The Revolution That Didn’t Come
Let me tell you the story of a wild and crazy primary.
There was this guy who was in the lead almost the entire race and then he shocked everyone by winning. Then there was this other guy who was in second place most of the time. Surprisingly it turns out that he landed in second place. The candidate who spent the most time in third place got third place.
And nobody saw it coming.
More seriously, there were about six interesting weeks during the entire campaign. There was the week following Harris’s hit on Biden during the debates, the week where Warren really did actually surge on a Biden hurting from Ukraine, and then when the voting started until the point that the race fell into the pattern that polling had been showing us the entire rest of the time. In a way, it has fallen more or less into the same place it was in 2016.
It was a 55/45 party then, and it’s a 55/45 party now. In the last four years, things keep breaking down along those lines. In 2016, Hillary Clinton got 55% of the vote to Sanders’s 43%. In Iowa, Sanders and Warren together got 45% of the delegates to Buttigieg, Biden, and Klobuchar’s 55%1 It was pointed out at the time that you can’t really just combine votes like that it’s not how things worked, but it turns out that may in fact have been how things worked. As of the writing of this, the combined vote for Biden, Bloomberg, Buttigieg, and Klobuchar is at 54% of the popular vote and combined Sanders and Warren are at 42%. As of right now, Joe Biden is sitting at 51% in RCP polling with Sanders and Gabbard at 37%.
There were a number of reasons people thought that Biden would crater. He is old for a presidential candidate and lacks the energy usually associated with a winning candidacy, for example. Mostly, though, people believed he was out of touch with a party electorate where the energy is increasingly on the left. That’s why when people speculated about who would win, the speculation was centered on Elizabeth Warren and Kamala Harris, representing the new party. Bernie Sanders, who ironically like Biden did not get the attention his polling warranted, had set off a spark with a torch that would end up in someone’s hands. The candidates themselves believed this, competing with one another for what was perceived to be the new Democratic Party.
Instead, the numbers may have ended up exactly where they were before. What happened?
At one point it appeared that Biden might win on the basis of a fractured left, him having the “centrist lane” all to himself. But it turns out that wasn’t even necessary. The dynamic even appeared to give rise to a candidate that had previously been ignored and the persistence of a candidate who was ridiculously unqualified for the job, so desperate was the faction of the party that did not want a revolution. The narrative of the race that the “establishment” won through consolidation is undermined by the actual math involved.
None of this is to say that it never could have happened any other way. I’m not going to pretend that I “knew it all along” even as things appear to be ending almost exactly as I thought they would all along. I thought that Biden would get second or third place in Iowa and New Hampshire, fight Nevada close, and then dominate South Carolina. Instead, Biden got fourth place and fifth place. Under ordinary circumstances that would have doomed him, but Bernie Sanders also underperformed by losing Iowa and winning New Hampshire only narrowly. So both of the top two underperformed (one more than the other) and I was left with the feeling that somebody was going to have to win2. After Sanders dominated Nevada and the national polls turned (with the all-important African-American gap narrowing) I started preparing myself for a Sanders nomination and possible presidency.Then South Carolina happened followed by Establishment Voltron.
I mention all of this to say that there were opportunities. If Bernie Sanders had won Iowa and New Hampshire convincingly that might have set a different trajectory. His strategy of bringing out young people did not pan out. Further, Sanders never made the moves a frontrunner might to consolidate their support. Whether this was strategic (consolidating support was never the plan) or his weakness as a candidate3 The Democratic electorate was looking to end this quickly and they expressed an increasing willingness for Sanders to be the one, but a week later as soon as they had an alternative – any viable alternative – they pounced. Nobody was attached to Biden or Sanders, and with an unattached primary electorate perhaps they split in the familiar 55/45 way between revolution and guardianship.
All of this is to say that if the revolutionaries want the party they are going to have to win it. Bernie’s plan to divide and conquer was as ineffectual as it was reckless. The Democratic Party has demonstrated that it is not the Republican Party in search of a freak flag to fly. Analogous to the Democratic belief in an Emerging Democratic Majority that meant that they would not need to court new voters. It’s a strategy that can succeed but more often fails (something to keep in mind for November). This is not an argument for centrism, for what that’s worth. It’s an argument to be as generally appealing as possible to as many people as possible in your electorate. This can be done by moderating on issues or it can be done with a charismatic leader4
For the defending champions — the “establishment” — the same lessons apply. The only reason Sanders ever might have won was because they lined up behind someone who could most generously be described as “good enough” and then did not give him enough support to compete. Biden has to win, and whether he does or not I wouldn’t bet on them winning the next round without a much more compelling candidate and vision.
- Okay, that’s cheating a bit because that’s not the popular vote. The final popular vote tally came out 46% Sanders-Warren to 51% Buttigieg-Biden-Klobuchar.
- I never thought it would be Buttigieg or Klobuchar. They simply didn’t have time to usher the resources needed for a national campaign. That left Bloomberg, who was the only other possibility I could see.
- I simply can’t imagine him backing off his Cuba comments, for instance, which I believe unnerved some people.
- A charismatic leader that people outside the movement consider charismatic. Ted Cruz very much appealed to some people on a personal level but it was important that everybody else disliked him. Or Jeremy Corbyn. Bernie wasn’t at that level, but he wasn’t where he needed to be.
I think Nate Silver was right in saying there were two lanes, though not in the left-moderate sense. More Bernie and Not Bernie.
I think everyone writes Bloomberg off as an ego-driven vanity candidate when he did impact the campaign:
– Carpet bombed the airwaves with ads reinforcing the notions that defeating Trump was job one and that Sanders was just not the guy for America.
– Bigfooted Buttigieg and Klobuchar when they needed the free air time after Iowa and New Hampshire.
– Took all the flak in the last two debates, adding to above bigfooting and leaving Biden completely unscathed. And now Warren won’t be at the next debate to take on Biden.
And lastly, I think we’re all still underestimating the effect of the coronavirus and market crash on the election. Biden’s numbers rocketed the instant the virus hit American shores. Politics is all fun and games until reality declares its not, voters suddenly had the election clarified in no uncertain terms. The only candidate besides him that maybe had the reputation they could handle a pandemic-recession double whammy was Warren, and that was a lot of maybe by then.Report
Good to see you Douglas!
Fair points about Bloomberg. I viewed his campaign primarily as an insurance policy against “moderate lane” failure, and after Biden darted out in front it became redundant. But maybe he did have a more immediate effect.
I don’t think the crash and virus have factored in yet, but I suspect they will (and to Biden’s benefit over Sanders and Trump).Report
Thanks! I need to post in more non-political threads too. Where can I talk about the joys of D&D, wargaming, and City of Heroes?Report
Saturday gaming posts would be *PERFECT* for that sort of thing. (And we are at the tail end of our Board Game Symposium!)Report
I agree with the basic conclusion that the D establishment seems to be more functional than the hollowed out husk of the GOP that was partially taken over, but that’s setting a very low bar. What would be mistaken I think is to confuse the Sanders candidacy and to a lesser extent the dissident aspects of Trump’s 2016 run with the tiny percentage of votes that regularly go to the Greens or Libertarians or some other irrelevant micro party. Real questions are being raised about who exactly the global economy works for. Even if Biden wins the general (and he just might, especially if we go into a coronavirus recession) I think it will represent a collective kicking of the can down the road, and continuing to pretend 2008 didn’t actually happen.Report
I have at times referred to Biden as The Great Pause Button with a lot of this in mind.
But I think a pause button is what we need anyway. Get ourselves together.Report
Agreed.Report
Yeah, ain’t nothing wrong with a pause.Report
The problem with that idea is that the world doesn’t pause. I have been reading a lot about the end of the British empire lately, and one thing becoming increasingly clear is that many of the people wanted the world and its society to stop moving after the first world war. And it didn’t. You can see this with Chamberlin and Hitler, the rise of the Soviet Union and so on. The world was going to change, no matter that a huge chunk of British upper class died in the trenches. This, more that anything else, is what led to the downfall of the British.
All of which is to say that while you might want a pause candidate, to freeze things so to speak, the opposition, in this case the R’s will become the party of progress. And I am guessing that is progress you don’t want.Report
The GOP and the Dem Establishment are hollowing out differently because they are different institutions. At different positions on the timeline. But they are both hollowing out. This shows up with Trump running roughshod threw the GOP and the D’s nominating do-nothings such as Clinton and Biden.Report
There’s a different perspective where Trump stole what should have been the Democrat position on trade and jobs (populist) because too many Republicans were representing the position of Wall Street globalization and almost all the Democrats had, post Dukakis, sold themselves to the highest donors, which was the Wall Street globalization crowd, coastal elites, and tech elites. Nobody was representing the old Ross Perot anti-NAFTA segment that liked American factories in America. Judging from events in the US and Europe, that seems to be a strong position that appeals to a broad swath of people.
The corona virus could easily reinforce Trump’s support, because a whole lot of people are now seeing the downsides of an overly interconnected world and over-dependence on Chinese manufacturing. Biden will be an unlikely person to run with that position because his first statements after Trump’s ban on travel from China was that it was reactionary, racist, and unnecessary. Had Biden been in charge, the US would now be as eaten up as Italy. And Trump won’t neglect to point out that Biden is pretty much a Chinese agent, since he gave them free reign in the South China sea when they gave Hunter Biden a billion or so Chinese state dollars to play with.
So you could say that Biden represents sort of the Obama status quo of globalization, and the world may be moving on past that and getting back to more local and more resilient production.Report
I think putting Warren in the same lane as Sanders is unfair to Warren and her supporters.Report
It’s an oversimplification to be sure. I know many Warren-to-Biden voters. But both represent a desire for a more aggressive and unapologetic left.
When people were putting together those numbers after Iowa, a lot of people including myself said “That’s not how it works!” but they are seem to fall into a particular pattern with Warren-Biden offset by Pet-Bernie etc.Report
What would you say are the major substantive differences between Warren and Sanders? I agree that there are major stylistic differences, but the substance seems fairly similar.Report
I would argue that style really matters in this dynamic, however beyond that Warren was heavier on the intersectionalism side but on the economic side was more often to intermediary stepsReport
I think she got dragged way off the mark by the primary but she is a capitalist, and unapologetically so. I think that deep down Bernie believes its unworkable and morally repugnant whereas she sees herself as a means of fixing capitalism so that its benefits are more widespread. The 2004 book version of Warren (where I see a lot to like) really got mangled in the TV miniseries in a number of different ways.Report
I’ve never said this before and probably never will again but I actually thought this (inflammatory) write up by Tucker Carlson of all people was surprisingly cogent.
https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/tucker-carlson-elizabeth-warren-identity-politics-campaignReport
Donald Trump proved that you can in fact get elected on identity politics.Report
I said this to Stillwater on the Super Tuesday thread and believe it is pertinent:
‘Warren and Harris are examples of why a coalition party can’t be built from identity politics unless the identity in question is itself a majority, or at least plurality, of actual voters necessary for the coalition to win. And even then it might not be the best strategy.’
I also think that what the Right engages in is more ‘culture politics’ than ‘identity politics’ but probably not a practical difference for this particular issue. If the identity you’re appealing to is the biggest among the votes you need to win it can at times work. When you’re dealing with a broad based coalition it never will.Report
Yeah, that’s the vacuity of whataboutism.
Identity politics that do not center the majority of the polity only reliably flourish in non-democratic spaces. You have to be comfortable indeed to “center” someone else with your vote.Report
Exactly. Some of the more vapid memes I’ve seen floating around social media space have been ‘vote like x marginalized identity/group’. Very, very few people will ever think that way and even those that do will always have to square the question
of whatabout y marginalized group/identity. There are real divergences in interests and viewpoints in play that can’t be papered over.Report
When well-meaning whites try and listen to marginalized group X, what they’re actually listening to is an activist class that relies on spinning a certain not-widely-held narrative.
One of the more obvious delusions of the Warranistas was their elevation of “Black Womxn For” as some sort of signal of wider black support. In the NYT pre-Mortem article about her failure with black voters, one of her high level staffers was still prattling on about those binders full of Black ”Womxn.”
That’s one impenetrable bubble.Report
Donald Trump and the Republicans use a hedgemonic set of identity politics, while the Dems use a balkinated identity politics.
Very different in how it plays out. Misunderstand that at your peril.Report
This is an even better description of the distinction.Report
To say it another way, Weimar was never going to go for a party based on Jewish identity.Report
2016 mucks this up the lane talk a bit. Hillary was both the identity politics candidate AND the establishment candidate, which was always an uneasy fit. Now, Hillary’s biggest supporters are supposedly lumped in the Bernie land because they support Warren. Those two left camps are incompatible. Class-first is a non-starter for Resistance Ramona.
I’d say that the 2020 lanes were educated white women, class-first socialist-ish, and caretaker/normalcy/centrist. Harris took her big swing at Biden thinking it was aimed at both white women and black voters in the normalcy lane, but it turned out to have little currency among black voters because it was symbolic and dead as an issue, so Harris was left to scrap over the same educated white women as Warren, whose campaign was less of a mess internally.
Perhaps I spend too much time following this drama and its worst practitioners, but the lack of an obvious second choice for Warren supporters shows they are ideologically incompatible with the other lanes and will only cross over when the “representation” is right, something it’s too late for now.Report
I’ve read elsewhere that the difference between conventional political groups like liberals and conservatives, and revolutionaries is that convetional political groups have actual policy goals they want to accomplish while revolutionaries really have only the revolution as their goal.
In the sense that they see the struggle to defeat the enemy as their primary goal, while assuming that once this goal is reached, the other goals like transforming society will somehow just happen by magic.Report
As it pertains to the Sanders campaign in particular this has explanatory power.Report
Revolutions are lazy. Oh of course they take a lot of work for a while they you get your giants changes and boom, you have changed the world. But political change doesn’t just happen in one spurt, it needs to be maintained every election and despite setbacks. The bernie people became enamored with the romantic idea of a revolution. But the broader Left has never been willing to build itself through electing people at the local/state level. They want a giant win at the top which will be a paradigm shift w/o spending years creating real political grass roots.
You can sort of see it in the muddle of how they talk about what would happen when bernie won. Lots admit most of his stuff wouldn’t get passed, others had this ludicrous idea bernie would be stumping around the country going after recalcitrant D’s until they voted for everything and some even thought all his stuff would get passed.Report
A big problem I think is that the media sort of has iron laws that want and need the Democrats to be just as crazy as Republicans. There was drama during the early primaries but by Super Tuesday it became clear that the Democrats learned the lessons of the 2016 primaries. Moderate candidates dropped out and endorsed Biden and rallied around the base. But there are strong biases among internet politicos and journalists that the Democrats need to be disorganized (Dems in disarray!!!!) as the GOP. A lot of this seems to be an anti-Democratic bias and refusal to credit the Democrats with anything.
I don’t think Sanders would be a Mondale level disaster like some detractors do. But it seems pretty clear that others saw a potential problem and reacted against it. Plus his promised youth vote did not come out.Report
These people read too much friggin’ Marx and nowhere near enough friggin’ Hegel.
“Hurray! We’ve achieved synthesis! Glad that’s over with!”Report
They read too much Hegel and Marx and not enough Lenin and Mao.
Eta – tbf they are fairly well versed in western hemisphere revolutionaries of all stripes, which is more relevant to their task at hand of transforming the USA.Report
The Democratic Party has demonstrated that it is not the Republican Party in search of a freak flag to fly.
And thank God for that.Report
One of the things that actively hurt the republicans in 2006/2008 was the whole pandering thing when it came to how important Fiscal Conservativism was. They talked this big game for so freakin’ long but as soon as they got their hands on the reigns of power, they started throwing money around like water and “deficits don’t matter”.
And there were a handful of principled types who said something like “If neither party cares about my first choice… maybe I will instead vote for the party that cares most about my second choice”. Not all of these principled people voted Republican when it came to their second choice.
By the time Romney/Ryan were running, the noises about how we needed to spend money frugally was downright laughable. Like, how freaking stupid do Republicans think that their voters are?
Anyway, I bring that up to point this out:
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how freaking stupid do Republicans think that their voters are?
Very.Report
Wait until they hear about DACA!!!!Report
Good numbers post from Paul Campos at LGM. Apparently the youth vote fizzled:
https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2020/03/bernie-sanders-and-the-failure-of-the-youth-vote-strategyReport