interested in you.”

 “Yes, I know. I received her letters.”

 “But you did not see fit to report to Weisshaupt.”

 “I did not think it was necessary.”

 “Orders are not generally something left to the discretion of those who receive them.”

 “As you may recall, the Grey Wardens of Ferelden were nearly destroyed during the Fifth Blight. It has not been trivial to rebuild the Order here, as the First Warden herself requested of me. Traveling to Weisshaupt would take me away from the Vigil for months.”

 “We understand that. Nevertheless, the First Warden has weighed these concerns, and decided that, on balance, such a journey would be valuable.”

 Yes, very valuable—very valuable for getting her out of the way and replacing her with someone more tractable. Loriel’s eyes carefully did not narrow. “Then the First Warden and I must agree to disagree. She is certainly welcome to come here, if she feels a face to face conversation with me is so important.”

 “It seems that there is a great deal that you and the First Warden disagree on. Such as the importance of our carefully guarded secrets.”

 This again. It had been a thorn in her side ever since it had become standard procedure at the Vigil. “If you are referring to the Ferelden Warden’s policy of transparency for new recruits,” Loriel said delicately, “then rest assured that no sensitive information has been made public. The details of the Joining remain strictly guarded. All that the public knows now is that the Joining is sometimes fatal, which any fool could have figured out on his own. In telling them up front, we build trust with those we protect. In the long run, we will be stronger for it.”

 Privately Loriel thought it had been a stupid idea to make that information public. It had caused her no end of headache out of Weisshaupt, and probably made no difference to the recruiting rates. The kind of man—it was usually young men—who came to give his life to the Grey Wardens would not be deterred by knowing that the Joining could easily kill him. Every single one of them was absolutely certain that      he    would survive.

 Anyway—she hadn’t gotten a choice. Why did anybody else deserve one?

 Loriel picked up her recently-sharpened quill pen and twirled it around her finger.

 “Be that as it may,” said Henrick. “You had no authority to do it.”

 “I am Commander of the Grey. I rule my Wardens as I see fit.”

 “To a point. Warden-Commanders have a great deal of discretion, but not this much. The First Warden has questions.”

 “I’m sure she does,” Loriel said icily, dragging the sharp quill across her palm, calming herself.

 “For instance—how you survived the slaying of Urthemiel. This should not be possible. There are rumors that Urthemiel is not dead—that he still lives in the Deep Roads in another form, and that you send good lives after bad on patrols to find and slay him. Have you anything to say to that?”

 They mean the Architect, Loriel realized with a start, and it took effort not to laugh. “I say it is absurd, but I do not control what the First Warden spends her resources on. By all means—if she wishes to waste everyone’s time in investigating a Blight that has been over for years, she is welcome to. The patrols are purely routine. To read anything else into it is, to be frank, bizarre.”

 “That is wonderful to hear,” said Henrick. “I am sure the First Warden will understand when you explain it to her yourself.”

 With great effort, feeling rusty and incompetent, Loriel put on her most gracious, diplomatic tone and expression. “I am sorry if I have been curt. Please rest assured that all these concerns will be addressed. All letters will be responded to, all questions answered. Everything will be explained. I may be an unorthodox commander—but I am loyal to the Order.”

 “The time is far past for letters,” Henrick interrupted. “We did not come here idly. Our orders are to bring you back to Weisshaupt to answer for all that has transpired since the Blight—by force, if necessary.”

 “I see,” Loriel said eventually, her hands in her lap. She looked between the three of them, the blue-eyed dwarf with the tri-cornered beard, the ruddy Anderfels woman, her slight and silent companion. “And there is no dissuading you from this course of action, I suppose?”

 Their stony glares were all the answer she needed.

 She sighed. “Very well. Then I have only one thing to ask of you.” Pain bit at her palm. “Go back to Weisshaupt. Tell the First Warden that the situation here is far more dire than she believed—that it hangs by a thread—and that it would be dangerous and irresponsible to call me away now. Be persuasive—because it is true. You saw it all with your own eyes. You were very convinced. Convince the First Warden.”

 The Anderfels Wardens stared blankly at her. Silence in her quarters. “Now,” Loriel said evenly, her blood pooling in her hand, “      Go away.”  

 The Wardens went away without another word.

 Loriel slumped in her high-backed chair as the door closed behind them. She would maintain some hold on their minds for a while yet, but for now she released enough of them that they wouldn’t look strange departing her office.

 Not that she had been really afraid that it wouldn’t work—but the mage might have noticed something before the spell really took hold, and then it would have been so much harder to take her mind. She doubted the three of them would walk away from the experience entirely unscathed, but this way, the damage would be limited.

 When Brigit entered, Loriel had sealed her cut and composed herself.

 “Is all well, Commander?” the Seneschal said. “I know how you detest interruptions to your routine.” She seemed genuinely concerned. How sweet. How stupid. “What did the Wardens want?”

 “Nothing you need worry about. I have addressed their concerns adequately.”

 For a beat Loriel met her eyes. Did she really not know? She had to know. Brigit was no fool. Surely she knew.

 Brigit slowly nodded. “I see...and do you still want your morning tea, Commander?”

[theliberaltony]

via Politics – FiveThirtyEight

How many Democrats are running for president? It’s not a trick question. And it’s not an easy question to answer.

Unfortunately, it’s also not a question we can really avoid. We’ll be writing about the Democratic primary for the next [checks notes] 16 months here at FiveThirtyEight, until the Democratic National Convention is held next July in Milwaukee. We’ll be making thousands of charts and graphics featuring these candidates, taping hundreds of podcast segments about them, and collecting heaps of data on their activities. While there’s some room for flexibility — I can mention Marianne Williamson’s name in passing without committing FiveThirtyEight to write a 2,000-word feature about her — we need to make a distinction between “major” candidates and everyone else for a lot of what we’re doing.

It would be nice to be extra inclusive, but that gets out of hand quickly. According to the Federal Election Commission, there were actually 209 (!) Democrats1 who had filed paperwork to run for president or form an exploratory committee as of last Friday afternoon, including luminaries such as Gidget Groendyk, Maayan Z. Zik, John Martini and Dakoda Foxx.

The Washington Post and New York Times have more modest lists of 15 Democratic candidates — but to be honest, their definition of who qualifies seems to be pretty arbitrary. For instance, Williamson, a self-help guru and best-selling author, is on both lists, but Wayne Messam — the mayor of Miramar, Florida, who this month formed a presidential exploratory committee — is not on either.

There are lots of other edge cases. What to do with entrepreneur Andrew Yang, who became Internet-famous and is now penetrating mainstream coverage of the 2020 race? What about Mike Gravel, who is an 88-year-old former U.S. senator and may be running for president — or who may just be helping some teenagers troll everybody? Then there is John Delaney, who is a former U.S. representative and has been languishing in obscurity despite having fairly traditional credentials for a presidential candidate.2 He’s been drawing a goose egg in most polls and failing to raise enough money to qualify for the debates despite having been running for president since July 2017.

For better or worse, we need a set of relatively objective standards to distinguish major from minor candidates. So we’ll be introducing one in this article and revealing which candidates do and do not qualify so far. The fact that the standards are objective doesn’t mean they’re beyond reproach — there’s subjective judgment involved in determining which objective measures to use. (The judgment comes primarily from me and Nathaniel Rakich; everyone else politely ignored us while we went through several iterations of the qualifications in FiveThirtyEight’s politics Slack channel.) But they’re at least something we can apply consistently to all the candidates.

In fact, candidates will have two paths — plus one shortcut, which I’ll explain in a moment — to qualify as major by FiveThirtyEight’s standards. (Candidates must be officially running or have formed an exploratory committee to qualify; Joe Biden may be major, but he isn’t a candidate yet.) The first path is to meet the Democratic National Committee’s standards to qualify for the presidential debates. According to the DNC’s rules, candidates can qualify via either of the following ways:

Receive at least 1 percent of the vote in national or early-state polls from at least three separate pollsters on a list prepared by the DNC.

Receive donations from at least 65,000 unique individuals, including at least 200 donors in each of 20 states.

There are a couple of complications here. One is that we don’t necessarily expect the DNC to declare which candidates have and have not qualified until we get closer to the debates, which begin in June. So we’ll be determining this for ourselves, using their standards. We’ll also be taking candidates at their word when they claim to have reached 65,000 donors, unless we have some strong reason to doubt them; the DNC will seek to vet and verify their claims, by contrast.

Also, the DNC says that it will limit at least the first couple of debates to 20 candidates; if more than 20 qualify, they’ll use some other (ambiguous) method to decide who actually gets a podium. We’ll consider candidates to be major even if the DNC runs out of room for them, however.3

To be honest, we think the DNC standards are pretty generous. Getting 65,000 people to donate to you isn’t that much — Beto O’Rourke received donations from twice that many people within his first 24 hours!4 It’s also not that hard to hit 1 percent — just 1 percent! — in a handful of polls.

Nonetheless, we also have a second path open. It requires candidates to meet at least six of the following 10 criteria:

How we’re defining “major” presidential primary candidates

Candidates must meet the DNC’s debate qualifications via fundraising or polling OR meet at least six of these 10 criteria …

How actively the candidate is running 1. Has formally begun a campaign (not merely formed an exploratory committee) 2. Is running to win (not merely to draw attention to an issue) 3. Has hired at least three full-time staffers (or equivalents) 4. Is routinely campaigning outside of their home state* What other people think of the candidate 5. Is included as a named option in at least half of polls* 6. Gets at least half as much media coverage as candidates who qualified for the debate* 7. Receives at least half as much Google search traffic as candidates who qualified for the debate* 8. Receives at least one endorsement from an endorser FiveThirtyEight is tracking The candidate’s credentials 9. Has held any public office (elected or appointed) 10. Has held a major public office (president, vice president, governor, U.S. Senate, U.S. House, mayor of a city of at least 300,000 people, member of a presidential Cabinet)

The criteria are applied to the trailing 30 days.

* “Routinely campaigning” means being on the road, hosting events open to the public, for at least two weeks out of the previous 30 days. Polls include all state and national polls over the previous 30 days as tracked by FiveThirtyEight; however, each polling firm is counted only once. (If a candidate is mentioned by name in any of that polling firm’s polls over the previous 30 days, he or she counts as having been included.) Media coverage is based on the number of articles at NewsLibrary.com. Google search traffic is based on topic searches — rather than verbatim search strings — in the United States.

These standards are also meant to be pretty generous. If we think of those criteria as a point system, in which candidates get a point for every one they fulfill, someone can get to 4 points just by doing the basic blocking-and-tackling of a campaign: formally launching their bid, going out on the campaign trail, hiring a few staffers and claiming (however implausibly) that they’re in it to win it rather than (as Gravel has said) merely to draw attention to a favorite cause.5 In addition, candidates who are actively running can get 1 or 2 additional points if they have been elected or appointed to public office, depending on the stature of the position. So, candidates such as Delaney, U.S. Rep. Tulsi Gabbard and former Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper can qualify as major based on actively campaigning (4 points) and their credentials as elected officials (2 points) alone.

For other candidates — those who have held only minor public offices or none at all, or those who are only campaigning half-heartedly — there are four additional ways to gain points, based on whether they’re included in polls, how much media coverage they’re getting and how much they’re being searched on Google, and whether they’ve been endorsed by anyone whom FiveThirtyEight is tracking. It’s really not that hard to get to 6 points.

There’s also the shortcut I mentioned before. If we consider it almost certain that a candidate will eventually qualify under either the first or the second path, we reserve the right to designate them as major even if they haven’t technically qualified yet. For instance, if John Kerry or Stacey Abrams were to run, they might not qualify right away because it would take the various metrics some time to catch up to their (somewhat unexpected) announcements, but they would almost certainly reach them within a few weeks. So we’d consider them to be major candidates from the start.

Which candidates have qualified so far?

By our accounting, 12 people have qualified for the debates under the DNC’s rules, one of whom (Biden) isn’t actually running yet. They also qualify as major under FiveThirtyEight’s rules, therefore.

Which candidates have qualified for the debates?

Candidates who achieved at least 1 percent in three DNC-approved polls through March 24, 2019

Candidate CNN Monmouth U. Des Moines Register (Iowa) UNH (N.H.) Fox News Biden ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ Sanders ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ Harris ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ O’Rourke ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ Warren ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ Booker ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ Klobuchar ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ Castro ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ Gillibrand ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ Buttigieg ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ Inslee ✓ ✓ ✓ Hickenlooper ✓ ✓ Bloomberg ✓ ✓ Brown ✓ ✓ de Blasio ✓ ✓ Yang ✓ ✓ Delaney ✓ ✓ Gabbard ✓ ✓ Kerry ✓ Bennet ✓ Holder ✓ Bullock ✓

Shaded candidates have qualified for the debates under FiveThirtyEight’s interpretation of DNC rules, including Yang, who qualified on the basis of fundraising. According to the DNC: “Qualifying polls will be limited to those sponsored by one or more of the following organizations/institutions: Associated Press, ABC News, CBS News, CNN, Des Moines Register, Fox News, Las Vegas Review Journal, Monmouth University, NBC News, New York Times, National Public Radio (NPR), Quinnipiac University, Reuters, University of New Hampshire, Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Washington Post, Winthrop University. Any candidate’s three qualifying polls must be conducted by different organizations, or if by the same organization, must be in different geographical areas.”

Eleven of these candidates — Biden, Bernie Sanders, Kamala Harris, O’Rourke, Elizabeth Warren, Cory Booker, Amy Klobuchar, Julian Castro, Kirsten Gillibrand, Pete Buttigieg and Jay Inslee — have qualified on the basis of achieving at least 1 percent of the vote in three DNC-approved polls. A 12th candidate, Yang, has qualified by having at least 65,000 donors, according to his campaign. We reached out to various other campaigns that didn’t meet the DNC’s polling benchmark to ask whether their candidate had hit 65,000 donations, and none claimed to have done so.

However, three additional candidates qualify as major under FiveThirtyEight’s second path. Delaney, Gabbard and Hickenlooper are running full-fledged campaigns and currently or formerly held major elected offices, so they each have at least six points, enough to qualify. (They’re also been included in the majority of polls, and two of the three, Delaney and Hickenlooper, have at least one endorsement.)

Other candidates fall a little short, however:

Williamson gets four points for running a full-fledged campaign, including a busy travel schedule and a staff of 10 full-time people, but she has no points beyond that for now. She’s included in polls occasionally, but less than half the time; she has less than half the Google search traffic of most Democrats; she isn’t included in much media coverage about the campaign; and no one on our list has endorsed her yet. Nor has she held public office before. Some of these categories are close-ish, though, so it’s not a stretch to imagine her qualifying in the future, whether by meeting the DNC’s fundraising criteria or for other reasons.

Messam is not yet officially running — although he does have an exploratory committee. He also hasn’t been included in any polls and has drawn very little interest from the media (other than FiveThirtyEight!) or the public (as measured by Google searches). He has a fairly easy path to 5 points if and when he does launch a full-fledged campaign, however — including hiring a staff and traveling to events — since he gets 1 point for being an elected official (although not 2, since Miramar is not a large city). The 6th point is tricker, but getting pollsters to include him or someone to endorse him would do the trick.

It’s not clear how seriously Gravel is taking any of this, and even though he gets 2 points for being a former U.S. senator, that alone isn’t (nearly) enough. If he does decide to officially run and begins campaigning (for the time being, an exploratory committee was opened on his behalf), he’ll accumulate additional points quickly, although note that Gravel has said that he would be running to critique U.S. imperialism rather than to win, so he wouldn’t get the point that most other candidates get for being in the race to win.

Finally, for posterity’s sake, there’s the question of whether former West Virginia state Sen. Richard Ojeda counted as a major candidate back when he was running. (He has withdrawn his bid.) By our definition, the answer is “no,” as he usually wasn’t included in polls, didn’t draw a significant amount of search traffic or media coverage, and didn’t get any endorsements, meaning that he’d have had no more than 5 points.

So how many “major” Democrats are running for president? By our definition, there are 14 major candidates so far — not counting Biden, who is not running yet — with Williamson, Messam and Gravel having a shot to achieve major status later on. There are also several candidates who, like Biden, are still considering a bid and who would fairly easily qualify as “major” if they ran, so our guess is that the Democrats will eventually meet or surpass the record-setting 17-candidate field that the Republicans had in 2016.

Check out all the polls we’ve been collecting ahead of the 2020 elections.