Updated rankings for the 2020 Democrat candidates. I didn't get a chance to do another of these after the last debate, but honestly we're beyond the point where anything other than a complete meltdown on stage would have any effect on individual candidates' standings. In fact there's no better illustration of the irrelevancy of the televised debates to the overall race than the flatlining Kamala Harris campaign. The media declared she's had a breakout moment in the first debate after she attacked Joe Biden, but perhaps after the curious started taking a look at her record they've been cooling on her candidacy, and Haris wasted the last debate trying to box Elizabeth Warren on her foolish crusade to get Twitter to ban Donald Trump; news flash: they won't. There's also the fact that Harris started her campaign as a law and order moderate but then ran away from all her old positions when she saw some polling and her rivals, so looks like she has no conviction in addition to her terrible record back in California. The other campaign on life support is Julian Castro, who also tried to attack Biden in a debate but made such a hash of that he didn't even get a brief polling bounce. Castro is staking out a lot of far left positions but in reality his only movement is circling the drain.
Of the recent dropouts only Beto O'Rourke really bothered the pollsters of late, but he too kept shifting his political positions about to try and gain traction after the media got bored with him, but to no avail. In fact his radical stance on guns could hurt the Democratic Party who look to make some real gains in Texas. If O'Rourke has any political sense and skills beyond being good looking and swearing on television he'd make a case as a pragmatic progressive who won't scare the steers and make a bid for US senate, but he probably won't. The other media darling whose lustre hasn't yet faded is Pete Buttigieg, but the longer his campaign goes on the less it seems he has to offer other than youth. He lacks real governing experience, isn't bringing new ideas to the national arena and hasn't really moved in the polls. He's likeable enough young clean guy, but something of a lightweight, and to state it baldly, a lot of the moderate or conservative Democrats, particularly African American ones, just aren't going to be bowled over by a gay cosmopolitan who can't seem to manage his own town's police department.
As for the big three, well despite much pawing at phones and scratching of heads woke Twitter can't seem to work out why Joe Biden is still leading just about every national poll. It's almost as if gaffes in the debates and political positions he held in the 1970s that 2019 has declared “problematic” aren't total dealbreakers for the 95% of Democrats who aren't virtue signalling online, what's up with that? Meanwhile Bernie Sanders suffered a heart attack, even though his campaign tried to deny this for a few days which wasn't a good look. He came back with a fiery debate performance, but as stated above, debates aren't that big of a deal. It's worth noting that Sanders is 78, while according to a 2016 OECD study the average life expectancy for an American male is 76. Obviously a US senator has access to the best healthcare in the country, but this might be something that could affect his standing. Speaking of healthcare (and candidates in their 70s), this issue is proving to be Elizabeth Warren's biggest challenge and potentially her undoing. Her plan is vast and needlessly disruptive (at least compared to some of her rival's pitches), and her unwillingness to admit that certain people's taxes will go up makes her look shifty and untrustworthy. No one likes to run on “MOAR TAXES!” but if Warren can't sell her own policy to the Democratic base then she'll never see the inside of the White House without a visitor's pass.
Still the top three, a few wobbles from each but the polling has been solid.
Joe Biden
Bernie Sanders
Elizabeth Warren
The next group have mostly scraped into the next debate, but barely, we're honestly probably looking at more Veepstakes or perhaps administration positions should the Democrats win next November for this lot, but you never know. It's hard to see any other than perhaps Andrew Yang moving upwards as they're mostly on a downward trend.
Corey Booker
Pete Buttigeg
Julian Castro
Kamela Harris
Amy Klobuchar
Tom Steyer
Andrew Yang
The bottom tier,still wasting people's time and donations, I expect most of these to be gone before the end of the year.
Michael Bennett
Steve Bullock
John Delaney
Tulsi Gabbard
Wayne Messam
Joe Sestak
Marianne Williamson