How the Sanders campaign fell back into 2016

It wasn't hard to foresee that Bernie would do badly one-on-one against a moderate. You just had to remember 2016, when he got about 43% of the vote. He ran the same campaign this time, and we're looking down the barrel of a similar result.

To dispense with the stupid idea that's been consuming the internet, Elizabeth Warren's endorsement wouldn't have changed anything significant. Progressive Warren voters have moved to Sanders already -- there just aren't enough of them for him to win. Polls about counterfactuals aren't always reliable, but it's worth noting that the one poll to ask people how they'd vote if Warren endorsed Sanders had him gaining only 2%. The progressive movement is better served by Warren playing for influence within a future Biden Administration -- the same way she negotiated with Hillary four years before.

In fairness to the Sanders campaign, things could've turned out better. If Democrats had been completely ineffective in resisting Trump, disgusted mainstream partisans might have gone over to him, pushing him over 50%. But things generally went well enough to keep the Democratic faithful satisfied.

Obamacare survived by the skin of John McCain's thumb, Democrats won a House landslide in 2018, the new Congress began with Pelosi defeating Trump in a government shutdown, impeachment was handled skillfully, and it seems to have helped purple-state Democratic Senate challengers as intended. There were defeats too, but that's not a bad list of legislative and electoral successes.

So by October 2019, it should've been obvious that the Sanders campaign would need to do something new to get over 50% one-on-one. They didn't realize this. Some accounts have them being confident that centrists would divide the vote all the way through the primary. They didn't see Jim Clyburn coming, or even expect some shadowy insider force from Bernie Twitter ghost stories to unify the field against them. And that leaves us here.

Barring a miracle, the path to progressive reform in the next administration will involve maneuvering Biden into it. The inside game begins with whatever concessions Warren can squeeze from him. Then we need strong Congressional majorities, and victory in internal White House power struggles. Old Joe is a party man more than an ideologue, and his positions can move if you set things up right around him.

When there are no more moves in the outside game, you don't give up. You switch to the inside game. I'll have more on that in the weeks to come.

Electability in the time of coronavirus

My friends are discussing electability. I'm thinking about it in light of the coronavirus pandemic, and I expect either Biden or Sanders to win if nominated.

Both candidates have about a 5% lead over Trump in current head-to-head polling. Democratic consolidation around a nominee will push up on those numbers as Republican general-election attacks push down. Maybe the net effect pushes both down to 4% or so, where they need a ~3% lead to win because of Electoral College imbalances.

The likely levels of illness, economic damage, and loss of life from the coronavirus will make things harder for an already embattled Trump. He's been awful in many ways before, but it usually doesn't come back to bite his own voters. Most of them will find some way to blame Democrats. But not all will. Mismanaging a recession-causing pandemic might push him say 3% down, making the Democratic lead insurmountable.

Fox News and GOP media as a whole are in their early stages of attacking both Sanders and Biden. With Sanders, the attacks will probably concern socialism. With Biden, it's probably corruption attacks connected to Ukraine conspiracy theories. I expect both attacks to have less effect amidst a pandemic.

Biden will promise a return to Obama-era normalcy. Sanders will pitch policies like Medicare for All. Both messages are likely to play well under pandemic conditions.

If Trump's mismanagement leads to a major Democratic victory, it will likely help us in the Senate too. That's more likely to cause the passage of major Democratic legislation under Sanders than Biden, since Sanders is on board from the beginning. But there are still ways that Biden can be maneuvered into passing policies coded as progressive this primary, especially with an unexpectedly good Senate.

At this point, it's very unlikely that Sanders will win the nomination. But I think his policy ideas are much better, and if my vote were coming soon, I'd vote for him.

The campaign ends, the plans continue

Elizabeth Warren's campaign of plans has ended.

She proposed a wealth tax, and Bernie followed. She had the best-developed plans on universal child care, rebuilding the State Department, catching tax evaders, and a litany of other issues.

Plans outlive campaigns. They sometimes get passed into law by politicians who opposed them. Obviously, it's best for a plan when an ideologically aligned campaign wins.

That's why I hope Bernie Sanders can defeat Joe Biden. The Warren plans are a natural outcome of negotiations between Sanders and Democratic centrists in a good Senate situation (if Sanders sees that Warren was right about the filibuster). I'll tell you a story.

Obama's health care plan during the 2008 primary didn't include the individual mandate that Obamacare is famous for. When John Edwards had introduced a plan with a mandate in February 2007, unions celebrated it. Lefty policy types taught everyone how mandates prevent adverse selection from messing up insurance. Hillary Clinton took up Edwards' plan and argued its merits against Obama.

Though Obama won the election, the mandate supporters won the argument. After the November victory, Senate committee chairs suggested that they'd be open to passing something like the Edwards / Clinton plans. After an epic legislative struggle, the mandate Obama opposed became part of what we now call Obamacare.

(The mandate got converted into a tax by the Supreme Court, but it's still there. The public option was less lucky. It was part of everyone's plan at first and Pelosi got it through the House on first passage, but it was sacrificed to Joe Lieberman for his filibuster-breaking 60th vote. Warren was right to push for eliminating the filibuster.)

When plans win the debate, the planners gain power. James Kvaal, the staffer who built the party-driving policy shop of 2007-2008 for Edwards, became policy director for Obama. I expect the same for Warren's staffers, which creates useful inside pressure for the plans.

Things as big as Medicare for All could pass even under Biden if everything breaks right: Biden's public option 2021, 4-5 new Democrats from the very favorable 2022 Senate map, M4A in 2023. That was Warren's plan to pass the plan, and with good work on the inside it's not impossible to walk Biden into it. Everything is easier with Bernie, but it wouldn't be the first time old Joe has changed a position.

Warren contributed a lot more than ideas. The destruction of Michael Bloomberg's campaign was huge. Bloomberg must have been very interested in buying the Clyburn endorsement and taking the place Biden has now. I doubt Clyburn would sell, but I wouldn't want democracy to face that risk. Warren devastated Bloomberg in the Nevada debate, and democracy was saved.

But I'll return to the ideas, because that's what we academics do. And Warren is one of us. The big point I've been making here is something obvious to us: the success of an idea is distinct from the fortunes of its creator, let alone its creator's Presidential campaign. And for some of us, the ideas matter most. We're just here to help them along and find others who will.

The campaign ends here. But for the plans, it's just another day. Elizabeth Warren will still be fighting for them, and we will too.

Why Jim Clyburn endorsed Joe Biden

Jim Clyburn's endorsement seems to have been the decisive event of the primary. 27% of South Carolina voters called it the most important factor in driving their vote, and Biden won with 48% to Sanders' 20%. This was the signal moderates needed to consolidate around Biden, leading to his Super Tuesday victory.

South Carolina is usually won by an establishment Democrat, though a sufficiently impressive black candidate can win voters over. Hillary Clinton won 73% of the vote against Bernie in 2016, with Clyburn's endorsement. In the 2008 campaign, polling favored Hillary until Obama won other primaries and then won SC 55-27. Clyburn didn't officially endorse that year, but voted for Obama. This got him an angry phone call from Bill Clinton. Clyburn told him, "How could I ever look in the faces of our children and grandchildren had I not voted for Barack Obama?"

The last black candidate to win SC before Obama was Jesse Jackson in 1988. He supported Medicare for All, had Bernie's endorsement, and was the great left-wing predecessor to Bernie in my lifetime. Perhaps a candidate who shares Bernie's policies and can win SC will have to be black.

Clyburn is more typical of top Democrats who win elections for candidates like Biden than anyone at the DNC. He's highly placed in the House leadership, and has the unofficial responsibility of representing black community interests to powerful Democrats. When they use their power as he asks, they win favor with him, and that translates into presidential endorsements. This is how a lot of the DC economy of politics operates. It makes things hard for less powerful candidates who haven't built up a bank of favors with people like Clyburn.

Sanders' campaign messaging appears to have irritated Clyburn too: "I find it very interesting that someone is referring to African American voters in South Carolina as the establishment," Clyburn told The Daily Beast, referring to Sanders' claims that the Democratic establishment is coalescing around Biden in order to stop his campaign. "I don’t understand how that vote can be dismissed."

Broad anti-establishment messages resonate with many who recognize the party's past failures. But Clyburn heard these messages as an attack on him. He responded by throwing black support decisively behind Biden. It's a problem that I don't think the Sanders campaign recognized, and that progressives will have to solve in future primaries.