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Summary of the candidates



Joe Biden

You've heard about this guy. But if you only started paying attention to politics over the last decade, you've probably heard about the guy who stood next to Obama doing nothing for eight years while the Onion invented a parody character based on him. Unfortunately, that's not the Joe Biden who's running for president. The Joe Biden who's running for president is the Joe Biden who opposed anti-segregation busing, the Joe Biden who made student loans bankruptcy-proof, the Joe Biden who gave Strom Thurmond's eulogy, the Joe Biden who invades womens' personal space without consent at every opportunity, the Joe Biden who ran twice for president only to fail miserably both times, and the Joe Biden who still defends all of that and insists that he's never done anything wrong in his entire life. His primary campaign platform is based on working with Republicans, and he's openly declared that he's convinced that Mitch McConnell will work with him to pass bipartisan progressive legislation.

Despite many stupid moves, ranging from racism to praising Republicans to being unable to remember the names of anyone who entered politics after 2000 (including a certain former President), he's the frontrunner by a wide margin right now, to the dismay of pretty much everyone left of Bush, and most of the candidates are gunning for him right now.


Bernie Sanders

The guy everyone either loves to love or loves to hate, the independent self-proclaimed socialist Senator from Vermont who challenged Clinton in 2016 needs no introduction. He's been the fairly consistent #2 in polls, and unlike Biden, his speech performance hasn't declined despite his age or his recent heart attack. He's also the only one who's still sticking to Medicare For All; most of the other candidates that supported it have noticeably drifting right on healthcare as the elections draw closer. Everyone knows who this guy is, and I'm sure there'll be plenty of talk about him.


Elizabeth Warren

A lawyer, Harvard professor, and Massachusetts senator, she's most famous for her pro-consumer advocacy and being the driving force between the creation of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Her history as a Republican who changed parties in the 90s and her openly identifying as a capitalist have made it difficult to win over the leftists and socialists most likely to support her pro-consumer economic policies. On top of that, her campaign has made a lot of dumb moves, such as putting a list of negative rumors about her on her website, and advising her to take a DNA test to see if she really had Native American ancestry that could be used to justify her identifying as a native for much of her life.

She briefly rose to frontrunner status on the strength of her closer ties to establishment figures and the perception that she was a more electable leftist, but her polls have been in freefall since she essentially abandoned Medicare For All and watered down most of her other left-leaning policies.


Pete Buttigieg

The Harvard-educated mayor of South Bend, Indiana, this guy has been treated as a young Democratic rising star for a couple years now. He's reasonably charismatic and the media absolutely loves him, but he has a preference for talking inspirational fluff rather than politics, and he doesn't have much of a political record to look at. Is gay and married. His support has been surging in recent months as he's largely stolen Beto's role, but his base is overwhelmingly white so far.

A number of serious racism scandals in South Bend have thrown his failure to win over minorities into the spotlight, and the fact that big billionaire donors have largely rallied around him has drawn him a lot of fire from the candidates that have rejected billionaire donations.


Andrew Yang

A serial entrepeneur and venture capitalist, this is his first entry into politics. Even though he's an East Coaster, his policies are about what you'd expect from a Silicon Valley character. He often identifies the problems facing society, only to come up with solutions that are either badly flawed or downright stupid, like combating bad laws by passing a Constitutional amendment forcing all laws to have an automatic expiration date. Unfortunately, the demographic he's been most successful with are extremely online conservatives, who love his meme-heavy campaign and his inclination to talk about the problems most politicians tend to ignore (like AI and automation), and he's responding by being more appealing to them and going on their favorite shows and stuff.

His most famous and most widely advertised issue is the "Freedom Dividend", a UBI proposal that would give everyone $1k a month...except that you have to give up any other government benefits to get it, so the poor will benefit less than everyone else.

He's not polling well, but his willingness to talk about issues that no one else really wants to talk about make him a bit of a wildcard. It's unlikely he'll win, but he might be able to become a Ron Paul-style meme candidate...except that if the debate is any indication, he's not that great a speaker either.




Cory Booker

Former mayor of Newark and current Senator of New Jersey. His hands-on approach as mayor got him plenty of good press for things like personally saving a person from a burning house, but that's largely been eclipsed by some dicey political stances, most famously when he bucked the Obama campaign to defend Romney and Bain Capital from the Obama campaign's cruel attacks against private equity funds. He's liberal on social issues, but conservative on most economic issues, and his close relationship to Wall Street and the healthcare industry is unlikely to win many friends on these forums.

In the primary so far, he's mostly campaigned as a moderate, resisting Medicare for All and talking up the virtues of compromise and bipartisan cooperation. However, he's drawn some attention by attacking Biden for talking too much about the virtues of compromise and bipartisan cooperation with segregationists and white supremacists, and for repeatedly pointing to the disparity between his coverage and Pete's coverage. His debates performance were generally considered to be solid, but not stunning. He no longer qualifies for debates, though, and his days are numbered.


Julián Castro

Former mayor of San Antonio, and HUD secretary under the Obama administration. Beloved by the political establishment, but that hasn't translated to much support among the media or on the ground. His highlight issues are universal pre-kindergarden and lead cleanup; other than that, he talks a very liberal talk on social policies and supports moderate incremental improvements in economic issues.

He's released plenty of detailed policy plans, but he's so far failed to gain any real traction. He's done well in the debates; this longtime rising star may be one to watch.

Also, he has a twin brother in Congress, so if you want hilarious place-changing hijinks like in a bunch of B-grade 90s comedies, this should be your #1 pick.


Tulsi Gabbard

An Iraq War veteran, and a House member in Hawaii since 2013. Unusually for an American politician, she's economically leftist but leans hard right on social issues, which leads to a lot of Ron Paul-style unusual positions, such as anti-interventionism. Her most famous issue these days is probably her open hatred for Muslims, but she spent much of the 00s openly anti-LGBT as well and supported conversion therapy and banning gay marriage. Despite being a sitting member of Congress, she refused to vote for impeaching Trump, and her increasingly erratic campaign appears to have little chance of further progress.

Often appears wearing plant life in some form, possibly indicating that she is secretly a druid.


Amy Klobuchar

A former prosecutor who, having served as a senator in Minnesota for over a decade, has gotten a lot of media buzz as the bipartisan moderate candidate who might win back the red-leaning states in the Midwest by attracting conservative votes. However, despite the pundits' predictions and lots of early media buzz, she's failed to gain much traction and hasn't brought anything interesting to the policy table. So far, her campaign's biggest headline-grabber has been leaks about her horrible treatment of staff, bullying and terrorizing them. Most famous for reportedly eating a salad with a comb, and then forcing a staffer to wash that comb as punishment for forgetting her fork.

Made reporters wait out in a snowstorm for her announcement. And there were a lot of them there, since she was supposed to be the pundits' Great Midwestern Hope.


Marianne Williamson

An author and activist whose only political history is finishing fourth in a House race in California. Despite that, she's got better positions than at least half the candidates on this stage...for the most part. She wouldn't be out of place in the Green Party, mixing strong progressive policies like M4A and the Green New Deal with downright wacky stuff like antivax talk.

Her signature issue is reparations for slavery, having come out with the earliest and biggest proposal.

She's not a serious contender for the presidency, but her mixture of cool and crazy talk has earned her a meme fanbase after the debates. She hasn't been a big player for a while, I honestly forgot she was still in.




Tom Steyer

Michael Bloomberg

Two billionaires, both self-funding their campaigns and spending tens of millions of dollars on furious advertising blitzes. One's been publicly bolstering their media image by buying pro-impeachment ads for months, the other owns their own media empire. Steyer qualifies for the debates, Bloomberg doesn't. They both suck.


Here lie the names of the fallen, those who have dropped out:


Beto O'Rourke

Kamala Harris
probably some people I forgot about because they never mattered enough to mention in the first place