Feeling the Bern

Feeling the Bern

The results of the Iowa Caucuses and the New Hampshire Primary are in and the Democratic candidates are off to Nevada and South Carolina for the next round of delegate gathering in their long march to the DNC Convention. Just to recap, this month there are the Nevada Caucuses and the South Carolina Primary followed by the March 3rd so-called Super Tuesday with primaries in Virginia, Vermont, Utah, Texas, Tennessee, Oklahoma, North Carolina, Minnesota, Massachusetts, Maine, Colorado, California, Arkansas, Alabama, Samoa and Democrats Abroad. That will be eighteen states with the rest having primaries in what’s left of March, April, May and June. The DNC is on July 13th and the general election is on November 3rd. The year is just beginning and it feels like it will be a fast-paced and very busy year for us all, none more than the candidates themselves as they winnow the field and gird their loins for the battle of our collective lives and for democracy itself against the incredulous bulwark of the Trump Republican machinery.

At the DNC Convention in July in Milwaukee there will be 4,750 total delegates. 3,979 of those will be pledged by virtue of the state primaries and caucuses and 771 will be automatic delegates, known as Superdelegates and consisting of members of Congress, governors and other distinguished party members whose votes are not committed by virtue of specific votes. So far, a total of 64 of the pledged delegates are decided with Pete Buttigieg having the lead with 22 and Bernie Sanders next in line with 21. Nevertheless, the pundit talking line this morning is that Bernie is in the lead because he has been through this course before and has on-the-ground support in places where Buttigieg is more untested. The case for Buttigieg’s more tenuous position is based on the concern that he will not appeal to black and brown voters because of his problems in South Bend and perhaps because they are more ethnically adverse to a gay candidate. Neither one of those reasons sounds very convincing or compelling and I am more inclined to accept the views of several African American pundits on MSNBC that have said that the black vote is a very pragmatic vote and it is less likely to move in the more progressive direction represented by Bernie and more in the direction of a moderate like Pete. Time and South Carolina will probably tell that tale so we don’t have that long to wait for that evidence.

What I want to discuss is this obvious and well-noted rift in the Democratic Party between the progressive wing and the moderate wing. I suspect it is fair to suggest that Bernie and Elizabeth Warren own the progressive side and a combination of Joe Biden, Pete Buttigieg, and Amy Klobuchar own the moderate path. Of course there is Michael Bloomberg sitting out these first two contests but ready to pounce on the next spate of primaries. Bloomberg is even confident enough (or perhaps just rich enough) to be filling in behind the New Hampshire Primary by setting up a New Hampshire office to address the state’s electorate in the general election. That is actually a noteworthy and amazing piece of evidence that Bloomberg is committed to ousting Donald Trump as much as he says he is, regardless of the outcome of the convention. But the fact remains that the more this progressive/moderate rift impales the Democratic Party, the more the odds of a Bloomberg option look better and better.

I just lost a bet with someone the other day about the use of the term “low odds”. Unlike the term “low probability”, when you say something has low odds it is like at the racetrack when the odds on a horse are low odds and means that the horse is more favored to win. As we go forward into this election cycle I suspect that little reminder (Wikipedia says it is a very common mistake, which makes me feel only marginally better for having made it) will prove very useful. So let’s rephrase and say that the more the Party polarizes in the run-up to the convention, the lower the odds of a Bloomberg surge to the front of the pack becomes.

Everyone likes to say that can only be in a brokered convention situation, but I guess I don’t understand political party dynamics well enough to know if that is true. I know that a brokered convention occurs if no one gets 2/3 of the delegate vote on the first ballot. That is being interpreted by NBC News as 1,991 of the 3,979 pledged delegates (a simple majority) that are needed to swing others including the other pledged delegates and the Superdelegates to vote for that candidate. One thing is for certain, since this system was put in place in 1832, the view was that a brokered convention is the most likely course if the Party is highly polarized. Yet again the founding fathers (even those of the Democratic Party in particular like Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and Andrew Jackson) seemed smart enough to anticipate that there would be times when such polarization exists. I know we all feel we are living in the most extraordinary and challenging of times, but these dudes were astute enough to see it all coming and here it is in spades. I can’t imagine anything happening in the next five months to lessen the polarization, so brokered convention here we come and perhaps Bloomberg and his white cavalry stand ready to ride in to the rescue.

Our friend Bernie Sanders is the biggest single reason for the polarization. He practically brought the Party to a halt in 2016, though some would say that the Party halted him in an underhanded manner. While Warren has done a great job of putting policy elements together and explaining the progressive line of thought to people, it remains Bernie who has galvanized the fervent masses to his cause. I respect Bernie for his beliefs and his passions, but I fear that galvanized thinking stands the chance of backfiring like it did in 2016 on Hilary if we are not careful. I am not the only one to own this fear, it is much discussed and debated among the pundits.

So, the question is, if I am in such agreement with the progressive agenda (which I tend to be), why do I support a more moderate candidate and approach? The answer is simple. It is not just the Party that is polarized, but it’s the entire nation and perhaps the entire world that is polarized. I do not like many of the conservative policies for I find them short-sighted, selfish and uncaring. They do not like the progressive (to them socialistic) policies because they consider them wasteful, unmotivating, perhaps naive and down-right Un-American. Bernie is the Head Commissar of that ideology to them. We must do what we can to unpolarize the U.S. and the world for without it we will be in a war amongst ourselves or at best chaos for far too long. A moderate path and indeed a Bloomberg path would do more to bring the country together than any other candidacy. That is a degree of likelihood and success that I hope we can achieve this year. I hope all the ad money will make more people aware of this great option and maybe its our ultimate salvation to not feeling the burn of Bernie.