Friday Talking Points -- Predicting Nevada's Outcome

[ChrisWeigant]

{Program Note for DemocraticUnderground.com readers:
This is a weekly roundup column of what is going on in the political world. For the duration of the 2020 campaign, I've been instructed to post it under the "Democratic Primaries" category rather than the "General Discussion" category, whenever the primary race is discussed. This discussion may be a large part of the column, or a very small part. Just wanted to clarify this up front, to avoid any objections that most of the post is "off topic."}

We are hereby totally throwing in the towel on our usual "weekly news wrap-up" segment here, because the Democratic primary race is ever so much nicer to focus on. In place of it, we offer up what we wrote back in Friday Talking Points Volume 523, from last April -- a "Generic Weekly News Roundup" with Mad-Lib-style fill-in-the-blanks. Two paragraphs even caught our eye as being not all that far removed from the current week, to wit:

Trump was also in the news this week for firing [HIGH-RANKING ADVISOR], which he claimed was due to [TOTALLY MADE-UP AND CAPRICIOUS REASON]. Multiple White House sources report, however, that the real reason was that [HIGH-RANKING ADVISOR] refused to violate numerous federal laws when directed to by Trump, which sent him into a rage.

...and the slightly-more-tongue-in-cheek:

In the current field, Senator Elizabeth Warren released [WILDLY POPULAR AND DETAILED POLICY IDEA], but the media completely ignored it because it was so intently focused on [LATEST SHINY-OBJECT NON-STORY FROM CAMPAIGN TRAIL]. And also because they had to have time to run the [LATEST ADORABLE CAMPAIGN VIDEO] from [CURRENT MEDIA DARLING CANDIDATE], thirty or forty times each hour. "[CURRENT MEDIA DARLING CANDIDATE] has really locked up the [CAT-LOVERS / DOG-LOVERS / ROCK FANS / STAR WARS FANS / YOUTH ACTIVIST / SENIOR CITIZENS] vote, with this new video clip," said every cable news anchor, simultaneously.

Cynical? Perhaps. Amusing? We hope so, at any rate. But let's push on with the real subject at hand instead, shall we?

Every four years, we run a loose series of columns in which we offer up our predictions for each upcoming primary state. Since this is the first time this election cycle where a primary or caucus falls on a Saturday, this is the first time we're blending our Friday column in with this series. We promise that future such installments will be a lot more succinct and won't take up the whole introductory segment, too.

But we've always thought that pundits should act like sports reporters and publish their predictions of election outcomes before they actually happen. Right or wrong, this provides a record so that readers can judge their accuracy. Before we get to this year's record (so far) and our picks for Nevada, here's our own past record in Democratic primaries. We should mention that in the early primaries we predict more than just the winner, when the field is large enough that coming in second or third still matters, but that later on we just begin picking the overall winner (so as not to boost our own stats with obvious picks for second place when it's a two-person race). In 2008, when the race boiled down to Barack Obama versus Hillary Clinton, here's how we did:

[Final 2008 Primary Pick Stats]
Total correct 2008 Democratic picks: 43 for 60 -- 72%
Total correct 2008 Republican picks: 37 for 50 -- 74%
Total overall correct picks: 80 for 110 -- 73%.

In 2012, there was no primary race among Democrats as Barack Obama was renominated as a sitting president. In 2016, the race was between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, and here were our final stats:

[Final 2016 Primary Pick Stats]
Total correct 2016 Democratic picks: 38 for 52 -- 73%
Total correct 2016 Republican picks: 37 for 47 -- 79%
Total overall correct picks: 75 for 99 -- 76%.

Overall, we're averaging roughly three out of four correct, which we consider not too bad. But enough resting on our laurels, let's take a look at this year. So far, we've been predicting the top five spots, since the field is so wide this time around. In Iowa, we didn't do so well, correctly calling only two out of five (unless Bernie Sanders turns out to be the winner, which would boost us up to three out of five). But we did a lot better in New Hampshire, and actually called the whole top five in correct order. This has boosted our running 2020 stats to:

Total correct 2020 primary picks so far: 7 for 10 -- 70%.

That's not too bad, for this early on, but Nevada is notoriously hard to predict, so that'll probably go down a bit after tomorrow night. At least we hope it'll be tomorrow night, although there are already a lot of fears that Nevada could screw up the tabulating of the results just like Iowa did (can we please just kill off the whole caucus concept?). But getting back to my picks, there are two reasons Nevada is always so hard to predict -- it is a caucus (where anything can happen), and there just aren't that many state-level polls (which are often proved inaccurate, in the end). One other thing worth mentioning is that Nevada -- like New Hampshire -- is almost certainly going to set a record for turnout. In the early-voting this week, an enormous number of people have already participated. The numbers already racked up in the early voting almost equal the total number of votes cast in 2016, to put it in perspective.

There were two last-minute Nevada polls which were just released, but neither one of them really showed any of the reaction to the Las Vegas debate this week, so that's got to be factored in as well. The first poll only reported numbers for the top four candidates (remember, Michael Bloomberg isn't in the running), which shortchanged both Amy Klobuchar and Tom Steyer. This poll put Bernie Sanders on top with 32 percent, followed by Elizabeth Warren (17), Pete Buttigieg (15), and Joe Biden (14).

The other poll was more inclusive. Bernie Sanders led this poll too, with 30 percent support. But this time Pete Buttigieg came in second (17 percent), followed by Joe Biden (16), Elizabeth Warren (12), Amy Klobuchar (11), and Tom Steyer (10).

There was one poll released a week earlier, which might show how the race has been moving since then. It put Bernie Sanders on top once again, with 25 percent, followed by Joe Biden (18), Elizabeth Warren (13), Tom Steyer (11), and Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar tied at 10 percent each.

While it's pretty easy to see who is in the lead, second through fifth place is a lot murkier, obviously. Biden, Warren, and Buttigieg each had one second-place showing, but the gap between second place and fourth place isn't all that big. Tom Steyer has been doing a sort of stealth campaign both here and in South Carolina, which is why he ranks so much higher here than he does nationally.

Also making things hard to see clearly, as we mentioned, the post-debate reactions aren't really accurately reflected in any of these polls. And adding to the confusion is the fact that Nevada is a caucus state, so if your candidate doesn't make 15 percent in the first round of voting, your second or even third choice becomes important.

But sometimes, in the prognostication business, you've just got to throw a few darts at the wall to see where they hit. So let's try to do so and call the Nevada results. The easiest and most-obvious pick is that Bernie Sanders is going to win the state. He may pull his highest percentage of the vote so far here, too -- predictions are as high as 40 percent (counting all the second-place votes he might pick up). But it likely will be nowhere near as close as both Iowa and New Hampshire were.

This is where it gets tough. Elizabeth Warren and (more recently) Pete Buttigieg have put together impressive ground games in Nevada, which includes reaching out to the more rural parts of the state in the north. So either or both may do better than expected outside the cities. But most Democratic primary voters are centered around Las Vegas, so the question may still boil down to how each does with Latinos and other voters of color. Both candidates could benefit from late-breaking surges, after this week's debate, too. Most pundits crowned Warren the winner of the debate, for whatever that's worth.

We're going to go out on a limb and predict that in the end Warren edges Pete out for second place. The safer bet would be to swap those two placements, but we were also very impressed with Warren's debate performance and think it may give her the edge she needs.

Trailing the top three will be Joe Biden, but we have no idea what the margin between them will be. It could be very close, and then again Biden's support might just completely crater. But we still think Biden will beat Amy Klobuchar and Tom Steyer, if only because he ends up making it to the final round of voting in more individual caucuses. We're really going to go out on a limb and predict that Amy Klobuchar loses fifth place to Tom Steyer, based on his impressive campaign investment here and Klobuchar's rather vicious performance at the debate.

Of course, any or all of this could prove to be wrong, so we invite everyone to list their own picks down in the comments, as always. Being Nevada, you've got to take a gamble, right? Here are our final predictions for tomorrow night's Nevada caucuses: (1) Bernie Sanders, (2) Elizabeth Warren, (3) Pete Buttigieg, (4) Joe Biden, (5) Tom Steyer. We're not going to count predicting Amy Klobuchar in sixth place, because picking the top five is already almost too broad for the stats. So those are my picks -- what are yours?





We're handing out both of our awards this week based on the Las Vegas debate, because it was easily the biggest political news of the week for Democrats. Which makes our Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week pretty obvious.

Senator Elizabeth Warren was the most impressive one on the stage for two big reasons: she didn't fade into the background (as indeed she has been doing at the last few debates), and she absolutely eviscerated Michael Bloomberg on the issue of his sexism in the workplace. By next week's debate, no doubt he'll have formulated a better response to why he won't release people from those non-disclosure agreements, but this week he went from being a deer in the headlights to being strapped onto the fender of Warren's pickup truck, in one heated exchange. And no, we don't think that's too brutal a metaphor to use.

Elizabeth Warren showed why it is so important to have female presidential candidates, because people like Bloomberg can no longer get away with just skating on some version of "boys will be boys." Not in the #MeToo era, at any rate. To put it another way, while Hillary Clinton likely thoroughly enjoyed watching Warren's takedown of Bloomberg, if the country had been where it is now back in 1992, it is almost certain Bill Clinton would never have been nominated by the Democratic Party, let alone become president. Remember the "bimbo eruptions"? They happened during the primary season.

Nowadays, such things aren't even remotely funny. As Bloomberg is fast finding out. While Bloomberg did marginally better (...only marginally, mind you...) responding to some of the other attacks launched against him in his first debate, he absolutely blew it on the non-disclosure agreement issue. Warren, sensing this weakness, has continued to hammer Bloomberg on it, ever since the debate. We'll have to see what happens to his polling numbers as a result of all this being exposed.

Elizabeth Warren didn't let anyone off the hook in the debate -- she got in some jibes at pretty much every other candidate on stage. Even Bernie. Up until now, there's been a kind of "non-aggression pact" between the two, but Warren knows if she doesn't start doing better soon then her campaign is soon going to be over. So she has nothing much to lose, at this point.

Personally, we could see Elizabeth Warren debating Donald Trump on stage one-on-one, and coming away the victor of such a showdown. We certainly can't say the same about every Democrat running, but Warren can bring the heat when it is most needed, as she obviously proved this week.

We have no idea whether she'll get a big boost from this debate performance (as Amy Klobuchar did in New Hampshire), but she really deserves one. Out of all six of the candidates on stage this week in Las Vegas, Elizabeth Warren was easily the Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week.

[Congratulate Senator Elizabeth Warren on her Senate contact page, to let her know you appreciate her efforts.]






This one's pretty obvious, too.

Michael Bloomberg was far and away the easy choice for Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week. His debate performance was universally panned as one of the worst ever. The headlines were not kind, and neither were the pundits. Bloomberg went down in flames, plain and simple.

He reportedly had done a whole lot of debate prep with what one can only assume were high-priced political consultants, and either (1) he just didn't listen to them, or (2) they didn't throw their worst at him in practice debate sessions. For whatever reason, though, it wasn't exactly money well spent for Bloomberg.

Now all eyes will be on the next debate, which happens next Tuesday night. Will Bloomberg continue to self-destruct on stage? Or will he actually listen to his consultants next time and practice a few rehearsed answers to all the obvious attacks he's going to get? At this point, it's hard to see him turning in a worse performance than he did in Vegas. So maybe "when you're on the bottom, the only way you can go is up"?

Maybe, but then again maybe not. There's another pithy saying which might be more accurate, the one about finding yourself in a hole and trying to dig your way out of it.

Sometimes the worst problem with billionaire candidates isn't that they try to buy elections, but that they're billionaires -- and therefore are simply not used to people telling them what to do or attacking their opinions in any way, shape, or form. We'll see whether all Mike's money can buy him a better performance next time around, but for this week he was obviously the Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week.

[Michael Bloomberg is technically a private citizen, and our blanket policy is not to link to campaign webpages, so you'll have to search his contact info yourself if you'd like to let him know what you think of his actions.]




Volume 562 (2/21/20)

Before we begin, we'd like to urge everyone to raise their mouse (or touchscreen) in silent salute to the passing of one of the most influential men in the entire history of personal computing -- Larry Tesler. He invented "cut, copy and paste." He was instrumental in the development of the mouse, too. And the "graphic user interface" we all have grown to know and love. One of the most historic meetings in computer history happened when Steve Jobs toured a Silicon Valley facility run by Xerox, where he met Tesler. Out of that one tour came: the Macintosh, the first GUI operating system, WYSIWYG, the mouse, the AppleTalk LAN, and the LaserWriter. In the days when people interacted with all computers using only text and 80-column screens, all of these developments were beyond revolutionary. Tesler was arguably more historically influential than Steve Wozniak -- that's how important he was. So please, everyone, raise whatever graphic user interface you now use in a moment of silence for one of the key men responsible for it all happening in the first place.

Requiescat In Pace. You will be missed.

OK, with that out of the way, we're going to forego our usual talking points this week and just let loose a rant instead (as we are sometimes wont to do). Because there's a phrase making the rounds -- that we claim absolutely no credit for, by the way, because we didn't think it up or anything -- which could become the most important credo of this election season.



Vote Blue, No Matter Who

Let's make one thing perfectly clear. The goal in the 2020 election is a simple one: beat Donald Trump. Period.

Does any sane adult out there really want four more years of what we're going through now? Four more years of a man-baby in charge of the nuclear launch codes? Four more years of a narcissistic personality disorder being our sole representative on the world stage? Four more years of watching behavior you wouldn't tolerate in your own small child being somehow passed off as "presidential"? Four more years of cronyism, crooks, nepotism, and more incompetent and unqualified yes-men than you can shake a stick at? Four more years of having to watch Kellyanne Conway on our television screens?

Because that is precisely what we will get if Democratic and independent voters don't speak very loudly -- and with one single voice -- this November. Those are the stakes, and nobody should ever lose sight of that crucial fact.

As in all presidential primary seasons, there are going to be many people who wind up disappointed in the eventual nominee. This is normal, folks. It happens each and every time, in fact. But like in The Highlander, in the end there can only be one. The voters will decide which one that is, or perhaps we'll have to wait until the convention to find out who the Democratic nominee will be. Either way, there will only be one name on the presidential ballot with a "D" after it in November.

I don't know about you, but I'm voting blue no matter who that name turns out to be. I will not be staying home in a fit of petulance. I will not be voting Green or other third party in protest, even if my favored candidate loses. Instead, I will be enthusiastically pulling that lever or marking that box for whichever Democrat is running against Donald Trump. I will gladly and cheerfully vote for Tulsi Gabbard, if it comes to that. I will vote with enthusiasm for Tom Steyer, Michael Bloomberg, Pete Buttigieg, Amy Klobuchar, Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren, or Bernie Sanders. Because at the end of the day, we've still got to beat Trump.

I will admit that my enthusiasm level will be higher for some of those candidates than others. But come Hell or high water, I will be marching down to the polling place in my neighborhood to boldly vote for any of them -- even the ones I now think would be the worst possible nominee. Because no matter how excited or disappointed I am in the choice of nominee, any of them are a thousand times better than Trump, period.

Will the nominee eventually disappoint me after winning the Oval Office? Almost certainly -- and that goes for each and every one of them. Barack Obama was a disappointment in many ways, but I certainly wouldn't trade any of it for President John McCain or Mitt Romney. Even the most progressive Progressive will undoubtedly be disappointed by a Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren presidency. Even the most center-of-the-road moderate will become disappointed with Joe Biden or Pete Buttigieg, given enough time. Because there is no perfect candidate. Even if "your guy" or "your gal" gets the nomination and goes on to a landslide win over Trump, there will still be disappointments ahead for you. That's just the way the world works, folks. Of course, if your guy or gal doesn't get the nomination, there will likely be a higher level of disappointment in their presidencies, should they win.

I have one thing to say about that: get over it. In every single election since I've been old enough to pull that lever, a large contingency of the Democratic Party has had to hold its nose while voting. Why should moderates be any different, if Bernie Sanders wins? Progressive Democrats certainly have had to unenthusiastically vote for a very long list of milquetoast moderates over the past three or four decades. Perhaps this time the moderates will be the ones in that position, instead of the progressives (for once). Or perhaps not -- perhaps the progressives will be the ones (once again) who have to hold their noses when voting. But no matter which way it works out, the message for the supporters of the other side need a swift reminder: get over it. Get over it, support the nominee, and get out and vote for them this November. Because the stakes are incredibly high this time around.

Vote blue no matter who. I have no idea who came up with that phrase, but it should immediately become all Democrats' rallying cry for 2020. We can't afford any "Party Unity My Ass" PUMAs nonsense or disgruntled Bernie Bros this time around. Because this time it's more than just party unity. This time American democracy itself is in danger. The country might not survive another four years of Trump -- at least not the democracy we all know and love.

Because that's the choice. President Trump or a Democratic president. There is no other option. Staying home and not voting is exactly the same as a vote for four more years of Trump. Last time around, nobody believed he could win. Nobody should make that same mistake again this year.

Seeing a Democrat inaugurated next January is the prize. That prize may not be exactly the one you wanted, but that's just how it goes. Any of the Democrats -- even the one you now consider to be the worst -- will be miles better than a second Trump term. That's an indisputable fact, or it should be, to every Democratic voter.

Vote blue no matter who. That pretty much says it all. Do so as unenthusiastically as you wish, but cast that vote no matter what, because voters' enthusiasm isn't counted -- only the actual votes are. Hold your nose if you must, but vote. The choice is stark and it is critical to the future of this country. So no waffling and no foolin' around -- get out there and vote. For the Democrat. Beat Trump like a drum. Vote blue no matter who.




Chris Weigant blogs at: ChrisWeigant.com
Follow Chris on Twitter: ChrisWeigant
Full archives of FTP columns: FridayTalkingPoints.com
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