President Obama has suggested Bernie should start to wind down the campaign and the calls have been starting to grow louder. It’s difficult enough for a party to win three straight presidential elections, we can’t possibly take additional risks, especially when that could mean President Donald Trump, right? Wrong, Bernie remaining in the race until June will strengthen and unify the party, the eventual nominee, and besides, it’s not going to hurt our general election chances.
Let’s start by getting one thing out of the way, Bernie is going to lose. Hillary’s lead in pledged delegates has become insurmountable given the proportionality of delegate allocation. It’s possible that the superdelegates could move to Bernie en masse, but what reason is there? Hillary is leading in pledged delegates, the popular vote, states won, size of the states and the list goes on. Short of that indictment Republicans claim is just around the corner, but will never happen, they have no reason to abandon Hillary. Yet, Bernie should continue, because while he can’t win the nomination, he still can accomplish a lot.
Most importantly is using the campaign process to highlight serious problems throughout the country. Trevor Noah had a bit about this on the Daily Show, which was quite astute, the work of both candidates has helped keep attention on the Flint water crisis at a time when it could have easily receded into background. Yet there are still more problems that need attention, lead crisis in cities across the country, voting incompetence like in Arizona which could be devastating in the general election, to say nothing of what it means for our democratic system. Further, there is the plight of the ravished industrial centers and even small concerns like companies ignoring fair use laws. Keeping the primaries going until June can help bring needed attention to these issues and more, that otherwise would be lost amidst the oxygen suck that is the Trump clownshow.
More is needed than just attention though, which is the second reason Bernie needs to stay in the race, to have a bigger hand at crafting the platform come July. This will be the first post Obama platform and it will set the tone for the Democratic Party moving forward.
In 2012, Ron Paul, leveraged his third place standing in delegates to ensure the platform included some of his core policies, such as auditing the fed, net neutrality and unwarranted and intrusive use of drones. His larger policies of course never made the platform, such as ending military intervention, but that was never going to happen anyway.
Coming into the convention with 40-45% of the pledged delegates will give Bernie the opportunity to ensure some version of his ideas are included. While single payer and free college won’t be on the platform, renewed support for a public option in the Affordable Care Act, college debt reduction plans, free community college and other ideas could be. The more delegates and support Bernie has going into the convention the more influence he will have in crafting the platform.
Nor should we ignore that so many people want him to stay in the race. Polls still have Bernie winning around 45% of the vote, endorsements are still coming in and while not an endorsement, Elizabeth Warren did say she was cheering him on. Most importantly though, he’s still winning states.
31 states or territories have voted in the primary so far, this is usually around the time when candidates who can’t finish a primary either stop winning states or drop out. In the 2012 GOP Primary, candidates other the frontrunner stopped winning states after the 35th state voted, in the 2008 GOP primary it was 32, for the Democrats in 2004 it was 31 and only 24 for the Republicans in 2000.
Bernie has won 12 contests and is likely to add another 2-3 to that list today and there are still contests later on the calendar that look promising. Of the primary election cycles listed above, no single candidate who wasn’t the frontrunner won more than 11 contests, a number Bernie has bested and will continue to outpace. This demonstrates not only that a sizable faction of the party wants him to continue, but also that Hillary has yet to incorporate his supporters into her coalition.
Winning over your opponent’s supporters is something frontrunners need to do in the latter portion of the primary election in order to demonstrate crossover appeal and start winning large swaths of the party. During the 2008 GOP primary, Mike Huckabee was the last opponent to be defeated by John McCain before McCain became the nominee. He did this by winning over Huckabee’s base voters as the race went on.
To demonstrate this, let’s look at three states in the 2008 GOP primary that were all in Huckabee’s southern base: Georgia, a Super Tuesday state, Virginia which came after Super Tuesday, and Texas, where McCain’s victory ended Huckabee’s campaign. While Mitt Romney was still in the running for Georgia, we’ll only look at the numbers in relation to McCain and Huckabee, as it was a two man race after Super Tuesday.
Huckabee’s base was made of several groups, but we’ll look at conservative voters and protestant/other christian voters. From Georgia to Virginia to Texas his lead over McCain with conservative voters went from 16.5 point lead to 13 to a 4 point loss in Texas. With Protestant/other voters, the same thing happened, going from a 10 point lead in Georgia, to 2 points in Virginia and losing them by 4 in Texas. Unable to even win a plurality of his strongest supporters in a state that bordered one he governed for 12 years, Huckabee dropped out.
By winning over the other faction during the primary rather than the general, it can help lessen bad blood between since they’ve already voted for the nominee once. This means fewer resources that need to be spent consolidating the base in the general, since it’s already been done. So far it isn’t happening for Hillary.
To demonstrate, we’ll do a quick look at how Hillary’s doing with Bernie’s base voters, Northern white voters, Northern voters under 30 and Northern white men. The South is being excluded from this as Hillary is dominating in the South to the point where further unification is hardly possible. The three states to check are New Hampshire, Michigan and Illinois, which are northern primaries, with exit polls to compare.
From Bernie’s first win in NH, to his loss in Illinois, his support with white voters dropped from its NH high of 24 points over Hillary to 14 in MI, but remained stable in Illinois at 15. With voters aged 18-44 (or in IL 17-44) the numbers were relatively stable, going from 74%, to 65% to 70%. The New Hampshire highs could be explained by it being a neighboring state of Vermont. Finally, white men are almost unchanged throughout.
Bernie’s winning margin with white men in NH-MI-IL is 35-35-29. That’s a 6 point gain for Hillary, which might represent her winning over his base, but could also be polling error, or an older electorate that affects Bernie’s numbers at the margins (more older white men pulling Bernie’s support down for example). Either way, it does not seem clear that Hillary has started to win over Bernie’s base in the kind of large percentages McCain had.
This continued resistance should help Hillary be a better candidate by figuring out ways to reach out to these voters to try to bring them into her camp. Otherwise she’ll keep losing races to Bernie, making it hard to move to the general election. Bernie dropping out when he still has large support and is winning offer risks as well. It could come off as the party establishment muscling out a popular voice, potentially festering resentment, hostility or outrage in his supporters. As long as he has the support and the money to continue on, both sides should want him to.
Which is another point of remaining in the race, to make Hillary a better candidate. While she hasn’t won over Bernie’s core group yet, she has improved in many other ways. The debates have proven invaluable for both reintroducing America to her deep well of policy knowledge, but also providing practice for future debates and even stump speeches.
The campaign has also helped in regards to fundraising. Since the actual voting began in February, her campaign raised $10.8 million in small donors, ⅓ of all the money she raised in February. More impressive was that $10.8 million was also ⅓ of all money raised from small donors since the start of her campaign. The rivalry of the two campaigns creates incentive for people to donate, as it still seems like money is needed. Further, Bernie touting his small donors gives her campaign renewed reason to expand their own small donor list.
These donors will be crucial come the general election to keep the campaign going against Trump, Ted Cruz or whomever the Republicans install at the convention. The donors provide not only resources and data lists, but also a connection between the campaign and the voters willing to send a few dollars here and there.
Beyond donors and the voters, Bernie staying in the race keeps both candidates in the media. Right now Trump is sucking up oxygen from both campaigns, if the Democratic primary ends, Trump will pretty much box out the nominee until after the conventions making the next four months all about him. Jeb Bush thought hiding while Trump roared and thrashed about was a clever idea, which was ultimately proven hilariously wrong, Democrats can’t make that mistake.
Waiting too long to unify was something the party feared back in 2008 as the Obama Vs. Hillary primary continued through to June and it’s still a concern in this campaign. Yet, even moving past the fact that continuing on will help consolidate the party, there is also the fact that Democrats are in far better shape than we were in 2008. Actually, a better way of putting that is that Republicans are in far, far, incredibly far worse shape this cycle.
Back in 2008, after McCain was the only GOP candidate left following the 3/4/08 primaries, the first few polls showed him in solid shape for the general. A Wall Street Journal poll had his favorables minus unfavorables at +20, Gallup had McCain’s favorables at +40 and most polls found strong favorables for McCain (with a few outliers). Contrast this with Trump, who Pollster currently has at -32 and trending downward. Cruz meanwhile sits on a slightly better -17, also trending downward. Their frontrunner this cycle is doing 52 points worse than in 2008, better yet, almost no one hasn’t heard of Trump, giving him very little room to grow.
While Hillary isn’t as popular as either she or Obama was in 2008, it’s nothing compared to the dumpster fire that is the GOP primary. Better still, it’s a dumpster fire on top of a nuclear bomb, where if they manage to install as the nominee a person who received fewer votes and delegates than the frontrunner it could very well destroy the party. This isn’t 2008 where there was a risk of looking disorganized compared to the GOP who easily nominated a senator with a well cultivated image of being independent and a war hero.
Which is why Bernie should stay in the race. It’s helping keep important issues in the spotlight, will allow him to help craft the 2016 party platform and is making Hillary a stronger candidate. Besides, the GOP is resigned to nominating either the least popular nominee in their history, or the second least popular, we can afford to wait a few months before uniting to a single candidate.
Please follow at
@dtuttlepolitics
forpoliticalseance.tumblr.com
politics.nytimes.com/...
politics.nytimes.com/...
politics.nytimes.com/...
www.cnn.com/...
www.cnn.com/...
www.cnn.com/...
www.usnews.com/...
www.washingtonpost.com/...
online.wsj.com/...
www.gallup.com/...
www.realclearpolitics.com/...
elections.huffingtonpost.com/...
elections.huffingtonpost.com/...
.tif.png?1410202987 "no image description available")
.tif.png?1410202987)
