I agree with the Times 100%

I had come to the same conclusion recently.

Bernie is too extreme - and too old.

Biden is too much status quo - and too old.

Buttigieg might be ready someday - he could get some role in the next Democratic administration.

Warren and Klobuchar both have strong credentials. They both are in their prime. It comes down to if you want to vote for someone for more rapid fixing of problems - or for the one with a more gradual approach.

I think we should have learned from Obama and Trump - that the more that can be fixed - the sooner the better. Because you can't assume the next president will continue on with the whatever you have started.

Elizabeth Warren on the Daily Show in 2009 - explaining the need for banking regulations

Warren fans will esp. appreciate this - from the NYT

I'm not the only one to see Biden as 'weak, fumbling'

"From a climate perspective, what’s worrying about Biden isn’t just his hodge-podge climate proposals and promise to return to an Obama-era status quo on decarbonization. It’s his consistently weak, fumbling performances that show how easy a target he’d be for Donald Trump to pick off in the general election. We should be grateful that other candidates went after Biden. Hopefully there’s more of that to come."

-Kate Aronoff: ‘Climate disaster Joe Biden failed to impress’

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/aug/01/who-won-the-democrats-debate-our-panelists-verdict

After watching the 2 debates these are the candidates I think have a chance

(The others either don't have enough of a 'presence', or they don't know enough for the job, or some other problem.)

Amy Klobuchar

Bernie Sanders

Elizabeth Warren

Beto O'Rourke

Cory Booker

Kamala Harris

"No President Is Above the Law" From May 2019

When Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report was released on April 18, I sat down and read it. All 448 pages of it. I started reading it that afternoon, and I read all through the night and into the next morning. And when I got to page 448, three things were clear to me.

First, a hostile foreign government attacked our 2016 election to help candidate Donald Trump get elected. Second, candidate Donald Trump welcomed that help. Third, when the federal government tried to investigate, now-President Donald Trump did everything he could to delay, distract, and otherwise obstruct that investigation.

That’s a crime. If Donald Trump were anyone other than the President of the United States right now, he would be in handcuffs and indicted. Robert Mueller said as much in his report, and he said it again on Wednesday.

“The Special Counsel’s Office is part of the Department of Justice, and by regulation it was bound by that Department policy. Charging the President with a crime was, therefore, not an option we could consider.”

Mueller’s statement made clear what those of us who have read his report already knew: He’s referring President Trump for impeachment, and it’s up to Congress to act.

That’s why I came out in favor of impeachment after reading all 448 pages of Mueller’s report. This is not about politics — it’s our constitutional duty as members of Congress. It’s a matter of principle.....

"The 2020 Democratic Field, Minus Joe Biden, Embraces a Death Penalty Moratorium"

I Posted Biden in 1991 being proud about his 51 death penalty provisions - and he didn't care whether there was a racial provision or not. People objected to it being 28 years ago. So here we have this - up to date story about the same thing. It is good to consider people's change - or not - over time.

Democrats running for president in 2020 are rushing to cheer Governor Gavin Newsom, after the recently inaugurated California Democrat signed an executive order to halt further executions in his state.

The first two candidates to make public statements on Newsom’s order were California’s own Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) and Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ), both of whom have focused their campaigns in part on criminal justice reform and the country’s incarceration of people of color.

...But there is one likely candidate who has previously taken a different path. As a U.S. senator, Joe Biden helped write the 1994 crime bill that expanded the application of the death penalty, saying at one point that “we have predators on our streets” who are “beyond the pale.” Sanders voted for it too, though he framed it as a compromise measure.

After one Republican had complained that an earlier crime bill coddled criminals, Biden replied, in support of the law, that "we do everything but hang people for jaywalking." A request for comment made to Biden’s spokesperson was not returned.

Biden's record - video from C-span - Anyone think this is a good thing?

[People] applaud Warren in heart of MAGA country (West Virginia)

KERMIT, W. Va. — It was a startling spectacle in the heart of Trump country: At least a dozen supporters of the president — some wearing MAGA stickers — nodding their heads, at times even clapping, for liberal firebrand Elizabeth Warren.

The sighting alone of a Democratic presidential candidate in this town of fewer than 400 people — in a county where more than four in five voters cast their ballot for Trump in 2016 — was unusual. Warren’s team was apprehensive about how she’d be received.

About 150 people gathered at the Kermit Fire & Rescue Headquarters Station to hear the Massachusetts senator and former Harvard professor talk about what she wants to do to fight the opioid epidemic. Trump-supporting college students in baggy t-shirts, housewives in pearls, and the fire chief dressed in uniform joined liberal retirees wearing rainbow “Persist” shirts and teachers with six-figure student loan debt.