The Democratic Primary is Upon Us! - Biden is the Presumptive Nominee

[Seanchaidh]

1) Sanders spending 5 years bashing a nebulous "establishment" while doing almost no reaching out to try and build the bridges with less-ideologically aligned power centers necessary to secure the nomination and unify the party. This essentially painted him in the eyes of the average center-left democrat as someone not interested in unifying the party in a way to secure a nomination, which makes him look less electable because Democrats need more unity to beat Republicans in presidential general election than visa-versa.

This is just plainly false. What they need are independents and others who are sick of the DNC's shit.

Except that doesn't get rid of those "establishment" moderate and center-left voters who identify with the democratic party. It, at best, displaces them slightly and dilutes their vote, not eliminate it. So he does actually need to make inroads with them if he hopes to win the nomination.

The Democratic Party may be structurally incapable of nominating a candidate capable of winning a national election if it cannot nominate Sanders despite those "moderates". Independents outnumber Democrats by a long ways.

 

[Tireseas_v1legacy]

1) Sanders spending 5 years bashing a nebulous "establishment" while doing almost no reaching out to try and build the bridges with less-ideologically aligned power centers necessary to secure the nomination and unify the party. This essentially painted him in the eyes of the average center-left democrat as someone not interested in unifying the party in a way to secure a nomination, which makes him look less electable because Democrats need more unity to beat Republicans in presidential general election than visa-versa.

This is just plainly false. What they need are independents and others who are sick of the DNC's shit.

Except that doesn't get rid of those "establishment" moderate and center-left voters who identify with the democratic party. It, at best, displaces them slightly and dilutes their vote, not eliminate it. So he does actually need to make inroads with them if he hopes to win the nomination.

The Democratic Party may be structurally incapable of nominating a candidate capable of winning a national election if it cannot nominate Sanders despite those "moderates". Independents outnumber Democrats by a long ways.

And they didn't turn out when Sanders needed them to, at least last night. So how does a candidate become the leader of the party if they can't bring in more new members to assume leadership? You appeal to the existing voters, which is what Biden did and how he beat Sanders in multiple states.

An independent vote is the same value as a party regular vote. If you need 6 to win, there's 7 existing voters, and you bring in 4 new voters, you still need 2 votes from the existing voters to meet the threshold. Sanders needs to expand his appeal beyond his base to win, because unlike the GOP in 2016, the moderates in the Democratic party aren't trying to stick it out at the risk of losing to a candidate they perceive as less electable in the general election than the alternative.

 

[tstorm823]

Easy Prediction List (if I'm wrong about these, you got me):
1)Joe Biden is not going to win the nomination. He never was. He got his numbers by name recognition and "electability", so as soon as other candidates gain notoriety and the media questions Biden, he's toast. He never had a chance, even I honestly don't know much of his policy proposals because nobody talks about it and nobody cares.
2)Elizabeth Warren takes down Bernie Sanders to win the nomination. Her campaign was built to take down Bernie from the start. She's hijacking as many of his policies as she thinks the American people can stomach, and she's branding herself with the sentence "I have a plan for that", which is a bullseye on Bernie's head, as he has all the ideas and has implemented almost precisely nothing in his political career. Her goal is to shape herself to be like Bernie but effective, so she can clean up when Biden fails to be a contender.
3)Democrats move for impeachment in the lead up to the election. On the off-chance Trump is ousted, they win big. But on the much more likely chance the Senate doesn't remove Trump, they use the "failed attempt" as a rallying cry to push voter turnout expecting a win that way.

Do you still stand by your earlier predictions? Incidentally, when I wrote my thoughts on your predictions I pretty much agreed with you on point 1. At the current time though it looks like that will turn out to be incorrect, and if so the domino effect makes several of the other predictions you made probably no longer relevant.

Well, no, but also yes.

No in the sense that my predictions definitely didn't go as predicted, so definitely not getting full marks here. I was certainly wrong.

But a little yes in that I feel obligated to stick it out until fully proven wrong, and it's still possible these happen. Biden may have somehow gotten the party behind him (if he names Clinton as a running mate, we'll know how), but the most likely "winner" before the convention is still most likely nobody. neither Sanders nor Biden is predicted to hit 51% at the moment. And while this could change literally as I'm typing, Warren has said she plans to stick it out and hope for a brokered convention. Her position in the middle of the two remaining contenders gives her the interesting ability to kingmake either side at the convention, or hope to pull a fast one for herself, and the media would probably back her on that move because they don't like Bernie and Biden is more questionable daily.

As far as the third point, that still seems likely, we're just not gonna see the full campaign against Trump until the primary is over. I expect "corrupt Republicans won't remove him from office, so we have to" to be major campaign rhetoric.

 

[Marik2]

I don't want another guy with dementia in the oval office. He was supposed to drop out quietly cuz he offers nothing to the table, except being a puppet for conservative democrats. We are going to get another term with Donald. This was supposed to be Bernies comeback reeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.

 

[Pseudonym]

1) Sanders spending 5 years bashing a nebulous "establishment" while doing almost no reaching out to try and build the bridges with less-ideologically aligned power centers necessary to secure the nomination and unify the party. This essentially painted him in the eyes of the average center-left democrat as someone not interested in unifying the party in a way to secure a nomination, which makes him look less electable because Democrats need more unity to beat Republicans in presidential general election than visa-versa.

Well, that's one of his core beliefs. If he loses on that than his views just weren't that popular. Unfortunate but nothing to be done there. Should he rather have lied about his views or changed them out of convenience?

2) Taking a rigid ideological approach further alienates those who have serious concerns about his approach to politics, even if on brand for him. After years of GOP dogma, the last thing they want is something similar on the left side, especially when the electoral math still shifts the median point to the right. Things like praising Cuba and Nicaragua's communist regimes, deserved or otherwise, really fucking scares voters for whom "Florida 2000" remains a trauma point, as those stances are seen as serious liability for securing one of the largest swing states.[footnote]Recent polls in Flordia, which are over a week old so take them with a massive grain of salt, routinely have Sanders at around 15% in the Primary [https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2020/president/fl/florida_democratic_presidential_primary-6847.html#polls].[/footnote]

Saying that Cuba increased literacy rates and that that is a good thing, is not a rigid ideological stance, it is simply true. Demanding that one doesn't mention this, even though it is true, because Cuba's regime is bad for other reasons is a rigid ideological stance. In fact, such a stance signals a complete rejection of nuance which is very dangerous and is probably part of the reason why the US has not been at peace for decades. If injecting any degree of nuance and sanity in American debates on foreign policy costs him the votes of insane jingoists and cold warriors, so be it. Not only that but there was little he could have done about this. He has already supported Nicaragua's revolutionaires decades ago. If that is dragged up he has no way to really win. He can apologize but this would be dishonest and would not convince those affected by this red scare nonsense. Those people are too far gone. Meanwhile Sanders has been at the forefront of trying to reduce US support for the murderous campaign of violence Saudi-Arabia is carrying out in Yemen. If you are more worried about a positive comment about the literacy rates of an irrelevant dictatorship, than you are about active support for murdering monarchs, you are too far gone.

3) An army of trolls (some of whom work for or are surrogates for the campaign) who tout his message that actively turn off potentially persuadable voters through insults and divisive statements. A regular drip of stories like this aren't just not helping, but likely actively hurting him moving forward [https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2020/03/04/marianne-williamson-candidates-endorsement-biden-coup/4949415002/].

That's a story about a deleted tweet by a supporter of him. The tweet was apparently deleted so fast that it can't even be quoted. Worse things than what Williamson tweeted are said about Sanders on TV every day. Again, what would you like him to do here? If anyone cared to, we could go to pro-warren twitter (or pro-anything twitter), find some of the most unpleasant people there and have a steady drip of stories about how Warren supporters are dangerous trolls. You could perhaps blame Sanders for not having the stomach to organize a frontgroup to do that. You cannot expect him to prevent a million of his volunteers and surrogates to never say anything that people like you can throw a hissy fit about. Especially not since it is a foregone conclusion that you will do so.

4) A general familiarity with the now-main moderate in the race. Biden, for his all his faults, maintained strong enough ties and reputation with essential voting blocks (notably black and older voters with a higher propensity to turn out) that he was considered a known quantity among a group of voters that tends to vote strategically for moderates to favor victory over hail-Mary candidates that could better represent them but have the perception of likely loosing in the general election. Sanders has not shed that reputation among voters who remember McGovern, Mondale, and Dukakis who were painted and too liberal by the GOP and lost and his theory of the case for his candidacy has not borne fruit in the way necessary to proceed (Hell, Virginia, which was considered a toss-up favoring Sanders going in [https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/election-update-what-our-forecast-says-about-every-super-tuesday-state/] nearly doubled the 2016 turnout and it broke heavily for Biden, not Sanders).

I agree with this.

5) Perceived hypocrisy for calling for more-aligned candidates to drop out of the race. A lot of people, particularly female supporters of Warren, feel insulted by Sanders' supporter's calls for Warren to drop out of the race after he actively ignored such calls in 2016 and did little to reign in his supporters ugly attacks against Clinton even when it was abundantly clear there was no means of securing the nomination. 2016 will likely haunt this election until the first Wednesday in November.

I recognize an ad hoc argument when I see it. It's unfortunate that whatever remains of Warren's support chooses to be this defensive over a fairly obvious point that she is splitting the left-wing vote. It's also unfortunate that some people are still bitter about him running against Clinton.

I'll reiterate the main problems here though. (1) At some point you have to rep the ideology you believe in. If voters disagree with your views or make their voting decisions on grotesquely irrational grounds, then though luck. I prefer Sanders losing over him pulling a Buttigieg and selling out any and all of his views and integrity just to try to get elected. The worst part is that it wouldn't even work. He would still be perceived as too far left, except by the left-wingers who previously supported him. (2) some of these problems with Sanders are manufactured by his enemies (this would include you). Best not to acknowledge smears about Bernie bro's or him being a commie dictator and if pushed on such issues, to stick to your guns.

 

[Eacaraxe_v1legacy]

Boy howdy, it's certainly been a few days hasn't it. Eacaraxe's Primary Nooz Round-up!

Biden won SC to the surprise of absolutely no one. The big shocker, is that Biden supporters and establishment Democrats are advertising his majority support with and turnout increase by southern, highly conservative black voters, never mind they're still treating "the black vote" as a homogeneous monolith that owes the Democratic party its votes in perpetuity, and this is all really a big con to justify rightward creep as inclusivity. Black turnout was up by 26% in SC, but white, conservative, elderly voters from the reddest parts of the state, just so happened to be up by 131%. But trust us, the Trump voters were crossing party lines to spoil it for Bernie, we promise.

You thought black turnout for Hillary tanked after the convention? Just wait until black voters hear about Biden's Senate record.

Astute followers of the news might have heard Final Fantasy boss music over the weekend. Buttigieg and Klobuchar both dropped out of the race, morphing into a set of arms, legs, and a cannon that fires staplers; Bloomberg morphed into its torso and engine; its head? Joe Biden. Fueled by Wall Street and billionaires' funding, ready to do absolutely nothing in office, absorbing the low-info vote like a black hole's accretion disk and converting into a relativistic jet of pure apathy directed straight towards Bernie Sanders, Neoliberal Voltron has emerged.

Particularly genre-savvy listeners may take notice the boss music was the synth-rock shit, rather than orchestral music with Latin chanting, signaling this is only phase 2. Mecha One-Winged Battle Angel Hillary awaits.

So, Biden won a bunch of open primary states in the South, Maine, and Minnesota. And once again, just like SC, gotta git dem white conservative votes, just don't pay attention to those or the Hispanic/latino vote, only the black vote. Oh, and the youth turnout which actually was up, just not remotely close to the Boomers' tidal wave of bediapered cynical mediocrity. Percentages matter, not raw numbers. It's what I tell myself at night to not cry myself to sleep.

But hey, health care stocks are soaring today, that's a good thing right? Also, in unrelated news, Mika Brzezinski was hospitalized when she opened a cleaning closet in the MSNBC studios looking for a bottle of hand sanitizer, and was crushed by a torrent of semen had that accumulated during commercial breaks.

The DNC has been reported to be looking for ways to expedite the primary schedule over concerns coronavirus may kill Biden's voter base before they have an opportunity to cast their ballots.

In Texas, exceedingly long wait lines to vote, dysfunctional machines, and over 750 closed polling stations bogged down the process, leaving many unable to vote due to three-hour-plus waits while retirees and pensioners were able to wait it out. Biden supporters reportedly enthusiastic over the situation, not having yet figured out this will very much be the case in November as well. It's a cunning strategy, and we'll just have to see how it works out for them.

Bernie won California. Moving on.

Big props to Mike Bloomberg who, after a half billion dollars in campaign spending, wins big in...American Samoa? What the fuck, he bought the Girl Scouts too?

Also in late-breaking news, Warren, after losing her home state to Neoliberal Voltron seems to have finally figured out she fucked up, backed the wrong horse in this fight trying to spoil Bernie for establishment table scraps, and now basically progressives' entire agenda is at risk. You know, she read a progressive op/ed from six months ago. Will Warren have an eleventh hour heel-face turn, ride up on the Bernie campaign like a librarian John Cena, and help restore momentum and morale to progressives? Or will she push the B button without holding down left trigger and accidentally punch the horse why don't you, GODDAMN IT ARTHUR!

EDIT:

Recent polls in Flordia, which are over a week old so take them with a massive grain of salt, routinely have Sanders at around 15% in the Primary [https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2020/president/fl/florida_democratic_presidential_primary-6847.html#polls].

Look, there are rules, observations, theories, laws, and incontrovertible facts about the world we live in. The sun sets in the west, you need water to live, objects fall when you drop them, and Florida will always find a way to fuck up an election.

 

[Agema]

Like I said, "grain of salt." The point is that the theory that Warren, who sits in between Sanders and the moderates, would have her support shift more towards Sanders as opposed to Biden or stay home is mostly theoretical and likely no where near enough to make the difference where it counts.

Last I saw before the recent drop-outs, ~40% of Warren voters said they'd vote Sanders as second choice. If we then factor in that of the drop-outs about 20-30% went Sanders as second choice, we can expect that around a third of the other 60% of Warren voters would go Sanders. In toto, therefore, we might expect a modest majority (~60%?) of Warren suporters to go Bernie if she drops out. I don't think that's enough.

I think if she were to concede and endorse Sanders, it'd require giving him some sort of momentum over and above her supporters to make him competetive.

It's still possible and worth fighting for that Bernie takes it, but I'm pessimistic.

I don't think Sanders was ever in a good place to win.

When we remember he ended up with about 40% against Clinton, him starting off this campaign at 15-20% and making very little progress for so long (only substantially getting above 20% in February this year) must have been recognised as a bad sign for him. Sure, the field was crowded, but a quick look at the MOR positions of the also-rans should have signalled that their supporters were more likely to go moderate than Sanders when the field thinned out.

I wonder just how much time and hard effort Sanders spent doing ordinary and boring wooing of Democrats since 2016, and I fear the answer is somewhere between not much and not enough. Sure, everyone can get excited about AOC etc. and the youth vote, but it was always going to be about traipsing round the country building bridges with local Democratic Party influencers who'd sway the moderates. Biden, whatever his faults, over the years has built up that trust and relationship.

 

[Seanchaidh]

1) Sanders spending 5 years bashing a nebulous "establishment" while doing almost no reaching out to try and build the bridges with less-ideologically aligned power centers necessary to secure the nomination and unify the party. This essentially painted him in the eyes of the average center-left democrat as someone not interested in unifying the party in a way to secure a nomination, which makes him look less electable because Democrats need more unity to beat Republicans in presidential general election than visa-versa.

This is just plainly false. What they need are independents and others who are sick of the DNC's shit.

Except that doesn't get rid of those "establishment" moderate and center-left voters who identify with the democratic party. It, at best, displaces them slightly and dilutes their vote, not eliminate it. So he does actually need to make inroads with them if he hopes to win the nomination.

The Democratic Party may be structurally incapable of nominating a candidate capable of winning a national election if it cannot nominate Sanders despite those "moderates". Independents outnumber Democrats by a long ways.

And they didn't turn out when Sanders needed them to, at least last night. So how does a candidate become the leader of the party if they can't bring in more new members to assume leadership? You appeal to the existing voters, which is what Biden did and how he beat Sanders in multiple states.

An independent vote is the same value as a party regular vote. If you need 6 to win, there's 7 existing voters, and you bring in 4 new voters, you still need 2 votes from the existing voters to meet the threshold. Sanders needs to expand his appeal beyond his base to win, because unlike the GOP in 2016, the moderates in the Democratic party aren't trying to stick it out at the risk of losing to a candidate they perceive as less electable in the general election than the alternative.

Let's just take a step back and observe how disingenuous it is to talk this way when a few days before Super Tuesday Bernie was leading practically every relevant state's poll, and then a media narrative whose genesis was the consolidation of the centrist clown car propelled Biden's 'electability' myth back to the forefront-- handily without any of the scrutiny of his being a real frontrunner. It's telling that even back when there were ~7 or so candidates, Bernie was both Biden and Warren supporter's second choice. To say that Bernie's appeal has been insufficient is utterly silly. And that's not even to mention the voter suppression.

Biden's brain is leaking out of his ears; he's going to collapse on his own now that he is one of only two (or three) candidates. The question is whether he'll do it during the primary or during the general election.

 

[SupahEwok]

I think Biden is who Trump wants to be his opponent. He doesn't really know how to deal with Bernie other than the "he's a communist, lookout!" thing, but with Biden he can get personal and dirty in the way that makes his supporters cheer.

Of course Trump wants Biden, any opposing candidate would want Biden. Just schedule every debate late in the day and his brain will be fried and he'll forget what state he's in. Trump just gets extra points since Biden is everything Trump rallies against, which is his only real strength.

"The key issue of the candidacy is electability!"
"Let's choose the least electable candidate!"
"Brilliant!"

Man, I really thought for a couple of weeks that Dems had wised up to the sentient wet toiletpaper roll that Biden was, but I guess they'd rather get absolutely destroyed this time instead of barely like last time.

Oh no, I still think it'll be a coinflip. Trump is pretty damn bad. But man are the Dems stacking the deck against themselves as hard as they can. All I can think is they want him in office since they can just put whatever they want in front of him and he'll sign it. More than being bought, I don't think he has it in him for being an independent politician.

It'll be a coinflip, right up until he gets onto a stage with Trump and Trump pounces on every one of his stutters and malapropisms.

Seriously, how does anyone in their right mind think that Biden is the electable candidate when the election is against a Trump?

 

[SupahEwok]

I wonder just how much time and hard effort Sanders spent doing ordinary and boring wooing of Democrats since 2016, and I fear the answer is somewhere between not much and not enough. Sure, everyone can get excited about AOC etc. and the youth vote, but it was always going to be about traipsing round the country building bridges with local Democratic Party influencers who'd sway the moderates. Biden, whatever his faults, over the years has built up that trust and relationship.

Just about the only thing in Bernie's campaign I never cared for was an insistence on portraying a him vs the world story, always going on about how the establishment is out to get him and we've got 'em on the ropes and so on (I gave $10 or $15 bucks to his campaign back in January once, and have been bombarded with 2-4 emails a day since, begging for more, and texts too, until I turned those off; this is their general tone throughout). I don't think he ever tried to get endorsements or build up local/state support, as you said, and at some point if you expect to lead a group of people, you need to be able to work with them. In such a sprawling democracy as the US, one man simply can't come in and sweep out one of the two major political party to suit his own ends.

Unless you're Trump, I guess.

 

[Agema]

Let's just take a step back and observe how disingenuous it is to talk this way when a few days before Super Tuesday Bernie was leading practically every relevant state's poll, and then a media narrative whose genesis was the consolidation of the centrist clown car propelled Biden's 'electability' myth back to the forefront-- handily without any of the scrutiny of his being a real frontrunner. It's telling that even back when there were ~7 or so candidates, Bernie was both Biden and Warren supporter's second choice. To say that Bernie's appeal has been insufficient is utterly silly. And that's not even to mention the voter suppression.

Lots of Sanders fans have seemingly confused the concepts of plurality and majority.

The numbers never looked like they were stacking up for him: he was the frontrunner (temporarily after Biden's stumble) only because the voters who didn't want him had so many not-Sanders options to choose from. With these opponents winnowed down to one major candidate, he's where it mostly always looked like he was going to be: second. If it wasn't been Biden, it would have been one of the others (probably Bloomberg).

 

[Eacaraxe_v1legacy]

I think if she were to concede and endorse Sanders, it'd require giving him some sort of momentum over and above her supporters to make him competetive.

I mean, like I snarked about, Warren's in about the most unenviable position of any candidate I can name in recent history. Her voters' "second choice" split pretty much gives up the ghost.

She tried to position herself as the "pragmatic progressive" and unity candidate with compromise positions between the progressive and conservative Democratic wings. That was a bad tea leaf-read as the nomination campaign was already predetermined to be a cage match between neoliberals and progressives, and realistically the only support she's drawing are bougie progs and the last vestiges of the PMC. That approximately half of her support would go to Biden at all in the face of his Senate record is pretty indicative of the people she attracted.

And, now she's stuck between endorsing Biden and giving up any real chance of a progressive agenda, or endorsing Bernie and risking her political career.

Seriously, how does anyone in their right mind think that Biden is the electable candidate when the election is against a Trump?

The election was never about beating Trump in the first place, it was about beating Bernie. Just as the left has been saying for months, Democrats would rather lose to Trump than win with Bernie, because the priority this election cycle is Democratic officials and party leaders preserving their status, influence, party apparatus, and connection to the donor class. That they're willing at all to build Neoliberal Voltron around a clearly sundowning 77-year-old man with one of the most horrid Senate records of a Democrat since Strom Thurmond, and based on a narrative built around the Southern Democrat vote and not even an accurate representation of who was really turning out for him in the South, really speaks to what's at stake.

I mean, let's take a deeper dive into SC and super Tuesday.

SC:

Spoiler

Source:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/03/01/south-carolinas-turnout-makes-bidens-win-even-more-impressive/?arc404=true
https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/politics/exit-polls-2020-south-carolina-primary/

Super Tuesday:

Spoiler

Source:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/politics/exit-polls-2020-super-tuesday-primary/

Black turnout was up, and it did break big for Biden. It was also heavily-slanted towards older black voters, who are ridiculously conservative yet vote Democratic because of the civil rights movement, and the same generational gaps in voting trends are just as present in black voters as in white and latino/Hispanic voters. Nobody ever wants to talk about black conservatism, and it's telling how Democrats speak of "the black vote" as a monolithic, homogeneous bloc which seems to owe conservative Democrats -- and exclusively conservative Democrats -- its vote in perpetuity.

Nor do they ever want to talk about black voter mobilization during general elections. You'd think black drop-off in 2016 would be a warning shot straight up the Democratic party's nose, because that couldn't have been clear as day and was clearly linked to Hillary's treatment of "the black vote" post-nomination as well as her handling of the Flint water crisis during her campaign. This meme doesn't exist just because it's funny:

Spoiler

But, for however high black turnout was up, and however big it broke for Biden, white conservative turnout was up way more and it also broke big for Biden. That the black vote drove Biden's victory margins in the South is the biggest goddamn lie in an election full of them so far.

 

[Eacaraxe_v1legacy]

Breaking news from the Warren campaign [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5FjWe31S_0g]: to the surprise of absolutely no one, she drops out. No word on endorsement yet.

 

[Seanchaidh]

[tweet t="https://twitter.com/BenjaminNorton/status/1235578625027698691"]

Hmmmmmmmmmmm...

Probably will be swept under the rug like Ohio in 2004.

Let's just take a step back and observe how disingenuous it is to talk this way when a few days before Super Tuesday Bernie was leading practically every relevant state's poll, and then a media narrative whose genesis was the consolidation of the centrist clown car propelled Biden's 'electability' myth back to the forefront-- handily without any of the scrutiny of his being a real frontrunner. It's telling that even back when there were ~7 or so candidates, Bernie was both Biden and Warren supporter's second choice. To say that Bernie's appeal has been insufficient is utterly silly. And that's not even to mention the voter suppression.

Lots of Sanders fans have seemingly confused the concepts of plurality and majority.

The numbers never looked like they were stacking up for him: he was the frontrunner (temporarily after Biden's stumble) only because the voters who didn't want him had so many not-Sanders options to choose from. With these opponents winnowed down to one major candidate, he's where it mostly always looked like he was going to be: second. If it wasn't been Biden, it would have been one of the others (probably Bloomberg).

The data just doesn't support that.

https://today.yougov.com/topics/politics/articles-reports/2020/02/18/democrat-head-to-head-poll

What we're seeing on Super Tuesday is primarily an issue of endorsement timing and the power of media narratives.

 

[Dalisclock]

Breaking news from the Warren campaign [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5FjWe31S_0g]: to the surprise of absolutely no one, she drops out. No word on endorsement yet.

I didn't think she's drop out so soon. I figured she'd try for at least the next set coming up before calling it. Then again, her campaign has been running short of cash for a while now.

Not that it matters much, but the only other candidate is Tulsi Gabbard, who is still in the race for reasons I'm unclear on. I'm unsure exactly what she's hoping for, but then again, I also question why she's running as a Democrat.

 

[Eacaraxe_v1legacy]

I didn't think she's drop out so soon. I figured she'd try for at least the next set coming up before calling it. Then again, her campaign has been running short of cash for a while now.

I figured she'd wait until March 10 to drop out, to fuck up Michigan and Washington state. Everything else on March 10 are red states which means they're going for Biden, and Biden's comfortably ahead in MI, so I figure the moderate wing is willing to take the hit in Washington if it swings Bernie.

 

[Seanchaidh]

[tweet t="https://twitter.com/BetaODork/status/1235321894540324865"]

This man will never be president.

 

[Agema]

In other news, I notice that apparently even Tulsi Gabbard has forgotten she's in the race to be Democratic candidate, as that can only be why she hasn't withdrawn yet.

 

[Avnger]

I didn't think she's drop out so soon. I figured she'd try for at least the next set coming up before calling it. Then again, her campaign has been running short of cash for a while now.

I figured she'd wait until March 10 to drop out, to fuck up Michigan and Washington state. Everything else on March 10 are red states which means they're going for Biden, and Biden's comfortably ahead in MI, so I figure the moderate wing is willing to take the hit in Washington if it swings Bernie.

I'm surprised you haven't decided yet on a theory for how me having orange juice this morning is a conspiracy against Bernie.

 

[Seanchaidh]

I didn't think she's drop out so soon. I figured she'd try for at least the next set coming up before calling it. Then again, her campaign has been running short of cash for a while now.

I figured she'd wait until March 10 to drop out, to fuck up Michigan and Washington state. Everything else on March 10 are red states which means they're going for Biden, and Biden's comfortably ahead in MI, so I figure the moderate wing is willing to take the hit in Washington if it swings Bernie.

I'm surprised you haven't decided yet on a theory for how me having orange juice this morning is a conspiracy against Bernie.

Establishment candidates that were doing better than Warren dropped out before Super Tuesday. It is not at all weird to wonder whether Warren is deliberately trying to be a spoiler.