My Advice to Fellow Super Tuesday Voters: United You Win in the Fall
My advice to Super Tuesday Democrats is simple: vote for whom you think would be the best president and stop worrying so much about beating Trump. Then enthusiastically support the eventual nominee.
Yes, beating Donald Trump is the top priority, but honestly no one really knows who the best candidate would be. (BTW: I vote in the Super Tuesday state of Virginia.)
Pundits claim to, but they mostly end up saying the candidate they agree with most would also be the strongest candidate. The name for this is confirmation bias — or believing what you want to believe.
I don’t mean this advice to be a cop out. I don’t think assessing electability is inherently impossible. It’s just that I have spent weeks listening to experts and going through data, and the one conclusion that seems most certain is:
Any of the major candidates can win in the fall if the Dems stick together; and none of them will if they don’t.
Of course, the data do show differences among the candidates. First, Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden currently hold a small but evident advantage over the other candidates versus Trump. Sometimes that is because other candidates are less well known to the voters who are therefore undecided about them. In contrast, Trump is almost always stuck in the 41%-43% range in national polls regardless of the nominee. But don’t take my word for it, just look at the most recent Fox News poll on the subject.
Second, Bernie and Biden are usually neck-and-neck in terms of who would do better against Trump. This is perhaps surprising to the Democratic establishment who assumes Sanders would be a disaster, yet this worst-case scenario is not proven in the polling to date. The numbers do indicate the composition of their coalitions would be different — with Biden’s support having more blacks and older Americans and Sanders with more Latinos and youth — but the size would be about the same.
BTW, I’m not saying that Sanders won’t collapse after Putin’s bots finish attacking him for being too close to Russia in the past. I’m also not saying that Biden won’t resume his public opinion freefall, if the party establishment secures the nomination for him. I’m just saying that at this point the data can’t predict this kind of future for us, so you might as well use a Ouija board to figure that out.
With Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar dropping out of the race, the dynamic changes but not by much. For now, Elizabeth Warren and Mike Bloomberg are still challenging Sanders and Biden from the left and right respectively.
Bloomberg remains a definite wild card. Of all the candidates he is the most untested (as his debate performances proved), and therefore his polling numbers — propped up by big spending — are the most speculative. Warren’s takedown of him put troubling issues out in the open. He did well in the aforementioned Fox national poll, but he has underperformed a little bit in state polling in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. But if you really believe he would be the best president, then go for him.
Bloomberg’s theory of the case has always been Sanders is awful and Biden is fading, so he needed to step in as an alternative to Sanders (and Warren). With Biden no longer fading, his case is less clear. Indeed, it would be ironic if he split the moderate vote paving the way for Sanders. But even more, it would be a sad comment both on the state of American politics as well as the Democratic party, if the only way they could win is to use their billionaire (who used to be a Republican) to beat the other billionaire (who used to be a Democrat).
Super Tuesday is critical for Warren, who could still come from behind. Even if she can’t pull ahead, a strong showing could position her as a potential Vice-Presidential running mate. She would pair surprisingly well with Biden, who could use some help with women and will need a bridge to the disaffected left should he be nominated. Last year, before her flap over Medicare-for-all, she had frankly run the best campaign of any of the candidates and would bring much needed energy to the ticket. But FYI: don’t expect to ever see a Warren-Bloomberg unity ticket.
The idea of voting for whom you think would be the best president has other virtues than simplicity. By focusing too much on electability, the voting rank-and-file is missing its chance to say what the party actually should stand for. The party needs to sort this out anyway, since many of its members are presently in outright revolt. But more importantly, if the party can’t come together on the content of their message other than “Dump Trump,” they will find themselves at a disadvantage in persuading others in the general election.
But no matter how you vote in the primaries, please remember in November the differences among these Democratic candidates are much smaller than the fundamental threat we all face from a Trump presidency. Then go Dump Trump.
