The State of the Democratic Race: Post ‘Mini-Tuesday’
One of the classic 2016 SNL Cold Openings placed Kate McKinnon’s Hillary Clinton on her sofa frustrated by a recent string of primary losses at the hands of Bernie Sanders in late March and early April of 2016. That year, following his inability to garner sufficient African American support and his limited success Super Tuesday, Bernie Sanders’ campaign found a second wind with a stunning upset in Michigan that gave new momentum to the race and extended it far beyond initial expectations. The same was meant to happen in 2020. Following arguably one of the most stunning turnarounds in support in recent presidential political history, Bernie Sanders went, in the space of two weeks, from the presumptive nominee in some quarters to fighting for his place in the primary against a resurgent Joe Biden. Michigan was to be the state that was to jumpstart the Sanders’ campaign again; he effectively pulled out of campaigning in many of the other states and focused his attention in the Great Lake State, calling it the ‘most important’ contest of Tuesday night’s primary.
While much of the 2020 campaign has had seemed eerily like its 2016 counterpart, Tuesday night provided a sharp counterpoint to that déjà vu narrative. Within minutes of the polls closing in Michigan, networks were already calling the state for Joe Biden, indication that Sanders was not even in contention. Out of the six states voting, Biden won four, will is leading in Washington (as yet uncalled), whereas Sanders only managed a solitary win in North Dakota. Winning states is significant, yes, but it’s the delegates that matter. Biden’s victories combined netted him 158 delegates; for Sanders, he gained only 100. In the overall delegate race Biden leads Sanders by 141 and looking ahead to the voting states in the coming two weeks, demographically and geographically, if the pattern of the primary season holds, they favour Joe Biden. Indeed, states like Florida and Georgia – both with significant delegate hauls, point to being very favourable for the former Vice President. In all likelihood then, barring something unforeseen, it looks as though the Democrats have their nominee to take on Donald Trump in November. While Biden is not yet crowned, if this momentum continues, by the end of this month, numerically speaking, he will likely become the presumptive Democratic candidate for president.
Delegate ‘math’ is one thing – indeed, the most important thing in elections. But there are other noticeable takeaways from Mini-Tuesday and its aftermath that tell us something about the state of the Democratic primary race.
1. The Nature of Biden’s Victory
Joe Biden won comfortably in Michigan, with over 52% of the vote. His victories in Mississippi and Missouri were even more comfortable at 81% and 60% respectively. In all three states, he won every county. Biden’s successes then were commanding. Such widespread success reveals the nature of the coalition that he is building. With his continued success with African Americans and college educated voters, Biden added to his base suburban voters, union voters and, most notably, rural white voters. This indicates two things: firstly, that Sanders’ 2016 support especially in rural areas and union households is fracturing somewhat, but secondly – and more noteworthy – that Biden is establishing in the presidential race, the coalition of voters that won the Democrats the 2018 midterms. Taking Missouri as an example. Sanders won this 78% white majority state in 2016; Biden overwhelmed him in every county by wide margins.
The lesson moving forward for the rest of the primary season then is as Biden extends and cements his coalition, Sanders’ is breaking apart.
2. The Nature of the 2016 Democratic Primary
In turn, Biden’s victory tells us something about what happened in 2016 and Sanders’ 2020 strategy. The numbers that underpinned the Sanders surge in 2016 were relatively soft. His strategy was to build upon the enthusiasm and extend support that he generated 4 years ago. So far, he hasn’t been able to even generate the same depth or breadth of enthusiasm in terms of securing votes this cycle. What appeared 4 years ago as support for the independent senator now looks increasingly like it was a protest, anti-Hillary Clinton vote. With Clinton off the ballot, support has both deepened and expanded for the traditional Democratic candidate this time around.
This, in turn, challenges the fundamental premise of the Sanders campaign. It went a little like this: Donald Trump won the electoral college because he managed to defeat Hillary Clinton in the Rust Belt States. On the basis of the 2016 primary, Sanders won more support there than Clinton. Ergo, Sanders was more likely to beat Trump in a general election scenario. On the basis of the 2020 results last week and this week, Biden is more popular in these key traditionally Blue states than Sanders. That inverts the grounding argument Sanders has made this election cycle, and the claim that his supporters have posited since 2016.
3. The Nature of the Democratic Party
Further, and more broadly, all of this reveals something about the nature of the Democratic Party.
Since Sanders’ 2016 surge, commentary has presented a Democratic party fighting among itself; a battle for its philosophical and ideological direction between the traditional ‘establishment’ in Washington, led by insiders like Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer and Barack Obama, and the ‘progressive’ movement – or revolution – that spoke to the feelings of everyday Americans, the face of which was Bernie Sanders. 2018 dispelled this myth – Democrats won, not because of the message of Sanders and his followers, but because of candidates who won over Republicans and Independents in former Trump counties and districts.
With the rise of Joe Biden as party leader – and his significant level of support – this battle for the soul of the Democratic party is not as radical or divided as we might have thought from listening to commentary over the past 4 years. Just consider what has happened in the last 2 weeks. After the Nevada caucuses, there was the case being made the Joe Biden was finished. But after South Carolina, Biden secured significant party endorsements heading into Super Tuesday. The majority of the Congressional party gathered around Biden in unprecedented fashion and, as the last 10 days has borne out, the electorate has gathered around him as well. Joe Biden reflects the nature of the vast majority Democratic Party at the minute. The idea of a divided party gathering a testy brokered convention in July is well and truly a pipe dream for political nerds now! (The rest of us can just watch the end of Season 6 of the West Wing!)
Put most simply: what is clear is Democrats want a party leader that can beat Donald Trump. That is why exit polls have consistently asked this question. Overwhelmingly, Joe Biden has emerged as the voters’ choice as the candidate most able to do this.
But, there is more to Biden’s support than simply electability, as Sanders described on Wednesday afternoon. It is about the nature of the leadership that Biden represents. The emerging Coronavirus is a case in point. On the question of who voters trusted to handle a major crisis such as the Covid-19 pandemic, Biden led Sanders by clear margins in the states that voted on Tuesday. For example, 61% to 27% believed Biden was better suited to the task in Missouri, 46% to 27% in Washington and 51% to 32% in Michigan. More than just beating Trump, voters clearly want the kind of leadership Biden offers: stability, steadiness and normalcy. It is no wonder that these are the kinds of adjectives Biden uses repeatedly to define his candidacy. And, after the political upheaval of impeachment, a global pandemic and increasing economic uncertainty, it is no wonder Americans simply want normalcy. With Biden there is leadership clarity. With a Sanders revolution – or attempted revolution – there is uncertainty.
My point: the ideological battle that many thought would define the party and this campaign has not come to fruition. Instead, the party and campaign have been defined by the question of leadership. The lesson: sometimes it’s best not to focus online or on the rhetoric of a few high profile members of Congress when trying to figure out where a party is at!
4. The Race moving forward
Bernie Sanders made it clear that he was staying in the primary race for the time being on Wednesday afternoon. He will participate in Sunday’s debate, with the hope campaign insiders said of being able to gather momentum leading into next Tuesday’s primary contests. It seems like a long shot, especially given the primaries on Tuesday coming in Arizona, Florida, Illinois and Ohio are all ones he lost in 2016.
Reading between the lines, it would seem that Sanders is starting to enter into the final stages of his campaign. It does not seem likely that he will repeat his 2016 spoiler campaign. In his press conference yesterday, he laid out a series of questions he intends to needle Biden on during the debate. It was odd to give away your debate playbook to your opponent. In reality, however, it appears this is the start of Sanders hoping to influence the party platform and get as many of his campaign ideas included as possible. But there are two problems to look out for:
a) Sanders did the same in 2016 and Clinton’s campaign more or less accepted what he wanted to include, with the exception of Medicare for All. What can he ask for this time? and What will count as a victory for his supporters in such circumstances?
b) Sanders’ supporters are another issue. What this campaign online and at rallies has proven (again) is that Sanders is adept at riling up his support base but he has little – or is simply not willing to exercise – control over them. He now needs to try and motivate his supporters to support the Democratic ticket even if he is not on it. Having spent the best part of 2 years attacking the so-called ‘establishment’ and more recently launching punishing attacked on Biden – even questioning his physical fitness and cognitive agility at the weekend past – this will prove to be an uphill battle for the Vermont senator.
Of course, it is not a one way street. Biden and his campaign will have to extend their tent to include Sanders’ supporters. In so doing, they will have to learn the lessons from the Clinton campaign that just anticipated, at best, or expected, at worst, Sanders and his voters to fall in line for the general election. The debacle on the opening days of the Convention and the lower than expected voter turnout told a very different story.
There is already an indication that Biden is learning this lesson. In his victory speech on Tuesday evening, he was magnanimous in his praise of Sanders and his campaign and spoke of sharing a common goal with them in working to defeat Donald Trump. On the main policy faultline between the campaigns – health care – Biden spoke of it explicitly as a right for all Americans, something that Sanders argued his Medicare for All plan was premised on.
For Biden too, there are a couple of things to watch out for. Firstly, can he maintain his current standing. As a candidate known for gaffes, how will he cope, especially under the pressure of a one-to-one debate? The second thing to watch out for is the possibility of an early announcement of a running mate.
On Monday evening past in Michigan, on stage with Cory Booker, Kamal Harris and Gretchen Whitmer, Biden specifically referenced himself as a bridge to the younger generation of the party. Was this a hint at a one term presidency; a plan to restore the decency of the office as he understands it after Trump and then hand over to a younger leader to take it forward? It’s unclear.
What is clear is that Biden needs a dynamic, younger running mate. Since the Bush-Cheney campaign, running mates have always been about balancing out the top of the ticket. Biden’s age is what needs balanced out. Plus, it seems increasingly likely that gender will also need to be balanced out. Therefore, some quick detective work indicates a younger female running mate! Initially I thought that Biden would look to Amy Klobuchar, especially given the prominence of her endorsement, relative to Pete Buttigieg’s, and the fact that as a mid-western senator she could be useful in securing votes in the north of the country. However, since Super Tuesday, Biden has demonstrated he can win the mid-west on his own name. Another name being cited is Kamala Harris. I have my eye on Stacey Abrams of Georgia, a woman of colour who could be very significant at winning red states in the south. So watch this space!
5. Obamian Biden – Rhetoric for the General Election
For me one of the most revelatory things that emerged from Mini-Tuesday was Joe Biden’s victory speech. Oratorically it was the best Biden has given all cycle – he was measured, sombre, clear and sharp. These are not always the ways we describe a Joe Biden speech!
As someone who studies rhetoric in particular, I was more interested in two key elements of his remarks.
Firstly, the venue. Biden spoke from the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia. This was where Biden formally launched his campaign in 2019. Speaking on the cusp of securing the nomination, returning to this same venue heralded his acknowledgement of the start of a new moment in his bid for the White House. It is interesting as well that it was the same venue that a then candidate Barack Obama spoke from in March 2008 and delivered his ‘A More Perfect Union’ speech following the Rev. Jeremiah Jackson crisis. That speech was considered a marker in the Obama campaign, that both saved him and propelled him to the nomination. While there is no indication that the venue choice was deliberate, the parallels with Obama are interesting nonetheless.
Where there are deliberate parallels I think between Obama and Biden is in the rhetoric used. The very grounding of Obama’s political philosophy is the Founding Documents: the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. It is from these he argues that America’s common creed is found, where that spirit of individualism is coherently married to a deep sense of communitarianism, and from which the nation’s goal to reach towards ‘a more perfect union’ is realised. It does not seem as coincidence that Biden took up this same understanding at the close of his speech. He articulated explicitly the same understanding that America’s creed has not yet been realised, but anchored his vision of a Biden presidency as one that sought to live up to it and reach towards it. Indeed, he went further and in placing the Founding Documents in the context of the Trump era argued that the current incumbent in the White House had walked away from the origins of the nation. Not explicitly stated, but certainly implied was Biden’s ambition to walk towards them again.
In making this case, Biden used a particular Obamian rhetorical trait: presenting dialectical pairs as an instrument for clarification. Building on his idea of walking towards the Founding Documents as the philosophical source of his presidency, Biden juxtaposed these same documents against the presidency of Donald Trump making his case that the 2020 campaign was a battle of American leadership and for the soul of the country. Using America’s Founding Documents as a rhetorical proxy for his presidential vision, Biden make the stakes of the election not a battle of personalities as Trump would like, but one about the idea of America. I expect, as we move forward into the general election, Biden will continue this approach.
On a side note, from an Irish perspective, I hope to hear more Seamus Heaney in Biden’s speeches. And I think we could. So much of Heaney’s poetry emerged from his experiences of the Troubles, of two sides at once intractable reaching towards agreement. Given the partisanship and polarisation of American society presently, I expect this theme – and Heaney’s masterful expression of it – will also be prescient as he moves forward.
So … having said all this, I’m still not calling Biden the presumptive nominee – yet. By next week, it could be a different story. Although, what I will say is I think it’s probably about time SNL settled on their Joe Biden for the rest of the 2020 season! My vote is for Jason Sudeikis!