The punditocracy decided Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., wasn't electable. The conventional wisdom said it was impossible for a mayor of a mid-sized Midwest city to compete for the presidential nomination, even if he was also a Rhodes Scholar and an Afghanistan war veteran. Hillary Clinton had too many policies, so Warren wasn't going to win over voters with substance. South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg was utterly unknown to the vast majority of primary voters, so he couldn't compete with Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., whose name ID was practically 100 percent.
All of this was gibberish (as a few of us suggested), but now that we see an Iowa poll (albeit, ridiculously early so it is not predictive but rather descriptive of this moment in the race) in which former vice president Joe Biden is at a respectable 24 percent, and Sanders is in the midteens in a state he should be dominating (he got 49.