Bernie Sanders’ closing argument was predicated on “finishing strong,” which would then give him “momentum” and thus convince superdelegates to overturn the will of the Democratic electorate with a coup of their own. It was never a good argument, but at least it gave him a rationale to stay in the race, bolstered by arguments about a supposed rigged system and a hostile establishment arrayed against him.
Of course, the system was rigged, but in his favor. He benefited with Iowa and New Hampshire, two white states with zero resemblance to the party electorate, then leveraged low-turnout undemocratic caucuses and our proportional allocation of delegates to win far more than his popular vote merited. While they’re still counting votes in California, as of right now, Sanders has gotten 45.3 percent of the delegates, while notching only 43.3 percent of the popular vote.
But in the end, the same demographic trends that bedeviled him once he left the cozy confines of New Hampshire did him in—a massive loss in California (currently at 13 points, but likely to grow a bit once all early votes are counted) driven in large part by Latino preferences. While we don’t have exit polls out of Cali, its most Latino county, Imperial (80.4 percent Latino), went Clinton 67-32. Tulare (62.3 percent Latino) went Clinton 58-40. San Benito (57.9 percent Latino) went Clinton 58-41. It’s hard for anyone to overcome those kind of numbers in a state like California. (The state’s whitest county, Trinity—7.1 percent Latino—went Sanders 61-37.) Field Poll, which had been scary accurate, probably just had their worst miss ever, and at the root of their miss? They had Clinton winning Latinos by just four points, a contention I mocked in some comments here. It was never plausible. It was clear to anyone immersed in Latino culture and Spanish-language media that he wasn’t making the inroads he needed. See also Rico, Puerto.
Hillary Clinton has won in every category imaginable except caucuses (she’s even won more open contests, even though they should all be closed). And the two caucus states that had subsequent higher-turnout primaries, the win flipped from Sanders to Clinton (though it had zero effect on the delegate allocation). Her popular vote lead is now at 3.7 million (including caucuses!), and will be closer to 4 million when California is finished counting and DC has its say (not including non-binding primaries in Washington and Nebraska, which would boost her margin further).
And she did all that despite being heavily outspent by Sanders. His problem wasn’t that he didn’t have the resources to get his message out. His problem wasn’t that he ran out of time, or that the more people saw of him, the more they liked him. Last night proved that theory wrong. The problem was that in a Democratic primary, Democratic voters went with the person they knew and trusted, who had spent the last three decades helping build the party and getting Democrats elected. And that was doubly so with people of color.
Now, I’ve made clear over the last 14 years running this place that I want the superdelegates gone. But their early endorsements weren’t a sign of a rigged system, they were a sign of the party’s elected officials and party leaders rallying around the family that has raised more money for them than anyone else. It’s basic relationship building, and there’s nothing wrong or nefarious about it. So the way to fight that is to 1) play the same game, and help people get elected and build the party, or 2) bypass those supers and win actual party voters themselves. Barack Obama did the latter in 2008. Heck, it’s what Donald Trump did this year. Outsiders can and do win if their message resonates with the party electorate. The supers are irrelevant to that. Blaming them is a cop-out.
Sanders had the money, he had the reach, he certainly had the volunteers and an intensely loyal army of volunteers and advocates. What he built was nothing short of amazing. But in the end, his inability to make inroads with the party’s communities of colors was a bridge too far, and in this day and age, you won’t get far without making those inroads. At the beginning of the primary, I predicted Sanders’ ceiling at 30 percent. I was wrong. He got to 43 percent because he got great support among youth of color. But that wasn’t near enough, and when all was said and done, that still left him at a big double-digit deficit to Clinton.
Meanwhile, Clinton busted through a history of concrete ceilings and gave us our second historic nomination in eight years. As much as some people like to say they don’t trust her, fact is, most Democrats do. The polling is clear, the party will have no problem uniting around her. The Sanders dead-enders will be as relevant as the PUMAs of 2008. We might as well expect that sort of recalcitrant in any contested primary and factor it into the math. And look at that, they pencil out as irrelevant.
How can we not be proud of our party, which looks more and more like America every day? That doesn’t mean it’s perfect or beyond criticism. If liberals are good at anything, it’s criticizing our own. We have nothing approaching Reagan’s 11th Commandment. And President Hillary Clinton will do things that will infuriate us. But she’ll also do things that excite us, and even things that’ll make us go “meh.” In the end, she’ll be an extension of the Obama presidency, but without the desperate need for Republican approbation. There will be good, there will be bad, but she’ll be looking to fuck over Republicans because she’ll know damn well that they’ll be looking to fuck her over. Thirty years of being under fire has made her stronger, more eager and willing to fight. There are no illusions or fantasies of reconciliation in Camp Clinton. And for those of us looking for a White House willing and able to take the fight to the GOP, we’re going to get that.
And Hillary herself is pretty amazing. Read her interview with the NY Daily News. Watch her performance at the Benghazi hearings. She is THE policy wonk of policy wonks. She does a crappy job of building a broad vision of what liberalism can accomplish (that’s Bernie’s strength), but no one can doubt her intelligence and command of the issues. It’s mind-blowing.
I was on a radio show last week when a caller called in and said “I’m a Bernie supporter, and I hate Clinton, but her foreign policy speech was pretty amazing!” I think many of you will be pleasantly surprised that Clinton doesn’t line up with the caricature her critics have drawn. I still firmly believe that the biggest tactical mistake by the Clinton campaign was not agreeing to earlier debates. That time allowed her critics to paint her as a mustached villain, a picture that remains to this day. Watch her numbers rise among Democrats over the next few months as people finally get to see her. That caller will hate her less and less over time.
But of course, the White House alone gets us somewhere, but nowhere near where we really want to go. So our job is to deliver a Congress that will help push Clinton as far left as we want. That means control of the Senate and maybe even the House. Donald Trump is giving us the opportunity. It’s up to us to take advantage of it.
With the Senate we get control of the Supreme Court, and we can say “buh bye” to Citizens United, partisan gerrymandering, obstructions to voting rights, and all the other mechanisms Republicans are using to stem the demographic tide threatening to overwhelm them and render them meaningless. We also get to fill dozens more judicial openings currently being obstructed by the GOP. The courts will look fucking amazing for us for a generation, if not more. That will undo much of the damage created by the GOP and its conservative judicial majorities over the last several decades.
(And for those who like to tar Hillary with everything Bill did, remember that Bill gave us the amazing Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer. His judicial nominees were never a problem.)
So if nothing else, retaking the Supreme Court and reinforcing the federal judiciary with liberal judges will be a dramatic step forward for our country. If nothing else!
But there will be more. We have majorities, we can push for a new Glass-Steagal, we can codify protections for our nation’s most vulnerable groups, we can implement more family-friendly policies like national paid family leave, we can push for a higher national minimum wage, and so on.
But of course, none of that matters if the House is around to kill everything. So we must retake the House. That’s a tall order! But again, Trump has put it in play. Then, we must stay engaged through 2018, because those first-term midterms are always brutal for presidents, and the Senate map is godawful for Dems. So we need to run up our victory margin this year, and limit our losses in 2018.
How do we get our people to turn out in 2018? Well, hopefully the Clinton team will have learned from everything Democrats did wrong in 2010. And I mean, they did everything wrong. It’ll all be about base mobilization. And how do you mobilize the base? By proving that you are fighting for them. It’s pretty simple! Just fucking fight! If we have Congress, pass shit. If Republicans still hold the House, make them block shit. Good shit. Amazing shit. The best shit!
And 2018 will be extra important because every governorship we pick up is a bullwark against 2020 GOP partisan gerrymandering at both the state and federal levels. We don’t need to win full control over redistricting commissions. It’s enough to win over one veto point and let the courts draw the maps. Every time a court writes a fair map, we win.
2020 will come around, and we’ll have to defend Clinton from … Paul Ryan? That’s who their establishment wants. Watch Ted Cruz or even a repeat Donald Trump spoil those plans. Either way, that’s our final chance to put a crimp on GOP gerrymandering efforts. We need to win the fuck out of everything, down to the state legislatures. Again, how to best accomplish this? Have your base turn out. How do you get your base to turn out? Get them excited! Did I mention how simple this is?
So you see, Clinton will have every incentive to motivate the base, and every disincentive to kowtow to Wall Street or start a war or any of the things her critics fear the most from her. I’m not saying those fears are unwarranted! They are very warranted. But we have leverage to prevent that sort of thing, and part of our job will be to keep her on the right path, because if she doesn’t stay there, 2018 and 2020 won’t be pretty.
So we’ll make gains over the next eight years, just like we made gains the last eight (even as people pretend that we’ve gone backwards). And it’s up to us to fight for those gains, because they won’t happen in a vacuum. Silence won’t fuel gains, but neither will taking the ball and going home. Fortune may favor the prepared, but it also favors the engaged.
And then, in 2024, we’ll have a wide-open field with no legacy candidates in the wings. You want a battle for the soul of the party? That’s the year to have it, and eight years isn’t that far away. It feels like yesterday that Obama was first sworn in. So we get what we can, take the courts, make incremental gain, build our bench (so, so important, because change doesn’t start at the top!), and in 2024 we supercharge everything, bolstered by even more favorable demographics and a better Congress.
But that shit takes work, and we need everyone engaged. If you are Bernie or Bust, then the door is that way. If you are genuinely fighting for the things that Sanders was fighting for, this isn’t the end. It’s the beginning. Now let’s all get to work.
