Opinion: What Happens Next in the Democratic Primary

I’m sure you’re very well aware by now that former Vice President Joe Biden over-performed massively on Super Tuesday. After being expected to only win five or six contests at the most, Biden was able to win eleven, establishing himself as the clear frontrunner moving forward. This surprise showing led to underperformance from the rest of field, particularly from Elizabeth Warren and Michael Bloomberg. Their results were so dismal that in the past two days, both of these candidates have dropped out from the race. It’s now a two-man fight between Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, and Tulsi Gabbard.

All jokes aside: We’re reaching the final and most important stages of the Democratic primary. In my last opinion post, I explained the DNC’s rules for becoming the party’s nominee. Basically, the candidate who does so will either secure 1,991 nominations from primaries, or will be pushed over that number by superdelegates at the Democratic National Convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin over the summer. The odds are most likely that no candidate will win outright, but if one were to do so, it would be Joe Biden.

Endorsements from Amy Klobuchar, Pete Buttigieg, and Michael Bloomberg indicate a clear moderate coalition behind Biden as the establishment figurehead candidate to beat, which will be difficult to do as he’s polling so well in the states moving forward such as Florida, Ohio, and Illinois. The world is waiting with baited-breath to see who Elizabeth Warren will endorse, if anyone. If she endorses Biden, the race is over. If she endorses Sanders, the race is likely still over, but things might get end slightly more interestingly.

The March 15th debate between Biden and Sanders is going to be very telling, and hopefully more substantive and policy-focused than the ones which came before it. I expect this race to get uglier before it ends, unfortunately, as both of the candidates left are looking for knockout punches. If I had to make predictions moving forward, they would be: Elizabeth Warren endorses Joe Biden, Biden dominates the rest of the primaries, and becomes the party’s nominee with a large plurality at the Convention over the summer. What do you think will happen next? Thanks for reading.

Opinion: How Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar Dropping Out Will Impact Super Tuesday

The first four Democratic Primary contests were all relatively straightforward. After South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg’s surprising and narrow victory at the disastrous Iowa caucus kickoff, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders went on to dominate both the New Hampshire Primary and Nevada Caucus, cementing his place as the frontrunner early-on and moving forward. Then came the atrocity of a debate days before South Carolina’s primary, where Joe Biden ended up outperforming the polls and winning handily, reestablishing himself as a worthy contender moving forward in the race. I, along with most, didn’t think much would change in the few days between Saturday’s primary and the upcoming Super Tuesday, but low and behold, a wrench has been thrown into the race with the sudden departure of Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar from the race.

The Democratic National Committee has rules which establish that each candidate needs to surpass a viability threshold of fifteen percent support in order to begin accumulating pledged delegates. If a candidate is able to secure a majority of the delegates (1991 of them) before the Democratic National Convention, then that candidate automatically becomes the party’s nominee for the General Election. If not, then there is what is called a contested convention, and DNC officials known as Superdelegates vote and effectively select the nominee they want to choose, regardless of whether there is a candidate with more popular votes or a plurality of delegates at that point. Pretty complicated, but those are the primary rules in a nutshell.

Ideologically similar candidates split support from one another, and a crowded field of likeminded candidates often sabotages each candidate involved. In this particular primary, the moderate / establishment candidates had been pulling support from one another, and that trend looked likely to continue into Super Tuesday’s many contests. This led to Bernie Sanders becoming a clear frontrunner, as his only progressive competition up until this point had been Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren. By dropping out of the race and endorsing Joe Biden within just days of Super Tuesday, moderate candidates Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar are signaling to the electorate that the establishment is rallying all of their support behind Joe Biden for the nomination in an attempt to prevent Bernie Sanders from securing the highly-coveted majority of earned delegates. The Democratic primary has been known for pulling these sorts of tricks before… see 2016.

At this point I really only see two possible outcomes for this Democratic Primary. The first is that the young demographic shows up on Super Tuesday unlike they did in South Carolina, and that Bernie Sanders secures a nomination from a majority of delegates in the coming months. The chances of this happening are slimmer now that support will be consolidated behind Joe Biden. The second outcome is that the young vote will stay home as they are infamously known for, and that Joe Biden will be handed the nomination at a contested convention over the summer. We will likely know which of these two paths we are headed down after tomorrow’s votes, and there is no way to known for sure what is going to happen.

Politics are increasingly unpredictable in today’s climate. The electorate doesn’t get to know what happens behind closed doors, but it’s certainly easy to connect the dots and infer about connections between events and candidates. Either the Democratic Party will continue to implode over the coming days and months, or they will rally behind a popular candidate capable of defeating Donald Trump in the 2020 election. Tomorrow will be very telling, and I can’t wait to see what happens. We shall see. Things certainly just got a lot more interesting. Thanks for reading.