Thirteen Observations on Super Tuesday 2020
On Mar. 3, 2020, there were 15 contests in the nomination process for President of the United States. Primary elections took place in Alabama, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, and Virginia, while caucuses took place in American Samoa. Collectively, this is known as Super Tuesday because more delegates are awarded on this date than on any other date in the nomination process.
The delegate count from these contests as of this writing is 627 for former Vice President Joe Biden, 548 for Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), 74 for former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, 61 for Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), and two for Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI). 91 more will be awarded as vote totals are finalized. Thirteen observations follow on these events and the likely path forward.
1. Biden exceeded expectations. Forecasting predicted a regional breakdown, with Biden succeeding in the South and Sanders winning Northern and Western states. But Biden won the Southern states by larger margins than expected and managed to win states that were predicted to go to Sanders. Minnesota can be explained away by Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) dropping out and endorsing Biden days earlier, and Massachusetts likely went for Biden due to the progressive split between Sanders and Warren, but Biden was given only a 25 percent chance to win Maine. This suggests that while progressives are more vocal in the national discourse, especially on social media, there is a massive bloc of moderate Democrats who do not seek the sort of radical transformations advocated by Sanders (or Warren). Biden probably owes the most to Rep. James Clyburn (D-SC) for his Super Tuesday success, whose endorsement in the South Carolina primary on Feb. 29 was critical for revitalizing his campaign.
2. Likewise, Sanders underperformed for understandable reasons. Though Sanders won California, Colorado, Utah, and Vermont to almost keep pace with Biden in the delegate count, none of these contests were ever truly in doubt. As in South Carolina, Sanders had demographic issues with Black voters, who overwhelmingly chose Biden, even more so for Black voters over 30. Biden, for all of his obvious flaws, is better known and understood by this essential Democratic voting bloc. Those who prioritize defeating Donald Trump over making fundamental changes and view even meager efforts as nearly impossible in this environment are choosing to play it safe. That being said, the contest is far from over, and Sanders’ inroads into the Latino community and Blacks outside the South may produce more favorable results in upcoming contests.
3. Bloomberg failed more for his inept strategy and track record than for anything involving money. A common talking point about Bloomberg’s dismal showing is that he spent $570 million and has next to nothing to show for it, therefore money in politics is far less relevant than it used to be. Let us brush aside this cum hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy and look deeper to understand other reasons why he failed. First, he decided to skip the early states and start with Super Tuesday. This left him an untested and unpolished candidate going up against those who had withstood the rigors of the campaign trail for months or years. It also treated voters as pawns to be manipulated rather than listened to (which is accurate, but unpopular to say out loud in a democratic society). Second, he carefully crafted an image of himself in his massive advertising campaigns and was unable to maintain this image in debates, town halls, and other public appearances. Had he either started earlier or remained scarce in such arenas, he might have been able to solve this problem, but it still would have been difficult, given his record as a meddling authoritarian from his time as mayor of New York City and his history of controversy with women.
4. Psephology should be denounced as pseudoscience and seen for the tool of Power that it is. Polling results leading up to Super Tuesday were significantly different from voting results in many states. This is the latest in a long history of polling failures, including the Brexit vote and Trump election in 2016, and the British general election in 2015. “Unrepresentative samples” is always the excuse given for such failings, but this is a catch-all term that includes sampling bias, response bias, the closet Tory effect, inaccurate and/or loaded questions, and lack of polling. The only poll that (possibly) matters in the end is the official one taken on Election Day, and every poll leading up to that is invariably erroneous to some degree. Indeed, the pollsters who question political betting markets as being generally (but not always) more accurate should be invited to use their supposedly superior methodology to gamble and win, which they curiously do not tend to do. Polls are best seen as tools used by the political establishment to try to steer democratic processes toward their desired results by portraying some candidates as heavily favored and others as non-viable. This can be bolstered by using polls to determine which candidates are allowed on debate stages, which are powerful free media opportunities that make and break campaigns.
5. The Democratic contest is effectively a two-person race. Only Biden and Sanders won states on Super Tuesday, with Bloomberg winning in American Samoa. After spending an unprecedented amount of money to only pick up 59 delegates and win no states, it was grand opening, grand closing for the Bloomberg campaign. Warren stayed in a day longer, but finally came to terms with the fact that finishing third in her home state of Massachusetts and fourth in her birthplace of Oklahoma was a campaign-breaking result. There is no indication that Gabbard can obtain delegates in any major contest, so her only chance is for Biden and Sanders to both suffer health failures in the next few months (which, to be fair, is quite possible). Finally, should there be a contested convention, awarding the nomination to someone else would anger both the Biden and Sanders camps, ensuring defeat for the Democrats in the general election.
6. Warren’s non-endorsement was to be expected. When she announced that she was suspending her campaign, many people expected Warren to endorse either Biden or Sanders, but such expectations were unfounded. Had she endorsed either right away, she would have alienated a significant portion of the Democratic Party and gained next to nothing in return. It makes more sense for her to either weigh her options and see what both camps are willing to offer her in exchange for her support, or endorse no one until the contest is over and climb aboard the winning train. An endorsement of Gabbard would be the most interesting move, and would thrill those who care more about female identity politics than effective governance, but she is not a viable candidate unless something unforeseen occurs. Therefore, withholding support from everyone makes sense.
7. Procedures exist to be manipulated. To quote Mencius Moldbug, “You are governed by manipulating procedural outcomes.” Put another way, those who run the system will look after their own interests first. As mentioned in observation #4, the qualification rules for debates are set in such a way as to present a field of candidates that is to the establishment’s liking. This has occurred twice in recent weeks. First, a rule requiring that candidates have 225,000 individual donors contributing to their campaigns was scrubbed so as to allow Bloomberg onto the debate stage on Feb. 19. Notably, Bloomberg was the only candidate to personally donate money to the Democratic National Committee and a DNC-related PAC, to the tune of $300,000 and $800,000, respectively. (The Andrew Yang campaign, but not Yang personally, donated $125,000 to the DNC in 2019.) This was done to give competition to Biden and have the best of the two take the moderate lane. At least this bribe was thoroughly formalized, in that the actors, quid, and quo are all publicly known.
Second, by the qualification rules of the most recent debate, Gabbard would qualify for the next debate on March 15 in Arizona because of the delegates she won in American Samoa. But DNC officials changed the rules to require that a candidate have at least 20 percent of the delegates awarded by March 15. The previous debate had seven candidates (and did not include Gabbard); the next will have only two unless a miracle occurs in Gabbard’s favor. Despite her lack of electoral support, Gabbard has proven formidable in the debates in which she was allowed to participate, including single-handedly ending the campaign of Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA). Her anti-interventionist stance in particular puts her at odds with the establishment, and they would prefer not to allow her to kneecap an obviously weak Biden.
Finally, the Democrats are moving away from caucuses and toward primary elections. In the 2016 Democratic nomination process, there were 14 states that used caucuses. In 2020, only Iowa and Nevada have retained them so far, with Wyoming set to do so as well. The caucus format is less inclusive, but rewards those who care enough to show up and go through the process. It is thus more likely to award delegates to outsider candidates, as occurred with Gabbard’s delegates from American Samoa and the disproportionately large delegate count obtained by Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) in the 2012 Republican nomination process. In a move predictable by any student of Jouvenel, the abandonment of caucuses is meant to marginalize outsider candidates in favor of establishment-friendly ones and will be masked as empowerment and inclusion of the masses.
8. The tardiness in counting votes in California is an argument against a national popular vote. Those who wish to replace the current system for electing the President should consider that the presumptive victor (barring faithless electors) is usually known on Election Day or the day after. With a national popular vote, the winner generally could not be known until the largest states finish counting. Delays of several days in California, which are par for the course, would mean that the President-elect would be unknown for that long. Such uncertainty can roil financial markets, feed conspiracy theories, and lessen credibility of the system. Although this would be good in the long-term if it accelerates anacyclosis, an unrealized possibility of regime change is an unwelcome panic.
9. A contested convention is still possible, but unlikely. With the viable field narrowed to two candidates, it is highly probable that one candidate will gain momentum, slowly but surely building an insurmountable lead. Conventional wisdom holds that it will be Biden at this point, but as explained in point #4, this easily could be wrong. There are enough delegates controlled by other candidates to keep both Biden and Sanders below the threshold to claim the majority. Should this occur, the minor contenders will engage in deals with the top two candidates to create a majority in exchange for favors, which may include absorbing campaign debt, a position in the administration should Biden or Sanders win, a pet issue prioritized, and so forth. While this is likely to produce a nominee before the convention, there are no guarantees.
10. The nomination process will red-pill many leftists and black-pill some. The establishment is doing its best on all fronts to stop Sanders from being nominated, and they have a better than even chance of succeeding. But will this truly be success? There already is a perception among many Sanders supporters, especially long-term ones, that the 2016 process was rigged against him. Regardless of the truth value of that hypothesis, creating that perception again in 2020 (let alone actually doing it) could have detrimental consequences for years to come. Many in the Sanders camp will be red-pilled as to the reality of the Democratic Party establishment, and some will be black-pilled, concluding that there is no peaceful solution. This leads directly to the next observation, but before going there, let us contemplate longer-term possibilities. After Ron Paul’s unsuccessful bids for the Republican nomination, some of his supporters concluded that it was hopeless to use established channels to achieve the changes they desired. This led some to the Libertarian Party and the Gary Johnson campaign, but others eventually made their way to the Trump campaign and/or the alt-right. A similar pipeline from a twice-failed Sanders campaign to less savory points leftward is possible and should be monitored going forward.
11. Milwaukee police and the Wisconsin National Guard should be on full alert. Although Sanders is at a disadvantage in the remaining contests at present, he will still have a significant delegation at the Democratic convention in Milwaukee, Wis. on July 13–16. If Sanders is not nominated, a walkout is likely, but it may get much worse. There are already warning signs of violence at the convention, with Kyle Jurek, a field organizer for the Sanders campaign, recorded by James O’Keefe of Project Veritas predicting,
“If Bernie doesn’t get the nomination or it goes to a second round at the DNC convention, fucking Milwaukee will burn. It’ll start in Milwaukee and then when the police push back on that, other cites will fucking [explode].”
Jurek continued,
“Be ready to be in Milwaukee for the DNC convention. We’re going to make 1978 (sic) look like a fucking girl’s scout fucking cookout. The cops are going to be the ones fucking beaten in Milwaukee.”
Jurek meant to refer to the 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago, which is remembered for left-wing activists violently clashing with police. Possible Antifa involvement could make matters significantly worse. Preparations should be underway now to meet this potential threat to peace and order, and they should extend beyond the regular police forces to National Guard units in the area.
12. Third parties currently are set to be a non-factor in this election, but that may change. In the 2016 election, both the Libertarian and Green parties had high-profile nominees in Gary Johnson and Jill Stein, respectively. Both were also their party’s candidates in 2012, and Johnson had been Governor of New Mexico from 1995–2003. In 2020, there is no one running for any third party nomination who has significant name recognition outside of dissident political circles. In North Carolina, the primary results for third parties were particularly dismal. No Preference won the Libertarian vote with 33.17 percent against 16 candidates; runner-up Jacob Hornberger finished with 9.54 percent. No Preference also won the Constitution Party primary with 41.73 percent, while Don Blankenship finished second with 36.69 percent. Only Green Party candidate Howie Hawkins defeated No Preference in a two-way race with 66.97 percent of the vote.
However, there is potential for a significant protest vote. Following a Biden nomination, as described in the previous three observations, Sanders supporters will be looking to vent their frustrations, and the Green Party will offer them an avenue for doing so. Should Sanders win, the Cathedral will be in panic mode, as they do not want a general election between a right-wing populist and a left-wing populist. It is possible for an independent establishment campaign to be assembled in haste if Sanders should begin to overwhelm Biden. There is also the matter that some of Trump’s 2016 voters are disappointed with his performance, as there are key aspects of his platform that have not been fulfilled, whether his fault or not. The Constitution Party could benefit from this. This leaves the Libertarians, who are likely to decline from their record-high performance in 2016.
13. Donald Trump will almost certainly be re-elected. It will be difficult for the Sanders faction and the Democratic establishment to unite behind the nominee, even if the candidates themselves reconcile. Should the nominee manage to do this, there is still a general election campaign against Trump, which will subject the victor to a new level of negative campaigning. Assuming that either Biden or Sanders will be nominated, there are serious health questions about each of them. Sanders suffered a heart attack, while Biden’s mental acuity is questionable. The are no indications that Trump will shy away from attacking on these fronts, and a Biden/Sanders unity ticket would raise questions of what would happen if both should run afoul of the 25th Amendment.
There is also the matter of voter turnout. In the words of Tom Bonier, chief executive of Democratic data analytics firm TargetSmart,
“To beat Trump is going to take an all-of-the-above approach, what we saw in the [2018] midterm elections: expanded youth turnout, expanded turnout among people of color and continuing to win crossover votes among better-educated independents and Republicans. Whoever the Democratic nominee is, they are going to have to check all those boxes.”
That the Green Party is larger and better organized than the Constitution Party weighs in Trump’s favor, with more malcontents from the Democratic base likely to vote third-party. The signs so far are not promising; despite facing only token opposition, Trump is inspiring record numbers of Republicans to show up and vote for him in the Republican primaries. At this point, it is difficult to see how Trump loses unless he completely bungles the federal government’s response to coronavirus.
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