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 Ninth Debate.

The ninth debate of the Democratic party was held in Las Vegas last night. It was much more lively and eventful than the prior eight, because five of the candidates had a common target-the short fellow down at the end of the line.  They did not shirk from their mission to destroy him and they largely succeeded. Quick impressions:

I. Helped Their Cause.

1. Elizabeth Warren.  Her best debate. All those committee sessions where she eviscerates banking execs were good preparation for getting Bloomberg on the hook and reeling him in. The stuff on the non-disclosure agreements was devastating.  He now has two choices-let those women out of their non-disclosure agreements or give up on being the Democratic nominee.  This is probably a false choice because I suspect the contents of those non-disclosure agreements would also foreclose him from being the nominee.  

Warren also got in good digs at other candidates, and deftly got in a moment of diplomacy when Pete when after Klobuchar.  If there are any soft Bernie supporters, they are probably giving Warren a second look.  Grade: A.

2. Joe Biden.  His best debate so far. He obviously knows that he's now a long shot and he was able to make his strongest points pretty effectively. He also stayed around to do post-debate interviews, something that he should have done even when he was a front-runner.  Most of all he benefits by the attacks on Bloomberg.  If Bloomberg goes down in the polls, Biden should be the beneficiary.  Grade: B+.

II.  Neither Helped Nor Hurt.

3. Pete Buttigieg.  He usually does well in these debates and he didn't have any terrible moments last night. But he spent most of his time going after Klobuchar, who isn't a front-runner. I think his campaign peaked in Iowa but if Bloomberg and Biden both flounder, he can stay around and gather some delegates.  It's not like he has anything better to do with his time.  Grade: B.

4.  Amy Klobuchar.  For the first time, she was a target of significant incoming fire. That's what happens when you exceed the polls a couple times. She was prepared for the question about the Mexican president, of course but I don't think she came across as warm and prepared as she did at the New Hampshire debate.  She regressed to the mean, which is understandable. But she needs to finish February strong or she will not be around much beyond Super Tuesday.  Grade: B.

III.  Hurt His Case.

5. Bernie Sanders.  The rest of this field has been hesitant to really go after Bernie becuase they all worry about alienating his base. But he's the front-runner now and he took at least some hits last night. He made his same ponderous "policy" points as he always does but he looked petty when responding to Bloomberg's attacks about being a millionaire with three homes by pretending this was a common thing in Vermont. 

He is likely to end the primaries with a plurality of delegates. Last nigth he made the statement that the candidate who should gets the most votes should be the nominee.  That sounds like a prety straight-forward and even obvious principle....if you forget 2016.

The last Democratic primary was held on June14th, 2016.  When it was over, Hillary Clinton had 3.7 million more votes than Bernie Sanders. She had won 54 percent of the pledged delegates. She won, fair and square.  But it took Bernie over a month to endorse her and he talked openly about trying to persuade Super Delegates to change their votes.  Now that the math is shaping up the other way, he has had a convenient change of principles.

This will hurt him, at some point. Unless of course, he runs away with the primaries and wins an outright majority of delegates. Given how fractured and mediocre his opponents looked last night, he should think this is a reasonable goal. Grade: C+.

IV.  A Monkey Trying to Fuck a Football Bat.

6. Michael Bloomberg.  Money can not buy you a personality and it can not buy a thick skin. Bloomberg was unprepared, ill-tempered and out of his league.  He pays his people a lot of money and somehow they convinced him that "The NDAs were consensual" is a sufficient defense to why he is keeping some untold number of actions for workplace harassment and discrimination secret.

There is another debate next week.  If he is really serious about being the nominee he needs to spend the whole week preparing for it, including interviews with some unfriendly outlets.  Two performances like this in a row, and he might as well turn off the cash spigots. 

I don't think Bloomberg will be the nominee. The question becomes, will he really spend a billion dollars supporting any of the people who unmaked him on that stage last night?  I don't see him doing it for Bernie or Warren. But maybe he's a bigger man than he showed last night.

Grade: F.

Embrace the Uncertainty. (Democratic Horse Race Take 13)

Iowa and New Hampshire have Cauc-voted, and all we know for sure is that we don't know much.

I. New Hampshire Analysis.

My predictions were terrible but the polling averages were pretty accurate.  Let's compare:

1.  Bernie Sanders: Result 1st 25.9%.   Polling average 1st 28.7, Prediction 1st 28%.

Bernie did fine. He won and that's the most important thing. But his number was slightly lower than expected and as in Iowa, it does not seem that he brought out waves of young people to vote for him. The electorate is obviously focused on beating Trump and his electability argument is predicated on turning out young people to vote for him in unprecedented numbers. So far, we don't have evidence of that.

The optimistic take is that Bernie is the person most likely to wind up with a plurality of delegates. I am increasing skeptical that he will get through the process with a majority however.  Yesterday Nate Silver's model had him winding up with about 1,650 delegates. After NH the model has him winning 1,531. (1,990 are needed for a majority.)

2.  Pete Buttigieg.  Result: 2nd/24.4%  Polling average: 2nd/21.3%  Prediction:  3rd/16%.

Pete overperformed, slightly. His strategy officially paid off. By working IA and NH meticulously and accepting all free media invitations, he was able to get one gold and one silver. For the moment he has a negligible lead in delegates with 23. (Sanders has 21.)

Now he has to run nationally. He will get a lot of attention but I think voters will be concerned about his lack of experience. 

3. Amy Klobuchar  Result 3rd/19.8%  Polling average: 3rd/11.75  Prediction: 5th/11%.

No one can accuse me of being a homer. Klobuchar had a great night and will now get a lot of media attention. But she has to start running in places that have not paid much attention to her until very recently.   She had a fundraising windfall after the last debate and should have one today too. But she has to scale up in a hurry and I'm not sure what her campaign will focus on next.

She remains a huge long-shot. Nate Silver's model only has her winning 80 delegates. (Up from a project 57 before NH.)  That's two percent. She needs to start beating Pete and she has to worry that Bloomberg might get a lot of voters that otherwise would have voted for her.

I would advise her to keep pointing out the contrasts with Mayor Pete. She has the resume of a president. He does not.  But she also needs someone to go negative on Bernie. I don't think it's the right time to do that directly. But Biden and Warren might have to do that for their own interests.

4.  Elizabeth Warren  Result: 4th/9.3%.  Polling Average: 4th/11%  Prediction: 4th/14%.

It was not her night. Being from a neighboring state, she should have done better than 4th. But she can also claim with a straight face to have done as well as Klobuchar so far. (She in fact has 8 delegates, and Klobuchar 7.)  I think she is a pragmatist. Most years that would mean dropping out now. But this year looks like a fight for every delegate until Milwaukee. She will stay in until Super Tuesday, at least. Watch her fundraising. I think a lot of her donors might be drifting towards Amy Klobuchar today but I know Warren is a worker. She knows that she can still have a big say in who the nominee is and what the platform looks like.


5.  Joe Biden.  Result 5th/8.3%  Polling Average: 4th(tie)/11.0%. Prediction: 2nd/20%.
I thought NH would give Biden a comeback narrative. But his attack on Mayor Pete felt petty and he slid all the way down to 5th place. He skipped town before the voting was done.  But he does have an argument that will resonate with some-so far only white people have been voting. That can give him some hope but he's a wounded candidate and there will be a lot of money spent trying to deny him a win in South Carolina.  If he's going to be the nominee, he needs to have the best 18 days of his campaigning life.

I am starting to think that Trump's Ukraine/Hunter/Burisma fantasy hurt Biden. I don't think any Democrat believes this is a real scandal but there's probably some percentage who doesn't want to go through Hillary's emails again.  The unfortunate thing is that any candidate will have some version of that bullshit thrown at them by Trump and Fox News.  Biden's reputation is probably best suited to withstand it. But he got his ass kicked twice and I'm not sure how he turns that story around.

II.. The Horse Race.

The Top Tier (Front Runners)
1.  Bernie Sanders
2.  Pete Buttigieg (Up from 2)
3.  Michael Bloomberg (Up from 4)

Tier Two (The Alternatives)
4.  Amy Klobuchar (Up from 6)
5.  Elizabeth Warren

Tier Three: (The Wounded)
6. Joe Biden (Down from 2)

Tier Four: (Nothing Better to Do With the Lives)
7. Tom Steyer  He's already spent a fortune in NV and SC so he might as well stick around to see if he can get any return on it. I suspect not.
8.  Tulsi Gabbard  (Up from 9)

III.  The Power Rankings, Take 12
These are just my personal preferences among the remaining candidates.
1. Amy Klobuchar
2. Joe Biden (Up from 4)
3. Pete Buttigieg (Up from 5)
4. Elizabeth Warren (Up from 6)
5. Michael Bloomberg (Up from 7)
6. Bernie Sanders (Up from 8)
7. Tom Steyer (Up from 9)
8. Tulsi Gabbard (Up from 11)

Pour a little out for Andrew Yang, Michael Bennet and Deval Patrick. Bennet and Patrick would have been contenders for compromise candidates at a brokered convention. But I doubt that will happen now.

Andrew Yang will start a podcast and/or Multiple Level Marketing scheme any day now. His endorsement would be worth something, but I'm not sure who he would give it to. Without one, I suspect that the 3 percent of voters he got in NH will split pretty evenly, among Bernie and Pete.