She’d been signalling an interest in making him her VP since back in August or so. I’m not sure this endorsement moves the needle at all for her, but it’s surely welcomed given how much ground she’s lost since October.

Solid insight from you, as per usual. However, people seeking the office of the presidency have an obligation to respond soberly and, yes, deferential on matters of immediate international (especially military) conflict. They don’t say “I trust that the president has made the correct decision,” but they also don’t fly…

He also thinks objects in the rear view mirror may appear closer than they are when, in fact, the opposite is true.

Yes. 

The tinfoil hat part is that he is launching the attack to strengthen Sanders (or potentially Buttigieg). Sanders and Buttigieg have both begun to talk about Biden’s Iraq War Resolution vote recently. I think Buttigieg called the Iraq War something like the biggest disaster of his lifetime (or some such thing).…

Also worth pointing out the way the various responses really underscore why some events are best responded to with a formal press release. If your chosen vehicle for communicating your message comes with a character limit, you might forget to mention some important stuff.

I understand your perspective. I just think it misunderstands their position. You and I can say whatever we want about this situation. And their criticism may become stronger as more about the operation is revealed. However, they have an obligation to deference.

I guess I’m just not generally impressed by empty posturing dressed up in colorful language. When I look at each of these responses, what I see is the individual candidates trying to shape their response around their personal brand.

Well, I’ve been called far worse than a pedant. The broader point is that you created a bar by which to criticize Buttigieg, which implied that the bar was cleared by others. It was not. Nobody condemned the act as an illegal assassination, so the observation that Buttigieg also had not cleared the bar seemed…

On some level, they are obliged to offer a modest amount of deference to the president. It’s not nuance, though I guess it wouldn’t be completely inaccurate to refer to it as hedging.

...but doesn’t really take a firm stance about how we shouldn’t just assassinate foreign heads of state.

Tinfoil hat time. We all kind of assume the president has done this at least partially for the purposes of improving his reelection bid, right? I mean, he literally predicted throughout 2011-12 that Obama would start a war for the sole purpose of gaining reelection, so at the very least, we understand that the…

She’s Australian. Unless proven otherwise, I’m going to assume she doesn’t need to do any research to get into the head of a politically conservative white woman. 

Yeah, I typed something about that and then deleted it. He’s a really polished speaker and debater, and really, the people who are not keen on Biden, Sanders or Warren, are basically looking for an acceptably credible alternative. For most of the summer, I expected it to be Harris (also a fairly polished debater who…

As I’ve said repeatedly, I don’t expect him to be the nominee, but if he actually wins Iowa and NH (and I still don’t think he wins either of them), all bets are off.

Buttigieg is a regional local to Iowa, and though he was not well-known, he had a specific kind of popularity (similar to Beto O’Rourke) that gave him an effective kind of social media notoriety. Those things gave him a huge leg up over people like Castro, Klobuchar, Booker, etc. But the real reason he’s where he is…

Not really. He’s losing because he never had a real chance. He’s losing because the two most important advantages you can have in a primary are name recognition and media attention. Name recognition drives polling activity in the early phase of the race, and polling activity determines media attention, which leads to…

Definitely not counting her out. I just don’t know that she’s ever done anything to change the math that says that she and Sanders are tied together in a zero sum type of dynamic. If he gets stronger, she gets weaker. And vice versa.

That’s an echo chamber take.

I’m not saying that Buttigieg will be the winner, obviously. I’m just acknowledging that the progressive wing of the party briefly peaked at about 40 percent—but has mostly lived in the 32-35 range.