NEW HAMPSHIRE–UMass Lowell/7News: Sanders 61, Clinton 30
NEW HAMPSHIRE–Trump 38, Cruz 12, Kasich 9, Bush 9, Rubio 8, Christie 7, Fiorina 2, Carson 3, Paul 3, Santorum 1
Jason330 has come out for Sanders, though he is happy to vote for each candidate in the end, especially if the primary produces a battle tested Hillary Clinton. I, as you know, am a strong supporter of Hillary Clinton and I am not going to change my mind on that nor apologize for it. I believe Bernie Sanders would fail as our nominee, leading us to a Mondale or Dukakis-style defeat. And if you don’t see that possibility, and the risk inherent in nominating someone who pledges to raise taxes on the middle class, not the wealthy, but the middle class, by 20%, then you are a, what is the term Jason used to describe me, oh yes, a puerile irredeemable naive misanthrope. It’s like you have learned nothing at all about Republicans and Independents and even Democrats your entire life. I mean, the commercials write themselves.
And the worst part is Bernie Sanders has pledged that he will be another Michael Dukakis and John Kerry in that he will not fight back with negative campaigning against the Republicans to defend himself. Fuck that. I’ll go with the fighting Clinton.
I will of course support and vote for him if he is our nominee, if only because to do otherwise will make me responsible for whatever Republican wins, but that does not change the fact that the Democratic Party will be wiped out in Congress and every where else, not that Bernie cares, since he is not a Democrat nor does he support any Democratic candidates with his campaign money.
So game on. The Battle is joined.
Now let’s get back to the politics of it. Hillary got the win, albeit a close one, but she will no doubt take it and be happy. And Clinton supporters should be happy, and Bernie supporters should be concerned. Why? Because the worst case scenario for her campaign and the best case scenario for the Sanders campaign occurred in that the turnout for Sanders was higher than even the Sanders campaign expected, and Hillary still won. She took the punch and kept standing.
Now Bernie faces a no win situation in New Hampshire. Current polls have his lead there anywhere from 15-30 points. He better win by 20-30 points to have his win deemed a win. In fact, I am not sure he should even be campaigning in New Hampshire right now. He should be in South Carolina and Nevada. Because what happens if Hillary gains on him in New Hampshire to finish strong there, losing by 5 instead of 30? It means she will have “won” the New Hampshire primary in terms of momentum. And then she will go steamrolling into Nevada and South Carolina. Bernie needs to be there now to see if he can make inroads in states where Hillary is leading by significant margins, to show that he can win where white progressives are not 90% of the vote.
Today's front page: @realDonaldTrump beaten out by @TedCruz in Iowa, nearly lands 3rd place https://t.co/f9cq9fQEG1 pic.twitter.com/NcOlypbcnv
— New York Daily News (@NYDailyNews) February 2, 2016
As we discussed a few weeks ago, FiveThirtyEight’s Nate Silver published a piece back in July noting that Sanders is strongest in states where the universe of Democratic voters is very white and very liberal. Based on previous performance, that means the three best states in the Union for the senator are, in order, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Iowa.
In other words, Iowa was a natural for Sanders. His message was poised to land on fertile soil.
The Vermonter believed he could take full advantage of the beneficial calendar – given its demographics, the fact that Iowa and New Hampshire go first was the equivalent of Sanders pulling an inside straight – and win both of the first two nominating contests, becoming only the third Democrat to do so, following Al Gore and John Kerry.
At that point, the theory went, the Democratic establishment would enter a full-blown panic and Sanders could present himself as the legitimate frontrunner for the nomination – complete with the wind at his back as the next round of primaries and caucuses got underway.
An Iowa loss, even an incredibly narrow one, prevents him from making that pitch. If the senator wins New Hampshire – which seems extremely likely – Sanders will face less-friendly terrain in Nevada and South Carolina without the benefit of two wins in his pocket.
The conventional wisdom has long held that all the pressure in Iowa was on Clinton, but I’ve always thought that was backwards. With her broad institutional support, and state-based strength following New Hampshire, she could survive a setback in Iowa. For Sanders, however, the road ahead just got even more difficult.
The polling community that polled Iowa definitely suffered a black eye, since they all missed the Cruz and Rubio surges, though I would argue that Ann Selzer’s DMR/Bloomberg Poll pegged the Democratic race. Remember, she had Clinton’s lead at 3% (45-42), and O’Malley at 3%. But caucuses are not like primaries where O’Malley gets to keep that 3% of the vote. No, in precincts where he did not become viable (i.e. did not get to 15% of the vote), his voters had to choose Sanders, Hillary or Uncommitted. Looks like most of them went to Sanders, which makes sense, and hence the closeness of the race.
Meanwhile, Jason330’s and my prediction of a Cruz nomination remains alive! And my theory re Donald Trump was proved right (that his support was fickle, that he had no ground game). I can’t wait to see what happens to his poll numbers now that he is a loser, both nationally and in New Hampshire. I can see the GOP race becoming a two man Cruz v. Rubio race pretty soon. Go Cruz!
Dylan Matthew’s winners and losers from last night: 1) Winners: Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio; 2) Losers: Donald Trump, Martin O’Malley and Jeb Bush.
Donald Trump lost. That mere fact, for a candidate whose persona is so built around being a winner, about crushing and humiliating his opponents, is damaging in a way it’s not for anyone else.
The situation is made worse still by Trump’s healthy lead over Cruz in the polls heading into the caucuses. Trump didn’t just lose — he lost when he was expected to win. And given that Iowa is nothing more than an elaborate scheme to manipulate media narratives, that’s particularly rough.
Trump didn’t help matters with his surprisingly civil and normal concession speech, in which he graciously congratulated Cruz, praised all the other candidates, and meekly suggested that he beat the initial expectations set when he entered the race in June 2015, when “Donald Trump for president” was treated by most media as a publicity stunt, not a serious candidacy. He wasn’t wrong. But commentators weren’t judging against June’s expectations; they were judging against January’s.
The speech also made Trump seem like something he hasn’t resembled all campaign: a normal politician. The media, and his supporters, expect him to subvert every norm expected of leading candidates, to be meaner and more brazen and less predictable than the competition. He wasn’t. Who knows if this will matter in a couple of days — it wasn’t memorable enough to be a “Dean Scream”–style debacle that actually hurts Trump’s campaign — but it certainly didn’t do anything to recover his lost momentum.
It’s important to not overstate things. Trump still leads in New Hampshire. He still leads nationally. He still leads in South Carolina.
Gwyneth Kelly and Emma Foehringer Merchant at the New Republic have five takeaways regarding the results from last night’s Iowa Caucus.
Hillary Clinton Didn’t Get a Coronation, but is Still Looking Strong
At about 3 a.m. local time, the count in Iowa was finally done, and Clinton had eked out a narrow victory over Bernie Sanders. One of them:
The Clintons are reportedly disappointed with the result, but as the New Republic’s Alex Shephard wrote, even this narrow victory is important for Hillary. “If Sanders had beaten her decisively tonight, it would not only have given his surging campaign another boost, but fueled a narrative that 2016 was 2008 all over again.” Instead, the results reaffirm Clinton’s own viability as a candidate, giving her a cushion of delegates she can build on into March.
The near-draw in Iowa indicates better things to come for Clinton in primaries in the more racially diverse states of Nevada and South Carolina. Sanders couldn’t topple her in a state whose demographics—overwhelming white, less affluent, liberal—seem tailor-made to Feel the Bern. The broader Democratic electorate is likely to be much more favorable towards Clinton, especially given that she holds a massive lead over Sanders among black and Latino voters.
Clinton will probably face a loss in New Hampshire, where some polls show her trailing Sanders by half, but her campaign is robust enough (financially and in terms of popularity) to continue into March, where she expects to see big gains. Her campaign has been building a “political firewall” in the Southern states for months, and the close finish in Iowa doesn’t derail her plans so much as underscore the importance of those states.
Timothy Lee at Vox wonders if Bernie Sanders will do what ordinary candidates do to win:
Sanders is trying to achieve the same goal as Barack Obama achieved eight years before, but his strategy is very different. Obama campaigned as a post-partisan uniter who could bring “change you can believe in.” Much of Obama’s appeal came from his personal biography as a biracial man who could — it was hoped — heal the nation’s racial divide.
Sanders, in contrast, is a self-described socialist who is campaigning on a specific and fairly radical set of reforms to America’s economy. Those reforms — including dramatically higher taxes on the wealthy, single-payer healthcare, and free college for many — are generally considered to be outside the mainstream of American politics. But Sanders is betting that after a decade of disappointing economic performance, voters can be persuaded to broaden their horizons.
But while Sanders’ left-wing agenda has significant support among Democratic voters, there wasn’t enough support to secure him a majority of voters — even in a state rich in the white voters who have been most receptive to his message. An equal number of voters preferred Hillary Clinton’s own mix of more moderate policies and hard-headed pragmatism.
An ordinary candidate — faced with a tie in a state whose demographics favor him — would look for ways to retool his message to win over a few more marginal voters in later states. But Bernie Sanders isn’t a normal candidate. To him, the message is as important as the messenger — and he probably didn’t expect to come this close to beating Clinton in the first place. So we can expect him to continue hammering away at the same themes in future states, hoping that the inherent appeal of his message will ultimately power him to victory.
Bryce Covert provides some much-needed perspective on the race between Hillary and Bernie.
[T]he largest difference between Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Sanders is not over policy. … There is scant daylight between them on most issues and certainly almost all of the causes near and dear to Democrats’ and progressives’ hearts. The largest difference, and therefore what the Democratic Party is truly grappling with, is not about two different visions of the party. The choice is between two theories of change. It’s the difference between working the system and smashing it.
[…] If Mr. Sanders embodies idealism, then Mrs. Clinton is pragmatism incarnate. Mrs. Clinton’s message of how to get things done takes the lessons of President Obama’s eight years in office — that Republicans will mostly unite against anything, even policies that they once supported — and, rather than change the system, she promises to work it. At the same early debate where Mr. Sanders explained his revolution, Mrs. Clinton was asked if she was a progressive. “I’m a progressive,” she responded. “But I’m a progressive who likes to get things done.”
Part of that is continuing Mr. Obama’s practice, most evident in his second term, of calling for Congress to pass legislation while taking executive action when Congress stalls. On issues ranging from gun control to marijuana regulation to corporate tax policy, she has released policies that she would like to see enacted alongside outlines of executive action she would take on her own without Congress. […]
Here is a partial list of the policies that Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Sanders largely agree on: The country should have paid family leave; the minimum wage should be substantially increased; college students shouldn’t have to take on so much debt; parents need more affordable, quality child care and preschool options; Wall Street needs further reforms; health care should be universal; the wealthy should pay substantially more in taxes. Many of these are new policies even for Democratic presidential candidates. Despite using the socialist label, Mr. Sanders sounds a lot like many prominent Democrats. Mrs. Clinton is a tried and true liberal.
Covert’s point is that what separates Clinton and Sanders is not those goals, but the issue that is taking up a lot of ink from liberal pundits lately: their different theories of change. We did the Bernie theory of change in the first two years of Obama’s term, with much more favorable conditions, and progressives still left disappointed because not enough was accomplished. The only way Bernie gets anything done as President is if his revolution elects 260 like minded Democratic socialists in the House and 60 like minded Democratic socialists in the Senate. And right now, I see no evidence that Bernie is recruiting any candidates to join him.
Sanders needed a great showing in Iowa to build the kind of momentum he will need going into South Carolina, Nevada and the Super Tuesday states where Clinton has the advantage right now. That didn’t happen last night. When it comes to the race going forward, the Iowa caucuses gave us a bit of a game-changer for Republicans and more of the status quo for Democrats.
In the wake of Iowa, the Democrats are still a house divided almost down the middle. Yet ideologically, the direction of the party is clear: The resilience of Sanders movement is pulling the Democrats in a progressive direction. Without the challenge of Sanders, Clinton might be pivoting toward the center in preparation for the general election. Certainly Clinton has made gestures in that direction. But Sanders has shown that his message has a passionate audience in the party, which is creating a center of gravity that is tugging Hillary Clinton to the left.
Clinton is still the likely winner of the nomination, but the party she is trying to unite behind her is being transformed by Sanders. That, as the final delegate counts trickle in, is the legacy of Monday night’s vote.
Harry Enten agrees, Bernie needed more than he got last night:
The results in Iowa suggest that polls in New Hampshire may tighten. That’s because the states look similar demographically. Even taking into account that Sanders lives next door in Vermont, Clinton probably shouldn’t be behind by 17 percentage points in the New Hampshire polling average right now.
Assuming Sanders holds on to win in New Hampshire, would that be bad news for Clinton? Although I’m not sure that anyone wants to lose a primary, how she frames a loss in New Hampshire will matter a lot. If she is seen as doing better than expected, she could get a bump (something she is now unlikely to get coming out of Iowa). If, however, Sanders gets good press, he may improve his chances despite the demographic challenges facing him in other states.
We’ve said for months that Iowa and New Hampshire are two of the best states for Sanders demographically. You can see why in the entrance poll taken in Iowa. Sanders won very liberal voters over Clinton by 19 percentage points, but he lost self-identified somewhat liberals and moderates to Clinton by 6 percentage points and 23 percentage points, respectively. That’s bad for Sanders because even though 68 percent of Iowa Democratic caucus-goers identified as liberal this year, only 47 percent of Democratic primary voters nationwide did so in 2008. We’ll need to see if Sanders can do better in a state that is more moderate than Iowa before thinking he can win the nomination.
But, as Matthew Yglesias says, Bernie’s success should be a wake up call to the Democratic Establishment:
[T]he hearts of America’s young people — including, crucially, young women — are with the crotchety, 74-year-old socialist from Vermont. This both tends to confirm Washington, DC, Democrats’ conviction that demographic headwinds are at their back and complicates their hazy sense that faith in demographics is a substitute for political strategy.
The problem is that the young progressives the party is counting on to deliver them to the promised land are, as Sanders has shown, really quite left-wing. They aren’t going to be bought off with a stray Snapchat gimmick or two. To retain their loyalty and enthusiasm, party leaders are going to need to offer some kind of theory about how Democrats intend to deliver change and get results.
That is why I welcome the Sanders campaign and its challenge to Hillary Clinton, so long as it doesn’t win. Because Hillary Clinton can do what all good winning candidates can do: co-opt and adopt. She will need to move to the left to keep these voters in the party.