FiveThirtyEight: Why Bernie Sanders Lost (APR. 8, 2020)

In 2016, Sanders built a passionate bloc of supporters who crowded his rallies and flooded his campaign with money, but lost to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, a more centrist, establishment Democrat who had greater appeal among black, Southern and older voters. In 2020, Sanders built a passionate bloc of supporters who crowded his rallies and flooded his campaign with money but lost to Biden, a more centrist, establishment Democrat who had greater appeal among black, Southern and older voters. Sanders got almost no backing from elected Democrats in 2016, and didn’t court the party establishment that much in 2020 either. That was a major barrier to his candidacy — not only did Sanders again get little support from the party elite, but that same elite was instrumental in helping Biden consolidate the field and winnow the race to a two-man contest. [...]

Sanders and his aides also made new mistakes in 2020. There were some clear indications that some of Sanders’s success in 2016 — among white voters without college degrees, in particular — had more to do with anti-Clinton sentiment than strong support for Sanders. But the senator’s advisers seemed to think that Sanders had a unique appeal to white working-class voters that would simply continue in 2020. So the Sanders campaign decided to invest heavily in the March 10 primary in Michigan, a state packed with white voters without a college degree. Biden not only won Michigan easily, but he won overall among white voters without a college degree (and pretty comfortably). [...]

We made this case in more detail in an article earlier this week, arguing that Sanders, Sen. Elizabeth Warren and the Democratic left were always going to face an uphill climb in the 2020 primary. Democrats’ overriding priority in 2020 has been defeating Trump, and many in the party view left-leaning ideas as something that makes it harder to win over swing voters. The boomlets around former Rep. Beto O’Rourke and former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg, neither of whom had the traditional qualifications for a presidential nominee, had the feeling of the Democratic Party desperately searching for a white, male, centrist-y candidate to take on Trump. The party landing on Biden (white male, centrist-y) fits that general narrative. [...]

The way the primary process played out, with Sanders the clear front-runner after the Nevada caucuses and Biden needing a surprising comeback to win, suggests that Sanders could have won in 2020. But it would have been somewhat fluky if a candidate (Biden) who led in the polls for basically the entire race crashed without the party’s establishment able to mobilize behind any alternative. Had Biden not run in 2020 or faltered fairly early, could Buttigieg, O’Rourke, Sens. Cory Booker or Kamala Harris, or even Warren have defeated the Vermont senator in the same way Biden did, by getting into a one-on-one race with Sanders, running to his right and receiving the bulk of support from the party’s establishment? That seems entirely possible.

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FiveThirtyEight: Why Buttigieg Dropped Out

Pete Buttigieg pulled off a surprisingly successful presidential run. The 38-year-old former mayor of South Bend, the fourth-largest city in Indiana, was unable to win the race for chair of the Democratic National Committee three years ago. In the 2020 Democratic primary, however, he not only outlasted prominent Democrats like Sens. Cory Booker and Kamala Harris, but Buttigieg also effectively tied for first in Iowa and finished a close second in New Hampshire. He won more support than Sen. Elizabeth Warren, another party heavyweight, in all four early caucuses and primaries. And his sharp attacks on Warren (and her proposal for Medicare for All) in October and November were arguably one of the most important moments of the primary, helping blunt Warren’s rise when it seemed like she could become the race’s front-runner. [...]

Just as important as the losing itself was the way Buttigieg was losing. More than 30 percent of Democratic voters are black or Latino. And the Democratic Party thinks of itself as the party that represents people of color. But Buttigieg never gained much popularity with black or Latino voters, punctuated by him getting an estimated 3 percent of the black vote in South Carolina. [...]

Why would Buttigieg do that? The former mayor might genuinely think that Sanders would be a terrible nominee for the Democratic Party. But there is a potential upside for Buttigieg in making this decision too. At his age, Buttigieg has four decades to try to become president. In leaving the race now, he builds goodwill with Democratic Party officials broadly and Biden in particular. If Biden is elected president, it’s easy to imagine him putting Buttigieg in a top administration post that helps Buttigieg fill out his resume — think U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. And goodwill among party officials will help Buttigieg if, as I expect, he eventually runs for president again.

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TLDR News: Bernie Wins Nevada: What That Means for the 2020 Race

At the weekend Senator Bernie Sanders won his third Primary of the 2020 process in Nevada. In this video, we discuss the winners and losers in Nevada as well as the impact this will have on the rest of the contest.

Politico: Bernie breaks out of the pack

While few expect that Sanders can carry more than a third of the vote in Nevada, nearly everyone believes that will be enough to win in a field where the moderate vote remains splintered. It is becoming a source of celebration for Sanders' supporters and an urgent problem for those who want to prevent him from claiming the nomination. [...]

Pete Buttigieg, who topped the field with Sanders in Iowa and finished less than 2 percentage points behind him in New Hampshire, is not polling well in Nevada or in the next voting state, South Carolina. Amy Klobuchar surged in New Hampshire but is starting from behind in Nevada. Biden is the opposite — humiliated in Iowa and New Hampshire but with better prospects here. [...]

The dim prospects of anyone beating Sanders in Nevada were laid bare last week, when the state’s powerful Culinary Workers Union elected not to endorse in the presidential primary. Despite its criticism of Sanders’ signature policy proposal, Medicare for All, the union was not convinced that any other Democrat could defeat Sanders, even with the union’s endorsement, according to a source familiar with the union’s deliberations.

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Social Europe: What’s at stake in the Democratic primaries

For example, with regard to health care, all the candidates support moving beyond the reforms introduced under Barack Obama’s presidency towards universal coverage. Where they differ is on how to get there: Sanders and Warren favour a rapid transition to a ‘single-payer’, public (‘Medicare for all’) system, while the moderates favour gradual change, beginning with the expansion of a public option (Medicare) to those lacking private insurance.

Similarly, all the candidates advocate higher taxes on the wealthy, fighting inequality, more business regulation, increased spending on social programmes and infrastructure, making college more affordable, and devoting greater attention to environmental issues and climate change. As with health care, on these issues the candidates differ more on how they favour achieving these goals than on the goals themselves. [...]

On the other side of the electability debate are those who believe the path to victory lies not in trying to attract independent and wavering voters but in mobilising the party’s base. Supporters of this strategy point to research arguing that voters generally don’t know much about policy and the intense polarisation of the American electorate, which makes them care even less. In this view, Democrats and Republicans are so committed to their own ‘team’—technically, ‘negative partisanship’ has become so strong—that they will vote for any candidate their party puts up.

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TLDR News: Sanders' New Hampshire Win Explained (& an Iowa Update)

Last night Burnie Sanders won in the New Hampshire Primary, marking his second win in the Democratic Primaries of 2020. In this video, we discuss the winners and losers in New Hampshire as well as the impact this will have on the rest of the contest.

Politico: Bernie crashes the gates, Buttigieg cuts the line

The winner in New Hampshire, Senator Bernie Sanders, is, like the man he wants to overthrow, U.S. President Donald Trump, a gate-crasher who knows the only way he will be accepted by establishment power in the party or elsewhere in American life is not by persuasion or reassurance but by beating them head-on with the votes of people who share his grievances.

The runner-up, former South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg, is a line-cutter just like the last Democratic president, Barack Obama — perfectly comfortable with establishment power, just not willing to wait his turn and indifferent to those who say he’s promising but needs more experience. [...]

The former New York mayor’s unorthodox strategy, skipping the early states and blasting his way into the race with hundreds of millions of dollars in advertising, gives him elements of both line-cutter and gate-crasher. At a minimum, his $50-billion-plus fortune, combined with zero restraint about spending it, allows him to not care much about whatever old rules he is bending or breaking.

This leaves Klobuchar — newly ascendant just as Sen. Elizabeth Warren and former vice president Joe Biden are losing altitude with two weak performances in a row — as the only conventional candidate to emerge from New Hampshire with enhanced momentum. Neither gate-crasher nor line-cutter, she is the student who didn’t necessarily dazzle with charisma but turned her homework in on time and asked the teacher if she could have some more for extra credit.

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TLDR Explains: What Happened in Iowa? Who Won and Did Pete Cheat

On Monday Iowans voted in the Iowa Caucus for the candidate they wanted to become the Democratic Presidential Nominee. It was always going to be an interesting race, but it ended up being interesting in a different way than expected. Chaos ensued after the caucus with Pete quickly claiming victory despite major issues in the reporting system. This lead to widespread confusion and some even alleging that Pete cheated.

Slate: Queer Like Pete

I’ll be the first to admit that Buttigieg is missing a certain warmth. And I’ve critiqued his lack of familiarity with gay history in the past. Even so, as a gay historian, I can’t help but witness his rise with interest and excitement, and in the wake of last week’s presidential debate and a revealing interview with Buttigieg on the New York Times’ Daily podcast, a worry has emerged. I’ve come to believe that those who find his self-presentation off-putting are missing an important bit of context—one that has to do with the set of archetypes through which we (queer and straight folks alike) make sense of gay men. [...]

Viewed through the lens of Schedule Spice, Buttigieg’s persona and life trajectory make complete sense. To my mind, he is the natural end result of a very familiar queer pattern that groomed him for this moment. His religious devotion to mastering the perfect pedigree, his refusal to be single, his denial of any type of popular gay aesthetic (which is, itself, another kind of gay aesthetic) make him legible to me. His academic nerdiness combined with his über-masculine military service is not a genuflection to heteronormativity, as some have claimed, but a familiar gay identity curated among upwardly mobile white gay men who have often turned to politics in one form or another. The only difference is that Schedule Spice is now vying for the presidency. [...]

While his model of gayness might not be widely familiar, Buttigieg’s Boy Scouting, his default of being the best little boy on the stage, is legitimately queer. If it strikes us as odd, it’s only because we have too narrow a definition of how a gay man can be in the world. Understanding Buttigieg through this lens does not, of course, have any bearing on his proposals or problems, such as his poor track record among black voters back home or his campaign’s recent foible of using stock images of Kenyans to represent black Americans. By all means, criticize those. But attacks on his “wonder boy” perfection, his encyclopedic knowledge, and his manner demean him and the many gay men like him—men who marry the first guy they date, who don’t come out till their late 20s, who are socially awkward, who have devoted their lives to work, and whose musical default is not gay pop. Men who, most of all, are raring to discuss politics at any moment, particularly on Sunday morning.

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The Week: The coming end of Christian America

America is still a "Christian nation," if the term simply means a majority of the population will claim the label when a pollster calls. But, as a new Pew Research report unsparingly explains, the decline of Christianity in the United States "continues at a rapid pace." A bare 65 percent of Americans now say they're Christians, down from 78 percent as recently as 2007. The deconverted are mostly moving away from religion altogether, and the ranks of the religiously unaffiliated — the "nones" — have swelled from 16 to 26 percent over the same period. If this rate of change continues, the U.S. will be majority non-Christian by about 2035, with the nones representing well over one third of the population. [...]

In what remains of the American church, reactions to this decline will vary. Some will see it as a positive apocalypse, which is to say a revealing of what was always true. America was never really a Christian nation. Our government and society have long made choices and embraced values that are difficult, if not impossible, to square with Christianity, so an end of any association between the two is welcome. Likewise, the proportion of Americans who actually practiced Christian faith in any meaningful, life-altering sense was always substantially lower than the proportion who would identify as Christian in a poll. What we're seeing is less mass deconversion than a belated honesty which may be an opportunity for new faithfulness, repentance, or even revival. [...]

Yet as contradictory as it may seem, I'll also suggest left-wing nones may come to find they miss the religious right when grappling with its successor. The New York Times' Ross Douthat has argued the post-religious right of which President Trump has given us a glimpse will be an ugly beast indeed. Polling shows the "churchgoers who ultimately voted for Trump over Clinton still tend to hold different views than his more secular supporters," he wrote last year, including being "less authoritarian and tribal on race and identity. ...The trend was consistent: The more often a Trump voter attended church, the less white-identitarian they appeared, the more they expressed favorable views of racial minorities, and the less they agreed with populist arguments on trade and immigration." In other words, on the right, the decline of Christianity looks to mean the rise of racism, as the communal life of active faith is replaced by darker impulses.

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Vox: Kamala Harris was the Democrat you could imagine taking on Trump

But it was in the middle of the debate that Harris changed the campaign. After Biden was confronted with a question about deportations in the Obama administration, Harris went where the other candidates had not. “This was one of the very few issues with which I disagreed with the administration,” she said, explaining that “as attorney general and the chief law officer of the state of California, I issued a directive to the sheriffs that they did not have to comply with detainers and instead should make decisions based on the best interest of public of the basis of their community. I was tracking it and saw that parents, people who had not committed a crime even by definition were being deported.” [...]

“I do not believe you are a racist,” she said. “But” — you knew there was a but — “it was hurtful to hear you talk about the reputations of two United States senators who built their reputations and career on the segregation of race in this country. And it was not only that, but you also worked with them to oppose busing. And, you know, there was a little girl in California who was part of the second class to integrate her public schools, and she was bused to school every day. And that little girl was me.” [...]

Buttigieg is a natural debater, and he offered about as good an answer on the South Bend shooting as was plausible, but it’s always hard to run for president from a place of apology. His bigger problem, to my ear, was the absence of an overarching theory connecting his answers. His responses are strong on their own terms, and I particularly appreciate his insistence that he’d prioritize restoring American democracy in his first year, but he’s offering individual answers rather than a clear message, and that’s tough in a field this big.

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CNN: I was married with 2 kids when I realized I'm gay

There's a price of admission for coming out as gay later in life. Over the course of several months, I paid the price daily. It was like I was watching a movie about myself but unable to control what was unfolding. Everything fell apart. [...]

He felt unsettled and scared about the uncertainty of our future. He asked several times if I was a lesbian. It was a question that felt impossible to answer because I knew what that answer would mean. [...]

By early 2018, my husband and I separated in an effort to give me some perspective. I lost time with my children as we began a shared custody schedule. I was consumed by the pit in my stomach -- the shame of ending my marriage because I was gay was like lugging a sandbag over my shoulders and having a rock in my stomach at the same time. I couldn't eat. My weight dropped by the day. For the first time since I met my husband, we went a full day without speaking. [...]

Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg -- who, like me, is in his late 30s and, like me, came out publicly just a few years ago -- put it this way: "It's hard to face the truth that there were times in my life when, if you had shown me exactly what it was inside me that made me gay, I would have cut it out with a knife. If you had offered me a pill to make me straight, I would've swallowed it before you had time to give me a sip of water."

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FiveThirtyEight: What Happens If Biden Doesn’t Run — Or Flops?

A Change Research poll released this week offers some clues. It showed Biden well ahead of his potential Democratic rivals in South Carolina, which is expected to vote fourth in the Democratic primary process. (The survey was conducted March 31-April 4.) Thirty-two percent of Democrats said they favored Biden, with Bernie Sanders (14 percent) and Kamala Harris (10 percent) the only other candidates in double digits. Of course, that Biden is leading in South Carolina is not surprising — he leads in basically all polls of the 2020 field, nationally and in the early primary states.

But Change Research also conducted a version of the poll with only declared candidates — leaving out Biden and other potential late entrants1 And that showed a much different, more wide-open race. Sanders was in first with 24 percent, and five other candidates were in double digits: Beto O’Rourke (16 percent), Harris (15), Cory Booker (12), Pete Buttigieg (12) and Elizabeth Warren (11 percent). [...]

That said, the difference in results without Biden is interesting a couple of ways. First, even though Sanders is positioning himself as one of the most liberal candidates in the race and Biden is likely to be cast as one of the more conservative ones, it’s not clear that Democratic voters are seeing those two as representative of different ideological poles within the party. According to polling from Morning Consult, Sanders is the second choice for many Biden voters, and vice versa. That Sanders gained 10 percentage points in the Change Research poll when Biden was not included also suggests that some voters are choosing between those two. Again, that finding could simply reflect that Sanders is the only candidate besides Biden who most Democrats are really familiar with. But it’s also worth considering that voters, at least at this stage, either might not know or might not care about the various candidates’ policy differences, which may already be well-known to party activists and journalists.

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