Democrats Delay Convention

The Democratic National Committee has announced that the party’s convention will be delayed due to the Coronavirus pandemic. The convention was originally scheduled for July but will now be delayed until mid-August, the New York Times reports.

Last night, presumptive nominee Joe Biden called for a delay in the convention in an appearance on “The Tonight Show.” The day before, Biden told MSNBC in an interview that it would “hard to envision” the convention going ahead on schedule.

The Democratic convention was originally scheduled to take place from July 13 through July 16. The new schedule calls for the convention to kick off on August 17. The gathering will still take place in Milwaukee.

The Republican convention was already scheduled for August 24 through 27 in Charlotte. The new Democratic schedule puts the two party functions only a week apart.

Speaking to Fox News last week, President Trump said that he has no plans to change or cancel the Republican convention.

“We’re not going to cancel,” Trump said. “I think we’re going to be in great shape long before then.”

The shifting schedule for the Democratic convention leads to several questions and possibilities. Many states have postponed their primaries due to the pandemic. The longer primary schedule may make it more difficult for Biden to consolidate the party behind his candidacy. The new convention date does give his campaign more time between the late primaries and the convention to hone their message.

The delayed convention also keeps open the possibility that Democrats might substitute another candidate for Biden. If Biden does not win 1,991 of the 3,979 pledged delegates, anything could happen at the convention. This is especially true if Biden loses the confidence of party leaders over the summer.

Finally, the shorter time between the convention and the election will affect Biden’s ability to mount a national campaign. Donald Trump has already secured the Republican nomination, but Joe Biden still has to vanquish Bernie Sanders. With delayed primaries and a delayed convention, Biden will be fighting a two-front war until August.

The flip side is that a delayed convention may make it easier to keep the energy of the convention going. A two-month sprint to the election, as opposed to a three-month marathon, may benefit the aging Biden. The shorter span will also help to keep the focus on the Biden campaign since the pandemic curve should be lower by the end of summer.

In any case, it is difficult to see how the Democrats could have kept the July schedule. Social distancing and delayed primaries would have made the convention an iffy prospect.

Originally published on the resurgent

You Can Stick A Fork In Bernie – He’s Done

oe Biden continued to outperform the polls in this week’s wave of Democratic primaries. The former vice president won four of six states outright with Washington still too close to call. At present, Biden leads Sanders by more than 150 delegates and there seems to be little chance for Sanders to make up the difference.

As I pointed out over the weekend, Michigan was last night’s big prize. Sanders won the state in a close race in 2016. This year, Biden won the state by 16 points. The final vote exceeded Biden’s lead in the polls by 10 points.

Here are the results from the March 10 elections:

• Idaho – (20 delegates) – Biden 48.9 – Sanders 42.5
• Michigan (125) – Biden 52.9 – Sanders 36.4
• Mississippi (36) – Biden 81 – Sanders 14.8
• Missouri (68) – Biden 60.1 – Sanders 34.5
• North Dakota (14) – Sanders – 53.3 – Biden 39.8
• Washington (89) – Sanders 32.7 – Biden 32.5 with only 69 percent of precincts reporting

The pattern follows that of Super Tuesday in which Biden runs up the delegate score in states with large minority populations and then holds Bernie to narrow leads in the few states where the Vermont senator wins. If this trend continues, Biden will continue to expand his lead over the coming weeks.

“The window is closing for Bernie. Losing states that he won last time in a scenario where he’s got a clean head to head is pretty damning for his candidacy,” said Doug Herman, a lead mail strategist for Barack Obama’s 2008 and 2012 campaigns, told Politico. “The most crucial barometer for him is, ‘Has he expanded his coalition?’ And time after time we see that he hasn’t.”

Even before all the results were in, Rep. James Clyburn (D-S.C.), whose endorsement of Joe Biden before the South Carolina primary helped to reshape the race, said that it was time to pull the plug on the debates since Bernie had no path to victory.

“I think when the night is over, Joe Biden will be the prohibitive favorite to win the Democratic nomination,” Clyburn told NPR on Tuesday night. “Quite frankly, if the night ends the way it has begun, I think it is time for us to shut this primary down, it is time for us to cancel the rest of these debates. Because you don’t do anything but get yourself in trouble if you continue in this contest when it’s obvious that the numbers will not shake out for you.”

With Sanders consistently underperforming his 2016 numbers, it seems that his relative success that year was less about his movement than about Hillary Clinton’s unpopularity. Bernie’s wave of support seems to have been built around a Democratic Never Hillary movement that abandoned him when there were more candidates to choose from.

Unless there is a major change in the structure of the race, Sanders has no path to the nomination and will eventually be mathematically eliminated. With four big primaries coming up next week, all in states won by Clinton in 2016, Biden has the chance to expand his lead even further.

Bernie’s days are numbered, but the question remains whether Joe Biden will be able to bring his voters into the Democratic fold. In states like Michigan, Democrats are sharply divided among the two camps, but polling shows a very close general election race. Democrats will need every available voter to carry the state.

My personal prediction is that most Bernie Bros will rally around Biden for the simple reason that they hate Trump more. As I described back in April 2019, Bernie supporters don’t like Biden because they don’t see him as progressive enough, but still hold the attitude that “at least he’s not Donald Trump,” similar to the way that Republicans held their noses and voted for Trump in 2016 because he wasn’t Hillary.

As one Bernie supporter told me at the time, “I could take literally any other Democratic candidate other than Joe, but I will vote for him if I have to.”

It looks like she will.

Originally published on The Resurgent

Biden Could Clinch Nomination In Next Few Weeks

Joe Biden’s stunning turnaround and the decision of most of the Democratic candidates to suspend their campaigns have dramatically reshaped the primary campaign. A race that looked likely to be contested up to the convention now looks as though it may be resolved within the next month.

The Biden campaign had been all but written off by many observers when two solid debate performances and blowout victory in South Carolina turned the tide of the campaign. Realizing that the only way to prevent Bernie Sanders from winning the nomination was to line up in support of Biden, the other moderate Democrats suspended their campaigns and endorsed the former vice president, paving the way for Joe’s surprisingly extensive victories on Super Tuesday. Since the middle of February, Biden has gained 10 points in the national polling average while Sanders has dropped three points.

Following Super Tuesday, Biden now leads Sanders in the delegate race by 595 to 528. To win the nomination, a candidate needs 1,991 delegates.

The big prize for the March 10 wave of primaries next week is Michigan with 125 delegates. None of the other five primary states that day have more than 100 delegates.

Recent Michigan polling reflects the same shift that has been evident in the rest of the country. A mid-February poll showed Sanders up by nine points while a poll taken between February 28 and March 3 found Biden up by six.

The Sanders campaign has been confident about Michigan, having won there in 2016 and with Biden have very little in the way of organization there. However, Politico reports that Biden led the Vermont senator by 20 points in early absentee voting even before the momentum of Super Tuesday was apparent.

“This thing could be over for all intents and purposes in three weeks,” Paul Maslin, a top Democratic pollster who worked on the presidential campaigns of Jimmy Carter and Howard Dean, told Politico. “It’s done unless Joe makes some horrible mistake. He will win blacks 75-25 minimum from here on in. He doesn’t have Hillary’s negatives. And people want to beat Trump big time. This race is over.”

“Everybody wants to get on the bandwagon now,” Barry Goodman, a bundler for Biden in Michigan, said. “I think if Joe wins [Michigan] by 10, Bernie may not leave yet. But the following weeks, when he loses by 10 in Florida, Mississippi, and Georgia, I think it’s done.”

March 17 is a big day for Democrats with primaries in four states, three of which have more than 100 delegates. Florida, Ohio, and Illinois are big primaries on St. Patrick’s Day. Biden leads in Florida, the only state of the three with recent polling.

Georgia, another strong Biden state, follows on March 24 with 105 delegates. The next big primaries after that are not until April 28 when New York and Pennsylvania vote.

If the Biden surge continues, he can be expected to start opening his lead on Sanders over the next few weeks. While Bernie Sanders is not the sort of candidate who can be expected to easily fall in line and join the Biden train, at some point, it will become apparent that he will be mathematically eliminated from winning a plurality of delegates.

As Bernie falls behind Biden in the popular vote, he will also lose his ability to claim a right to the nomination if no one wins the nomination outright. Democrats are speaking and what they are saying is that they want a more moderate candidate than Bernie. Democratic voters are prioritizing the ability to appeal to a large share of the electorate to beat Donald Trump over the radical change preferred by social media progressives.

Perhaps a bigger question for the next few months than who will be the Democratic nominee is how Sanders supporters will react to a loss by their candidate. Will the Bernie Bros rally around Joe Biden or will they repeat their mistake from 2016 and stay home, allowing Donald Trump to repeat his narrow Electoral College victory?

Originally posted on The Resurgent

Biden Campaign Is Not Dead But Tomorrow Will Make It Or Break It

ust when it seemed as if the Biden campaign was on life support, there are signs that the former vice president’s campaign is stirring. After weeks of Bernie Sanders surging in the polls, a couple of strong debate performances by Joe Biden and some optimistic new polls have breathed life back into the Biden campaign.

A few weeks ago, it seemed as though the Sanders surge paired with self-funded campaigns by Bloomberg and Steyer might upend Biden’s chances of carrying the Palmetto State. Now, however, Biden is trending upward in a number of recent South Carolina polls with several showing him holding a double-digit lead over Sanders.

Biden’s resurgence comes not at Sanders’s expense, but at the expense of pretty much every else. The Real Clear Politics average shows Sanders stagnant while Steyer, Buttigieg, Warren, and Klobuchar are all in decline.

Biden undoubtedly owes his comeback to good debate performances in Nevada and South Carolina as well as a surprisingly strong second-place finish in Nevada. Voters who had written him off are now giving him a second look, especially since he is the only candidate positioned to stop Bernie Sanders.

Nationally, Sanders is still the frontrunner. The Real Clear Politics average shows the Vermont socialist with an average lead of 11 points. However, if Bernie turns in a disappointing performance in South Carolina and Super Tuesday, which includes many states with large minority populations, it could slow his momentum.

Here is a rundown on Super Tuesday polling (based on the current Real Clear Politics averages) :

• Alabama primary – no polls
• American Samoa caucus – no polls
• Arkansas primary – Bloomberg leads Biden by one and Sanders by four
• California primary – Sanders leads by an average of 16 points
• Colorado primary – Sanders at 30 percent, Biden in fifth at 10 percent
• Maine primary – Sanders at 25 percent, Biden in fourth with 12 percent
• Massachusetts primary – Sanders averages 23 percent, Biden in fourth with 11 percent
• Minnesota primary – Klobuchar leads with 28 percent followed by Sanders at 22. Biden in fourth with nine percent.
• North Carolina primary – Biden and Sanders are in a statistical tie with about 20 percent each
• Oklahoma primary – Bloomberg leads Biden by about four percent with Sanders in third
• Tennessee primary – no polls
• Texas primary – Another near-tie for Sanders and Biden
• Utah primary – The sole recent poll gives Sanders 28 percent and shows Biden in fifth with nine percent
• Vermont primary – Sanders up by 38 in his home state
• Virginia primary – One poll shows a Sanders-Bloomberg tie and the more recent shows Sanders up by nine. In both cases, Biden is in third.

The big question for the Biden campaign is how much has changed in these states after the last two debates. Poor performances by Sanders and Bloomberg may have hurt those candidates while benefitting Biden. There is also the question of how many early voters may have locked in their votes before the debates began to fuel the Biden surge.

Biden can also hope to gain from attacks on Sanders from the media and Democratic establishment. Many prominent Democrats have warned voters that Sanders would be likely to lose the election to Donald Trump.

“If you want to vote for Bernie Sanders because you feel good about his program, you don’t like the banks on Wall Street or you don’t like pharmaceuticals, that’s legitimate, I understand that,” Democratic strategist James Carville said on MSNBC. “If you’re voting for him because you think he’ll win the election, politically, you’re a fool.

Some Democratic voters may also be put off by the Republican glee at the prospect of a Trump – Sanders race. The movement by some Trump supporters to cross party lines and vote for Bernie in the Democratic primary should be a warning sign to the Bernie-curious.

At this point, Biden is fighting to stay in the race. A win in South Carolina could fuel a strong showing on Super Tuesday. A good Super Tuesday would increase his momentum going forward, but would likely mean a long, tough race to the convention.

Joe Biden’s plan has long been to focus on South Carolina and not seriously contest the other early primary states. He currently looks set to win the Palmetto State, thanks in large part to black voters. With Bernie Sanders’s momentum, however, South Carolina may be too little too late.

Originally published on The Resurgent

Bernie Sanders Could Actually Win

Many Trump supporters seem almost giddy about the prospect of Trump-Bernie race this fall. To many people, the biggest question is whether Sanders will do better or worse than Walter Mondale’s 49-state loss in 1984. Very few people, even among the Democratic establishment, seem to consider the possibility that Bernie might win.

Mitch McConnell is one of the few who seems to be trying to tamp down what former Fed chairman Alan Greenspan would refer to as “irrational exuberance.” Speaking to reporters on Tuesday, the Senate Majority Leader attempted to rein in the premature celebrations.

“I’m reminded of when the Democrats back in 1980 were all pulling for Ronald Reagan to be the nominee because they thought he’d be the easiest to beat,” McConnell said in Politico. “I think it’s going to be a contested general election with a lot of energy on both sides, and for myself, I’ll leave it up to the Democrats to pick who they’d like to be their candidate.”

Republicans are licking their chops and waiting for the opportunity to dump a veritable truckload of opposition research on the Sanders campaign. Bernie’s trips to the Soviet Union and apologetics for dictators are no secret, but many undecided voters (read, voters who don’t argue politics on Facebook and Twitter ad infinitum ad nauseam) will not yet be familiar with them. These skeletons in Bernie’s closet will be devastating, the Republican reasoning goes.

Yet, it doesn’t occur to most Republicans that the Bernie campaign has plenty of ammunition with which to return Trump’s fire. Republicans are going full steam ahead in nominating the man who may well be the most corrupt president in American history.

The Republican victory in acquitting Donald Trump only prolonged the public discovery process about the president’s activities. Because the Senate decided not to call impeachment witnesses, itself an unprecedented act, the public will now find out what John Bolton has to say about Trump and the quid pro quo for aid to Ukraine when his book hits the shelves on March 17. The White House response is to try to halt publication of the book on the national security grounds.

Bolton’s book isn’t the only potential problem for the Trump campaign. Trump’s second national security advisor, H.R. McMaster, is also publishing a tell-all that will be released in April. McMaster and the president had a rocky relationship before the former general was dismissed in April 2018.

In fact, there is no shortage of former Trump Administration officials who had rocky relationships with the president and any number of them could come out with damaging books, op-eds, or statements between now and November. In particular, the former “adults in the room,” Rex Tillerson, James Mattis, and John Kelly could do a lot to sink Trump’s re-election chances if they want.

To some extent, the members of the trio have already spoken out. For example, Tillerson called the president a “pretty undisciplined” person who likes to do illegal things in a 2018 interview with CBS News while Mattis let his venomously polite resignation letter do his talking for him. Just a few weeks ago, Kelly let loose at Trump in a question-and-answer session at Drew University where he told students and a reporter from The Atlantic that a major problem in the Trump Administration was the shortage of confident advisors who were strong enough to tell the president “no.” Any of these former Trump Administration officials could make big trouble for the Trump campaign by telling of their experiences with the president and pronouncing him unfit to lead the country.

But wait, as Billy Mays used to say, there’s more.

Among the host of Trump Administration cases winding their way through the courts are two lawsuits over the disclosure of Donald Trump’s tax returns. The Supreme Court issued a temporary stay in November after lower courts ordered the president’s tax documents released to Congress. The Supreme Court will hear arguments in March but it seems likely that the tax returns will be made public prior to the election. No one knows exactly what is in the president’s tax documents, but the Administration has fought tooth and nail to keep them secret after Trump’s initial promises to release them to the public.

And then there is Lev Parnas, the associate of Rudy Giuliani who rocked Washington in January with his photos with a Who’s Who of Republicans and tales of Giuliani’s dealings in Ukraine. Parnas previously released an audio recording of the president discussing the firing of Marie Yovanovitch and his lawyer says that he has more tapes of the president.

Yet another possible problem for Team Trump is the prospect of a Coronavirus recession. For years, the sole, unequivocal bright spots of the Trump Administration have been the rising stock market and the strong economy. Now, however, stock markets have shown declines for three consecutive days as investors worry about the virus’s effect on international trade.  

I’m not predicting that Bernie Sanders will be our next president, but I am saying that the election could easily go either way. In 2016, Hillary was bedeviled by a constant drip of bad and embarrassing stories throughout the last few months of the campaign. In 2020, a similar pattern could emerge for Donald Trump. If the election boils down to a grudge match between socialism and corruption, there is a good chance that the socialist will win.

Republicans who are longing for a Bernie Sanders nomination should be careful what they wish for. They could get more than they bargained for.

Originally published in The Resurgent

Trump-Critical Conservatives Should Rally Around Biden In The Primary

bout a month ago I wrote about different voting strategies for conservatives who are opposed to President Trump’s re-election. With Bernie Sanders’ recent victories and Super Tuesday approaching, the rubber is about to meet the road. For anyone who doesn’t want the possibility of a Bernie Sanders presidency, time is running out.

The moderate candidates are splitting the vote of their wing of the party, allowing Sanders to win with a minority of the vote. If the trend continues to Super Tuesday and beyond, Sanders will eventually be the Democratic nominee.

As I wrote previously, Trump’s domination of the modern Republican Party and the fact that Republican presidential primaries have been canceled in many states mean that the opportunity cost for disaffected conservatives to vote Democrat is very low. The question is who the new conservative Democratic voters should vote for. Really, there is only one option. Those of us who want a viable alternative to Donald Trump should rally around Joe Biden.

Pete Buttigieg won Iowa and finished strong in New Hampshire, but he is woefully inexperienced and has no national organization. Amy Klobuchar looked like a possible moderate alternative after New Hampshire but has since failed to catch on. Bloomberg has plenty of money but obvious problems with skeletons in his closet and personality. Despite spending hundreds of millions of dollars, he isn’t polling well. Tulsi Gabbard is nothing more than a polling blip and Elizabeth Warren is no moderate.

Joe Biden, for all his flaws, is the only real chance to beat Bernie and then Trump. Biden is experienced, has a nationwide network of supporters, and is moderate enough to be a safe nominee.

Notice that I don’t talk policy here. As a conservative, I disagree with the entire field (including Trump) on policy. The best that I can hope for out of this election is an honest president who will be restrained in his (or her) use of executive power and who will abide by the Constitution and the rule of law. A moderate caretaker president who would try to bring the country together instead of dividing it for political gain would be a bonus.

What I am suggesting is different from what Hugh Hewitt and other Republicans have advocated in voting for Bernie to give Trump what they perceive as a weaker candidate. Rather than trying to sabotage the Democratic Party, my plan attempts to save it and help the country in the process by helping Democrats pick a more electable nominee. While Hewitt and the like have no intention of voting for any Democrat in the general election, conservatives critical of Trump may at least consider the possibility.

And to those Republicans working for a Bernie nomination, you may regret it if you get what you wish for. If the election turns into a battle of corruption versus socialism, it isn’t a fait accompli that the corrupt Republican would emerge victorious.

The swing voters who decide elections often don’t vote on the issues, instead basing their choices on which candidate “cares more about people like me” or who they would prefer to have a beer with. A recent USA Today/IPSOS poll found that Bernie scored higher on these likability and character issues than Trump. And it wasn’t even close.

If conservatives decide to vote in the Democratic primary, they should vote for the candidate that would be best (or least worst) for America. Pushing the opposition party towards an extreme and unelectable candidate has backfired twice in the past three elections. That’s how we got both Barack Obama and Donald Trump.

It’s naive to believe that it is impossible for Bernie to win. That is why conservatives who love America should try to ensure that he does not win the nomination.

Originally published on The Resurgent

Bernie Is the Frontrunner... For Now

New national polling shows that Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders is now the undisputed frontrunner in the Democratic national primary. A spate of new polls show that Sanders now has approximately 30 percent of support from national Democrats with Joe Biden, Michael Bloomberg, and Elizabeth Warren vying for second place.

Three polls released over the past two days confirm that Sanders now enjoys a double-digit lead over his nearest rivals. Here are the results of those polls:

ABC News/Washington Post conducted Feb. 14-17 with 408 registered voters:

Sanders – 32

Biden – 16

Bloomberg – 14

Warren – 12

All others are under 10 percent.

Emerson College conducted Feb. 16-18 with 573 likely voters:

Sanders – 29

Biden – 22

Bloomberg – 14

Warren – 12

All others are under 10 percent.

NBC News/Wall St. Journal conducted Feb. 14-17 with 426 likely voters:

Sanders – 27     

Biden – 15

Bloomberg – 14

Warren – 14

Buttigieg -13

All others are under 10 percent.

The polling undisputedly shows that Bernie Sanders is moving away from Joe Biden. Sanders has not only climbed in the polls after his strong showing in Iowa and his victory in New Hampshire, but Biden has also dropped off sharply.

But it isn’t only Sanders - and perhaps it isn’t even predominantly Sanders – who has benefitted from Biden’s misfortune. A look at the Real Clear Politics polling average graph shows that Biden’s decline mirrors Bloomberg’s rise almost perfectly. It appears that Bloomberg is drawing many of the moderate Democrats who were once Biden supporters.

However, as with the Electoral College, the nuts and bolts of the delegate race are at the state level. As I pointed out last week, there is a dearth of polling in Nevada, South Carolina, and the Super Tuesday states so there is room for surprises. What polling there is shows a muddled race. Some various recent state polls show Sanders up by 19 points in Nevada and somewhere between four and 18 points in California. Meanwhile, the most recent South Carolina polling shows Joe Biden with a narrowing lead, last reported at eight points. In most cases, Bloomberg and Biden are competing for second place.

Biden’s concern for his South Carolina firewall is evident in the fact that his campaign is deploying John Kerry, famously described by Wall St. Journal columnist James Taranto as “the haughty, French-looking Massachusetts Democrat, who by the way served in Vietnam,” to rally his forces in the Palmetto State. The State reports that the 2004 presidential nominee will join a bus tour with Biden’s surrogates as it swings through the state.

I wrote several times earlier this year that the Democratic primary might follow the model of the 2016 Republican race in which the moderate candidates split the vote, allowing the radical outsider to win with a plurality. Only this year, I surmised, the effect might be the reverse with progressive radicals splitting the vote and allowing the moderate Biden to cruise to victory. Michael Bloomberg’s late entry into the race changed all that.

Bloomberg’s ad blitz paired with Biden’s underwhelming performance seems to have established the New Yorker as a spoiler. With Bloomberg drawing from Biden’s support, both of the moderates are weaker than Bernie Sanders, but their combined shares of support are larger than Sanders’ share in most cases. If both candidates stay in the race, Bernie seems likely to come out on top.

That doesn’t necessarily mean that Bernie will win, however. There seems to be a growing chance that none of the candidates will be able to claim the nomination outright, leading to a brokered convention in which a deal has to be struck to determine a nominee. The FiveThirtyEight model recently put the chances of a brokered convention at about 25 percent.

Even if Bernie emerges with a plurality of delegates, he may be denied the nomination in a brokered convention. The fail-safe scenario in which moderate Democrats unite to prevent a Bernie nomination could give the Democrats a more electable candidate, but it could also split the party. Either scenario could make it difficult for Democrats to beat Donald Trump.

The next big tells will be South Carolina and Super Tuesday. If Bernie strongly outperforms Biden and Bloomberg, he could be unstoppable on the way to the nomination. If Biden’s Southern firewall holds, it may be a close three-way race to the convention.

Tune in next week to see what other changes happen in this topsy-turvy race.

Originally published on The Resurgent

Klobucharge! Is Amy The New Moderate Choice?

The surprises from the New Hampshire primary were not the top two finishers. Everyone knew Bernie Sanders would take the Granite State. The big news above the fold was how poorly Bernie fared relative to his performance in 2016 when he did not face a bevy of challengers. Likewise, Pete Buttigieg’s strong second-place finish was not unexpected after his win in Iowa.

The big news from New Hampshire came from further down the list with Amy Klobuchar’s surprisingly strong showing in third place. Last week, Klobuchar was polling in single-digits and this week her share of the vote pegged at just below 20 percent. What happened in the meantime?

There were two big reasons for the shift in polling. First, there was Klobuchar’s formidable performance in last week’s New Hampshire debate. Second, there was Joe Biden’s underwhelming finish in Iowa and his subsequent self-immolation moment in which he called a voter at a town hall meeting a “lying, dog-faced pony soldier.”

Aside from the question of what a pony soldier is and how it would apply at a town hall meeting, the lesson here is that candidates should probably refrain from insulting voters if they want to win votes. Even if Biden was joking, he has now built a history of attacking town hall attendees after calling an Iowa man “a damn liar” in December.

If we compare the recent polling trends on Real Clear Politics with the actual results, we see that Sanders, Biden, and Warren all underperformed relative to expectations while Buttigieg and Klobuchar did better than expected. I don’t think it is unreasonable to speculate that part of Klobuchar’s surge (dubbed the “Klobucharge” by the FiveThirtyEight podcast) came at the expense of Biden and Warren who both had lackluster performances in the recent debate. With Biden failing and Sanders’ success alarming the party, it is possible that Klobuchar is emerging as the moderate in the race.

When I discuss moderate Democrats, I always get comments that say that no Democrats are moderate so let me stipulate that the term is relative. A Democratic moderate is not the same as a Republican moderate, but there is a range in the Democratic platforms. Biden and Klobuchar are not identical to Bernie and Buttigieg by any stretch of the imagination.

The big question is what comes next. Well, next after Nevada where no one has any real idea of what is going to happen (but where Sanders is under attack by the Culinary union).

What about South Carolina?

Joe Biden has been betting big on South Carolina with its large black population, which has been the base of his support. But now new polling shows that Biden’s support among black voters is falling as blacks turn to… Mike Bloomberg? [Checks notes.] Yes, Mike Bloomberg has cut sharply into Biden’s minority support in a new Quinnipiac poll that shows the mayor at 22 percent in the demographic versus 27 percent for the vice president. If Biden’s support among blacks is slipping then he’s toast.

But will blacks stick with Mayor Mike? Bloomberg is already in hot water as an embarrassing clip has resurfaced in which he blames “male minorities, 16 to 25” for “95 percent of your murders.” The comments relate to the unpopular stop-and-frisk policy of the NYPD in which police were permitted to stop and search minority men.

Black voters represent the kingmaker of the Democratic primary in almost every presidential campaign. The question is who they will coalesce around if they desert Joe Biden. The three remaining likely contenders are all white northerners with little minority support.

Bernie Sanders has not caught the imagination of black voters even in his second campaign. Pete Buttigieg has little traction in states after Iowa and New Hampshire and may be too liberal for black voters. That could conceivably leave Amy Klobuchar as the heir apparent to the moderate lane.

However, it is premature to count Joe Biden out. Despite the media narrative that his campaign is freefall, he is still the frontrunner in national polling, if only just so, and still holds a double-digit lead in South Carolina polling. As I pointed out last week, there is a dearth of polling in most Super Tuesday states so no one is really sure what will happen.

The most recent polling average in South Carolina shows Biden with 31 percent, surprisingly followed by Tom Steyer at 19 and Sanders at 17. Warren, Buttigieg, and Klobuchar are all at less than 10 percent. Mike Bloomberg doesn’t even register.

However, South Carolina is still two weeks away and the field is in a state of upheaval. A poor showing in Nevada could deepen Biden’s descent in the polls and impact his performance in the Palmetto State.

With the situation changing rapidly and little hard data to look at, especially relating to the minority vote, all eyes are on South Carolina and Super Tuesday. This year, the race could be described like Forest Gump’s box of chocolates.

“You never know what you’re gonna get.”

Originally published on The Resurgent

Iowa Caucuses Are Too Close To Call

Okay, political junkies, it’s time. A campaign season that already seems to be endless finally gets its official start today with the Iowa caucuses. As is fitting for a year with so much uncertainty, the Iowa race is too close to call.

If you’ve followed the polling, you know how topsy-turvy the Iowa race has been over the past few months. Elizabeth Warren led throughout the early fall and then Pete Buttigieg surged in November. As the new year dawned, Bernie Sanders was ascendant but then Joe Biden, who seemed to have written off Iowa months ago, was suddenly thrust back to the top of the polls.

The polling situation is made all the more difficult by the absence of the Des Moines Register poll that is normally considered the gold standard in the state. The paper decided not to release the poll results after reports that operators at the call center had adjusted the font size on their list of questions. The change caused Pete Buttigieg to be inadvertently dropped from the list of options and skewed the poll results.

Other recent polling alternated between favoring Biden and Sanders. Currently, the polling averages of both Real Clear Politics and FiveThirtyEight show an edge for Sanders, by four points and one point respectively, but neither average reflects the new CBS poll that was released this morning.

The plot thickens if we throw the CBS poll into the mix because it shows Biden and Sanders tied at 25 percent. The CBS “Battleground Tracker” is actually more than a poll. It’s a model that blends multiple polls and considers the stated intentions of more than 35,000 likely voters.

Beyond the top two candidates, CBS found Pete Buttigieg in a close third at 23 percent and Elizabeth Warren at 16 percent. Amy Klobuchar, who you may remember was near the 15-percent threshold for earning delegates in a recent Emerson survey, is now polling at five percent. All other candidates were below five percent.

Under the current polling, Biden and Sanders can be expected to win an almost even number of delegates, regardless of who the top finisher is. Buttigieg and Warren are also likely to earn Iowa delegates.

The nature of caucuses, which require much more effort than simply casting a ballot in a primary, would normally favor Sanders since the Vermont senator inspires a zealous following among his Bernie Bro backers. However, the current state of alarm in the Democratic Party over a possible Sanders candidacy may mobilize establishment Democrats to spend the time to caucus for Joe Biden.

As I’ve said before, Sanders may well win Iowa and will almost certainly win New Hampshire, but the long term race still seems to favor Biden. Nevertheless, Bernie is peaking at the right time to give the former vice president a run for his money.

Originally published on The Resurgent