The Circuit: Two More White Guys! Dumb Bitch Juice! Apology Tours!

Plus: Will the election ever have fewer white men?

Two white guys enter and two white guys leave the race (so the white guy math stays the same!), Biden’s base breaks for Kamala, fundraising fights emerge, and Trump goes Stranger Things on climate. This is the Dumb Bitch Juice edition.

I’m Chris Thomas. Welcome to Issue 11 of Rubber Chicken Circuit, the weekly election newsletter from Study Hall. Read more about us, subscribe here, and forward us to your friends!

Headliners

Literally, why are even more old white men running?

God is testing me because, somehow, two old white men have decided now is as good a time as any to jump into a historically crowded presidential race. First, there was former congressman JOE SESTAK, whose campaign announcement was so insignificant that I didn’t even notice (and neither did the rest of America). Now we have billionaire TOM STEYER, who entered the race on Tuesday in an apparent effort to make our brains collectively explode. 

What do you need to know about these two men? Honestly not much, but if you insist, here’s your crash course. You may know “billionaire activist” Steyer because of his grassroots campaign to impeach Trump. Expect him to stay in the race far too long because he has enough money to ignore logic and if you’re one of the 8.3 million names on the email list from his impeachment campaign, I’m sorry. Meanwhile, Sestak who lost his past two general election races to Republican Pat Toomey, is already an afterthought, and was photographed showing off his dirty boots once, which I present without context below.

It’s “stop drinking the dumb bitch juice and drop out” season.

Before you bang your head against the wall over two new people entering the race, I have good news. Last week, nearly all of JOHN HICKENLOOPER’s senior staffers quit and told him to drop his presidential ambitions and run for Senate. He blamed his lagging campaign on the fact that he’s not a “really good debater” and isn’t “real smooth with wealthy donors” but vowed to keep sipping the dumb bitch juice and stay in the race, which, alright. No big surprise given that he once drank fracking fluid. 

Maybe he should take a cue from ERIC SWALWELL, another would-be candidate who read the room and shelved his Oval Office ambitions. The Californian dropped out on Monday and is going to run for a fifth term in the House instead. MIKE GRAVEL also announced he’s ending his candidacy this month. But his was never a serious campaign in the first place, since it revolved around a group of teenage boys stacked up in a Mike Gravel skinsuit attacking other candidates on Twitter. 

There’s rising pressure for low-polling candidates like TIM RYAN, MICHAEL BENNET, WAYNE MESSAM, and SETH MOULTON to put down the dumb bitch juice, listen to logic, and do something better with their time. Yes, they’re probably trying to pull a Rick Perry or Ben Carson and parlay their campaigns into future Cabinet positions, but Rick Perry and Ben Carson actually had some success in their campaigns (a.k.a. they both polled above 1%). Unless there’s a mass plague that kills off the top-tier candidates, there is no way these particular longshots are going to get anywhere near the White House outside of a guided tour.

Have feedback or want to slip us a tip? Reply to this or email chris@studyhall.xyz with your scoops and suggestions. 

The Pack

KAMALA HARRIS: Breaking Biden’s base.

We already knew Harris mopped the floor with Biden in the debates, but now we have a better picture of how seismic her attacks on Biden’s racist past was for Biden’s base (seismic mop!). According to FiveThirtyEight’s data nerds, about 11% of his supporters jumped into the Kamala camp, while nearly one in four of her new supporters were Biden converts. If she can keep up the surge through this month’s round of debates, she’ll confirm her newfound frontrunner status wasn’t just a stroke of luck. 

ELIZABETH WARREN: One million dollars more.

Well, $1.1 million more to be specific. That’s how much more money Warren raised from small donors than Sanders in the second quarter of fundraising with $19.1 million to his $18 million; with an average donation of $28 from 384,000 donors. All that money in her war chest is being put to good use — albeit with a big risk. She’s pooled her resources and cash flow into hiring over 300 staffers but has saved money by creating campaign ads in-house rather than through expensive outside firms. Whether the strategy helps or hurts remains to be seen but should her funds dry up, I’m sure she’ll have a plan for that. 

JOE BIDEN: Welcome to the Apology Tour.

Love might mean never having to say you’re sorry, but being a frontrunner with a shoddy record on race means saying sorry. A lot. Welcome to Uncle Joe’s Race Record Apology Tour. Not to be confused with the sort-of apology he gave to Anita Hill, this time he’s saying sorry for praising the “civility” of segregationists and his shoddy record on bussing. Imagine a world where Biden didn’t run for president and we got to avoid Biden’s constant flip between half-apologies and the “I have a black friend named Obama” defense? 

PETE BUTTIGIEG: Big money, low support.

Looking strictly at the benjamins, Mayor Pete is on top of the world with a massive $24 million fundraising haul that outpaced every other candidate. But beyond that metric, he’s still struggling with the same big issue: diversity. Between his two mayoral runs, Buttigieg’s support among black voters dropped in South Bend and his general election polling average hovers at 5.3% while other candidates surge ahead. He may have won the hearts of deep-pocketed donors in Hollywood and on Wall Street with his youth, charisma, and ability to play Spoon songs on piano, but he’s going to need to figure out how to appeal to rich white people if he wants to be anything more than a potential pick for Vice President.

BETO O’ROURKE: Reboot, Round 3. 

Remember when Beto switched from a loose, grassroots campaign style and tried to reboot his campaign with a ton of TV appearances? Old Beto’s freewheeling style is back. He spent his 4th of July weekend on a family RV trip through Iowa on another campaign reboot trip. Let’s just hope that if he crashes and burns again in this month’s debates, he’ll finally drop out and run for Senate in Texas again where he can actually make a difference. 

BERNIE SANDERS: Not winning over sex workers.

When one of the biggest news stories right now involves billionaire Jeffrey Epstein’s sex trafficking ring, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that voters might ask about policies differentiating sex trafficking and sex work — especially after FOSTA-SESTA bills crippled the sex work economy. For Senator Sanders, the question of how he’d protect sex workers came up in Vegas and when he couldn’t give an answer, he turned to his usual style interruption and promised he’d look into it, which might be a strategy every other candidate should take as well. 

The Leftovers

TULSI GABBARD: Falsely accused Kamala Harris of falsely accusing Joe Biden of racism.  MARIANNE WILLIAMSON: Trying to help Mike Gravel make it to the debates to double the quota of ridiculousness. AMY KLOBUCHAR: “We are less safe” because of Trump’s foreign policy decisions. STEVE BULLOCK: His new struggle bus strategy is switching from fighting against “dark money” to courting D.C.’s elite class. JULIÁN CASTRO: Met the 130K donor requirement for the fall debates, but still needs to hit the polling quota. CORY BOOKER: Flipped pancakes with his main boo, Rosario Dawson. JAY INSLEE: Still convinced he’s “building support” for his campaign despite all evidence. ANDREW YANG: Gun-shooting, whiskey-drinking Meghan McCain isn’t here for Yang’s free marriage counseling proposal. KIRSTEN GILLIBRAND: I’m now convinced she leads a double life and played Holly on The Office. JOHN DELANEY: Doesn’t think we should decriminalize illegally border crossing. BILL DE BLASIO: Pushing the “I have a black son” strategy hard yet again. 

The Trump Check

Trump’s Green New Lie.

The president must’ve taken time to watch the new season of Stranger Things and taken it a little too seriously because he’s now living in the Upside Down. Suddenly, he’s out here giving speeches on his record of working “so hard” to have the “very cleanest air and cleanest water on the planet,” while attacking Obama’s “relentless war” on U.S. energy. 

In case you hadn’t guessed, this isn’t true. Trump doesn’t believe global warming is real, his Interior Secretary is a former oil lobbyist, his administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency is a former coal lobbyist, he’s rolled back Obama’s carbon emissions, he’s withdrawn from the Paris Agreement on climate change, and is generally just a terrible president when it comes to the climate. 

So why lay such a big lie on the table now? Besides serving as evidence of how unhinged he is, it was also a response to the panic in his campaign that they’ll lose the key independent voting block as America finally wakes up to the reality that we’re in a climate crisis. This isn’t the first time Trump has gone full 1984 and used “alternative facts” to confused voters but if this strategy works, we’re all going to be the This Is Fine dog.

Will more candidates drop out by next week? Find out next week on another serving of Rubber Chicken Circuit.