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

Have Democrats Learned That Voters Want A Moderate?

More than six months after what many pundits predicted would be a flash in the pan, Joe Biden still sits atop Democratic primary polls. The reason for Biden’s preeminence is simple: He is the dominant moderate in a race filled with progressives. Even though moderates do not represent a majority of Democratic primary voters, the moderate niche is large enough to allow Biden to sit atop the cluster of progressives competing for votes among a divided group of leftists. The situation is very similar to how Donald Trump’s plurality allowed him to win the Republican nomination in 2016 amid thanks to Republican primary voters divided between Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, and John Kasich.

Now, after months of watching Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders vie for second place, another Democrat is contesting Biden for the moderate lane. Pete Buttigieg has exhibited a rise in the polls, doubling his share of voters since the beginning of October, per the Real Clear Politics average. Buttigieg now stands at 11 percent, which earns him an increasingly close fourth place. Aside from the Big Three, Mayor Pete is the only candidate to poll at more than 10 percent.

Whether Buttigieg is a moderate depends on how you define “moderate.” Jill Lawrence noted in USA Today that “his résumé includes service as a Navy intelligence officer in Afghanistan and three years at the management consulting firm McKinsey & Co.” and adds, “He’s religious and married (and also, by the way, gay).” Lawrence also notes that his public option health plan “for all who want it” is less radical than the Medicare-for-all plans of many of his opponents.

On the subject of health, it is also relevant to note that Elizabeth Warren’s Icarus-like journey to tie Joe Biden at the top of the polls only to fall apart and begin a long, slow crash back to ignominy can be traced to her radical health care reform plan. When Warren released her much-vaunted Medicare-for-all plan, even Democrats blanched at her sweeping plan to remake America’s health care system as well as its associated price tag.

Elizabeth Warren wasn’t the only candidate whose campaign flamed out over an overly radical platform. Beto O’Rourke, who got off to a quick start by raising more than six million dollars (enough to build a bionic man in 1973), failed to energize his flagging campaign by promising to confiscate assault rifles and tax churches. Progressives failed to rally to Beto’s liberal Christmas list, perhaps recognizing that these positions were too far out of the mainstream to be accepted by a majority of voters.

A third Democrat who succumbed to progressive preferences was Kamala Harris. There is more than one reason for Harris’ failure to launch, but one factor was that she catered her campaign to “woke” Twitter. In so doing, she failed to attract enough mainstream Democrats to keep her campaign going.  

But the fact that Buttigieg is appealing to moderate Democrats doesn’t mean that he is a moderate, especially in Republican terms. “Moderate” to Democrats means something different than it does to Republicans. Even a moderate Democrat is going to hold positions that most conservatives would consider to be deal-breakers. For conservatives, a voluntary public option is scarcely better than Medicaid-for-all and even though Buttigieg is a Christian, his religious views are far from harmonized with conservative evangelicals, especially when it comes to abortion. Mayor Pete may not be a true moderate but he does seem to appeal to moderate Democrats who aren’t sold on Joe Biden.

In fact, it’s difficult to say exactly what Buttigieg really is. As a city mayor, he doesn’t have much of a track record on national issues. As with other recent candidates such as Barack Obama and Donald Trump, his scant history makes Buttigieg a blank slate onto which supporters and opponents can project what they want to see.

Whether Buttigieg continues to surge or becomes another also-ran, it seems that Democratic voters are increasingly looking towards the moderates for their candidate. If Buttigieg falters, Andrew Yang and Amy Klobuchar seem likely to inherit the moderate-but-not-Biden niche.

However, in the end, Joe Biden is the heavy favorite to win the Democratic nomination. His victory will be in no small part due to the support of the largest moderate segment of the Democratic coalition, a demographic that is both staunchly Democrat and heavily Christian. It is a core group with which other Democrats, such as Buttigieg, have been able to make little headway against Biden.

Black voters will be the moderate kingmakers who propel Biden to the nomination.

Originally published on The Resurgent

Black Voters Not Sold On Biden

So far, Joe Biden holds the lead among black Democratic voters, but there are signs that members of the demographic, which makes up a large share of Democratic primary voters, are not thrilled with the candidacy of Barack Obama’s vice president. However, the several minority candidates in the Democratic field have nonetheless failed to catch fire with voters.

In a recent ABC News/Washington Post poll, 39 percent of black Democrats favored Biden. Elizabeth Warren, another white candidate, ran a distant second in the poll at 22 percent. The other candidates, including Bernie Sanders and Pete Buttigieg as well as the minority candidates, all polled at less than 10 percent.

Still, there are concerns about Biden, especially regarding his propensity for gaffes. For example, in last week’s debate, Biden claimed, “I come out of the black community in terms of my support” and said that he had the support of “the only black African American woman who had ever been elected to the United States Senate,” referring to Carol Mosely Braun.

That was news to Kamala Harris, who laughed back, “Nope. That's not true. The other one is here.”

Biden quickly corrected himself, saying, “I said the first.”

Another source of uncertainty surrounding Biden is his age. The 76-year-old candidate is viewed as healthy by almost as many voters (74 percent) as the 70-year-old Warren (80 percent) and more than Bernie Sanders (48 percent), age 78 and the victim of a recent heart attack. That doesn’t mean that voters are not concerned, however.

"Well, I was sort of leaning toward Joe Biden," said Elsie Just-Buddy, member of the Ebenezer Baptist Church in downtown Atlanta when asked by ABC News about her candidate preference. When asked about her hesitation, the member of the church once pastored by Martin Luther King, Jr. cited Biden’s age.

ABC reported that, after interviewing dozens of congregants at Ebenezer, black voters trusted and liked Biden due to familiarity with him from his years in the Obama Administration but weren’t very excited about his candidacy. They were open to a more exciting candidate, but, so far, that candidate has not emerged.

Another member of Ebenezer, Ernest Fry, said, “I think that he’d be a good candidate as well as the rest of them. But, you know, I don’t think anyone got it locked unless you got a good program for the people.”

Nevertheless, Elizabeth Warren, once renowned for her plans and currently smarting from a health plan so unrealistic that it was even mocked by Democrats, fares much worse than Biden. The very white woman from Massachusetts pleaded her case to minority voters in the Atlanta debate, saying, “As a white woman, I will never fully understand the discrimination, pain, and harm that black Americans have experienced just because of the color of their skin. When I am president of the United States, the lessons of black history will not be lost.”

Black Democratic candidates Corey Booker and Kamala Harris were critical of the fact that white Democrats top the polls. Both glossed over their own dearth of support from black voters when they made their complaints, however.  

Booker warned that black voters are “p-ss-d off because the only time our issues seem to be really paid attention to by politicians is when people are looking for their vote. And they're worried because, in the Democratic Party, we don't want to see people miss this opportunity and lose because we are nominating someone that … isn't trusted, doesn't have authentic connection.”

In a speech to the NAACP in Detroit last May, Harris complained that the notion of electability to Midwest voters led to prejudice against minority candidates, saying, “Too often, the definition of the Midwest leaves people out.” However, during Harris’ brief flirtation with frontrunner status, it was white voters and not blacks who rallied behind her.

Black support for Biden also comes as a surprise to many on the right who predicted that the Democratic Party would rally behind an intersectional candidate rather than another old white man. The fact that the top two choices of black voters are a white man and a white woman, even though there are prominent black candidates in the running, has exploded stereotypes on both sides.

For all the uneasiness and lack of excitement surrounding his campaign, Steady Joe Biden remains the candidate to beat. While others, including Kamala Harris, have flashed in the pan and quickly burned out, Biden’s position atop the polls with the support of a quarter to a third of Democratic voters has been very consistent since he entered the race.

Elizabeth Warren, who is currently plummeting in the polls, is the only other candidate with any significant support in the black community, and other potential frontrunners such as Bernie Sanders and Pete Buttigieg have shown almost no minority appeal. Due to the lack of exciting alternatives, it seems almost certain that, barring a major gaffe or health problem, Joe Biden will emerge as the Democratic candidate at the end of the day. If so, he will have black voters to thank.

Originally published on The Resurgent

New Poll Shows Mayor Pete Leading In Iowa

There is a first for everything and today was a first Pete Buttigieg. In a Monmouth University poll of Iowa caucus-goers released on Tuesday, Mayor Pete has vaulted to the lead for the first time.

The new poll shows Buttigieg leading the pack with 22 percent support. This represents a shockingly fast surge for a candidate who garnered only eight percent back in August.

The poll shows Joe Biden and Elizabeth Warren in a statistical tie with 19 ad 18 percent respectively. Bernie Sanders runs a distant fourth at 13 percent. No other candidate polled above five percent.

While the Monmouth poll may not be enough to establish Mayor Pete as the Iowa frontrunner, other polling does confirm his rise and Elizabeth Warren’s decline. A Quinnipiac poll from last week showed Warren and Buttigieg tied with 20 and 19 percent respectively. That poll put Sanders in third with 17 percent and Joe Biden at 15 percent.

A month ago, a New York Times poll had Warren at 22 percent. The Massachusetts senator was followed by Sanders, Buttigieg, and Biden who were all within one point of each other.

The Iowa polling seems to be following a pattern in which the top four candidates ebb and flow as voters consider their pros and cons. Warren surges for a few weeks and then Buttigieg gets a turn as Warren’s weaknesses are revealed. Biden and Sanders have been more-or-less consistent in their Iowa polling even though both men have suffered setbacks.

The Buttigieg surge comes with both good news and bad for Mayor Pete. The bad news is that there is not much depth to his ground game. While rolling in cash, the Buttigieg campaign is heavily invested in Iowa and has little in the way of infrastructure or support elsewhere. Mayor Pete’s failure to generate excitement among black voters will be particularly problematic as the race moves to the South. In New Hampshire, a recent Quinnipiac poll showed him with 15 percent, competitive with Warren and Sanders for second but behind Joe Biden.

The good news for Mayor Pete is that his surge may not be enough to attract a significant amount of attention from the other Democrats at next week’s debate. National polling still shows Biden as the frontrunner with Elizabeth Warren fading into second place. In national polling, Buttigieg does not even break into double-digits.

To have a sustainable campaign, Buttigieg must look beyond Iowa and broaden his appeal while fending off attacks from his rivals. If Mayor Pete can hold on for three months to pull off an upset victory in Iowa, then he may be able to parley his new frontrunner status into more victories. Not following the examples of Kamala Harris and Elizabeth Warren, who both used their time in the spotlight to crash and burn, may be a bigger problem.

Pete Buttigieg and his supporters have worked hard to be competitive in Iowa. Over the next few weeks, we will see if the effort was worth it or whether he is just another flavor-of-the-month.

Originally published on The Resurgent

Buttigieg Gets A Leg Up In Iowa

Recent polling of the Democratic primary in Iowa shows that the state is up for grabs and the most recent candidate to surge is… Pete Buttigieg? According to a new poll, Buttigieg has jumped to third place, surpassing Bernie Sanders.

The USA Today/Suffolk poll of 500 likely Democratic caucus-goers showed Joe Biden and Elizabeth Warren in a statistical tie at 18 and 17 percent respectively, but the big surprise was a strong showing from the South Bend mayor. Buttigieg polled at 13 percent in the survey while Bernie Sanders dropped to nine percent.

Looking at the big picture, the Real Clear Politics average does show a long, show rise in Iowa polling for Buttigieg. The upward trend started in early September and coincides with drops for both Kamala Harris and Bernie Sanders. The average of polls currently shows statistical ties for both Biden and Warren at 21 percent and Buttigieg and Sanders at 14 percent.

Buttigieg is likely benefitting from multiple factors in the race. Both Biden and Warren have given weak debate performances while Bernie Sanders has been saddled with health concerns after a recent heart attack. Kamala Harris, once considered a strong contender, has plummeted in the polls since the early debates.

The mayor has also made some important friends. Bloomberg reported that Buttigieg was advised by Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg on hiring certain campaign officials. Buttigieg and Zuckerberg both attended Harvard where their tenures overlapped and they shared mutual friends. Buttigieg was one of the first 300 users of Facebook. While Zuckerberg has not endorsed Buttigieg, the Facebook founder is an important connection.

The Iowa caucuses are tentatively scheduled for Feb. 3, 2020, only about four months away. Unlike the primaries that most states hold, the caucuses require candidate supporters to attend local caucus meetings to vote for their candidate. The process is a bigger commitment than just voting so excitement over a candidate can be a game-changing factor.

The caucuses are not winner-take-all but candidates do have to meet a threshold, typically 15 percent, at caucus sites to be considered viable. If a candidate is not viable, their supporters can switch to a different candidate and still participate. Under this system, it is very possible that Buttigieg could win delegates in Iowa if his surge continues.

Nationally, however, Buttigieg has not caught on. He has remained at about five percent in the Real Clear Politics national average throughout the summer. However, if either Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren falters (or both), Pete Buttigieg seems to be positioned to be the next candidate to catch the wave of Democratic dissatisfaction with the frontrunners.   

Originally published on The Resurgent

April 17th, 2019 Bernie Is The Big Winner In Democratic Fundraising

The fundraising reports are in for the first quarter of 2019. The big news was the $30 million raised by President Trump’s re-election campaign, but the fundraising stats from the plethora of Democratic candidates could shed some light on who donors consider to be a viable candidate. Fundraising numbers also provide access to an important platform for Democrats. Only candidates with at least 65,000 individual donors will qualify to participate in the first Democratic primary debate in June 2019.

Candidate reports from the first quarter, which are available on Open Secrets, show that Bernie Sanders is the undisputed money leader in the race so far. Sanders raised more than $18 million, not counting transfers from previous campaigns. More than $15 million of Sanders’ take was from small donors, reflecting his extensive grassroots network. This bodes well both for Bernie’s ability to continue to raise money and his ability to tap into his donor network to find volunteers to work his campaign.

Kamala Harris was in second place with a $12 million take, which also excludes transfers. In contrast with Sanders, Harris received more than half of her donations, $7.6 million, from large donors. Harris has shown a better ability to raise money than to garner support, averaging about eight percent in polling.

In third place was Beto O’Rourke with $9.3 million. As with Bernie, Beto raised more money from small donors, but about 40 percent of his donations also came from large donors. This shows a good mix of grassroots and wealthy backers.

Pete Buttigieg was the surprising fourth-place finisher with more than $7 million. Buttigieg, who averages about five percent in polling, also performed well with both small and large donors.

A quartet of congressional figures make up the next four finishers. The campaigns of Elizabeth Warren, Amy Klobuchar, Cory Booker, and Kirsten Gillibrand were boosted by transfers from prior campaign coffers but none seem to have gained traction either in the polls or with donors. Warren is the only candidate of the four to raise a significant amount ($4.2 million) from small donors. The others don’t seem to have much grassroots support.

When it comes to cash on hand, Bernie Sanders is the leader once again. The Sanders campaign has more than $15.6 million in the bank, which is significantly more than Elizabeth Warren, who was in second place with $11.2 million.

The next four on the list were boosted by transfers from previous campaigns. John Delaney, a former congressman from Maryland, has the third-largest war chest with $10.5 million. Gillibrand, Harris, and Klobuchar follow in order with accounts ranging from $10.1 to $6.9 million.

In the seventh and eighth positions are newcomers Beto O’Rourke and Pete Buttigieg. O’Rourke held $6.8 million while Buttigieg had $6.4 million. Both of these candidates have strong fundraising numbers and will likely see their bottom lines increase sharply in the coming months.

Rounding out the top-tier candidates is Cory Booker. The New Jersey senator had just over $6.1 million in his bank account at the end of the first quarter.

Obviously, the big winner in the fundraising race so far is Bernie Sanders. His strong fundraising among small donors reflects a veritable army of dedicated grassroots supporters that will present a formidable opponent for the other Democratic hopefuls.

Other winners include Beto O’Rourke and Pete Buttigieg. The newcomers both had surprisingly strong showings that will enable them to get their names and messages out to primary voters. Fox Business reported that average donation for the Buttigieg campaign was $36.35. Simple math shows that this would almost certainly give the recently unknown candidate a place in the first debate.

Kamala Harris was also a winner. As the second-place fundraiser, her campaign is bringing in enough cash to keep going for the foreseeable future despite a poor showing in the polls.

The big loser was Elizabeth Warren who had very disappointing fundraising numbers. Her previous frontrunner status stands in stark contrast to her current status as a has-been who has generated little interest. Warren has a large war chest, however, so don’t look for her to drop out any time soon.

Everyone else was also a loser. The group of Washington insiders, Klobuchar, Booker, and Gillibrand, also had disappointing results, in terms of both polling and fundraising. Large war chests will enable these candidates to stay in the race at least until the first debate.

The plethora of other candidates may not be so lucky. The numerous small and unknown candidates may start dropping out soon. If they don’t start to gain enough traction to get a seat at the debate, there will be little reason for them to stay in the race.

The wild card is Joe Biden. Biden is not reflected in the fundraising numbers despite leading in the polls because he does not have an active campaign yet. If Biden is serious about running, he is working to prepare potential donors to start giving as soon as he makes his announcement. The former vice president and senator is an experienced politician with an extensive network from his previous campaigns. He will hope to outraise the $6.1 million raised by Beto and the $5.9 million garnered by Bernie in the first 24 hours of their campaigns to affirm his status as the frontrunner.

Finally, Republicans should not feel too confident despite Donald Trump’s $30 million haul. While this is more than any Democrat, it should be noted that Democratic fundraising is splintered among a crowded field and many Democrat donors may be waiting for Joe Biden to enter the race. Despite Trump’s impressive number, it only takes two Democratic candidates, Bernie Sanders, and Kamala Harris, to eclipse the president’s haul. It may not be long before Democratic donors rally behind a presumed nominee and President Trump’s fundraising lead begins to quickly erode.

Originally published on The Resurgent