The centerpiece of the cult film, Weekend at Bernie's, is the corpse carted about by two party animals. Through the magic of Hollywood that Bernie did not stink. The same cannot be said of Bernie Sanders and his crotchety escapee from the old man muppet balcony, Joe Biden. Yes, I have heard the gushing and swooning over the alleged resurrection of Sleepy Joe who was declared the winner in 9 of the 14 contests. But look at the actual votes and percentages compared to 2016 and the outlook is not as rosy.
Here are the major conclusions:
- The Democrats are on track for a brokered convention. Biden's wins were not dominating in terms of taking most of the delegates. Yes, he is in the delegate lead but the numbers do not appear to support a first ballot win.
- Bernie did far worse in 2020 in term of percentage of votes, which means he won fewer delegates in these contests than he did in 2016.
- It appear Republicans engaged in an Operation Chaos by voting in the Democrat primaries.
- Trump is likely to win at least 5 of the 9 states that had open primaries.
- Trump is well positioned to win in at least 3 of the 5 closed primary states in the general election.
- The Democrat establishment effort to stop Bernie appears to be achieving some success. Still, he will be a factor in the Democrat Convention in July and there is no sign that his supporters will eagerly switch to vote for Biden in the General.
Let us start with the 9 OPEN PRIMARY states:
Alabama: As I predicted in Tuesday's pre-primary article, the total votes were slightly higher compared to 2016. Bernie got less votes this year than in 2016. Biden scooped up 40 of the 52 delegates. And Trump, in a non-competitive primary, almost doubled the total number of Democrat votes.
Hillary 2016– 309,928 Biden — 286,065 (63%)
Bernie 2016– 76,399 (20%) Bernie — 74,888 (17%)
Bloomberg — 52.750 (12%)
Arkansas: Bernie's percent and vote total fell way below his 2016 performance. Biden also failed to match Hillary's vote. Democrat turnout barely kept pace with 2016. Trump's 237,863 was more than the combined Democrat votes.
Hillary 2016– 144,580 Biden — 92,586 (40.5%)
Bernie 2016– 64,868 (30%) Bernie — 51,117 (22.4%
Bloomberg — 38,213 (17%)
Minnesota: I show no votes for Trump. He was awarded all the Republican delegates. It appears that many Republicans turned out and voted in the Democrat primary. Bernie almost doubled his votes but his percentage of the votes was cut in half. Bottomline, the top three Democrats carved up the delegates with no decisive winner.
Hillary 2016– 78,381 Biden — 287,464 (39%)
Bernie 2016– 126,229 (62%) Bernie — 222,530 (30%)
Warren — 114,754 (15%)
Tennessee: Donald Trump won 380,276. Democrat turnout was larger, but that may reflect Republicans and Independents crossing over to vote in the Democrat primary. Opeation chaos? Bernie won gathered more votes this go round but his percentage of the total fell. Again, no dominant delegate win that would push Biden over the threshold of the number required to get the nomination.
Hillary 2016– 245,304 Biden — 215,005 (42%)
Bernie 2016– 120,333 (33%) Bernie — 128,688 (25%)
Bloomberg — 79,638 (16%)
Texas: Trump collected 1,889,006. More than all the top Democrats combined. Once again, Bernie got more votes compared to 2016 but a lower percentage. That means fewer delegates. Biden did not match Hillary's numbers. Bloomberg ate into his base of support.
Hillary 2016– 935,080 Biden — 716,030 (34.5%)
Bernie 2016– 475,561 (34%) Bernie — 622,360 (30%)
Bloomberg — 298,262 (14%)
Utah: Trump's 277,307 votes exceeded the combined votes of all Democrats. Bernie slightly improved on his 2016 performance, but his percentage was cut dramatically from 2016. Biden and Bloomberg combined matched Bernie. .
Hillary 2016– 15,666 Biden — 31,571 (17%)
Bernie 2016– 61,333 (80%) Bernie — 62,786 (35%)
Bloomberg — 30,366 (17%)
Vermont: Vermont is a solid Democrat state. Yet, its hometown Senator was down dramatically compared to 2016. Total votes roughly matched the 2016 turnout. Another kiss your sister moment.
Hillary 2016– 18,335 Biden — 34,734 (22%)
Bernie 2016– 115,863 (86%) Bernie — 80,121 (51%)
Warren — 19,816 (13%)
Virginia: There was no Republican primary. I know for a fact that Republicans turned out to vote in the Democrat primary. Biden garnet more votes compared to Hillary in 2016 but did not match her percentage. Sanders? More votes but a big fall off in the percentage compared to 2016..
Hillary 2016– 503,358 Biden — 705,800 (53%)
Bernie 2016– 275,507 (35%) Bernie — 306,024 (23%)
Warren — 142,470 (12%)
Now for the closed primaries:
California: Trump won 1,483,642. Only 93% of the vote is in. The numbers on the Democrat side are quite interesting. They are running well below the numbers that turned out in 2016. Less than 50% so far. What the hell?
Hillary 2016– 2,745,302 Biden — 778,697 (25%)
Bernie 2016– 2,381,722 (46%) Bernie — 1,049,065 (34%)
Bloomberg — 437,388 (14%)
Warren — 374,820 (12%)
Colorado: Comparison to 2016 is not valid. Colorado had a caucus system. They did a primary this year. In terms of percentage Bernie underperformed significantly compared to 2016. Biden and Bloomberg combined exceeded Bernie's votes. Trump's 599,816 was more than the top three Democrats combined.
Hillary 2016– 49,314 Biden — 184,262 (24%)
Bernie 2016– 72,115 (59%) Bernie — 282,462 (36%)
Bloomberg — 160,240 (21%)
Maine: Maine held a caucus in 2016 and awarded most of its delegates to Hillary. This time Biden and Bernie essentially tied. Trump was awarded all delegates without a vote.
Hillary 2016– Biden — 68,396 (34%)
Bernie 2016– Bernie — 65,894 (33%)
Warren — 31,514 (16%)
Massachusetts: The top three Democrats did not match the vote totals racked up by Hillary and Bernie in 2016. Total Democrat turnout in the 2020 contest roughly matched that of 2016. Bernie did much worse in terms of votes and percentage compared to 2016. Trump is not competitive, it appears, in Massachusetts.
Hillary 2016– 603,784 Biden — 470,294 (34%)
Bernie 2016– 586,716 (49%) Bernie — 373,173 (27%)
Warren — 299,733 (21%)
North Carolina: 747,038 votes for Donald Trump. Republicans did not have to turnout. More Democrats showed up in 2020. Bernie got a less votes compared to 2016 and went from 43% to 24%.
Hillary 2016– 616,346 Biden — 568,581 (43%)
Bernie 2016– 460,316 (43%) Bernie — 318,872 (24%)
Bloomberg — 171,823 (13%)
Warren — 138,502 (10%)
Oklahoma: Donald Trump's 273,562 exceeded the total votes for the Democrats who won delegates. Bernie had a major fall off compared to 2016. Biden fell short of Hillary's 2016 numbers. Everyone got some delegates.
Hillary 2016– 139,338 Biden — 117,552 (39%)
Bernie 2016– 174,054 (56%) Bernie — 77,302 (25%)
Bloomberg — 42,243 (14%)
Sir;
It is now asserted over here out in Left field that the DNC would rather lose to Trump with anybody than win with Sanders.
Warren has come out of the shadows as the spoiler for Sanders that she always was. Not all of her votes would go to Sanders if she had not been in, indeed, her core constituency seems to be mainly women and ten percenters, otherwise known as the PMC (Professional Managerial Class.) That group would never support any sort of Populist candidate.
Bloomberg spent plenty of his own hard stolen loot to kneecap Sanders. We here in the Deep South are still getting Bloomberg flyers in the mail. Some groups of the voting population will always be “low information voters,” and thus strongly susceptible to propaganda campaigns.
The key flaw in the Democrat Party’s primary system is the reliance on the early primary states, mainly clustered in the old Deep South. One hears much talk of “momentum” for a candidate coming out of these early contests. so much so is this true that one could posit that the Democrat Party nomenklaturs wished the contest to be decided in these early voting states. However, these early states are mainly conservative bastions which will generally vote Republican in the general election. So, why would a “true blue” party like the Democrat Party rely on the decisions of the group of states that least mirror the party’s core constituency? A cynic would say that, for the Democrat Party nomenklatura, the ‘real’ core constituency is comprised of the Donor Class. In effect, there is almost no substantive difference between the elites of either American legacy political party.
Insofar as he has been and so far has continued to self-identify as an American Socialist, (let us leave the argument over what that beastie really is till another day,) Sanders threatens the power and perks of the Democrat Party nomenklatura. Thus, the full bore campaign against Sanders by the party he is running in.
Vote early and vote often.
Larry,
IMO, the primary is over. Biden will be the nominee at the convention and the establishment will not be stealing it as he’ll have the most delegates and votes. Sure, it will go to the second ballot.
The general election is going to be determined as usual by a handful of states. Michigan and Pennsylvania being ground zero. Unlike Hillary, senile Biden will be more competitive in those states. The Obama machine will be running his campaign. With Kamala or Amy as his VP they’ll make a serious go of those states. It is not a slam dunk for Trump.
It will be interesting to see how COVID effects your 2020 elections. The Republicans have their man but Dems need to attend these public gatherings to work out who their champion will be. If there is no clear winner before the convention then are there plans to manage it. From a public health point of view it would crazy to have a mass gathering with delegates from all areas packed into a convention hall for viral swap-meet. It is a perfect spreading environment for a respiratory pathogen even better than the S Korean church meeting linked to nearly all their cases.
I read that there are millions of mailed-in California ballots to be counted and that the Sanders campaign expects to receive a lot of them, and a bump in delegates, making it a virtual tie or even a lead for Bernie.
Some key points about Super Tuesday:
1. The center-right of the party consolidated around Biden after his win in South Carolina.
2. In South Carolina, James Clyburn played a key role, and this provided the template for Biden’s victories in the six states across the South with large African American voting blocs.
3. After South Carolina, the next step was Obama calling Pete and Amy and telling them to step aside for the team, lest Sanders run away with Super Tuesday. Amy delivered Minnesota to Biden and other endorsements (like Harry Reid) lifted Biden in Texas and Massachusetts.
4. Warren had a poor showing and, objectively speaking, only served to confuse the progressive vote, paving the way for Biden wins in MA and Texas. What was she thinking? She had no path to the nomination, so there are only two options: deliberately divide the progressive vote and serve the nomination to Biden; or hang on with the hope of miraculously emerging as the compromise candidate between the progressive and corporate wings. Trump lambasted her correctly in his twitter attacks.
5. Politically, the DNC establishment clearly wants to run the election solely on a ‘Beat Trump’ platform, with nothing else of substance in terms of policy. They just want a ‘professional management’ of the state, as opposed to Trump’s erratic behavior. They think the Obama years were just fine, and we can just go back to that with ‘better management.’ The last thing they want is the change in politics that Sanders represents — Medicare for All, Green New Deal, tax hikes on corporations and the 1%, breaking up corporate monopolies, and an end to forever wars. The corporate wing profits too much from the status quo to tolerate any of those politics. This is class war *inside* the DNC.
6. Identity politics played a pernicious role, and Biden is still playing this up. Basically, the relatively small black elite rallied around Biden, and used Biden’s association with Obama to deliver the working-class African American vote. The Churches seemed to have played a role in this too.
7. The MSM played a dishonest role in the days between Nevada and Super Tuesday, smearing Sanders with a welter of garbage, like Chris Mathews comparing Bernie’s win in Nevada to the Nazi conquest of France, and like Carville losing his (already lost) mind. The MSM is owned by the biggest corporations in the country and they are desperate to defeat Bernie.
8. What is the legacy of Bernie’s strategy? Can the DNC be transformed away from a party of Wall Street, Big Business and liberal interventionism? Doesn’t look like it.
9. Will Biden’s rebound be a Pyrrhic Victory? He is losing mental abilities very quickly, and surely won’t do any better than Hillary Clinton against Trump. Bernie polls better than Biden against Trump in over 60 national polls.
10. Lasty, we can’t underestimate the effect of Russiagate. Millions of Democratic voters think that its imperative to oust Trump because he is only President because of collusion and Russian meddling. The DNC strategy around Mueller and Impeachment paid off in their internal battle against Bernie. They convinced many Democratic voters that the election should only focus on ‘beating Trump’ with another Clinton clone. For those who support Trump, Super Tuesday was a god send.
Jim,
Not true about 3 million still to be counted. California stated they have counted 97% of the votes, which includes the mail ins.
Jim,
Those same “Russia did it” democrats will tell you they don’t think Obama and the democrats failed in securing that same election.
This is an very interesting election. Both Bernie and Biden have a real probability of succumbing to corona-virus before Nov 2 – and if they avoid that, and by satanic miracle, were to be elected, both have a high probability of dying in office. Bernie by heart attack and Biden being found face down in his drool bucket for various health/mental reasons.
The party of science and diversity couldn’t – out of millions – find anyone better and more likely to survive than these two old health compromised white men.
How anyone can be a proud Democrat escapes me entirely. It’s gotta be some kind of deep cult like indoc.