Year: 2015

[T]his early version of Sanders appears to be an eerie carbon copy of the Howard Dean 2003 campaign—wildly popular with the party's white, educated, middle-class base ... and few others. The most recent CNN national poll had Sanders getting 19 percent of the white Democratic vote, and just 9 percent of the non-white vote. Clinton's numbers were the opposite, getting 53 percent of the white vote, but 61 percent of the non-white vote. Given that non-whites will make up around 40 percent of primary voters, Sanders needs to gain with those groups if he is to have any shot at the big upset. And that's not even considering the huge gender gap already emerging. In that CNN poll, Clinton gets 50 percent of men, and a whopping 63 percent among women. Meanwhile, Sanders gets 20 percent of men, and just 9 percent of women. We see that same gender gap in Iowa, where Clinton gets 46 percent of men and 56 percent of women. Meanwhile, Sanders gets 37 percent of men, and 29 percent of women. Being a white male is finally a disadvantage somewhere. Clinton benefits from an age gap—in the CNN national poll she gets 61 percent of voters over the age of 50, and 53 percent of those under 50. Sanders is stronger with younger voters, which is exciting, sure, but a group of voters not generally inclined to vote. And then there's education. Sanders gets 19 percent of the vote from Democrats who have attended college. But he gets just eight percent from those who haven't. So younger, whiter, more male, and more educated. Yup, that's the Dean coalition, and unless Sanders can bust beyond it, his fate will be the same as Dean's.

But across the board, Republican candidates are committed to adjusting the status quo backward. They oppose the Iran negotiations, the normalization of relations with Cuba, and the very notion of an international agreement to curb global warming; they oppose administrative policies, like deferred action and overtime pay rules, that improve the lives of minorities and workers; and they oppose social legislation like the Affordable Care Act. Of the leading GOP presidential candidates, Walker holds the most extreme view that the Supreme Court’s decision to legalize same-sex marriage should be reversed and returned to the states. But all of these candidates oppose same-sex marriage, and when conflicts arise between supporters and opponents of marriage equality, they will side with the opponents. Taken as a whole, these issue positions will make it difficult for Republicans to cast themselves as forward-looking candidates. But the substantive developments themselves share a thematic quality that will do more than complicate the GOP’s branding strategy. They are all designed to force Republican candidates to make unreasonable promises that will be hard to defend in a general election, and harder to execute should a Republican become president. Obama is using his first-mover advantage not just to shore up his own legacy, but to set the terms of the coming presidential campaign favorably for the Democratic nominee.