YouTube and 2028

Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics.  The 2028 campaign is starting already.

Adam Wren at Politico:

NOW STREAMING: The 2028 presidential primaries are already unfolding on YouTube.

Amid the rapid decline of cable news, potential candidates and other elected officials are locked in a digital arms race to draw subscribers, boost their reach and build what amounts to their own broadcast networks.

• Potential candidates like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) are closing in on audiences that rival or surpass total cable primetime viewers for individual networks.
• Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley is racking up millions of views.
• Vivek Ramaswamy, the former 2024 GOP presidential candidate who is running for Ohio governor, dwarfs any other Republican but President Donald Trump on YouTube with more than 813,000 subscribers.
• Former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg’s channel started the year with just 28,000 subscribers, and now has 177,000, having generated nearly 10 million views and accumulated 500,000 hours of viewing time so far this year, according to a spokesperson.
• Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear saw a 448 percent increase in views from last year to this year, a spokesperson tells POLITICO.

Amy Out, Joe Up

In Defying the Odds, we discuss the 2016 campaign. The 2019 update includes a chapter on the 2018 midterms. The 2020 race, the subject of our next book, is well under way.

The day after Buttigieg quit the race, so did Klobuchar.  Both endorsed Biden, as did Beto.

Anna Palmer at Jake Sherman at Politico:

BIDEN is consolidating establishment Democratic support with speed and precision as he makes the case that he -- and only he -- can steer the party through an election with President DONALD TRUMP atop the ballot. He’s rounding up prominent supporters -- like PETE BUTTIGIEG, AMY KLOBUCHAR and BETO O’ROURKE in Dallas on Monday night -- and finally beginning to raise the millions he needs to continue deep into March and April. BIDEN is so eager for unity that he told a local reporter in Houston on Monday that he would ask BUTTIGIEG to be in his administration.

Philip Wegman at RCP:

“It’s not apple to apples,” Tim Miller said in comparing the 2020 Democratic primary to the previous Republican one. He was the spokesman for Jeb Bush last time around, the once mighty Florida governor and presumed establishment champion. But Bush dropped out after a disappointing showing in South Carolina and the other candidates, Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas and Marco Rubio of Florida, refused to make peace to oppose the upstart front-runner Trump. Klobuchar and Buttigieg are not so hard-headed.

Miller said that by walking away before Super Tuesday, the two moderates have given Biden “a realistic path toward the nomination.” He added, however, that these endorsements “were necessary, but not sufficient, for stopping Sanders.” It is possible, the former GOP flack said, “that a consolidation might not matter because, in the end, voters might be for Sanders.”

But consolidation does have two immediate and undeniable effects, observers from across the spectrum say. First, it gave Biden the spotlight 24 hours before voters cast their ballots. Second, and perhaps more critically, it signals to donors that that there is no longer an embargo on Joe, that they can give freely and generously to his campaign.

 Jonathan Martin and Alexander Burns at NYT:

Late last year a group of first-term House Democrats, anxious over the party’s fractious presidential race, convened a series of discussions intended to spur unity. Led by Representatives Colin Allred of Texas and Haley Stevens of Michigan, they considered issuing a collective endorsement of one moderate candidate.

The group held phone calls with Joseph R. Biden Jr., Amy Klobuchar and Pete Buttigieg. But the lawmakers could not agree: Some were torn between the options, and others worried about alienating voters at home who backed other contenders, like Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. A few issued solo endorsements of Mr. Biden, but the grander plan disintegrated.

“There was not time to reach consensus over one candidate,” said Ms. Stevens, who eventually endorsed Michael R. Bloomberg, recalling the “fast-moving” blur of the lead-up to Iowa.

That effort was just one in a series of abandoned or ineffective plans to rally the moderate wing of the Democratic Party, and the leaders and institutions of the political establishment, behind a single formidable contender who could stop the ascent of Mr. Sanders, a democratic socialist promising a revolution in government.

Buttigieg Out

In Defying the Odds, we discuss the 2016 campaign. The 2019 update includes a chapter on the 2018 midterms. The 2020 race, the subject of our next book, is well under way.

Elena Schneider at Politico:

Soon after midnight on Sunday morning, Pete Buttigieg convened his senior advisers on a conference call. Sitting in a car after flying to Georgia from his last rally in Raleigh, N.C., Buttigieg told them the campaign was over.

Buttigieg’s staff had just briefed top donors two days earlier about his plans to push forward in the presidential race, looking deep into the March primary calendar for friendly Midwestern states. But in the hours between those two calls, Buttigieg’s disappointing fourth-place finish in South Carolina’s primary — and Joe Biden’s stronger-than-expected win there — squeezed the delegate math of the 2020 race.

The narrow path forward the candidate saw days earlier had all but disappeared, and he knew it, according to a senior Buttigieg source who described his thinking. “The turning point was South Carolina,” said another person close to the Buttigieg campaign.

Reid Epstein and Trip Gabriel at NYT:

On a conference call with campaign donors on Sunday evening, Mr. Buttigieg said he had reached the decision with regret but concluded it was “the right thing to do, when we looked at the math,” according to one person on the call. Without mentioning opponents by name, Mr. Buttigieg said he was concerned about the impact he would have on the race by staying in, saying Democrats needed to field “the right kind of nominee” against Mr. Trump.

Mr. Buttigieg talked with Mr. Biden and former President Barack Obama on Sunday night, according to a Democratic official familiar with the conversations. Mr. Biden asked for Mr. Buttigieg’s support and the former mayor indicated he would consider the request. Mr. Buttigieg wants to sleep on the decision, he told aides, some of whom believe he should move quickly to endorse Mr. Biden.

Mr. Obama did not specifically encourage Mr. Buttigieg to endorse Mr. Biden, said the official, who insisted on anonymity to discuss private conversations. But Mr. Obama did note that Mr. Buttigieg has considerable leverage at the moment and should think about how best to use it. Should Mr. Buttigieg endorse Mr. Biden on Monday, it could reshape the Democratic primary if many of his supporters shift to Mr. Biden, creating a more formidable centrist challenge to Mr. Sanders’s progressive movement.

In his remarks, Mr. Buttigieg directed criticism toward Mr. Sanders, without naming him, that he has previously made on the debate stage and on the campaign trail.

“We need leadership to heal a divided nation, not drive us further apart,” he said. “We need a broad based agenda to truly deliver for the American people, not one that gets lost in ideology. We need an approach strong enough not only to win the White House, but hold the House, win the Senate and send Mitch McConnell into retirement.”

Super PACs and Democrats

In Defying the Odds, we discuss campaign finance and campaign technology. The 2019 update includes a chapter on the 2018 midterms.

Zach Montellaro at Politico:

JUST SUPER — You get a super PAC! And you get a super PAC! A new super PAC backing Warren called Persist PAC has quickly become one of the top outside spenders in Nevada ahead of Saturday's caucuses, POLITICO's Maggie Severns and Alex Thompson wrote. (Advertising Analytics tracks about $800,000 in TV and radio ads .) A statement from team Warren doesn't entirely wave off the group, after Warren has crusaded against super PACs earlier in the cycle. "Sen. Warren's position hasn't changed. Since day one of this campaign, she has made clear that she thinks all of the candidates should lock arms together and say we don't want super PACs and billionaires to be deciding our Democratic nominee," Warren campaign spokesman Chris Hayden said. (Axios' Margaret Talev and Alexi McCammond first reported details about the super PAC.)

This means that every Democratic candidate falls into one of three categories: A billionaire self-funder, a candidate supported by some outside money — yes, including Sanders, who got air cover from a nurses' union super PAC and general support from the nonprofit he founded, Our Revolution — or Tulsi Gabbard, who appears to fall into neither of the former categories. An interesting detail from The New York Times' Jonathan Martin: EMILY's List, which hasn't endorsed a candidate, gave $250,000 to the new outside groups supporting both Warren and Klobuchar.

Brian Sloydysko at AP:

Many now rue that early days of the primary were dominated by pledges of the sources of money campaigns would reject rather than building a fundraising network to compete with Trump. Along with the Republican National Committee, he has raised more than $525 million for his reelection effort since the start of 2019.

“It was a huge mistake to try to adhere to this level of financial purity. The only person who can do it is Bernie Sanders — no one else can. Barack Obama couldn’t, Hillary Clinton couldn’t and Donald Trump can’t,” said Rufus Gifford a prominent Democratic fundraiser who held high-level posts in both of Obama’s campaigns. “That will be the lesson of this primary — especially if Bernie Sanders wins.”

New Hampshire

In Defying the Odds, we discuss the 2016 campaign. The 2019 update includes a chapter on the 2018 midterms. The 2020 race, the subject of our next book, is well under way.

Bernie Sanders won NH with about 26% of the vote -- the lowest vote share of any winner of the New Hampshire primary.  Some worry that he could cruise to victory over divided opposition, as Trump did in 2016.  But unlike the GOP, Democrats strictly require proportional delegate allocation, which means he could not win the same way as Trump.

Buttigieg ran a very close second. Klobuchar is getting massive attention for coming in third.

Warren is a distant fourth, with about nine percent. A lot of NH voters are in the Boston media market and commute to jobs in Massachusetts. Bay State candidates Dukakis (1988), Tsongas (1992) and Kerry (2004) all won the primary.  Warren should have done better.

Biden was a sad fifth, with about eight percent.

 Sahil Kapur and Shaquille Brewster at NBC:

Victorious in New Hampshire on the heels of a popular-vote win in Iowa, Bernie Sanders has forced the Democratic establishment to reckon with a prospect it has been dismissing: He's currently the favorite to win the party's presidential nomination.

The Vermont senator has seen his fortunes rise since Iowa, leap-frogging a struggling former Vice President Joe Biden as the frontrunner in two national surveys of Democratic voters — ahead by 8 points in a Quinnipiac poll and 10 points in a Monmouth poll. At a jubilant election night party here, he told a cheering crowd that his victory in the state was "the beginning of the end for Donald Trump."

The prospect was causing waves of anxiety in the Democratic Party.

“A lot of mainstream and moderate Democrats are growing increasingly nervous with the prospect of Bernie Sanders as the nominee,” said Jonathan Kott, a Democratic strategist and former senior adviser to centrist Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.V.

College America, Warren, and Mayor Pete

In Defying the Odds, we discuss the demographics of the 2016 campaign.   College education has emerged as a major dividing line in American politics.

Timothy P. Carney at The Washington Examiner:

Warren has always relied heavily on the Connected Class. That includes doctors and lawyers, but, in general, it's the larger class of college-educated white people. This may, in fact, have been the biggest chunk of her support.

At her Iowa peak, when Warren was leading the field in mid-October, she was getting about 33% of all college graduates according to an Iowa State University poll, while Buttigieg was pulling in about 19%.

Now, Buttigieg is winning the college-educated vote 26% to 24%, according to the Iowa State University poll in December. If you were to screen out those with graduate degrees, and look at those whose highest degree was a bachelor’s (which is about a quarter of the Democratic electorate), we’ve swung from a 14-point Warren lead in October to a 5-point Buttigieg lead at the New Year.

Warren is falling mostly because white, college-educated voters are leaving her for Buttigieg.

Mainline Pete v. Trump and the Evangelical Right

 In Defying the Odds, we talk about the social and economic divides that enabled Trump to enter the White House.

Jack Jenkins at the Religion News Service:

Donald Trump insisted that he is favored by God during a speech to evangelicals on Friday evening (Jan 4), in which he also went through a roll call of evangelical rallying points and challenged the faith of his Democratic rivals as he kicked off a new campaign initiative aimed at conservative Christians.

“I really do believe we have God on our side,” Trump told the crowd of roughly 5,000 gathered at El Rey Jesús Church in Miami, Florida.
...
The president repeatedly characterized religion itself as under attack or “under siege” in the United States, saying that people of faith have no greater champion than him. He noted a recent shooting at a church in Texas and the stabbing of Jews worshiping in New York, adding that he would strive to combat anti-Semitism.

He did not mention his controversial travel ban — which was originally proposed as a ban on Muslims entering the country — or attacks on Muslim Americans and their houses of worship that have occurred during his presidency.

However, Trump did take shots at the field of Democratic candidates vying to replace him.

“As we speak, every Democrat (sic) candidate is trying to punish religious believers, and silence our churches and our pastors,” Trump said. “Our opponents want to shut out God from the public square so they can impose their extreme anti-religious and socialist agenda on America.”

It is unclear what Trump meant by “punish religious believers,” although he made reference to a short-lived proposal by former candidate Beto O’Rourke of Texas, who once suggested faith-based institutions should lose their tax-exempt status if they don’t support same-sex marriage. O’Rourke later clarified that he was referring only to religious institutions that provide public services, not individual houses of worship.

Trump also mocked South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg, who has referenced faith repeatedly during his presidential campaign. The president joked that “nobody can pronounce (Buttigieg’s) name” before questioning the authenticity of the Democrat’s religious beliefs.

“All of a sudden he has become extremely religious,” Trump said. “This happened about two weeks ago."

At The Dispatch, David French explains that Pete Buttigieg's deep and sincere Christianity is not necessarily appealing to Evangelicals.

All of that may sound hair-splitting and esoteric to those who aren’t Christian, but these theological differences create profound cultural differences. For example, a Mainline Christian looks at an Evangelical and simply can’t understand how someone who calls themselves “loving” or “kind” or “compassionate” could possibly believe that the loving sexual union of two men or two women is in any way immoral. An Evangelical wonders how a person who calls themselves “loving” or “kind” or “compassionate” could excuse or rationalize conduct that God rejects. Does that not harm the souls of the very people they love? (To his credit, Buttigieg frequently acknowledges the good faith of competing Christian ideas.)

Or, to put it another way, at his or her best an Evangelical declares (to quote the esteemed theologian Kanye West), “Jesus is King,” and then seeks to follow what the King commands through the “God-breathed” scriptures that represent the final word and ultimate authority in any religious contest. They (we) are of course subject to comprehensive critique in the way in which we uphold our own professed principles, but those are the principles, that’s the language, and that’s one reason why not all “God talk” is created equal in the eyes of the faithful.

I appreciate Mayor Pete for putting his faith front and center in his campaign. Truly, I do. It’s a welcome act of transparency. After all, we all get our code of ethics from somewhere, and it’s worth knowing the source of Buttigieg’s forceful moral arguments. But if mainstream media figures believe that Mayor Pete speaks the same Christian language as Trump’s Evangelical base, they need to think again. He’s a sincere proponent of a faith that is very different from theirs.

Biden Bucks

In Defying the Odds, we discuss campaign finance and campaign technology. The 2019 update includes a chapter on the 2018 midterms. 

Molly Nagle and John Verhovek at ABC:

Former Vice President Joe Biden raised $22.7 million in the fourth fundraising quarter of 2019, his campaign announced Thursday, his best number yet of the 2020 cycle-- figures that come a week after his campaign disclosed the names of their "bundlers", individuals that helped raised more than $25,000 for the candidate.

Biden’s current fundraising numbers put him third so far compared to other 2020 campaigns who have already released their numbers for the fourth quarter of 2019. Sen. Bernie Sanders announced a staggering $34.5 million in Q4, and former Mayor of South Bend, Ind Pete Buttigeig, who raised $24.7 million."Biden for President doubled its online fundraising and increased its overall fundraising by 49% compared to last quarter, demonstrating financial momentum at the same time as Vice President Biden’s lead nationally has grown," a press release sent out by the Biden campaign Thursday afternoon said.

Throughout his campaign, Biden has not shied away from high-dollar fundraisers and held more than 100 fundraisers in 2019 alone.

Late last month, following the lead of fellow candidates N.J. Sen. Cory Booker and former South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg, the Biden campaign, released the names of more than 200 bundlers-- a group that spans well connected Hollywood figures such as movie executive Jeffrey Katzenberg and current or former elected officials that have endorsed Biden.

The bundlers include Delaware Senator Chris Coons, California Sen. Dianne Feinstein, Pennsylvania Sen. Bob Casey, Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont, Louisiana Rep. Cedric Richmond, Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan and former Florida Rep. Patrick Murphy.
(MORE: Pete Buttigieg releases list of 113 bundlers for his campaign)

Former top Obama economic adviser Jeff Zients, International Association of Fire Fighters (IAFF) President Harold Schaitberger, and Amazon General Counsel David Zapolsky, are also on the list.

D Debate

In Defying the Odds, we discuss the early stages of the 2016 campaign, when many candidates were unknowns.  The update  -- recently published --includes a chapter on the 2018 midterms.  We are concluding the early stages of the 2020 race.

Mike Allen at Axios:

During Democrats' last debate of 2019, Pete Buttigieg was attacked like the Iowa frontrunner that he is.

• Why it matters: Buttigieg faced a series of attacks as tensions that had been brewing on the campaign trail broke out on the L.A. debate stage last night.

The debate's sharpest clash came when Elizabeth Warren said he had held a fundraiser "in a wine cave full of crystals, and served $900-a-bottle wine": "Billionaires in wine caves should not pick the next president."

• #Winecave and #WineCavePete trended on Twitter.
• Buttigieg drew applause for his rabbit-punch return: "[A]ccording to Forbes magazine, I am literally the only person on this stage who is not a millionaire or a billionaire."
• And he warned Warren against "issuing purity tests you cannot yourself pass."

...
More takeaways, from Axios' Zach Basu, Alexi McCammond at the debate site, and Axios editors:

• Amy Klobuchar had her strongest debate performance yet. But instead of hitting progressives Bernie Sanders and Warren, she took aim at the only other Midwestern moderate on stage — Buttigieg. Klobuchar ripped Buttigieg for his lack of experience and failure to win elections outside of South Bend.
• Yang shines: Andrew Yang called it both "an honor and a disappointment" that he was the only candidate of color on stage, before pivoting to his stump speech by rattling off statistics that explain the economic disadvantages that minorities face.

The bottom line: The relentless attacks on Buttigieg could shake up the race. But anything that doesn't alter the fundamentals of the campaign benefits the frontrunner.
That remains Biden, who slipped through tonight unscathed and was more assertive, comfortable and in command than in some past debates.
...
Issue-by-issue recap.

Age Gaps

In Defying the Odds, we discuss the early stages of the 2016 campaign, when many candidates were unknowns.  The update  -- recently published --includes a chapter on the 2018 midterms.  We are now in the early stages of the 2020 race.

Lisa Lerer and Denise Lu at NYT report that the youngest and oldest candidate in 2020 have a 40-year age gap between them, the largest in modern political history.

Age has never defined a race so sharply before. The 23 Democrats include one of the youngest presidential candidates in modern history and the oldest one, spanning four generations — from 37-year-old Pete Buttigieg, mayor of South Bend, Ind., to 77-year-old Bernie Sanders, senator from Vermont.

...
The two men leading most national polls — Mr. Sanders and Mr. Biden — would be over 80 by the time they finished their first term in office, beating out Mr. Trump to become the oldest of any president elected to their first term. Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, who polls in third place in many surveys, will be 71 on Election Day.

Their age cuts a striking contrast with many of their rivals: Mr. Biden won his first statewide race for Senate in 1972, before eight of the Democratic candidates had been born. When Mr. Sanders entered Congress in 1990, 10 of his opponents had not yet graduated from college. Both men were the only candidates in federal office during the fall of the Berlin Wall, the first invasion of Iraq and the first major generational transition for their party in more than three decades — the election of Mr. Clinton in 1992.

...
But the dominance of older voters at the polls may not hold in 2020. This presidential race is likely to be the first election in which voters under 40 make up the same proportion of the electorate as voters over 55 — nearly 40 percent of the electorate, according to some early projections. Generation Z, Millennials and Generation X outvoted older generations in the 2018 midterms, and early surveys show them on track to turn out in far greater numbers in next year’s primary contests than they did four years ago.

Beto's Bust

In Defying the Odds, we discuss the early stages of the 2016 campaign, when many candidates were unknowns.  The update  -- just published --includes a chapter on the 2018 midterms.  We are now in the early stages of the 2020 race.

At Vanity Fair, Peter Hamby explains why the media fell out of love with Beto O'Rourke:

The most obvious reason for Beto’s boom-and-bust media cycle is that running against a reviled Republican in Texas is a far cry from running in a Democratic primary against a bevy of qualified opponents, many of whom have devoted followings in various corners of the left. “It’s not good enough to not be Ted Cruz anymore,” said Republican media strategist Matt Gorman. “In a state, you have a baseline of party support that’s with you no matter what if you’re running against a Republican. Not in a primary. He needs to make an identity for himself. When he is on that debate stage, what’s the rationale against Kamala [Harris] or Mayor Pete or Joe Biden? Why Beto?” Force of personality is not enough to carry a campaign without an underlying reason for running, Gorman said, especially in a Democratic Party flush with options. But having a clearly defined reason to run for president—that simple thing called “a message”—is what carries a campaign forward, inoculating a candidate from the daily traps and potholes of the presidential media storms. Buttigieg is one of only a handful of Democratic candidates who is using his campaign to tell a story—his is about generational change—and it’s allowed him to parry attacks and mostly avoid stepping in mud. Even though it’s doubtful that a Harvard-educated polyglot who can name every Radiohead B-side since The Bends doesn’t know who Alfred E. Neuman is, Buttigieg brushed off Trump’s name-calling this week with a simple, youthful aside: “I had to Google that.” Next question.