With Labor Day over, and autumn just ahead, it is time to ask: What do we know at summer’s end about the politics of the 2020 presidential election that we did not know at the beginning?

Well, hmmm…...

If the standard is what do we absolutely, super-duper know for sure then the honest answer is: not much. The Democratic race features a front-runner, Joe Biden, whose support looks impressively durable in one light (in a succession of polls) and acutely vulnerable in another (in a series of mildly clumsy performances, offering himself as a vessel for the restoration of pre-Trump political norms at a time when significant numbers of Democrats on the left and even center are hungering for something more disruptive than that).

But we knew all that before the summer debates, before the Iowa State Fair, before we learned that the next president won’t be John Hickenlooper or Kirsten Gillibrand.

So that answer won’t cut it. Political journalists are paid (modestly) to squint through the haze, looking for patterns and trends early in formation. In the closing days of summer, a group of POLITICO reporters—Natasha Korecki, Holly Otterbein, and David Siders—joined me for some squinting.

Turns out there are some things we think we learned over the summer--and some critical questions that will be answered imminently this fall. A transcript of the conversation follows, and you can listen to it in a Labor Day bonus edition of POLITICO’s “Nerdcast.”

Here are some of the takeaways from our end-of-summer tour d’horizon.

1. Razzle-dazzle has fizzled

Barack Obama in this generation, like the Kennedys in an earlier one, created a standard for what counted as charisma: a combination of photogenic looks and rhetorical inspiration that would send a thrill up Chris Matthews’s leg, and yours too.

So far the Democratic race has featured multiple candidates who credibly hoped to lay claim to that tradition—and drew lots of news media cheerleading for their efforts. Beto O’Rourke has tried to channel the urgent electricity of Bobby Kennedy’s appeal; Pete Buttigieg’s youth and Rhodes scholarship and teacher’s pet speaking style looked like it might make him this year’s Bill Clinton; Kamala Harris’s poised bearing, combined with her prosecutorial brand of argument, drew 20,000 people to her announcement and seemed ready to become a Democratic sensation. Cory Booker and Julian Castro have reputations for being dynamic and even glamorous and have shown flashes of command on the debate stage.

So far, all these candidates after the first waves of interest and excitement are laboring to stay in the first tier (Buttigieg and Harris) or penetrate it at all (O’Rourke, Booker, Castro).

The year seems to be creating a new standard of charisma, as illustrated by the magnetism many Democrats feel toward Bernie Sanders’s flyaway gray hair and give-‘em-hell leftism, or Elizabeth Warren’s crisp, professorial town-hall performances. Biden, meanwhile, seems to be making the case that his familiar ol’-Joe non-charisma is what Democrats need to unify the party and defeat Donald Trump.

Siders, who followed O’Rourke constantly in the early days of his campaign in the expectation that the Texan’s candidacy might ignite, observed the limits of political flash: “What hurt him at the beginning was really a perceived lack of substance. I think he’s a good example of Democrats wanting something more than an aspiration, and I think might in part be a reaction what they have in the White House, which is a huge personality.”

2. The Democratic left is more complicated than meets the eye

There are two dynamics that many reporters and political analysts expect will come to shape the 2020 race. One is a head-to-head battle between Sanders and Warren for the allegiance of the Democratic left. This belief is predicated on the belief that the race will eventually boil down to a two-candidate contest between one of these two, representing “the left,” and Biden, or some successor if he stumbles, representing “moderates.”

Otterbein, who has closely followed this year’s progressive currents, notes that one reason Warren and Sanders so far have mostly avoided confronting each other directly (other than occasional arrows thrown by surrogates) is that they don’t actually overlap that much on their core supporters.

“Warren supporters tend to be more higher-income, more highly educated, older, a little bit whiter,” Otterbein observed. “Bernie supporters are a little bit more [racially] diverse, younger, more male, less college-educated. And so they are pretty different people and you have to ask why they are appealing to different populations when they do, at the end of the day, have a pretty similar left-wing, populist message. And I think it speaks to the fact that this [nomination contest] is about more than ideology.”

Instead, Democrats of all ideological stripes are assessing such concerns as electability, at a time when beating Trump is their paramount goal, and authenticity, at a time when a new media environment punishes anything that looks like insincerity and contrivance. The eagerness of some women to vindicate Hillary Clinton’s 2016 loss is another factor beyond ideological affinity.

So, just as the 2016 GOP contest finished in a contest between two disrupters—Trump and Sen. Ted Cruz—rather than the establishment and outsider contest many expected, there is a chance the Democratic contest doesn’t ultimately break along left vs. moderate lines.

3. This is the year of the selfie

Most presidential campaign cycles produce some signature breakthrough in how candidates engage and mobilize voters. This has been true for generations—from JFK’s use of the then-new technology of television, to Bill Clinton’s decision to exploit casual talk-show formats like Larry King and Arsenio Hall, to Obama’s use of Facebook to Trump’s mastery of Twitter.

What will be the signature of this presidential campaign?

Korecki has a clever nominee: This is becoming the year of the selfie.

Warren, most notably, spends hours in crowds posing with admirers who want to pose for shots on their phones with her. So do many of her rivals.

The point isn’t really the selfies per se. It is how they symbolize campaigns that are based around intimacy, or at least the illusion of intimacy. Trump uses Twitter to talk to his 63.8 million followers on a massive scale. This year’s Democrats are trying to use technology and marketing to create an impression that they are talking with voters, and building a movement in small-scale way.

By this light, the selfies with voters are of a piece with Warren’s decision to forswear political action committee contributions or attend big-dollar fundraisers. The key is to use technology to create sustained engagement with voters. Each individual small-dollar contributor is someone who might be persuaded to give again, or convince neighbors and friends to give, or knock on doors in the days before a primary. Each selfie in a campaign line is one that might be shared on Facebook or Instagram with the voter’s contacts—creating an impression of an authentic and engaged candidate that goes far beyond a single-moment interaction.

Cumulatively, Korecki said, presidential politics is changing in a fundamental way: “It’s not as much of ‘OK, I’m talking on a stage and then I will leave the stage and goodbye.’ It’s people are just having more of an expectation to be able to touch the person, take a picture with the person, say something at the question, get a little video. It’s just much more human interaction.”

4. The POLITICO crystal ball

This summer, for all the noise, the shifts in the fundamental dynamics of the Democratic contest have been subtle. By the time fall turns to winter—a few months from now, and on the eve of actual caucus and primary voting—the dynamics will be more profound.

In our conversation, we pretended to be in possession of a crystal ball that, without predicting the actual winner, could tell us about other major factors. What question would political reporters want to ask the crystal ball? The choices were illuminating of the larger 2020 landscape.

Siders said his question would be on the state of the economy by year’s end. If the current vague fears that a recession may be imminent, this will affect not only Trump’s political standing but also the prism through which Democrats are assessing their own choices.

Korecki said her question would be the state of the impeachment debate. Castro was the first candidate to call for beginning impeachment inquiry against Trump, but Warren made the biggest splash when she also endorsed this. Will impeachment become a new litmus test in the Democratic contest?

Otterbein said her choice for the pivotal question of the Democratic race is: Will African-American support swing decisively toward a candidate other than Biden?

“I think that is pretty much the race, right?” she noted. “Right now a big part of the reason that Joe Biden is ahead is because he’s just crushing every else among African-American voters. Pete is doing atrociously with black voters. Elizabeth Warren is not doing well…She’s kind of won a lot of high-profile black activists over but she’s not done well with the [broader] electorate there yet. Bernie is doing okay—he’s second usually, but he’s just way behind Biden. And, you know, if no one can beat Biden on that front, then I think Biden has got the nomination.”

Happy Labor Day. An edited transcript follows:

John Harris: OK, it’s Labor Day weekend, a year-plus out from a presidential race. If this were a traditional presidential campaign, we would say, “Look, this is the beginning.” Of course, it’s not a traditional presidential campaign; in some ways, it’s been going on for almost two years, or more than two years—ever since Donald Trump was first elected, surprising all of us, I think.

But I still think this is an important date, an important milestone for us to reflect. What have we learned these past few very intense months this summer, and here at the start of fall? What do we still have to learn about this presidential race, before winter starts and when actual voting finally begins?

One thing I’m curious to hear you guys talk about is charisma, and how we’re defining charisma in the Democratic contest in 2020. The most traditionally charismatic candidates—Beto O’Rourke being a great example; he’s good-looking and he has an inspiring stump speech, we all thought, from his 2018 Senate race. He’s kind of fizzled. Mayor Pete [Buttigieg] was attracting lots of attention for his style; he was seen as the charismatic, ascendant candidate, but he’s struggling to stay in the top tier. And Kamala Harris, similarly, is showing the limits of traditional charisma—her image as the razor-sharp, tough prosecutor is not really breaking through. And yet, anti-charisma candidates, or people who traditionally haven’t had what we thought of charisma—Elizabeth Warren being a good example and probably Joe Biden being an example—they seem to be in command of this race.

What have we learned about charisma? And why hasn’t all this anticipation around certain candidates, all the great press they got, seemed to translate into actual support?

Natasha Korecki: Charisma is the initial draw, right? I mean, that is why people were drawn to Beto, to Mayor Pete, and to Kamala, initially. But I think the bottom line of what we’re seeing across all the early states, across different demographics, is Democrats need more time. They want someone with a clear message. They want someone who will take on Trump, and they want somebody who they can see as electable in the general election.

And, you know, I think that’s why Elizabeth Warren has done well. She, I would argue, of the field, has the clearest message: It’s economic disparity, it’s corruption in government—the system is rigged. And by the way, here’s my resume and what I’ve done in the past about it.

And then when you get to Joe Biden, you know, again, I think he actually needs to work on his overall message. But what he came out doing is he, more than anyone in the field, went directly at Trump. You know, there was always doubt—when you think back on when Joe Biden first was announcing—that, you know, he’s too old, he can’t raise money online, he’s not going to be able to compete with these young whippersnappers. And he releases a video that went right at Trump and was all about Charlottesville. And Biden then gets a huge bump, a bigger announcement bump than, I think, anyone else in the Democratic field. And you know, I think that’s the message, and I think it’s what a lot of us are hearing when we’re on the ground in some of the early states, in Iowa and elsewhere—people want to know, you know, ‘That’s great, I love your message. Can you take him on and do you have a message that resonates with me?’

David Siders: Just from the perspective of having covered O’Rourke, the other side maybe of the Biden success coin, I think Natasha has it exactly right—that Democratic voters are looking for a clear message, and also, I think, for more substance to that message.

O’Rourke, on that first day he entered, had tons and tons of support, and raised all sorts of money based on charisma and expectation alone. And then, I think he’s now maybe righted this ship in terms of not having much of a policy platform, although I think to little effect. What hurt him at the beginning was really a perceived lack of substance. I think he’s a good example of Democrats wanting something more than an aspiration, and I think that might in part be a reaction to what they have in the White House, which is a huge personality, and somebody who’s—well, charismatic in some ways, I think, Trump is. And that may be a reaction to that.

Harris: David, you were right there at the beginning, with O’Rourke, though, at all his early appearances. You mentioned that perceived lack of substance. Is that a fair perception?

Siders: I think, initially, it was in the same way that Barack Obama was criticized in 2008 for not—or 2007, rather, for not having so much substance to his plans. And Obama managed to get through those early months and to get past that criticism. What compounded the problem for O’Rourke was that he quickly developed such a negative, I think, relationship with the media that every negative thing about his campaign and the lack of policy detail, initially, is a true and honest thing to say about him in those first—you know, that first month. Because he didn’t have a better relationship, I think, with the media, I think it just hurt him a lot.

In the early month of the campaign, when nobody is advertising yet, or at least the advertisements are all online and directed at getting donors, they’re not doing the broadcast TV advertising. I’m looking back at March/April. Almost all of the movement you’re trying to get is through traditional press, and O’Rourke made two mistakes. One was having some deficiencies in his own candidacy. The other was, I think, ignoring national press and traditional reporters, thinking that he could run the same kind of thing he did in Texas—that he wouldn’t need traditional reporters; he could simply go to Facebook. And so that’s interesting in that it is a reminder, I think, that some of the traditional structures of a presidential campaign are still very much in play.

Korecki: Which is so interesting, because Warren’s people were talking about this at the very beginning. If you recall, in her early days, when she was in the U.S. Senate, she would not take questions when she was walking by the cameras. That’s what she was known for. And they strategically started loosening that up last fall, and building it up slowly, so that by the time she launched, she was starting to get more comfortable with the back-and-forth with reporters, and they made her very accessible.

So, after almost every public event she had, she would do a gaggle. And the thought process there, and I remember adviseors talking about it at the time, was: If you only get one or two chances at a candidate every month or something, you’re going to go at them with the hardest question you can because you think you’re not going to get another chance. And then that ends up getting negative—more negative stories, and then negative stories beget negative stories.

That was a strategic move for them, and I think it’s interesting, hearing David say that, because it’s interesting that it’s actually hurting—potentially has hurt other candidates.

Siders: And I should say for fairness that O’Rourke has recognized this problem very publicly, a month or so ago, and said he needs to do more national media, he needs—and he has. They’ve tried to become, I think, much more accessible in the way that Natasha was describing with Warren. But the question for O’Rourke, of course, is whether it’s all too late because the national media tends to be less interested in candidates who are polling at 2% than at candidates who are polling at 15.

Holly Otterbein:I think the question about charisma is a fascinating one, and it really gets at something that’s going on in this campaign. You have Joe Biden in the lead, and you have, basically tied for second, Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, and neither one of them, as you said, is traditionally charismatic. Biden is a gaffe machine. Bernie gives a very passionate speech but often says many of the same things and is kind of churlish. Elizabeth Warren is wonky and professorial. But what they all are—or I think what they all inspire in voters—is a sense of authenticity. You look at all of them and, in their own ways, because they’re not polished, I think, they come off as authentic.

And we saw this in the 2016 campaign. Donald Trump, because he spoke off the cuff and said crazy things, a lot of people, I think, associated that with authenticity. Bernie Sanders was also seen as authentic in that race. And so I think we’re kind of seeing a continuation of that in the polish that we used to expect of candidates, it’s just not appealing to voters in the way that it used to be.

Harris: Where does that leave Mayor Pete, who’s certainly polished because he’s so articulate. Does he also pass the authenticity test?

Otterbein: That’s a great question. One test the definitely passes is the fundraising test. In the second quarter of the year, he was able to fundraise more than anyone else, which is astonishing when you’ve got these major fundraisers in the race—Bernie Sanders, with his giant email list; Joe Biden, with all of his connections; Elizabeth Warren, now, has built up a real fundraising base, as well—and he was able to trump them all. So, he has enough money to keep on going in this race. But one of the challenges that he’s going to struggle with, is: Can he appeal to people outside of the white, well-off, highly educated base that he’s talking to right now? They appreciate the polish, but, you know, is he going to be able to speak to more demographics than that?

Korecki: Authenticity is something that’s drawing people to Mayor Pete right now. He has a very easy, calm way about him and it does come across as not fake; it seems very authentic. And he’s very quick on his feet and, you know, he kind of moved into this—when Beto was sort of struggling in the beginning, when he was perceived as not having policy ideas—Mayor Pete sort of moved into that void and seemed to have more answers when people asked questions. It just seemed like he had more depth to him, and it just came across as very true to who he was.

Otterbein: He absolutely stole Beto’s thunder. I think that is part of what has led to Beto’s downfall.

Harris: So it’s Labor Day right now. The next big milestone: probably Thanksgiving. Do we think Mayor Pete is going to still be in the top tier? He is right now, probably we’d all agree, kind of barely hanging in the top tier, largely driven on the strength of his fundraising rather than his polling performance. Is he going to be in the top tier, still, at Thanksgiving, do we think? And if so, what does he need to do between now and then? What do you think, Dave?

Siders: I think the fundraising keeps him in the top tier, and I think that there has been so little paid advertising that we might—it might be easy to forget the significance of being able to drop millions and millions of dollars on TV, if a candidate decided to do that who was not a Tom Steyer kind of candidate, but a candidate who is already in that top tier. So, I do think he has that going for him. I also think he’s going to need to express some gravitas that projects an image beyond his young age. If he can do that, especially through mass media, then I do think he hangs on and is in the top tier by Thanksgiving. And if not, he probably slides a little bit.

What’s amazing to me is how static the race has been the last couple of months. I’m not sure there’s a great reason to think that, by Thanksgiving, it changes dramatically, one way or the other.

Korecki: I would add with Mayor Pete that, I mean, one, he is someone I can see going far because he does do really well in debates. He just does. I mean, he is very clear. He is just a very good orator. And as I said, after you see him at events, people will often say, “God, he is just so—there’s such a calm about him. I can see him debating Trump.” And that’s how people—you know, that’s how Democrats are looking at it. That’s the lens that they’re looking at it.

The other thing I’ll say about Mayor Pete is I think their team was taken by surprise about how quick his rise was. They weren’t ready for it. You know, he’s a small-town mayor. I remember, at one of his first events in Iowa, he was supposed to have 50 people there, and 1,650 people showed up. And it was all organic. And he gave a great speech. There was some antigay protestors there and he talked them down and just defused it immediately, in a way that was, again, very calm and measured. But, you know, he didn’t have anyone on the ground in Iowa yet. There was no one there taking people’s names down. They were nowhere near that. Now, they’ve ramped up. They have raised their money. They have 300 people on their campaign. They’re starting to get kicked into gear.

The other thing I’ll say, there is natural enthusiasm for him. Dave and I were at the Iowa Wing Ding Dinner recently, and you saw 22 candidates go up and speak. And for several of them, you could just sort of feel the ground move. Definitely for Elizabeth Warren, but Mayor Pete was another one. You could feel the enthusiasm in the room for him. So there’s something there, and I think that’s going to take him a little further than we think.

Harris: Holly, one of the big stories of the summer, of course, has been the strength of the Democratic Party’s left. Do you think there’s a significant division within the left between Warren and Sanders over what they stand for? Sanders says, “I’m a democratic socialist.” Warren says she believes in capitalism but needs to reform it. Is that a difference with any significance on the ground in presidential politics?

Otterbein: I think, among activists, there’s certainly a division about what is the best way to make change happen. Both Bernie and Warren see that answer to that question differently. I think in the voting base itself, it’s interesting: Bernie and Warren have actually pretty different voters at this point in the primary. That could change, obviously. But Warren supporters tend to be higher-income, more highly educated, older, a little bit whiter. Bernie supporters are a little bit more diverse, younger, more male, less college-educated. And so they are pretty different people and you have to ask why are they appealing to different populations when they do, at the end of the day, have a pretty similar left-wing, populist message. And I think it speaks to the fact that this primary is about more than ideology.

You know, we often talk about these lanes as the moderate lane of the progressive lane, and I think it’s just a little bit more complicated than that in these voters’ minds. They’re thinking about electability, they’re thinking about authenticity, they’re thinking about whether they want a woman in office, they’re thinking about who they trust, who they think is the most experienced. And so right now, at this point in the primary, those questions are dividing the left more than the ideological questions of, you know, should the left rally behind Sanders because he’s slightly to the left of Warren or should it rally around Warren because she doesn’t caller herself a democratic socialist and maybe that will be more electable. It hasn’t broken down that way quite yet.

Between their two campaigns there have been these flashes of disagreements at times. But I think that’s largely been kind of an insider thing. We haven’t seen it, for instance, on the debate stage. When they shared the debate stage last month, they both very clearly decided to not go after each other whatsoever and instead teamed up and kind of battled the moderates on stage. And I think that’s partly because, at this point, their voters don’t overlap too much. That seems to be starting to change in a couple polls. There’s been evidence, for instance, that Warren has been eating a little bit into Bernie’s younger base. If that continues to happen, then we might see them do more battle or see their campaigns do more battle with each other.

Harris: Do you think, come the fall, we’re going to have an open battle for the left, moving beyond these little digs from surrogates and little social media flare-ups? Do you think in the end, this nonaggression pact between Sanders and Warren is going to break down? Because one of them is going to be carrying the banner for the left and the other is going to be an also-ran.

Otterbein: Right now, the Sanders team says that’s not happening. And I’ve personally tried to, you know, ask Sanders things about Warren. I basically tried to bait him into taking on Warren, to see if he would go there, and he has really been resistant to it. So it’ll be fascinating to see whether the nonaggression pact sticks.

Both campaigns say they think it will end up being a progressive versus a moderate in the end. There’s an interesting question there as to whether or not that’s true. What if it ends up being a race like the 2016 Republican primary was, where it was basically, in first and second place, a firebrand and another firebrand—Ted Cruz and Donald Trump? Could it be the same thing in the Democratic Party, Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders? I don’t know. I think it’s at least possible.

Siders: It’s not as if the Democratic electorate stays in some progressive lane and selects its choice down the card of progressives. It tends to go back and forth, based on a lot of other factors, like the ones Holly enumerated. So Biden supporters may go to Bernie, or Sanders supporters may go to Biden, or Harris supporters go to Warren.

Harris: It may not be an ideological campaign per se, but there clearly is strong pressure on all the candidates to take positions that are much further than the left than even Barack Obama would have regarded as sensible in his two presidential runs—on Medicare For All, on decriminalizing border crossings and so forth. Maybe the key difference, though, is part ideology and part stylistic. There’s one candidate who represents politics as we have understood it for decades: Joe Biden. And there’s no other candidate who is gaining a lot of energy, showing a lot of energy, who doesn’t represent something different, which is: Let’s fundamentally challenge the system and let’s fundamentally practice a new brand of politics. Mayor Pete represents that, both Senators Warren and Sanders represent that—a kind of demand, a hunger to shake up the system and not run politics as usual, versus Biden sort of standing for the status quo or a return to the status quo from the Trump era. What do you guys make of that?

Korecki: I think the reason Biden is getting away with that is because Donald Trump is in the White House. I think if it were a different dynamic, Democrats might be looking at things differently, but Biden positioned himself and his team is selling him as the person who can beat Donald Trump.

And I think that’s kind of where Democrats are: They see Biden as someone who can be a uniter and win in a general election. They can see some of the Midwestern voters going for him, you know, that he’s more palatable in that sense. But no one would dispute that other candidates are exciting the base much more when you’re at these events.

Otterbein: Democrats are just so scared, and they have PTSD from 2016 and they’re terrified of another four years under President Trump, and they just want to do anything to prevent that. And so in Joe Biden, they see the solution to that. And I think that his campaign will depend on whether or not he can continue to make people associate him with electability. Every time that he has a quote-unquote “gaffe,” you know, he risks losing that.

Harris: Let’s talk about what’s new in politics this year. It seems to me most presidential campaigns, going back over the last generation, two generations, present some kind of innovation in how candidates communicate with and mobilizer their voters. You know, Ronald Reagan was an innovator back in the day: I’m going to skip over the mainstream media filter and talk directly with activists through direct mail.In the 1992 campaign, it was seen as a great innovation that Bill Clinton would use cable TV and he’d go on Larry King or Arsenio Hall and show a different side of himself than presidential candidates historically have done. In recent years, we’ve had the Facebook campaign and of course President Trump has been the Twitter candidate. What’s our best guess as to what 2020 is going to represent? What’s going to be the signature innovation? What’s going to be the breakthrough that will change how presidential campaigns connect with the American people?

Korecki: I’m going to go with selfies, the selfie lines. You know, is it an innovation? I don’t know. But it has become the norm. I mean, if you’re a candidate running for president and you’re not taking selfies with the people who show up at your events, I mean, you know, you’re a grumpy fool. Warren has it down. It’s almost corporate-like, where, you know, here’s a line, everybody get in line. Biden stays until the end. Cory Booker will do videos with people. There’s just much more one-on-one talking to voters. There’s just a lot more personal interaction. It’s not as much of, “OK, I’m talking on a stage and then I will leave the stage and goodbye.” People are just having more of an expectation to be able to touch the person, take a picture with the person, say something at the question, get a little video. It’s just much more human interaction

Harris: Create intimacy, or at least the illusion of intimacy, out there on the campaign trail.

Siders: I think it’s related to the struggle that all the candidates are having more so this year in the past with small-dollar donors who are giving to more than one candidate. How do you keep that list engaged beyond just the donation or signing up? And so the selfies are one way.

I do think when you look back at the innovations that have been repeated in the following election cycles, they tend to be cemented as the successful ones after they are successful. I’m not sure if there’s an anti-selfie candidate out there, but if that one won, for example, maybe everybody would put away their cell phones.

Korecki: You have a candidate, Elizbeth Warren, again, who says, “I’m not going to do any more of these big-money fundraisers. I’m changing the way things are done.” To the point where, you know, one of her head fundraisers quit over this. I remember in January, other campaigns were telling me that she was going to drop out because she wasn’t going to be able to pay all the people she hired. And then look what happened: She ends up raising a ton of money. So, maybe that’s an innovation.

Otterbein: I think the choice of the selfie line is a brilliant one. And part of what makes it work is that those people are posting those photos on social media. And so when their friends and their family members see them with Elizabeth Warren or whoever, that makes them interested in the candidate and makes them maybe take another look. That’s what is genius about it. If this was just on your personal Polaroid, it wouldn’t work, right?

The Bernie people would say that some of these things that Warren is doing—particularly with small-dollar fundraising—are something that, you know, he led the way on in 2016. He really pioneered the idea of massive email, small-dollar fundraising, and swearing off big-dollar fundraisers in order to do that.

Harris: Let’s pull out the imaginary POLITICO crystal ball that allows us to see into the future. If you would ask one question of that crystal ball about what’s going to happen between now and the end of the year, just before voting starts, what would be the one question you’d like to know? And not who’s going to be ahead in the polls. Tell me what are the big variables that you really are focused on.

Siders: I guess my question would be where the economy is. And I don’t mean the metrics about wages and some of these perhaps more impactful measurements that Democrats talk about. But the top-line numbers that tend to drive and help or hurt a president’s approval rating. If we really are sliding into the beginnings of a recession. I’d be curious to know where that stands by the end of the fall and how the candidates react to it, and how the views of the candidates among the Democratic electorate are shaped by where the economy stands in a few months.

Otterbein: Is it cheating if I say who is doing best with black voters? I think that is pretty much the race, right? Right now, a big part of the reason that Joe Biden is ahead is because he is just crushing everyone else among African American voters. Pete is doing atrociously with black voters. Elizabeth Warren is not doing well—I think she’s kind of won a lot of high-profile black activists over but just has not done well with the electorate there yet. Bernie is doing OK. He’s second usually, but he’s just way far behind Biden. And you know, if no one can beat Biden on that front, then I think Biden has got the nomination.

Korecki: I guess one variable that could affect the Democratic primary is where’s the impeachment inquiry at that point, and how does that affect how people position themselves. If you start off the beginning of the year, no one would touch it. No one in the 2020 field was asking for it, would even go near it. And then it started becoming who could ask—Castro actually asked for it first, I believe. But Warren made the biggest splash with it. And when she did, she raised a ton of money. And lots of Democrats then started jumping on board. So, that’s why I’d look at where we are on impeachment in the late fall. Whoever at that point is in the best position as the anti-Trump, ‘I can beat Trump’ candidate has the best shot in Iowa, and that’s going to be just a month from then.