Welcome to the very first edition of the Surge, our weekly 2020 newsletter in which we rank the presidential candidates according to their Surge Quotient (and welcome back to loyal readers of the 2018 newsletter, the Hot Seats). What is a Surge Quotient? I’m glad you asked: The Surge Quotient is calculated by taking things like polls, media coverage, gaffes, policy proposals, and “How much stuff do I have to say about these candidates that I really want you to know?” and multiplying it all by some number—the Surge Number—that I cannot reveal. The Surge will always have seven entries, which means that, at least with the current field of 23 Democrats and two Republicans, several candidates won’t make the cut each week. And as always in politics, today’s No. 1 could fall completely off the list—or de-surge, to use the technical term—tomorrow. We’ll be tracking it all.





This week, we look ahead to next week’s debates, when none of the candidates we want to see debate each other will be on the same stage because of an ingenious idea from the people who run the Democratic Party. President Donald Trump, meanwhile, is more ready than ever to take on Hillary Clinton, and Cory Booker is looking great because he got into an ol’-fashioned Apology-Off with the front-runner. Bernie Sanders is stuck and getting feisty about it, Pete Buttigieg is starting to expand his support beyond venture capitalists who annually attend the Aspen Ideas Festival, Marianne Williamson hates mandatory vaccination NO SHE DIDN’T MEAN THAT, and Elizabeth Warren, well …