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| Biden's elevator pitch in the New York Times building. |
Last week, the black news website The Root published a kind of magisterial overview of every remaining Democratic presidential candidate's "black agenda", based on a survey of policy, legal, and journalists experts, all of them black, and looking at a list of ten criteria (economics, criminal justice, education, voting right issues, comprehensiveness, blind spots, feasibility, candidate's history, candidate's intentionality, and programs' impact) and ranking all eight (including Tom Steyer, who dropped out last night) on a 100-point scoring system.
It's clarified some things that have been tormenting me for a while in a way that extends beyond the black agenda to the whole campaign, alongside yesterday's results in South Carolina, and might clarify for you some of the discomfort I've been having with the traditional left-right axis and its application in the current situation (and uses some terminology I've been using, which is gratifying, because that means I'm using it right). It's also entertainingly written, by Michael Harriot, and designed for suspense, so—spoiler alert—you might like to go read it before you look below the fold here.
