Back in September I read this article from The Hill by Amie Parnes entitled “Sanders, Warren ask whether there’s room for both in primary”. It laid out some of the then-current thinking of the two possible campaign’s brain trusts around the question implied in the article’s title. Obviously, both camps concluded that the answer was “yes”.
Fast forward 8 months to the present and today’s edition of The Week which features an article by David Faris with the provocative title “If Warren and Sanders want to beat Biden, one of them will need to drop out”. (In addition to appearing on The Week website, the article was one of the 15 or so articles featured on this morning’s RealClearPolitics homepage.)
When I saw the title and as I started to read, I was curious how Faris was going to address the “second choice” issue that, say, Morning Consult polling provides. Morning Consult’s latest second choice polling shows:
Sanders voter’s second choices: Biden 37% Warren 19%
Warren voter’s second choices: Sanders 23% Biden 20%
In other words, it’s not as simple a calculation as one might intuitively think because it’s not like all those currently in favor of Sanders would migrate to Warren should Bernie drop out, or vice versa.
Faris does address the second choice issue and (in my opinion) more or less discounts it with the summary:
The departure of one from the race would give a substantial boost to the other. And it certainly feels like they are getting in each other's way.
Ultimately, Faris does acknowledge that neither of them is going to drop out now but concludes with this paragraph:
A more likely scenario is this: at some point, whether in September, in January or in March, either Warren or Sanders will have to fall on the sword of progressivism in an effort to help the other get elected. If neither is willing to do so, they'll both be left fighting for primetime speaking slots in Milwaukee while Biden preps his acceptance speech.
This predicament is partly the result of what happens when you have an extremely unpopular president running for re-election: it attracts a plethora of outstanding candidates on the opposing side.
We truly do have an embarrassment of riches when it comes to our candidates and the winnowing is going to be painful at times.
Buckle up, it’s going to be a wild ride.