For some weeks now, supporters of Mr. Sanders have been saying that he should get the nomination even if he enters the convention with plurality, but not majority, of delegates. Mr. Sanders has had a commanding in lead in the polls and a microscopic share of delegates during that time.
Mr. Biden may well win a plurality of delegates awarded on Super Tuesday. Even though Mr. Sanders may “win” CA overall, the current (Wednesday morning, 4-Mar-2020) returns suggest that Mr. Sanders will gain at most 30-40 delegates from California. We might very well end up in a real delegate horse race by the end of the week.
I therefore want to resume a discussion we had earlier, with the shoe on a different foot now. If the candidates go into the convention with Mr. Biden having a plurality and not majority of delegates, what nominee is best for the party as a whole? What process for selecting the nominee leads to the best outcome?
To be specific, suppose we go into convention with the following delegate shares:
Joe Biden: 49%
Bernie Sanders: 48%
Others: 3%
What is the best outcome and process for getting to that outcome?
My own view won’t change. The person with the plurality goes in with a strong argument – the bigger the plurality and bigger the gap, the stronger the argument – but not a guarantee. As to your example in most cases I would say the person with 49% and the person with 48% constitute an obvious unity ticket, but I would find Sanders in the #2 spot a bit hard to swallow, as I suspect so would he, albeit for different reasons.
Agreed.
I don’t think any combination of the current candidates is a viable “unity ticket”. To the extent that choice of running mate is a factor (which I tend to downplay), I think the racial and age homogeneity of the current leading candidates is real obstacle to building the momentum and turnout we need in November.
I think we need somebody on the ticket who is:
– Black or perhaps Latino
– Male (Sadly, I don’t think we can risk alienating voters who are not ready to support a woman)
– Under 70 (under 60 would be even better).
My first thought is for Joe Biden to consider a black mayor of a major city. There are no black governors (so far as I know), and I sadly think nominating a man is a safer bet than a woman. I’d like to see our nominee reach out beyond the “beltway crowd” and choose someone from an executive, rather than legislative, background.
Andrew Gillum fits that bill, although he has issues with corruption allegations and ultimately lose his statewide election. Maybe former mayor Michael Nutter from Philly, although he switched from Biden to Bloomberg during the primary cycle. Deval Patrick also fits that bill, but obviously he went nowhere on the 2020 stage. I’ve always thought Biden-Abrams was a good ticket and disagree that a woman VP is the liability you think it is. Booker of course was a former Mayor and a compelling candidate, someone who also has a great relationship with Bernie Sanders.
Honestly making Bernie DNC chair might be a fun consolation prize for him. He knows how to bring Latinos and young people into the tent and it helps him stay active in the electoral process and groom the next generation of leaders. Also his supporters could finally stop kvetching about the dreaded DNC! He and Joe also do not have nearly the kind of animosity Hillary had for Sanders.
STom, no no no, you are smarter than this. Biden is almost certainly going to be the nominee, especially when Bloomberg starts pumping in his cash. Don’t try to check the boxes for a VP mate.. Julian Castro should be the obvious choice , a smart progressive and incredibly competitive candidate (ask his brother LOL). If Biden is as strong with the AfAm vote, then Castro is better with the Latino vote. KHarris has a bad political past but she she would be safe
I agree with you about Julian Castro. I see Kamala Harris as an obvious choice for AG. One reason she dropped out, as I understand it, is that AfAm voters are unhappy about her history as AG of California.
I agree that Mr. Biden is likely to be the nominee. I think there is some chance that it will come as a result of convention negotiations after failing to win a majority of pledged delegates before the convention. I posted this diary out of curiosity about whether this upheaval changes the rhetoric of the passionate supporters of Mr. Sanders.
The situation is changed again with the withdrawal of Mr. Bloomberg from the race and his subsequent endorsement of Mr. Biden.
I expect Ms. Warren to end her campaign momentarily. I’ll be surprised if she makes a pre-convention endorsement aside from committing to support the nominee in November.
Castro is a great choice. Possibly puts TX in play. Also a nice olive branch to Warren supporters, and to a lesser extent, Sanders supporters. He also has executive experience.
I don’t see it happening at this point. Biden is well on his way to being the presumptive nominee since early voting has ceased and Bloomberg dropped out. If Warren stays in, she divides the Sanders base further. If she drops out, I suspect she does not endorse Sanders (she may also not endorse Bloomberg) and keep her base from splitting into Biden and Bernie camps. Biden is likely to get to 50%+1 after the next round of states vote.
He has momentum while Bernie does not. MI, AZ, WA, and maybe ID and ND are the only Sanders friendly states I see on the calendar. And honestly I am only confident he would win WA on that list. Biden takes FL. Its probably game over.
It’s not the outcome I wanted, but it certainly is better than a contested convention. The voters had their say and they picked Biden.
Oh and I suspect we will be hearing them cite polling and ask the superdelegates to elect Bernie again. The Bernie cult (I liked the man and his campaign-not his wider cult of personality) will twist themselves into knots and conspiracy theories to deny this reality. But its over. Biden won fair and square.
That is a significant reason why I will not vote for this guy. Not earlier this week. Not in November. Not ever. The very last thing the nation needs is another populist personality cult, for whom unfavorable facts are just conspiracies promulgated by the evil, lying media. Nope.
Ah yes, those Bernie Bro’s with their crazy conspiracy talk about Central Park Firing Squads , and breaking Nelson Mandela out of prison–we can sure do without that..
There’s a lot of stupidity on both sides. But the idea that the process was ‘rigged’ because the non-viable moderates consolidates or because Warren stayed in instead of dropping out is also silly. The Castro stuff against Bernie is silly.
Hopefully either Democrat left can ask the two questions Reagan successfully asked in 1980:
1) Are you better off than you were four years ago?
2)C an you trust the President to manage a crisis?
The answer to 1 is a resounding no, particularly for those rust belt voters who’s state economies have gotten worse even as Wall Street’s numbers have gotten better. I think Bernie can make a better case than Biden on that question.
The second answer I think Biden has the advantage, if only because he’s been around for so long and on the NSC as VP. Both would appoint competent people.
Perhaps. The less news coverage and video record he gets, the better positioned he is for this question.
It’s still terrifying to me that we’re pretending he’s not in cognitive decline.
@cognitive decline:
That’s one reason why I think the choice of running mate should be dominated by the ability to take office in a heartbeat rather than short-term political considerations. We got lucky with LBJ, who was arguably well-prepared to take charge after the tragedy of 1963.
Yeah, there is no chance for Pete. Seems like Klobuchar would be a smart, aligned pick. Or Harris.
I really don’t like the idea of Biden-Warren, unless of course it means she is President quickly.
Fox News is already going in hard on the cognitive issues. I don’t think Dems are prepared for this issue, and it’s not something that can easily be messaged away. The stutter defense won’t cut it.
I saw an interview from 2016 with Biden. He’s a different person now. It’s sad.
Cognitive decline: I agree that this is a big risk, probably more than the sudden interest in talking about Ukraine that I would expect Republicans to develop over the next few months.
Trump isn’t Mr. Nimble, but I would expect that he will have his new insults for his twitter audience. I am a bit worried that Biden will have a shut-down line prepared, but will flub it in the moment and wind up looking foolish. Maybe Trump will refuse to debate, and the Dem campaign can pout and complain a bit before quietly moving on. Maybe Biden should refuse to debate, since Trump will only be out there slinging insults anyway.
It isn’t really fixed by the running mate.
Weird that the thread for this post has strayed so quickly off topic. Rather than picking the vice presidential nominee and filling a hypothetical cabinet, it would be more useful to find out what the Massachusetts superdelegates plan to do. Who are they? I’ve had a hard time figuring it out, mainly because the Wikipedia page is unreadable.
Does anyone have a list? Does anyone want to put together a list? Maybe we could ask them what they plan to do at the convention.
Also, even though Fred and Terry got the Zombie Apocalypse they wished for, I wouldn’t talk about this campaign in the past tense yet. Organization and passion still count for something even though you wouldn’t think so from what happened this last 72 hours.
I join you in wondering what the MA superdelegates plan to do.
Even closer to my intent in posting this is to hear what the most passionate supporters of Mr. Sanders WANT them to do (in the event that no candidate has a majority of delegates going into convention).
I’m not interested in a horse-race discussion. We’ve had a fair number of exchanges in recent weeks about how a contested convention should choose a nominee. A common theme from supporters of Bernie Sanders was that the candidate with the largest plurality of voters should get the nomination. That was, perhaps coincidentally, while Mr. Sanders was the candidate most likely to have the largest plurality.
I’m interested in whether those views have changed now that it appears that Mr. Biden may be the candidate with a larger plurality of voters.
I’m not suggesting that the campaign of Mr. Sanders is dead. I’m instead curious about how the transformed landscape affects the views of the most outspoken supporters of Mr. Sanders.
I can’t speak for others. I’ll say I viewed it as a situation where say Sanders was the lead and the next best candidate was ten points behind and the rest of the field was divided every which way. In that scenario, I thought if Sanders was the frontrunner with 40%, just pick him.
In the likelier scenario now, I see Biden either winning outright or Bernie clawing just enough delegates to deny Biden a majority and take it to a contested convention , in which case he would be acting in the manner I feared the moderates would have had he been the leader.
Could the moderates have united the party after going nuclear on a Bernie with a solid lead? Doubtful. Could he unite the party after similarly going nuclear on Biden? I don’t think so. I think Sanders has earned a right to move onto the next round and was very gracious in conceding the turnout he needed did not materialize and very gracious in giving Warren space to make a decision while finally and forcefully telling his supporters to back off while she does so. I hope the remaining contests can help us avoid a divisive primary and convention.
The absolutely automatic ex officio delegates I believe are members of the DNC (which includes state party chairs), all Dem members of either chamber of Congress, and all Dem Governors. There is a second tier of what are called PLEOs (party leaders & elected officials) who run separately and are pledged based on the statewide ratio or can run as uncommitted who are elected by the DSC.
I view this question as a legitimate thought experiment, but, for the record, a really unlikely outcome.
If there were two minority (as in less than a majority) candidates separated by 2% of the delegates, neither would have a moral claim to any remaining delegates.
It would be a potentially fraught situation politically, and it would (in that situation) behoove the party officials and regulars to conduct themselves with evenhanded circumspection.
It would be up to them to say, “The voters are divided and it is the task of this convention not just to break the tie but to bring us together.”
And then to facilitate that, especially he more difficult latter task.
I tend to agree with you.
I didn’t pull that number out of thin air — I tried to run a few different scenarios based on delegate percentages coming slowly out of CA. I keep coming up with a very tight finish, at least based on the little data we have so far.
I don’t think this will be a runaway. I think Mike Bloomfield’s departure and subsequent endorsement of Mr. Biden will prove to be much more influential than Ms. Warren’s inevitable departure. I think it is a mistake to assume that her supporters will shift to Bernie Sanders, even if she endorses him (which I think is unlikely).
The Joe Biden campaign has demonstrated a growing momentum across a broad cross-section of voters that neither Mr. Sanders nor Mr. Bloomberg has been able to even hint at despite years of effort (in the case of Mr. Sanders) and hundreds of millions of dollars (Mr. Bloomberg).
The next data that I’m eager to obtain is proving hard to get. I’d like to see a state-by-state breakdown of eligible voters by age — maybe that’s available from the 2010 Census data. I’d then like to see a table or chart showing the percentage of eligible voters in each age group who voted in the last few Democratic primaries. I’d like to see the same metric for the 2018 midterms.
The cornerstone of the entire Bernie Sanders campaign has been that he will provoke an “unprecedented increase” in turnout, especially among new voters. He’s been saying that since his 2016 campaign. I hear old-timers like James Carville comparing that stance to climate change deniers. I’d like to see the actual data about what’s happening.
I now think Mr. Biden is likely to be nominee. I’m more receptive to him now than I was even a week ago. I think he’ll be the nominee, and I think I’ll vote for him — knowing full well that my vote will be meaningless here in Massachusetts.
I expect there will be some buyer’s remorse in the coming months, as Joe is, after all, a flawed candidate who is shaping up to be another weak president. But it is still his to lose.
Bernie will stay in because that is what he does. He’ll be a “safe” protest vote and will enter the convention with a respectable and sub-majority number of delegates.
Elizabeth might still have a role to play, as an arbiter only. I hope so, because it could be important to model some unity leading up to Joe’s nomination.
Russian bots will foment as much disunity as possible, and lots of people will go for that, because it feels good and they do not believe that Russian bots control them.
Sanders himself told Rachel Maddow tonight that he is sticking with his case that the plurality winner should be made the nominee, even if it turns out not to be he.
That;s great, I think he slowly is seeing the writing on the wall. It makes sense for him to go to the next round and see what he can get. I think the delegate math becomes much harder for him after that, and if Biden upsets Sanders in MI and wins IL, I think it’s game over.
I think Bernie’s going to stay in to the convention, and that is fine, and nobody should get ruffled by it.
I think he has more than earned the right to go to the next round, particularly as CA delegates trickle in. Those voters can decide whether to send Bernie to the next round or call it a day. I don’t see it going as late as the last one did myself, but you never know.
I was a Warren supporter who defected to Sanders since she was no longer viable. In Michigan I would be a Sanders supporter defecting to Biden to end the contest. But I respect voters rights to make their own decisions. Either way, it’s out of our hands now!
Why do you keep moving around? Vote for the person you would like to see President, not whom others want.
If I were an Iowan that would be my MO, since the field didn’t winnow I felt that Sanders was the more viable progressive candidate. Going forward, I want the party to unite behind Biden. Again-ranked choice voting would solve this dilemma, but until then, tactical voting is a reality.
Unity is for AFTER the convention is gaveled to adjournment.
I don’t think we can afford that wait this year. From a recent PPP survey (that also shows a serious shot at a Senate majority!)
I want this thing to wrap up quick, so I am now rooting for Biden and against Sanders, even though I liked Sanders and Warren better than Biden.
This is a tough one for me. I am not excited at another four to eight years of an Obama-like administration that I fear might actually deliver Donald Jr. as our 47th president. As for Mr. Sanders, as a former supporter of him back in 2016, I feel the same way as I feel about Jesus of Nazareth….I like him, but his fan club drives me nuts.
If we go into the convention with your 49/48/3% start,let the 48% recipient choose the vice president (but not himself!)
That is brilliant, actually.