Elizabeth Warren • mackaycartoons

Tuesday March 3, 2020

March 10, 2020 by Graeme MacKay

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Tuesday March 3, 2020

Here’s What’s at Stake in Super Tuesday States

Sketch from the CBS News Democratic Party Candidates Debate, Charleston, South Carolina, February 25, 2020.
Michael Bloomberg, Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Pete Buttigieg, Amy Klobuchar, Tom Steyer

The contests on Tuesday may be the single most important day on the primary calendar, with the potential to elevate one candidate as a decisive front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination.

If one Democrat — most likely Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont — builds a wide lead of several hundred delegates over the rest of the field, it could become exceedingly difficult for other candidates to catch up over the remaining three months of primary elections.

But it is by no means certain that Mr. Sanders or anyone else will establish a controlling advantage on Super Tuesday, and former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. is hopeful that a late surge of momentum will keep the final margin close.

The vast diversity of the country and the internal divisions of the Democratic Party will be on display across a landscape of elections that covers the swollen suburbs of the Mid-Atlantic and the Sun Belt; traditional Democratic strongholds in New England and the Upper Midwest; the booming cities of the upper South and the interior West, and large rural stretches across both regions.

For any one candidate to dominate that map would be an extraordinary show of strength.

Super Tuesday 2012

It is the closest we will get, in this long campaign season, to a national day of voting in the nomination race. But the balance of influence on Super Tuesday is weighted toward the West, represented by huge states like California and Texas. Other big population centers in the country — electoral prizes like Florida, Michigan, New York, Pennsylvania and Illinois — are still weeks from voting.

Mr. Sanders is highly likely to come out of Super Tuesday with a lead in the delegate count. But the size of that lead is a big question mark, and so is the number of states Mr. Sanders might win outright.

July 31, 2019

There are few states out of reach for Mr. Sanders. In theory, he could win virtually everywhere on Super Tuesday, except perhaps Alabama, where moderate African-Americans who lean toward Mr. Biden make up a huge share of the primary electorate.

The Vermont senator has even been showing strength in Massachusetts, the home state of his rival, Senator Elizabeth Warren. He also has a chance of capturing Minnesota, which is now up for grabs after Senator Amy Klobuchar decided to exit the race on Monday. Mr. Sanders won the state in 2016.

The most important target for Mr. Sanders is California, where his campaign hopes not just to win, but to win by such a dominant margin that he captures a vast majority of delegates. If Mr. Sanders managed that feat, he could open a nearly insurmountable delegate lead.

Yet Mr. Sanders’s strength depends on his political opposition staying fractured. If moderate voters or African-Americans coalesce around just one or two other candidates — Mr. Biden may be the likeliest rallying point — then Mr. Sanders could end up with a shorter list of victories, concentrated in Western states where his coalition of young liberals and Latinos is strongest.

February 11, 2020

The race began to take a dramatic turn on Sunday after former Mayor Pete Buttigieg dropped out, clearing the way for moderate voters to coalesce around candidates who may be better positioned to stop Mr. Sanders. The exits of both Mr. Buttigieg and Ms. Klobuchar could lift Mr. Biden’s political fortunes on Tuesday, but might also benefit Ms. Warren and Michael R. Bloomberg.

Mr. Biden received the big victory in South Carolina that he was looking for, but it remains to be seen how much of a lift he will get heading into Super Tuesday. One problem: Until this past weekend, he had not campaigned in a Super Tuesday state in over a month, aside from fund-raising.

May 11, 2012

After his fourth-place finish in Iowa and his fifth-place finish in New Hampshire, Mr. Biden planted himself in Nevada and then in South Carolina — and he achieved the results he was looking for in those two states. But that came at the cost of campaigning elsewhere. He visited North Carolina, Alabama and Virginia this past weekend, and he is campaigning in Texas on Monday before heading to California.

Mr. Biden’s team is focusing on congressional districts that play to his strengths, such as those with large numbers of black voters.

Mr. Biden’s operation on the ground across the Super Tuesday states is also conspicuously thin. He has only a single office in California and four in Texas. By comparison, Mr. Bloomberg’s campaign says it has 24 offices in California and 19 in Texas.

February 6, 2008

Still, Mr. Biden has some significant advantages heading into Tuesday’s contests. He emerged triumphant from the South Carolina primary, which provided him with a burst of positive attention, and the endorsements from Ms. Klobuchar and Mr. Buttigieg offered a signal to moderate voters to embrace his candidacy. Mr. Biden already had a long roster of prominent endorsers in Super Tuesday states, which has grown even larger in recent days.

He is also relying on his status as a household name and the goodwill that remains among Democrats from his time serving as President Barack Obama’s vice president. (NYTimes)

Tuesday February 11, 2020

February 18, 2020 by Graeme MacKay

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Tuesday February 11, 2020

Bashing Buttigieg

Addressing a conference of African-American church congregations in this vote-rich city, Pete Buttigieg quoted scripture on Sunday morning and extolled his “Douglass Plan” to combat racial inequities in America, one of several attempts this weekend to confront his strikingly low support among black voters.

But Mr. Buttigieg also undertook a delicate task before the African Methodist Episcopal worshipers. As a gay, married man addressing a denomination that does not allow same-sex marriage rites, he tried to seek common ground over being members of minority groups whose civil rights have come under attack. It was a nod to his sexuality, following the disclosure last week that the Buttigieg campaign held focus groups that found some black voters in South Carolina were uncomfortable with a gay man as president.

“All of us in different ways have been led to question whether we belong,” Mr. Buttigieg told the pews of black worshipers. “And I know what it is to look on the news and see your rights up for debate. All of us must extend a hand to one another. Because I also know what it is to find acceptance where you least expect it.”

As Mr. Buttigieg increasingly presents himself to Democrats as a younger, moderate alternative to former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., he is struggling badly to compete against one of Mr. Biden’s strengths: deep connections to black voters. Nowhere is that problem greater than in South Carolina, which votes fourth in the Democratic nomination fight in February and is the first state where black voters are decisive — a critical test that could be a prologue for primaries in March where African-Americans will also be influential.

A Monmouth University poll of Democratic likely primary voters in South Carolina released last week found Mr. Buttigieg at 3 percent overall, with just 1 percent support from African Americans.

There are many reasons for Mr. Buttigieg’s low standing among black voters, the foremost being that he is little-known to many of them. He is the 37-year-old mayor of South Bend, Ind., who still has a relatively low national profile — including on civil rights and issues of race — and focused much of this year building support among liberals, Democratic donors and voters in the predominantly white states of Iowa and New Hampshire. (NYTimes)

Meanwhile, ahead of the New Hampshire Primary day, Joe Biden Slashes Into Buttigieg: ‘This Guy’s Not a Barack Obama!’. (NYTimes)

Buttigieg and Bernie Sanders fight for the number one position. (The Guardian)