THE LEDE

The Lede: Since impeachment is an intense but predictable Washington drama, Democrats may have a little space in their heads for the primary. And as they look back to Iowa, they’re going to see…Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders.

Is Michael Bloomberg really going viral? Axios the other day reported that on Nov. 24 Bloomberg was enjoying an “attention boom,” pointing at both cable TV (true!) and the following internet stat: “Recent stories about Bloomberg generated more social media interactions than Amy Klobuchar, Andrew Yang, Julián Castro, or Tom Steyer have ever gotten.” That’s not nothing — but “storiesarticles about” is a pretty narrow measure.

So I asked my colleague Brandon Hardin to pull a more organic measure, interactions on the candidates’ Facebook pages the week after Bloomberg announced, and it’s pretty much what you’d expect: Bernie dominates, Warren is second, and Bloomberg is the floor. His tweets, meanwhile, get likes and retweets in the triple figures, but this isn’t a mass movement.

Bloomberg did have stellar engagement on one post a couple months ago, Hardin says: the one in which he appeared with India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi. He’d be a hell of an internet candidate in India, it seems.

Remember Cory Booker? The New Jersey senator was on AM to DM Wednesday morning, upset that “we’ve gotten to a point now where there’s more billionaires in the 2020 race than there are black people.” Booker says it with a different valence than Sanders and Warren do — some of his best friends are billionaires — and if you’re a pro-business Democrat worried about Joe Biden, it’s hard to watch that interview and not come away thinking Booker is the blindingly obvious answer to the question of who’s a strong centrist alternative.

TEXTING WITH

Ian Sams

Kamala Harris was the first major candidate to text with me for this series, and we talked policy and memes. She left the race yesterday after failing to find a clear base of support, and will now be a sought-after endorsement for her former rivals. I texted yesterday with a staffer of hers, Ian Sams. I chose him because he and I had one of the sort of blowups — in this newsletter — that you sometimes see between campaigns and reporters.

BEN SMITH: Ian - thanks for doing this. And to begin with - can you bear to send over a selfie and let me know where you are today? IMAGE DESCRIPTION: Ian Sams in front of a wall of “Kamala Harris For The People” signs. IAN SAMS: hey ben. Thanks for chatting. In the office in baltimore, watching impeachment hearings.

BEN SMITH: You spent a year pouring your heart into Kamala’s campaign, and it ended yesterday. How do you feel? IAN SAMS: It’s pretty devastating. She was a historic candidate. The rough and tumble of daily campaign life can often distract from what her running at all really means. Only the third Black woman to ever run for president from a major party. It was a challenging primary field -- in size, resource environment, etc. -- but she always stood out, and I think her example has really opened the door for people from many backgrounds to say, “Hey, someone like me could run for president one day.”

BEN SMITH: There was this moment after the first debate when she has a surge of support and money - what do you think happened after that?

IAN SAMS: Obviously, campaigns are tough and no one does everything right, but she was treated with the scrutiny of a frontrunner from day one and that continued for the entire race. Regardless of where she really stood in the polls, etc. And that has an effect. Every candidate running has to be prepared for scrutiny, but the volume and intensity of what she faced -- initially after the successful launch, then again after that lightning debate performance -- was pretty unique in the field. Especially for a candidate who really was introducing herself nationally for the first time.

BEN SMITH: What do you think the press got most wrong about Kamala, and her campaign? IAN SAMS: You’re trying to make me complain!! That is a hard question. No simple answers. BEN SMITH: I’ll take a complicated answer! To put it differently -- what did you feel like you learned about the press?

IAN SAMS: I remember Peter Hamby writing a column a year or two ago in which he called Twitter “the modern day assignment desk” for reporters. And this campaign really crystalized that for me. Twitter narratives - and who knows sometimes where they really come from - drive coverage decisions and spawn story ideas in a dominant way. It’s a loop that gets to print which gets to TV which gets to pundits and donors and talkers.

BEN SMITH: Do you buy this Times argument, which is sort of a version of that?

IMAGE DESCRIPTION: New York Times excerpt reading, “There are also generational fissures. One adviser said the fixation that some younger staffers have with liberals on Twitter distorted their view of what issues and moments truly mattered, joking that it was not President Trump’s account that should be taken offline, as Ms. Harris has urged, but rather those of their own trigger-happy communications team.”

IAN SAMS: As I’m sure you’ve come to know setting up an online only news outlet with heavy reliance on social media to lift and carry traffic, you can’t ignore it. You can’t bury your head in the sand and say, “Twitter doesn’t matter.” The platform’s power is undeniable. Just look at Trump. You have to walk and chew gum at the same time though. Just like reporters have to actually go talk to human beings in real life to report out stories and can’t just sit and RT and fav all day and churn out takes, campaigns have to both fight battles on Twitter and convey broad messages to people offline. Nothing is zero sum.

IAN SAMS: Even Ryan Brooks had to actually speak to Stans! (very interesting story btw)

BEN SMITH: Finally, you and I had this exchange in the hear of the campaign a few months ago, and I thought it might be useful to talk it through. I was frustrated because I thought you were invoking the (real) race and gender barriers and Harris faced to criticize a basically innocuous joke. We don’t need to relitigate this one - but can you tell me a little about how you saw that from the inside - and about whether you do think race and gender bias was central to how she was being covered?

IAN SAMS: This again?! Honestly that was a lesson. If you’ve only gotten two hours sleep after a debate night, just don’t text you frustrations! And if you do get the OTR agreement first! But yes

IAN SAMS: absolutely we still struggle as a country and as a people to reckon with implicit or explicit biases. It’s true in politics, media, business, life. All of it. In this line of work, people always look for analogues. “Oh she is the next Obama!” But the truth is, she is the first -- an only -- Kamala Harris. There are no analogues for a Black woman, daughter of Indian and Jamaican immigrants, who spent a career as a prosecutor, running for president. And we live in a world where Black women constantly face barriers that others just don’t. I won’t make any excuses, but it’s a fact. And I wish everyone -- myself included -- always took the time to be reflective and thoughtful about bias and how it affects literally everything we do. We could all use a bit more empathy.

BEN SMITH: What’s next for you? IAN SAMS: Wine. Then a vacation. Any recs?

IAN SAMS: Right now I’ve narrowed it to “somewhere warm” But in all seriousness, we’ve gotta beat Trump. He’s dangerous. Going to rest up, see how all this goes, but definitely be a part of defeating this guy. God knows Kamala Harris will too. Haven’t seen the last of her. Stay tuned.

ON THE TRAIL WITH BUZZFEED NEWS

Ryan has a fantastic look at the relationship between stan culture and political campaigns, with lots of newsy details on the #KHive.

After Harris dropped out, Nidhi spoke with Julián Castro, who said that the media is holding candidates of color to a different standard.

If senators running for president get stuck in Washington for an impeachment trial, Addy wrote, Bernie Sanders has a secret weapon: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

And Molly scooped before Thanksgiving that a woman alleged in 2011 that Andrew Yang discriminated against her at his tutoring company.

Darren reported on the Democratic panic that is setting in over pro-Trump messaging to occasional black voters.

📝 This letter was edited and brought to you by Ben Smith, Veronica Dulin, and BuzzFeed News. You can always reach us here.

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