New Hampshire 2020: In Supreme Irony, the Horse Race Favors Bernie Sanders
By Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone
14 February 20
Sanders and Trump are political opposites, but theyre on the same path to
victory
Bernie Sanders won the New Hampshire primary Tuesday night. Second-place
finisher Pete Buttigieg earned 24.4 percent of the vote, while Amy
Klobuchar, not long ago polling in single digits, came out of nowhere with
19.8 percent, a classic New Hampshire outlier result.
The words eked and narrowly are getting a workout in headlines today.
There is a Yeah, but
passage in nearly every major media write-up of
Bernies win. Sanders cements his front-runner status, but his narrow
margins
show how volatile this race is, is how The New York Times put it.
In reality, the results for Sanders cut both ways. On one hand, its amazing
he can win any state after years of propaganda depicting him as a half-dead
cross of Hitler and Stalin (MSNBC before New Hampshire outdid itself with
Looney Tunes commentary about executions in Central Park and a digital
brownshirt brigade).
On the other hand, there are signs after New Hampshire that some of the
relentless corporate messaging against Sanders is landing. This will inspire
orgies of excitement its already happening as pundits revel in every
storyline suggesting Democratic voters are scrambling to find an electable
alternative.
Good. Let them. I saw this movie in 2016 and have a fair idea of how it
ends. It just wont be horrifying this time.
Four years ago, after New Hampshire, it was crystal clear that Donald Trump
was not only going to win his partys nomination, but that his path was
being actively cleared by the Republican Party establishment and the
national news media, whose half-baked efforts to stop him were working in
reverse. I wrote this in February 2016:
The [Republicans] sent forth to take on Trump have been so incompetent, they
cant even lose properly. One GOP strategist put it this way: Maybe 34
[percent] is Trumps ceiling. But 34 in a five-person race wins
The
numbers simply dont work, unless the field unexpectedly narrows before
March.
Early mixed results guaranteed that Ted Cruz, John Kasich, Jeb Bush, and
Marco Rubio would not drop out soon enough to give any of the others a
chance. As a result, the following was obvious at this time four years ago:
Trump will probably enjoy at least a five-horse race through Super
Tuesday.
In hindsight, those Republican challengers were so villainously terrible
that none would have beaten Trump in a two-person race. Still, Bushs
backers knew their man was roadkill by New Hampshire, yet didnt pull the
plug. Kasich, who in a rare moment of self-awareness was ready to bail after
Iowa (If we get smoked up there, Im going back to Ohio, he fumed in New
Hampshire), let himself be fooled by one surprise second-place finish.
All pledged to be committed to stopping Trump but accelerated his victory by
staying in too long. Popular disgust was also enhanced by delusional
news-media hype surrounding a succession of would-be real candidates.
All of this is happening all over again, only this time its Democrats who
are committing ritualistic self-abuse, seemingly in a conspiracy with one
another and the news media to push as many votes as possible to a hated
outsider. I thought this outcome might be possible for Bernie nearly a year
ago:
The 30,000-foot pundit view on Sanders chances should be that he, of
course, has a chance, one rooted in the same logic that saw Trump win. He is
an unconventional candidate with an at least somewhat insoluble base of
support, running in an overlarge field of mostly traditional politicians,
many of whom will take votes from one another.
Still, no one could have predicted that even the idiosyncratic particulars
of the 2016 and 2020 races would be so alike.
In 2016, Iowas Republican caucus was won by Cruz, but press wizards gushed
over the Marcomentum of third-place Rubio, who acted like hed won with a
soaringly pompous address that somehow evoked both Obama and Henry V:
They told me that we have no chance because my hair wasnt gray enough and
my boots were too high
But tonight, tonight here in Iowa, the people of
this great state have sent a very clear message.
Four days before the New Hampshire vote, Rubio stepped on a rake in a
debate, repeating the lets dispel with the fiction that Barack Obama
doesnt know what hes doing schtick four times in a viral fiasco. The New
York Times declared the End of Marcomentum roughly 10 days after it began.
This year the standout haughty victory declaration in Iowa was given by a
different human haircut, Pete Buttigieg, who told Iowans you have shocked
the nation, with zero percent of the vote in.
Unlike Rubio, Pete could argue he technically won, but otherwise, the story
was the same. Press swooned #Pete-mentum is no joke, declared the Daily
News only to watch as the Great Electable Hope stepped on a rake in the
New Hampshire debate, with Elizabeth Warren and Amy Klobuchar both kicking
him in the balls on his race record.
Like clockwork, Pete was no longer the new hotness. With about 10 percent of
the results in Tuesday night, Gloria Borger on CNN opened the floodgates on
the inevitable next gambit.
Klomentum? she asked Anderson Cooper. The latter responded, correctly,
that the horrible word sounded like something he took for his sciatica.
Klomentum was instantly a thing. [Cory] Booker and [Kamala] Harris looking
at #Klomentum tonight, tweeted Dave Weigel of The Washington Post, over a
pop-art cartoon of a woman thinking, It should have been me
When
#Klomentum is more than a Twitter joke, tweeted Edward Isaac-Dovere of the
Atlantic.
Klobuchar spokeswoman Carlie Waibel actually confirmed to The New York
Times that its Klomentum, not Klobmentum.
One of the lessons of 2016 was that cheeseball clichés like the Big Mo,
straight talk, and the beer test no longer had traction. Voter
calculations were about rage and nihilism: They were done with catchphrases.
Like amputees who still feel a leg is there, pundits continued speaking in
this dead language, which widened the credibility gap further.
Four years later, theyre still doing it. Kasich of all people was on CNN
Tuesday night talking about the Big Mo. Van Jones wondered about the beer
lane. Klomentum is the relic being flogged this morning. The firewall
might be next.
The hapless Joe Biden, 2020s clear answer to 2016 establishment Hindenburg
Jeb Bush, finished a disastrous fifth in New Hampshire. Joe should drop out.
The world knows it. The man shouldnt be driving, much less running for
president.
Nonetheless, because Biden is perceived to have a firewall in the South
the firewall of minority voters enjoyed by this or that corporate-funded
candidate is one of the more vile campaign clichés he will certainly not
drop out. His campaign, even before Tuesday, was directing reporters to
ignore New Hampshire and look to Nevada, South Carolina, and Super Tuesday.
This means once again, it will likely be (at least) a five-person race
through Super Tuesday, this time between Buttigieg, Klobuchar, Biden,
Sanders, and Mike Bloomberg, the detestable oligarch who has not even
test-driven his eleventy-gazillion election-buying dollars yet. If Elizabeth
Warren stays in [checks Twitter], the pie will be split in at least six big
parts.
The Democratic Partys argument against Sanders for years has been his
alleged inability to grow beyond his base. Now, things have been arranged so
that he may not have to dispel these notions before Super Tuesday. This may
or may not be a good thing beating Trump is important and the Democratic
nominee should have to demonstrate the widest appeal but the brutal irony
of Bernie Sanders boosted by horse-race luck and conventional-wisdom
miscalculation is difficult to miss.
As with Republicans in 2016, the defining characteristic of the 2020
Democratic race has been the unwieldy size of the field. The same identity
crisis lurking under the Republican clown car afflicted this years
Democratic contest: Because neither donors nor party leaders nor pundits
could figure out what they should be pretending to stand for, they couldnt
coalesce around any one candidate.
These constant mercurial shifts in momentum its Pete! Its Amy! Paging
Mike Bloomberg! have eroded the kingmaking power of the Democratic
leadership. They are eating the party from within, and seem poised to
continue doing so.
For Sanders supporters, the calculation has always been simpler: Are you
bought off, or not? Just by keeping to the right side of that one principle,
Sanders will hold his 20-to-30 percent and keep grinding toward victory,
narrow wins or not. Its a classic tortoise-and-hare story. When you know
where youre going, you tend to get there.
