The Democratic nomination campaign is ramping up to be a
real wild affair. There are conflicting forces at work, so it’s hard to predict
what will ultimately happen. Will any candidate be able to lock in a majority
of the delegates before the convention?
Let’s go beneath the covers and see what we can figure out.
On the surface, the Democratic campaign appears to mimic the
Republican campaign of 2016. That year the Republican establishment was upended
by an outsider. Why? Because there has been a growing feeling throughout
America that Washington insiders are either corrupt or incompetent. Just take a
look at the approval rating of Congress, which stands at 21%. The dissatisfaction
the public feels drives them in the direction of an outsider for president. Their
feelings are strong and visceral so that doesn’t leave much room for logic. Voters
are drawn to outsider like moths going to the light.
Republicans were unhappy with their party’s establishment in
2016, because it appeared to them as a bunch of rich white men voicing a
philosophy that was tired and worn out. Republicans are seldom successful when
they only talk about traditional values and capitalism. There has to be
something more than that, or a candidate whose personal appeal makes the
presentation of these concepts more appealing.
Trump was attractive to Republican voters because of his energy
and the force of his personality. As a populist, he appealed to groups who felt
ignored and they stuck with him. The rest of the Republican Party was then dragged
along against their will.
Fast forward to 2020, and the Democrats have a similar outsider
situation. Bernie Sanders is the candidate that acts like the outsider. That’s
a pretty good trick since he’s a Senator. Bernie focuses on the idea that if America
had listened to his ideas a long time ago, it could have solved all the
country’s problems. Now is the time to see his “democratic socialist” ideology
in operation.
The difference from 2016 is that Bernie is farther from the
center than Trump was. Bernie will change the government structure
substantially using money from as yet undefined sources. That smells like raising
taxes for the middle class. Trump, for all his personal idiosyncrasies, was in
the main a Republican politician.
A substantial number of Democrats don’t like Bernie’s
chances of beating Trump, and don’t see any willingness on his part to move
toward the center. If Bernie loses, the party forfeits a chance at power, so
they are motivated to look to a different candidate.
Bernie has enough support to win most of the primaries and
gather the most delegates. The fact that three other candidates remain, divides
the opposition so that no one can beat him outright. This theory will be tested
in the “Super Tuesday” states because some have constituencies that favor Bernie’s
competition. If Bernie wins big on Super Tuesday, the pressure will be on
Warren to drop out. If Bloomberg does poorly the handwriting will also be on
the wall for him. He may become Biden’s financier to continue the battle
against Bernie.
Bernie appeals to very specific groups; younger voters and
those with lower incomes. Twenty-eight percent of his supporters are
unemployed, which explains their interest in a socialist model. Young voters do
not vote in high percentages like older voters, however, so that may hurt the
Democrat’s prospects in the fall.
The Democratic Party has 4750 delegate votes at the
convention. Of those, 771 (16%) are superdelegates. If superdelegates pledge themselves
to a particular candidate, at the start of the convention, they must vote for
that candidate on the first ballot, unless released. If the first ballot does not elect a candidate,
subsequent votes are taken until someone wins. The super delegates could vote
in a block to support a particular candidate. Bernie Sanders could go into the
convention with a 300-delegate lead and have that lead overturned by the superdelegates.
The job facing the Democrat elites is to get Joe as many
delegates as possible before the convention so they can defeat him using the
superdelegates. Joe Biden is the horse they’re riding out of necessity.
It will be interesting.
