US election: desperate Democrats can’t pin their hopes on Sanders

By the time Bernie Sanders could claim a narrow victory over Pete Buttigieg in the New Hampshire primary yesterday, Joe Biden’s departure from the scene seemed timely. He soon popped up in South Carolina to remind us that the state, along with Iowa, wasn’t even the real contest. Surrounded by a more diverse platform of supporters than at any time in the past few weeks, Biden looked re-energised as he explained how South Carolina represents the proper makeup of the party, the nation, and his own caucus. The fight, Biden said, begins there in 18 days. He might be right.

He might also be too late. New Hampshire, like Iowa before it, was a testament to the Democratic Party’s ability to overcomplicate what should have been the simple process of picking a popularly electable candidate. Instead, they might have terminally wounded their front runner, whilst boosting the chances of self-identified “democratic socialist” Sanders as well as a man, “Mayor Pete”, who disingenuously maintains that he represents a bold future of American politics simply because he’s young and a military veteran. The fact that Buttigieg is gay still remains the elephant in the room, barely (if ever) mentioned in hours of network coverage that still devote time to questioning if America is ready to vote for a female president.

That America’s media seem uncomfortable tackling a subject that might open them up to accusations of homophobia reveals the degree to which the US is still uncomfortable discussing socially liberal issues. Make no mistake – this is a real problem for Democrats in a climate where identity too heavily affects the way politics is discussed.

Take, for example, the response to pundit Donny Deutsch on MSNBC last week, when he dared say about Elizabeth Warren that “[t]here’s a certain stridentness [sic] to her… Do we want to invite her into our bedrooms and living rooms every day for four years?” The condemnation online and in print media that followed was as predictable as it was unhelpful.

Yet Deutsch has correctly identified a weakness about Warren’s candidacy that wasn’t entirely about her progressive agenda and it was a concern clearly shared by many voters. Warren’s numbers in New Hampshire last night were almost as bad as those for Biden but, for her, perhaps more damning. If the Massachusetts senator does this poorly in a neighbouring state, there’s clearly something that’s stopping her getting traction and that “something” might be the vulgar stuff of personality, tone, and presentation.

As loved as she is by her base, there’s nothing sexist about others (even if they’re male) pointing out how they feel. Last night, the eminently respected senator Michael Bennet also withdrew from the race, proving again that even the best candidates can slip for some indeterminable reason. The same is true of Andrew Yang, who also withdrew. His quirky approach to politics had endeared him to some but irritated others.

In the case of Biden, the indeterminable reason for his campaign’s decline lies in the nature of the man who Saturday Night Life still ridicules for the way he makes his supporters worry whenever he opens his mouth. This is unlikely to change any more than his capacity to look every one of his 77 years. For a candidate who set out to prove that he was spiritually younger and fitter than Donald Trump (four years his junior) his performances have done quite the opposite.

In New Hampshire this week Biden turned on a supporter, calling them a “lying, dog-faced pony soldier”. His team was quick to point out that he was playfully quoting a western from the 1940s but the damage was done. No matter how many times he drops “hey man” into his speech, he cannot disguise how much he resembles a man out of his time.

We head towards South Carolina, then, with Bernie Sanders streaking ahead as the only viable candidate in the progressive lane. For centrists, Pete Buttigieg has a good lead over the other moderate candidate, Amy Klobuchar, whose own rise in the polls is well deserved. She has repeatedly shown her chops in the debates, topping months of small victories with a barnstorming performance in New Hampshire. If there’s a candidate who doesn’t appear to have a ceiling to her support, it’s Klobuchar. She also, as yet, doesn’t appear to have an obvious weakness.

Anyone of them is more than capable of beating Trump in November but, worrying to Democrats, none is certain. The latest Quinnipiac polls suggest that Sanders has the best chance of the current candidates, winning 51% to Trump’s 43%. Next comes Klobuchar with 49% to 43%. Lastly comes Buttigieg with a statistically tight 47% to 43%.

This data is hard to extrapolate this far out, but the numbers do highlight the Democrats’ problem. Sander’s good polls belie the common wisdom that “socialist” is going to be a vote loser come November (a very reasonable argument). It should also not be overlooked how closely he is identified with divisive figures such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC). She routinely provides Trump with the ammunition to portray Democrats as too far to the left.

Klobuchar, meanwhile, is rising the polls, but many fear Trump relishes a race against another woman. Lastly, Buttigieg’s head-to-head numbers suggest a concern in the wider public that’s not properly factored in due to his success among liberals. Again, it might well be the issue of his sexuality. Trump’s relationship with women might have been one of his weaknesses but, make no mistake, in the heightened identity politics that will accompany a Buttigieg nomination, Trump’s infidelities will play as a positive virtue to the socially conservative parts of his base.

All of which explains the other dynamic of the past week: the emergence of Michael Bloomberg as a genuine contender. The same Quinnipiac poll gives Bloomberg a lead of 51% to 42% over Trump, the best of any candidate. It might be a theoretical lead but it represents a noticeable mood change, with his polling improving even among black voters where it was previously thought he would struggle due to his support of “stop-and-frisk”.

Consider what happened early in the New Hampshire voting. The small town of Dixville Notch prides itself on being the first place in New Hampshire to declare and that they did when its five residents cast their votes on the stroke of midnight on Tuesday. The winner, surprising everybody, was Mike Bloomberg who wasn’t even on the ticket in New Hampshire. Two of the town’s Democrats wrote in his name. More notable was the vote of the town’s one Republican, who also wrote in the name of the former New York mayor.

For many moderate Democrats, Bloomberg offers their last chance to reclaim this contest. He will also bring the underlying tension between the two wings of the party to the fore. Sander’s supporters already question Bloomberg’s place in the contest, pointedly describing the former Republican mayor as an “oligarch” who is using his money to buy the nomination. Moderates simply see him as offering them the most likely path to victory in November.

Both might well be right, but this sets up a battle between ideology and pragmatism that must be resolved before the Democrats go into convention in July. If not, Democrats might begin to understand the truth of Lincoln’s words, when he warned that “a house divided against itself, cannot stand”. Certainly, it’s hard to see how it could stand against a man like Trump who, as recent months have proved, will do almost anything to win re-election.