There is an old political saw about Republicans falling in line and Democrats falling in love. It's designed to explain how the respective parties choose there nominees. Repubicans supposedly pick the safe heir apparent, the next in line -- Bush I in 1988, Dole in 1996, McCain in 2008. Democrats swoon over fresh newcomers -- JFK, Clinton, Obama.
Like, however, much that passes for conventional political wisdom these days, this is probably . . .
Wrong.
For every Democrat loved -- like Obama -- there is one who provoked either the sigh of boredom or a discontented "Meh". Think Dukakis, Mondale, Carter. None of them were loved. Dukakis and Mondale were each the benficiaries of old guards unwilling to either embrace riskier (Jesse Jackson) or threatening (Gary Hart) alternatives that would have limited their power. As for Carter, in 1976 he benefitted from a crowded field surrounded by candidates decidedly to his left, and though he won the 1980 Democratic nomination, the party's August convention is remembered mostly for Ted Kennedy's dream-shall-never-die speech . . . which is what Democratic love looked like then.
Same for the Republicans.
If Trump refutes any piece of conventional wisdom, it is the notion that GOP primary voters fall in line. They never came close in 2016. In a field crowded with papabile -- four former or current Senators, five former or current Governors -- Trump's irregularity stood out like a sore thumb. Indeed, between his lies, foul mouth, school-yard taunts and bullying, Trump couldn't have been part of any GOP line, even had he wanted to be.
And he clearly didn't.
So, what's happening today?
After two caucuses and one primary, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, a self-described democratic socialist and registered Independent, is the front runner for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination. He won 46% of the vote in the Nevada caucuses yesterday, assembling a broad coalition of voters that left the second place finisher (Biden) more than twenty-five points behind. Five Thirty Eight, stat wunderkind Nate Silver's independent vehicle for modeling/predicting all things political and athletic, now gives Sanders a 45% (or almost even) chance of being the party's actual nominee come this summer.
The next contest is the South Carolina primary this coming Saturday. That is closely followed by Super Tuesday on March 3, where 1,357 delegates (or 34% of the total pledged delegates) will be chosen in contests in fourteen states and two other jurisdictions (American Samao and Democrats Abroad). To win the nomination outright, any candidate needs half (or 1,991) of the pledged delegates on the first ballot or half of the 4,750 total delegates (2,376) on subsequent ballots. Of the total delegates, 771 are super-delegates (office holders, ex-Presidents, state party and county party chairs). They are free to support anyone they want but only on the second ballot and going forward.
In South Carolina, Biden is still ahead in the polls but not by much. Sanders is a strong second, five points behind, with Steyer five behind him and Buttigieg, Warren and Klobuchar each seven or so behind Steyer. Critically, however, Sanders has closed the gap between him and Biden with black voters, who make up a majority of the state's Democratic primary voters.
If Biden loses and Sanders wins in South Carolina, it is difficult to see how Biden (or the other moderates, all of whom will presumably have done worse than Joe) can go forward. Neither Biden nor the others have enough money to buy paid media in all fifteen Super Tuesday contests. And though late-entrant Michael Bloomberg is on all the Super Tuesday ballots, and has spent more than anyone on paid media by orders of magnitude, his poor (indeed, positively awful) debate showing last week has taken the proverbial bloom off his rose.
In the category of not learning from one's mistakes, Bloomberg is set to appear in his second debate later this week, where there is no telling how he will do. He has, however, not been partiularly good at debates throughout his brief political career and there is no reason to assume he will be magically transformed in the next few days.
If Biden loses and Sanders wins in South Carolina, it is difficult to see how Biden (or the other moderates, all of whom will presumably have done worse than Joe) can go forward. Neither Biden nor the others have enough money to buy paid media in all fifteen Super Tuesday contests. And though late-entrant Michael Bloomberg is on all the Super Tuesday ballots, and has spent more than anyone on paid media by orders of magnitude, his poor (indeed, positively awful) debate showing last week has taken the proverbial bloom off his rose.
In the category of not learning from one's mistakes, Bloomberg is set to appear in his second debate later this week, where there is no telling how he will do. He has, however, not been partiularly good at debates throughout his brief political career and there is no reason to assume he will be magically transformed in the next few days.
Which leaves us with Bernie.
The candidate not by any means in line . . .
But difficult in these times of Trump to love.
Right now, a generic Democrat and Trump would appear to each have 226 electoral votes from states either in or leaning into their respective columns. That leaves roughly 86 electoral votes in the clearly up-for-grabs category. Those votes are in Arizona, Florida, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Today, Bernie is ahead in the polls in Michigan and Pennsylvania and behind in Florida and Wisconsin. In a very old poll, he was slightly ahead in Arizona. Were he to lose Florida and Arizona but win the other three, he would be President, all else being equal; without Wisconsin, where he is now behind, he would lose. Were he to flip Arizona but lose Wisconsin while holding Pennsylvania and Michigan, he would still win. And on the optimistic side, there are polls in Florida that say the race between Sanders and Trump is at this point tied. So, even there . . .
Maybe.
All of these scenarios, however, are radically uncertain. On the one hand, state polls are often not that good and in any case can age quickly into irrelevance. On the other, even where he is winning, Sanders' margins are not insurmountable, He leads Trump by five points in Minnesota, better than Hillary's margin but nowhere near a lock. In the last Virgina poll, he was losing to Trump in a state Hillary won; that's 13 electoral votes he cannot afford to give up.
And perhaps most importantly, the negative campaign against him hasn't really begun.
According to the polls, 65% of Americans hate socialism.
Yet Bernie persists . . .
Happily embracing the title with a qualifier.
He says he is a "democratic socialist".
When asked to describe countries that fit into this category, Sanders says he isn't thinking about Cuba or Venezuela, neither of which are democratic in any functional sense. Instead, he claims to have Denmark and Sweden in mind. That's nice. . .
But for two problems.
One is that voters are not likely to investigate the difference all that closely, and the GOP will be more than happy to confuse them. The other is that, assuming socialism involves some state ownership of the means of production, it's not clear to me that Americans favor allowing any vote to make that happen.
For a number of reasons, all of this is really a shame for Bernie.
One is that, if he is claiming to be a socialist, he's not a particularly good one. He's certainly not advocating the take-over of whole industries. Even with heath care a la Sanders, the private sector will have to provide the services Medicare pays for. Though Sanders is pretending he'll be able to lower costs by some sort of legislated fiat, he knows that whatever emerges will be negotiated. Doctors and the AMA are not going to sua sponte accept a price list. Nor are the drug companies.
Bernie's aides and seconds are now blanketing the cable shows with claims that their man is really just a 21st century version of Franklin Roosevelt, and my view (which is also Paul Krugman's) is that this is pretty much correct. He's not advocating state ownership of the means of production. He's just talking up a heightened regulatory environment where the concept of "public goods" enters the lexicon as an alternative to all things market based. In that world, we get to think about education, health care, clean air and water, and the fight against global warming as something we're all entitled to, as things that as a moral matter shouldn't go to the highest bidder and as a practical matter have often been destroyed on the altar of markets uber alles.
The other, of course, is that if you are really just FDR-redux, why not lead with that rather than the whole democratic socialist mantra? I mean, it's not as if a non-American, more or less despised, foreign sounding label is his only problem. He's also had a heart attack; he's 78 years old; and some of his more ardent supporters are acting like left wing versions of you-know-who's.
So, please Bernie, give it a rest.
Even AOC is telling us you won't be able to enact the full menu.
And she likes you.
Can he win?
I don't know.
But what I do know is this. If he can't, we better figure that out now and come up with someone who can. And from at least what the early primary voters are telling us, none of the current candidates on offer fit that bill.
There are miles off Joe Biden's fast ball. Warren and Klobuchar wax and wane from high to low moments; many of the former are inspirational but none are sustained. Steyer and Bloomberg really do think cash is king in a party and at a time where we cannot let it be; if either is to be president, they'd have to be as eloquent as they are rich . . . and they're not. And Mayor Pete, the smartest of the lot, has of late revealed a snarky streak that makes intelligence over-bearing and therefore ineffective. There's a reason Amy Klobuchar asked if he was calling her dumb for not remembering the name of the Mexican president. He kinda was.
I am not willing to give up on them . . .
Yet.
But if, as and when I do, an idea sparked in a conversation with a friend yesterday was intriguing.
For me, it is a given that we need to defeat Trump. He is getting worse, not better. The lies, narcissism and paranoia are hollowing out the government, replacing any remaining competence with sycophants, crippling institutions, and turning the law into a private vendetta-machine. I do not believe it at all certain this experiment we call a democratic republic can survive a second term. And I am certain Trump doesn't give a damn if it does.
Perhaps there is a third way.
An independent fusion ticket that could actually win in the electoral college and save us from Trump.
Twenty years ago, one of them decided "for the sake of . . . unity . . . and the strength of our democracy" to honor a flawed decision that stopped a vote count that would have elected him, and eighteen days ago, the other decided to remove a flawed President despite the opposition of his party and the certain vilification that followed.
Candidates for the White House regularly talk about putting country above party.
These two have already done so.
So, my fusion ticket, a political Hail Mary if you will, is . . .
Al Gore and Mitt Romney.
To be continued . . .
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