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.
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