Real numbers from a small state.
Tuesday, February 11th, 2020
Even in an age where it’s much easier (and in fact possible) to do so, I don’t spend a lot of time listening to candidates’ stump speeches. They’re designed for a certain effect and past a certain point they sound somehow…pat.
But I listened to Amy Klobuchar’s “we did well in New Hampshire” oration tonight and, in her success, she delivered a lot of the stump speech content, but managed to speak to working-class Americans in a deep, somewhat sad, party-independent way.
And I listened to Joe Biden, who had already decamped to South Carolina, where he could be surrounded by energetic people who weren’t as pasty-white as those in New Hampshire and Iowa. He seemed tired, spent, and a man full of heart, but not much gas in the tank. He has a story, but it’s a story based increasingly in the past. He didn’t do well.
So tonight, the New Hampshire Primary. Play the politics music! Fire up the big boards!
And, because it’s 2020, fire up Twitter on a convenient device and the people (and/or bots) you’ve chosen to follow will give you their quickly-delivered takes.
MSNBC’s Steve Kornacki around 10:30pm. The forehead of Joe Biden indicates how far down he is.
Updating at 10:55 pm: Buttigieg is speaking to his supporters. Why haven’t I noticed before that his cadences can get very Obama-y?
