Welcome to this week’s edition of the Surge, which ranks your presidential candidates—both Democrats and Republicans—according to a top-secret proprietary formula incorporating good news, bad news, polls, joke potential, a dash of quantum physics, and a sprig of harnessed love.

We apologize that this week’s edition is arriving later than our “traditional” (this is only the second week) Friday morning delivery. The many Democratic presidential candidates, however, were debating for the whole 72 hours during which we typically write this newsletter. In those debates, we saw Elizabeth Warren coast, Kamala Harris kill, and Joe Biden wilt. We saw candidates who have deserved harder looks, like Julián Castro and Cory Booker, get them, and we saw Marianne Williamson demonstrate that indeed, there is a self-help spiritual leader in America who sounds like the late William F. Buckley Jr. Lastly, we saw Republicans feeling quite satisfied about the toll this primary season is going to take on the eventual Democratic nominee.