With my preferred candidate making a pragmatic, mature, take-one-for-the party decision to drop out of the race, Suzie and I have less than two days to decide who we’ll vote for in the California primary. It’s a tough nut to crack; we need a flow chart to follow all the possible permutations.
I’m a moderate, pragmatic, center-left guy. I think Trump and his ilk are reprehensible and dangerous. Four more years of them might irrevocably damage our country. So for me, there’s only one question in this election: Which candidate has the best chance of beating Trump? And since this election, like the last one, will likely turn on a handful of mostly-Midwestern states, that question distills down to which candidate has the best chance of beating Trump in those few states.
Nothing else matters. Not whether I agree with a candidate on most policy issues. Not whether the candidate makes me feel good. Not whether a candidate ticks off category boxes that are important to me. Not whether I like a candidate. Not whether I think a candidate would do a better job as President than some other candidate. Just one thing matters — who can beat Trump in those four or five swing states.
Adding to the complexity is the increasing likelihood (64% according to FiveThirtyEight) that no candidate will have locked up the nomination by convention time. So the possibility of a Democratic “unity” candidate being selected at the convention has to be considered too.
One thing I’m confident of to an 80%-90% level of certainty is that Bernie Sanders cannot carry those swing states. I think he’d run up big margins in his home-turf areas, I think he’d even win the popular vote. But there’s no way he carries Wisconsin, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, or Pennsylvania. He’s too far left to capture moderate voters who might be disaffected with Trump (his take-away-your-health-insurance plan alone dooms him there), and there aren’t enough Bernie Bros to make up the difference (in any event, young voters rarely come through in the end in the numbers expected).
That leaves as viable candidates Biden, Bloomberg, and Warren, plus the possible “unity” convention candidate. How to choose among them?
The first big question is whether to vote “strategically” or for a candidate I’d actually want to get the nomination. Because (a) the sole issue for me is finding someone who can beat Trump, (b) I don’t believe Sanders can, and (c) Sanders is leading right now, I want my vote to minimize the chance of a Sanders nomination. Given the way the Democratic delegate allocation works (in California and elsewhere), that means maximizing the number of candidates who are able to garner more than 15% of the vote. (The San Jose Mercury News has an excellent explanation of the allocation method, with examples.)
As of now, the aggregate of California polls has Sanders at 34.4%, followed by Biden (18.5%), Warren (15.4%), and Bloomberg (12.5%). At 12.5%, Bloomberg is within striking distance of the 15% delegate cutoff. Pushing him over that cutoff would reduce Sanders’ delegate take. So a Bloomberg vote is strategically smart. (I assume here, in part due to the experience Suzie and I had canvassing for Pete yesterday, that Warren will also get over the 15% threshold.) The only wild card is a lack of information about the relative strengths of the candidates in my particular Congressional district, which would impact this analysis.
I share with most Democrats an aversion to voting for a candidate who is buying his way into the race, who contributed $250,000 to support the unctuous Lindsay Graham as recently as 2014, whose treatment of women and African-Americans is concerning, and whose debate performances to date were poor. Normally he’d not get my vote.
But these are desperate times.
I’m still hoping (no doubt unrealistically) that Democrats can coalesce around some better choice than these four. I have doubts that any of them can win the swing states. So at this time, in this state, a strategic vote for Bloomberg is where I’m leaning. It makes it less likely that Sanders will get the nomination, and maximizes the party’s options going forward.
Ick.
Categories: Politics
Tags: California Primary, Elizabeth Warren, Mike Bloomberg