How Does Bernie Sanders Deal With Super Tuesday?

By Bill Simpich, Reader Supported News

23 August 15

ernie Sanders is on course for strong performances at the Iowa caucuses on February 1st and in the New Hampshire primary on the 9th. He may make a credible showing at the Nevada caucuses and the South Carolina primary later in February. But how does Bernie get past Super Tuesday on the first of March?

Alabama and Arkansas – ugh. Colorado caucuses – potential? Georgia – tough. Massachusetts and the Minnesota caucuses – could be good. North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas – whoa, with the Lone Star State the largest prize of the day. Vermont – Bernie’s home state. Virginia – Hillary territory.

Most insurgent candidates simply don’t get past Super Tuesday. Gary Hart in 1984, Bill Bradley in 2000, Howard Dean in 2004, you get the picture. The twelve races are tilted to the South and favor the candidate with national strength and deep roots in the African American and Latino communities. What strategy can enable Bernie Sanders to go all the way?

Ask Nate Silver, who is the go-to guy for a lot of us. At his number-crunching website FiveThirtyEight, Silver recently raised the odds that Bernie Sanders can win the Democratic nomination to 5%. His analysis:

I still think it needs to involve some “shock” (as an economist would define that term) to the Clinton campaign. Meaning some substantially worse turn in the email scandal than what’s been reported so far. Hackers publish a bunch of top-secret documents culled from Clinton’s emails, for instance. Or a new scandal. Or a health problem.

In that event, Democratic elites would probably turn toward another establishment candidate. Most likely Joe Biden. But while I’m pretty sure that Sanders can’t beat Clinton head-to-head – he’s losing to her badly now, after all – I’m not so sure that’s true of Biden, etc.

I think Sanders vs. Biden, in a world where the Democratic establishment is in disarray because of a Clinton crisis, could be highly competitive. And Bernie’s organizational advantages – e.g., in the caucus states – could help him against a candidate who is getting off to a very late start.

Another angle on Bernie’s problem brought up by Silver’s team is that endorsements from governors, senators, and congressional members are thought to be the most important variable to consider as a predictor of success. Bernie does not have a single endorsement from any of them. See this chart provided by FiveThirtyEight.

Here’s a related dilemma: pragmatic voters are going to be reluctant to vote for Bernie if it doesn’t seem that he is going to be able to govern effectively. Where are the legislators who are willing to work hard to realize Sanders’s vision? Very few of them presently can be found in Congress – and how are they going to get there by 2016? How can he build a base of like-minded legislators? It’s no accident that he’s calling for a political revolution.

And, of course, Sanders has to win over huge numbers of African Americans and Latinos in order to halt the Hillary juggernaut. Is it possible? In a nod to Black Lives Matter, Bernie has adjusted his platform to note that unless structural racism ends, economic justice is impossible. But he still has to peel an incredible number of voters away from Hillary.

Nonetheless, Bernie continues to build momentum. He just won the endorsement of the 185,000-member National Nurses United. He is coming off a successful campaign swing through South Carolina. Believe it or not, even The New York Times on Friday exclaimed that the 73-year old Sanders has “recaptured the enthusiasm that fueled the 2008 Obama campaign.”

What Bernie is bringing to the 2016 race has nothing to do with his heritage, his pallor, or his coiffure. He has based his career and now this campaign on the belief that the vast majority of people agree with the fundamentals of his platform for economic justice. The unifying core of his message is that the billionaires can’t have it all. The strength of his belief in the common sense of the people is about to be tested. He could change American politics in a very positive way. As Tom Frank called for in his book What’s the Matter with Kansas?, we may see Americans in the heartland stop voting against their own interests. Whether or not Bernie wins the national election, we are seeing the formation of a political movement ready to fight the good fight on a multi-issue level.

He has to convince people of different points of view and different constituencies to work together. If he builds an effective team and stays in good health, he may be able to bring people to the voting booths who never vote and build alliances of people who don’t generally ally. There is one big wave of energy behind him.

If anyone can bend the numbers that Nate Silver relies on, Bernie is the man.

Bill Simpich is an Oakland attorney who knows that it doesn't have to be like this. He was part of the legal team chosen by Public Justice as Trial Lawyer of the Year in 2003 for winning a jury verdict of 4.4 million in Judi Bari's lawsuit against the FBI and the Oakland police.

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