Ready The Clown Car: The First Batch of Democrats Are Ready To Announce Their 2020 Bids

They are all wignuts. There are no actual "moderate" Democrats to speak of any more. There are certainly not any actual "moderates" currently in the running in the primaries. Any of those people will strive to destroy our country in any meaningful sense, if they are elected. Hillary certainly would have. And Obama damn near did.

 

Nate Silver at 538 has been analyzing Bernie's chances and thinks that not only can he can win the nomination, he is currently the person most likely to win the nomination for the Democrats. His article is long and awkwardly wonky, as is normal for Nate Silver, so I will just post a few paragraphs. There is quite a bit more at the link:

Does Sanders Have A Ceiling? Maybe. Can He Win Anyway? Yes.

Over the course of building our primary model late last year, I grew less skeptical of Sanders’s chances. In fact, our model is now quite bullish on Sanders, having him as by far the most likely Democrat to win a majority of pledged delegates — although the most likely scenario is that no one wins a majority (meaning a contested convention is possible).

Sanders could easily win a one-on-one race. Finally, suppose that we do wind up with a two-candidate race fairly soon; Biden loses South Carolina, for instance, and quits the race, and the large majority of delegates on Super Tuesday go to either Sanders or Bloomberg.

This seems to be the outcome that a lot of moderates I talk to are rooting for, but it could also fairly easily lead to a Sanders nomination. If Sanders’s main opponent was Bloomberg, for instance, he’d play perfectly into Sanders’s messaging about the corrosive influence of money on the democratic process. Bloomberg also has a lot of baggage that has been somewhat unscrutinized because of his late entry into the race. Against Buttigieg or Klobuchar, meanwhile, Sanders would probably have the more diverse coalition, and he’d also have an organizational advantage against someone like Klobuchar, who is only now starting to raise serious money.

I don’t know who would be favored in a head-to-head matchup between Sanders and another Democratic candidate, especially a resilient Biden, or if it somehow came down to Sanders and Warren. (As the YouGov polling shows, these are potentially tougher matchups for Sanders.) But the bottom line is this: Even if Sanders is far from the textbook nominee — and even if he’s likely to have some trouble winning new voters to his side — all of the other candidates have a lot of problems too. Sanders is in the strongest position for now, and he has a high floor of support that should win him delegates almost everywhere, while the rest of the field is a mess behind him. Ceiling or not, that’s why you’d rather be in his position than anyone else’s.​

It appears that Silver and many other analysts on the Democrat side believe that Bloomberg is the one most likely to come out of the second tier scrum successfully and end up as the other candidate to match up against Sanders in the latter stages of this primary contest. But he thinks Bloomberg is weak against Sanders and that Sanders could, especially against Bloomberg, come out of that contest as the nominee.

All that being said, he appear to believe that is what is more likely than a straight up majority of delegates for Sanders going into the convention, is Sanders leading with a plurality, and the convention being contested.

If the Democrat establishment elite superdelegates take this away from Sanders at the convention, his supporters are not going to respond well to that. As Silver explains at some length in the article above, Sanders supporters are nothing if not loyal. And how loyal will Bernie be in that situation?

Anyway, first things first. The debate tonight and then the Nevada caucuses on Saturday.

 

The latest National RCP Poll Average has Bernie Sanders up by 11 over Joe Biden. All of the polls contributing to this average were conducted within the last week, after the New Hampshire Primary.

RCP Poll Average - National
28.6 - Sanders (+4.8)
17.6 - Biden (-2.2)
15.9 - Bloomberg (+2.9)
12.3 - Warren (-1.7)
10.3 - Buttigieg (+0.5)
06.6 - Klobuchar (+1.8)

Sanders, Bloomberg and Klobuchar are all up from last week. Biden, Warren and Buttigieg are all down. The biggest gainer over the last two iterations has been Bloomberg (+6.9), followed by Sanders (+5.5). The biggest loser has been Biden (-10.0), followed by Warren (-2.3). Bloomberg has also leapfrogged Warren into 3rd place in these latest polls.

This does seem to bode well for a possible face off between Bloomberg and Sanders at some point after Super Tuesday. Both of these two guys look like they have some real momentum in this race.

 

The big question. From Scott Jennings at USA Today:

Democrats' Bernie Sanders problem: They are damned if they nominate him and damned if they don't

What’s worse: choosing a socialist for your party’s presidential nominee, or taking the nomination away from one at a contested convention?

If Sanders gets close but falls short, all hell could break loose. After the first ballot, the Democratic “superdelegates” (establishment party leaders and elected officials) get involved and could turn the convention toward a more establishment-friendly candidate.

Can you imagine the absolute pandemonium if Sanders shows up in Milwaukee with the most delegates and leaves without his party’s nomination? All immediate chaos aside, a key political question emerges: Will Sanders supporters show up in November to support a Democrat who, in their eyes, stole the nomination?​

 

As best I can tell, because Bloomberg is outspending him more than 2-1. Bloomberg has apparently spent $400 million in the relatively short time he has been in this race.

 

Were there any actual winners in this debate in Nevada? I am not so sure that there was.

In Fiery Debate, Bloomberg Takes Beating, Sanders Defends Socialism

 

CNN's Chris Cillizza weighs in on the implications of last night's debate, with quotes from Obama campaign manager David Plouffe. Plouffe thinks Sanders is very likely going to be the nominee now.

Stopping Bernie Sanders just got a lot harder

If you tuned in to even five minutes of Wednesday night's Democratic presidential debate, you'd have concluded that former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg was the race's clear front-runner. He was savaged at every turn by almost every candidate -- all of whom seemed determined to bring him down, and fast. Bloomberg, of course, isn't the front-runner. Bernie Sanders is. And his rivals for the nomination may well look back on Wednesday night in the coming weeks and months as the moment they failed to stop the Vermont democratic socialist's campaign.

"Bernie Sanders in all likelihood is the nominee, unless it gets taken away from him at the convention," predicted David Plouffe, who managed Barack Obama's 2008 presidential campaign, Thursday morning on MSNBC. Plouffe is exactly right.

....

Now, because Democrats give delegates in a proportional manner -- any candidate getting 15% statewide or 15% in a congressional district qualifies to receive delegates -- no one candidate will come close to winning a majority of all delegates on Super Tuesday. But that same proportional allocation -- when coupled with the fact that Sanders has a built-in 25(ish)% in every single state that will vote between now and when the primary process ends in June -- means that the Vermont senator is just going to keep piling up delegates.

Will he get to the magic number of 1,991? That's not clear just yet. But what seems much more clear after Wednesday's debate is that Sanders is perfectly positioned to end the primary season with the most delegates of anyone in the field. Which is a very good place to be.​

So while all the Democrats were piling on Bloomberg, Bernie Sanders was chilling out, cool as the other side of the pillow. This day could be looked back on as the day that that they failed to stop "the Vermont democratic socialist's campaign".

 

In South Carolina, the firewall state of Joe Biden, Biden's lead is down to 3.7 points in the RCP Poll average. This is down from a peak of 18.7 points on January 8, just six weeks ago. All of the polls in this average were conducted after the New Hampshire Primary.

RCP Poll Average - South Carolina
24.5 - Biden
20.8 - Sanders
15.5 - Steyer
10.3 - Buttigieg
08.3 - Warren
07.3 - Klobuchar

The South Carolina Primary will be held a week from tomorrow on February 29, 2020, just 3 days before Super Tuesday. Michael Bloomberg will again not be on the ballot in this state. He debuts on ballots everywhere on Super Tuesday.

It appears the this may be Joe Biden's Waterloo, although he has certainly not been in any way Napoleonic in his campaign at any point in this race, or at any point in his political career for that matter. Poor Joe. I feel bad for him watching him go down like this.

This is also going to be a major test for all of these candidates, especially in how much support they get from black voters. Joe Biden was supposed to have that block of support all wrapped up, but it seems that much of this was dependent on him being the "inevitable" nominee. Now that he is clearly not that anymore, those black voters are reevaluating their options.

If Bernie Sanders finishes strong among black voters in South Carolina, then batten down the hatches. He will not be easily stopped after that.

I am just guessing, but it seems that at least two of these candidates and very possibly three are out of this race before Super Tuesday. This contest will likely help them to clarify that choice. And don't forget Bloomberg, who will almost assuredly still be in the race on Super Tuesday, although his experience in the debate the other night appeared to provide him with a very rude awakening.

 

According to Politico, the campaigns of Warren, Biden and Buttigieg (and also Klobuchar) are struggling financially, with Super Tuesday fast approaching, now just 11 days away.

Warren, Biden and Buttigieg dangerously close to going broke

While Sanders started February with nearly $17 million in the bank, according to campaign finance disclosures filed Thursday night, his next closest rival (nonbillionaire class) was Biden, at $7.1 million. Warren was closest to the red, with just $2.3 million left in her account, while Buttigieg ($6.6 million) and Klobuchar ($2.9 million) were in between.

The cash crunch comes at a critical time in the race, with nearly one-third of the delegates available in the primary up for grabs on Super Tuesday on March 3 — and only a handful of candidates able to marshal resources to advertise to voters in those 14 states. It’s why super PACs, demonized at the beginning of the 2020 primary, are suddenly jumping in to assist most Democratic candidates, and it’s why the campaigns are now making ever more urgent pleas for financial help.

Bloomberg, fellow billionaire Tom Steyer and Sanders are the only candidates with more than $1 million in television advertising time already booked in the coming days in Super Tuesday states. Klobuchar has reserved about $874,000 so far in smaller states, skipping California and Texas, while Warren is advertising in smaller amounts in Colorado and Maine. Buttigieg has yet to reserve any TV ads beyond the South Carolina primary.​

The sad fact is that money talks. Campaigns are not people and corporations are not people, but they are both vehicles of speech by people, and it takes money to get that message out and promoted to the right people in the right format at the right time.

One or two of these candidates is going to need to make a move here in the next few days to stay effectively alive in this race. Those that do not, their money will continue to evaporate and their campaigns will grow weaker and weaker.