Avinash Bakshi

January 31st, 2020 - Entry 1

Today I start my Art 101 blog detailing the state of the 2020 Presidential Election!! I am personally planning to support candidate Andrew Yang and am excited to debate on his behalf at Penn State Democrat's mock debate on Monday. I am also excited to see which candidates will survive after the Iowa caucus. May the best candidate win!

February 3rd, 2020 - Entry 2

Today is the day of the Iowa Caucus. We will see the first votes being casted. A caucus is a special type of primary where you publically declare who you are going to vote for and have to interact with other people in your polling area to decide on a final vote count. Due to the long process only dedicated people will go to the caucus. I hope Yang does really well!

February 7th, 2020 - Entry 3

Disaster in Iowa! It has been 3 days since the Iowa caucus has concluded and results are still not out. Apparently the app being used to transport results glitched out an there is no accurate vote total. Due to this the DNC has decided to double check caucus results by individually tallying votes. I doubt that any other states will continue to use an app due to the mishap. Nevada has already decided against using its own app to tally results. I hope we get accurate caucus results soon!

February 9th, 2020 - Entry 4

Today was the last presidential debate before the New Hampshire primary! I think Amy Klobuchar in particular did well this debate as she made the case for why she should be the moderate candidate. The other centrist candidates (Joe Biden and Pete Buttigieg) did not fair as well. Unfortunately my candidate of choice Andrew Yang had a cold and as a result was not as dominant this debate. Hopefully New Hampshire voters will look past that but I am skeptical. There is still not a lot of clarity on the Iowa caucus results, but it looks like Bernie Sanders and Pete Buttigieg did really well.

February 14th, 2020 - Entry 5

Today the New Hampshire results are in and it looks like Bernie Sanders was the winner. Additionally Andrew Yang who was my candidate of choice dropped out which makes me sad. He was the only candidate left that believed in; Universal Basic Income, Value Added Tax, Democracy Dollars and Full Drug Decriminalization. I will have to decide which candidate I want to vote for when the Pennsylvania primary comes around. As of right now I am considering either Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren.

February 19th, 2020 - Entry 6

Today was the post New Hampshire primary debate and it was very interesting. It was by far the most exciting debate. Michael Bloomberg was a new entrance for this debate. The biggest winner for the debate has to be Elizabeth Warren. She came after Bloomberg very early on by attacking his Non disclosure agreements for sexual assault cases. Bloomberg responded by saying he would not release the NDA's and that the sexual assault cases were just 'poor jokes' on his end. After that blow Bloomberg was unable to recover. Bernie piled on by saying Bloomberg's existance on stage was a major problem and Bloomberg was yet again unable to respond. These two incedents make Bloomberg the biggest loser tonight. If I had to rank the performances tonight it would go 1. Warren 2. Sanders 3. Biden 4. Klobuchar 5. Pete and 6. Bloomberg.

February 23rd, 2020 - Entry 7

Today the results for the Nevada Primary are mostly in. Despite voting finishing yesterday night only 60% of the districts have the results officially in. I dont know why it is taking so long to get votes in given there was no failed app or incorrect results (like in Iowa). Reguardless it looks like Bernie Sanders won by a hefty margin. He is currently in the lead with 46% of the vote. This is good for him going forward because the demographic breakdown of Nevada is similar to the rest of the country. Joe Biden seems to have gotten second with 19.6% of the vote. Biden will be counting on a South Carolina victory if he wants any chance at winning. Pete is in 3rd with 15.3%. This is not what his campaign was looking for and anything other than a 2nd or 3rd place finish in Iowa would be horrible for him. Warren only got 10.1% placing her in 4th. This is despite a strong debate performance a couple of days ago. Amy is 5th with 4.8% and Steyer is 6th with 4.1%. Results are as of 9:30AM.

February 30th, 2020 - Entry 8

Today the results for the South Carolina Primary are in. Joe Biden got 48.4% of the vote and 39 delegates, Bernie got 19.9% of the vote and 13 delegates, and Tom Steyer got 11.3% of the vote and 2 delegates, the rest of the candidates did not get delegates. This was a big win for Biden as it puts him back in the running for the candidates. Now I think a two horse race between Biden and Bernie is truly on. Biden was projected to win by 10-15% but winning by 28% is a huge overperformance for him. I expect 1 or 2 other candidates to drop before Super Tuesday. If I had to guess Tom Steyer and Amy Klobuchar drop before Tuesday.

March 1st, 2020 - Entry 9

Yesterday candidate Tom Steyer dropped out. This was probably because he did not finish top 2 in South Carolina after dumping a lot of money into ad spending and having a strong ground game there. Given that he hasnt spent as much time and effort into Super Tuesday states it is understandable that he feels like he doesnt have a path to nomination. In my opinion he entered the race too late and didnt have a clear lane to run on. He seemed to focus a lot on reparations, but in general reparations are not a popular stance in american politics. He also had some strong views on the environment and climate change, but so do Bernie and Warren. Today Pete Buttigieg dropped out. It is surprising to me that Pete dropped out before Klobuchar since he has more delegates and higher national polling averages. That said it makes sence that he dropped especially considering how poorly he was polling amoungst non caucasians. Additionally Pete was counting on a springboard effect from strong NH and Iowa results which clearly wasnt working.

March 4th, 2020 - Entry 10

Super Tuesday Results are in and Biden has won massively. Biden won 10/14 states which was suprising because Bernie Sanders was projected to win the majority of the states according to 538. There are two reasons for Bidens overperformance in my opinion. The first reason is a strong finish in South Carolina. The strong finish in South Carolina allowed Biden to show moderates that he is the candidate that can win the primary outright. The South Carolina finish also served as a springboard effect which helped him in Super Tuesday. The second reason is Amy Klobuchar and Pete Buttigieg dropping out and supporting him. The moderate vote coalescing around biden helped give hm a 10% boost which was enough to push him to victory in multiple states. More importantly Warren did not drop out, so she split the progressive vote with Sanders.

March 5th, 2020 - Entry 11

Elizabeth Warren dropped out. In my opinion this drop out is too late to help Bernie Sanders. If she had dropped out before Super Tuesday then Bernie would have been competitive with Biden. Now however barring a Michigan comback by Bernie it looks like Biden is going to win. Reguardless I am a fan of Warren (she would have been my 4th choice after Yang Bernie and Tulsi) because she does care about progressive values. I think a large part of the reason she didnt win was because she hired many neo liberal advisors who told her to pivot away from those progressive values. This combined with inaccurately calling Bernie a sexist caused her downfall.

March 11th, 2020 - Entry 12

Today the results for Super Tuesday 2 came in and yet again Biden won massively. The big state that was up for grabs was delegate rich Michigan. In 2016 Bernie had a huge upset victory over Clinton so if he wanted to have any chance to win the democratic nomination he would have to win here. Unfortunately for Bernie Biden got 52.9% of the vote while he only got 36.4% This meant that Biden got 72 delegates while Bernie got only 52 delegates. This basically seals the Democratic nomination for Biden as I dont see how Bernie could viably win in half of the remaining states

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