Bernie Sanders’ was expected to win the Nevada Caucuses, but did even better than expected, crushing Joe Biden by a more than two-to-one margin, thus making it exceedingly unlikely that he (Sanders) can be stopped as he steamrolls his way to the Democratic Party’s 2020 presidential nomination.
“The basic takeaway here is that it’s Bernie’s nomination to lose,” says FiveThirtyEight’s Nate Silver. “Bernie Sanders in all likelihood is the nominee unless it gets taken from him at the convention,” adds former Obama campaign manager David Plouffe.
The Bulwark’s Bill Kristol casts a dissenting note, arguing that there’s still plenty of time and ability to deny Sanders the nomination.
Sanders, he observes, has won just 43 of 101 delegates chosen so far and about 30 percent of the popular vote. Ninety-seven percent of the delegates, Kristol explains, have not yet been chosen.
That’s true, but Kristol’s theoretical possibilities ignore the practical realities, which make it all but impossible for Sanders to lose the nomination. For starters, as the primary race advances, Sanders is getting stronger, not weaker; and his opponents are getting correspondingly weaker, not stronger.
Biden’s Fall. Before losing in Iowa and New Hampshire, for instance, Biden had been expected to win Nevada. “A Real Clear Politics polling average has [him] in the lead in both Nevada and South Carolina,” reported CNBC Feb. 4.
But losing creates new political dynamics and electoral facts on the ground; and so it was with Biden, who lost badly to Sanders across most major demographic groups in Nevada—Latinos, young voters, the college educated, union members, and progressives.
Even 22 percent of self-styled “moderates” voted for Sanders versus 25 percent for Biden.
Sanders’ broad-based electoral appeal bodes well for him in Texas, Florida, and California—big delegate-rich states with large and diverse populations and burgeoning numbers of Hispanic voters. (Sanders won more than half of all Hispanic/Latino voters in Nevada.)
Biden did win the black vote in Nevada, 39-27 percent over Sanders; but that’s a weak performance, relatively speaking, when compared to how, say, Hillary Clinton did in Nevada four years ago. Clinton, reports the Washington Post’s David Weigel,
won 76 percent of the black vote in Nevada, to just 22 percent for Sanders. The senator from Vermont actually increased his share of black support this year despite the divided field, to 27 percent.
“Biden’s black voter advantage [also] keeps shrinking… [and] that constituency is not rallying around Biden like it used to, or like he needs it to,” Weigel notes.
This is an ominous development for Biden, who needs a very strong showing among black voters in South Carolina and other Southern states if he is to have any chance of stopping Sanders. Biden desperately needs black voters because, as Weigel observes,
he’s struggling with white voters… Biden won just 14 percent of Nevada’s white voters, running behind former South Bend, Ind., mayor Pete Buttigieg and tying Sens. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.).
Right now, Biden is still favored to win in South Carolina; but his margin for victory keeps shrinking as he badly loses these early caucuses and primaries and appears increasingly to be a weak and unattractive candidate in the eyes of prospective voters.
Moreover, even if Biden wins South Carolina and other Southern states, Sanders will still gain a respectable share of the delegates there.
That’s because the Democrats award their delegates proportionately, provided a candidate wins at least 15 percent of the vote, which Sanders is doing and no doubt will continue to do.
The bottom line: as the Bloomberg campaign’s Kevin Shelley told Axios’ Mike Allen: “according to his (Shelley’s) models, if the current field remains on Super Tuesday (March 3), Sanders would win about 30% of the vote—and 45% of the delegates.”
That’s a plurality, not a majority; and, according to party rules, only a candidate with a majority of the delegates can win the nomination.
But will the party establishment really deny Sanders the nomination if he arrives at the convention with 40-45 percent of the delegates? No way. Again, while this may be theoretically possible, it is practically impossible.
To deny Sanders the nomination after he has won far more delegates than any other candidate, and after he has won big and important states such as California, Texas, Florida, and New York, would be to invite an open revolt among the Sandernistas.
Such a move would split the Democratic Party, render it asunder, and destroy whatever prospects it had to defeat Donald Trump.
So if, as now appears inevitable, Sanders wins these big states and at least 40-45 percent of the delegates overall, then he will be, without question, the party’s nominee.
Also-Rans. What about Bloomberg, Buttigieg, Klobuchar, and Warren? Might they stop Sanders? No, and for the reasons we’ve already explained here at ResCon1.
Warren rendered Bloomberg Democratic roadkill at the Las Vegas debate. The party’s base will never tolerate a Bloomberg nomination. In their eyes, he has three strikes against him. First, he’s a plutocrat; second, he’s a misogynist; and third, he’s a racist (in their eyes).
Buttigieg has demonstrated no ability to win black votes, and this is a real problem, since African Americans are a core Democratic Party constituency. A Democrat simply cannot win the party’s nomination without them.
Warren is a great debater, but she finished fourth in Nevada, with a dismal 9.6 percent of the vote. That’s less than the 12 percent she was expected to get according to the last poll conducted before the Nevada Caucuses. So much for any post-debate bounce.
Again, Warren’s great debating skills don’t correspond with political popularity. She’d have to overcome Buttigieg and Biden before she can have any hope of competing with Sanders. That ain’t gonna happen.
And the situation is even worse for Amy Klobuchar, who could not parlay a strong showing in New Hampshire into a respectable showing in Nevada. Indeed, her sixth-place finish gives her a ticket to nowhere.
That leaves Sanders, and maybe Biden, as the nominee. But Biden, as we’ve seen, is on a clear glide path to defeat. If he doesn’t win decisively in South Carolina, he’s finished.
In short, Biden is the walking dead, and Sanders is the Democratic ghost that won’t die, and this is unlikely to change.
Feature photo credit: New York Times.