Trust me when I tell you that the following is not meant to diminish Bernie Sanders’ accomplishment in winning the New Hampshire primary on Tuesday night but is instead intended to place things in perspective. You could be forgiven for believing that you’ve woken up on Groundhog Day.
In 2016, Bernie Sanders technically lost the Iowa Caucuses to Hillary Clinton, but the outcome was contested and many in the Sanders campaign thought they had been robbed. Nonetheless, he quickly rebounded by winning the New Hampshire primary. This obviously mirrors almost exactly what has transpired in the first two contests of 2020.
‘
Strictly speaking, Pete Buttigieg is in first place because he’s won the most delegates so far, but his lead is insignificant. Most people looking at the race right now would concede that Sanders is the current frontrunner and has the best chance to win the nomination. And that is what is clearly differentiates 2020 from 2016, because even after Sanders’ strong win in New Hampshire four years ago, there appeared to be almost no path to victory for him.
I think the truth is actually somewhere between these two extremes. Sanders is probably disappointed in his performance in both Iowa and New Hampshire, but he’s done well enough to be pleased with his position. Yet, he didn’t get off to the kind of start he needed to take on clear frontrunner status. If his path looks easier this time, it’s because he facing weaker and more divided opposition and he’s better prepared and organized. Having said that, he’s objectively in about the same position he was in 2016 as he heads into much tougher territory.
If things haven’t exactly broken Sanders way so far, they most definitely haven’t gone well for Joe Biden. Say what you want about his skills in debates or on the campaign trail, everything seems to have been stacked against him. What he and Sanders shared at the outset was the most sizable base of solid supporters. For Sanders, this was veterans of his last campaign, and for Biden it was Obama loyalists, particularly in the black community. But Biden is still waiting to reach a state where his base of support makes up a significant portion of the electorate. If South Carolina and Nevada had gone first instead of Iowa and New Hampshire, this race would look a lot different. To make matters worse, Biden had his family’s name dragged through the mud for two months prior to the voting during the impeachment, which badly undermined his image as an ethical guy who doesn’t have a lot of skeletons that Trump can exploit. His electability argument quite obviously took a huge hit. The results in Iowa and New Hampshire have him hemorrhaging support, and now Michael Bloomberg is making inroads with Biden’s black supporters before they even have a chance to vote for him. It’s so bad, in fact, that it may cost him the endorsement of the powerful culinary worker’s union in Nevada. It’s fair to say that Biden’s campaign is hanging on by a thread now, but he still has a chance to turn things around if he can keep the floor from falling out before South Carolina votes in 18 days.
Assuming Elizabeth Warren doesn’t wind up winning the nomination, and that looks like the longest of long shots right now, my post-mortem on her campaign is going to focus on her decision to fight on Bernie Sanders’ turf. It may sound crazy, but if I had been advising her, I would have told her to use a modified version of Sarah Palin’s “Mama Grizzly” approach. Instead of going after the far left liberal vote, I would have told her to act like an aggressive protector of the working class, the small businessman, the small farmer, and everyone impacted by the monopolization of the economy. I would have had her do this in struggling urban and rural communities, and in front of the local chambers of commerce all over the country. The basic idea would be to approach income inequality as a matter of regional inequality, with a focus on the people and regions that are getting left behind as local ownership disappears and wealth is concentrated in just a few booming areas of the country. I’d try to move her as far away from her professorial image as possible and make her a woman of the people. She’d be talking about agricultural auctions and tying the opioid crisis to the larger issue of pharmaceutical greed and lack of accountability. She’d be talking about the disappearance of small businesses as everything is gobbled up by Wal-Mart and Amazon. She’d have a plan for every worker in the energy sector whose job is threatened by needed changes to address climate change. She’d talk as much about kids who have no desire to go to college as kids who want to be relieved from their college debt. This was Warren’s area of expertise and also her most logical lane, and it also would involve a much needed image makeover that would give her a much better chance in a general election if she made it that far.
Warren has been talking about these things, but she didn’t do it consistently enough or with enough theatrics, and she got away from it too often in her effort to cut into Sanders’ edge on the left. But Sanders started this campaign with a small army and Warren was never likely to match him. She wound up siloed on the left, which you can see by her poor performance in the Boston suburbs on Tuesday night. The New Hampshire bedroom communities showed a clear preference for Buttigieg and Klobuchar over Warren, and she didn’t get a decent share of the college vote or the liberal vote. If she’s going to continue on, she has to pivot in a hurry and get back to acting like a warrior for the people. She can do this in a way that makes her seem like more of a moderate with more potential appeal in the heartland, which is actually what the suburbs want to see.
I don’t really know where Pete Buttigieg goes from here, but he’s done as well as he could have reasonably hoped, and I guess he’s going to see if it translates to enough increased support in Nevada and South Carolina to give him some life for the Super Tuesday contests. Maybe he can convince people that he’s a safe moderate electable choice, although it seems like quite a stretch. It worked well enough in New Hampshire, although Amy Klobuchar surged on the same sentiment. Had they not both surged at the same time, it’s probable that Sanders would not have been the winner in the Granite State, and if they continue to split this vote in the future it could become a trend.
There’s anecdotal evidence that a lot of voters in New Hampshire struggled to choose between Klobuchar and Warren, and broke late for Klobuchar. Considering their much different ideological profiles, this is best explained as a desire to pick the most electable woman. If Warren continues to flame out, Klobuchar could bank a good part of her support. But it’s really Biden’s potential demise that most stands to benefit Buttigieg and Klobuchar. They really need Biden to tank in Nevada and South Carolina so that they can add as much of his middle lane support to their own as possible before they have to take on the Michael Bloomberg juggernaut.
As things stand now, everything seems to be breaking Bloomberg’s way. He needs Sanders to look as unstoppable as possible. He needs Biden to look hopeless. He doesn’t want Warren coming after him with both barrels blazing. And, if he is going to have to beat off some moderates, let it be ones with no support in the black community, little organization, and (in Klobuchar’s case) no money.
If you’re a progressive who doesn’t believe Sanders can unite the party or a Obama Democrat who wants the left-most candidate who can win, the New Hampshire results were about as bad as could be drawn up. As things look now, your choice is Sanders or a former Republican billionaire, a McKinsey consultant financed by Silicon Valley libertarians and monopolists, or a very centrist senator from Minnesota.
This group may or may not be able to beat Trump, but it’s not an appealing menu.
I’ll go over the numbers from New Hampshire when they are complete, but what I’ve seen so far confirms my concern about the shape of Sanders’ support. He performed poorly in the affluent suburbs where the Democrats have built their congressional majority over the last four years. Warren also performed very badly there, which is attributable to her running as a Sanderite. In Bernie’s favor, turnout appears to have been strong and he did well in the urban areas, even if these are not typical urban areas. I want to get a feel for his performance in the Obama-Trump areas of the state, because he’ll need to perform in those areas to be viable against Trump. If he’s really all that’s remaining to choose from on the left, we’ll need to know if he’s actually got a shot to win the general. And we should not lose sight of the fact that 74 percent of Democratic primary voters in New Hampshire chose someone other than Sanders. Winning gives people confidence, but that confidence can be misplaced. The real story, if it can be discerned at all, is hiding in the precinct results.
Finally, Sanders clearly won in New Hampshire because he got the most votes. However, the projections are that he and Buttigieg will actually be awarded 9 delegates each, so on the thing that actually ought to matter, it was a tie. This is why I said going in that I would pay less attention to the winner than the order in which the candidates finished. Biden got the booby prize, coming in fifth with just 8 percent of the vote, but Warren did so poorly at 9 percent that she really can’t spin the result as helping her in any way. I said Buttigieg really needed to win but could possibly weather a second place finish. Well, he tied in delegates, so he accomplished the minimum standard I set for him. And I said Klobuchar would be treated like a champion if she came in third, and that’s proving to be correct.
As for Sanders, I said he wanted a win but wouldn’t be all that impacted if he lost. He got his victory, and while the win exposed some weaknesses, I think every other candidate would gladly trade places with him right now. Strangely, he’s simultaneously in the exact same position he was in four years ago and in a much stronger position.
Impressively done, thanks.
thank you.
I’ll take your word on whether such a Warren policy would have been good politics. But it would have been good economics, and good for the country.
Sanders got 150,000 votes in NH in 2016. Last night he got half that. His campaign’s rationale is that it would inspire a whole new bunch of voters. Didn’t happen. The Senator from next door lost half his voters. This suggests to me that voters are getting serious about winning and possibly taking back the Senate as well. If we have to use a billionaire to win, we use a billionaire.
As of today I think Bloomberg is the un-anointed front runner.
Bloomberg, as I said, has to be pleased as punch about the results in New Hampshire. But I think it’s wrong to look at how Sanders did in a two-way race and compare it to how he fared last night. In 2016, it was much more of a referendum on Clinton: yes or no.
Sanders’ strong support in 2016 was probably about the same as it was on Tuesday. Overall, the turnout was pretty strong, although it’s hard to say how much Sanders had to do with that. More candidates asking for votes probably equals more people voting, and Trump is the main mobilizer in the Democratic primaries. Still, it’s important that almost three-quarters of the voters chose someone other than Sanders. Winning with weak pluralities may give you momentum but it doesn’t mean you’re a strong general election candidate or that you can unite the party.
I’m married and I love my wife. Under any circumstance, however many choices I was offered, I would still choose my wife. If Bernie is a transformative, inspirational figure, how come so many voters who supported him last time went, “Enh, let me shop around first?” And half chose, “Someone who is not Bernie.”
Well, as I said, this is a category error. Much if not most of Sanders’ support in NH in 2016 was anti-Clinton rather than pro-Sanders. The real takeaway is that no one came close to Clinton’s level of support. In 2016, NH made clear that people were not ready to anoint her, but she still had a much bigger chunk of solid support than anyone showed last night.
it really smells like Sanders won’t get enough delegates to avoid a contested convention. The big question to me is whether any of the remaining candidates can “do the right thing” by the country and drop out to leave a single center-left alternative to Sanders. If that can happen by Super Tuesday, a contested convention could be avoided, and it’d be a straight-up fair fight to see who Dems really want.
Maybe SC will tell. Probably Warren and Buttigieg will do very poorly. Biden might crater.
If that’s how it goes, Warren and Biden should drop out. Mayor Pete might hope to see how he does in a head-to head with Klobushar in the next round; its hard to assert on the merits that he should drop out.
Question: does Klobushar have the money to compete in Super Tuesday? If she lays an egg there relative to mayor Pete, its a mess still.
The problem is that the centrist real dems would now fighting fake dems at both ends. Maybe fear of Sanders and finally a legitimate centrist candidate in Klobushar would get Bloomberg to reconsider his plans, hopefully after some disappointing results.
Time’s going to start running short fast though, and early voting has already started in a bunch of states.
Great breakdown. I totally agree about your comments on Warren, whom I still support. She can totally lean into the rural side – it’s part of her background and part of her policy suite in important ways. But, as you say, the pivot has to be hard. Right now she’s getting attention as the straight talking anti-corruption Trump attacker, which I think helps her a bit. In sum, I think she should retain you on her staff. You are a perfect fit!