Now that New Hampshire Democrats have voted, it looks like it’s gonna be Bernie, Biden or Bust—with the Bust being a contested political convention in which no candidate has a clear majority of the delegates and all bets are off.
First, Bernie. After finishing in a virtual tie in the Iowa Caucuses, Bernie won the New Hampshire primary.
Critics carp that he won a bare plurality of the vote—far less than the 60 percent he won in 2016 when facing off against Hillary Clinton for the Democratic Party presidential nomination. But it is obviously more difficult to run up vote tallies in fractured field than it is in a two-person race.
What matters is that Sanders won and is the clear frontrunner now, with all of the momentum and sense of destiny that accompany a political winner. He’s also cemented his hold on the party’s progressive, left-wing base; no other candidate comes close.
Sanders, moreover, has raised a boatload of money and has strong political organizations in key states nationwide. If, as the polls suggest, he wins the Nevada Caucuses Feb. 22, he likely will go into Super Tuesday, Mar. 3, as the prohibitive favorite.
Biden didn’t just lose New Hampshire; he lost badly, finishing fifth, with a measly 8.4 percent of the vote.
Of course, he didn’t do much better in Iowa, finishing fourth there, behind Sanders, Pete Buttigieg, and Elizabeth Warren. Many prominent political analysts say he’s finished. You can’t lose this badly, they say, and remain politically viable.
That’s probably true; but Biden is banking on winning in South Carolina, Feb. 29, to catapult him back into the race. More than 60 percent of Democrats there are African Americans, and polls have shown that they strongly prefer Biden.
But will black voters in South Carolina and elsewhere continue to support Biden even as he decisively loses these early contests? Or will they conclude that he’s a political loser and cast their lot elsewhere?
That really is the critical question for Biden: because if he cannot win in South Carolina, then his presidential campaign is over.
Bust. Unlike the Republicans, who have winner-take-all rules for most of their primaries and caucuses, the Democrats award delegates largely on a proportional basis in accordance with a candidate’s share of the overall vote tally.
In 2016, this meant that Donald Trump could win, and often did win, all of a state’s delegates simply by winning a plurality of the vote in that state.
This is not true for the Democrats. Because they award delegates proportionately, it is much more likely that, at their convention this summer, no candidate will have a clear majority of the delegates, and they’ll have to fight it out to determine who their nominee is.
There hasn’t been a contested major party convention since 1976 if you count the Republican Party battle between Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan. Prior to that, you have to go back to 1952 for the last truly contested convention.
“The chance of there being no pledged delegate majority—which could potentially lead to a contested convention—is high and increasing, reports Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight. “New Hampshire,” he writes, “is
good news if you’re hoping for chaos. Our forecast has the chances that no one wins a majority of pledged delegates up to 33 percent, its highest figure yet, and roughly double what it was before Iowa.
Other Candidates. There are other candidates, of course, and, theoretically, they could win the nomination; but, practically speaking, I don’t see how.
Elizabeth Warren, the Senator from Massachusetts, will soon drop out. She finished fourth in New Hampshire after finishing third in Iowa.
If Warren could not win in either Iowa or New Hampshire, then it is difficult to see where she can win—especially given that she doesn’t poll well with blacks, Hispanics, and other minorities.
This is a real problem for her campaign: because starting with Nevada and South Carolina, minorities will become an increasingly prominent part of the Democratic Party primary electorate.
Klobuchar, Buttigieg, and Bloomberg have a similarly fatal political problem: a lack of support from blacks and other minorities.
Again, it’s possible that could change, but I don’t see how. As mayors of their respective cities, New York and South Bend, Bloomberg and Buttigieg alienated key black Democrats and sometimes had chilly and testy political relations with influential African American progressives.
Klobuchar does not appear to have incited opposition among blacks and other minorities, but she hasn’t exactly inspired their loyalty and commitment either. And her political problems extend well beyond this key voting demographic.
Does she, for instance, have the requisite political organization to compete head-to-head with Sanders nationwide and especially in the big and expensive states such as California, New York, Texas, and Florida? I rather doubt it, but we’ll see.
The bottom line: the media will do their best to make a race of it. Look for Klobuchar especially to be the beneficiary of glowing press coverage, and even Biden will get a second look. But right now, this is Sanders’ nomination to lose, and it is difficult to see how that changes.
Feature photo credit: the New York Times.