Bernie and Me

Sanders is now at a key decision point. While he still has a chance at being the nominee, and therefore any calls for him to get out of the race are way too premature, he must carefully consider his options. 2020 will end in one of three ways for Sanders. Either he will get elected President of the United States, will have moved the party significantly leftward but still be stuck in the US Senate, or will be held responsible by many for helping elect Donald Trump-twice. The only reason this is a difficult choice is that Sanders seems to think that he can only achieve the first option, if he allows the third one to be possible. Sanders’ ongoing, and by now foolish, battle with what he calls the Democratic establishment has created this problem and led to the real fear and possibility that Bernie’s most ardent supporters will stay home if Biden is the nominee. The smart move for Sanders would be to do whatever is he can to ensure that does not happen.

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A Brokered Convention Preview

Every four years a subset of pundits and political junkies speculate about a brokered convention where no candidate comes into the convention with enough delegates to secure the nomination on the first ballot, thus leading to discussions, multiple ballots and deal-making before a nominee is finally chosen. For much of American history this was common, but in the last half century or so that has changed. The last genuinely brokered Democratic convention was 1952 when the eventual nominee was Adlai Stevenson. Early opposition to Donald Trump among many Republicans led to speculation that the 2016 Republican convention would be brokered, but it didn’t work out that way.

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Bernie's Moment

Bernie Sanders has been running for president essentially nonstop for almost five years now. For much of that time the question that has been the subtext of his candidacy has been can he win-first the Democratic Party nomination and then the general election. With the Iowa caucus, the first contest of the 2020 nominating season, less than a month away, it may be time to rephrase that question-at least the first half of that question-and ask if Bernie can lose the Democratic Party’s nomination. That is an overstatement, but a confluence of recent events and developments in the race have bolstered Sanders’ chances.

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2020 Democratic Primary Preview

As the New Year begins it would be foolish to predict with any certainty who the Democratic nominee will be, particularly with a new and extremely well-funded, but untested outside of New York City, candidate competing in primaries beginning in March. However, there are several scenarios that could unfold in phase one. Each would lead to a different set of major contenders in phase two.

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Three Takeaways from the Democratic Debate

These debates have a modest impact on the nominating process because there are so many debates and because the first votes will not be cast for more than four months, but debates provide some insight into the state of the race and what we might see in the coming months. The race now looks like one where the frontrunner is flawed and perhaps out of touch ideologically with both the Democratic Party and a majority of the American people, but also where second tier candidates are struggling to break through in such a crowded field, and where the progressive vote is largely split between Sanders and Warren. Some of this may sort itself out in the next few months, but the large and impressive field, could make this a long primary season.

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Three Questions that Should be Asked at the Debate-But Won’t

On Thursday night, ten Democratic candidates will gather for the third official debate of this primary season. This debate will only be one night and include only ten candidates, so it should be smoother and more useful for potential voters. However, it is still likely that much of the debate will be taken up by detailed discussions of policy proposals on issues like health care, gun regulations or the environment. These discussions are worthwhile, interesting and give a good sense of what the candidates believe, but the emphasis on details belies the reality that presidents don’t make policy. They are merely part of a process along with congress and in many cases the states and the courts. These detailed discussions of policies seem like the right subject for the debate, but there are other bigger picture questions that are probably more important. Below are three questions that Democratic voters should be asking their candidates, but that might not be raised on Thursday night.

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The State of the Race as Summer Winds Down

In the last few weeks, Seth Moulton, John Hickenlooper, Kirsten Gillibrand and Jay Inslee have dropped out of the Democratic primary campaign for president. Hickenlooper and Inslee both had resumes that in previous elections could have made them frontrunners for the nomination, but their campaigns never got any traction this year. Both also immediately turned their attention to other elections. Inslee will seek a third term as governor of Washington while Hickenlooper will run for the Senate in Colorado against Republican incumbent Cory Gardner. Moulton, like Eric Swalwell a few weeks earlier, has decided to run for his safe congressional seat rather than continue a presidential campaign he had almost no chance of winning. Gillibrand will return to the Senate.

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The Real Electabliity Questions

Over the last few election cycles we have learned pretty definitively that we know a lot less about electability than we think we do. Our last two presidents, Barack Obama and Donald Trump, were both viewed as axiomatically unelectable when they began their campaigns for the White House. Moreover, most candidates have both positive and negative and electoral traits so their overall electability becomes a post facto assessment rather than having any predictive value. For example, in 2016 Hillary Clinton was very electable until she wasn’t. Similarly, had John Kerry beat George W. Bush in 2004, the punditry would have explained that as a war hero with years of experience he was the perfect candidate, but he lost narrowly, so we have been told he was a northeaster liberal with limited charisma and therefore a week candidate. Given this, when somebody tells you they think a particular primary candidate is electable, what they usually mean is simply that they are supporting that candidate.

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Misreading Bernie Sanders’ 2016 Campaign

It may be that in 2016, it was not Sanders who consolidated the anti-Clinton sentiment, but Clinton who consolidated the anti-Sanders sentiment. As the primaries went on voters who found Sanders too far left, did not like his inability and seeming unwillingnessto connect to non-white voters, or chafed at the sexism of many in his campaign, had nowhere to go but to Clinton. In 2020, according to this view, the vote that went to Clinton will be dispersed among all the other candidates while Sanders will hold his base. If that happens, Sanders will be in a very good position to win the nomination.

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Turkey, Nice and the Value of Political Stability →

litical instability is lurking on the sidelines of American political life as well. The frequency of extra-judicial killings of African Americans by police from Staten Island to Baron Rouge, the killing of five police officers in Dallas and, perhaps the willingness of Donald Trump to dance up to, and occasionally cross, the line of encouraging insatiably are all evidence of this. The widening wealth gap, a sense among many that socio-economic mobility is limited, and more general racial and ethnic tensions also raise questions about continuing political stability in the US.

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Bernie Sanders' Vanishing Act

The presidential race has moved on and Sanders is no longer leading a political revolution, but is trying to remain relevant, and maintain some leverage, in a fast-moving election where fear of the Republican nominee has, as expected, helped solidify the Democratic base around Ms. Clinton and largely put to rest concerns about Sanders supporters refusing to support the former first lady.

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The Primaries Aren't Rigged, but the Two Party System Is →

The two-party system endures through a combination of residual political loyalty, entropy and, most significantly, a set of legal and electoral structures that create extraordinary barriers for potential third parties or independent bids for office, rather than because it is a rational organization of political interests. Rules making ballot access for independent candidacies difficult, the challenges independent candidates face getting media coverage or even participating in debates and state and primary elections that are paid for, in substantial part, by the states rather than the parties all contribute to the dominance of the two party system. Blurring the line between state and party has been a problem of authoritarian regimes for decades. In the US, the phenomena is slightly different, but line between the state and the two major parties is frequently difficult to identify.

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