While 60,277 votes is a lot, and close to our record high, the static results to suggest a pause in analyzing the presidential field as Impeachment rages. It would make sense, while all these candidates are presumably out and about and campaigning, it’s hard to care overly much about it as the news out of DC is so relentless and meaningful. We are witnessing history in real-time, and there’s plenty of primary campaign left to wage. We can take a break from that and focus on the more immediate threat.
But the question then becomes, does this set the field down in stone, benefiting Joe Biden and Elizabeth Warren, or is it temporary? Heck, we don’t even know for sure right now whether this is a Daily Kos-only phenomenon or one that is reflecting the outside world as well.
Yet, while we can’t answer all those questions just yet, it is clear that Warren has locked down about 2/5th of the vote on this straw poll, as she’s been at that level for two months now. Can something knock her down? That’s always within the realm of possibility, but she’s running a picture perfect campaign. Talking to campaigns, she has the best organization in Iowa and Nevada. She’s got home-field advantage in New Hampshire. She’s lagging in South Carolina, by quite a bit, but she has started to make inroads with the Black vote (her biggest weakness, by far) and in national polling, is approaching 20% of that vote.
Sanders’ mid-teens here is the same mid-teens he’s seeing in national polling, a sort of frustrating purgatory for him. It’s enough to keep him in third place (and even some seconds here and there), but that number reflects his hardest-core base of support. He’s shed much of the 40-45% he had last cycle (and over 60% he had on Daily Kos!), with no real idea how to grow beyond that. Saying “I thought of that first!” isn’t a winning strategy. Because first of all, someone thought of it before him, inevitably (liberalism has been around for a long time), and second of all, most people care about the movement, not any one individual. If Sanders was the best messenger and vehicle to enact those policies, he’d be doing better. It’s that simple.
Meanwhile, Biden doesn’t appear to be losing much of his Black support. His resilience with that vote has proven frustrating to a lagging Kamala Harris (who is retooling her campaign, one that, uh, didn’t have senior staff meetings until last month), But no one loves him or his campaign, he doesn’t draw crowds, his advisors keep him as hidden as possible to avoid the next inevitable gaffe, and his 1980s-era campaign and message are increasingly out of sync with modern today’s zeitgeist. A strong Harris would’ve been a better bet to knock him down, taking his base of support away. Her inability to do that has given Biden extra life.
Buttigieg can raise money ($19 million this last quarter), but it’s not translating to support. Not sure how it can, when he’s going around being a jackass and declaring himself the Next Joe Biden, as if that’s what anyone outside of Wall Street is clamoring for.
Anyway, don’t expect impeachment to move the primary needly in any way. But will it freeze numbers as it drags into the weeks and months? Only time can answer that question.
