Sanders supporters, Trump haters, electability obsessives and progressive policy enthusiasts should all be very pleased with the state of the Democratic primary so far, mounting and compounding Party-enabled debacles notwithstanding. For at the end of the day, Bernie has almost certainly won the popular vote in Iowa and tied Buttigieg in national delegates (the “split verdict” scenario in the graphic above). Biden, meanwhile, is expected to remain in fourth place, wildly under-performing polls and expectations.
Biden was, before Iowa, still considered by many to be the front runner nationally, mainly because of the all-importance of African American Democratic primary support. This despite expectations that Bernie was favored to win the state. But no one thought Biden would do this poorly.
Also, no one, at least in the corporate media, was expecting this:
If Bernie wins New Hampshire and Nevada, and Biden continues to flag, it is clear who will be the favorite going into South Carolina, and also delegate-rich (and disproportionately Hispanic) California and Texas. From the New York Times on Friday:
[W]ith Mr. Sanders surging days before voting begins with the Iowa caucuses, an intriguing theme has emerged: Much of his momentum, polling shows, owes to the support of nonwhite voters — particularly African-American and Hispanic Democrats.
Most surveys of California voters over all now have him in a virtual tie or with an outright lead — and his support among Hispanic voters is foundational to that. A survey conducted for The Los Angeles Times by the Institute of Governmental Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, found Mr. Sanders with 26 percent support among likely primary voters statewide, putting him ahead of Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, the runner-up, with 20 percent. He had the support of 38 percent of Hispanic voters, including 41 percent of those living in households where Spanish was the dominant language.
In Texas, exit polls in 2016 found that Mr. Sanders, Vermont’s junior senator, had lost the Latino vote to Hillary Clinton by a two-to-one margin. He now enjoys a commanding lead among Hispanic primary voters there, according to a Texas Lyceum survey released this week. (In Texas’ Democratic primary, white voters are expected to make up a minority of the electorate, as they did in 2016.) The Lyceum poll showed Mr. Sanders with 36 percent of the Hispanic vote, compared with 24 percent for former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and just 10 percent for Ms. Warren. That helped propel him to a statistical tie in the poll with Mr. Biden, who until recently had seemed to enjoy a comfortable lead in Texas.
Keep in mind this article was published before Biden lost by a mile in Iowa. As a quick anecdote, when I canvassed for Bernie in NYC in 2016, Hispanic voters were mostly lukewarm on Bernie, because they wanted more assurance that Bernie could actually win in November. I think that was largely due to him being way behind in delegates at that point. They liked him as a politician and liked his policies. I can’t help imagining those same misgivings about Biden this cycle, following Monday night in Iowa, only without the same enthusiam for his “nothing will fundamentally change” policies.
But what about Biden’s “firewall” of AA voters, especially in South Carolina, but also in southern super Tuesday states? From the same NYT article:
A national CNN poll released last week found Mr. Sanders pulling 30 percent of all nonwhite voters to Mr. Biden’s 27 percent.
A Monmouth University poll last week and the Pew survey were a little less kind to him than CNN’s poll, but those two still found him trailing Mr. Biden by just eight points among Democratic voters of color nationwide. (Monmouth polled those likely to vote in a primary or caucus, while Pew looked at all registered voters.)
Again, do note that this was written before Biden’s abysmally poor Iowa performance. Bernie was already scaling that supposed “firewall” before Biden limped in at 4th in a purple state that voted for Obama twice, despite his claimed front runner status and Obama halo.
But what about Pete? Well, Pete has no non-white support, and that is a death toll for one’s Democratic presidential ambitions. Politico last Thursday:
Buttigieg’s standing in the black community, both in South Carolina and nationally, hasn’t budged, despite his campaign dropping more than $2 million in TV and radio ads in the state. A Fox News poll found just 2 percent of African American Democrats in South Carolina back him. And a national Quinnipiac University poll released Tuesday found Buttigieg at zero percent support among black primary voters.
Winning a split decision in lilly-white Iowa with a distant 2nd in nonwhite support to Bernie is unlikely to change any of that, not to mention the likelihood of him losing in New Hampshire and finishing 3rd or 4th in Nevada (or even 5th! Warren has a better chance according to the RCP polling average, at this point, as does Tom Steyer).
If I were a gambler my money would be on Bernie, but since I’m not, all I can do is put my time and energy into his historic campaign, not for me, but for my family and my community, and our country, and our planet.
Wednesday, Feb 5, 2020 · 6:22:14 PM +00:00 · emerly
Editor’s note: I originally titled this “Did Bernie Sanders just become the presumptive nominee”. As you will notice that has been changed slightly. This is in response to feedback that I was getting in the comments that reflected a misreading of my overall message. I was asking it rhetorically. Because I do feel it needs asking, of whoever the front runner may be. I was not answering it in the affirmative, however, as appeared to be the impression many well-intentioned folks were taking away. Therefore, I replaced it with language that I do feel quite certain of.
But I will also add, we need to avoid a contested convention, a new situation to find ourselves in as a party, and as such, asking ourselves if a given candidate has a plausible path to outright majority in the first round in Milwaukee, earlier than later, is certainly in order. I would make that case unflinchingly for Bernie, and only Bernie at this point. Hence my initial rhetoric.