2020 Presidential Primary Candidates: Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren
Day three of my presidents week coverage focuses on candidates labeled as the left wing of the Democratic field, Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. Looking at the bigger picture, what constitutes “left” in the United States would be considered “centrist” in most democracies.
Each candidate has a different persona, with Bernie representing the battle tested outsider/activist niche, and Warren being the law professor who’s persisted in an epic battle against the corporate establishment.
Both candidates recognize the dysfunctional nature of the political and economic systems. I’d say Sanders counts heavily on activist pressure to accomplish much of his agenda, and Warren believes she can build a insider/outsider coalition to do the same.
Although the right/center/status quo types are already tagging these candidates with cold-war era epithets, the reality is that no matter who gets the nomination, variants on the words socialism and communism will be used by Republicans. They’ve been doing it since the 1930s and aren’t about to change.
Frankly, it’s time to put those characterizations to rest. Today, the primary contradiction in world politics is between authoritarianism and democracy.
https://twitter.com/VABVOX/status/1229931915358109696?s=20
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About this series: I will be voting this week, and although I’ve maintained a fluid attitude about who will get their circle filled in on my California Primary ballot, my political lean has been and is towards Senator Elizabeth Warren.
Monday’s coverage focused on Biden and Bloomberg. Tuesday, I covered Buttigieg and Klochubar. Thursday, I’ll review this week’s debate. Friday, I’ll turn in my ballot. I’ll wait until after Wednesday’s debate, which I consider to be a critical juncture, to make my final decision.
For my coverage on local political offices and judicial contests, go here.
For a list of assorted voter guides worth perusing, go here.
For my take on local ballot measures, go here.
NBC/MSNBC, along with the Nevada Independent, will host tonight’s debate, with Vanessa Hauc, Lester Holt, Hallie Jackson, Jon Ralston, and Chuck Todd acting as moderators. Broadcast time is 6 pm PST. It will also air live in Spanish on Universo, as well as the Noticias Telemundo mobile app and website and Noticias Telemundo’s Facebook page.
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Reuters/Ipsos commissioned national opinion polls in 2015 and 2019, looking to discern the mood of the electorate going into the general election.
The latest results conclude Americans’ interest in voting is growing faster in large cities dominated by Democrats than in conservative rural areas. Voter turnout in 2020, if this trend is correct, could shatter the all time record (63.8%), set in 1960.
Michael McDonald, a University of Florida political scientist who studies voter turnout, said a lot of Democrats also may be sitting out the primaries “because they don’t see a lot of distinction between these candidates.”
When Trump gets on the ballot in November, McDonald said: “There will be much sharper interest in voting.”
By Election Day, McDonald expects as many as two-thirds of the voting-age population may cast ballots, a record level of participation for a U.S. presidential election. (Emphasis mine)
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Senator Bernie Sanders, in case you’ve not seen the most recent polling, has gone past the so-called (30%) ceiling on his popularity. Today’s Washington Post national sampling shows him (32%) with a 16 point lead over a rapidly deflating former Vice President Joe Biden.
Right behind Biden is Bloomberg, followed by Warren, with Butiigieg and Klobuchar in the bottom position. (Bloomberg is already peaking, I think, as daily polling shows his favorability index sinking by 6 points since February 11th.)
Polling in California by PPIC (link not available at presstime) shows a similar spread, with the exception of Klochubar not being near the top.
The thing to remember in California is that candidates must crack 15% for a share of the state-wide delegate count (the same goes House district by House district).
At this point, on a statewide basis, Sanders would collect all the delegates.
Electability surveys now show Sanders beating Trump by margins similar or greater than Biden and Bloomberg. Never-Trumpers and old-line Democratic types are in a near panic, since they think the Vermont Senator can’t win.
Sanders is facing a few ongoing challenges to his credibility, ones his opponents hope will nibble away at his lead.
At a CNN town hall Tuesday night, Senator Sanders said he would not be releasing more complete medical records, beyond the letters from three doctors he released in late December. Defending that decision on CNN Wednesday morning, the candidate’s press secretary Briahna Joy Gray compared calls for Sanders’ medical records to birtherism. (Ugh. Not a good look. Why give ammunition to assholes?)
Unions with a more conservative leadership have been pushing back against Sanders’ call for Medicare-for-All, saying they don’t want to lose hard earned benefits.
This is a variant on the “I want more choice” trojan horse created by trade groups representing hospitals, insurance companies and pharmaceutical makers who banded together to form the Partnership for America’s Health Care Future in 2018.
After the public release of a scorecard by the powerful Nevada Culinary union criticizing the Vermont senator over his position on Medicare for all by saying that he would “end Culinary healthcare” if elected president, a wave of personal on-line attacks aimed at the leadership (which hasn’t endorsed any candidate) triggered national coverage of the so-called “Bernie Bros.”
Sanders has disavowed the attacks, claiming that the trolls among his followers are not different than any other candidate’s more rabid followers.
All of this blowback doesn’t change the fact that Sanders has the largest campaign organization in the field in many states and the massive donor base which provides a cushion against the “advice” candidates with larger donors get about watering down their message.
The Vermont Senator’s strategy has been to simply win the Democratic primary and worry about the consequences for the general election later. It is working for him so far: he is the definitive front runner for the Democratic nomination.
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https://twitter.com/RWPUSA/status/1230156061581201408?s=20
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Senator Elizabeth Warren is on the receiving end of a political/media double-whammy.
Not only is she the candidate with fleshed out plans on how to tackle the nation’s systemic and economic failures, she’s also a woman of a certain age.
Believe it or not, the reality for women past the traditional childbearing years, is that they tend to “disappear” where they’re in male dominated circumstances. Go ahead. Ask just about any woman who’s been there. I’ll wait…
On Tuesday as polling was being released, Senator Warren’s name didn’t make it into the results, not in just one survey, but two.
The pollster’s excuse for this omission was that even though Warren was ranked fourth in overall polling, Amy Klochubar (who ranked sixth) was included in the head to head matchups because her campaign was ascendant.
So then there’s this...
https://twitter.com/arlenparsa/status/1229975312034914305?s=20
Okay, some intern screwed up the graphic…
And then this Emerson poll…
https://twitter.com/Politics_Polls/status/1229957722596089856?s=20
https://twitter.com/CharlesPPierce/status/1230208033210478594?s=20
So yeah, Warren supporters are pushing back against what they see as a lack of coverage. The New York Times reacted with a story:
She is not cratering or surging, neither the most likely to win nor at risk of immediately dropping out, a 40-degree day surrounded by candidates who are hot and cold. Her staff members and plenty of allies argue that as a result, she is being ignored by the news media and some voters during a pivotal moment in the primary, and she is at risk of becoming less relevant in the nominating process — something her campaign is now trying to reverse.
Kerry Eleveld at Daily Kos noted:
Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren doesn't have time to grouse about the press coverage her campaign is getting from the pundit class. It's so last century. “This is what women face all the time," Warren told NBC's Ali Vitali when asked about the double standard for women. "It's always too much of this or too much of that. But you put your head down, do your job and you keep on going.”
Indeed, the only female candidate the media ever likes is the one they haven't yet had the opportunity to slice and dice with a thousand conflicting critiques. (Smile!/Don't! Attack!/Unite! Get aggressive!/Rude!)
So how’s it all going to end?
Hey, it’s the primary. Things can get rough. But the one thing about Elizabeth Warren’s history that nobody can deny is that she persists.
Here’s David Atkins, writing at Washington Monthly:
Where does Warren go from here? It’s hard to say. She is famously persistent and refuses to be anything other than who she is. The entry of Mike Bloomberg, a paragon of exactly the sort of Wall Street-friendly billionaire she has made it her political life’s work to oppose, potentially gives her an opportunity to regain her footing and reassert herself as a champion of both policy and the middle class.
There would be many salutary effects of a Sanders nomination in terms of pushing the Democratic Party toward a more progressive vision (so long as Sanders’ most toxic supporters can be sidelined and avoid becoming the face the campaign and the party.) But it would be a terrible shame if one of the lessons of the 2020 election cycle were that honesty, decency and attention to detail–as well as just being a woman in a world where Donald Trump festers in the White House–were seen as lethal drawbacks for a candidate rather than the strengths they rightly ought to be. And it would be a stain on the Democratic Party if a woman attempting to unite the two factions of the party after an ugly rift in 2016 were left high and dry by both sides in their respective attempts to dominate the other.
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For those of you who are confused about the Medicare for All debate, HBO’s John Oliver offers up a (NSFW- F-bombs) explanation.
https://youtu.be/7Z2XRg3dy9k
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Lead graphic: So, yeah, the fading on Warren IS deliberate, meant to illustrate what's happening to her lately in the media.