Super Snoozer

 Our latest book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics. The 2024 race has begun. The nomination phase has effectively ended.

Trump swept Super Tuesday except for Vermont, where there is not party registration and Democratic identifiers were probably responsible for Nikki Haley's surprise win.  Tom Nichols at The Atlantic:

Trump was the Republican favorite from the moment former Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy went to Mar-a-Lago in 2021 to rehabilitate Trump’s standing in the GOP. His nomination was inevitable the night most of his primary opponents raised their hand on a debate stage—one from which he was absent—and said they’d vote for him if he beat them, even if he was convicted in a court of law. Even Nikki Haley is still dithering to this very moment about whether she’d support a man who calls her “Birdbrain” and whom she has passionately argued is unfit for office.

He earlier lost the DC primary, Instead of just ignoring the loss, he rationalized it:

The Party in the Electorate Decides

 Our latest book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics. The 2024 race has begun. The nomination phase has effectively ended.

Seth Masket at Politico:

As I surveyed GOP county chairs across the country, I thought they would provide an early signal as to where the Republican nomination would end up. County chairs are influential in local GOP circles, party leaders who can offer the kind of endorsements that candidates are eager to collect. They’re also still close to the rank-and-file grassroots, and their shifts, I imagined, would signal where the rest of the party was going.

But instead, I found that the county chairs didn’t lead their voters. For the most part, they followed them — to Donald Trump.

Last February, the county chairs were less supportive of Trump than Republican primary voters as a whole. Yet as time went on, and Trump consolidated support among rank-and-file voters, the chairs fell in line. It’s a reflection of the state of the GOP that has existed since 2016 when Trump first snatched the nomination away from the establishment and took over the Republican Party.

In the pre-Trump era, GOP leaders clearly played more of a role in steering the direction of the party. The 2012 campaign is instructive: Many different candidates were briefly the favorites of rank-and-file Republican voters, from Rick Perry to Herman Cain to Newt Gingrich to Rick Santorum. But throughout the cycle, party elites’ money and endorsements stayed focused on Mitt Romney, and that’s who got the nomination. This year’s ongoing survey of county chairs illustrates how Republican elites are now more responsive to the grassroots rather than the other way around — either because they lack the interest or the ability to do anything else.

Christie Out

Our most recent book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics. The 2024 race has begun.

Michael C. Bender at NYT:

Chris Christie closed out his second presidential campaign much as he began it, with a blistering and personal takedown of Donald J. Trump designed to prompt a reckoning in his party.

Anticipation had been building all day for the remarks from Mr. Christie, a former governor of New Jersey, after news had spilled out hours earlier that he was telling close allies about his decision.

With all three major cable news networks airing the speech live, Mr. Christie used the rare spotlight — something that had largely eluded his campaign — to make an urgent appeal to the better angels of his party. He framed his animosity toward Mr. Trump in sweeping, historical terms and cast himself as the experienced party elder warning of the possible dangers ahead.

“Imagine just for a moment if 9/11 had happened with Donald Trump behind the desk,” Mr. Christie said. “The first thing he would have done was run to the bunker to protect himself. He would have put himself first before this country, and anyone who is unwilling to say that he is unfit to be president of the United States is unfit themselves to be president of the United States.”

...
Mr. Christie also grappled with his own role in Mr. Trump’s rise, acknowledging that he had capitulated to ambition when he ended his 2016 presidential bid and surprised much of the political establishment at the time by backing Mr. Trump. Mr. Christie described his second campaign as something of a redemption tour.

“I would rather lose by telling the truth than lie in order to win, and I feel no differently today, because this is a fight for the soul of our party and the soul of our country,” he said.

Mr. Christie paced the stage as he spoke and at times appeared emotional, including when he talked about the supporters who had urged him to remain in the race. His voice cracked when he quoted Benjamin Franklin’s warning that Americans had been given “a republic, if you can keep it.”

“Benjamin Franklin’s words were never more relevant in America than they are right now,” Mr. Christie said. “The last time they were this relevant was the Civil War.”

Tim Scott Is Flailing

Our latest book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  The the 2024 race has begun.

Natalie Allison at Politico:

Tim Scott is moving nearly all of his resources to Iowa in a bid to reenergize his faltering presidential campaign.

The South Carolina senator’s campaign announced the move to staff during a call Monday afternoon, according to two people with knowledge of the plan. Details on the shift in strategy were first published by the Des Moines Register.

The announcement — the first major reset of Scott’s campaign — comes with Scott polling at just under 2 percent nationally in the Republican primary, and as some prominent Republican allies express disappointment in the trajectory of his presidential bid. While Scott on Monday told reporters he was confident he would appear on the Nov. 8 debate stage (“We’ll be in Miami,” he said after a speech at a church in Chicago), his campaign has yet to announce meeting the Republican National Committee’s 70,000 donor requirement to do so.

 

'Beyond the pale': ABC host hits Tim Scott for saying Biden has 'blood on his hands' https://t.co/sHdPcLbPe3

— Raw Story (@RawStory) October 22, 2023

Trump Is Rigging GOP Rules

Our latest book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  The the 2024 race has begun.

Shane Goldmacher, Jonathan Swan and Maggie Haberman at NYT:

As Mr. Trump dodges debates and is regularly seen on his golf courses in branded white polo shirts and red MAGA hats, it can seem that he is bypassing the 2024 primary fight entirely. He has done relatively few public campaign events until recent weeks. But Mr. Trump and his political team have spent months working behind the scenes to build alliances and contingency plans with key party officials, seeking to twist the primary and delegate rules in their favor.

It amounts to a fail-safe in case Mr. DeSantis — or anyone else — scores a surprise victory in an early state. And it comes as Mr. Trump faces an extraordinary set of legal challenges, including four criminal indictments, that inject an unusual degree of uncertainty into a race Mr. Trump leads widely in national polling.

“They’ve rigged it anywhere they thought they could pull it off,” said Ken Cuccinelli, a former Trump administration official who founded Never Back Down, the pro-DeSantis super PAC that was essentially ousted from the Nevada caucus.

The Fat Lady Is Clearing Her Throat

Our latest book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  The 2024 race has begun.

 Sophia Cai at Axios

State of play: Win It Back, a political action committee (PAC) affiliated with the conservative group Club for Growth, says it burned through $6 million creating 40 anti-Trump messages — none of them effective, the New York Times reported

• .Republican Accountability PAC — a group of former Trump voters dedicated to moving beyond the former president — is giving up on the primary after spending $1 million on ads in Iowa. "We have stopped spending money in the primary," the PAC's leader, Sarah Longwell, told Reuters.
• Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R) — who clashed with Trump when he refused to go along with Trump's claim that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump in Georgia — said last week that he'll support Trump if he gets the GOP nomination.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, once generally seen as the best prospect to take down Trump in the primaries, has been in a downward spiral since July.

• Two of his biggest donors in the primary and Florida's gubernatorial race have paused their support or have decided to stop backing him.
• Hotel entrepreneur Robert Bigelow, the biggest individual donor to the DeSantis-aligned Never Back Down PAC, won't donate more money for now.
• Billionaire and Citadel CEO Ken Griffin — who previously said "our country would be well-served by [DeSantis] as president" —now is not supporting DeSantis.

Between the lines: In a sign of DeSantis' struggles, Trump — obsessed with blasting the Florida governor for much of this year — is now taking aim at former UN ambassador Nikki Haley, who's done well in the two GOP debates and is outpolling DeSantis in New Hampshire.Thursday morning, Trump complained on Truth Social that Fox News "has been pushing Nikki 'Birdbrain' Haley" after having "totally given up on Ron DeSanctimonious."

Trump Rigs GOP Rules

Our latest book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  The the 2024 race has begun.

Seema Mehta at LAT:

Strategic, surgical efforts by former President Trump’s campaign to overhaul obscure Republican Party rules in states around the nation, including California, have created an opportunity for the GOP front-runner to quickly sew up his party’s presidential nomination.

The former president’s aides have sculpted rules in dozens of states, starting even before his 2020 reelection bid. Their work is ongoing: In addition to California, state Republican parties in Nevada and Michigan have recently overhauled their rules in ways clearly designed to favor Trump.

This election, “despite a large number of candidates, only the Trump campaign went out and did the really hard grunt work of talking to state parties to try and get them to meld their rules to Donald Trump’s favor,” said Ben Ginsberg, a veteran GOP attorney who represented the presidential campaigns of George W. Bush — notably during the 2000 Florida recount — and Mitt Romney.

...

But the work started in earnest years ago — changes were made in 30 states and territories in 2019, according to Josh Putnam, a political scientist who focuses on the presidential nomination process and runs FrontloadingHQ. Among the rules changes were switching from proportional delegate allocation, where multiple candidates can win delegates in a state, to winner-take-all. In some states, delegates are also being awarded based on the outcome of party-run caucuses among GOP activists, many of whom remain loyal to Trump, rather than official state primary elections.

...

They have had a number of successes: Nevada will award all of its delegates based on the results of a Feb. 8 in-person caucus, two days after a meaningless all-mail state primary — an uncommon scenario. The primary may be canceled if no candidate files to appear on the ballot, and there is talk of the state party not allowing any candidate who appears on the ballot to compete in the caucus. Michigan will allocate most of its delegates through caucuses on March 2 rather than the state’s primary on Feb. 27. Colorado and Louisiana are considering revamping their rules so delegates are bound to a candidate during a second round of voting if no candidate receives a majority during the first round.

Operatives in California, Nevada and elsewhere say they were forced to change their rules to align with national Republican Party requirements, which include mandating some proportional delegate allocation opportunities in states where contests take place before March 15. Though they claim these modifications do not benefit any candidate, most political experts are skeptical, partly because the leaders of many of these groups are Trump loyalists.

In California, the state GOP voted in late July to award all of their 169 delegates to a candidate who receives more than 50% of the vote in the March primary, and to allocate them proportionally based on the statewide vote if no candidate clears that benchmark. The state previously awarded them by congressional district, theoretically allowing candidates to target certain regions without having to advertise across a state that contains some of the most expensive media markets in the nation.

The change is largely viewed as making the state less competitive for candidates who can’t afford to blanket the airwaves before California and 14 other states vote on March 5, Super Tuesday.

Why Is Newsom Campaigning In Red States? [Answer: Obama 2008]

 Our most recent book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics. California Governor Gavin Newsom spent much of 2022 trying to raise his profile outside the state. The effort continues.

Hannah Wiley at LAT:

Saturday’s swing through Idaho didn’t just energize Biden’s much-neglected base in such a conservative corner of the West. It helped build a future one for Newsom.

... 

The visit to Idaho, which kicked off Newsom’s second tour through red states over the past few months, was all about shoring up enthusiasm for Biden’s accomplishments and touting party accomplishments, while showering beleaguered local Democrats with some love, attention and a little campaign cash from his political action committee Campaign for Democracy.

Newsom cut the Idaho Democratic Party a $10,000 check for the event, the maximum allowed; it’s a sliver of the more than $3 million he’s funneled to Biden and Democrats in Republican-run states such as Florida, Tennessee and Mississippi over the last three months. This week, he’ll have private meetings with Democrats in Montana during an annual family Fourth of July vacation, with a stop later in Utah.

The swing through Republican-led states gives Newsom the chance to remind local Democrats how critical they are in fighting back against what he described as a GOP-led “rights regression.”

Why is he campaigning in red states that would never support him in a general election?  The answer:  they send delegates to the Democratic national convention.  In 2008, as we explain in Epic Journey Obama showed that campaigning in otherwise-neglected red states could be a cost-effective way of building up a delegate lead.

DeSantis Falters

Our latest book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  The early stages of the 2024 race have begun.

Shane Goldmacher, Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan at NYT:

In six short months from November to May, Mr. DeSantis’s 2024 run has faltered before it has even begun.

Allies have abandoned him. Tales of his icy interpersonal touch have spread. Donors have groused. And a legislative session in Tallahassee designed to burnish his conservative credentials has instead coincided with a drop in the polls.

His decision not to begin any formal campaign until after the Florida legislative session — allowing him to cast himself as a conservative fighter who not only won but actually delivered results — instead opened a window of opportunity for Mr. Trump. The former president filled the void with personal attacks and a heavy rotation of negative advertising from his super PAC. Combined with Mr. DeSantis’s cocooning himself in the right-wing media and the Trump team’s success in outflanking him on several fronts, the governor has lost control of his own national narrative.

Now, as Mr. DeSantis’s Tallahassee-based operation pivots to formally entering the race in the coming weeks, Mr. DeSantis and his allies are retooling for a more aggressive new phase. His staunchest supporters privately acknowledge that Mr. DeSantis needs to recalibrate a political outreach and media strategy that has allowed Mr. Trump to define the race.

...

A book tour that was supposed to have introduced him nationally was marked by missteps that deepened concerns about his readiness for the biggest stage. He took positions on two pressing domestic and international issues — abortion and the war in Ukraine — that generated second-guessing and backlash among some allies and would-be benefactors. And the moves he has made to appeal to the hard right — escalating his feud with Disney, signing a strict six-week abortion ban — have unnerved donors who are worried about the general election.

“I was in the DeSantis camp,” said Andrew Sabin, a metals magnate who gave the Florida governor $50,000 last year. “But he started opening his mouth, and a lot of big donors said his views aren’t tolerable.” He specifically cited abortion and Ukraine.

Working the Refs for 2024

Our latest book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  The early stages of the 2024 race have begun.

Michael Scherer, Josh Dawsey and  Maeve Reston at WP:

Donald Trump’s team has launched a nationwide campaign to buttress his chances of getting sympathetic delegates at next year’s nominating convention and identify opportunities to shape party rules that could help his campaign, according to people familiar with the plans.

The behind-the-scenes effort comes at a time when most Trump rivals have not even launched campaigns and focuses on the most esoteric part of the Republican nominating process — the state rules and party leaders that actually select presidential nominating delegates.

His team has invited state party officials to Mar-a-Lago, arranged private meet-and-greets between state leaders and Trump as he travels, endorsed state officials they believe will be supportive of him and met with senior Republican Party officials in Washington to discuss how the delegate selection process will unfold, according to the people directly familiar with the efforts, who like many for this story spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations.

Trump advisers say the outreach is less about demanding changes now and more about cultivating relationships for the upcoming months — when they could call for some rule changes in states and try to shape who the delegates are for the convention. It also shows that while they are projecting political strength, there is a realization that they will likely face a long and difficult nomination fight and potentially a messy convention, some Trump advisers say.

The Post-Primary

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 Democratic nomination contest has now ended.

Stephen Ohlemacher and Bill Barrow at  Associated Press

Presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden has agreed to let former primary rival Bernie Sanders keep hundreds of delegates he would otherwise forfeit by dropping out of the presidential race in a deal designed to avoid the bitter feelings that marred the party in 2016 and helped lead to Hillary Clinton's defeat.

Under party rules, Sanders should lose about a third of the delegates he’s won in primaries and caucuses as the process moves ahead and states select the people who will attend the Democratic National Convention. The rules say those delegates should be Biden supporters, as he is the only candidate still actively seeking the party’s nomination.

However, in a memo obtained by The Associated Press, the Biden campaign says it will work with Sanders and state parties to fill those positions with Sanders supporters. The joint memo from the Biden and Sanders campaigns was being sent to state Democratic parties on Thursday.

“We must defeat Donald Trump this fall, and we believe that this agreement will help bring the party together to get Trump out of the White House and not only rebuild America, but transform it,” the two campaigns said in a joint statement.

In some ways, the delegate count is a moot point. While Biden has yet to formally win the 1,991 delegates needed to claim the Democratic nomination on the first ballot at the convention, he is the Democrats' presumptive nominee. All of his rivals — including Sanders — have endorsed him after ending their own campaigns.

The deal, however, is a major step in the two camps avoiding the acrimony between the Democratic establishment and progressive insurgents that marked Sanders' 2016 primary fight with Clinton, the eventual nominee. In that campaign, Clinton and Sanders battled for delegates until the end of the primary calendar and then jousted over the party platform and rules well into the summer.

Why is Biden so eager to make concessions?  Rebecca Morin at USA Today:

Bernie Sanders may have endorsed Joe Biden, but almost a quarter of the Vermont senator’s supporters aren’t jumping on board just yet, according to a new poll.

Nearly 1 in 4 Sanders supporters (22%) said they would vote for a third party candidate, vote for President Donald Trump, not vote in November or were undecided about who to vote for, according to a USA TODAY/Suffolk Poll. When broken down, 2% said they would vote for Trump, 8% said they would vote for a third party candidate, 2% said they would skip voting and 8% are still undecided.

However, the vast majority of Sanders supporters (77%) said they will vote for Biden in the general election in November.

Additional Reasons Why Biden Won and Sanders Lost

 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.  

Why did Biden win and Bernie lose?

One reason was the decline of caucuses:

Sanders was really hurt by March/April caucus states switching to higher turnout primaries. Change in the Sanders vote in each (W = he won anyway):

CO: 59% -> 37% (W)
ME: 64% -> 33%
MN: 62% -> 30%
UT: 73% -> 36% (W)
ID: 78% -> 42%
WA: 78% -> 37%
AK: 80% -> 45%

— Dave Weigel (@daveweigel) April 13, 2020

Another was Biden's appeal to older voters.  People over 40, who backed Biden, turn out in greater numbers than the younger voters who supported Sadners.

Brian Arbour at The Hill:

While Biden won his party’s nomination on the strength of his fellow senior citizens and with voters over the age of 50, Sanders was the clear winner among more than just college students , as many outlets reported.

My examination of voting patterns in this year’s Democratic primaries shows the real break between Sanders and Biden is not at college graduation, but at age 40.

Data from the Fox News Voter Analysis/AP Votecast of Super Tuesday found that Sanders finished first among voters between the ages of 30 and 39, with 43 percent of the vote. Among those in their 40s, Sanders only won 31 percent of the vote.

This pattern continued in the remaining contests that voted in March. Sanders won 60 percent of the votes among thirty-somethings in Arizona, but only 39 percent of those in their 40s; a 21 percent difference. There were similar large differences between the views of those ages 30 to 39 and those 40 to 49 in Missouri (59 percent to 38 percent), Illinois (54 percent to 35 percent) and Florida (45 percent to 24 percent). The numbers show those 40 and up were much less likely to vote for Sanders.

Bernie Is 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.  

Ilma Hasan and Tatyana Monnay at Open Secrets:

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) dropped out of the presidential race Wednesday, ending his second White House bid, which revolutionized the way political candidates raise money and talk about wealthy campaign donors.

Sanders’ exit comes weeks after he ceased all fundraising activities for his campaign and raised over $2 million for charities providing resources amid the coronavirus outbreak. With former Vice President Joe Biden set to challenge President Donald Trump, 80 percent of Sanders supporters said they would back Biden, 15 percent said they would vote for Trump.

“While we are winning the ideological battle and support of so many young people and working people throughout the country, I have concluded that this battle for the Democratic nomination will not be successful,” Sanders said to his supporters during a livestream on Facebook.

Coronavirus hurt Sanders in two ways.  First, there is some evidence that the crisis moved some Democratic voters toward the "safer," more moderate candidate.  Sanders promised upheaval, but coronavirus provided all the upheaval that Americans could handle right now. 

James Bisbee of Princeton and Dan Honig of Johns Hopkins have a paper titled "Flight to Safety: 2020 Democratic Primary Election Results and COVID-19."  The abstract:

What is the impact of anxiety on vote choice? Building on a well-documented phenomenon in finance, we posit that voters will exhibit a “flight to safety” by turning toward establishment candidates. We test this theory in the context of the Democratic primary election of 2020 by examining changes in the vote shares of Bernie Sanders, a candidate promising disruptive change. We use the outbreak of the novel coronavirus across both space and time to identify a causal effect of anxiety on voting. By comparing counties with and without reported cases in their local media market, before and after the outbreak of the virus, we show that COVID-19 anxiety resulted in diminished support for Sanders as compared to his support in the 2016 election. Our findings contribute empirical evidence to an as-yet underappreciated preference for “safe” candidates in times of social anxiety

Second, it severely limited campaign activities.  Sanders had to campaign hard to catch up with Biden, but now he could not really campaign at all.  On March 13, he said: "We do more rallies than anybody else, and (they’re) often very well attended. I love to do them,This coronavirus has obviously impacted our ability to communicate with people in the traditional way that we do. That’s hurting.”

Moreover, the economic fallout made it hard for him to raise money.  He relied on small donations, particularly from working-class voters -- exactly the people who are suffering the most from the economic crisis.

Biden and Sanders

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.

Lloyd Green at The Guardian:

On Sunday, America caught a glimpse of the coming campaign: two septuagenarians battling each other without a live audience applauding and goading. The debate changed nothing, but at the end of the evening Joe Biden was sitting on the cusp of the Democratic nomination. Come Tuesday, the former vice-president is poised for lopsided wins in Arizona, Florida, Illinois and Ohio.

Without Hillary Clinton as a foil and target, Sanders’ luster appears gone. It is no longer his time, if it ever was. As Biden put it: “We have problems we have to solve now. What’s a revolution going to do? Disrupt everything in the meantime?”

Faced with a pestilential presidency, the Democrats are ready to rally to around the Delaware Democrat. Even better for Biden, so too may be the rest of the country. Nationally, the latest polls give Biden a nine-point lead over Donald Trump. Whether Biden can sustain that edge remains to be seen.

Amid a pandemic, a battered stock market and zero-interest rates, a president disclaiming his own responsibility is more than America can afford or bear. Unalloyed self-absolution and the Oval Office are a toxic brew. A Biden presidency would not be flashy but it would definitely be engaged.

John F. Harris at Politico:

The assumption that there is no practical way the Democratic Party can put forward a presidential ticket with two white men has become so widely accepted in journalistic and political circles that a major development at last night’s debate was greeted in some quarters with something of a shrug.

But Joseph Biden’s firm public commitment that he would select a woman as his running mate in the event he stays atop the Democratic race and is the party’s 2020 nominee is historically unprecedented: No major candidate has ever made such a pledge based on demographic characteristics, nor has one narrowed the field of potential vice presidential nominees this early in the year, several months before the decision is usually made.

Biden, African Americans, and Proportional Allocation

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.

Before South Carolina and Super Tuesday, it was plausible to foresee Sanders doing well in South Carolina and then locking up the nomination on Super Tuesday.  In a splintered field where the other candidates barely fell short of the 15% threshold, Sanders might have won a wildly disproportionate share of delegates.

Instead, Biden romped in South Carolina and in most of the Super Tuesday states.

There are two big reasons why Biden is now a favorite to win the nomination.

First, he has the support of African American voters -- who have been the nominating wing of the Democratic Party since 1992.

  In July, Steve Kornacki wrote at NBC:

Who won the black vote in the Democratic presidential primary?

Since 1992, no candidate has won the Democratic nomination for president without winning a majority of black vote. Black voters are likely to account for one of every four primary ballots cast in 2020.

Year	Candidate	Eventual nominee
2016	Hillary Clinton (won 77 percent of the black vote)	Hillary Clinton
2008	Barack Obama (82 percent)	Barack Obama
2004	John Kerry (56 percent)	John Kerry
2000	Al Gore (86 percent)	Al Gore
1992	Bill Clinton (70 percent)	Bill Clinton
1988	Jesse Jackson (92 percent)	Michael Dukakis
1984	Jesse Jackson (77 percent)	Walter Mondale
1980	Ted Kennedy (45 percent)	Jimmy Carter

Second, Biden has turned 2020 into a two-person race and built an early advantage in the delegate count.   As we pointed out in Epic Journey (p. 94) and Defying the Odds (p. 57), is a Democratic nomination candidate is hard put to catch up after lagging in the delegate count.  With winner-take-all primaries, such a candidate might be able to leapfrog the leader with a big win in a big state, but Democratic rules effectively bar such an approach.  As we explained in the 2016 book:

Under Democratic rules, each candidate's share of a state's convention delegates is roughly proportional to his or her vote share.  Even if one candidate wins a plurality of the vote in a state, another candidate can still take a substantial number of delegates.  So once one candidate builds up a sizable lead in delegates, it is hard for rivals to erase it.

State of the D Race

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.

Astead W. Herndon and Shane Goldmacher at NYT:

Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts told her staff she was dropping out of the presidential race on Thursday, ending a run defined by an avalanche of policy plans that aimed to pull the Democratic Party to the left and appealed to enough voters to make her briefly a front-runner last fall.

”I know that when we set out, this was not the call you ever wanted to hear,” Ms. Warren said on the call. “It is not the call I ever wanted to make.”

Though her vision excited progressives, that did not translate to enough excitement from the party’s more working-class and diverse base, and her support had eroded by Super Tuesday. In her final weeks as a candidate she effectively drove former Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg of New York, a centrist billionaire, out of the race with debate performances that flashed her evident skills and political potential.

[By nailing Bloomberg, she inadvertently helped Biden by wounding his most formidable competitor for center-left voters. -- JJP]

Super Tuesday exit polls

Reid J. Epstein and Stephanie Saul at NYT:

They were disaffected Republicans in affluent Washington suburbs. They were shipyard employees in Norfolk. And they were health care workers in Petersburg.

They all came together on Super Tuesday in an extraordinary surge to the polls in Virginia, propelling former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. to an overwhelming victory in a state that just days earlier had seemed up for grabs. The triumph was part of a 10-state sweep for Mr. Biden that resurrected his presidential candidacy, and established him as the centrist Democrat who would go head-to-head with Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, the standard-bearer of the party’s liberal wing.

In Virginia on Tuesday, it was no contest. Mr. Biden won with 53 percent of the vote, 30 percentage points more than Mr. Sanders. Voter turnout broke a state record for a presidential primary, and was especially high in suburban areas near Washington and near Richmond and Norfolk, as well as in regions with large African-American populations. Petersburg, a mostly-black city south of Richmond, went 75 percent for the former vice president.

Biden leads in the March 10 Michigan primary  and has a prohibitive edge in the March 17 Florida primary:

As we explain in Epic Journey (p. 94), proportional allocation makes it hard for a challenger to catch up once the other candidate has a substantial lead in delegates.

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.”