The role of Chancellor of a UK university is AIUI honorary and formal. The real work is usually die by the Vice Chancellor.
There would be an expectation that the Chancellor would be able to preside at important ceremonial occasions and graduation ceremonies, at least the main ones.
I would not count Klobuchar out just yet. She's getting a lot of buzz in papers like the Washington Post. She has a solid track record, and she's a true moderate. Maybe it's just wishful thinking, but she could be a sleeper.
That is part of why Trump will win.
Biden is your candidate, get used to it. The older and more conservative Democrats won't vote for anyone else. Bernie's heart attack didn't kill him, but it probably killed his chances. Besides, he is a commie. Warren is a woman, and that is a double hit right now with the tensions rising in the middle east.
What you need is to get the younger people (and others who typically vote in small numbers) to vote and vote for whoever is running, not who they want to be president. It is too late to boost anyone's profile enough, barring a major miracle.
I would not count Klobuchar out just yet. She's getting a lot of buzz in papers like the Washington Post. She has a solid track record, and she's a true moderate. Maybe it's just wishful thinking, but she could be a sleeper.
She's also polling ~3% support nationally among likely Democratic primary/caucus voters. She's been able to get enough support to get in to the debates, but barely more than that. This is no comment on the amount of support she should have in a fair Universe, but it's where she is in this one.
I am an older, but not conservative, Democrat. I certainly will not vote for Grandpa Joe at least in the primary process.
The problem is that, right now, no one else will have a chance against Trump.
It is a long way to November. That said part of the Democratic process is the development of the national platform and the selection of the VP nominee as well as other key positions. There will be a lot of horse-trading going on between now and the Democratic Convention. I want to see how that all comes out.
I think it is way too early to be definitive about the outcome of the primary battle. It might not seem like it, but it is still early days. Croesus is right to express caution in his monthly updates.
The CBS primary tracker is now saying in Iowa Sanders, Biden, Warren and Buttigieg are now tied in a four-way race there. The New Hampshire Polls show Sanders, Warren and Biden are tied with Buttigieg not too fire behind. By the way, Klobuchar is tracking at 7%.
Lincoln Chaffee has decided to run for president as an independent. For those with no reason to remember him he was a Republican Senator, an independent Governor of Rhode Island, and ran for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2016. From the Wiki page on his 2016 campaign:
He received zero votes either formally or by write-in, meaning he got the fewest votes of any major party candidate in the Democratic or Republican Primaries 2016.
I guess he decided that peeling a few votes off the eventual Democratic nominee in a third party run would be his final(?) act of vandalism in American politics.
The CBS primary tracker is now saying in Iowa Sanders, Biden, Warren and Buttigieg are now tied in a four-way race there. The New Hampshire Polls show Sanders, Warren and Biden are tied with Buttigieg not too fire behind. By the way, Klobuchar is tracking at 7%.
Oh? The media is saying things are all tied up! We had better all watch their advertising then...
Tom Stier (?), the ultra-rich guy, is still running campaign TV ads here. Saw one in the last couple of days. But I don't think he's running them often.
The political action committee for Fair Fight, the voting rights group that Democrat Stacey Abrams started after losing the governor’s race in 2018 raised $14.6 million in the last six months of 2019 from across the country.
<snip>
Most recently, presidential candidate and former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg donated $5 million to the group just before Christmas, . . .
Now you can say that spending $100 million on a vanity presidential candidacy is a mis-allocation of resources and I wouldn't argue with you, but the thing about being a billionaire is that vanity presidential candidacy / voting rights group isn't necessarily an either/or proposition, it can be a both/and.
Bloomberg (who is much richer than his fellow billionaire Steyer, and way richer than Trump, too) seems to be having some effect with his huge ad buys, at least on national polling, where he isn't that far behind Buttigieg, although far behind Biden, Sanders, and Warren.
I wonder whether or not Bloomberg is trying to win delegates supporting him in the primary to go to the party convention (because that's what the primary contests are all about - electing delegates) so that, in the as-of-now probable case that Bloomberg can't win the nomination, his delegates can help steer the nomination towards a moderate candidate.
Because the Dems select delegates for their convention by a method that is much more like PR than the Republicans, candidates who want to influence the selection of the nominee have much less incentive to drop out of the race as long as they can afford to stay in, especially if they don't have a competing interest such as trying to be selected as someone's running mate or (re-)running for another elected office.
I wonder whether or not Bloomberg is trying to win delegates supporting him in the primary to go to the party convention (because that's what the primary contests are all about - electing delegates) so that, in the as-of-now probable case that Bloomberg can't win the nomination, his delegates can help steer the nomination towards a moderate candidate.
Because the Dems select delegates for their convention by a method that is much more like PR than the Republicans, candidates who want to influence the selection of the nominee have much less incentive to drop out of the race as long as they can afford to stay in, especially if they don't have a competing interest such as trying to be selected as someone's running mate or (re-)running for another elected office.
That doesn't seem like a workable strategy. Yes, the Democrats award delegates by a proportional methodology, but they also have a 15% minimum threshold, which is about 3× where Bloomberg is currently polling nationally. This 15% threshold is by jurisdiction, so even if you don't win 15% of the vote in a particular state you can still get some delegates if you poll close to 15% since you'll likely be over 15% in some locations.
For example Iowa, which will be having caucuses in 25 days, awards 14 delegates proportionally to the statewide winners who get more than 15% of the statewide vote, but also 27 delegates distributed between the winner(s) of its four Congressional Districts. So if you're at 12% statewide you're probably going to be 15+% in one or two Congressional Districts. If you're at 5% statewide your odds of picking up delegates is much lower.
That said, this particular example is irrelevant for Bloomberg since his late entry means he isn't on the ballot in Iowa or any other pre-Super Tuesday state. Bloomberg would have to have a write-in campaign of almost unprecedented effectiveness to get any delegates before March. This means that he won't have "momentum" or "the bandwagon effect" or whatever other metaphor you'd like to use for the idea that being popular makes you even more popular.
And finally, this "kingmaker" scenario only works if there is no clear winner of a majority of delegates. Although this seems more probable this year than in past election cycles, that's still a low probability outcome. A front-runner would be more likely to wait for the second ballot and wrangle superdelegates than deal with Bloomberg, and a non-front-runner accepting Bloomberg's offer of delegates would almost certainly be seen as illegitimate by many/most Democrats.
Former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s massive campaign apparatus and an army of some 500 staffers will march on through the general election in November even if he loses the Democratic nomination, campaign officials tell NBC News, shifting their efforts toward working to elect whomever the party selects to face President Donald Trump.
Bloomberg’s vast tech operation will also be redirected to help the eventual nominee, as Democrats struggle to compete with the vaunted digital operation built by Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale. Hawkfish, a digital company started by Bloomberg that’s carrying out his $100 million online ad campaign, will be retained through Election Day to help defeat Trump, the officials said.
Awaiting the eventual nominee would be a shadow field operation across the country that’s currently unparalleled in size by any of the other candidates in the presidential race. The roughly 500 staff members Bloomberg has committed to paying through November include those in battleground states like Florida, North Carolina, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, as well as in Arizona.
The speculation is that Bloomberg just hates Trump that much and is willing to devote a sizable chunk of his fortune to thwarting him. As I said, when you're an actual billionaire you can spend a lot on pet projects.
Also, if you want to write about Bloomberg's "massive . . . apparatus" and how it's "unparalleled in size", maybe you should be writing porn and not news stories.
Also, if you want to write about Bloomberg's "massive . . . apparatus" and how it's "unparalleled in size", maybe you should be writing porn and not news stories.
Porn... politics... the distinction is, for me, blurring.
So who are folks with a vote thinking of supporting in the primaries?
I was pretty sold on Elizabeth Warren until Trump had Soleimani assassinated. Her immediate response disappointed me; starting out with "he was a bad guy none of us will mourn" before moving on to why it was troubling was indistinguishable from the statements of a lot of Republicans. Sanders on the other hand gave a strong anti-war statement right out of the gate.
I still think he's too old. But I feel like immediate responses to surprising bad news tell us a lot about a politician, and I didn't like her reaction.
Ruth, are you my longlost twin? I had exactly the same response. I've been pulling for Warren too (though I also like Buttigieg) and also worry about Sanders' age (and now his heart attack on top of that). But it's time somebody stood in front of 45's reckless tank. Eisenhower warned us way back in my toddler-hood. Not only have E's warnings grown legs, our current military-industrial complex has psychopathic toddler leading its charge.
I might well be the twin separated from birth, except I've been dubious about Buttigieg. He seems too centrist for me, and too inexperienced, and I am still agog at his ignorance of the segregation in South Bend's schools. So - what do you like about him?
Yes, Buttigieg's comparative lack of experience concerns me too. I'd actually like to see him in a VP spot more than a Presidential one; Warren and Buttigieg, maybe? But I like what he has to say about climate change -- building a clean economy and developing resilience hubs as a start. Developing proactive ways of dealing with the mounting natural disasters we likely face sounds like an improvement over what we're doing. Especially if that's basically going to consist of chucking rolls of paper towels at our citizens.
As to that worrisome ignorance of school racial divisions, he has no kids. I think many people without kids (and even some WITH kids) manage to remain remarkably clueless about the state of our schools and the devastating effects all this alleged "school choice" has had on public schooling. The governor & top education politico in my own state are draining resources from public schools to support "choice" to the extent that several small towns (this is a small, rural state where many localities have only one school) have been forced to close their only school.
I like Amy Klobuchar. She's a moderate (but so am I) Midwesterner (but so am I) , with, according to the Washington Post, an excellent sense of humor (which matters to me), and she knows how to work with people on both sides of the aisle (which I miss). I dislike Crazy Uncle Bernie and Elizabeth Warren, but, obviously, I'll vote for whoever gets the nomination over Trump.
Yes, Buttigieg's comparative lack of experience concerns me too. I'd actually like to see him in a VP spot more than a Presidential one; Warren and Buttigieg, maybe? But I like what he has to say about climate change -- building a clean economy and developing resilience hubs as a start. Developing proactive ways of dealing with the mounting natural disasters we likely face sounds like an improvement over what we're doing.
This is encouraging; I'd like to see microgrids of sustainable energy developed.
As to that worrisome ignorance of school racial divisions, he has no kids. I think many people without kids (and even some WITH kids) manage to remain remarkably clueless about the state of our schools and the devastating effects all this alleged "school choice" has had on public schooling.
The thing is, I don't have kids, and I figured out that if housing is segregated, as it is in most US cities of any size, the schools are segregated. It's just logical. I want our leaders to be several steps ahead of me on these things.
@Rossweisse : Do you give any credence to reports about Klobuchar not being nice to staff? She's too moderate for me - I am not at all a moderate! - but I feel like I haven't given her enough thought.
As to that worrisome ignorance of school racial divisions, he has no kids. I think many people without kids (and even some WITH kids) manage to remain remarkably clueless about the state of our schools and the devastating effects all this alleged "school choice" has had on public schooling.
The thing is, I don't have kids, and I figured out that if housing is segregated, as it is in most US cities of any size, the schools are segregated. It's just logical. I want our leaders to be several steps ahead of me on these things.
Point taken -- but you're probably about 6 times as political aware as a lot of people. Living as I do in a lily-white state, I also am sometimes guilty of overlooking "residential segregation" and its tendency to segregate schools. In my state, school choice looms as a larger problem than the segregation-by-neighborhood issue.
... @Rossweisse : Do you give any credence to reports about Klobuchar not being nice to staff? She's too moderate for me - I am not at all a moderate! - but I feel like I haven't given her enough thought.
That stuff flooded the news sites as soon as she declared. I have read it all, and concluded that it seems to be directly connected to her having two X chromosomes: It wouldn't register for a man. She's probably a tough boss, but not overly so.
I am a moderate (it must be my upbringing in Kansas), but I like her a lot. She can work across the aisle, and she seems to be a decent human being. I'm hoping she does well in the Iowa primary. I really think she could beat Trump, which is a consummation devoutly to be wished. (I actually sent her campaign money, which is a first.)
TBH, I mostly haven't watch the debates. However, there was one where all the candidates were in a dark-suited row across the stage. But Amy Klobuchar was all the way at one end, and wearing *colors*.
She really stood out. If her ideas stand out, might be worth a look.
We need a female version of Joe Kennedy III - dedication, serious, charisma, 'attractive', youngish. In the absence of which Warren will do although Bernie is the best choice. Joe B: please retire gracefully, your country no longer needs you that much.
The list of participants in the next Democratic presidential debate (January 14) has been finalized. In order to qualify a candidate has to receive at least 225,000 donations from unique donors and poll at least 5% support in four recognized national or early state polls or at least 7% in two early state polls.
There are six qualifiers for the pre-Iowa debate, making it the smallest number of qualifying candidates in the 2020 Democratic Presidential Debates so far. Missing from the stage will be Andrew Yang, who failed to meet the polled support requirement.
The Debatables
Joe Biden
Pete Buttigieg
Amy Klobuchar
Bernie Sanders
Tom Steyer
Elizabeth Warren
Steyer is the first 2020 candidate to qualify for a debate under the "2 polls showing 7%+ support in early states" rule, achieving this by blasting the airwaves in Nevada and South Carolina.
Then there were those who met some but not all of the qualifying standards.
Short of the Mark
Michael Bloomberg
Cory Booker
Andrew Yang
Booker and Yang had enough donor support to qualify but not enough qualified polls showing 5% support or more. Bloomberg has enough polls showing support but has not released any information on donors, which I guess is the hazard of self-funding.
And then there were those who didn't qualify by either polled support or number of donors.
Not Even Close
Michael Bennet
John Delaney
Tulsi Gabbard
Deval Patrick
The Not Even Close list is the same length as last time, losing one member (Marianne Williamson) and gaining one (Tulsi Gabbard). This is the first time Gabbard has not met any of the qualifying standards.
At this point my vote is for Amy Klobuchar. I would like Yang or Booker for VP. I really do not like Biden and think he is totally out of touch. I am liberal enough to like Sanders, but don't think he would win over some republican moderates who might go for Klobuchar. I will vote for anyone who is not Trump. I look forward to a well qualified cabinet.
At this point my vote is for Amy Klobuchar. I would like Yang or Booker for VP. I really do not like Biden and think he is totally out of touch. I am liberal enough to like Sanders, but don't think he would win over some republican moderates who might go for Klobuchar. I will vote for anyone who is not Trump. I look forward to a well qualified cabinet.
GI, you talk sense. I'm hoping Klochbar gets a kick along in the early states.
At this point my vote is for Amy Klobuchar. I would like Yang or Booker for VP. I really do not like Biden and think he is totally out of touch. I am liberal enough to like Sanders, but don't think he would win over some republican moderates who might go for Klobuchar. I will vote for anyone who is not Trump. I look forward to a well qualified cabinet.
Here's the problem: they're all, without exception, "out of touch," though perhaps to varying degrees. Being out-of-touch is, for folks who have clawed their way to these political levels, an occupational hazard, and the higher up this ladder you climb, the more out-of-touch you become, if only because you (A) have a job that's really not much like the regular sorts of jobs most of us hold down; (B) have both office staff and security personnel whose raison d'etre is to prevent contact with the folks you're representing out-of-touch with, and (C) you are beholden for your current position to a vast, shadowy, ever-shifting background party machinery whose primary purpose is to maintain a stranglehold on Power, not on addressing the hopes and struggles of those claiming allegiance to it.
For those who are unfamiliar, superdelegates are Democratic party functionaries that have a vote at the national convention. These are current Democratic federal elected office holders, Democratic state governors, past Democratic Presidents and Vice Presidents, and certain higher-ranking members of the state and national party committees. After the 2016 election Bernie Sanders' supporters raised a stink about the influence of this "vast, shadowy, ever-shifting background party machinery" over the selection of the Democratic Party's nominee and reforms were made so that in 2020 superdelegates will only vote on the second and subsequent ballots, meaning that if one candidate has an outright majority of regular delegates (which is what normally happens) the superdelegates are irrelevant since there won't be a second ballot.
At any rate, counting superdelegates is a way to gauge who has the favor of the party leadership. It's tricky though since superdelegates aren't bound by anything and can change their minds anytime up until the convention so mostly we have to go off of public statements and endorsements. Anyway, here's a count of superdelegates (of which there are 771 in 2020) as best as can be figured out at the moment. Note that there is an assumption that candidates who are also superdelegates (Bennet, Biden, Gabbard, Klobuchar, Sanders, Warren) are guaranteed to get their own vote.
No one yet 594
Dropout Candidate 59
Biden 50
Sanders 19
Warren 17
Buttigieg 10
Klobuchar 8
Bloomberg 4
Bennet 2
Delaney 2
Gabbard 1
Steyer 1
Patrick 0
Yang 0
So that's a brief, only marginally accurate snapshot of where the Democratic Party leadership is on the presidential nomination.
There are occasional news stories about DC politicians who haven't done a particular normal thing in years (like going to a grocery store) and are clueless about it. And not just the current occupant of that big, pale house.
DC has a ring road around it called the "Beltway". There's a meme about politicians there thinking "inside the Beltway": they're caught up in that world, and forget that there's anything (important) going on outside it.
Comments
There would be an expectation that the Chancellor would be able to preside at important ceremonial occasions and graduation ceremonies, at least the main ones.
And H said, in a quoted tweet, that
Biden is your candidate, get used to it. The older and more conservative Democrats won't vote for anyone else. Bernie's heart attack didn't kill him, but it probably killed his chances. Besides, he is a commie. Warren is a woman, and that is a double hit right now with the tensions rising in the middle east.
What you need is to get the younger people (and others who typically vote in small numbers) to vote and vote for whoever is running, not who they want to be president. It is too late to boost anyone's profile enough, barring a major miracle.
She's also polling ~3% support nationally among likely Democratic primary/caucus voters. She's been able to get enough support to get in to the debates, but barely more than that. This is no comment on the amount of support she should have in a fair Universe, but it's where she is in this one.
It is a long way to November. That said part of the Democratic process is the development of the national platform and the selection of the VP nominee as well as other key positions. There will be a lot of horse-trading going on between now and the Democratic Convention. I want to see how that all comes out.
I guess he decided that peeling a few votes off the eventual Democratic nominee in a third party run would be his final(?) act of vandalism in American politics.
Or a spot in her theoretical cabinet.
He's been there and done that, under Obama.
Oh? The media is saying things are all tied up! We had better all watch their advertising then...
He's also contributed to other Democratic-friendly political organizations.
Now you can say that spending $100 million on a vanity presidential candidacy is a mis-allocation of resources and I wouldn't argue with you, but the thing about being a billionaire is that vanity presidential candidacy / voting rights group isn't necessarily an either/or proposition, it can be a both/and.
I wonder whether or not Bloomberg is trying to win delegates supporting him in the primary to go to the party convention (because that's what the primary contests are all about - electing delegates) so that, in the as-of-now probable case that Bloomberg can't win the nomination, his delegates can help steer the nomination towards a moderate candidate.
Because the Dems select delegates for their convention by a method that is much more like PR than the Republicans, candidates who want to influence the selection of the nominee have much less incentive to drop out of the race as long as they can afford to stay in, especially if they don't have a competing interest such as trying to be selected as someone's running mate or (re-)running for another elected office.
That doesn't seem like a workable strategy. Yes, the Democrats award delegates by a proportional methodology, but they also have a 15% minimum threshold, which is about 3× where Bloomberg is currently polling nationally. This 15% threshold is by jurisdiction, so even if you don't win 15% of the vote in a particular state you can still get some delegates if you poll close to 15% since you'll likely be over 15% in some locations.
For example Iowa, which will be having caucuses in 25 days, awards 14 delegates proportionally to the statewide winners who get more than 15% of the statewide vote, but also 27 delegates distributed between the winner(s) of its four Congressional Districts. So if you're at 12% statewide you're probably going to be 15+% in one or two Congressional Districts. If you're at 5% statewide your odds of picking up delegates is much lower.
That said, this particular example is irrelevant for Bloomberg since his late entry means he isn't on the ballot in Iowa or any other pre-Super Tuesday state. Bloomberg would have to have a write-in campaign of almost unprecedented effectiveness to get any delegates before March. This means that he won't have "momentum" or "the bandwagon effect" or whatever other metaphor you'd like to use for the idea that being popular makes you even more popular.
And finally, this "kingmaker" scenario only works if there is no clear winner of a majority of delegates. Although this seems more probable this year than in past election cycles, that's still a low probability outcome. A front-runner would be more likely to wait for the second ballot and wrangle superdelegates than deal with Bloomberg, and a non-front-runner accepting Bloomberg's offer of delegates would almost certainly be seen as illegitimate by many/most Democrats.
The speculation is that Bloomberg just hates Trump that much and is willing to devote a sizable chunk of his fortune to thwarting him. As I said, when you're an actual billionaire you can spend a lot on pet projects.
Also, if you want to write about Bloomberg's "massive . . . apparatus" and how it's "unparalleled in size", maybe you should be writing porn and not news stories.
Porn... politics... the distinction is, for me, blurring.
I was pretty sold on Elizabeth Warren until Trump had Soleimani assassinated. Her immediate response disappointed me; starting out with "he was a bad guy none of us will mourn" before moving on to why it was troubling was indistinguishable from the statements of a lot of Republicans. Sanders on the other hand gave a strong anti-war statement right out of the gate.
I still think he's too old. But I feel like immediate responses to surprising bad news tell us a lot about a politician, and I didn't like her reaction.
As to that worrisome ignorance of school racial divisions, he has no kids. I think many people without kids (and even some WITH kids) manage to remain remarkably clueless about the state of our schools and the devastating effects all this alleged "school choice" has had on public schooling. The governor & top education politico in my own state are draining resources from public schools to support "choice" to the extent that several small towns (this is a small, rural state where many localities have only one school) have been forced to close their only school.
If a garden slug were to run against Trump, you know who'd get my vote.
(I am not in any way implying that any of the Democratic candidates is a garden slug!)
This is encouraging; I'd like to see microgrids of sustainable energy developed.
The thing is, I don't have kids, and I figured out that if housing is segregated, as it is in most US cities of any size, the schools are segregated. It's just logical. I want our leaders to be several steps ahead of me on these things.
@Rossweisse : Do you give any credence to reports about Klobuchar not being nice to staff? She's too moderate for me - I am not at all a moderate! - but I feel like I haven't given her enough thought.
Point taken -- but you're probably about 6 times as political aware as a lot of people. Living as I do in a lily-white state, I also am sometimes guilty of overlooking "residential segregation" and its tendency to segregate schools. In my state, school choice looms as a larger problem than the segregation-by-neighborhood issue.
I am a moderate (it must be my upbringing in Kansas), but I like her a lot. She can work across the aisle, and she seems to be a decent human being. I'm hoping she does well in the Iowa primary. I really think she could beat Trump, which is a consummation devoutly to be wished. (I actually sent her campaign money, which is a first.)
She really stood out. If her ideas stand out, might be worth a look.
. . . willing to primary one of the leftiest Democratic Senators largely on the qualification of his name . . .
There are six qualifiers for the pre-Iowa debate, making it the smallest number of qualifying candidates in the 2020 Democratic Presidential Debates so far. Missing from the stage will be Andrew Yang, who failed to meet the polled support requirement.
The Debatables
Steyer is the first 2020 candidate to qualify for a debate under the "2 polls showing 7%+ support in early states" rule, achieving this by blasting the airwaves in Nevada and South Carolina.
Then there were those who met some but not all of the qualifying standards.
Short of the Mark
Booker and Yang had enough donor support to qualify but not enough qualified polls showing 5% support or more. Bloomberg has enough polls showing support but has not released any information on donors, which I guess is the hazard of self-funding.
And then there were those who didn't qualify by either polled support or number of donors.
Not Even Close
The Not Even Close list is the same length as last time, losing one member (Marianne Williamson) and gaining one (Tulsi Gabbard). This is the first time Gabbard has not met any of the qualifying standards.
GI, you talk sense. I'm hoping Klochbar gets a kick along in the early states.
Here's the problem: they're all, without exception, "out of touch," though perhaps to varying degrees. Being out-of-touch is, for folks who have clawed their way to these political levels, an occupational hazard, and the higher up this ladder you climb, the more out-of-touch you become, if only because you (A) have a job that's really not much like the regular sorts of jobs most of us hold down; (B) have both office staff and security personnel whose raison d'etre is to prevent contact with the folks you're representing out-of-touch with, and (C) you are beholden for your current position to a vast, shadowy, ever-shifting background party machinery whose primary purpose is to maintain a stranglehold on Power, not on addressing the hopes and struggles of those claiming allegiance to it.
For those who are unfamiliar, superdelegates are Democratic party functionaries that have a vote at the national convention. These are current Democratic federal elected office holders, Democratic state governors, past Democratic Presidents and Vice Presidents, and certain higher-ranking members of the state and national party committees. After the 2016 election Bernie Sanders' supporters raised a stink about the influence of this "vast, shadowy, ever-shifting background party machinery" over the selection of the Democratic Party's nominee and reforms were made so that in 2020 superdelegates will only vote on the second and subsequent ballots, meaning that if one candidate has an outright majority of regular delegates (which is what normally happens) the superdelegates are irrelevant since there won't be a second ballot.
At any rate, counting superdelegates is a way to gauge who has the favor of the party leadership. It's tricky though since superdelegates aren't bound by anything and can change their minds anytime up until the convention so mostly we have to go off of public statements and endorsements. Anyway, here's a count of superdelegates (of which there are 771 in 2020) as best as can be figured out at the moment. Note that there is an assumption that candidates who are also superdelegates (Bennet, Biden, Gabbard, Klobuchar, Sanders, Warren) are guaranteed to get their own vote.
So that's a brief, only marginally accurate snapshot of where the Democratic Party leadership is on the presidential nomination.
There are occasional news stories about DC politicians who haven't done a particular normal thing in years (like going to a grocery store) and are clueless about it. And not just the current occupant of that big, pale house.
DC has a ring road around it called the "Beltway". There's a meme about politicians there thinking "inside the Beltway": they're caught up in that world, and forget that there's anything (important) going on outside it.