Ironies galore

Sunday morning and I am seeing a lot of ironies out of Nevada. Not much discussed in the roiling near hysteria, but there none-the-less. The results in 5 Takeaways From the Nevada Caucuses (The Big One: Sanders Takes Control) by Shane Goldmacher. Everybody seems in spin mode and they are reluctant to state the bare facts. As of 10:07am Sunday February 23rd, with 60% of the precincts reporting, Sanders has 46% of the vote, Biden 20%, Buttigieg 15%, Warren 10%.

I can see, especially in the context of Iowa and New Hampshire, why the DNC might be alarmed.

Irony Number 1 - At this point both establishment parties are basically running with outsiders independent of their respective parties. Trump is no traditional Republican and Sanders is explicitly a Socialist rather than a Democrat.

Neither establishment party is able to muster a credible candidate from within the establishment ranks.

Death of the establishment parties? I think not. This is a slow grinding recalibration of establishment parties across the developed world. All of them grew too lax, too arrogant, too incompetent, and too blind to the needs and interests of the majority of voters. They coasted on the winds of the post WWII boom and forgot how to govern through consent.

Here in the US, the Republican Party was put on notice way back in the 1990s with the Gingrich rebellion and has been edging closer to the needs and interests of voters ever since. Grudgingly. The Tea Party moved them close to voters but was ultimately suppressed. The Trump phenomenon has pushed them closer to voters. But they are still ineluctably an establishment party who desperately want to backslide.

The DNC as an establishment party came off their Obama high ideologically and candidate bankrupt. They lost their bench of candidates. They played typical backroom games with superdelegates and byzantine voting procedures to try and ensure that the DNC choice in Washington would be the choice of the rubes in the sticks. I was in California in 2016 and the outrage on the party rank-and-file and especially among Sanders supporters over the super-delegates and the blatant thumb-on-the-scale hypocrisy was palpable.

What we are seeing right now is not really a meaningful contest between candidates in the Democratic contest. What we are seeing are jubilant rebels on the ideological fringe and a panicking establishment party.

Irony Number 2 - The Democrats who have, since 2016, been avid supporters of the direct popular vote and the abolition of the Electoral College, are sudden enthusiasts for a non-democratic brokered convention.

I make no call on who the Democratic candidate from the primary process will be. However, absent heart-attacks or multiple indictments among the field or destructive opposition-research, it seems that the most probable scenario is that the Democrats will arrive in Wisconsin on July 12th with a leading candidate (Sanders) who has a plurality of the votes, perhaps a strong plurality, but who will not receive the nomination. That the machinations of the fractured party will lead to the anointment of a more "electable" candidate.

Should this come about, Democrats will be in the position of rejecting the sanctity of the popular vote. The very position about which they have been harping (even though the US is not and has never been a direct democracy), ever since 2016. In fact the position will be worse. With the electoral college you can win the election without having the largest number of votes. However, the win will occur through established law and procedures. As opposed to the brokered convention outcome the DNC faces where popular choice has little or no direct bearing on the selected winner (who might not even be someone who has been running.) Democrats will be in the position of rejecting the very basis of democracy - that individual votes count.

Irony Number 3 - Relative base-strength will probably be a bigger determinant of election outcome than absolute votes. I work off of a conceptual model where about a third of the population are reasonably committed Democrats, about a third are reasonably committed Republicans and about a third are either pretty consistent moderates or centrists who can comfortably swing either way. At any point in time, the numbers will vary from 33%, but that seems broadly the reverted mean.

I look at the intra-party bitterness between the moderates, the central establishment and the socialist fringe of the Democrats and see a recipe for electoral disaster. Plenty of observers have noted that part of what is causing uncertainty is that among the field of candidates, no one has a knock out punch and everyone has a marginal path for sustainability. Each staggers from one event to another without ever really opening any gaps.

Sanders always has a base of some 25% which makes him the default front runner in any crowded field. Everyone else floats between single digit and very low double digit positions. As long as that continues, the probability of a brokered convention mounts. But if Sanders takes the brass ring, the reality is that he only commands an enthusiastic 25% of the Democratic Party. 25% of 33% is only 8% of the national vote.

In contrast, Trump has vanquished the never-Trumpers and coopted the establishment Republican Party. He will go into the election with perhaps 95% of 33% enthusiastically backing him, i.e. about 31% of all voters. With a strong economy and many international and reputational tail-winds, all the polls seem to indicate that centrists, independents and moderates are likely to vote with their pocketbooks with at least half of the 33% going reasonably happy with Trump (50% times 33% equals 17%.) Among the balance in the middle, there appear to be very few Sanders supporters.

The net is that out of their respective conventions, it seems likely ceteris paribus that the respective nominees will enter the final stretch with one candidate having about 48% of voters solidly in his pocket and one candidate having only somewhere around 8-12%.

Irony Number 4 - The DNC reforms to make their primary season more open and fair to everyone (reducing the number of establishment super-delegates) has exposed them to how deep a divide there is between the average American voter and the Democratic Party, particularly the socialist wing of the party.

I see a lot of discussion about South Carolina, the relative campaign merits, and Super Tuesday. All useful, if noisy, considerations. I think the above four ironies are where the real dynamics exist.