Four Tuesdays in March (Democratic Horse Race, Take 15)

Seven days ago, Bernie Sanders was a two-to-one betting favorite to be the Democratic nominee.  As I type these words today, Joe Biden is a roughly seven to one favorite.  So yes, a lot happened.

First, the scale of Biden's South Carolina victory came into focus. That caused Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar drop out of the race and endorse Vice-President Biden. Beto O'Rourke got in on the game too at a rally in Dallas.

Then we started to get results from the Super Tuesday states and Joe Biden started to win in places that he had barely campaigned and had almost no physical presence. He won throughout the south, but also in Maine, Massachussetts and Minnesota.  He even took five delegates from Bernie in Vermont.

When all of the Super Tuesday votes are counted, Joe Biden probably be ahead of Bernie Sanders by about 70 delegates. A week before it looked likely that he would trail by at least 100.

I. The Kim Wexler Effect.

Before getting into the remainder of this race, I want to say a word about two candidates who left the races since my last post- Senators Amy Klobuchar and Elizabeth Warren.

When Barack Obama became my president, my friend bought one of those placemats that has all the presidents on it.  He showed it to his three year old daughter, going through all 45 pictures and telling her a little bit about who they were.  He was curious whether she would remark on the fact that only the new guy was black.  When they were done, she asked her dad two questions 1. Why were they all boys? 2.  Why were so many named James?

As of Thursday, we know that they will continue being all boys for at least one more cycle. The earliest that can be remedied is 2024.  She will be old enough to vote in that one. For the moment, it seems likely that she will not have to vote for a James.

Warren's departure has prompted a lot of hand-wringing and genuine lamentation that this was not the year to elect a woman.  One particular piece by Matthew Yglesias got a lot of traction in my social circle.  The premise is that educated liberals are much more likely to support a woman president than any other demographic.  That's a frustrating idea, but it's hard to deny.  There are multiple factors behind this, including the fact that Hillary's loss in 2016 has scared a lot of people into thinking that the country is not ready to elect a woman. At the risk of being reductive, I have to say that I agree this far-the white working class is not ready to vote for a woman.  For some reason, women who come from that demographic seem to lose their street credibility along the way to accumulating the bona fides to run for president.

There was a story line on this week's episode of Better Call Saul that illustrates the dynamic pretty well. In the first part of the episode Kim Wexler is excitedly spending a day working with her pro bono clients in several criminal cases but has to leave those duties to an associate when she gets called away by her primary client, Mesa Verde Bank. She then has to drive out to the sticks and "negotiate" with a squatter who has built a home on land that belongs to the bank.  All of his neighbors have been bought off, but he will not budge.

The squatter is about 70 years old and if the story were not set in 2006, very well might have been wearing a Make America Great Again hat.  Kim attempts to be empathetic and to offer him more money than he is legally entitled to receive. She is polite and dignified, even as it becomes obvious that this older man is unimpressed by her offer. He tells her off, saying that she is the kind of hypocrite who spends one day a year at a soup kitchen to feel better about spending her working days screwing over the little guy. He describes how the bank sent her out to be "the big gun...with a pony tail."

 Eventually, she snaps and tells the guy he has 24 hours to accept a less generous deal or get nothing. As she storms off, her boss praises her for ending the confrontation.  On the drive back into town, Kim pulls over the car and takes stock of what just happened. When we see her next, night has fallen and she is back knocking on the guy's front door. When he answers, she shows him real estate listings that she found. These are homes he can afford with his buyout money. Nice homes. Homes with ameneties like nice views.  She even offers to pay for his movers and to take a day off from work to help herself.

He is still unimpressed.  She explains that she can't relate to what she is going through, because she has never owned a home. As a child, she had to move in the middle of the night, one step ahead of the sheriff and the landlord. We in the audience know she is telling the truth, because we have been learning her story over the course of five seasons.

He responds by telling her that she is willing to say anything to get what she wants.  He goes back inside, turning his back on the one person who was willing and able to help him. The audience knows that Kim sacrificed hours of her time trying to help him because she cared. But to him, she's just a pretty blonde with an educated vocabulary, expensive shoes, and a great skincare regime.

Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren all grew up in the working class. Voters see this in Brooklyn Bernie even though noone quite seems to know what he did for a living in his 20s and 30s.  As for Scranton Joe, he just exudes the mores and culture of a car salesman's son. 

But to thos same voters, Elizabeth Warren will always be the Harvard prof who probably benefitted from identifying as a Native American based on negligible ancestry that never affected her day to day life. Bernie can own three houses and Biden can be famous for 40 years, but they are still of the working class.  Betsy Herring of  Oklahoma City, is just Professor Warren from Harvard.

No matter how much she pledge to work for the working man and woman, they never got comfortable with her. She didn't make the sale. And I'm not sure she ever could have. She finished third in the state she represents in the senate and fourth in the state of her birth.

As for Klobuchar, her failures are more specific. She never connected with black or brown voters. As each debate went by, I wanted her to find a specific believable reason she could give for why minority voters should choose her from among the many realistic options they had before them. It did not happen.  A strong third place finish in New Hampshire gave me hope, but she dropped like a rock in Nevada and South Carolina.  Her smartest move was to get out when she did and to deliver her home state for Joe Biden. Klobuchar competed against Warren in four states. The each got just over 100,000 votes.  Neither will be president this time, although Klobuchar remains a plausible option for Biden' running mate.

For a variety of geographic and pragmatic reasons, Warren is not that. Third place is not much consolation. But having run a good and honest campaign built on specific policy ideas and committed to inclusion and helping people from backgrounds like her own should be. Even if too many of those people never appreciate what she tried to do.


II.  The Horse Race.

1. The Front Runner-Joe Biden

The day before Super Tuesday, Biden was favored to win six of the 14 states. He won ten. And the party has continued to coalesce behind him in the days since then. He has weaknesses, but the people of South Carolina chose him so resoundingly that Buttigieg and Klobuchar knew it was time to get out.

He is popular and decent. The institutional party likes him and he is riding a wave of goodwill that is rarely seen in politics. His weaknesses are well documented and a lot can wrong in eight months. But after the next few weeks, he will probably be on track to win the nomination with a couple hundred delegates to spare.

2. The Stubborn Independent- Bernie Sanders.

A week ago Bernie had good reason to expect that he would win a fractured primary to emerge with a clear plurality of delegates. An out right majority was possible, if things fell into place. But then the party came together and turned out in large numbers for Biden.

Bernie staked his candidacy on a very specific theory-he is a strong candidate because he can turn out voters who did not turn out in 2016. He claimed that he would motivate large numbers of young people to vote.  We've now had 18 states test that theory and there is no evidence to support it.

So far, Bernie does not appear to have a plan B. He has not shifted his message to the center and he not hired anyone from the exiting centrist campaigns or gotten the support of Elizbeth Warren.

He does not seem capable of strategic change. And the delegate math looks brutal for him. Super Tuesday was his chance to run up the score.  The coming Tuesdays will deliver blowouts in Florida and Mississippi and likely losses in Illinois and Ohio.  It does not look good.

3. Tulsi Gabbard is still running for some fucking reason. She has two delegates. I hope they are friends, because it will save them some hotel money in Milwaukee this summer.


III. When Will This End?

1. The Rest of March

Six states vote on March 10th.  Bernie is the betting underdog in all six. Idaho and Washington might be close, and a win in either of those states would at least let him claim to be winning the western states. But if he really wants to make the race competitive, he needs to win Michigan, which was the site of his biggest upset victory in 2016. 

Bernie is sure to get crushed in Michigan and Mississippi, so even if he holds his own in MI and overperforms out west, Biden's delegate lead will probably grow.

Bernie claims to be more popular than Biden in the states that the Democrats need to win in November. Michigan will be his best chance to test that theory. It des not look promising at the moment.

If he doesn't win Michigan, he won't really have a plausible path forward to a delegate majority. But he will keep fighting, because Bernie is about building a left wing movement in America and he's not going to let something as silly and capitalist as math get in the way of that.  (He will also have, theoretically a shot at a plurality, so okay, fight on.)

After those six states vote, there is a debate scheduled for March 15th. Bernie will be on the attack and Biden is vulnerable to a bad night. But  March 17th is where it gets really ugly for Bernie.  He will lose Ohio and Arizona and get hammered in Florida. I suspect Bernie will focus on Illinois and hope for a win in a big state. It could revive his candidacy, at least for awhile.

But then we get to the 4th and final Tuesday of the month-March 24th. Only one state votes that day, but it is Georgia. Unless something really radical changes in the race in the next 16 days, Biden will cruise to another blowout and the delegate math will start to look really hairy for Bernie.

2. COVID-19.

In the days leading up to Super Tuesday a friend who supports Bernie told me that the Corona Virus could hurt Biden, as it will sour people on the status quo.  That day may well come. But my operating theory is that for now, the virus makes people want stability.  If it gets really, really bad, then they might want to burn the system down.

Tomorrow is Monday March 9th. It looks like the stock markets will take a blood bath in the morning. Maybe more bad news will come tomorrow and it will shake up the race enough to give Bernie life.  But a more likely outcome is that people will turn out on Tuesday so that the Democrats can put this fight behind them and begin to face the Orange Menace.


I do not expect Bernie stop campaigning until all of the primaries have been held. As in 2016, he will  slowly realize that the nomination is not to be his, but he will keep building his "movement." The best result fo the Democrats is that the rest of March becomes so bad for Bernie hat he looks ridiculous campaigning in the spring.

Not that that will stop him either.

IV. The Final (?) Power Rankings.

1. Joe Biden (Up from 2)
2. Bernie Sanders (Up from 4 thanks to Klobuchar and Warren leaving the race.)
3. Tulsi "DFL" Gabbard.

Pour some out for Liz and Amy.  If anyone wants to borrow my copy of Under the Dome, let me know.

The End of the Beginning (Democratic Horse Race, Take 14)

Does the name James Rassman mean anything to you?  Probably not.

On March 13, 1969 James Rassman was embarked on a swift boat in the Mekong River delta. During a firefight, he went over the side, falling into the Bay Hap River.  John Kerry ordered the boat to turn around, back into enemy fire.  When Rassman was unable to pull himself onto the boat, Kerry went down and reached for him, pulling him to safety.

Rassman lived a mostly quiet life after getting home from the service. But one day in 2004 he got on  a plane to Iowa and showed up at a John Kerry event to tell that story. Kerry was already rising in the polls, but this pushed him over the top. He won Iowa and New Hampshire on his way to a relatively easy nomination that summer.

Most politicians do not have a story like that. There are only so many war heroes to go around. Joe Biden has a hell of personal story.  When Joe Bide was 30 years old and a senator-elect, his wife and infant daughter were killed in a car accident. Last week during a CNN Town Hall Reverend Anthony Thompson asked Biden a question about his faith. Rev. Thompson's wife was murdered by a white supremacist during the mass shooting of a black church in Charleston, South Carolina in 2015. Vice-President Biden responded to the question in direct and personal terms, as seen above.

And yesterday, Biden swamped the South Carolina primary with nearly 50% of the vote. He won 39 of 54 delegates and the race now feels like a two-man contest. If Biden holds his own on Super Tuesday, and winds up winning the nomination in Milwaukee, the moment with Reverend Thompson might be seen as the turning point of what recently looked like a doomed campaign.

So where does this leave us?

I. Early State Analysis.
After four contests, the race stands as follows:

1. Joe Biden, 30% of the vote, 1 win, 54 delegates.
2. Bernie Sanders, 24% of the vote, 2 wins, 2 second places finishes, 60 delegates.
3. Pete Buttigieg, 15% of the vote, 1 win, 1 second, 1 third, and 1 fourth. 26 delegates
4. Elizabeth Warren 10 % of the vote, 8 delegates
5. Amy Klobuchar 10% of the vote, 7 delegates.

II. The Horse Race: No More Tiers.

1. The Front Runner-Bernie Sanders.

Bernie leads in delegates and after Tuesday will probably have the popular vote lead too. He is the front-runner. He has done well with Latino voters and he remains the overwhelming favorite of young voters.  But he has only exceeded expectations once (Nevada) and a winnowing field probably helps Biden going forward.

I like Bernie's chances of winning a plurality of delegates. But to win a majority, he's going to need to course-correct a little. As moderates drop out, he should hire some of their staff because he needs to get better at messaging for the center of the country.

At the last debate he responded to every criticism of him with an angry harrumph. When called out on his support of Fidel Castro, he doubled down. This will not win him any votes going forward. He needs to think about the center more, not just to win the nomination but to be competitive in the general election.

2.  The Alternative- Joe Biden.

Biden just had the best night of his life. But nothing is guaranteed on Super Tuesday.  He needs to win the southern states and to make the delegate threshold in California. He's also an underdog in Texas, but he can probably control the delegate bleeding there.

But one good night does not erase his weaknesses. He is prone to gaffes and his fundraising has been poor. He can probably win a convention floor fight over Bernie, but only if the numbers are close to even.

3. The Persister-Elizabeth Warren.

Third in Iowa.  Fourth in neighboring New Hampshire. Fourth again Nevada, Fifth in South Carolina. She has under-performed and her trend is downward. But she retains a committed core of voters who like her debate style and her thoroughness. They have donated enough money to her campaign that she can keep competing through March.

Last night she was frank in saying that her plan going forward was to win as many delegates as possible. She knows the math does not exist to propel her to a delegate majority. But she also knows that every delegate she earns gives her leverage in Milwaukee. She is from the left wing of the Democratic party but she's also a believer in institutions. At the time of her choosing, she could endorse either Bernie or Biden and sell it with a straight face.

If she wins Massachusetts on Tuesday, she has a justification to stay on beyond that point. She will not be the presidential nominee. But she could be the most powerful broker at the first brokered convention of my lifetime.

4.  The Imperfect Pragmatist-Amy Klobuchar.

I have been with Amy for months. I still think she has the best resume to get elected and the best temperament to govern. But it's not going to happen this year.

She caught a break in Iowa. The confusion about the outcome and the poor showing of Vice-President Biden became the biggest stories coming out of the first caucus. By performing slightly better than polls suggested, she looked like a credible option. And then she had a great debate night in New Hampshire. This led to a respectable third place finish. Six delegates and 20% of the vote gave her momentum and boosted her fund raising.

But at the next debate, she got into a petty exchange with Buttigieg that took some of the glow off her earlier performance. She also completely failed to develop a narrative for why black and brown people should vote for her. So she bombed down to 5th in Nevada and all the way to 6th in South Carolina.

5-3-5-6 is not going to do it. But she is the betting favorite to win Minnesota on Tuesday, and I know that means a lot to her. Like Warren, she knows that every delegate is valuable.

Fun fact-the very first presidential candidate that I ever supported was Senator Paul Simon (D-IL). When I was 14 years old, I went to a Barnes and Noble and special-ordered his book about putting America to work through an infrastructure jobs program. I was too young to vote for him, but I followed him closely, including his surprise appearance on Saturday Night Live with the other Paul Simon. (No relation and no endorsement either.)

Simon won his home state Illinois primary that March.  I want Amy Klobuchar to do the same this week. And then, she needs to drop out.


5.  The Republican- Mike Bloomberg.
He has spent half a billion dollars on this campaign before his name ever appeared on a regular ballot. I don't blame him for staying around long enough to find out just how bad that investment is. There might even be a practical justification for competing on Tuesday. A lot of mail-in ballots were cast before his campaign was revealed to be the cynical joke that it is. So he might just get 15 percent of the vote in California. He certainly will get it in plenty of congressional districts.  That could cost Sanders some delegates, and if that prevents a Bernie nomination, well there are worse ways for a 78 year old man to spend eight tenths of one percent of his wealth.

6. Yeah, she's still running-Tulsi Gabbard.
One percent in South Carolina. One.  But she's still the preferred candidate of Fox News.


And pour a little out for Tom Steyer. He spent $250 million dollars so people could hear his opinions about various things. That's not as ridiculous as spending the percentage of free time that I spend doing the same thing.


Bonus Segment: I was drafting this posting when the news broke that Pete Buttigieg was dropping out of the 2020 race.  I'll leave this here, unedited for posterity's sake.  I am glad he accepted the reality of the math.  He has a bright future.

The Rookie of the Year-Pete Buttigieg.
Someday he might be the answer to the trivia question: Who won the last Iowa caucus?

Winning Iowa is nothing to sneeze at it. He had to overcome a lot of questions about his age and resume. He also had to convince a lot of people that the country was ready to elect a gay president. He followed this up with a very close 2nd place finish in New Hampshire.

But then the race turned to more diverse states, and he faltered. A respectable third in Nevada but a distant 4th  in South Carolina. At one point last night it looked like he might announce that he was dropping out today. But for now, his campaign goes on.

Maybe he has polling that shows him sucking up sizeable delegate numbers in places like Oklahoma and Colorado. But he is the one candidate who I think could enhance his career by dropping out early. You won Iowa, kid. If Biden becomes president, you'll probably have a plumb job this time next year.
Putting up a bunch of six to ten percent performances on Tuesday doesn't get you much.

III. The  Power Rankings, Take 13.

These are just my personal preferences among the remaining candidates:

1. Amy Klobuchar  (For old time's sake.)
2. Joe Biden 
3. Elizabeth Warren (Up from 4)
4. Bernie Sanders (Up from 6.)
5. Michael Bloomberg  (Same position numerically because Pete dropped out, but for the record I have moved him below Bernie Sanders.)
6. Tulsi Gabbard (Up from 8, but DFL is still DFL.)