For any of you following along, and want to be picayune about the details of the headline, you are correct. I didn’t write a “Super Tuesday Part I” post. I did however, write that I wasn’t going to post on CrankyOldGuy.com, until AFTER Super Tuesday…because I suspected that everything up to that point was not going to be a clear indication of anything regarding the Democratic nomination.
But now, here we are, on the Tuesday following Super Tuesday, when one of two things will happen…Biden seals the deal, or Bernie muddies the water even more, allowing Trump (and more important, his evil digital general, Brad Parscale) to keep the focus on dividing the party.
However, in the past two weeks, I have become an acolyte to the most unlikely of political prognosticators, a young, whip-smart, 2009 graduate of the University of Oregon, who has gone on to blow up political projection modeling, like nobody else in recent history.
If you haven’t heard of Rachel Bitecofer, it’s time for you to know more. Because she is not only quantifying many of my own beliefs, but going way further in her stance, that it almost doesn’t matter who gets the Democratic nomination, because it’s mostly just about removing Trump.
Granted, she wasn’t around to give her opinion about the 2016 Presidential election (although she does write about it in op-eds). But she was a clear maverick, standing alone from others, in her bold, and almost exact prediction of the 2018 mid-term elections. She predicted the Democrats winning back the house in overwhelming fashion, calling it within a single seat, the exact number of races the Democrats would win.
So…when she writes about the upcoming nomination process, and the upcoming general election, I am paying attention.
She and I are lock-step in our evaluation of why Biden blew out Sanders on Super Tuesday. I am just a cranky old guy with opinions, she is clearly a political modeling genius, the same age as my youngest daughter. So yes, you can throw the demographic “birds of a feather” argument out the window.
In a recent op-ed that ran in The Guardian on March 4th, she made some of the following points about how/why Biden won Super Tuesday.
“Sanders’ only pathway to the nomination absolutely required the senator win over older voters of color, and on Tuesday these voters, along with suburban voters of all colors, soundly rejected Sanders’ revolution in favor of Biden’s pragmatism.
Had Sanders’ revolution been more digestible, and not saddled with the democratic-socialist label, it may have fared better. Instead, it provoked outright panic throughout the Democratic party, and not just within the party’s so-called establishment. Although Monday night’s coordinated winnowing and endorsement effort was clearly organized by party elites, the rejection of Sanders’ candidacy came at the hands of rank-and-file Democratic voters, who turned out en masse on Tuesday to blunt his path to the party’s nomination. Though it’s true that Biden dominated among moderates, he also performed well among liberals, earning the plurality of this group as well while Sanders only dominated among those who described their ideology as “very” liberal. Biden also dominated among late-deciding voters, capitalizing on natural momentum from his dominant South Carolina win.
What makes Tuesday’s results most stunning, is the fact that Biden won many of these states without any campaign spending, something we’ve never seen in a competitive primary before. The cash-strapped Biden operation staggered into South Carolina on life support and had no time to transition their victory there three days prior into investment in the Super Tuesday contests, where his closest ideological rival had invested more than a half billion dollars.”
BOOM! I couldn’t have said it better…and I guess I have on Facebook, and in my recent appearance on the Spent The Rent Podcast, with my favorite local podcaster, Patric Stutz.
CLICK HERE TO LISTEN
I admit to being blown away by Super Tuesday results. I thought Biden would do OK…at least well enough to not become a statistic in this horrendous circular firing squad that the DNC concocted. But, to sweep, blow up, and blow out Sanders, while gathering endorsements, and slaying a juggernaut media blitz of campaign spending by Bloomberg, was something I really didn’t see coming.
As far as the rest of what Rachel has to say (and there is a lot to unpack,) the best place to find her modeling, including her amazingly exciting, general election map (which she is going to update soon), is on her web site for the for the Niskanen Center, a think tank that is described as, “a Washington, D.C.-based think tank that advocates environmentalism, immigration reform, civil liberties, and a national defense policy based on market principles.”
She is also a contributor to The Judy Ford Wason Center for Public Policy, which was established in 2007 to provide unbiased and non-partisan scientific research about public policy issues facing Virginia. It her modeling for the Wason Center that won her national attention in 2016. And, it is her current map for the upcoming general election, that is going viral.
So…Let’s get back to my most recent post about “The Six States that Matter,” and why Iowa doesn’t. I’ll let you decide on the Hillary faction…but, that will play out tonight in Michigan, a state that Bernie won in 2016, and needs to hold if he has a chance in hell of remaining vital in 2020.
The six states that matter, continue to be (Date of Primary and ECVotes in the General)
North Carolina-– Super Tuesday – March 3rd – 15 Electoral College Votes
Michigan-– March 10th – 16 ECV
Florida- – March 17th – 29 ECV
Ohio– March 17th – 18 ECV
Wisconsin-– April 7th – 10 ECV
Pennsylvania-– April 28th – 20 ECV
If we are so bold as to agree with Rachel’s 2020 General Election Map Modeling…
North Carolina – We are going to win (for the same reasons Biden won in the primary)
Michigan – We’ll see tonight what the turnout is like…and if Biden can take another leg off of Bernie’s foot stool and tumble him from the race).
Wisconsin – should come back to being part of the “Blue Midwest Wall” that Hillary squandered
Pennsylvania- Should come back to the Dems…but according to Rachel, is only “leaning” to the left.
Florida – Biden is going to cream Bernie in the primary, after his apparent apologies for Castro. But it is a toss-up, and critical for a win in November. That is a lot of electoral votes to hand back to Trump. I am going to be very interested to see Rachel’s modeling when her new map comes out, as well as what the turnout looks like on the 17th of March.
I keep harping on “The Six States that Matter,” because they are the states that handed the election to Trump, with the help of Hillary’s hubris. I won’t go back to that song and dance, except to say that “she who needs to go away” doesn’t, and is actually being whispered as Biden’s VP. Arrrrrrrrrrrrrrggghhhh! Now THAT would mess up anyone’s model.
This is going to be an interesting 6 weeks, as by the end of April, all of the Six States will have given their approval/disapproval of one candidate or another, and we will be heading into the REAL contest…that of working our asses off to remove Trump.
In the meantime…follow Rachel on Twitter (if you are a twitterhead), @RachelBitecofer
or follow her posts on the Niskanen Center Web site: https://www.niskanencenter.org/category/in-the-news/print
Or her page of Projections (including the model from 2018 and the 2020 General) here
https://cnu.edu/wasoncenter/2019/07/01-2020-election-forecast/
OR…if you want to hear her on a Podcast from the Washington Post – regarding “How Biden Won,”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/03/10/election-forecaster-bitecofer-explains-reason-joe-biden-is-nominee/
OR…if you are a Bill Maher Fan (I’m not…but this is a good interview)
https://youtu.be/jqvM8-z7THs
Sooooooo many ways to get bitten by Bitecofer!
Let’s hope that she is correct…about all of it. Because now, more than ever, we need a little hope!
CrankyOldGuy.com 