#who often needed defeating by the rest of the party during the post-Big Boss Fight scenes

[otherpeoplescreativity]

A card deck game by Atlas Games: Once Upon A Time

Now, we have some House Rules for the two blank cards, but I won't insist on their inclusion. They are based heavily on our gaming group's ancient history -- probably not anywhere near as much fun for a newcomer like Death to be popping down the 2nd Blank Card and saying "... and the horse he rode in on!" as part of the ongoing tale.

Besides: this way I might get to mine my gaming group's past adventures for storytelling bits.

I do however insist upon the absolute truth of these rules: they are presented as if they are genre-locked, but nowhere is it explicitly stated that the genre must be familiar to Madame d'Aulnoy. After all, it is stylistically consistent to say "Once upon a time, a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away..." and lay down my first card.

[maiji]

“If you could pick 5 members to be on your team in the dark tournament, who would it be?”

So while I was going back through my archives trying to see if I had any incorrectly flagged content (I scrolled all the way to 2015, found three, and gave up/went to bed lol), I kept getting distracted and rereading old posts out of amusement. One of them was this 21 Questions Yu Yu Hakusho meme - and one question in particular made the gears of my brain clank so I thought hey, why not? Let’s answer it.

I'm going to tackle this question from two angles.

A) If I could pick ANY characters in Yu Yu Hakusho to form a team.

B) If I could only pick characters who appear during the actual Dark Tournament.

As soon as you see my first list, you'll understand why I was like, “oh.” and opted to do it again from B lmao.

(Oh yeah my tags spoil everything but oh well. Hope the rationale makes up for it hahaha)

VERSION A: Fun times

Raizen.

I'm sorry, the tournament is over now, thank you for coming. Seriously though, he's Yusuke with a million times more firepower and brains/experience. Also, one of the appeals of Yusuke is that he makes fighting fun, which is why everyone wants to go up against him. Raizen's friends express the exact same sentiment repeatedly. Raizen in his prime in battle would be a sight to see. He'd be all DID SOMEBODY SAY FIGHTING?? YEAH I'LL FIGHT ALL THE FIGHTS WAHOO and nobody would be able to get him off the arena platform. If there is an arena platform left. Or an arena. Or anything.

Enki.

Jolly uncle/all-round good dude, I love him. He also loves fighting, so he is also lots of fun. He seems much more cool-headed and practical than Raizen, and definitely takes the lead in coordinating the rest of Raizen's pals. Thus, he's a great wingman for Raizen. If you somehow actually manage to defeat Raizen- haha, what am I talking about? OK, if Raizen slept in or something, then you can fight Enki. And in that case the tournament is still over.

Kokou.

LOVES FIGHTING AND WILL KICK YOUR ASS. Even Enki was relieved he didn't have to face her. I firmly believe after Raizen she's the strongest - or at least one of the strongest - out of all of Raizen's already insanely powerful friends. Honestly, between Raizen and Kokou they'd probably just take everybody down, including each other, and have a blast. 

My perfect noodle husband Hokushin.

Obviously no one is surprised at this pick on my blog. Also loves fighting, plus super duper reliable, he's perfect support for anything. Along with Enki, he'd help temper Raizen and Kokou's wild party. And somebody needs to clean up after all the mess and make sure everybody gets first aid and whatever. Well, first aid for the other team they just massacred, I guess.

One more Raizen friend: Natsume.

We could put another one of Raizen's friends here, but I pick Natsume because we know a lot more about her and she's so badass and we should have more women. Also, because she's very clearly another great mashup of LOVES FIGHTING and NOT STUPID, as a fifth member, she can easily step in to fill any of the others' shoes, whether it's happily beat the crap out of everything in sight or be calm and strategize. If anybody ever actually needed to be filled in for some reason.

I call this amazingness Team Old People. IMO this team is flawless because they would just be so damn entertaining on so many levels. You have five extremely powerful and smart warriors with centuries of experience who have nothing to prove aside from sheer enjoyment of battle. Every one of them has expressed a passion for fighting because it's simply a joy for them, which means they wouldn't be playing it safe/boring. Seeing a master in action at practically anything is awesome, and not only that but they’d be willing to experiment and take risks and do things that are out there. A tournament is also a form of entertainment for the audience (both the real life audience and the one in the show), and that combined with their expert level combat skills means that I think they'd be so fantastic to watch. And all of them have distinct personalities that balance "I am an ancient demon with wisdom and stuff" VS "I love punching people (or getting punched) in the face!!" in different enough ways that they still offer really interesting character dynamics and interaction opportunities. And they would also be incredibly supportive of each other while still allowing for plenty of snark.

That said, FUN FUN FUN aside, the very obvious problem with this team is that they seriously break the question. And everything else. Even if they don’t intend to flat out obliterate everything, that’s what would probably happen, and that unfortunately can easily head towards its own kind of boring. Everyone would be like "why are we having a tournament, we're going home". So, we must leave Team Old People behind and move on to version B.

VERSION B: Serious business

Dark Tournament characters only. I will exclude members of the Toguro Team from my selection for obvious reasons. NO MORE FUN TIME. This is me pretending that I'm some rich underworld dude or whatever putting together a team I'm betting on to get through the tournament. You're going to see a clear pattern emerging from my picks.

Genkai.

The veteran. Intelligent, experienced, very powerful and pragmatic. I'd shell out big bucks to get her to come back to be my team's captain. No question for me, she's a must, even if all she does is sit on the sidelines and coach the rest of the team. With a group of serious, motivated and talented fighters, she'd be the best mentor and my team would be well-positioned to MAKE ME LOTS OF MONEY SO IN YOUR SMOKY SCARRED FACE SAKYO

Hiei.

Those who know me may find it shocking that I'm including Hiei but not Yusuke, Kuwabara, or Kurama. Hiei doesn't appear on my tumblr very often, and of the four main characters he's probably the one I'm least emotionally invested in. But if you're assembling a team for the Dark Tournament, you're IN IT TO WIN IT!! And Hiei is the best bet. I shall explain.

Hiei is efficient and effective, and his success ratio is the highest out of all Urameshi Team members - the most number of individual fights without a single loss or draw. Granted, he sits out for a chunk of the tournament, but he rarely appears worn out at the end of a fight. The only time he overexerts himself is against Zeru; after his recovery, he never seems to break a sweat. Even against Bui, he had no real issues. From a betting perspective, his odds are very, very good. Kuwabara and Kurama both experience multiple losses - Kuwabara often because he's young and overconfident or becomes so personally involved that he cares more for a positive outcome for other people than for winning; Kurama often because (as Hiei notes) he tends to overcalculate the situation and draw things out so long figuring everything out that it turns into a disadvantage. Yusuke's very strong and has huge potential, but he's also focused far too much on the experience. This makes his battles fun to watch but would give a strategist heart attacks. Many of his fights involve near-misses or less-than-ideal situations stemming from amateur errors. And finally, he gets dinged with a draw in his match with Jin, in part because his dawdling on the field made the deception feasible. Yusuke's great for drama and storytelling, not great for the comfort of my pocketbook. Having him on a team is risky when I know the other underworld bosses I'm competing against are not above using underhanded tactics.

As a result, based on a purely practical evaluation, Hiei is the most reliable choice. He's very focused on, and very good at, the one thing I want - DEFEAT THE OPPONENT UNEQUIVOCALLY. He comes in and tears people apart and there's no chance of an ambiguous referee call. He just needs his team members to be people he can respect to keep him in line. With Genkai as captain, that shouldn't be an issue. Nor with the rest of my picks.

Ryo (Kai in the anime) / M-3.

This is the Dr. Ichigaki member with the invisible claw powers. After their fight, he offers to be a replacement for the seriously injured Kuwabara (Yusuke appreciates it but has to turn him down because it's against the rules unless Kuwabara actually dies). He seems to be the strongest of the three students who were brainwashed by Ichigaki, and without Genkai's intervention and his own struggling against Ichigaki's mechanism, he would very likely have wiped out Kuwabara and Yusuke. He's extremely serious and dedicated, and with someone like Genkai steering the helm I think he'd go far. I'd be comfortable putting money on him. I also like him a lot and wish he had more involvement in the story - I've always felt that if Togashi didn’t need to get Koenma in for story purposes Yusuke hadn't been so freaked out and completely lost mentally when Genkai died, he probably would've asked Ryo to be the replacement fifth member. SOMEONE WRITE THIS

Touya.

Stronger than Gama, less arrogant than Risho, more reliable than Jin (who has many of the same problems as Yusuke), and Bakken sucks and will never be considered by anybody. Touya's powers are also very flexible. Somebody just needs to tell him to NOT TALK TO HIS OPPONENT. Don't talk to them, don't listen to them, don't let them distract you, don't let them get into your head, JUST GET IN THERE AND EYE ON THE PRIZE AND BEAT THE CRAP OUT OF THEM OKAY lol. I also think when Genkai was training everyone for Kurama, Touya was probably the one who gave her the least hard time. I mean, out of Touya, Jin, Chuu, Rinku, Suzuki and Shishiwakamaru who do YOU think would bellyache the least? I thought so.

The fifth member is actually a backup/alternate who doesn't necessarily see action (if you recall, this is why Chuu was mad). For my final pick, I took a while to decide, so I'll tell you about both of the last two people I was considering since I enjoy any excuse to talk about characters I don’t usually see mentioned.

5a is Zeru. 

OK, partly I considered him because nobody remembers him lmao - he was Hiei's first victory, obliterated into a shadow by Hiei's training-wheels Kokuryuuha. But if you look at my other picks, I think you'll appreciate why he's on my radar - he fits the profile of what I'm looking for very nicely. I want someone in control of themselves; who is a reliable, consistent, focused fighter unlikely to get distracted by other things; who clearly demonstrates power and is committed and has potential to grow really fast with the right direction/team captain. The only thing is that with Hiei already on the team, this may be duplicating the skillset and the mental profile a bit too much. And I think it's clear Hiei already has the upperhand in baseline power. So,

5b is Suzuki. 

His strength isn't fighting. It's his ingenuity in adapting, augmenting, and outfitting his team members with really good, really creative tools. He's honestly more a tinkerer and an inventor, imaginatively tweaking things to be even more useful, and whenever he realizes and accepts this about himself instead of trying to be just another fighter in the limelight, he'll be rich lmao. Anyways, this skill makes him a hugely valuable asset. I don't need him to be in the ring, I'm fine having him support with cool gadgets to amplify the rest of the team.

I HOPE YOU LIKED MY PICKS lol

[thisdaynews]

Why Symone Sanders Went From Bernie to Biden

New Post has been published on https://thebiafrastar.com/why-symone-sanders-went-from-bernie-to-biden/

Why Symone Sanders Went From Bernie to Biden

M.Scott Mahaskey/POLITICO

When Symone Sanders enters the Matchbox restaurant in Capitol Hill’s Barracks Row, she’s hard to miss: Big sunglasses, intricately painted nails and a shaved head. She walks through the door on a summer day, checking the phone in her hand every few seconds to see if she got a text message or new alert. Every millennial does this, but like most things with Sanders, she is one notch more intense about it. The texts and alerts come more often, and she checks them more often, too.

As she nears her lunch table, she spies Corey Lewandowski, Donald Trump’s former campaign manager, quietly eating lunch a few tables away.

This restaurant is one of Washington’s bipartisan hangouts, a regular spot for both Republicans and Democrats. Families come here to brunch. Congressional staffers and political operatives go here to get a little distance from the day job. Marginally famous political types use it as a reprieve from the grind. It’s rarely a site for any kind of conflict or open expression of discomfort. But when Sanders spies Lewandowski, one of the architects of her party’s defeat in the presidential election of 2016, she waves a hand dismissively in his direction, and trumpets to me and no one else in particular: “Under no circumstances!”

She shakes her head, without breaking pace and holds one hand out. “Absolutely not. No. I am not going to sit near Corey Lewandowski.”

Sanders is a household name among the political class in D.C., where a reference to “Symone” among journalists, congressional staffers and campaign operatives is understood to refer to just one person. While still in her 20s, she served as a top aide to two Democratic presidential campaigns and as a regular talking head on the cable news networks.

So it’s easy to recognize her. But on this day, Lewandowski either doesn’t notice Sanders or decides not to acknowledge the brush-off. Even so, Sanders and I moved tables.

“I guess for some people I’m an anomaly,” Sanders tells me once we are seated an acceptable 30 feet or so from Lewandowski, with glasses of sangria in front of us. In a company town where the stereotypical operative is a white Ivy league graduate, Sanders concedes that she stands out. “I’m a bald, 29-year-old black girl from the Midwest who does politics.”

In one sense, Symone Sanders is very much a recognizable Washington character, the archetype of an ambitious young operative—she’s now 30—comfortable in front of a camera, unafraid to claim a slot as the voice of a grassroots activist community, and very conscious of her brand.

In another, though, she’s an object of curiosity. In 2016, she hit the national stage as press secretary for Bernie Sanders, the uncompromising outsider whose progressive crusade galvanized the American left. This year, she’s a senior advisor and cable TV surrogate for Joe Biden, the centrist candidate whom Bernie supporters widely see as a rebuke, even a threat, to their entire mission.

“If anybody’s wondering if Joe Biden can take on Donald Trump and is ready for a fight I’d point you to the video in Iowa,” Sanders said during a panel of operatives held at POLITICO’s Women Rule summit this month. Sanders was referring to a heated—and controversial—exchange Biden had with a voter where at one point he called the voter “a damn liar.”

In her current role, Symone Sanders represents something that could become very important in 2020 Democratic politics: If Biden becomes the nominee, and the activated political left is going to get in line for Uncle Joe, they’re going to walk the path that Symone Sanders walked, from the lure of the purist to the siren song of a person who you don’t entirely agree with but says he can just plain oldwin.

If you tried to describewhat Symone Sandersdoes, exactly, there’s no quick way to capture her unusual position in the 2020 Democratic campaign world. She’s part behind-the-scenes campaign operative and part media personality. On paper, Sanders checks the boxes of the kind of Democrat the party thinks will help it to oust Trump from the White House. She is black, young, a native of a Great Plains state, and outraged by the current administration and its enablers like Lewandowski.

There are parallel universes where Sanders is making an argument for other presidential contenders. During the embryonic phase of the 2020 primary campaign, she found herself with connections to Kirsten Gillibrand, Elizabeth Warren, Cory Booker and Kamala Harris. At the beginning of the Trump administration, Omarosa Manigault even felt her out about a job in the Trump White House (Manigault declined to comment for this story). She’d gone out drinking whiskey with Gillibrand, she said she had tea with Warren, and that she was close to Maya Harris, Kamala Harris’s sister who chaired her campaign. She was in contact with all of those proto-campaigns, to varying degrees. She even donated $250 to Pete Buttigieg.

Then, when Joe Biden formally announced his candidacy for president in April, Symone Sanders was listed as a senior adviser on a press release of “Key Campaign Hires” as part of the campaign rollout. Before the Biden campaign, Sanders was a frequent Democratic talking head on CNN and, for a short time, a regular guest on the Pod Save America podcast.

This was not, for many people, the Symone Sanders they knew. In the last cycle, she’d voice the Vermont senator’s opposition to super PACs and support for single-payer healthcare. Now she was signing up for a candidate who believed none of those things. The Black Lives Matter organizer Deray McKesson recalled asking her, “Why Biden?”—a question many other progressive activists were asking, too. She told McKesson that she liked the impression she got when she sat down with the former vice president. That wasn’t enough to sell McKesson on Biden.

“It hasn’t made me less critical of Biden,” McKesson told me over the summer. “I want to see what she saw.”

Similarly, Wisconsin Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes, another Symone Sanders acquaintance, said “I didn’t see it coming” when he found out that Sanders had joined the Biden campaign.

What changed? Was it her, or the world?

“My politics are not tied to Bernie Sanders and they are not tied to Joe Biden,” Sanders told me when I asked her about this seeming contradiction. “I have great respect for Senator Sanders and I have great respect and admiration for Vice President Biden. If I didn’t, I would not be working for him right now. But he does not define me.”

This is a striking statement from a young staffer in a town where status is generally determined by how important your boss is—and your standing with your boss depends on how unquestioned your loyalty is.

It points to Sanders’ unusual status in Washington. It’s common for Democrats to build a career as a political operative and then transition to a role as a political commentator—perhaps while maintaining their work in politics. It’s much rarer to see someone rise through both spheres concurrently.

That might explain why Sanders seeks to separate her politics from her own candidate. “I’ve never agreed 100 percent with anybody I’ve gone to work for,” Sanders said. “Obviously I’ve disagreed with Vice President Biden.”

There’s also the possibility that thisisa kind of loyalty: She’s sending a pro-Biden message to her fellow skeptical progressives, reminding them that ideological purity may, in this case, be less important than waging the most competitive challenge to Trump. Sanders, like the rest of the Biden campaign, is insistent that her candidate is the best one, not because of any single policy issue or a vision of America, but because of Biden’s ability to appeal to two constituencies that the next Democratic nominee is going to need: black voters, and the Rust Belt workers who went for Trump in 2016.

After the Bernie Sanders campaign, Symone Sanders carved out a job as a CNN analyst and political commentator. She still appears on TV occasionally, but now the chyron no longer reads political analyst.

“When my niece and nephew ask me what I was doing to get Trump out of office I’m not going to say I was sitting in a fucking studio pontificating about what people are doing on the campaign trail,” she said. “I’m going to say I was actively out there working.”

Sanders’ job, in part, is to weave her boss’s decades of shifting political positions and comments into something that feels coherent, and palatable, to Democratic primary voters in the America of 2020. This is not always easy. Before a rally in Philadelphia around the start of Biden’s presidential campaign, Sanders was pressed by CNN’s Victor Blackwell over Biden’s defense of the 1994 crime bill, legislation that progressives say contributed to mass incarceration. Sanders couldn’t directly answer whether Biden now believed the bill contributed to mass incarceration or not. It was an uncomfortable position for someone who, before serving as Bernie Sanders’ campaign press secretary, was a volunteer for the Coalition for Juvenile Justice, a criminal-justice reform organization in Washington.

“I am not going to sit here and tell you the crime bill was perfect,” Sanders said, clearly taken aback. “At the end of the day no one is suggesting what has ravaged communities over the last 20 years does not need to be fixed.”

In backing Biden,Sanders hopes to woo her old ideological confederates—but she has alienated them, too.

For the grassroots Bernie supporters she was aligned with in 2016, Sanders is a textbook example of a political operative who started out in a party’s activist wing only to move away from those roots through advancement. Usually, the enmity is relatively minor.

In the case of Sanders vs. Sanders—Symone and the disciples of Bernie—it’s more extreme. “Bernie acolytes”—as distinguished from what she called mere “Bernie supporters”—have “a particular vitriol” when someone leaves the flock, the Democratic strategist Hilary Rosen told me.

During the 2016 campaign, Symone was regarded by some Bernie Sanders staffers as more of a hired gun than a true believer. That’s been on public display this cycle. After the second Democratic presidential debate, the one where Kamala Harris body-slammed Biden over his past opposition to using busing for school desegregation, the Justice Democrats, a group born out of Bernie Sanders’ 2016 campaign, spliced together a clip of Symone Sanders tying herself into knots trying to explain Biden’s position with one of Jesse Jackson criticizing Biden for being on the “wrong” side of history.

Coworkers friendly with her on the 2016 Bernie Sanders campaign say she was pushed out, and was a specific target of communication director Michael Briggs’ wrath. Briggs declined to talk about Sanders on the record. A top adviser on the 2016 campaign said Symone was essentially “sidelined” by some other operatives on the campaign. But some Sanders campaign operatives speak highly of Symone, and she regards the Vermont senator positively now, even as he competes with Biden for the Democratic presidential nomination.

“I think Sen. Sanders [and I] had a rapport but we didn’t have a relationship. But perhaps my time wouldn’t have been so tough the last go around if in addition to having a relation to [campaign manager] Jeff Weaver I had an actual relationship to Sen. Sanders,” she said. “I’ve built a real relationship with Vice President Biden, and I feel as though if anything were to happen he would have my back.”

After 2016, Sanders moved over to a number of more establishment roles within the Democratic Party, including working for Priorities USA, the party’s flagship super PAC, an unheard of move for a true Bernie Sanders apostle. It was the equivalent of being born Amish and opting to leave the faith to help run Microsoft.

Still, Symone acknowledges the allure of the Vermont senator and his policies.

“Why did I go to work for Sen. Sanders? Because I liked what he was talking about,” Symone Sanders says.

That’s a notable contrast to her explanation of how she decided to work for Biden—that he seemed like the best candidate to beat Trump.

Even so, it was clear to Guy Cecil, the president of Priorities USA who hired her to work there, that Symone never quite fit into the Bernie campaign. “She was too Bernie for the Hillary people; she was too Hillary for the Bernie people,” Cecil said. “Frankly, I think one of the biggest mistakes Clinton campaign did was not bringing Symone on. I think she could have been helpful to them in a lot of ways.”

Sanders grew up in Omaha, Nebraska.Her mother was a seamstress, then an event planner with a specialty in balloon artistry. Her father was a chemist for the Army Corps of Engineers. In 2014, after graduating from Creighton and becoming known as a blogger and a columnist at the Omaha Star, an African-American newspaper, Sanders joined the long-shot gubernatorial campaign for Democrat Chuck Hassebrook. She started out as the team’s communications assistant. Her immediate ambitions to rise in the campaign.

Sanders volunteered to drive Hassebrook around the state. She was 23. “In Nebraska, it’s eight hours from Omaha to Scottsbluff,” she said. “That’s a lot of time with the candidate.”

She seemed to instinctively understand how important thankless tasks, and a close relationship with the candidate, are to advancement in politics. Less than five months after joining the campaign, Sanders was its deputy communications director.

“She got things done that she said she would do. She was logical and rational,” said Hassebrook, whose campaign didn’t break 40 percent of the vote. “She didn’t just say what you wanted to believe.” He added, “You’ve got a lot of folks who are very committed to politics, but they kind of think with their heart. And she was logical and rational and thought things through.”

Sanders says her relationship with Biden, like her relationship with Hassebrook on that first campaign, is “very frank” one. She travels with Biden, too, and has served as a surrogate in the spin room at the Democratic presidential debates. “I help with everything from debate prep to the political team, I help support the comms team, obviously people have seen me on television for the president. I help with delegate chasing. I help with fundraising.” The former vice president is her direct supervisor, she said. When I asked her how much of Biden’s ear she has, Sanders said: “I’m engaged and involved in our campaign strategy. But it’s not just him. I speak with my colleagues, other advisers, the deputy campaign managers. I’m involved as much as I want to be or as least as I want to be.”

Sanders says her portfolio on the campaign includes progressives, minorities, and young voters, but she has also been a frequent spinmaster and part of the Biden cleanup crew. During a Twitter cycle that centered on whether a gang leader whom Biden said called himself “Corn Pop” was real, Sanders retweeted journalist Daniel Dale’s tweet about an article backing that up. “Okay now can we all get back to our Sunday?” she wrote. “Can’t believe this thread was necessary.”

That was an easy one, unlike the chronic repair over Biden’s age. Sometimes Sanders has used humor, as she did when Biden said parents should leave a “record player” on to improve children’s vocabulary. “You don’t know about the vinyl vote?” Sanders said on CNN.

At the Women Rule panel,Sanders sat on stage in a leopard-print dress and black boots, beside Nina Smith, the traveling press secretary for Pete Buttigieg, and Alencia Johnson, the national director for public engagement for Elizabeth Warren. All three are women of color in marquee roles on major presidential campaigns. At one point, Sanders was asked if her career decisions were scrutinized more than her male peers.“Yes,” Sanders said quickly. “I absolutely feel that way. I think it’s partly because folks are not used to seeing people look like me make the decisions that I’ve decided to make about my career.”

There is a small, elite group of Democratic operatives nicknamed the Colored Girls: four African American women who have reached the highest echelons of Democratic politics as senior advisers and campaign managers. The group is made up of Donna Brazile, Minyon Moore and Leah Daughtry and Yolanda Caraway. All have shifted into semi-legendary status among Democratic operatives. They are the literal party elders. Decades later, there’s a new, emerging wave of young and mid-level Democratic operatives who seem to be on a similar trajectory. They have a text chain together. Symone Sanders may be the most prominent.

Here Sanders was more modest than usual. When I recounted how other operatives I talked to—and Barnes, the Wisconsin lieutenant governor—predicted that Sanders could be the White House press secretary, the first black woman to rise to the most sought-after political communications job, Sanders said, “Oh wow.”

“It’s not like there’s a group of us that run around like we’re the Colored Girls 2.0 of young people,” she said. “But all of the young operatives of color, and even not of color, but typically the young operatives of color, we talk to each other, whether we’re on different campaigns.”

She mentioned Chris Huntley, a speechwriter for Elizabeth Warren, and Maya Harris.

My first lunch with Symone Sanders was in July. Months later, Biden is still the frontrunner, even as Warren and Buttigieg and Bernie threaten him in Iowa and New Hampshire. Not long ago, I asked her if she was surprised to find the field unsettled, when at the beginning of 2017 it seemed like Biden might coast to victory.

“It’s easy to say ‘I had an inkling that it would shake out this way,’ ” Sanders said. “I didn’t.”

Especially online, criticism of Biden from the young, progressive element of the Democratic Party is becoming intense. The hosts—her former colleagues—at Pod Save America complain that Biden hasn’t come on their podcast for an interview.

Symone Sanders emerged from the very liberal, extremely online part of the Democratic Party, but she’s on another team now.

They “are just not feeling Joe Biden in this election,” Sanders said. “The Pod Save bros think that someone else could be a better nominee. OK that’s the bros. The bros are not the voters of America across the country. The bros are not black people in South Carolina. The bros are not culinary workers in Nevada.”

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