Contested Convention: Let the Wild Speculation Begin!

Politics & Elections
1

Current 538 projected number of total pledged delegates:

Sanders 1528
Bloomberg 892
Biden 873
Buttigieg 313
Warren 229
Klobuchar 118

Of course, it’s important to remember that those delegate projections for each candidate are just the midpoints of very broad ranges, and it’s highly UNlikely that the final delegate count will closely resemble this. But what the hell, let’s game it out.

It takes 1991 to win on the first ballot (wouldn’t 1992 have been more appropriate?).

First problem is I find it impossible to believe Bloomberg will do anywhere near that well. Let’s just put that aside.

Does Biden just decide to endorse Sanders in the name of party unity? Maybe extract a promise to let Biden choose the running mate? Sanders/Duckworth 2020? Or possibly Biden says he won’t support Sanders, but he’ll join him in supporting Warren?

Or, assuming Warren throws her support to Sanders, Buttigieg could put Bernie over the top. Sanders/Buttigieg 2020!

Could all the moderates gang up on Bernie? That would require Biden and Bloomberg coming to an agreement, which is problematic insofar as they don’t like each other and neither has anything the other wants. Maybe Bloomberg just decides his work here is done and endorses Biden; I can’t imagine the reverse happening. They’d still need Pete’s delegates, though. Biden/Buttigieg 2020!

If Bloomberg won’t go away, and neither Biden nor Buttigieg join the Political Revolution, nobody gets a majority on the first ballot. In the next round, 771 superdelegates enter stage right, and 2375 votes are needed to win. Obviously it’s impossible to predict how this will go, but…it seems kind of unlikely that it would be decisive. Probably about a fourth of those delegates would support Bernie, and some more would probably support him based on his huge plurality. But I’m sure a significant number of these people detest Bernie, and he’d need almost all of them to put him over the top, even assuming Warren’s support. On the other hand, even if almost all of them vote for either Biden or Bloomberg, it doesn’t really change the dynamic; a not-Bernie still can’t get nominated unless Biden and Bloomberg can agree. So maybe at that point they start talking about a compromise candidate? Klobuchar? Buttigieg? Probably not Warren… Or maybe someone who didn’t run at all, but on the other hand didn’t finish sixth? But now we’re far enough into the woods that the assumption that delegates would loyally fall into line seems more questionable…this could get VERY interesting!

Assuming the delegate breakdown as given, I think the scenarios above are presented in approximately descending order of probablility.

I think it’s more likely that Bloomberg goes the way of Herman Cain in the next few weeks, and quite possibly enough of those voters return to Biden to make it plausible for the superdelegates plus the other moderates to nominate him. But maybe they’ll scatter between Biden and Buttigieg and klobuchar or the new Centrist Messiah of the Week (Michelle!).

Thoughts?

2

I think that at some point:

“Now stop!” Bernie says and sends the wild things off to bed without their supper.
And Bernie the king of all wild things becomes lonely and wants to be where
someone loves him best of all.

I think that precise hypothetical, in which Sanders has under 40% of the delegates, and Sanders plus Warren are still well short, with those who voted for something other than a revolutionary approach outnumbering those who voted for a revolutionary approach, would see wild things roaring their terrible roars and gnashing their terrible teeth and rolling their terrible eyes and showing their terrible claws, for over a year and in and out of weeks and through a day and for a round or so of voting. But then, in the night of their very own room, deal-making and coming around the leader of the not Sanders or Warren group (Bloomberg in that hypothetical), nominating him, even if they found him still not so hot.

:slight_smile:

3

So you’re assuming Biden would just back Bloomberg? Why would he do that? I’m honestly not sure he would even prefer Bloomberg to Bernie in a vacuum, let alone in a scenario where doing so would enrage 45% of the party. And it’s not like Bloomberg can offer him the Vice Presidency or something. I think it’s much more plausible that Bloomberg would throw his support to Biden than the other way round. But even then, they’d have to count on Buttigieg valuing ideological solidarity over career advancement; good luck with that.

I think you’re telling yourself fairy tales about “lanes”.

4

You did read the first roaring terrible roars and so on? No not “just” … but would.

Choosing someone who 60% of the party did not choose would be likely more “enraging” than choosing someone who was more similar to the direction and preferences of a majority’s first choice.

“Lanes” are overplayed as a concept but there is still a key identity of the party difference between those who sell revolution and everyone else.

The group of Bloomberg, Biden, Buttigieg, and Klobuchar, all care most about beating Trump, and all agree that the same basic approach is the way to do it best, even as they disagree as to which of them is best to run that play. They all agree on the same basic party identity. And rationally they would end up rallying around the one one them with the most demonstrated support.

Your Buttigieg comment I do not get. Bloomberg could, and would, be able to offer him some support for his career advancement. Maybe Sanders could too but their ideological differences would make Sanders offering him something meaningful less probable. There is no rational reason for Buttigieg to think that supporting Sanders was better for his future career than supporting Bloomberg would be.

Of course we are asking about a rumpus sans other details of that might go into it. Polling at that point of general election match ups might impact the choice. How they each did in the electorally key states would inform. So on.

Then there are the superdelegates. Hopefully the superdelegates would exclusively take their lead from the majority (not plurality) of the pledged delegates but the membership of this group consists of the Democratic members of Congress, former Democratic presidents, former Democratic vice-presidents, former congressional leaders, and former DNC chairs, Democratic governors, and the elected leadership of the DNC. If there is a bias in their honest assessment of what is best for the country and the party and what they honestly think best represents what voters want, it is not likely the revolutionary approach.

5

OK, so it’s either Bernie or the Gang of Four Centrists.

There’s someone missing here. :slight_smile:

6

It could come down to how the delegates interpret the following rule:
"All delegates to the National Convention pledged to a presidential candidate shall in all good conscience reflect the sentiments of those who elected them."

My speculation: anything other than a first-ballot nomination is just asking for Four More Years, especially if Sanders has a reasonably sizable plurality but a moderate ends up with the nomination, so if, after the last vote (I think it’s the Virgin Island Caucus on June 6), nobody has a majority, they’ll gather the remaining major players together, lock them in a smoke-filled room (“hey, that’s not tobacco smoke…”), and make them come to an agreement - get enough of the candidates with lower amounts of delegates to withdraw and “ask” their delegates to vote for the agreed-upon choice, and hope that enough of them follow that advice.

Here’s some wild speculation:

  1. The Rules Committee will add a rule to the convention: “At any time after the completion of the first roll call vote for President, it shall be in order to accept a motion to declare a candidate the party’s nominee for President by majority voice vote.”
  2. After a first ballot where nobody gets a majority, someone will make such a motion to declare a clear leader as the nominee.
  3. “All in favor? All oppose? In the opinion of the chair, the ayes have it, and Bernie Sanders is officially declared the Democratic Party Nominee for President of the Untied States.”
  4. Half the crowd starts chanting, “Roll Call! Roll Call!”, but the chant falls on deaf ears.
    This kinda sorta happened in 1980; to appease Ted Kennedy, the votes to accept his proposed platform were passed by voice vote rather than the traditional roll call (nowadays, it would be done with electronic voting; each state would poll its delegates, and enter it into a computer terminal of some sort), even though it was not clear at all that the ayes had a majority.

Also remember that, except for the first roll call for President, the superdelegates can vote on everything that is put up to a vote - including the party’s Vice-Presidential nominee.

7

Yes there is something missing from your post. But silly to spread the discussion between two threads.

8

I’m not at all sure that Biden, Buttigieg and Klobuchar perceive themselves as being in agreement about either policy goals or party identity with Bloomberg. Sure didn’t look to me like they were exactly welcoming him to the team the other night.

The bolded sentence is crucial. As I said in the other thread, it’s a pretty drastic move IMO to not concede to the candidate who has a 16 point lead over the runners-up, who each have only 22%; closer to single digits than to the leader. So if you are correct that a clear majority of voters are strongly motivated to stop Bernie, I don’t think that this will be the delegate count at the end of the primaries, because the moderates will have rallied around a single candidate. Conversely, if something like this* is *the delegate count, it should suggest to the delegates that their constituents wouldn’t consider a Bernie nomination unacceptable.

The Sanders/Buttigieg scenario would come into play only in a world where neither Biden nor Bloomberg was willing to concede to the other or to agree on a compromise candidate. I think the chance of this happening would be small, but we apparently differ on whether it would be zero, especially given that their delegate shares are virtually equal.

I think my post above explained why I don’t think superdelegates would play a significant role in determining the outcome; even if all of them voted as a bloc, they could neither put Bernie over the top nor break an impasse between Biden and Bloomberg.

9

I agree that a first ballot nomination of Warren wouldn’t be at all an unlikely outcome in this scenario. Bloomberg probably wouldn’t go along with it, but if Biden gave Bernie an ultimatum that he would support Warren if he came along, and support Bloomberg if he didn’t, there we go. Policy stances aside, Warren is much more acceptable personally to the Democratic establishment than Bernie is. And I think Biden is smart enough to know that the party can’t win in November if it totally pisses off the progressive wing.

10

If the numbers are along the lines of the 538 projection I can’t imagine Bloomberg being selected as the nominee. He is too out of step and would massively alienate a large swathe of the party. If Bloomberg became a serious prospect I could even imagine Bernie cutting a deal with Biden to make the latter the nominee.

Possibilities:
a) The party is too afraid of a Bernie Bro revolt and decides to allow Bernie to become the nominee.
b)The centrists unite behind Biden and maybe cut some deal with Bernie to preserve unity
c)Warren successfully becomes the unity candidate as she angling to be though I think she would need more than 229 delegates

One factor to keep in mind: Obama would probably be a huge behind-the-scenes influence in a contested convention which probably favors Biden.

11

There are 3,979 pledged delegates and 771 superdelegates.

A win requires either 1,991 pledged delegates on the first ballot, or 2,375 votes on the second or beyond.

Your wild rumpus starts on the second round of voting. Sanders and Warren together then have 1757, not a majority of the pledged delegates and way short of what is needed on round two. Sanders with warren’s support would need another 618 to come over from either pledged or superdelegates. To date together Sanders and Warren have the endorsements of 44 supers; Biden 70 and Bloomberg 23. (Per wiki anyway.)

Second round I can imagine Warren asking her delegates to go with Sanders (and I can also imagine her holding off to see what she can negotiate for and going to the other side in return for certain policy promises, I don’t think she and Sanders have much love lost), supers who have endorsed going with who they have endorsed, and the House and Senate members who have not endorsed maybe going with whoever won their state as their first pass ethical way forward. Not enough to push over. Biden votes for himself of course. Obama, Carter, Gore, WJ Clinton, the governors, the past DNC chairs, the DNC membership that have not already endorsed? I don’t see them going to Sanders unless he has already built a coalition of pledged delegates that is a majority of the pledged delegates.

12

You’re assuming those 60% are a monolith. Sanders won about 60% of the vote in NH with 152k votes. In 2020 he won with 26% of the vote and 72k votes.

So a lot of those people who voted for Buttigieg, Biden, Klobuchar, etc in 2020 voted for Sanders in 2016.

The same scenario will play out in many other states coming up. People who voted for Sanders in 2016 will vote for someone else.

So to imply that those 60% who didn’t vote for him this time around find him unacceptable is baseless, since a significant fraction probably picked him as their first choice in a 2 party race, but didn’t make him their first choice in a 6 party race.

13

I don’t personally think Bloomberg expects to be the nominee, he just wants to build and break coalitions behind the scenes so that the democratic party picks Buttigieg or Biden as the nominee in the second round of voting.

Bloomberg, based on what he did in NYC (and how he used it to get onto the debate stage by getting the DNC to change the rules), seems very adept at using his personal fortune to build and break coalitions, and to buy support.

I think a list of Bloombergs priorities would be

  1. Stop Trump
  2. Stop Bernie
  3. Become the nominee

He will support Bernie if he has to, but he will do what he can to make sure someone else is picked as the nominee.

14

IIUC, delegates are under no obligation to follow their own candidate’s switch instructions. And, while state delegations voted mostly together in the olden days, now isn’t it every delegate for him/herself? Or do I have that all wrong?

So various scenarios are possible, but it seems quite likely that Bernie gets 40-45% and his supporters insist the brass ring belongs to him.

I think some delegates will want want “generic middle-aged white person” of which only Warren and Klobuchar are on the stage. Hillary is more charismatic than either of them!

15

A discussion now has to make assumptions. Those who claim that there would be 45% “enraged” are making their big assumptions. My point remains that both as ifs are without information that likely would be available then, which would impact how things would play out.

IF the circumstance was that the good conscience assessment of pledged delegates was that those who voted them as their delegate would be choosing Sanders as a second choice, then that should be how they vote in round two and/or beyond. If it was that they felt any of the less “revolutionary” choices would be their preference, then they should do that.

That ethically is their onus.

16

It is theoretically every delegate for themselves, but campaigns generally get to choose who their delegates are, so presumably a major qualification will be perceived unlikeliness to wander off the reservation. I think it’s a safe assumption that almost all delegates will obey their candidates’ wishes in at least the first couple rounds of voting. But we don’t know, this has never happened before (there have been contested conventions, but not under the post- 1972 system where delegates are awarded based on primary results).

17

Coming back to this, DSeid:

I think you’d find it hard to deny that given the current state of the race, the first of the following scenarios seems much, much less likely than the second to occur:

  1. Pete Buttigieg or Amy Klobuchar win the nomination.

  2. Buttigieg and Klobuchar win very few delegates, but their continued presence in the race splinters the moderate vote, allowing Sanders to rack up large pluralities, and hence delegate majorities, in States where he’s getting only 25-30% of the vote. This greatly increases Sanders’ chance of winning the nomination.

And yet Buttigieg and Klobuchar are still in the race. So if you grant the above proposition, you must conclude that already two of the “Gang of Four” are either acting irrationally, or demonstrating that they care a great deal more about maximizing their own chances than they do about minimizing Bernie’s.

So the fundamental assumption you make, that these candidates (and, by extension, their supporters) are rational actors who place a high priority on defeating Sanders specifically, seems to be highly questionable.

18

Of course there is the rational reason to believe that they can stay in and use their influence over their few delegates in exchange for policy considerations that are important to them (or more selfish career considerations).

Personally I think that it is rational minimally to for them to hang in through Super Tuesday if they have the funds to do so. After Super Tuesday I suspect the field will narrow more. Either of them being on the surviving side of that narrowing, and being one of the final three, seems unlikely to me but who knows? Getting out at this specific point would not be rational.

I am not sure who will be left standing on the so called moderate side after Super Tuesday myself.

Bloomberg? Has the money to continue but if he relatively flops on Super Tuesday (a reasonable possibility unless his next debate is much better) then he is not going to just play spoiler. That said a stronger debate, a decent enough Super Tuesday, in the pack results, and he’ll continue to try to become the non-revolutionary standard bearer.

Biden? Not sure he can recover. Decent in South Carolina may not be enough to convince donors that he has what it takes and even his more energetic performance the other night was short on coherence or a bigger message than “Obama!” and “I was the one!”

Klobuchar and Buttigieg both need to show they can connect with voters of color to be contenders and both have less sense on that than 2016 Sanders did (he’s done better since). Buttigieg’s funds could last him longer but competing for Super Tuesday will use up lots and without a good showing it does not magically refill.

But one or two of these flawed possibilities will stay on to fight to until a nomination is otherwise virtually clinched.

And I think Warren may hang in there for a bit too but lose steam fast.

You gave a hypothetical.

My WAG on 538’s projections is that the median of the predictions is hard to argue against but end of day either Bloomberg OR Biden is higher, fairly close to Sanders, and the other lower, with maybe equal chances, not both in the 800s. I try not to fight the hypothetical though.

19

I’m struggling to see why 2016 matters. The majority preferred Hillary in 2016. Should we just nominate her?

20

Bernie got 1839 delegates through voting in 2016. And now the projection is that he’ll get 83% of that number running against a crowded field, none of whom are Hillary? I don’t find that credible. Four years ago at this point he had 36 delegates, and right now he’s only sitting on 21. He’s well behind the curve.

I think Bernie will continue to under-perform. Fanatics can only vote once. As seen in Iowa, he’s not many voter’s second choice. When candidates start dropping, their voters are moving mostly to non-Bernie candidates.

If the field remains crowded, there is a possibility that Bernie ends up with a plurality of delegates, but it won’t be by much. In that case, I’m sure he won’t get the nomination. If he does get the projected 1528 delegates, then the Democrats would be dumb not to nominate Sanders. It would tear the party apart.