I’m feeling pretty good about Hillary’s chances now. I see she has a 13.5% advantage in my state (CA) and I’m predicting that’ll put her over if she’s not over the magic number by then. I agree, Bernie has too much of a hill to climb to get the nod. Today proved that.
We’re seeing some systemic weakness from Bernie:
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He’s not performing where he needs to in all of his heavily white states. Massachusetts demographically should’ve been a big win for Bernie, it wasn’t. Bernie also put money and time into Massachusetts. He was not able to put money and time into all the Super Tuesday states, but Hillary is going to put at least some time and some money in every state–she will not conceded a single state.
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He is performing even worse than expected among African American voters, and we now see that will never change.
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His huge differentials from where he was expected to finish in Texas suggests he probably has systemic weakness among Hispanics as well.
Sorry Bernie fans–you’re running for the Democratic party nomination, a party that wouldn’t have had a President in the White House since Truman if not for minority voters, so no, a candidate who lacks their support cannot and will not be your nominee.
Just as a point of comparison for people who think “the worst is over”, the highest black population state Bernie has won is Oklahoma with ~8% black.
Here are the states left with > 8% black populations:
Mississippi (37%)
Louisiana (32%)
Maryland (30%)
North Carolina (21%)
Delaware (20%)
Florida (16%)
New York (15%)
Illinois (15%)
New Jersey (15%)
Michigan (15%)
Ohio (12%)
Missouri (12%)
Pennsylvania (11%)
Connecticut (10%)
Indiana (9%)
Kentucky (8%)
Now, will Bernie lose all of those? Maybe not. But none of those are a great demographic draw for him, and he’s yet to prove he can win a single state with a higher AA population than 8%.
Bernie, bless his heart, has made a very important contribution, one perhaps even more important than anything else about his candidacy: small donor money. Five dollars, ten dollars, that sort of money from ordinary everyday people. And he has somewhere north of forty million dollars.
The sheer necessity of big money donations are what made the whole three-legged dead Blue dog menshevik business friendly Republican Lite Clintonista movement happen. Not that I’m bitter! Maybe they were right, maybe it was necessary. And maybe it isn’t any more.
Look at all the money Jeb(!) spent for nothing. Literally nothing. Compare that to the impact Bernie had with money straight from the people. Getting the picture?
Campaign finance by the people, for the people, from the people: hey, that’s so sane, it just might work! Brothers and sisters, pals and gals, can I get an “Amen!”?
It’s so utterly bizarre, too, since Bernie has the best civil rights cred of any presidential candidate I can recall, and the policies that would meaningfully help poor minorities and not just give lip service to them. He’s the most minority-friendly presidential candidate we may have ever had, and yet only white people will vote for him.
Meanwhile Trump is trying to stir up xenophobic angst, and getting a significant portion of the minority vote.
What a strange world we live in.
A significant proportion of the minority Republican vote. Kinda important detail, thought I should help you out a bit, there.
It’s because Bernie is a one trick pony. Most minority voters don’t see themselves screwed over in a cubicle job saddled with student loan debt and less opportunity for advancing since the recession.
The occupy Wall Street crowd was also very white.
Oh please. This isn’t the thread for it, but that’s ridiculous. Bernie is the furthest thing from a “one trick pony”, he’s had a broad platform and an agenda which he’s been sincere and clear about for decades. Even if you think everything he stands for is wrong, it’s wrong to mischaracterize him in that fashion.
I really should have stayed off social media this morning. Sanders supporters are positively crowing about their ‘big wins’ yesterday. They completely ignore the delegate count, somehow they think that spamming the comments section of any news story will help Bernie overcome an insurmountable delegate deficit.
He has stated that.
The reality is that the pledged delegate deficit of (per the NYT this am) is 544 to 459. She won 453 to 284 yesterday. Going into this 538 (who like other media has an incentive to keep the horserace alive) was estimating by polls that she’d win 508 to 357 and said “*t’s difficult to oversell how big that lead is.” 538 is right, and winning by much more, well much more so … but …
He will keep going while he keeps getting funding and cold reality aside the narrative of “winning states” will allow for enough spin to keep it coming for now: he won three states (other than VT) and one by double digits! And the storyline will be kind to him for the next week with probable wins in three out of the next four to go (pay no attention to the fact that he will make virtually no delegate progress in the process).
Michigan though, where he is polling about 20 behind, will be where the spin becomes unsustainable. Barring some miraculous flip there he will be losing yet another big state big, and this is not one of that southern bloc that his team now somewhat dismisses but one that by demographics he should win by +4. (Along with another southern blow-out in Mississippi.) He will then lose Illinois, Florida, Ohio, and duh North Carolina and Missouri, all by wide margins.
He will be entering his lily white state phase having lost the majority of white voters narrowly and other demographics badly.
I hope for the sake of his message that he suspends before he loses demographically favored states like Utah and Arizona. Get a convention speaking spot and pivot to unifying for the general. Don’t diminish the power of what you have done.
Frank, I’m going to let you off the hook for this one. But this could easily be warnable on a couple of levels.
Knock it off.
It’s actually 544-349, not 544-449 as per this morning. Those numbers are net yet firm, there are still delegates to be allocated from almost all of the Super Tuesday states as they get exact vote counts lined up.
But we can actually go a little further than that even now, we know the final vote percentages for almost all the states now, for whatever reason the media has yet to give us full delegate estimates. But the Green Papers has, using the published delegate rules and the public results. Adjusting for this, Hillary’s total pledged count goes up to 599, Bernie’s goes up to 400. So she is up 199.
The rest of your post is spot on–the election is going to start to look a hell of a lot like 2008’s contest now. Bernie will stay in because he has the money and supporters, he will get wins, but none of them will move the margin significantly, then Hillary will get a few more big wins, keeping the margin at 200+. His occasional wins which can continue all the way to the end of the primaries will give his die hards and the media enough justification to continue talking about it. The more sober media will acknowledge Bernie is unable to get the nomination early on (FiveThirtyEight just said that this morning.)
The only major difference is the demographic coalitions were a little different in 2008, Obama racked up huge wins mostly in smaller states that had caucuses, where he could mobilize voters far more effectively, and in the South, where demographics favored him. Clinton is racking up huge wins in the South, will probably “win some lose some” with the smaller liberal caucus states (some of which I think may have switched to primaries since 2008, but I can’t look that up at the moment), and then Clinton will also probably win most of the large states still to vote by bigger margins than she did in 2008, so she will sail to a more comfortable delegate victory over Bernie than Obama did over her. Namely, she will win an outright majority of pledged delegates, neither Obama or Hillary did that in 2008 (Obama won a plurality of pledged delegates and enough superdelegates committed to him to swing him the nomination the last week of the primaries–in this cycle it’s now extremely likely that Hillary wins an outright majority of pledged delegates.)
You’ll also see an important number probably get above 60% by mid-March: the number of outstanding pledged delegates left that Bernie will have to win to win the nomination. Right now he needs to win 53% of all remaining pledged delegates (which doesn’t sound too bad, but if you really look at how he’s been winning and how he’s been losing you quickly realize that’s just not possible realistically), after further huge wins in states like Mississippi, North Carolina, Illinois, Michigan and possibly Ohio (which isn’t as black as Michigan so may be a more modest Hillary win) he’ll then likely need 60% of all remaining pledged delegates to win the nomination, and that is when things are pretty rough because it means he has to average beating Hillary by 10% in every contest left.
Horse-race and “winning states” is what they sell because that’s what people largely understand and buy. Two channels I was watching last night took moments to say it’s not really about states, it’s about delegates. Then they went right back to putting up the Winner! headshots of the first-past-the-post candidates, as if it was an EV map in November.
Oh about superdelegates flipping …
Agreed that if the people have clearly spoken the other way superdelegates should switch.
But let’s imagine something that I think is extremely improbable … a scenario in which Black and to a somewhat lesser degree Hispanic Democrats have already spoken overwhelmingly for one candidate, in which the entire South has, and which on the back of lily White demographic states Sanders struggles to 50%+1 delegates. Theoretically, would it be good for the party for superdelegates give the election the the White Peoples Choice?
And this perspective is a big part of Sanders’s problem. It’s abundantly clear after last night that Sanders is getting absolutely blown out out of the water by Clinton where minority voters, specifically blacks, are concerned. Realistically, it was clear after South Carolina. And yet, Sanders and his supporters keep saying that he’s the best candidate for minority rights, that he’s the best candidate where civil rights are concerned, that he’s the best candidate for being “minority-friendly.” Even though the overwhelming majority of, you know, actual African American voters are voting for his opponent.
So, maybe he actually ISN’T the most “minority-friendly” candidate in the race. Or maybe, the things that non-minority voters think SHOULD some across as “minority-friendly” don’t. Or maybe, Sanders is completely missing what minority voters ACTUALLY want and need. I don’t know. But whatever it is he’s doing, it isn’t working, and to keep repeating that it SHOULD be working and that blacks are voting against their own interests–which I’ve seen Sanders supporters say–is incredibly condescending.
And as a result, he isn’t changing what he’s doing even though it’s costing him big-time. To paraphrase someone, I can’t remember who, “when I get new information I change my approach. What do you do with new information?” Sanders and many of his supporters don’t seem to be learning anything from the realities of the situation.
From my reading and understanding, Hillary went into black communities and asked black voters what she could do to help them, and then modified her messaging to address this. And from my perception, Bernie went into black communities, and told them what he would do to help, and didn’t modify his message.
And I would add “should not”. To DSeid’s point, it would be a nightmare to give the nomination to someone who loses most demographic groups but dominates among white dudes. Fortunately, that’s very unlikely to happen.
ETA: Ulf is right: Bernheads are being very condescending in the way they lecture black voters.
QFT. At this point it’s just a bunch of white people telling black people how they *should *be thinking and why they’re wrong for not thinking that way.
Is there anything about his campaign or policies which aren’t more minority-friendly than Clinton?
The reality is that he does very poorly with low-information voters who are mostly voting on name recognition. It’s doubtful to me that most minority voters have truly looked at his platform and evaluated it to be against their best interest - but rather, there’s a cultural meme about Bill Clinton being the first black president, a perception in the black community that the Clintons are their best bet. An actual black candidate would get their support over Clinton, but I doubt any white candidate would no matter his platform.
Wow.
Certainly one of the best ways to get the vote of a particular group of people is to dismiss them as “low-information voters.” One of the best ways of assuring others that you understand what makes “those people” tick, too.
You really couldn’t have proven my point better if you’d tried.
Okay, let’s say that African Americans ARE “low-information voters,” whatever that may happen to mean. (Whereas, by extension, all those white voters who think Sanders is great are “high-information” voters who have studied his platform in great depth.) Fine. Change your approach! Stop saying “I’m the best candidate for minority voters,” because clearly it isn’t working for the “low-information” crowd, and DO SOMETHING ELSE!
But he can’t, or he won’t. And that’s a problem.
I mean let’s be honest, I think the vast majority of voters supporting any candidate haven’t dug too far into the policies. I don’t know where we’d find numbers to support this (if anyone can, that’s great, or maybe I’m full of shit) but I saw as an anecdote in a news article this morning from an interview of a woman who was voting in Colorado for Bernie. She said “initially I was going to vote for Clinton because she’s a woman, but now I’m going to vote for Bernie. If she wins the nomination I’m moving to Canada, I’d consider Puerto Rico, but it’s almost a state.”
I mean, okay. What genuine neutral, policy based issues would have you believe as a former Clinton supporter, current Bernie supporter, that her nomination is reason to leave the United States? On the meat of their political positions Bernie and Clinton agree, on many on which they aren’t exactly aligned, their differences are just a matter of degree. The only real dividing issue is Sanders promulgates massively incorrect (essentially all economists since the mercantilist era will agree) idea that for someone to get rich, another person has to get poor. That is the underpinning of his insanely imbecilic rhetoric on Wall Street, and to be frank isn’t too far from the economic policies of Donald Trump, a billionaire who also seems to believe you only get rich by paupering others.