It’s time for my very biased but hopefully fair biweekly look at the state of the presidential race! Last time we took a look, the debates hadn’t happened. Joe Biden was at the top, though steadily losing ground. Elizabeth Warren was on a steady upswing. Kamala Harris was in the back, trading places with Pete Buttigieg for the last of the slots of the Big Five. Then the debates happened, and holy shit, everything looks different.
As always, we start with objective measures: The FiveThirtyEight tally of primary polls, and RealClearPolitics’ aggregation of those polls.
It’s hard to read, so for clarity’s sake, the top five are Biden (26), Harris (15.2%), Bernie Sanders (14%), Warren (13.8%), and Buttigieg (5.2%). That’s a legit shakeup.
1. Joe Biden ⬇️ (last week: 1)
How much longer can Biden hold on to a top spot he’s destined to lose to … somebody? His trajectory is unmistakably down, and with 100% name ID, opinions against him are hardened, while his waning support is paper-thin. Demographically, only 38% of white men voted Democratic in 2018, while ideologically, I’m not sure there’s a big desire for grabby supporters of the Hyde Amendment, Dick Cheney, and segregationist “states’ rights” arguments. His every campaign appearance appears to be straight out of 1992, when the Democratic Party looked a lot different than it does today. HIs inability to evolve and provide a legit rationale for his candidacy is proving his undoing. His lack of a natural party constituency has eliminated the sort of “floor” that can prop him up while he attempts to recalibrate his campaign. (Not that he’s doing anything to calibrate anything. He didn’t even bother preparing for the inaugural debate.)
And speaking of demographic bases, the bulk of Biden’s support has come from black Democrats. Look at Biden’s fall and Kamala Harris’ rise in the chart above. It’s clear where Biden is losing support, and where it’s going. Harris did exactly what she needed to do to dig deep into that black vote. She’ll keep working that angle, making her a long-term threat to the nomination, and leaving Biden with little else to hang on to.
And really, Biden deserves it. His insulting defense of his opposition to school busing spit in the face of his most ardent supporters, and was totally avoidable. A “times were different, and I’ve evolved with the times” response would’ve diffused the brunt of Harris’ attack. But he didn’t do that because he truly thinks his “states’ rights” argument is correct, just like he clung to his support for the anti-abortion Hyde Amendment for days after coming under sustained fire over his position. That makes him not just a bad candidate, out of his depth, running in the wrong millennium. It makes him a danger to progressivism in general.
At this point, the only question is how long his slow bleed will continue, so that a new frontrunner can be crowned.
2. Kamala Harris ⬆️ (last week: 5)
Harris’ ability to emerge from every scrum at the first debate marked her as the dominant alpha in that room, one that included every member of the Big Five except for Elizabeth Warren. She outright commanded that room. And she owned Joe Biden, shredded by her words, by her arguments, by her ability to evoke a deep emotional response. It took only one crowded debate for the nation’s Democrats to realize two things: 1) that Biden wasn’t the inevitable powerhouse his campaign was selling, and 2) that Harris was a legit top contender for the nomination. And her poll numbers responded accordingly.
Harris’ strategy has been simple all along: win the black vote and a significant portion of the white female vote. Build from there. If she can win a significant chunk of the black vote, it makes her a top contender in the Deep South, the border South, and states such as Florida, Illinois, Michigan, New York, and New Jersey. She’ll likely win her delegate-rich home state of California, and her profile should play well in the Pacific Northwest and Mountain West. (Look at Obama’s 2008 map.) Without the black vote, she’s dead in the water. So her clearly calculated attack on Biden wasn’t just genius; it was also successful beyond (surely) anyone’s biggest hopes.
Her job is not done, but she’s on a clear upswing, dealing a mortal blow to Biden, and—just as importantly—blunting Elizabeth Warren’s upward momentum.
I’ve long predicted that this will ultimately be a race between Warren and Harris, and I don’t care who wins as long as she picks the other to round out the ticket. This race isn’t as narrow as that just yet, but we’re one step closer to it.
One last note, as fundraising numbers are announced: If you are tempted to compare Harris’ $12 million fundraising haul to that of other candidates (particularly Buttigieg’s $25 million and Biden’s $21.5 million), think twice. As long as a candidate raises enough to field staff, any cash beyond that is likely to be wasted. This is a race—like the GOP’s primary in 2016—that will be won on social and free earned media (e.g., newscasts and news articles). The idea that tens of millions of dollars in TV ads will somehow change the trajectory of the results is absurd, no matter how much old-school media buyers claim otherwise. (It’s only their big, fat commissions that are on the line.)
3. Elizabeth Warren ⬆️ (Last week: 2)
Harris may have won Night 2 of the inaugural Democratic presidential debates, but Warren was the clear and uncontested winner of Night 1. She was so dominant, in fact, that no one dared even try to interrupt her. Now, her strategy was a little different than that of Harris, who had a more difficult task at hand. Warren was already riding an upswing in support, excitement, and polling, and had to merely show she was worthy of that support. She didn’t need fireworks or theatrics to become relevant. And it showed. She held court as queen of the evening, but didn’t try to engage when the moderators focused on other candidates, nor did she engage in any scrums. In fact, she was almost invisible during the second half of the debate, but by then, her job had been done. She had already proven to be the victor. And post-debate polling results have borne that out—only she received any polling boost. As much as people lauded performances by Cory Booker and Julián Castro, neither has anything objective to show for it.
Warren’s electoral strength will come from suburban women, the ideological (Bernie) left, the Northeast, and—thanks to her message of economic empowerment—the industrial Midwest. No other candidate, not even Joe Biden, does it better. And her regional strengths appear to differ from Harris’. Not that it might matter much, since we should expect both of them to rack up a lot of first-through-third placings in most states. And in a system that allocates delegates proportionately, that will certainly drag out any final coronation, perhaps even into the convention.
Warren’s supposed weakness is her fundraising, as she’s likely to lag the Big Five once again when she announces her numbers. She is the only candidate forswearing big-dollar, big-donor fundraisers, and there’s a price to be paid for that. But her campaign is clearly betting on what I wrote above—that spending her time talking directly to votes and working on actual policy plans will pay more dividends when the votes are cast than another forgettable 30-second campaign spot.
4. Bernie Sanders ⬇️ (last time: 3)
It seemed that Sanders did well in the debates, saying exactly what his supporters want him to say, right? And yet his polling took an unmistakable tick for the worse in the aftermath.
Turns out, voters have heard that message, and, with the Sanders campaign unwilling to adapt it to new times and a new campaign cycle, voters merely shrugged. It was bad enough that he failed to grow his numbers, something that has been a perpetual challenge the entire cycle. It was even worse that existing supporters started to realize that there were alternatives this cycle, even a handful that sound … pretty much exactly like him. As a result, his current 14% in the RCP aggregate is the worst of the entire cycle. His fourth-place standing in the polls is also the worst of the cycle.
Bernie has a choice to make: either figure out a way to retool and relaunch his campaign and message, or continue his slide into irrelevance.
Ironically, he’s the one candidate that is guaranteed a victory this cycle. Win or lose, his message has already dramatically altered the ideological complexion of the party. He may not be the best messenger for that ideology in this day and age, but he can still take a well-deserved victory lap because of that alone.
5. Pete Buttigieg ⬇️ (last time: 4)
Ooof. People didn’t seem to see it at the time, but aside from Biden, Buttigieg was the biggest loser from the debates. As someone who bills himself as a giant intellect, he did little to demonstrate that intelligence in the debate. As someone who needed to show he was much more impressive than his current job as a small liberal-college-town mayor, he literally said, “I couldn’t get it done” on the vexing issue of race. If he can’t handle small-town challenges, why should people promote him to president of the United States? In fact, he’s lucky more people don’t know the underlying story of his firing of his town’s black police chief for making a recording of racist beat cops. Because it looks so bad, and is so bad, that even today (and at the debate) he can’t muster a good answer to it.
As a result, the surprise breakout star of the cycle, someone who came from nowhere to 10% support in the aggregate polling, has fallen hard down to half that.
Somehow, he raised $25 million last quarter, more than anyone in the field (unless there is an unexpected surprise among the few remaining serious candidates who haven’t released their numbers). Raising money clearly comes easy to him, a great skill for future statewide campaigns in Indiana. But just like the GOP’s primary in 2016, this isn’t the kind of election campaign that will be decided by the biggest check.
The promise of Buttigieg lit up the race early. But his big national introduction fizzled, and his support is going elsewhere.
The rest
Given a chance to showcase themselves to the entire country, 20 candidates took the stage over two nights. Only two—Kamala Harris and Elizabeth Warren—objectively improved their positions. In fact, ironically, the crowded field may have served to simply consolidate the two, lucky to have been on stage on separate nights.
Beto O’Rourke lost ground, and no one else gained, not even candidates who, like Julián Castro, had well-reviewed performances. The best Cory Booker can say is that his 2% level of support remained unchanged, giving him a solid chance at meeting the much more restrictive entrance criteria of the September debate.
The DNC saved us from Iowa
The debate criteria have effectively served as a national primary, thankfully employing criteria that make all of us relevant in helping shape this race. The reason so many boring, ideologically vanilla white men joined the field was because they misread the party zeitgeist and the new rules of the road. They thought they’d set up shop in Iowa and appeal to an electorate that looks little like our party’s rich diversity.
Iowa’s role will be to simply ratify what the debate selection criteria is already doing—separating the real contenders from the also-rans. Steve Bullock, you can’t tell that you lost already? Okay, let Iowa deliver the news. Same to you, Kirsten Gillibrand. And John Hickenlooper. And Michael Bennet. And so on.
That’s not an offensive role for Iowa to play. Someone has to deliver the bad news to those who aren’t getting the hint.
