Bernie Sanders Gets a Rude Awakening

Elizabeth Warren has ended her presidential campaign and the question is whether she will endorse Biden or Sanders - or no one - and where her supporters will gravitate.  Some of the most liberal may go to Sanders, but many of the college educated suburbanites may be turned off by Sanders' class warfare agenda and move towards Biden.  Meanwhile, Bernie Sanders has claimed that the youth vote would power him to victory.  Based on analysis so far, the youth vote turned out in smaller percentages for Sanders on Super Tuesday than in 2016 and Sanders captured a small percentage of those who did go to the polls. The situation demonstrated (i) the unreliability of younger voters to actually go and vote, and (ii) the breadth of Sanders' coalition remains too limited to win the nomination.  A piece in The Atlantic looks at Tuesday's outcome and Sanders' need to attract those outside of his base - something I am not sure he is capable of doing given his demeanor and his my way or the highway mindset.  Tuesday, most Democrats chose the highway in the form of Joe Biden.  Here are article excerpts:

Bernie Sanders’s self-proclaimed “political revolution” crashed into a wall of resistance inside the Democratic Party last [Tuesday] night.

After a remarkable 72 hours that saw top party leaders consolidate behind Joe Biden, a panoramic array of key party voting groups coalesced around the former vice president—and against Sanders—in the coast-to-coast competition, according to exit polls conducted in almost all the states that voted. Biden captured at least nine of the 14 states voting, including some—such as Minnesota and Oklahoma—where Sanders won big in 2016.

The surprisingly decisive result left Sanders, a candidate who prides himself on his pile-driver-like consistency, facing a new challenge: finding a second act that can appeal to voters beyond the fervid base he has established. The evening’s clearest message was that while the senator from Vermont has inspired a passionate depth of support, the breadth of his coalition remains too limited to win the nomination. “Sanders has made no effort to reach out beyond his voters, his movement, his revolution,” Greenberg said. “It just has not grown. It is an utterly stable vote that is grounded in the very liberal portion of the Democratic Party, but he’s so disdainful of any outreach beyond that base. He seems content to just keep hitting that drum.”

Last night’s results could cull other candidates in the race sooner than later [Bloomberg has dropped out] . . . . . . Elizabeth Warren [now out as well] , who has pledged to fight on until the convention, lost her home state of Massachusetts and in the exit polls showed only trace levels of support among any group other than her core constituency of college-educated whites.

The results did not ensure a Biden nomination or a Sanders defeat. Sanders still won four states, including a solid-if-not-crushing victory in California, the largest prize on the board. He retained enthusiastic backing from his base: young voters, the most liberal voters, and Latinos, the key group that he has moved in his direction since his first bid in 2016.

But if Biden wins next week in Michigan, one of Sanders’s most significant victories four years ago, the rationale for the senator’s candidacy could quickly become murky.

Last night, Sanders failed on almost every front to enlarge his coalition. He faced a sharp recoil from groups that have long been the most skeptical of him, including African Americans and older voters.  . . . . Outside of Vermont, Sanders faced cavernous deficits among voters 45 and older, who composed a clear majority of the electorate in most states.

Across the country, Sanders also lost ground among white voters up and down the socioeconomic ladder. College-educated white voters, who on the whole had been skeptical of both men until Biden won them in South Carolina, broke decisively for the former vice president in most states. Simultaneously, in most states, Biden reversed Sanders’s previously consistent advantage among white voters without a college degree.

Perhaps the starkest symbol of Sanders’s limitations last night was the resurgence of a problem that severely damaged him in 2016: widespread resistance from primary voters who self-identify as Democrats (as opposed to independents).

The Super Tuesday exit polls showed Biden beating Sanders among self-identified Democrats by about 30 percentage points in both Virginia and North Carolina, about 25 points in Oklahoma, 20 points in Tennessee, and nearly 50 in Alabama. Sanders was more competitive among Democratic partisans in the New England states of Massachusetts and Maine. But the overall pattern was unmistakable.

His collapse among Democratic partisans came after recent full-throated attacks on “the Democratic establishment” in his rallies and media appearances. Sanders has often sounded more as if he believes he’s leading his movement in a hostile takeover of the party than a merger with it.

Biden, for instance, crushed Sanders in the white-collar suburbs of Northern Virginia. That suggests Sanders’s call for political revolution is ringing hollow in the largely prosperous communities outside major cities that helped deliver the House majority to Democrats in 2018, largely out of antipathy toward Trump.

[A]s the race reduces to a binary choice between Biden and Sanders, it’s the Vermont senator who emerged from the biggest night on the primary calendar with the greatest need to change the dynamic in the race.

Frankly, I do not see Sanders trying to enlarge the tent of his supporters.  He is singing the same song he has for decades and appears too old and to closed minded to change.  

Bloomberg's First Debate is a Bust

Michael Bloomberg joined the Democrat debate stage for the first time last evening and it was not pretty.  Bloomberg has held himself out as the savior of the Democrats and the best person to defeat Donald Trump in November, yet his rivals were unmerciful in their attacks and Bloomberg confirmed what I had heard one commentator say: debates are not his strong suit. Who actually won the debate may be in the eye of the beholder since all took incoming fire from the rival candidates, but Bloomberg seemingly was the big loser. It is essential that Donald Trump be defeated in November, but I remain uncertain who is the best Democrat - which rules out Sanders who isn't really a Democrat and never has been - to take on Trump. A column in the New York Times looks at Bloomberg's trashing last evening.  Here are excerpts:

You can buy ads and saturate the airwaves with them. You can buy allies, especially with the right budget.

But you can’t buy a debate performance, and that’s why Mike Bloomberg’s on Wednesday night mattered so much. This was the man talking, not the money.

And the man needed rescue — from his bloodthirsty rivals and even more so from himself.

Making his first appearance alongside other contenders for the Democratic presidential nomination, Bloomberg knew that he would be under furious attack and had clearly resolved not to show any negative emotion. But that meant that he often showed no emotion at all. Or he looked vaguely bemused, and that didn’t communicate the coolness that he intended. It signaled an aloofness that he very much needed to avoid.

He repeatedly — and laughably — suggested that he wouldn’t tear up nondisclosure agreements with women who have sued him or his company because they wanted the silence as much as he did. Elizabeth Warren hammered and hammered him on this point, but he wouldn’t budge, and that left the impression that he couldn’t budge. The truth would be too ugly.

Ugly: That’s the word for this ninth debate of the Democratic primary season. It had the fewest candidates — six — but the most nastiness, because those candidates clearly felt an urgency to diminish their competitors and elevate themselves before it was too late. A meager haul of votes in the Nevada caucuses this coming Saturday could effectively undo one or more of them; a poor showing on Super Tuesday less than two weeks from now would definitely be the end of the road.

So Pete Buttigieg went after Amy Klobuchar. Bernie Sanders went after Buttigieg. Joe Biden went after Sanders. Elizabeth Warren went after everybody, a Sherman tank bent on flattening everything in her path. And all of them went after Bloomberg. Dear God, how they went after Bloomberg. I’ve seen chum treated with more delicacy by great white sharks. It was the first time since Bloomberg announced his run for the presidency that he was within reach. For three high-spending, high-flying months, he campaigned essentially as a phantasm, ubiquitous in television commercials but averse to interviews, a supposed paragon of electability who had yet to put himself before voters, more idea than actuality, able to be seen but not touched.

But on Wednesday night, that changed abruptly. The apparition became flesh. And it was bruised from the get-go and bloodied soon after.

It was as if the candidates had made a private pact to eviscerate Bloomberg, who has spent hundreds of millions of his roughly $60 billion fortune to climb in the polls and is poised to spend hundreds of millions more before the nomination is decided.

Is he trying to purchase it? Absolutely. But, as he said at the debate, there’s a great cause behind that expenditure — his determination to deny Donald Trump a second term — and his funding of his own presidential bid at least means he’s beholden to no one.

Buttigieg arguably showed Bloomberg some mercy by denigrating him and Sanders together in one stroke. He called them “the two most polarizing figures on this stage,” one of whom thinks that “capitalism is the root of all evil” and the other of whom thinks that “money ought to be the root of all power.”

“We shouldn’t have to choose between one candidate who wants to burn this party down and another candidate who wants to buy this party out,” Buttigieg said. “We can do better.”

That line was obviously scripted but no less fascinating for it, because it affirmed the nutty extent to which Bloomberg, by dint of financial swagger and aggressive public relations, has created the narrative that he is the leading moderate alternative to Sanders and the most fearsome adversary for Trump. There’s no real proof yet of either. But it’s a notion with enough currency that Buttigieg, who actually leads the Democratic contest so far in terms of accrued delegates, felt the need to chip away at it.

Maybe Bloomberg never stood a chance, not given how prepared his rivals were to tear him apart and the particular exuberance and eloquence that Warren brought to the task. She savaged him not only for his mistakes but for his explanations of those mistakes, so that his apologies were all but erased.

You thought there was acrimony between Warren and Sanders? They’re honeymooning sweethearts compared to her and Bloomberg.

Sanders was the big winner of the night, because he entered the debate as the front-runner but evaded the kind of harsh treatment that a front-runner usually gets. Bloomberg got it instead.

So while Bloomberg warned direly that Sanders would be a disastrous nominee and possibly guarantee Trump’s victory, Bloomberg’s presence onstage may have bettered Sanders’s odds of getting to the general election. It certainly didn’t better Bloomberg’s.

There was another winner: Trump. The candidates flexed so much disdain for one another that they had a limited reserve for him, and I can imagine Trump and his advisers scouring the night’s transcripts for tips on how to take down whoever the eventual Democratic nominee is.

I don’t know how Democrats escape the uncomely chaos of their contest. But I do know that it’s not the ideal run-up to November, and Bloomberg’s billions aren’t magically going to make it all better.

Elizabeth Warren Embraced High-Dollar Fundraisers for Years

During my blogging hiatus, I booked marked several articles that struck me as worthy of another visit  once I was back home.  Elizabeth Warren likely thought she was being cunning when she went after Pete Buttigieg in the last Democrat presidential debate for supposedly courting "billionaire" donors.  Now, it would seem it is biting her in her hypocritical ass. First, there was an op-ed by an attendee who made clear that the event was hardly what Warren sought to describe it as (the piece is a must read).  Then, the Washington Post is reporting on Warren's own history of going after the millionaire and billionaire set at fundraisers - where she likely gathered the $10 million that she transferred to her presidential campaign, as Buttigieg noted during the debate.   In politics, it can be hard to escape your past, but when you have an easily documented history, one has to wonder why Warren set herself up for a trashing.  Here are highlights from the Post piece:

Chase Williams grinned broadly as he stood for a photo next to Sen. Elizabeth Warren, chatting briefly with the senator from Massachusetts before moving on so someone else could have their turn. But this shot, taken in October 2017, was at an entirely different kind of event: an exclusive “backstage” reception that took place in the vault of a former Cleveland bank. And that was the day’s low-rent affair — donors who agreed to pay more attended an even more exclusive shindig with Warren that day, according to two people familiar with her schedule.

The events were part of a high-dollar fundraising program that Warren had embraced her entire political career, from her first Senate run in 2011 through her reelection last year. Warren was so successful at it that she was able to transfer $10 million of her Senate cash to help launch her presidential bid.

[I]n the past year Warren has undergone a transformation, moving from one of the Democratic Party’s biggest draws at high-dollar fundraisers to a presidential candidate who has sworn them off as sinister attempts to sell access.

Williams, who supports Buttigieg in the presidential race, said Warren’s position was “disingenuous.”

“I am frustrated because she said, ‘I don’t do this. This isn’t something I do.’ And two years ago she very much did do that, and I was in the room,” said Williams, who had a photo taken after writing a $500 check.

Other notable Warren events from her Senate runs include a private luncheon held for donors at Boulevard, a San Francisco restaurant where the wine list tops out with a $3,800 bottle of a pinot noir from Burgundy and diners can eat in a “wine vault.”

The October 2017 event was to thank her big givers and seek their help for Warren’s 2018 reelection, according to an invitation obtained by The Washington Post, which outlined the requirement that attendees pay at least $1,000 a head to attend.

Warren appeared in June 2012 at an exclusive reception with Kevin Ryan, a New York tech investor who held an event for Buttigieg earlier this month that attracted protesters who sought to tag the candidate as #WallStreetPete.

There was also “an evening of music and conversation with Grammy Award Winning Singer-Songwriter Melissa Etheridge” at City Winery in Boston in June 2018 where those who gave more than $1,000 to Warren received a “souvenir wine bottle,” an event first reported by the Associated Press.

Warren’s campaign acknowledged the misstepfor an April 2012 evening reception with a host committee that included Linda Fairstein, the former Manhattan district attorney who prosecuted five black and Latino teenagers on charges of raping a jogger in Central Park in 1989. The teens became known as the Central Park Five and went to prison but were later exonerated in a case that highlighted deep racial disparities in the criminal justice system.

Warren’s new position is part of an attempt to tap into the zeitgeist of the party’s left wing, where activists and voters believe wealthy individuals and companies have far too much influence in American life and over American institutions. But party strategists say Warren’s approach could be damaging for her, as well as her opponents.

Buttigieg is the only candidate without Washington insider connections.  He's also the only candidate who is not a millionaire.  Coincidence?  Probably not. 

The Insane Fury of the Democrat Online Left Toward Buttigieg (and Moderate Democrats)

Back in early 2017 Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders thrust themselves into Virginia's Democrat gubernatorial contest pushing a far left candidate and trashing Ralph Northam who ultimately went on to win the primary and the general election.  Had Warren and Sanders and their far left followers prevailed, in my view, Virginia likely would now have a Republican governor and who knows where control of the General Assembly would now lie.   All that mattered was that Northam did not meet their standard of ideological purity and wasn't radical enough.  Never mind that Northam ran on perhaps the most progressive agenda of any gubernatorial candidate in Virginia history.  It was a near repeat of how the far left was similarly disenchanted with Hillary Clinton in 2016 and seemingly stayed home or voted for third party candidates - think Jill Stein - to throw the election to Donald Trump.  History is repeating itself at the national level again as the left of the Democrat coalition attacks moderates and pushes an agenda that likely would help re-elect Donald Trump.  A prime target of the left's wrath is Pete Buttigieg whose sin is not being radical (and un-electable) enough to meet the left's purity tests.  Absurdly, some of the far right in the gay community whine that Buttigieg is not "gay enough."  From my experience, one is either gay or not, which underscores the idiocy of these folks. A piece in CNN looks at the lefts targeting of Buttigieg and moderates and, in my view, secure a Trump victory in 2020.  Here are excerpts: 

Increasingly, their opposition to Buttigieg is turning to fury, fueled by a boisterous online ecosystem of progressives who are driving anti-Buttigieg commentary and memes. They view him as beholden to corporate interests, unable to win over the diverse Democratic base that these activists take pride in, and disinterested in the systemic change they believe the country desperately needs on issues like the influence of big money on politics and climate change and systemic racism.

These narratives have persisted in spite of what his campaign points to as evidence to the contrary, including that Buttigieg has proposed plans to address those very issues such as a climate change plan to cut emissions to zero by 2050 and a proposal to address systemic racism that he calls the Douglass Plan.

Buttigieg supporters say the criticism has become unhinged, with some progressives eager to latch on to virtually any negative narrative about Buttigieg whether it is true or not.  There is no question: The youngest candidate in the 2020 presidential race, at age 37, isn't doing well with young Democratic voters. Since he jumped into the race, Buttigieg has gone from a little-known, small-town mayor, to representative of the Democratic Party vision has of itself as an inclusive party to, now, the arch-nemesis of certain progressive advocates.

The intense heat on Buttigieg from some corners of his party comes as he rises in both early state and national polls and vies with Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren for a slice of the college-educated electorate. Both candidates have upped their contrasts with each other in recent weeks as the Iowa caucuses near.

"The nature of presidential politics is the better you do, the more you are tested," said David Axelrod, a former senior adviser to President Barack Obama and chief strategist of his campaigns. "Buttigieg has made a pretty remarkable progress in 2019. Now he is being tested as a legitimate top tier candidate and we'll see how he handles it." "It is an inevitable part of this process," he added. Buttigieg's critics cite a dramatic turn in his approach to his candidacy and are particularly incensed by his criticism of Warren on "Medicare For All." (Buttigieg, for his part, has pushed for a proposal called "Medicare for all who want it," an option that would keep private health care plans.) They consider his low standing with black and Hispanic voters to be disqualifying, and pejoratively refer to him as "Mayo Pete" for his overwhelmingly white supporters. As a result, his candidacy, in their view, is akin to the vanity project of an overly ambitious, privileged white man [as if Sanders' isn't exactly that]. "He's phony," said Adam Jentleson, when asked why he opposes Buttigieg's candidacy so strongly. 

For Washington insiders, Jentleson is a well-known figure, a former senior aide to former Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid, a far cry from the kind of left-wing progressive candidate Jentleson now would prefer. But now, Jentleson is known online as a progressive flame thrower, leading the anti-Buttigieg charge and slamming him for his attacks on more progressive candidates like Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and Warren.
 Buttigieg's campaign largely dismisses the intense criticism they have experienced from people like Jentleson. "We're not focused on the small echo chamber of Washington insiders talking to each other on Twitter," said Chris Meagher, a Buttigieg spokesman, "we're focused on talking to voters about the issues that matter most to voters." He continued: "This election is about defeating Donald Trump and uniting the country the day after this president leaves office. Pete is the best candidate to do just that." The kind of attacks that have been directed at Buttigieg have puzzled the candidate as well as his aides. And as they have gone from the internet to real life, including a wave of new protests outside of his high dollar fundraisers. "It is a little strange, because I think that I broadly share a lot of the same values and goals," Buttigieg told The Washington Post's Bob Costa in an interview when asked if the protests bother him. "It's a little hard to have a conversation with them, so I don't know for sure." It has been perplexing to Buttigieg supporters that a particularly vitriolic brand of anger has been reserved for Buttigieg rather than other moderate candidates like Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar and former Vice President Joe Biden, both of whom share Buttigieg's positions broadly on issues like Medicare for All and college affordability. Many of the progressive voices fanning the anti-Buttigieg flames explain the disproportionate attention by pointing to Buttigieg's standing in the polls and a feeling of inevitability that Biden's candidacy is not as strong as it currently seems. The distaste among some gay Democrats to Buttigieg has been the subject of a fair amount of analysis -- even raising the interest of Tim Miller, a moderate gay Republican and former Romney aide who has quizzically observed what he believes is a disproportionate amount of vitriol directed toward Buttigieg.

"They're the meanest," Miller said. "Within the gay community, unfortunately, I think it's a lot of resentment that Pete does not represent the gay ideal -- the pre-conceived notions about what a gay President would act like."

"The idea that he's a closet Republican is absurd, but I think because of his nature as a mild-mannered, traditional-acting religious man, that it's easier to demean him as being Republican lite," he added. But for others, the part of Buttigieg's identity that is the most salient is not that he is gay, but that he is white, which they believe has insulated him from the kind of scrutiny that other candidates have been subjected to. Throughout the Trump presidency Democrats have insisted that removing him from office is a top priority, but the #neverPete sentiment is testing that.

Donald Trump and his campaign must be smiling broadly.  If Trump wins re-election, as in 2016, the far left of the Democrats will bear a significant guilt for that result which will be the antithesis to all they allegedly support. 

Britain’s Ominous Portent for Democrats

Some would argue that one cannot draw parallels between the politics of the United Kingdom and the United States. Different facts and circumstances apply the argument goes, yet I believe there are parallels that need to be heeded, especially since the motivations of the pro-Brexit forces in the UK and Trump's base are very similar.  What are these? First, there is an abiding hatred of foreigners and non-whites.  Second, there is a contempt for globalization and those they consider the elite - often those who are educated and take a more progressive view.  Third, there is a misguided desire to restore a past that can never be recreated.  The age of the globe circling British Empire will never return, nor will the 1950's America and the white privilege that it embodied.  Given these and other parallels, a column in the New York Times argues that the disaster suffered by the Labor Party in the UK ought to be a wake up call for U.S. Democrats, especially those on the far left of the party.  Will they get the message, probably not, especially among Sanders and Warren supporters.  Here are column highlights:   

When Britain flummoxed and flabbergasted the world by voting in 2016 to leave the European Union, it seemed like a one-off: An unexpected gamble by a normally prudent country, but nothing that signified a profound shift beyond the United Kingdom and Europe.

Donald Trump’s election a few months later proved otherwise. Brexit was a portent, not a fluke. The British electorate may have been incautious, but it was ahead of the trend. The desire, however misplaced or ugly, to “take back” control of a country from supercilious political elites was a global phenomenon, not a local event.

Don’t think it can’t happen again, in much the same way.

That’s a lesson Democrats ought to draw, quickly and clearly, from the thumping victory Boris Johnson won for the Conservative Party on Thursday. As recently as September, some left-wing pundits and politicians were glibly writing off Johnson as a “failed prime minister,” peddling a “fantasy” of a renegotiated Brexit and facing “political disgrace” after losing his majority in Parliament.

Today, . . . . the Tories have their largest majority since 1987, and Labour has sustained its worst defeat since 1935.

How did he do this? In four ways, each of which has parallels with Trump.

First, Johnson was fortunate in his political foes. He ran against the most avowedly leftist frontbench the Labour Party has put forward since the early 1980s. Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn proudly calls himself a “socialist.” He rails against a “rigged system” that supposedly exists for the benefit of a handful of billionaires. His campaign promised free college, dramatic increases in health spending, a hike in the minimum wage, massive infrastructure spending, new taxes on the rich, and a “new green deal.”

Sound familiar? It’s the Warren-Sanders manifesto, only with £ rather than $ signs attached.

Second, Johnson was forward looking. He ran as the candidate of Brexit — not, as Theresa May had, as its reluctant and dutiful custodian, but as its persevering and happy warrior. Brexit wasn’t just about unyoking the U.K. from the E.U. It was also a statement of British self-belief, self-reliance and capacity for self-rule.

If impeachment — which I support as a matter of constitutional duty but fear on political grounds — winds up helping Trump get re-elected, it will be for similar reasons. That is, Democrats got so wrapped up in trying to bring the president down by legal and legislative means that they forgot to bring him down by ordinary political ones. The main job of any competent opposition is to fight the next election, not relitigate the past.

Third, Johnson was attuned to the moment. The prime minister is an ideological opportunist, not a purist. This upsets his critics on the right, who dislike some of his big-spending promises. And it confirms the view of his critics on the left, who see his political plasticity as being of a piece with his moral plasticity.

What matters more is relatability, reliability and results. Does the candidate get people like me? Will he keep his political promises? And has he achieved something that directly and tangibly benefits me?

This is Trump’s calling card, as it is Johnson’s. Are there equivalent figures on the left in the U.S. or U.K. willing to shake free from their party’s increasingly tightfitting, ideological straitjackets?

Finally, Johnson has benefited from critics whose mode of analysis is that anything and everything he does is dumb, dishonest, wretched and ruinous. Lately, they warn that he will bring about the end of the country itself. Similarly in the United States, some anti-Trump pundits have been forecasting economic decline and doom for three years straight as the economy continues to grow and unemployment plummets.

Bad things can — and, inevitably, will — happen. In the meantime, what we have is a trans-Atlantic case of boys crying wolf. Does it ever occur to the critics that, by constantly inferring or predicting the worst about either man, they make their less-than-worst moments look good, and their good ones seem positively great?

Like Johnson, Trump is a formidable incumbent. To oppose him with Corbynite candidates and progressive primal screams is to ensure his re-election.

To me, much to the likely screams of left wing Democrats, I suspect the columnist is right on target. 

Biden 2020 as Romney 2012

A lengthy piece in Larry Sabato's Crystal Ball looks at the current Democrat presidential primary contest and draws parallels between Joe Biden's and Mitt Romney's 2012 primary victory.  The comparison is worrisome given that Romney went down to defeat in the general election - something I fear could well happen with Biden even as I and many others will vote for whoever is nominated rather than Trump (one friend has secured bumper stickers which say "The Democrat in 2020").  Yet some on the far left of the Democrat coalition may reprise 2016 and sulk at home or throw away their votes on 3rd party candidates and, by default, re-elect Trump who is the antithesis to all that they claim to support. Such behavior - one cannot call it reasoning - is mind numbing, but a true potential given the cult mentality of some on the far left. I truly do not believe the nation can survive another four years of Trump - at least not as a democracy - as the Republican Party displays more and more desire to push the country to a near autocracy.  Here are article highlights:

History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes. Joe Biden doesn’t rhyme with Mitt Romney, although one of the words emblazoned on the side of Biden’s bus (malarkey) sort of does.

More to the point, we are beginning to wonder if the endurance of Biden at the top of the Democratic heap is beginning to resemble Mitt Romney’s endurance two cycles ago.

Despite his troubles, Romney seemed like the best bet to win the nomination for almost the entire campaign (except perhaps for when Rick Perry entered the race to great acclaim in August 2011).

The same may be true of Biden, although the race remains volatile. But Biden’s position is arguably stronger than Romney’s was at this time eight years ago.

In that 2012 race, Republican voters appeared at times quite willing to go with a different option than Romney. From late August 2011 through February 2012, Romney was surpassed no less than five different times in the national RealClearPolitics polling average, first by Perry, then Herman Cain, then Newt Gingrich (for two different stretches), and then, finally, Rick Santorum. Yet Romney always ended up back in the lead after his setbacks and emerged by the end of the first month of primary contests as the clear favorite to win the nomination (that year’s race started in January, not February). Romney benefited from split opposition as the primary season went along, with Santorum, Gingrich, and Ron Paul all cannibalizing the non-Romney vote.

Biden, meanwhile, has consistently led national polling. For a brief time in early October, Elizabeth Warren effectively tied Biden in the RealClearPolitics average, but Biden has since regained a decent-sized lead — he’s in the high 20s, with no one else within 10 points of his lead: Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) along with South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg are all clustered within the low-to-mid teens.

In the first two contests, Biden trails in Iowa and New Hampshire. However, he leads in Nevada and South Carolina, which round out the February contests before March 3’s Super Tuesday kicks off a three-week barrage of primaries.

Democratic voters have been sampling their other options, but they have not coalesced around a clear alternative to Biden. Again, this is reminiscent of GOP voters’ inability to ever settle on a true Romney opponent.

Beyond the top four, the freest-spending candidates (by far) are two others: late-arriving Michael Bloomberg, the billionaire former New York City mayor, and wealthy activist Tom Steyer. Neither have been able to crack the top tier anywhere, although they have surpassed many other candidates who have far more formidable political resumes but far less money to spend.

Bloomberg, who could spend a billion dollars on ads without making a dent in his personal fortune, is pursuing an unusual strategy, declining to seek the breadth of donor backing currently required to qualify for debates and focusing on building his support nationally as opposed to in the early states. It is an unusual strategy that we don’t think will work — ultimately, we’re skeptical that Democrats are all that interested in buying what Bloomberg is selling, and whoever does well in the early states will bask in the glow of free media more valuable than Bloomberg’s paid variety — but Bloomberg’s level of spending may end up being unprecedented for a primary.

The four polling leaders, and the two big spenders, are denying oxygen to the other candidates, of which there are many. That’s even after Gov. Steve Bullock (D-MT), former Rep. Joe Sestak (D, PA-7), and, most notably, Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) dropped out of the race earlier this week.

Her exit arguably helps Biden the most. Not because Biden necessarily stands to inherit the bulk of Harris’s meager support, but because her exit removed someone who even in her diminished state seemed like a potential threat to him.

Biden’s top challengers right now — Sanders, Warren, and Buttigieg, all of whom are whites elected from northern cities/states — do not appear to have any obvious appeal to black voters, particularly older black voters. Poll after poll shows Biden, who served dutifully and effectively as the first black president’s second-in-command, with an imposing lead with African Americans. Nationally, Quinnipiac University pegged his support at 43% with blacks and The Economist/YouGov at 48%, with the next-closest candidates struggling to break double figures.

Could black support shift? Sure. Again, let’s keep an open mind. But the possibility of dramatic change isn’t the same as the likelihood of dramatic change. Biden could do poorly in both lily white Iowa and New Hampshire and still retain significant black support, so long as his leading rivals remain Sanders, Warren, and Buttigieg. The real threat to Biden is if one of these three win both Iowa and New Hampshire — and maybe even more diverse Nevada too — thus establishing themselves as the clear alternative to Biden. . .

Why are we so fixated on black voters? Because they form the bedrock of the Democratic Party, dominate the voting in many Southern states, and strongly influence the voting in many more.

Biden remains the most acceptable candidate available for black voters, at least at the moment, and those voters also tend to be more moderate-leaning, too.

As Theodore Johnson noted in our recent book, The Blue Wave, the growth of liberal/progressive self-identification among Democrats has been driven by whites, not blacks. With Warren and Sanders positioned clearly to Biden’s left, with Buttigieg currently showing so little appeal to blacks, and with the black candidates either struggling or exiting, Biden’s position with black voters remains formidable.

This is not to say Biden has been a strong candidate or has run a great campaign. He continues to show his age in public appearances and debates, and he is lagging his rivals in fundraising. That’s different than Romney, who raised the most among the Republicans in 2012 and had a well-funded Super PAC that his allies deployed to great effect at critical moments of the campaign (one wonders if the nascent Biden Super PAC could do something similar — he very well may need it).

The Democrats who fear Biden may not be up to the task of this grueling campaign could well be proven right, and if Biden were to be nominated only to lose to Donald Trump, parts of the left will make the same argument that parts of the right did in 2012: the party establishment sacrificed ideological purity and received nothing in return.

For the general election, it isn’t just who is chosen as the Democratic nominee. It’s how he or she is chosen, how damaged the nominee is from the process, and how fractured the party is once it’s over. Democrats being Democrats, some will be off sulking for a while.

And some primary voters may disappear in the fall: It’s easy to imagine some supporters of the outsider candidates, most notably Sanders, Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D, HI-2), and entrepreneur Andrew Yang, falling by the wayside, even if the candidates themselves dutifully get behind the eventual nominee.

Still, Trump is a great unifier for Democrats, and that effect will kick in come fall, maybe even summer. We still see the general election as basically a 50-50 proposition, which is reflected in our early Electoral College ratings.

I cannot help but be very afraid of where things might end up come November 2020. Emigrating might yet be a plausible option. 

Elizabeth Warren Could Jeopardize Democrats in the House and the Senate

Selecting candidates for general elections is about picking a candidate that can both win and not wreak havoc on down ticket candidates. A long and well reasoned and researched column in the New York Times makes the case that Elizabeth Warren as the Democrat standard bearer could (i) result in Trump's re-election, and (ii) significant loses by Democrats in the House and Senate.  The same reasoning applies to Bernie Sanders and, to me, makes it clear that neither Warren or Sanders should be the nominee.   Their respective supporters, who the article points out tend to be the whitest and most affluent, simply are out of touch with what sells in Middle America, including among many more traditional and moderate Democrats. This is especially true in the half dozen swing states in the Mid-West that will likely decide who wins the Electoral College contest.  Running up huge vote leads in say California or New York means nothing in the Electoral College math calculation.  Here are lengthy column highlights which thinking Democrats need to read in full:

Under pressure, Elizabeth Warren has retreated from the idea of immediate implementation of Medicare for All, but she remains committed to the progressive core of her candidacy.

As she put it in a speech to Iowa Democrats on Nov. 1:

If we’re going to meet the challenges of our time, we need big ideas. Big ideas to inspire people and get them out to caucus and get them out to vote. Big ideas to be the lifeblood of our party and show the world who and what Democrats will fight for.

In rhetoric that drew enthusiastic applause from her supporters at the Liberty and Justice Dinner in Des Moines, Warren declared that the nation is at “a time of crisis, and media pundits, Washington insiders, even some people in our own party don’t want to admit it. They think that running some vague campaign that nibbles around the edges is somehow safe.”

Democrats will win, she continued, “when we offer solutions big enough to touch the problems that are in people’s lives. Fear and complacency does not win elections; hope and courage wins elections.”

There is evidence, however, that Warren’s strategy could generate a backlash leading to the re-election of Donald Trump.

Andrew Hall and Daniel Thompson, political scientists at Stanford, examined “the link between the ideology of congressional candidates and the turnout of their parties’ bases in US House races, 2006—2014” in their 2018 paper “Who Punishes Extremist Nominees? Candidate Ideology and Turning Out the Base in US Elections.”

In contrast to moderate candidates, Hall and Thompson found: Extremist candidates do worse, because, contrary to rhetoric, they fail to galvanize their own base and instead encourage the opposing party’s base to turn out more, on average.

In other words, polarizing candidates diminish turnout in their own party while boosting turnout among opposing partisans.

Alan Abramowitz, a political scientist at Emory, analyzed the pattern of Democratic victories in 2018 House races and found that “those who supported Medicare for All performed worse than those who did not, even when controlling for other factors.”

The analyses by Hall, Thompson and Abramowitz do not preclude the possibility that Warren could beat Trump in 2020. Whoever the Democratic nominee is will be able to capitalize on widespread hostility to Trump, a motivated Democratic electorate and the party’s continuing gains in formerly Republican suburbs across the nation.

An underlying premise of the campaigns of both Warren and Bernie Sanders is that taking radically progressive stands will motivate, enlarge and turn out the Democratic base, including minorities, the young and the poor; and that such positions are necessary to restore Democratic support among those who voted for third party candidates in 2016.

As much as the Warren program has mobilized many Democratic primary voters, polls show that significant numbers of swing voters — wavering Republicans repelled by President Trump and moderate to conservative Democrats — do not share Warren’s appetite for major structural change, preferring incremental change and the repair of existing programs, like Obamacare.

Strategically, if Warren wins the Democratic nomination, the election would become not only a referendum on Trump — favorable terrain for Democrats — but also a referendum on Warren’s program, a far less certain proposition.

“Many of Senator Warren’s proposals are indeed radical and could have unintended consequences,” Jeffrey Frankel, an economist at Harvard’s Kennedy School and a member of the Council of Economic Advisers during the Clinton administration, wrote by email. He added: “I fear that by far the worst of the unintended consequences of making these proposals during the campaign is to get Donald Trump re-elected.”

Larry Summers is a former secretary of the Treasury, director of the national economic council and president of Harvard. The Warren program, Summers wrote by email, “dwarfs the errors, economic and political, of George McGovern.”

Last week, in an effort to mute criticism that her agenda would be not only difficult to enact in toto but also highly disruptive if it became law, Warren announced a significant modification of her version of Medicare for All. Instead of trying to immediately pass a complete government takeover of health care that would eliminate private insurance plans, she proposed “a true Medicare for All option,” or what has generally been described as a public option — and that has strong support among voters of all stripes.

Warren’s new stance appears to be an acknowledgment of the fact that her proposal to replace all health private coverage with Medicare for All does not carry majority support even among Democratic primary voters, a liberal constituency, much less the general electorate.

While liberal economists have mixed views of Warren’s agenda, a number of political observers warn that candidates for the House and Senate would face a steeper climb to victory with Warren at the top of the ticket.

“It would be tough to run under Elizabeth Warren,” David Wasserman, who studies House races for the Cook Report, said in an interview. “As of now, she runs the weakest against Trump in battleground areas and her proposals are not broadly popular.”

The worst case scenario, Wasserman argued, “would be to have Elizabeth Warren at the top of ticket with a plausible chance to win.” He argued that swing voters worried about a Warren presidency would vote in support of a Republican Congress to act as a check on her.

“Anyone at the top of the ticket who repels these Republicans will make it more difficult to win the key House and Senate seats Democrats have targeted,” Trippi said.

Whit Ayres, president of North Star Opinion Research, was outspoken: “Elizabeth Warren is God’s gift to Donald Trump and Republican candidates.”

“Well-educated suburban voters, especially women,” Ayres continued, “are uncomfortable with President Trump,” but, he added, they are not going to vote for a candidate who wants to take away their private health insurance, decriminalize the border, increase government spending by 50 percent, and ban fracking, especially in Pennsylvania, Ohio and Colorado.

Wariness toward the kind of disruptive structural change Warren is calling for can be seen among Democratic voters in six battleground states — Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Arizona and Florida — as a New York Times/Siena College survey conducted Oct. 13-26 demonstrated.

By 62 to 33, these Democrats said they would prefer a candidates who promises “to find common ground with Republicans” to one who promises “to fight for a bold progressive agenda;” by 55 to 36 a candidate who is more “moderate than most Democrats” to one who is “more liberal than most Democrats;” and by 49 to 45 a candidate who promises “to bring politics in Washington back to normal” to a candidate who promises “to bring fundamental, systematic change to American society.”

The same Times/Siena College survey identified 596 undecided or “persuadable” voters in these six states . . . They are fairly clear about what they would like from a Democrat. They prefer, by 82 percent to 11 percent, one who promises to find common ground over one who promises to fight for a progressive agenda; and they prefer a moderate over a liberal, 75 percent to 19 percent.

Patterson’s analysis points to the larger question that looms constantly over the nomination fight: Is the progressive wing of the Democratic primary electorate, and its demand that the nominee take stands on health care, energy and immigration well to the left of the electorate at large, the main obstacle to Democratic victory in 2020?

The Case for Staged Health Care Reform

A prior post made the case that in the 2018 mid-term elections, Democrats who ran on a Medicare for All platform did significantly worse than those who supported a more modest, staged approach to reforming the nation's health care coverage problem.  This has not deterred Bernie Sanders - who in my view should not even be allowed to run as a Democrat after he quickly jettisoned the Democrat Party after 2016 - and his followers who want an immediate single payer system regardless of the fact that a majority of Americans are not supportive of blowing up the current system overnight.  Lately, Elizabeth Warren seems to be moderating her proposals to more of a staged approach that would not end employer based coverage in one fell swoop.  Perhaps Warren is beginning to see political reality or perhaps its an attempt to address the criticisms and counter proposals of Buttigieg and others. A column in the New York Times looks at how health care reform continues to be a positive for Democrats and how a staged approach to reform may be the only one that is realistically feasible.  Here are column highlights:

Recent state elections — the Democratic landslide in Virginia, followed by Democratic gubernatorial victories in Kentucky and Louisiana — have been bad news for Donald Trump.

Among other things, the election results vindicate polls indicating that Trump is historically unpopular. All of these races were in part referendums on Trump, who put a lot of effort into backing his preferred candidates. And in each case voters gave him a clear thumbs down.

Beyond offering a verdict on Trump, however, I’d argue that the state elections offered some guidance on an issue that has divided Democrats, namely health care. What the results suggested to me was the virtue of medium-size reform: incremental enough to have a good chance of being enacted, big enough to provide tangible benefits that voters don’t want taken away.

Remember, there was a third governor’s race, in Mississippi, in which the G.O.P. held on. . . . So what made the difference?

Personalities surely mattered. Louisiana’s re-elected John Bel Edwards was widely liked, Kentucky’s defeated Matt Bevin widely disliked. Demography probably also mattered. Urban and especially suburban voters have turned hard against Trump, but rural voters haven’t, at least so far — and Mississippi is one of the few states left with a majority-rural population.

But there’s another difference among the three states. Kentucky and Louisiana took advantage of the Affordable Care Act to expand Medicaid, leading to steep drops in the number of uninsured residents; Mississippi hasn’t. This meant that voting Democratic in Kentucky and Louisiana meant voting to preserve past policy success, while the same vote in Mississippi was at best about hope for future reform — a much less powerful motivator.

It took years to get there, but in the end Pelosi [in 2010] was proved right, as health care became a winning issue for Democrats. In the 2018 midterms and in subsequent state elections, voters punished politicians whom they suspected of wanting to undermine key achievements like protection for pre-existing conditions and, yes, Medicaid expansion.

And this political reality has arguably set the stage for further action. At this point, as far as I can tell, all of the contenders for the Democratic presidential nomination are calling for a significant expansion of the government’s role in health care, although they differ about how far and how fast to go.

Which brings me to the latest development in intra-Democratic policy disputes: Elizabeth Warren’s proposal for a two-step approach to health reform. Her idea is to start with actions — some requiring no legislation at all, others requiring only a simple Senate majority — that would greatly expand health insurance coverage. These actions would, if successful, deliver tangible benefits to millions.

They would not, however, amount to the full Bernie, eliminating private insurance and going full single-payer. Warren still says that this is her eventual intention, and has laid out a plan to pay for such a system. But any legislative push would wait three years, giving time for voters to see the benefits of the initial changes.

Sanders supporters are, predictably, crying betrayal. For them it’s all or nothing: a commitment to single-payer has to be in the legislation from Day 1.

The trouble with such demands, aside from the strong probability that proposing elimination of private insurance would be a liability in the general election, is that such legislation would almost certainly fail to pass even a Democratic Senate. So all or nothing would, in practice, mean nothing.

The lesson I take from the politics of Obamacare, however, is that successful health reform, even if incomplete, creates the preconditions for further reform. What looks impossible now might look very different once tens of millions of additional people have actual experience with expanded Medicare, and can compare it with private insurance.

Although I’ve long argued against making Medicare for All a purity test, there is a good case for eventually going single-payer. But the only way that’s going to happen is via something like Warren’s approach: initial reforms that deliver concrete benefits, and maybe provide a steppingstone to something even bigger.

I continue to view both Sanders and Warren as un-electable especially given the demographics and mind sets in the hand full of swing states that will decide who wins the Electoral College even if that individual loses the popular vote by many millions of votes.

Obama Tells Democrats to Relax and Embrace Political Reality

As an earlier post noted today, Barrack Obama cautioned Democrats to not lose touch with political reality of what the American public opinion supports.  He also reminded Democrats that the lead up to his 2008 nomination had been "robust" and bruising.  While not naming them, Obama appeared to be taking shots at Bernie Sanders and their followers who live in a bubble and are out of touch with main stream Americans who want improvements and change, but not a revolution and turning health care upside down.  This comes on the election of moderate Democrats win in Louisiana and Kentucky.  The message - which Nancy Pelosi has echoed - is that a centrist candidate is more likely to see electoral success in 2020.  A piece in New York Magazine looks at Obama's comments.  Here are highlights:

[O]n Friday evening, he [Obama] climbed onto a stage in a basement ballroom in Washington’s Mandarin Oriental hotel and asked his party’s liberal elite to chill out a bit.

“We have a field of very accomplished, very serious, and passionate, and smart people who have a history of public service, and whoever emerges from the primary process, I will work my tail off to make sure they are the next president,” he told the room of a few hundred of the party’s biggest donors and top strategists, gathered for a conference of the Democracy Alliance group.

Obama signaled for the first time a willingness to try and modulate his party’s debate — in this case to a less frantic tenor. “To those who get stressed about robust primaries,” he added, fully embodying this new slightly exasperated adult-in-the-room role, “I just have to remind you: I had a very robust primary.”

Yet Obama’s remarks were not only aimed at the donors and chatterers. He had a sterner-than-usual warning for the campaigns, too. While over the last year-plus he has been sparing in weighing in on individual primary flash points, here he cast himself as understanding but concerned emissary to what he perceives as political reality. “This is still a country that is less revolutionary than it is interested in improvement,” he said. “The average American doesn’t think we have to completely tear down the system and remake it.” In Obama’s telling, Americans are conservative, not in ideology, but in temperament.

Voters, including Democrats, are not driven by the same views that are reflected on certain left-leaning Twitter feeds, or the activist wing of our party,” he warned. “And that’s not a criticism to the activist wing — their job is to poke and prod and text and inspire and motivate. But the candidate’s job, whoever that ends up being, is to get elected.”

It’s a vision that clashes with some on his party’s left, most obviously including supporters of Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. And while he dismissed the debate between persuading voters and energizing base Democrats as “a false division,” he explained that he’d been thinking about how the candidates have been talking about him on the trail. “I think it is important for candidates to push past what I was able to achieve as president.

“I think it is very important to all the candidates who are running, at every level, to pay some attention to where voters actually are, and how they think about their lives. And I don’t think we should be deluded into thinking that the resistance to certain approaches to things is simply because voters haven’t heard a bold enough proposal, and as soon as they hear a bold enough proposal that’s going to activate them. Because you know what? It turns out people are cautious, because they don’t have a margin for error.” Onstage, Obama stuck to most of his personal Trump-era rules: He didn’t mention the president, or the news of the day — in this case the impeachment hearings. He didn’t mention any of the presidential candidates by name, either. But his remarks, delivered onstage next to Stacey Abrams, painted the clearest picture yet of Obama’s view of the primary, and of the direction of his party in the Trump era. And his timing sent as much of a message to the operatives in the room, and the candidates in the race, as his words.

Medicare for All: A Vote Loser

Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren and their respective rabid supporters are adamant about nothing less than Medicare for all in contrast to others, including Pete Buttigieg who want a more moderate, blended approach to expanding health care coverage.  Personally, I view Medicare for all as a laudatory goal, but in order to get to full coverage implemented, candidates need to get elected.  Results from the 2018 mid-term elections suggest that Medicare for all is a vote loser and could be kryptonite to getting elected.   Thus, I support a more moderate approach such as Buttigieg's which would not sweep away employer based plans and potentially alienate moderate voters and Republicans - few as they may be - who are sickened by Donald Trump.  A piece at Larry Sabato's Crystal Ball looks at the cautionary message from what happened to Democrats running on Medicare for all in the 2018 midterms.  Here are excerpts:

“Medicare for All” has emerged as a key issue in the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination campaign. Two of the leading candidates, Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), have made Medicare for All a central issue in their campaigns. Warren’s and Sanders’ proposals would abolish private health insurance in the U.S. within a few years and move all Americans into a government health plan based on the current Medicare program but with no copayments or deductibles.

Several Democratic candidates, including former Vice President Joe Biden, who has led in most national polls, have been highly critical of this idea. These candidates, along with a number of health policy experts and pundits, have attacked Sanders’ and Warren’s Medicare for All proposal as prohibitively expensive and politically unrealistic. They have also argued that embracing Medicare for All would alienate many independents and moderate Democrats and risk costing Democrats the electoral votes of several key swing states.

But 2020 is not the first election in which Medicare for All was an important campaign issue. It was also debated extensively during the 2018 midterm elections. By examining the impact of Medicare for All on the results of the 2018 U.S. House elections, we may gain some insights into how this issue could affect the 2020 presidential election.

Democratic candidates supporting Medicare for All did substantially worse than those who did not — winning only 45% of their races compared with 72% for the non-supporters. Their average vote margin of 0.5 percentage points was also somewhat worse than the average vote margin of 3.5 points for the non-supporters. This was true despite the fact that in terms of 2016 presidential vote margin, the districts of supporters were somewhat more Democratic (average Clinton margin of -0.2 points) than the districts of non-supporters (average Clinton margin of -2.7 points).

[A]fter controlling for all of the other variables affecting the outcomes of these contests, Democratic candidates who endorsed Medicare for All did significantly worse than those who did not. The estimated coefficient of -4.6 indicates that support for Medicare for All cost Democratic candidates in these competitive districts almost five points of vote margin — a substantial effect in a close election.

An analysis of the impact of Medicare for All on the 2018 House elections indicates that Democratic challengers and open seat candidates in competitive districts who endorsed a version of Medicare for All similar to that proposed by Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren did significantly worse than those who did not. This negative effect, close to five points of margin after controlling for a variety of other factors, was clearly large enough to affect the outcomes of some House contests.

It is possible that the estimated effect of Medicare for All was a byproduct of other differences between supporters and non-supporters. For example, supporters might have taken more liberal positions on a variety of other issues as well as Medicare for All. Even if that is the case, however, these findings are not encouraging to supporters of Medicare for All. They indicate that candidates in competitive races who take positions to the left of the median voter could get punished at the polls. Democratic presidential candidates would do well to take heed of these results, particularly as the eventual nominee determines what he or she wishes to emphasize in the general election.

Yes, Sanders and Warren supporters will be livid with this post, but elections are about WINNING, not ideological purity.