Democratic Primary Reset?

The 2016 frontrunners at this stage won their nominations easily. But that's often not the case.

Andrew Romano, the West Coast Correspondent for Yahoo News, contends that the campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination thus far has been all but meaningless and reports “among top staffers for the top candidates, there’s a growing sense that the last 28 days before Iowa may matter more than the last 12 months combined — that the entire contest is about to hit reset.”

As to the former, he observes,

Exactly one year ago, Joe Biden led the field with 27.7 percent support, according to the RealClear Politics national polling average; Bernie Sanders was second with 17.3 percent. Today, Biden leads with 29.3 percent; at 19.9 percent, Sanders is still in second by about 10 points. Nothing that happened in 2019 — not Biden’s gaffes, not Sanders’s heart attack, not the shifting fortunes of other contenders — has changed this simple fact: The Democratic primary’s two most recognizable figures remain its likeliest winners

That’s fair enough. Then again, we began with 27 declared candidates, most of whom qualified for DNC-sponsored televised debates, and are now down around half a dozen. A lot of smart folks in our comments section were predicting that Kamala Harris would be the eventual nominee; she didn’t make it to Iowa.

As to why a shakeup might occur, Romano argues that the impeachment of President Trump has diverted attention away from the race for the past several months and the strike that took out the leader of Iran’s Quds force will dramatically refocus the debate.

Already we’re seeing the top Democrats try to reframe their candidacies in response: Buttigieg by emphasizing his time as a naval intelligence officer in Afghanistan; Biden by stressing the foreign policy experience he amassed as a senator and vice president; Warren and Sanders by putting their anti-war bona fides front and center. If tensions escalate this month into an outright conflict, Democratic primary voters will head to the polls with a new priority: picking the candidate best-prepared for a foreign policy crisis, and who can most plausibly present himself or herself to the rest of the electorate that way. 

Finally, he notes that history shows that a lot can change once the voting in Iowa and New Hampshire takes place.

One month before the 2008 Democratic caucuses, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton were tied at 27 percent; John Edwards trailed by five. One week before the caucuses, Clinton led with 30 percent; Edwards and Obama trailed by five. Then, on caucus night, Obama won by eight. 2016 was a similar story: One month out, Clinton led Sanders by 13; one week out, Sanders was in first; in the final days, Clinton pulled ahead by four; then they essentially tied on caucus night, a result that was portrayed as a huge win for Sanders. 

The fact of the matter is that the polling at this stage in the race sometimes predicts the results quite well—the 2016 nominees, Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, were prohibitive frontrunners at this stage in that race—and sometimes doesn’t.

Cato’s Emily Ekins had a piece four years ago yesterday titled, “Presidential Candidates Who Led the Polls in January Entering the 2008 and 2012 Primary Election Cycles Didn’t Win.” She noted,

At this point in the 2008 primary election cycle, former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani led the pack with 23.6 percent. Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee garnered 16.8 percent in second place while the eventual GOP nominee Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) was in third with 13.6 percent

[…]

Similarly, in 2012, RCP shows that former House Speaker Newt Gingrich held the top slot at this point in the cycle with 31 percent, while the eventual nominee Mitt Romney was in second with 20.5 percent. Herman Cain was in third with 13 percent.

[…]

Average polling throughout December 2007 found Clinton with 45 percent of the Democratic vote. Barack Obama trailed by 20 points with 24.6 percent and John Edwards garnered 13 percent. Fast-forward a few weeks: Obama won the Iowa Caucuses and his numbers soared past Clinton, eventually securing the nomination. Similar to the Republicans in 2012, the eventual winner of the Democratic nomination was polling second at the start of the new year in 2008.

The Democratic nominating fight to face George W. Bush in 2004 was especially chaotic, as CBS’ Fred Bachus reminds us:

In some ways the 2004, Democratic primary race resembles 2020: it had a crowd of Democratic challengers vying for the chance to unseat a sitting Republican president. CBS began polling among Democratic primary voters in September 2003 — shortly after retired Army Gen. Wesley Clark entered the race. Clark (12 percent) was the frontrunner in that poll, followed by Congressman Dick Gephardt (10 percent) in second place and Vermont Gov. Howard Dean (9 percent) and Sen. Joe Lieberman (9 percent) tied for third. The eventual nominee — Sen. John Kerry — came in fifth (8 percent). By November, Dean was the frontrunner, a status he held onto until losing in the Iowa Caucuses. As late as January, John Kerry — still just in fourth place — was preferred by just 7 percent of Democratic primary voters nationwide, but shot up to 53 percent and first place after winning Iowa, New Hampshire and a slew of other contests on Super Tuesday.

The 2004 race was the first that I blogged (OTB started in January 2003) and I don’t recall taking Clark all that seriously. But there was certainly a long stretch where Dean looked like the prohibitive favorite. More importantly, Kerry famously had to take out a loan against his wife’s inherited properties to keep his race afloat. (McCain had to do something similar to keep his hopes alive in 2008; both bets paid off.)

Every contest has its idiosyncracies. Further, the changes brought on by social media make comparisons with races even a decade ago somewhat fraught. And that’s to say nothing about the potential interference by foreign governments, a not-inconceivable war with Iran, or economic meltdown.

Biden has been the frontrunner rather consistently but it’s rather clear that he’s vulnerable. I find it hard to believe Democrats will nominate a non-Democrat, Bernie Sanders. Warren seems quite plausible. While I like Buttigieg a lot, I can’t imagine that a 30-something small-town mayor is going to be the nominee. And I don’t see how anybody outside the current top four gets any traction.

Then again, I didn’t think there was any way in hell my former party would nominate Trump in 2016—even when he was the frontrunner.

FILED UNDER: 2020 Election, Afghanistan War, Public Opinion Polls, US Politics, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
James Joyner
About James Joyner
James Joyner is Professor and Department Head of Security Studies at Marine Corps University's Command and Staff College. He's a former Army officer and Desert Storm veteran. Views expressed here are his own. Follow James on Twitter @DrJJoyner.

Comments

  1. EddieInCA says:

    @Teve

    https://www.texastribune.org/2020/01/07/julian-castros-former-supporters-switch-endorsements-joe-biden/

    Several former prominent supporters of Julián Castro in his home state are endorsing Joe Biden for president now that the Texan is no longer running — and a day after he threw his support to Biden rival Elizabeth Warren.

    In an announcement first shared with The Texas Tribune, Biden’s campaign unveiled 11 new Texas endorsements, including nine from people who had been with Castro. They include five state representatives and members of the Mexican American Legislative Caucus: Reps. Rafael Anchia of Dallas, Ryan Guillen of Rio Grande City, Eddie Lucio III of Brownsville, Oscar Longoria of Mission and Armando “Mando” Martínez of Weslaco.

    Yep. Every little bit helps.

    1
  2. Kathy says:

    I think all this means presidential campaigns are waaaaay too long, and about one third goes on while most people aren’t even paying attention. By the time people start paying attention, they won’t even hear the names of those left by the wayside.

    7
  3. Neil Hudelson says:

    While I like Buttigieg a lot, I can’t imagine that a 30-something small-town mayor is going to be the nominee.

    To be fair, I bet a year ago you wouldn’t have been able to imagine that a 30-something small-[city] mayor would even be audacious enough to run, and that he certainly would never claw his way to polling #1 in Iowa.

    3
  4. Sleeping Dog says:

    I can imagine Amy as the nominee, but it requires a brokered convention, with her being the compromise candidate.

  5. Teve says:

    @EddieInCA: Good for them. And I hope they’ll vote for Warren once she becomes the nominee.

    1
  6. Teve says:

    Speaking of the Democratic primary, do you remember that scene in Rain Man where Tom Cruise and Dustin Hoffman are wearing beige suits and they come down the escalator? When that scene was filmed, Pete Buttigieg’s husband hadn’t yet been born.

    1
  7. EddieInCA says:

    @Teve: Well played, Sir. Well played.

    2
  8. EddieInCA says:

    Hey… Do you remember “Raiders of the Lost Ark”?

    Yeah. Me, too. When that movie came out….

    …Pete Buttegeig hadn’t been born.

    2
  9. Neil Hudelson says:

    Remember that movie, “Joe,” where Peter Boyle really wants to kill hippies, and beats a woman until she tells them where a hippie den is, and then he murders all the hippies?

    Elizabeth Warren was 21 and a Republican when that came out.

    (Am I doing this game right?)

    8
  10. Teve says:

    @EddieInCA: i was in kindergarten when that movie came out. 🙂

    1
  11. Teve says:

    @Neil Hudelson: there was no larger point.

  12. Neil Hudelson says:

    @Teve. Fair. I honestly thought there was, and I really couldn’t figure it out.

    1
  13. James Joyner says:

    @Teve:

    Speaking of the Democratic primary, do you remember that scene in Rain Man where Tom Cruise and Dustin Hoffman are wearing beige suits and they come down the escalator? When that scene was filmed, Pete Buttigieg’s husband hadn’t yet been born.

    You remember that 1990 movie where Macaulay Culkin plays an 8-year-old left “Home Alone” during Christmas? Pete Buttigieg is two years younger than Culkin.

    4
  14. Teve says:

    @Neil Hudelson: he was great in Clyde Bruckman’s Final Repose.

  15. CSK says:

    @Kathy:
    Agree.
    I’ve mentioned this before, but the only lawn signs I’ve see so far are a few for Tulsi Gabbard, and I’ve been seeing them for months. I’m not sure what to make of that.

    3
  16. Scott F. says:

    Every contest has its idiosyncracies. Further, the changes brought on by social media make comparisons with races even a decade ago somewhat fraught. And that’s to say nothing about the potential interference by foreign governments, a not-inconceivable war with Iran, or economic meltdown.

    If you consider the factors noted here, I don’t think comparisons with the race even 4 years ago can provide much pertinent reference for what lies ahead in the coming months. And if you throw in an impeached incumbent and near certain anti-democratic skullduggery from the GOP, I believe it is reasonable to expect the 2020 general election to be unlike any other in our history.

  17. Kylopod says:

    Remember that movie “Casablanca”? Bernie Sanders, Joe Biden, and Michael Bloomberg were all alive at the time of its release.

    (Though Biden only by 6 days.)

    12
  18. Mister Bluster says:

    Remember when this edition of the Chicago Tribune came out?

    I was 10 months old.

    2
  19. Teve says:

    @CSK: you obviously live near some of her relatives.

  20. CSK says:

    @Teve:
    I’m about as far away from Hawaii as it’s possible to get and still be within the continental U.S.

    2
  21. Kingdaddy says:

    Remember that movie Wings, which won the first Best Picture Oscar? None of the actors are still alive.

    3
  22. Teve says:
  23. Neil Hudelson says:

    @Kingdaddy:

    Damn. That one really hit me hard.

    2
  24. Remember 1992 when in Home Alone II Donald Trump was just C-list celeb doing a stunt cameo?

    Good times.

    12
  25. CSK says:

    @Teve:
    Big family.

    @Steven L. Taylor:
    And…he had a bit part on Judith Krantz’s 1986 novel I’ll Take Manhattan AND in the 1987 television miniseries. Krantz described Trump as “the handsome young billionaire” and Ivana as “the beautiful blonde Mrs. Trump.”

    Gag me.

    4
  26. senyordave says:

    I’m thinking of the negatives of the top four Democrats. Sanders – socialist, age and suspect health. Biden – age, too touchy-feely, Hunter Biden. Warren – idiotic M4A push with full explanation (the last thing most people care about is policy details, all she had to do was say she was for expanded coverage with increased affordability), poor political instincts. Buttigieg – too young with no foreign policy experience and a small city mayor, gay (I don’t think it helps, which means it probably hurts).
    Klobuchar is my sleeper candidate. She has not caught on at all, but I could see her doing well in the general. She has generally done well in the debates with very limited speaking time. The big criticism of her seems ridiculous – too angry? As opposed to the toddler in the WH with his daily temper tantrum?
    I’m a lifelong Democrat. If Bernie Sanders is the candidate and loses like I think he will, I will never give another cent to the Democratic party. He should never have been allowed in the debates, there should have been a rule that you had to be a Democrat to qualify.

    10
  27. Sleeping Dog says:

    @CSK:
    @Teve:

    As I’ve mentioned, Gabbard leads the lawn sign primary here in NH, though the numbers have diminished somewhat. My guess the disappearing signs belonged early supporters were hardcore Dems who liked her anti-war stance, but since she’s gone off the rails, they’re looking for another candidate.

    1
  28. al Ameda says:

    @senyordave:
    I too am harboring unrealistic hopes that Amy Klobuchar can somehow break through.

    I’m allowing my mind to wander to possible Klobuchar tickets that could accomplsh energizing base Democrats while threading the needle in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsyvania. Maybe Klobuchar-Booker does that – Amy gets it done in WI, MI, and PA while Cory appeals to base Democrats. Maybe Amy and Castro? It’s tough.

    4
  29. Matt says:

    @senyordave: Remember when Obama was too young, too black, too inexperienced in everything, had done nothing in the few years he was in the senate, and was going to be a disaster?? Good times….

    8
  30. senyordave says:

    @Matt: Obama was a perfect storm. He has great political instincts and he is smart and very engaging. McCain was a bad candidate with a joke of VP, and ran a poor campaign. Axelrod was a brilliant strategist and used advanced data mining when campaigns were barely using PCs. And most political statisticians believe Obama being black still cost him a couple of points.

    4
  31. Karatedeathcar2000 says:

    Looks like Iran launched rockets at Iraqi bases housing US troops. The Rubicon has been crossed. We will most likely be in a another war for the next decade or so.

  32. Deathcar2000 says:

    Iran launched rockets at US troops. We’re probs in it for the next decade.

  33. rachel says:

    @Teve: I was in 4th grade.

    1
  34. rachel says:

    @Teve: In high school.

    Edit function no work.

    1
  35. Matt says:

    @senyordave: Wow that is some seriously mythical story telling you’ve got there.

    McCain in hindsight made some bad moves but he wasn’t considered a bad candidate at all. His campaign was alright the only real big mistake I remember was when he tried to pull that stunt about suspending his campaign because of the economic crisiswhaetever. Sure the Palin thing didn’t play well with some but it didn’t really hurt his numbers. Obama won because he motivated people to turn out and vote. Especially the young vote.

    Axelrod is indeed a pretty bright fellow but he’s not some kind of unique snowflake thinking of stuff no one has ever tried. Axelrod worked for John Edward’s campaign and I’m sure you remember how much of a clusterfuck that ended up being. Campaigns are really about more than just one person.

    I almost laughed at the “advanced data mining” comment though. He was far behind what google and others were already doing during that time. I did certainly laugh at you trying to claim that campaigns barely had PCs in 2008. That’s just outright silly to claim. You’re talking about an era when roughly 70% of households owned a computer. The republicans were doing the same thing but as typical with them they didn’t get it right due to the graft and usual wing nut welfare crap.

    David Axelrod himself recommended that Pete hire Lis Smith. Were you aware of Pete’s close connections with David?

    2
  36. senyordave says:

    @Matt: I was working for Nielsen in 2008 and was in a department full of data miners. I am well aware of how advanced data mining could be, and that Obama’s people were not inventing the wheel. They were well ahead of the other candidates, and that is what matters.
    And I stand by my statement that McCain was a not a particularly good candidate. He ran a mediocre campaign, he screwed up the most important decision a presidential candidate has to make with the Palin choice, and he looked like a fool when he suspended his campaign because of the financial crisis.

  37. gVOR08 says:

    @senyordave:

    he looked like a fool when he suspended his campaign because of the financial crisis.

    IIRC he said he had to go to DC because you “couldn’t phone it in”. Then, having no actual role in affairs, spent his time in DC in his apartment, phoning people.

    However, speaking as one who has a low opinion of McCain, once the economy went south on W’s watch, no Republican could have won, no matter how brilliant a campaigner. Obama and Axelrod did good to win the nomination, but the financial collapse made the general a gimme.

    Obama was a very, very good politician, but he was also lucky. Ever watch Star Trek Voyager? Remember Seven of Nine, Jeri Ryan? Check 2004 United States Senate election in Illinois on WIKI. Churchill, IIRC, said he’d rather have a general who was lucky than good.

    3
  38. MarkedMan says:

    @Kathy: But another way of saying the same thing is that the people who care the most and are most interested weed out the weak runners in the early game, and by the time the actual voting starts there are only a half dozen or so real contenders. I think that’s just about exactly how it should work.

    1
  39. Michael Reynolds says:

    Iran just made a fool of Trump. They deliberately fired a shot past his head. If he reacts, it will be clear that he escalated. If he doesn’t react he’s walked away from his best shot at regime change. The Persians just schooled the asshat. He’s not just not a chess player, he’s not a checkers player. He’s playing tiddliwinks.

    7
  40. Matt says:

    @senyordave:

    he screwed up the most important decision a presidential candidate has to make with the Palin choice

    That’s a matter of perspective. The GOP voters loved it and it did shore up support that was flagging because of McCain being perceived as a “maverick” which drew quite a bit of hatred from the right. Trump ran a mediocre campaign and screwed up all over the place and still won.. Enthusiasm is going to be important for the democrats going into 2020..

    However, speaking as one who has a low opinion of McCain, once the economy went south on W’s watch, no Republican could have won, no matter how brilliant a campaigner. Obama and Axelrod did good to win the nomination, but the financial collapse made the general a gimme.

    Yeah at that point it was going to be a huge uphill battle for any GOP candidate. McCain did what he could to try to motivate the base to show up but it just wasn’t enough compared to everyone else being motivated to toss the GOP out.

  41. Matt says:

    @senyordave:

    I was working for Nielsen in 2008 and was in a department full of data miners. I am well aware of how advanced data mining could be, and that Obama’s people were not inventing the wheel. They were well ahead of the other candidates, and that is what matters.

    The GOP was doing that stuff in the 2004 election. They were way out ahead of the Democrats on that stuff. It just didn’t serve them as well because the people in charge were too busy trying to get themselves and their family/friends rich off the money being tossed around to actually improve on it.

    Some members in Obama’s campaign didn’t find the micro targeting impressive or considered it relatively minor at best. The biggest thing Obama did was get local Democratic groups to share technology and data with state and national groups. Once again the Republicans had already done this and thus were far ahead.

    https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2009/10/exclusive-how-democrats-won-the-data-war-in-2008/27647/

    1
  42. Kylopod says:

    @gVOR08:

    However, speaking as one who has a low opinion of McCain, once the economy went south on W’s watch, no Republican could have won, no matter how brilliant a campaigner.

    You got that exactly right, and it amazes me that people can have a conversation about 2008 without mentioning the economic crash, and talk about the outcome purely in terms of the candidates’ relative skills.

    I’ve always been struck by the way the popular image of candidates is by and large based simply on whether they win or lose. Once a candidate wins, they’re forever after regarded as the most brilliant, deadliest political force known to man, while the loser is thereafter remembered as a bumbling fool. It’s illustrated by the (possibly apocryphal) story where someone after the 1960 election told Bobby Kennedy he was a genius, and he said “Change 60,000 votes and I’m a bum.”

    Had Obama lost (which could have happened if he’d been running in a year that was less favorable to Dems), I bet he’d be remembered as a disaster. People would have said he was too aloof, too elitist. His statement about blue-collar voters clinging to their guns and religion would have come to define him as devastatingly as Hillary’s “deplorables” speech. And everything mentioned in this thread about how brilliant a campaigner he was would have been utterly forgotten. That’s the way it always is with winning and losing candidates: we have this selective amnesia that helps us maintain the myth that election outcomes come down entirely to the personalities of the candidates and the qualities of their campaign.

    For that matter, I don’t even think McCain was a bad candidate. I think he’d have easily vanquished Gore in 2000. He did sort of implode at the end of the 2008 campaign, but it was in large part due to the fact that he knew how difficult it would be to win at that point, and he was trying to find a way to shake things up, which is much of what was behind the Palin choice. He was always someone with a habit of taking bold risks to get out of tough spots (one pundit attributed it to his history as a fighter pilot), a trait that does not always lead to failure.

    1
  43. rachel says:

    @Matt:

    Sure the Palin thing didn’t play well with some but it didn’t really hurt his numbers.

    The heck you say. My Republican-leaning parents took a good look at her and then both of them voted for Obama.

    1
  44. Kylopod says:

    @rachel: There was a study a while back suggesting that the McCain ticket lost 1.6% in the popular vote due to the Palin selection. Obviously that’s not sufficient to explain Obama’s 7.2-point lead, but it did apparently hurt McCain in the net.

    2
  45. Matt says:

    @rachel:Sure and I had half dozen family members claim the opposite.

    @Kylopod: https://news.gallup.com/poll/110107/republicans-enthusiasm-jumps-after-convention.aspx

    I can’t read your link because the washington post so I don’t know the nitty details. Does it factor in the enthusiasm boost in the GOP base?

    1
  46. Kylopod says:

    @Matt: Here is a direct link to the journal entry containing the study, though it only features an abstract for most viewers. I’ll quote the summary of the study in the WaPo article. The upshot is that it examined shifts in opinion about her as the campaign progressed, and it does mention that her favorability increased among certain segments of the populace. Those voters were just outnumbered by those for whom it declined. Specifically:

    The researchers set out to determine the extent to which voters made up their minds on presidential candidates or on the performance of the party that was currently in office. To answer that question, they tried to figure out how much of an influence the candidates in the election had on moving support one direction or the other.

    Part of that process was to look at how candidate favorability ratings changed over the course of the campaign…. As the campaign progressed, fewer people said they didn’t have an opinion on Palin. And as nearly all of those people formed an opinion on her, that opinion was a negative one. As the researchers put it, “Palin saw a sharp increase in negative evaluations as the fall campaign progressed. Looking at individual-level changes in favorability, we find that 34% of respondents downgraded their evaluations of Palin between September and Election Day, while just 12% became more favorable.”

    To figure out the role that shift played, the researchers modeled elections in which Palin’s favorability didn’t plummet in the way that it did. The result? What they call the “Palin effect.”

    This counterfactual simulation finds that Palin’s declining favorability cost McCain 1.6 percentage points on Election Day. Since Obama actually won 53% of the popular vote, it suggests that Palin’s campaign performance did not necessarily change the election outcome, but was certainly large enough to be substantively meaningful.

    3
  47. Teve says:

    @Kylopod:

    data >> stories.

    2
  48. Just nutha ignint cracker says:

    The big criticism of her seems ridiculous – too angry? As opposed to the toddler in the WH with his daily temper tantrum?

    Well, certainly too angry for a woman, n’est pas?

    @Michael Reynolds: Say what you want about tiddlywinks, snapping those little buttons into the cup takes a lot of skill and luck. We’d be fortunate to have a master tiddlywinker in the WH.

    2
  49. @Kylopod:

    You got that exactly right, and it amazes me that people can have a conversation about 2008 without mentioning the economic crash, and talk about the outcome purely in terms of the candidates’ relative skills.

    I’ve always been struck by the way the popular image of candidates is by and large based simply on whether they win or lose.

    Yup and yup.

    1
  50. DrDaveT says:

    @Michael Reynolds:

    He’s playing tiddliwinks.

    The only game Trump understands is whack-a-mole. He uses those tactics (and the same degree of strategic thinking) in every endeavor.

    4
  51. gVOR08 says:

    @Kylopod:

    He was always someone with a habit of taking bold risks to get out of tough spots (one pundit attributed it to his history as a fighter pilot), a trait that does not always lead to failure

    Feeling snarky, in his case it did lead to him becoming a Commie ace, having destroyed five American aircraft. To be fair, he was in no way responsible for the one lost in the USS Forrestal fire.

  52. al Ameda says:

    @rachel:
    We now know that Trump is Palin on Steroids. I have 8 siblings and 2 parents, 9 of whom thought Palin was great, you know, that she was one of those ‘speak your mind’ and ‘give them hell’ types. Sounds like Trump, doesn’t it?

    1