Let's Look Back At Chris Cillizza's Hilarious "2020 Power Rankings"

CNN journalist Chris Cillizza has spent most of his recent journalistic career being ridiculed on social media from all sides of the political spectrum due to his incredibly awful takes, seemingly living by the manta of 'well, if everyone hates me I must be doing something right!' Even fellow mainstream liberal journalists such as Charles Pierce and Todd Zwillich have asked Cillizza if he ever "spends a second critically thinking" and claiming Cillizza is "completely incapable of critical thought."

When looking for things to write about, I often save pictures or keep bookmarks of things that I think could be interesting topics to comment on and after digging through the previously saved pictures I found an old Cillizza Democratic Primary 'Power Rankings' that was published at the very start of the primary process and thought it would be interesting to see how his predictions have held up over time.

Now, we've all made predictions that have come up short or just been flat out wrong, but for Cillizza, this is wheelhouse, it's why he's universally loathed and consistently ratioed on Twitter. After each Democratic Primary debate Cillizza's 'Winners and Losers' column ends up looking pretty similar to this, where he picks whoever gets the most applause or laughter from the debate crowd, but as previously mentioned, without any actual critical thought.

Cillizza applies the same logic to his 'Power Rankings', basing the ratings on perceived popularity, overestimating the value of identity politics and how closely they fit with the 'electability' argument of having to be a centrist Democrat who is able to reach a supposed large group of mythical disaffected Republicans, something which clearly worked wonders during the 2016 election and is why Hillary Clinton is President now, right?

Let's dig into the rankings. Beginning with the top three, Cillizza has Kamala Harris first, Beto O'Rourke second and Joe Biden third. We are now less than two weeks away from when voters in Iowa pick their choice among the Democratic candidates, Iowa being the first state to vote in the Democratic Primary and as we come up to the Iowa caucus only one of Cillizza's top three are still in the primary race: Joe Biden. Beto dropped out at the beginning of November and Kamala Harris followed suit in early December.

Now for the next three in Cillizza's rankings, Elizabeth Warren fourth, Cory Booker fifth and Sherrod Brown sixth. Once again, only one of these candidates are even still in the race: Elizabeth Warren. Cory Booker dropped out on the 13th of January and Sherrod Brown didn't even enter the primary race, declaring in early March 2019 that he wasn't running for president.

Let's finish with the final four of the rankings, Bernie Sanders (7th), Kirsten Gillibrand (8th), Amy Klobuchar (9th) and Julian Castro (10th). Once again Cillizza clearly nailed it as two of these four candidates have already dropped out - Kirsten Gillibrand dropped out in August 2019 and Castro dropped out at the beginning of 2020. Bernie Sanders is sitting in second place, five places higher than Cillizza's ranking and Klobuchar (3%) is currently sitting in seventh place, out of ten total candidates that are still running.

So let's summarise. Five of the ten candidates Cillizza listed aren't even in the race anymore in the lead up to Iowa voting and one other candidate - Sherrod Brown - never even entered the race to begin with. The fact that Cillizza had Sanders, who is leading in some polls nationally, behind Sherrod Brown, who was never running, and behind Booker and Beto when they barely reached 3% in polling and could barely make any of the debate stages is proof that Cillizza is indeed devoid on any critical thinking.