Some Instant Thoughts on Super Tuesday
(Dan here…Late to AB posting…what a difference a day or two can make. Elizabeth Warren has withdrawn from the election process and is not endorsing either Biden nor Sanders at the moment. Peter weighs in speculating on what is next.)
1. Biden benefitted from a wave of (orchestrated) last minute endorsements. One effect of this wave was to divert attention from Biden the candidate to the endorsers and their combined bandwagon effect. Particular endorsements helped in specific states: O’Rourke in Texas, Klobuchar in Minnesota. But Biden has flamed out in all his previous runs for president because he is a weak campaigner, not very bright and prone to own goals. He would be mincemeat for Trump. Sanders, however, has vowed to make an issue only of political differences, not personal qualities. We’ll see if that’s enough of an umbrella for Biden to get through to the nomination.
2. There must be immense pressure on Warren to remain in the race. By any logic, she should drop out now and not soak up any more scarce resources, whether money, staff or her own time and energy. If you look at the non-southern state results yesterday, however, her vote share had a big impact on the outcome. If her support would break, say, two-thirds for Sanders and one-third for Biden, this would be enough to put Bernie over the top in close races. I have no doubt the preferred lineup for the Democratic Party, donors and staff, is Biden-Warren-Sanders. It will be interesting to see if she keeps playing the game.
3. I’m not surprised that the party apparatus is so determined to defeat Bernie, even at the cost of re-electing Trump. Sanders has never been a Democrat. He caucuses with them in the Senate, but, aside from the inevitable vote-rustling in congress, he has never coordinated with them politically. His donor base minimally overlaps with theirs. His staff consists of political professionals who were either outliers in the Party or outside it altogether. If he were elected the result would be a hostile takeover of the national apparatus, and almost everyone who is a part of it today would have to find another line of work come January. It’s existential for them. The same probably holds in many or most state parties.
4. To recap #1, the Democrats have decided to place their full bet with Biden. It may well work for them, but based on the man’s history, it’s a risky move. If Biden self-destructs again their only fallback is to put forward a third party spoiler in the general election.
There’s a lot I disagree with this appraisal(I have seen no indication that the DNC is favoring anyone) but this has to be mentioned.
“If Biden self-destructs again their only fallback is to put forward a third party spoiler in the general election.”
No one I know of is stupid to think a 3rd party can be any help to anyone, except to the GOP.
Over the top, in my opinion. A President Sanders would not commence a ‘hostile takeover.’ Trump yes, he is shredding the government. But Sanders would be a lot more frustrated because both parties would give him a hard time. He’d have to do a lot of compromising.
I don’t know if I would call Biden “not very bright”. My guess he has ADHD, which explains much of his “gaffes”. I always saw Biden as a weak primary candidate but a decent general candidate because of good likeability numbers, a “man man’s disposition”(which appeals to black men especially) and the fact he will delegate much of the ground game to his surrogates. This was what killed “Crooked” Hillary in the end. Weak likeability coupled with a dictatorship over the ground game which led to a poor campaign strategy. Biden, will go everywhere. His rallies will be small, but numerous over swing states. He just won’t rally in Pittsburgh, but go down the road into areas that vote Republican 70% just to meet supporters there. Clinton was too elitist to do that. He is shittier with Hispanics, but stronger on the east coast than Clinton. White Reagan Democrats approve of him at a higher%%% especially outside of Michigan where Trump’s complete lack of interest in infrastructural spending is a major negative for him compared to Biden’s strong infrastructure plan.
It is what it is. Bernie’s Fidel and Sandies youtube videos crested the old guy’s support. Biden’s strength with mainstream liberals was just too strong in the end despite everybody wishing he were 2008 Joe Biden in terms of age, Trump’s own senility and dementia sorta make that moot. He basically pushed 24 states with a good surrogate driven ground games(including Minnesota where he had more offices than Sanders). My guess he will win them all.
Ps. Republicans better watch that Hunter Biden stuff. It won’t end well for them.
I am really beginning to wonder if Moscow is orchestrating some of the posts at AB of late. Biden was not my first, second or third choice but neither was Sanders. Both are light years better than the current racist nincompoop occupying the White House along with the current anti American GOP enablers who refuse to recognize the reality that everything Trump touches turns to shit. Think about it after bankrupting dozens of businesses his crowning achievement as president was to pass a tax cut for the wealthy and corporations which has ballooned the deficit 5 fold. He has systematically weakened our health care system resulting in many more people not having affordable access to health care. Does anyone think that is a good way to contain things like COVID 19? For that matter his vaunted low unemployment rate is mostly because more people are working for near poverty wages—how many of them are going to stay home from work if they are sick if it means they will become homeless? He sure stuck it to Obama and the Dems by blowing up the Iran deal—this week Iran had enriched enough uranium to build a nuclear weapon and are reportedly a few months away from having one—I am sure that fat little Korean buddy of Trump’s will be happy to provide technical assistance if needed. I could go on and on and you folks are arguing that Biden is not too bright? I would vote for a high functioning cognitively challenged chimpanzee before I would vote for Trump and I am betting most of the non deplorables feel the way I do. The deplorables would vote for Trump even if it was proven that he was dumber than a high functioning cognitively challenged chimpanzee.
I don’t need a “high functioning chimpanzee”, any would be better for our country and the world.
Biden is supposed to have taken Paul Ryan apart in the 2012 vice-presidential debate — and Ryan is supposed to be pretty smart. Smart enough to be taken mistakenly for serious policy wonk by much of the press. Paul Krugman used to decimate Ryan’s phony wonk proposals by showing that the numbers down in his proposals mostly conflicted with what Ryan said verbally upfront.
Denis et al:
even some of us without Nobel prizes could see that Ryan was a phony.
But don’t expect that to mean much in an election. Biden has lost me out of his own mouth. Not his gaffes, but his overarching policy philosophy.
But that (policy) is not much different from standard Democrat “appeal to the poor, appease the rich” policy.
And bad as that is, it is much, much better than R’s (Trump) “who gives a damn about the constitution or human decency or the appearance of fair play?”
Which would mean “if Bernie really can’t win, help Biden win and hope for more influence and better strategy next time. With Trump there will be no next time.
As for Warren, I hope she stays in the fight. Not to win the nomination, but to say intelligent things about the Crooks controlling financial policies that rob the poor to the point of no return.
and if EMichael sees no indication of the DNC favoring anyone, that tells me more about Michael than it does about the DNC.
Biden is a dead end. I think half of Sanders voters probably will never vote for Biden. This is like a civil war between proponents of the restoration of the New Deal Capitalism vs Clinton Pro-Wall Street wing of the party. Many Bernie supporters view Biden as the enemy (and politically he is the enemy as a staunch neoliberal and neocon)
Please note that some of them in 2016 voted for Trump.
https://www.npr.org/2017/08/24/545812242/1-in-10-sanders-primary-voters-ended-up-supporting-trump-survey-finds