How Biden Rebounded

(Bloomberg Opinion) --

So here's what I think happened with the Democratic presidential nomination contest this year, at least so far. It's still not entirely certain that Joe Biden will win, but I think Nate Cohn is right that the situation looks very difficult indeed for Bernie Sanders.

To begin with, I think Seth Masket is correct that this was a case of the party choosing, rather than the party jumping on a bandwagon established by voters. Here's how I would interpret the interaction between Democratic voters and party actors in February:

Voters in Iowa: “Pete!” (Party actors sit on their hands.)

Voters in New Hampshire: “Bernie! And also Pete and Amy.” (Party actors sat on their hands.)

Voters in Nevada: “No, really: Bernie!!! And also Biden, sort of.”

Party actors: “Bernie? Certainly not. Guess it's Biden.”

Let me back up a bit. As Hans Noel says, we need to think about this from the point of view of the party, not the candidates. The party, of course, consists of thousands and thousands of politicians, campaign and governing professionals, formal party officials and staff, activists, donors, party-aligned interest groups, and the partisan press. Collectively, the party wants a nominee who will win the election, act on behalf of the party while in office, and (preferably) be good at the job.

But it's complicated. All of these folks are also individuals, who may be pressing for the party to adopt particular policy positions and priorities, or an ideology, or an identity of some sort. They may be ambitious for jobs in a new administration, or for some other personal benefit. In other words, they are simultaneously acting as individuals with their own agendas and as members of a larger organization.

What makes it even more complex is that U.S. political parties, containing both formal party organizations and sprawling, loosely connected party networks, don't really have an obvious way to structure competition and cooperation around nominations. The process they do have is an ad hoc combination of deliberate planning and a lot of historical happenstance. Over time, party actors learn to work through and around that mess of a process, only to find that four years later bits and pieces of it have changed in response to new laws, norms, party rules and electioneering technologies. Stable processes are good for parties, but parties rarely have stability.

Back to 2020. Sometimes there's an obvious candidate such as a sitting vice president or a popular runner-up from the last nomination cycle that most of the party can agree to right away. Think, for the Democrats, Al Gore in 2000. But sometimes there just isn't any such figure. Sometimes the party can come up with one anyway, as Republicans did with George W. Bush in 2000. Usually, however, that doesn't happen, and the various candidates begin to fight it out without any clear party favorite. In fact, the party collectively may be indifferent; as long as it gets a solid general election candidate who will represent the party if he or she wins, it doesn't matter much which one does.

I think that's what happened this time. Party actors outside of Bernie Sanders's faction really didn't want him to win, because he repeatedly emphasized that he wouldn't act on behalf of the party as a whole if elected. But the rest? There was a fair amount of openness (as measured by endorsements, campaign staffers who were within the party network, and other indicators of party support) to Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Cory Booker, Elizabeth Warren, Amy Klobuchar and even Pete Buttigieg. But none of them dominated, and each had different strengths and real weaknesses. So the party did what it often does in those circumstances: It looked to voters in the early states.

And then among those possibilities, voters first picked the one, Buttigieg, who had the least party support. So the party actors waited. After all, there was time. Until Sanders won big in Nevada, and then there wasn't any more, so they converged on Biden in the run-up to South Carolina and even more afterward. As it turns out, the rush of positive publicity that generated did the job, and Biden will likely wind up the nominee.

It might have been different if someone other than Biden had finished second in Nevada. But those other candidates failed their test, and Biden passed his — and Nevada turned out to have been the final exam.

(Disclaimer: Michael Bloomberg, the founder and majority owner of Bloomberg LP, also sought the Democratic presidential nomination. He endorsed Joe Biden on March 4.)

1. Julia Azari at Mischiefs of Faction with more on the party and the nomination.

2. Jeremy Youde at the Monkey Cage on the WHO and health diplomacy.

3. Dan Drezner on Trump and getting out of Afghanistan.

4. Caitlin Moscatello on former member of the House Katie Hill.

5. And my Bloomberg Opinion colleague Francis Wilkinson with a smart idea about who Joe Biden should get on the phone.

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of Bloomberg LP and its owners.

Jonathan Bernstein is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering politics and policy. He taught political science at the University of Texas at San Antonio and DePauw University and wrote A Plain Blog About Politics.

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