It's officially a two-man race in the Democratic nominating contest, Tulsi Gabbard's bizarre refusal to face reality notwithstanding. The opposition party will likely choose Joe Biden to face President Trump in the fall, though Bernie Sanders will continue to be in the delegate mix. But the Vermont Socialist is staring down a deficit that is likely to grow deeper in the coming weeks. Take a look at these numbers out of delegate-rich Florida. One might say he's polling in Fidel Castro territory:
#Florida @StPetePolls/@Fla_Pol Poll (3/4):
— Political Polls (@Politics_Polls) March 5, 2020
Biden 61%
Bloomberg 14%
Sanders 12%
Warren 5%
Buttigieg 1%
Klobuchar 1%
Steyer 0%
Biden will present his own set of strengths and weaknesses, but let's set the former Vice President and his last remaining viable rival off to the side for a moment. This was a very crowded field of candidates at the onset of the campaign, and some candidates performed better than others. Now that they're almost all gone, I wonder which drop-out was the most satisfying to conservatives? There are plenty of honorable mentions in this category: Think of the fratty insufferablility of Eric Swalwell, the cringeworthiness of Kirsten Gillibrand's pandering, and the paternalistic arrogance of Michael Bloomberg's half-billion-dollar humiliation. Also, let's pause and pour one out for one very serious candidate who never quite made it into the race and is now otherwise occupied. But for my purposes, I winnowed the list of finalists in this category to three people.
First, Beto O'Rourke, the callow dude-bro who embraced every woke fad over the course of his unbearable campaign. It took him a long time to figure out that the media was no longer tipping the scales in his favor by portraying him as a quasi-Deity, as he was no longer useful as a liberal alternative to Ted Cruz in a red state. His gun confiscation raids will have to wait until he becomes Guns Czar in a Biden administration. Second, we have Kamala Harris, the a phony hypocrite whose disgraceful conduct during the Kavanaugh hearings presented a stomach-turning preview of her relatively short-lived presidential campaign. An authoritarian-leaning leftist of the worst kind. Finally, there's Elizabeth Warren, the abrasive fraud and wild-eyed demagogue. All the non-selfies in the world couldn't make voters actually like her, and her "reassessing" after finishing third in her own home state finally came to an end yesterday. Vote for your pick below, then read on for my personal preference on the question:
Who was the most satisfying candidate to watch lose?
— Guy Benson (@guypbenson) March 5, 2020
As for my vote? I've got a plan for that: It's Warren, by a mile. She build a significant part of her career on a racial hoax, which she compounded repeatedly via humiliating efforts to sidestep the damage, once she got caught. She's never really managed to admit what she did, remaining hilariously unable to answer basic questions about it. And her biographical lies and embellishments have continued apace. Her ideology is poisonous, of course, but that's only a minor factor in evaluating my "satisfaction" gut-check. What really clinches it for me is the extent to which the elite media wanted to desperately to make her happen. She represents the platonic ideal of what the people who populate New York-DC corridor newsrooms imagine as the perfect president. Her collapse is theirs, too. They tried so hard, and just couldn't make it happen. It's hard not to relish that double-blow. Also, it's enjoyable to watch faux-wonkery get vividly and painfully exposed. Nevertheless, she could not persist.