Democrats’ 2020 Primaries: Super Tuesday Results [UPDATE-4]

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This post is dedicated to the Democratic Party’s Super Tuesday results. Not much sense bothering with the Republican Party’s results since GOP canceled a number of primaries.

Post will be updated as results come in.

Results about 9:40 p.m. ET:

State

Percent Reported

Results

Delegates
Alabama 16% reporting Joe Biden won 52 delegates available
American Samoa TBD Michael Bloomberg won
Arkansas 13% reporting Joe Biden leads 31 delegates available
California Results expected around 11:00 PM EST
Colorado 25% reporting Bernie Sanders won 66 delegates available
Maine 32% reporting 24 delegates available
Massachusetts 29% reporting 91 delegates available
Minnesota 20% reporting Joe Biden leads 75 delegates available
North Carolina 55% reporting Joe Biden won 110 delegates available
Oklahoma 83% reporting Joe Biden won 37 delegates available
Tennessee 69% reporting Joe Biden won 64 delegates available
Texas 7% reporting Bernie Sanders leads 228 delegates available
Utah Results expected around 10:05 PM EST
Vermont 69% reporting Bernie Sanders won 16 delegates available
Virginia 100% reporting Joe Biden won 99 delegates available

Rather expensive hobby for Bloomberg, to have spent nearly half a billion to win only American Samoa. I still need to find the delegate count for the territory. At least Tulsi Gabbard didn’t win Samoa.

Of note: Donna Brazile’s appearance on Fox News today. I’ve enjoyed watching the video at this link several times.

UPDATE-1 — 10:30 P.M. ET —

Results about 10:20 p.m. ET:

State

Percent Reported

Results

Delegates
Alabama 39% reporting Joe Biden won 52 delegates available
American Samoa Caucus held (not a primary). Michael Bloomberg won 4 delegates to Bloomberg

1 delegate to Gabbard,

1 delegate TBD
Arkansas 37% reporting Joe Biden won 31 delegates available
California Results expected around 11:00 PM EST
Colorado 36% reporting Bernie Sanders won 66 delegates available
Maine 50% reporting 24 delegates available
Massachusetts 46% reporting 91 delegates available
Minnesota 40% reporting Joe Biden won 75 delegates available
North Carolina 59% reporting Joe Biden won 110 delegates available
Oklahoma 93% reporting Joe Biden won 37 delegates available
Tennessee 82% reporting Joe Biden won 64 delegates available
Texas 17% reporting Bernie Sanders leads 228 delegates available
Utah 33% reporting
Vermont 88% reporting Bernie Sanders won 16 delegates available
Virginia 100% reporting Joe Biden won 99 delegates available

Wondering how much last night’s tornado affected turn out in Nashville, Tennessee.

Texas has considerable problems with voting which look like typical voter suppression techniques.

UPDATE-2 — 11:10 P.M. ET —

Results approx. 11:00 p.m. ET:

State

Percent Reported

Results

Delegates
Alabama 68% reporting Joe Biden won 52 delegates available
American Samoa Caucus held (not a primary). Michael Bloomberg won 4 delegates to Bloomberg

1 delegate to Gabbard,

1 delegate TBD
Arkansas 71% reporting Joe Biden won 31 delegates available
California Results expected around 11:00 PM EST
Colorado 46% reporting Bernie Sanders won 66 delegates available
Maine 58% reporting 24 delegates available
Massachusetts 65% reporting Joe Biden won 91 delegates available
Minnesota 68% reporting Joe Biden won 75 delegates available
North Carolina 84% reporting Joe Biden won 110 delegates available
Oklahoma 100% reporting Joe Biden won 37 delegates available
Tennessee 88% reporting Joe Biden won 64 delegates available
Texas 17% reporting Bernie Sanders leads 228 delegates available
Utah 49% reporting  Bernie Sanders won 29 delegates available
Vermont 94% reporting Bernie Sanders won 16 delegates available
Virginia 100% reporting Joe Biden won 99 delegates available

These conditions are absolutely unacceptable in a modern democracy — do open the image link. This is at Texas Southern University.

The Democratic Party candidates and presumptive nominee MUST make this an issue in the media and embarrass the fuck out of Texas’ GOP-led government, but do so in a way to encourage November voter turn out.

UPDATE-3 — 12:10 A.M. ET —

Results approx. 12:00 a.m.:

State

Percent Reported

Results

Delegates
Alabama 87% reporting Joe Biden won 52 delegates available
American Samoa Caucus held (not a primary). Michael Bloomberg won 4 delegates to Bloomberg

1 delegate to Gabbard,

1 delegate TBD
Arkansas 86% reporting Joe Biden won 31 delegates available
California 9% reporting Bernie Sanders won 415 delegates available
Colorado 58% reporting Bernie Sanders won 66 delegates available
Maine 66% reporting 24 delegates available
Massachusetts 80% reporting Joe Biden won 91 delegates available
Minnesota 90% reporting Joe Biden won 75 delegates available
North Carolina 99% reporting Joe Biden won 110 delegates available
Oklahoma 100% reporting Joe Biden won 37 delegates available
Tennessee 98% reporting Joe Biden won 64 delegates available
Texas 52% reporting Bernie Sanders leads 228 delegates available
Utah 67% reporting Bernie Sanders won 29 delegates available
Vermont 98% reporting Bernie Sanders won 16 delegates available
Virginia 100% reporting Joe Biden won 99 delegates available

Report in Los Angeles Times discusses introduction of a new voting system and resulting delays. Sorry I can’t tell you more, LAT site won’t open for me at the moment. Check in with LAT’s Matt Pearce instead:

LAT called the state for Sanders though vote tallies will be a looong time trickling in with some people still voting in Los Angeles area. Silicon Valley went for Sanders, wine country on the north side of the bay went to Bloomberg. Wondering if Livermore National Labs’ ecosystem went to Biden?

Adder: LAT didn’t do voters any favors. AP definitely didn’t do any favors, and we need to address the AP in particular since they are funded by newspapers and TV stations across the country. Who’s pushing AP to be first to detriment of democratic process?

UPDATE-4 — 12:45 A.M. ET —

Last update for me, I need to hit the hay. Maine’s at 72% and will likely be a while yet. California is now at 12% reporting.

My two cents: A substantive number of Super Tuesday’s Democratic voters went with the “safe” candidate, the one who they believe will restore a sense of normalcy and stability to the White House.

They want to reprise the comfort of the Barack and Joe Show, even if Barack won’t be on stage for this spin-off, even if Joe is nowhere near as on top of his game as he was in 2008.

What’s telling is this bit about Minnesota:

I don’t think Klobuchar’s endorsement alone could overcome a deficit of campaign apparatus. Minnesota’s change to a primary from caucus since 2016 also doesn’t explain this.

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146 replies
  1. mvario says:

    I don’t know if it is true, but I had seen posted on Twitter that American Samoa had 6 delegates. And that Bloomberg had sent 7 people their to campaign, and that no other candidate had. For what it’s worth.

      • fikshun says:

        To be fair, Hillary lost two of those states and won a third by only 45k votes. North Carolina, Virginia, and Minnesota will be battleground states, for sure.

        I imagine there are multiple ways to spin this:
        1) Biden performs well in the battleground states he’d need to win in order to win the presidency
        2) Biden performs well in states where the pragmatism of electability has become a voting issue in its own right
        3) Biden is the Republican states’ Elizabeth Warren: their second-favorite candidate

        As a Coloradoan, the third possibility is concerning. Here in a state where mail-in ballots made primary voting easy (and open to unaffiliated voters), with 70% of precincts reporting, Trump garnered only about 160k fewer votes in the Republican primary (that didn’t matter) than the Democratic candidates received in total in their primary. Bernie won the state with at least 270k votes and counting. Assuming Biden wins the nomination, I hope he’ll work harder at galvanizing the support of the progressives and the youth vote than he does at trying to woo the Trump voters with buyers’ remorse.

        • orionATL says:

          “To be fair,..”

          oh, really?

          “…there are multiple ways to spin this…”

          oh, really?

          how sweet of you to educate us.

        • sherry says:

          Agree completely. Biden must reach out to the folks who did not vote for him…..and it is not going to be easy. We need more than the never Trumper’s, but i’ll take their votes too.

    • Eureka says:

      **Heartbroken PA-ian who bought into claims that our end-of-April primary would somehow matter this year** cries for my Liz, too.

    • holdingsteady says:

      It really would have been awesome to see her debate Donald Trump, she is fearless and smart in a quick on her feet way. I believe she could have made mincemeat of trump, as evidenced by how she told off Bloomberg.

      • errant aesthete says:

        I share your collective pain. “Heartbroken” is apt.

        And talk about a debate. If only… What a seismic blow she would have dealt to that offensively crude and blustering lout. Her gaze alone would have eviscerated him.

      • Danny Dullea says:

        An amazing comeback for Biden! More questions than answers as to who voted for Status quo Joe! Main stream media sure promoted this outcome. Consider: 11 of the fourteen states had open primaries. That means that republicans could vote in the Democratic primary. Biden won 10 of those states. The only open primary Bernie won was his home state. No mention today in our media about this possibility. Republican dirty tricks anyone? Or Perhaps some share of republicans actually think Biden might be a better choice than Trump but most of them, in the south, will end up voting for Trump in the end… Big risk by Democrats because Biden is a 78 year old gaff machine and really does look like a fragile old man. Only Democrat candidates left are all 70+ years old.

        • PhoneInducedPinkEye says:

          There are stats showing how many Republicans or likely Republicans voted in Dem open primary, and it was like 1% higher than the last cycle. No conspiracy there. You might not like the outcome, but don’t try to take away the agency of the voters who did come out to vote. Especially people of color in southern States.

  5. MB says:

    NYT called Utah for Bernie, Minnesota for Joe. Animal rights protestors storm the stage as Joe Biden speaks.

  6. P J Evans says:

    I understand that the voting time in Davidson county, TN, was extended an hour. From what I read, a lot of people directly affected by the tornado were in enough of a daze dealing with the mess that they weren’t likely to even be thinking about the primary.

    Bloomberg was getting a lot of votes in some states, for reasons I don’t understand.

    • Eureka says:

      Yeah I agree there’s no way voting wasn’t turned-down there from the tornado. I don’t see how an extra hour helps enough people, though that’s great for anyone who wanted to vote and was helped.

      But then again, if people were out from work, maybe that helped / might wash out some.

      • P J Evans says:

        I think some of the “voting centers” got extended to 10pm. Those were the ones with lines.

  7. Geoguy says:

    Posted on March 3, 2020 at American Renaissance, http://www.amren.com:
    “Texas Closes Hundreds of Polling Sites, Making It Harder for Minorities to Vote” by Richard Salame, The Guardian, March 2, 2020:

    “Last year, Texas led the US south in an unenviable statistic: closing down the most polling stations, making it more difficult for people to vote and arguably benefiting Republicans.
    A report by civil rights group The Leadership Conference Education Fund found that 750 polls had been closed statewide since 2012”

    • fikshun says:

      Yep, I have a bunch of coworkers in Austin. They were saying it took between one and a half to two hours to vote today.

    • P J Evans says:

      The county in west Texas where I lived had about five polling places, all in cities along the Interstate. If you lived in the west half of the county, you had to travel 20 or so miles to vote. (They used to have a couple more.)

    • Rayne says:

      This is a failing on the part of the Obama administration. Texas had the most population growth since 2010, with an increase of 430,000 in 2015-2016 alone. Obama’s DOJ civil rights division should have been all over Texas to ensure the number of voting locations grew in tandem with population.

      • SophiaB says:

        The utter lack of action until recently about the annual clusterF$%k that is our sold-out voting system gave me the push to stop voting 10 years ago. I was an election integrity activist in SAN FRANCISCO and could not see the point of cooperating with a totally corrupt system as I witnessed the collusion of the Vichy Dems. Sickened.

          • milestogo says:

            I really love how you keep calling this attitude out. I don’t give a damn how imperfect my side becomes or even how hopeless it sometimes seems. Giving up is not an option in life given all that’s at stake.

            • Rayne says:

              Thanks. If we all adopted that attitude instead of taking new tacks to address our problems, we might as well line up against the wall.

              I’m also quite aware that hostile entities also talk smack like that to test the community response. Agents provocateur may be at work.

        • bmaz says:

          Hi there SophieB. What a total load of putrid shit. You “are” the very problem you whine about.

    • Vicks says:

      Every registered voter in Colorado gets a ballot in the mail and a booklet that that lists the candidates and does a decent job of presenting both sides of the issues.
      You can mail them, drop them off or go vote in person.
      Our local media does a good job of communicating when you should have received your ballot and what to do if you have not.
      You can register when you renew your drivers license or in person up until Election Day.
      In 2018 voter turnout in Colorado was 71 percent of eligible voters, the national average that year was 58%. 45% of 18-24’s turned in their ballots compared to the national average that year of 36%
      To help me ease the feeling I’m missing out on Election Day tradition I get in the line of cars waiting to hand their ballots to one of the election officials standing in front of the drop off box on Election Day and get my sticker. It look 5 minutes this morning.
      My mom is still waiting for the absentee ballot she requested from North Carolina.
      This isn’t rocket science or cutting edge technology, it’s a paper ballot with my signature that gets matched to what’s on file.
      Each ballot come with a number so I can track my ballot online.
      I look at these pictures of lines at polling places and hear and read about voter suppression and it’s hard to get my mind around the fact they are talking about the United States of America and not some third world country.

      • bmaz says:

        It is not quite that good here, you have to ask for a vote by mail ballot, but it is ridiculously easy to do so. And the voter guide is similarly pretty fair and good.

      • cavenewt says:

        Where I live in Utah every election is by mail. I fill out the paper ballot and then drop it off in person at the county clerk’s office. This not only gives me more of a feeling like I’m participating, but for some reason I’m extra paranoid about trusting the mail for this.

        I used to be an election judge in Wyoming (what they call a polling place worker there) and I do miss the excitement of the polling place.

        • bmaz says:

          I kept going to the live polls for years after vote by mail was available to everybody for that exact reason. Participating live was just fun and rewarding. It felt good. Then I got caught voting too late in the day in 2012 and stuck in a 1.5 hours line. Vote by mail ever since, and it is ridiculously easy. By the way just put my primary ballot in the mail this morning. Had to walk all the way out to the mailbox!

          • cavenewt says:

            Unfortunately, mail is the *only* option here. I guess that’s the price we pay for living in the boonies. If there was a polling place option, I would go there. Being retired helps ;)

  8. P J Evans says:

    I don’t know how they’re calling it in CA already, because the state site has no results up yet, and neither does L.A. county.

    • MB says:

      It’s the Associated Press (AP) – they’ve called states significantly earlier than every other source tonight as far as I can tell. Maybe they’ve got aggressively-modeled algorithms working for them. NYT has yet to call California reporting 14% counted right now…

      • Rayne says:

        Could be AP has gathered all the rural districts and smallest precincts from largest population centers, with emphasis on those which have been predictive in most recent elections. Wouldn’t take much to pay runners to do this based on my past experience.

    • Vicks says:

      California’s Republican leader was on Fox last night.
      This “38, Latina, mother of three” made no effort to cover up her nasty bits after predictably ripping on the people she blames slow vote counting and then went full filthy on Biden, despite Bernie being the front runner in her state.
      I don’t know much about California politics, but I do know that whatever concept you personally use to explain how evil breeds has it’s hooks in the Republican Party.
      The upside is, I don’t think Republicans have a plan for dealing with a two person race so soon, must less figured out how to deal with the surge of a candidate that many in their own party “could live with”
      I’ve already showered, so I can’t turn Fox back on, but I’m concerned with how ugly and personal this is going to get….

  9. Katherine M Williams says:

    Democratic Leaders learned from republicans that voter suppression, blatant lies, and lots of dirty money will win every time. Except Biden can’t beat Trump, Trump will squash him like the ugly bug he is. In a Bug vs. Bug world, the ugliest dirtiest but will win.

    • BobCon says:

      Just a reminder — even after all of the fights for voting rights, African Americans still faced a lot of awful choices at the state and local level between Dixiecrats and the GOP.

      It took years in most places for decent candidates for mayor and state rep, years after that for US rep, and 2018 was when Stacey Abrams and Andrew Gillum were at the top of the ticket and almost broke through. It’s taken that long for minority voters in Texas, but the tide is turning.

      The GOP wants you to believe it is hopeless. Back in the early 1960s, people like Bob Moses in Mississippi and Annie Lee Cooper in Alabama had no reason to hope. The odds against them were far, far worse than what we see today. That didn’t stop them, and we never would be even close if they let the perfect be the enemy of the greater good.

  10. bmaz says:

    I have some terribly sad news for you all. George Papadopolous is failing miserably in his attempt in CA25. His race is over.

    • P J Evans says:

      I’m not surprised. He wasn’t getting much notice locally – it’s the next district over from mine, and I go shopping in it at least once a month. (Also, people aren’t stupid. They know he was the “covfefe guy”.)

        • holdingsteady says:

          bmaz, I get your black humor but as a fellow parent with a 24 year old daughter, yikes!

          Too possible by far. Remember the novel Room? How about that sadist in Ohio a few years back? (Just looked it up, Ariel Castro in Cleveland)

          I have been haunted by your joke all day, so now I shared.

      • MB says:

        He lost to Jeff Sessions in the primary yesterday. Now the question is: does he (Jeff) lock up recusal-was-right-but-I-still-love-Trump vote ??

        • Rayne says:

          Will be fun watching Tommy Tuberville and Jeff Sessions vie for biggest Trump ass kisser in a runoff, to put it nicely.

  11. Eureka says:

    This is a really neat, weird election with lots of interesting potential interpretations, none of which MSM will address, so there’s that.

  12. c180tom says:

    Sure glad I just MAILED my vote for Bernie…
    Rayne, wouldn’t HR-1 avioided some of the problems seen had not Mr. Chao (senator McConnell) not kept it off the floor? Sorry for the double negative, sort of how I feel.

    • Rayne says:

      I’m not certain H.R. 1 For the People Act would have fixed some of the primary voting problems.

      We need to address with new legislation a mandatory number of voting locations based on population. Period. Not going to happen with a GOP-held Senate or White House, let alone the current SCOTUS composition.

  15. earlofhuntingdon says:

    The “safe” vote. Right. Had nothing to do with a united MSM telling voters that was Joe, the supposed “centrist,” establishment candidate, who is well past his best game.

    Not to mention the MSM’s disappearing of Warren and its treatment of Bernie as “far left.” No political party outside the United States, the UK, and the fascist East European states would recognize Bernie as anything but centrist. In fact, he and Warren advocate what many people want. It’s just that they have been trained since grade school to respond in a pavlovian way to the lingo used to describe it.

    As for Texas, it has apparently closed 750 voting locations. One statistic had 540 of those in 50 left-leaning districts that had a recent increase in population of about 2.5 million, whereas it closed thirteen in 50 right-leaning districts that lost 13,000 voters. Routine behavior now for a GOP-controlled legislatures. So much for the Voting Rights Act the Supremes gutted not long ago.

    How would Safe Pair of Hands fix such things – or repair the swathes of government Trump has dismantled – if even one Republican clutched their pearls in lament. It might upset his bipartisan equilibrium about as much as taking away Trump’s twtr phone for a week because he was a bad boy. Given Joe’s reduced energy and attention span, who will volunteer to be his Dick Cheney?

    Progressives have a hill to climb. Sisyphus had it worse, so pass the water, retie your shoes, and let’s go.

    • PeterS says:

      How are you so sure the MSM isn’t reflecting some fundamental realities: that the US is a (small c) conservative country; that whatever Sanders pretends a president needs the Senate to make changes; that he just isn’t a convincing leader; that Warren, being a smart and hugely accomplished woman, would suffer the same prejudice as Clinton. I wish there were a better choice, I wish the population made better choices, but…

      • Katherine M Williams says:

        “How are you so sure the MSM isn’t reflecting some fundamental realities”

        Well, of course they are! They reflect the reality that the oligarch-owned corporate-media controls the election by who THEY, not the American people, support. They supported Trump and he won against all odds. They supported Biden and he “won” (or rather the .1% oligarchs won) in states that had polled for months as being in favor of Sanders.

        The .1% corporate-owned media, which doesn’t even faintly resemble the Free Press described & protected by the Constitution, choses the president, not the dumb, ill informed, lied to and easily tricked, American people.

    • earlofhuntingdon says:

      I am sure that the MSM reflects the establishment priorities of its corporate owners. Its track record is consistent. It’s exemplified by the faces it continues to put up: Chris Matthews, for one (until reality hit him in the face); its recurrent guests, such as the execrable Rick Santorum; it’s headlines and editing.

      You could change the topic – to bankers or Trump, for example – and readily find similar results. Its normalizing of Trump’s ignorant rambling and craziness might be the best example. I don’t think it’s open to serious debate.

      I am also sure that every progressive understands the need to elect a Democratic majority in the Senate.

      As for whether the US is a small “c” conservative country, that depends on the way you frame your question. Ask about things people need – jobs, health care, education, debt relief – and you get a positive response. Ask about “socialism” or government imposed restrictions on access to health care (as if insurers did not impose those already), you will get the routine rejection that has been drilled into so many from grade school.

      • earlofhuntingdon says:

        That the MSM’s role is to normalize establishment power is not new. The observation goes back decades, certainly, and arguably to the WWI era of Walter Lippmann and Edward Bernays. Herman and Chomsky wrote about it in Manufacturing Consent, in 1988. Their work was inspired by Alex Carey’s earlier work in Australia.

    • ducktree says:

      eoh ~ I made just the opposite allegory to a friend yesterday . . . Sisyphus had it easy: only one boulder daily, up the same incline; no commuting. Progressives instead have whack-a-mole raining down constantly coming from many directions (well, “left” and “right” anyway).

  16. ernesto1581 says:

    “The Democratic Party candidates and presumptive nominee MUST make this [absolutely unacceptable lines in progressive zones] an issue…”

    Hah. hah-hah. Will not be a thing. Dems and MSM are busy eviscerating what’s left of a dying party, with Obama as mortician-in-chief. The DNC has entirely ceded politics to to trumpublicans and are now officially the Party of Goop, Wakanda and What to Cook in the NYTimes.

    • Jenny says:

      Stacey Abrams on Twitter: 8:01 AM – 4 Mar 2020

      Four #SuperTuesday states moved from caucuses to primaries this year.

      CO participation is up 517% from 2016 and still counting
      ME is up 304% and still counting
      MN is up 264%
      UT is up 120% and still counting

      Democracy is stronger when more people are able to participate.

      • orionATL says:

        thank you for reporting this.

        it is a vindication of years of criticism of caucuses as a charade of democracy in large societies rather than a wondeful example of “the people” working their magic up close in the gym in small groups.

  18. P J Evans says:

    I’m not at all surprised about the lines in L.A. The sample ballot showed up a week AFTER i’d mailed mine in, and it has NO information on where to vote, since the “voting centers” took away all the old (neighborhood) precinct locations. They sent that out first, with no flashy cover to get your attention, and the listing is hard to follow (alphabetically by city name, but not by zip code). The nearest center to me is a mile and a half away, and that’s the only one I could find without a map.
    I switched to vote-by-mail because I don’t trust the machines they bought. Reports are that they still can’t pass the basic reliability/security tests, but they got certified anyway.

  19. The Old Redneck says:

    It’s just astonishing how fast the Democratic party leadership closed ranks around Biden (now they’ve got Bloomberg on board too). They were obviously worried sick about Bernie, who is in reality no more a socialist than FDR.
    This makes it highly likely that the Democratic candidate will be Biden, who is an incrementalist like Hillary. He’ll be legitimately criticized by Trump for a whole slew of things, like voting for the Iraq War, supporting credit card companies with the bankruptcy bill, and pushing through the crime bill in the 90s.
    And on top of that, Biden has reached the Mr. Magoo stage of his life intellectually and otherwise.
    It’s not hard to see a scenario where there’s a palpable lack of enthusiasm and Democratic turnout is tepid. That could be especially true for the Bernie Bros, who can’t bear to hold their nose and vote for the establishment that worked so hard to undermine their guy again. And we all know what that means for the general election.

    • Katherine M Williams says:

      Trump and the republican party are fascists. Biden and the dem party are neo-liberals, aka: corporatists. Not all that much difference in their goal of having corporations rule the world.

      The dems throw juicier tid-bits to the people (such as the corporate designed ACA) and place a few minor restraints upon the corporations -which they later secretly remove.

      So voting for the candidates forced upon us by the corporate democratic leaders is just slowing down the slide towards economic and environmental collapse, not stopping or even ameliorating it much.

      I suppose I should vote dem for my 22 year-old daughter’s sake (I’m 65), but will it do her any good? We’re heading for total destruction of civilization, just a bit slower with the democrats, is all.

      • earlofhuntingdon says:

        Gore would have been better than BushCheney, Clinton better than the Orange Satan. Small steps are needed in every direction, aim for improvement.

        I get that we’re all tired and only halfway to the Convention. The left’s task is to generate constant tension for its demands, to make it less electorally safe to ignore them.

        I think we get there partly through state and local elections, as well as by fighting for congressional seats, federal judges, etc. Karl Rove, for example, turned the relative political backwater of Alabama into a neocon safe space by leveraging its conservative culture, and by starting with local, then statewide judges, then state legislators and governor.

        With a legislative majority, he consolidated GOP power via such things as state-level “tort reform” – aka, closing the courthouse doors to plaintiffs – which significantly cut revenue for overwhelmingly Democratic-leaning plaintiffs’ lawyers, who were major contributors to Democrats. Sauce for the goose and all that.

        As I’ve heard said about power, it never asks you to play, you have to crash the party.

      • M. Smith says:

        I vote for slowing the ‘total destruction of civilization’ everything else being equal.

      • Rayne says:

        It is absolutely critical you vote up and down the ticket, even for the lesser of two evils. In this case, the lesser evil won’t be locking babies in cages and will respond to pressure from the left to remediate the problem upon taking office.

        I’m going to point out once again that Michigan had a record undervote of 80K in 2016 — 80K people refused to vote for either Trump or Clinton. The win margin was 10K votes. Those moral purists, many of whom may have been influenced by Russian psyops, ended up handing Trump a win.

        Do you know who is down ticket? Who the more progressive candidates are if you have a choice? Pay attention to them and not just the top of the ticket because down ticket races especially House and Senate are the restraints on neo-liberals at which you’re sneering. They are the real means by which we effect policy — watch what happens with legislation this week for pandemic response funding.

        I have two twenty-something kids. We’ve talked about politics since they were old enough to help fold literature for local Democratic Party outreach. They understand this is not a simple game of checkers but something far more complex. Maybe instead of whining here you might talk with your kid about votes — hers and yours.

        • BobCon says:

          Also talk to people who are old enough to have been fighting for change circa 1960, or failing that, read honest, true histories of the Civil Rights movement.

          Parting the Waters by Taylor Branch is a good one. Speak Now Against the Day by John Egerton is another.

          That fight was hard. Much harder than what we are up against today. And the people on the right side faced all kinds of philosophical debates, inner divisions, and unknowable mysteries about how to proceed.

          All kinds of political minefields had to be navigated, egos had to be soothed, and compromises had to be struck.

          But they stuck with their very imperfect coalition in the face of a very uncertain future, because they knew that the status quo was unacceptable. Giving up now is also not an option.

    • milestogo says:

      I was a Warren supporter but until SC I saw the establishment gathering behind Bloomberg to my great dismay. I see Biden’s rise a result of Black voters, not the establishment – the party had written him off. But I agree that they’re behind him now.

      • Rayne says:

        I would like you to define “establishment” for me. who is the “establishment” who gathered behind Bloomberg?

        The people of American Samoa?

        Seriously, I’d like you to tell me who this “establishment” is.

    • BobCon says:

      I don’t disagree that the Democratic leadership pushed hard for Biden, but I am not about to start subscribing to the idea that the DNC was somehow effective for the first time since Hector was a pup.

      I think claims that the DNC threw this to Biden are wrong. I am, however, more sympathetic to criticism of the major news outlets controlling the messaging and pushing hard against the idea that Sanders was a viable candidate. And I also don’t buy the idea that the Democratic Party leadership controls the media narrative. If anything, they are much too passive in the face of what the media says.

      • Rayne says:

        I’d really like folks like The Old Redneck to point to where the Democratic leadership pushed hard for Biden, beginning with the definition of “Democratic leadership.”

        The votes were cast by individuals, tallied, delegates apportioned per party rules. “Democratic leadership” didn’t cast the votes.

        • BobCon says:

          Yes, the reality is that the Democratic leadership is fragmented and defined by inaction. If they had any firm control, they would have shut down Sanders before he even started, and we would probably have had Bloomberg as the de facto nominee already.

          If they had even controlled the debate process in a candidate-neutral fashion, which they probably should have, we would have seen a saner method for hosting candidates and much better questions.

          For a bunch of dumb reasons they let the Chuck Todds out there dictate the overall outcome in a way which hurt every candidate, and blew a chance to promote messages which would have helped the party.

          • MB says:

            IMO, Dem leadership has been adrift since Bill Clinton’s election in 1992. He famously pulled the party away from its traditional orientation towards working people and labor unions to “Wall St. with a compassionate face”, i.e. monied interests who talk a sympathetic game on social issues, but whose bottom line is the same as harsher-seeming bottom line of pre-Trump GOP and now the insane Trump regime.

            As to the media, well the traditional broadcast networks have always been middle-of-the-road both prior to the advent of cable news up to and including now. MSNBC has always had a checkered history with anchors who have deviated leftward from the acceptable Clinton-Dem POV, to wit: Phil Donahue, Keith Olbermann, Cenk Uygur, Ed Schultz, and Martin Bashir, to name some prominent lefties who had anchor jobs there. So, Chuck Todd is simply a continuation of a long tradition. Morning Joe Scarborough fits in neatly with the never-Trumpers, including frequent guests Tim O’Brien (Bloomberg hack until today), Steve Schmidt (Howard Schultz hack until recently), Steve Ratner (neolib hack) etc. etc. etc.

              • MB says:

                Well…it is a bit of a vague term, but what comes to mind immediately for me is Pelosi (House), Schumer (Senate), Perez (DNC), and the current “leadership team” of the DLC which consists of 1) Tom Vilsack (Chairman + current governor of Iowa), 2) Tom Carper (Vice-Chair + current senator from Delaware), 3) Hillary (chair of DLC’s “American Dream Initiative”, whatever that is), and 4) Al From (CEO of the DLC).

                The DNC interacts with media (debates etc.) The DLC is like a centrist think-tank comprising of some currently-serving members of congress.

                Less fuzzy now?

                • P J Evans says:

                  Congressional leadership is not the party leadership. That’s one thing that gets the media confused, because they think that the Dems are run like the GOP-T is.

                • Rayne says:

                  Explain to me how whatever it is the DLC does influences and shapes the votes of any individual Democratic voter.

                  Ditto for DNC.

                  • MB says:

                    Hmm…going to have to retract what I said about the DLC, after further research. It appears the DLC was disbanded in 2011 and, according to Wikipedia, “the historical records of the DLC have been purchased by the Clinton Foundation”. The DLC website I found earlier today was from 2014 and found on the Wayback Machine website.

                    So…”how whatever it is the DLC does influences and shapes the votes of any individual Democratic voter”? A: not at all, anymore.
                    Hurrr, durr, durr indeed.

            • P J Evans says:

              “The media” don’t control the party. They *do* control who gets coverage – and that’s been Biden, Sanders, and Bloomberg, for the last couple of months, and, generally speaking, not many Dems for the last three or four YEARS.

            • BobCon says:

              Pelosi has pursued a weak legislative and investigative agenda, and her approach on impeachment was mess. Schumer has been vastly less effective at marshalling the still potent obstructionist potential of Senate minority leadership that Reid and McConnell could wield.

              Perez is barely visible at the DNC and has not built a strong grassroots network — Ellison would have been a much stronger choice.

              Cheri Bustos at the DCCC has fumbled the opportunity to take advantage of energetic new members like AOC and has none of the party building srtrength of Tony Coehlo. Catherine Cortez Masto is a blank at the DSCC.

              These people, for starters, did not suddenly flex muscles and crown Biden. I do not think there is any meaningful sign of Democratic party kingmakers anywhere else, but if there are I’m happy to be proven wrong.

              • Rayne says:

                Really don’t know how you can say Pelosi’s legislative agenda is weak when McConnell is sitting on +400 bills with no intention of letting any of them through. Not going to argue about the impeachment because it wasn’t solely on her — everybody neatly forgets Steny Hoyer’s role and lets that undermining asshole off the hook.

                I don’t know if Ellison would have been stronger because he’s been deputy chair and little changed.

                Bustos is a fuck up. That I’ll say.

                And yes, none of them crowned Biden. Voters did what they wanted to do, they went with their feelings.

        • bmaz says:

          I am with Rayne on this. Irrespective of my preferences, and Biden was never particularly one, this came out of voters. Not the “Democratic establishment”. That is lazy bullshit in favor of an excuse. It happened too fast. It was not the “Democratic establishment”, it was candidates that had no path, and no money (except Bloomie) to continue.

          Bernie could not turn out the youth as he promised. Minorities were far more complex than people thought. elections were finally held, as opposed to caucuses, and people spoke. Live with it.

          • ernesto1581 says:

            Moreover, Bernie may not have figured out how to convince black voters that white voters are really on board for systemic change. This is as important as getting to black voters in the first place.
            Regular folks, that is, not the professional class.

            • Rayne says:

              Rep. Maxine Waters first called for impeachment in May 2017.

              Rep. Al Green along with Rep. Brad Sherman called for impeachment in July 2017.

              That it took until December 2019 for a majority of the House Dems to finally vote for impeachment should tell you how much farther ahead the black community has been than white Democrats and why there’s a huge trust gap. The constant attacks on the first voices to call for impeachment with little support from their fellow elected Democrats has only widened that gap.

              • bmaz says:

                I would like to be crystal clear: It could have been voted out of HJC ever since the Mueller Report dropped, there was NEVER a need for a full floor vote (even if that is a nice touch). The fact that NOTHING happened before it did is entirely on Pelosi, Hoyer and Jeffries. They are solely responsible, and anybody who does not think so have not talked to enough people involved and are lying to themselves.

          • P J Evans says:

            I’d be willing to describe it as “real people came out and didn’t see it Bernie’s way”.

            • bmaz says:

              Think that is fair. Not sure his picture was ever really painted fairly prior to that, but think you are right.

          • Kool Moe says:

            fwiw, I generally agree too, but I do think there was some sort of effort to brush off Warren. Consistently in various news broadcasts and articles, it was all about Biden vs Bernie, or how Pete was going to come back, or…some other story. I rarely seemed to catch a fair report on Warren showing her as competitive.
            But I am biased toward her.
            If she’s not the nominee, I sure hope she’s elevated to some worthy post…maybe like Barr’s replacement :)

        • The Old Redneck says:

          Where to begin? James Clyburn. Obama, though apparently behind the scenes. James Carville. Hillary, who trashed Sanders in an interview. Mayor Pete and Klobuchar.
          Having said that, I agree that voting for the lesser of two evils is the right thing to do, and never suggested otherwise.

    • Molly Pitcher says:

      I would also point out that in almost every state, Bernie has gotten fewer votes than he did against HRC. His supporters are ardent but not voting.

      • Molly Pitcher says:

        []https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2020/03/04/super-tuesday-bernie-sanders-youth-votes-fell-short-compared-2016/4947795002/[/]

        This is a USA Today story about the diminished turnout by the youth vote for Bernie.

    • Vicks says:

      “It’s just astonishing how fast the Democratic party leadership closed ranks around Biden (now they’ve got Bloomberg on board too). They were obviously worried sick about Bernie, who is in reality no more a socialist than FDR”
      I disagree, the media had put a fork in him, and he turned around and pulled SC out of his butt.
      Biden’s win deserved every second of media attention he got, and he milked it like a good politician..
      The candidates that pulled out of the race aren’t part of some establishment plot, they did it because they made the rational decision they weren’t going to win, and anyone that continues to say there is something nefarious about them then throwing their weight behind Biden, hasn’t logically processed the situation.
      I’m not advocating for Biden but against these types of attacks.
      I think people are relieved to have the field narrowed to two decent candidates that are such opposites, instead of second guessing themselves, democrats now get to vote with their hearts and belief systems (mostly) intact.
      My choice yesterday was a whole lot easier yesterday than it would have been a week ago, it felt solid and I think THAT is what got people amped up to vote yesterday, and I think the energy will continue.
      IMHO this race will come down to turn-out.
      Biden’s had nothing but terrible reviews for his rallies, and I can’t remember what time of day it was, but on NPR a Bernie rep was being asked where the kids were, and he explained, that’s not how kid’s roll, they will show up for the general election…
      I think they both have their work cut out for them.

  20. Sela says:

    I have hard time understanding American voters. We are facing one of the most important elections in US history, when we decide if Trump get elected for 4 more years and cause irreparable damage to the US, or not. All the democrats have to do was to elect a reasonably good candidate to face Trump. Not perfect … there is no such a thing. Any person is flawed in one way or another. Just not terrible.

    And here we are, getting close to the finish line with only two viable candidates. One is 76 years old, the other is 77. One just had a heart attack, the other is showing signs of early dementia. There were lots of good candidates. Not perfect, but ok. How come we ended up with a choice between these two?

    • bmaz says:

      Um, because better people did not want the job and/or could not muster the votes. That’s kind of how it works.

  21. Jenny says:

    Could be people are voting for Biden because he is decent, caring and compassionate unlike the WH occupant who is a bully, abuser and vindictive. Everyday, it is like living in a domestic violent home with constant verbal attacks. Exhausting and stressful. For me, this is about consciousness and content of character.

    We need leaders to be PEOPLE before personalities, before politicians. PEOPLE first. NOT leaders who incite nationalism instead of patriotism, stir up fear, blame, spew hatred and division, deflection and lies, with no workable compromised solutions.

    We need leaders with strong character standing up for what they believe, is passionate and not jump into the fight pit. Someone who will do what is right for the people. “Let’s elect leaders who have a vision past themselves, past a religious predisposition, past a racial bias — past their own limitations projected through their own fear. Let’s elect people who have truly done the work to be good people, first and foremost.”

    “Judge a man not by the color of his skin, but by the content of his character.” Martin Luther King Jr.

  22. punaise says:

    I’m a single issue voter at this point: who can beat Trump?

    Both remaining candidates are flawed and have baggage. I don’t like either of them, but I am most concerned about Bernie’s vulnerability in the general election. Even though his policy positions are pretty close to those of my failed candidate, Warren. I struggle with the fact that I am actually kind of rooting for Biden now.

    BTW I do wonder if Warren will endorse Bernie…

    • Rayne says:

      The candidate who’ll beat Trump is the one who both wins the popular vote AND the electoral college, the one for whom enough citizens vote. It’s that simple.

      I am wondering if Warren doesn’t endorse either candidate as a means to persuade unity. She knows nothing will happen to progressive legislation if Trump wins; unity is required to kick him to the curb. How to play this to achieve unity?

      • punaise says:

        Indeed! While not really addressing the general election prospects, Amanda Marcotte
        has a nuanced take on Biden v Bernie, including this: (sorry I don;t know how to blockquote)

        For instance, there is the case of Warren, who has not yet dropped out and endorsed Sanders, despite many public demands from Sanders supporters that she do so. (Apparently Warren is weighing her possible departure from the race on Wednesday. She will do it on her own terms, if and when that happens.) Klein asks “why Sanders hasn’t been able to convince her” and suggests, much as it may pain the Sanders camp to accept it, that offering carrots to Warren and her supporters might work better than constantly battering them with sticks.

        • errant aesthete says:

          [blockquote] Seems odd we have 3 old white men vying for the presidency.

          I don’t find it odd at all. And I don’t think you do either in acknowledging the presidential candidate’s wife as the heroine of the evening.

        • holdingsteady says:

          Crossing fingers she’ll be our First Lady at this point! (although I am still keeping an eye on Bernie too due to his progressive courage)

          Imagine Michelle Obama as Joe Biden’s Veep (I know this is just a fun fantasy)

  23. orionATL says:

    the writer i cite below, david wasserman, was presented to me as thoroughly neutral and one of the premier analysts of election results. that he may be. he presents a laundry list of “deficiencies” democrats had in the eyes of voters in this unique county in 2016.

    https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-one-county-in-america-that-voted-in-a-landslide-for-both-trump-and-obama/

    one finds this sort of analysis everywhere in the media these days.

    continuing on, after paragraphs of sturm und drang, however, there appears this bit of history sort of off by itself:

    “…By the fall, anti-Clinton fervor in the community had reached a crescendo. The week before the election, emboldened Trump supporters took out a full-page newspaper ad and rented out the historic, city-owned Cresco Theatre and Opera House — a long-ago vaudeville haunt — for screenings of conservative filmmaker Dinesh D’Souza’s documentary “Hillary’s America” and the Benghazi film “13 Hours.” To Democrats’ dismay, the theater was packed…”

    then he continues:

    “…For years to come, pundits and political scientists will debate whether working-class white voters’ sharp turn towards Trump had more to do with economic or racial resentment…”.

    okaay. biiigg topic.

    toward the very end of his analysis there is this homily:

    “…If Democrats want to retake the House in 2018, they’ll need to win congressional districts like Iowa’s 1st, which includes Howard County.On this point, I actually disagree with my colleague Nate Silver’s analysis, which found that Democrats have a path to retake the House that doesn’t involve winning districts that are heavily white and heavily working-class. My rationale: Even if Democrats fail to pick up districts like Iowa 1, they’ll have to successfully defend their own seats in white, working-class areas. The 1st District narrowly re-elected rough-around-the-edges GOP Rep. Rod Blum last November. More importantly, Howard County’s Trump-curious Democrats have countless analogs in states that will decide the 2020 election: not just in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, but in Minnesota and Maine as well…”

    so i sez to meself, ” orion, lad, why don’t you take a look see who was elected to congress from this oh so special district in november 2018? so i did.

    you’d never guess:

    representative debbie finkenauer (D-Io)

    caveat lector (rough translation – watch out who lectures you on dem politics).

    • orionATL says:

      nuts. remembered it wrong. they’re too old to run and i’m too old to write. 🙃.

      representative abby finkenhour (D-Io).

      my apologies congresswoman.

    • orionATL says:

      here is another analysis, this time by wapo’s paul waldman who is usually very sharp. i think his analysis is so offbase and missing the obvious that it is embarrassing:

      https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/03/04/will-pragmatism-realism-doom-democratic-chances-against-trump/

      let’s begin with the population of u.s. regions. if you divide the nation into four regions (n.east, midwest, south, west) the south is the largest by far in population, nearly 50 million greater than the next, the west. of states voting, texas and n. carolina are in the top ten.

      seven of the 14 states on super tuesday were in the south.

      the south is generally understood to be a conservative region.

      one does not have to assume southern voters were bring “pragmatic” if they voted for biden over sanders. they just did not like what they felt sanders to represented.

      however, outside of the south in the nation’s most liberal and most populous state, california, sen. sanders got only about 1/3 of the dem primary vote, v.p. biden got 1/4, and sen. warren 1/8. i don’t see this as pragmatic choosing either. as usual in politics, it was what voters thought a candidate that they were willing to support represented.

      in minnesota an extremely popular senator, klobuchar, gave her support to v.p. biden, likely leading other dem voters to follow her lead – again, no need to introduce “pragmatism” into the analysis . “loyalty” and “trust” will do nicely.

    • orionATL says:

      former n. y. city mayor michael bloomberg, whose very large charitable donations from his vast fortune have been notable for being in the public interest, has been beaten badly about the head and shoulders by dem politicians and the media after entering the dem presidential foray.

      it has never seemed to occur to these folks that bloomberg was a peripheral character in that 2020 presidential drama. fear of his overtly, not covertly, spent money seemed to drive dems mad, or hypocritical. deciding between whether the devil hid with “small donations funding” or with “self-funding” seemed too much. let me offer an opinion – as always in politics, it resides solely in the character and the behavior of that candidate after she has been elected.

      in any event mayor bloomberg exited today with this notable comment:

      “… I will not be our party’s nominee, but I will not walk away from the most important political fight of my life,” Mr. Bloomberg said…” that could turn out to be a very good thing for dem party candidates since, all denial aside, since our rightwing supreme court’s sophistical “citizens united” decision american politics has been wide open to vast, hidden political spending.

      check out the underbelly of the federalist society out while you savor your righteous savaging of bloomberg.

      it’s all about leonard leo’s very, very secret war to make america a christian theocracy:

      https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/investigations/leonard-leo-federalists-society-courts/?

      • orionATL says:

        the other side of the turnout coin. another post- mortem:

        https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/04/us/politics/bernie-sanders-young-voter-turnout.html?

        i am no fan of sen. sanders. i think he has been distructive for one, and bears responsibility for trump’s ascendance.

        i think his message focusing on income inequality has got him holding onto the wrong end of the income stick. the problem for people at and below the median income is not billionaires, it is decades of low wage growth and serious limitations on opportunities for other jobs. all of these impediments were directly manufactured and installed in our labor markets by a political system that is skewed badly toward the interests of corporations and the hyperich they birth.

        i have not noticed sen. sanders criticizing corporations as sen. warren has, yet that is where our fundamental fairness and equality problems lie.

  24. harpie says:

    So, what percentage of Democrats [and “never Trumper” Republicans] have already voted?
    I am among those who have not even had the chance to weigh in yet.
    And the “choice” for me and the others in this boat is already down to two:
    …same old and same old…
    I’m sorry for being negative, but it really is infuriating.
    And, yes, I already know I’ll HAVE to vote for one of them in November
    …doesn’t mean I have to be happy about it.
    blech

  25. klynn says:

    I’ve been trying to find data analysis comparing the results of semi-closed, closed and open primary results. Has anyone come across any?

    • punaise says:

      Can’t remember ever agreeing with the Mustache of Understanding (TM) – creator of the six month “Friedman Unit” for moving the goalposts for measuring success in Iraq – but on this one he makes a pretty good argument. Although it’s Biden/Bernie at this point rather than Bernie/Bloomberg. But Mitt Romney for Commerce Scty? A token mushy centrist sop.

    • bmaz says:

      Good grief, that is typically idiotic by Friedman. “Lets give up 25% of the Democratic seats in the Senate for a Magical Mystery Team of Rivals”.

      Just shoot me. No.

      • Sonso says:

        Gotta say, not withstanding the distaste for Matt Taibbi here, his epic takedowns of Friedman are worth reading.

  27. Doug Fir says:

    Could a candidate Biden bring home some progressives with Warren as VP, or would that be too weird a combination?

      • Sonso says:

        Yes, lots of talk of Stacy Abrams. We desperately need Warren in the Senate (due to Republican governor in MA). Good news that Bullock will enter the Montana race (Daines is another intermountain phuckwiesel a la Barasso , Risch, Lee, etc.).

  30. harpie says:

    Yesterday, at a Sanders rally in Arizona, a man behind Bernie unfurled a flag with a swastika on it:
    The Nazi Flag Unfurled at a Bernie Sanders Rally Illustrates the Stakes of This Election
    It’s not just that Sanders would be the first Jewish president. It’s that his movement represents a push for genuine multiracial democracy, where anyone can have a seat at the table in America.
    https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a31260921/nazi-flag-bernie-sanders-rally-swastika/
    3/6/20

    This is a thread about who that man is, via JJ MacNab:
    https://twitter.com/nickmartin/status/1235988697851387906
    1:00 PM · Mar 6, 2020

    The man who unfurled a Nazi flag at the Bernie Sanders rally in Arizona yesterday is Robert Sterkeson, a neo-Nazi who lives in the Phoenix area.

    Here are a few things you should know about him. (CW: racist, anti-Muslim and anti-Semitic slurs/hate.) // A thread […]

    • bmaz says:

      Hey! Both Nick Martin and @imraansiddiqi are friends here, and very good follows if so inclined.

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