Front Burner - Biden versus Sanders II: Setting up Super Tuesday

Episode Date: March 2, 2020

Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders got off to a strong start in the early primaries and caucuses, but former vice-president Joe Biden is right behind him in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination. After a major victory in South Carolina, Biden has momentum heading into Super Tuesday — when 14 states vote for their preferred candidate. Today on Front Burner, Alex Panetta from CBC's Washington bureau joins us to explain what’s at stake.

In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. This is a CBC Podcast. Schwartz is a bit like, you know, to make another analogy, it's a bit like Nancy Pelosi, right? It goes through a phase where it's just one of many, right?

And then, you know, the other ones start to die off and it survives. But then it becomes an institution and an icon. That is Alex Panetta. He's a CBC Washington correspondent, and that was us bonding over our shared love of Schwartz's Deli in Montreal, and U.S. politics. Montreal is Alex's hometown, which is a long way from his hotel room in South Carolina where I spoke to him.

Alex was there to cover Saturday's South Carolina primary. It was a pivotal night in the race to become the Democrat who will fight Donald Trump in the upcoming U.S. election. And while South Carolina is important, tomorrow is an even bigger day, Super Tuesday. A polling day with so many delegates up for grabs that it can often make or break a campaign. So today, why frontrunners Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden face a crucial Super Tuesday test, and why, if Bernie Sanders comes out on top, his fight will be far from over. I'm Josh Bloch, in for Jamie Poisson. This is FrontBurner. Hey Alex, nice to meet you.

Good to be here. So former Vice President Joe Biden finally got some good news. He took South Carolina. You were there reporting for the primaries in Columbia, South Carolina. Can you give me a sense? What was it like to be there on the ground? There's this eruption of joy, people singing, dancing. Everyone was in a great mood because they really, really needed that win.

Right. Thank you. Thank you, thank you, thank you, South Carolina! It was pretty festive. I mean, it was like throwing a party for a campaign that had been unplugged from the life support system in a good way because it had roared back to life after an exceptionally strong showing in South Carolina. Well, I heard his speech when he was saying, for all those who have been knocked down or counted out, this is your campaign. I mean, he really sounded like he arrived in South Carolina as the underdog now with something to prove. Just days ago, the press and the pundits had declared this candidacy dead.

Now, thanks to all of you, the heart of the Democratic Party, we just won and we've won big because of you. Well, he went from basically, you know, Democrats in the first couple of states saying, yeah, nice to know you, to suddenly being almost matched with Bernie Sanders in delegates and actually having overtaken Bernie Sanders in total votes so far. So his campaign is very much alive. And that is an extremely stark reversal of fortune from the situation he faced entering last week. Right. He finished fourth in Iowa. He was fifth in New Hampshire. So it's safe to say that he was pretty desperately needed this victory in South Carolina. Let's talk about Biden. And he has pulled out of New Hampshire now. He's gone.

He's gone. He's already gone. He didn't even wait till the polls closed to go to what many are saying is Biden's last stand, South Carolina. Well, absolutely. I mean, he was he was finished without it because it only gets harder for him from here. Mike Bloomberg enters the race. It's not going to be as easy for him. So if he couldn't win in South Carolina, his best state, before Bloomberg gets in, it was pretty much game over. And one thing that's interesting to note about South Carolina is it usually picks the Democratic nominee. Four of the last five competitive cycles, the winner of the South Carolina primaries become the nominee. And it also similarly launched Bill Clinton. A win there for Bill Clinton in 1992

took him from being, you know, one of many in a pack to suddenly being the front runner. And he won a string of races afterwards. And that's why Biden mentioned Bill Clinton in his speech. He mentioned Barack Obama and, you know, the state's history of picking winners. speech. He mentioned Barack Obama and the state's history of picking winners. I told you all that you could launch a candidacy. You launched Bill Clinton, Barack Obama to the presidency. Now you launched our campaign on the path to defeating Donald Trump. This campaign is taking off. I'm not sure it's the same this time. The dynamics of the race are a little different. More candidates are involved.

But definitely was an important showing for him. Well, and one of the real demographics we were watching in South Carolina is the large black vote. This is a state that pretty consistently, as you mentioned, it votes for the candidate who goes on to get the nomination. Tell me about what happened on Saturday night in terms of the African-American vote in South Carolina. Yeah, now keeping in mind that the, you know, the black community throughout the United States is obviously not a monolith. Right. Yeah, so once again, the African-American vote was over 50% of the Democratic electorate in the state. You know, the older African-American voters, more moderate African-American voters, Joe Biden appears to be dominating.

And it just so happens that those are the folks who either have a huge say or a majority say in a number of the Super Tuesday states. There are five in the South with relatively similar voting histories to South Carolina. might not be enough for Biden to be the Super Tuesday frontrunner, because it just so happens that the largest Super Tuesday states, California and Texas, don't quite fit that particular mold. Well, I want to ask you about Super Tuesday in just a moment. But just quickly, in terms of the outcome from South Carolina, Bernie Sanders came in second in that race. What was the reaction from his camp on the ground there? Well, they just basically packed up and moved along. You know, Sanders spent election night in Virginia and he moved on to California right afterwards, which are both voting on Tuesday and which, frankly, have more delegates in play than

South Carolina. We also saw that billionaire Tom Steyer came in third. He had poured millions of dollars into the South Carolina race, but it didn't pan out for him. He actually announced on Saturday night that he was dropping out of the race. But I said, if I didn't see a path to winning, that I'd suspend my campaign. And honestly, I can't see a path where I can win the presidency. So that's South Carolina. But let's look ahead to tomorrow, to Super Tuesday. What's the deal with Super Tuesday?

What's so super about it? What's super about it is 14 states vote on a single day. More than one-third of all the delegates up for grabs this year are voting in one single day. And that includes huge states like California, Texas, Virginia, North Carolina, and a few in the South. So that's what makes it important is you come out of that day with a lead in the delegates, you are clearly the frontrunner for the Democratic nomination. And not only do you know who the frontrunner is after Super Tuesday, you also know whether that person has such a commanding lead

that they are likely to win immediately at the convention or whether you're likely to see a more complicated multi-ballot fight. So this Super Tuesday can really winnow the field down to just a few candidates. Yeah, you'll probably see a bunch of people drop out after Tuesday, and you'll also see the dynamics of the race start to crystallize. You're starting to have a composite sketch of what's happening in the country, a better national picture. Well, Super Tuesday will basically be that on steroids.

You're going to have people from the Southwest, states with heavy Latino populations, states that are rich, states that are poor, more progressive, less progressive. You essentially get a really nice portrait of what's happening across the United States in one single day. And how is Super Tuesday shaping up for the frontrunners? How is it looking like Bernie Sanders will do on Super Tuesday? I think he's looking pretty good. The question is whether he does well enough to be considered the likely nominee, or does he do well enough just to continue to be the sort of front runner? That remains to be seen. But the reason he's doing well is he's polling extraordinarily strongly in California. And California has got more than 10%

of all the delegates in the country. And if he delivers a knockout blow there, and by taking the vast majority of them, that's huge. He's doing almost as well, not quite as well, but pretty well in Texas, which also has a bunch of delegates in play. Joe Biden's pockets of strength likely will be in the South and to the East, closer to South Carolina. And to what extent does Biden's victory in South Carolina set him up, give him some momentum going into Super Tuesday to win states with a similar demographic to South Carolina? What scrambles the picture a bit is whether Michael Bloomberg's entry into the race might slow or halt Joe Biden's sudden spurt of momentum.

But without Bloomberg there, I think it would be safe to say that Biden looks like the favorite in North Carolina and Georgia votes in a couple of weeks and Florida and all these, you know, southern and eastern states, whereas Sanders suddenly is looking really, really strong in the West. Right. So you mentioned Michael Bloomberg. He has invested a lot of money in his campaign, but Super Tuesday is going to be his first test at the primaries. What do you expect to see there? Well, I guess it'll be an interesting political science experiment. You know, we learned in South Carolina that being a billionaire, buying lots of ads doesn't necessarily make you a front runner. Tom Steyer was on. Literally, people were joking about

how they always saw Tom Steyer on their TV. Well, Mike Bloomberg is spending a bunch of money. I saw him on TV in South Carolina, in Nevada. Because the first thing that needs to get done is winning. That means beating the biggest bully of all. The gloves are off, but the fight is on. I'm Mike Bloomberg, and I approve this message. He wasn't even on the ballot in those states. He's got so much money that he can afford ads that air in places he's not even running. He was handing out barbecue at some of his rallies, like literally feeding people coming to his rallies.

I think alcohol, I read somewhere that alcohol was being served at one of his rallies. He's got so much money that he throws a party for voters. Now we're going to find out whether that's enough to make you a contender. He's not polling particularly well. I'm not sure it's going to work for him. As a matter of fact, wouldn't it be ironic if a billionaire enters the race and ends up splitting the anti-Bernie Sanders vote and the billionaire helps elect a democratic socialist? That would be pretty funny. The real unintended consequences of a billionaire entering in. All right, this all seems pretty straightforward, right? You have democratic candidates. They're all vying to win.

A frontrunner emerges, they get the most delegates, and then after the convention, that person goes on and faces Donald Trump in the general election, right? That's how it tends to work. Not so fast. It's a little more complicated than that. Well, I want to ask you, I've been noticing some of the complication around that, which I want to get to, but it seems like part of it is to do with what's happening around Bernie Sanders and his campaign. He didn't take South Carolina, but clearly he is the frontrunner. He is the candidate with the most support. And we've been starting to see these attacks coming

from all sides, coming from inside his own party. What's going on there? Vladimir Putin thinks that Donald Trump should be president of the United States, and that's why Russia is helping you get elected so you'll lose to him. Elizabeth Warren on the Sanders plan for universal health care. But Bernie's plan doesn't explain how to get there, doesn't show how we're going to get enough allies into it, and doesn't show enough about how we're going to pay for it. Well I think a lot of Democrats, and I wouldn't say necessarily that's the majority of Democrats, but there are a lot of Democrats who fear that Bernie Sanders might not be as electable.

And now Bernie Sanders will say, well look, I'm polling as well if not better than anyone against Donald Trump. In the last 50 polls that have been done nationally, guess what? Bernie Sanders beat Donald Trump 47 times out of 50. I will beat Trump. I've won most delegates so far. Why am I not electable? And the answer some of these people give is he hasn't faced a single tough attack ad. The Republican Party, you just look at the tweets from people running Republican campaigns. They're happy about Bernie Sanders being the front runner. And part of the

reason is Democrats are not going to hit Bernie Sanders on his pledge to ban fracking. The scientists are telling us that if we don't act incredibly boldly within the next six, seven years, there will be irreparable damage done. Because they all want to appear sympathetic to fighting climate change. But the Republicans are going to pummel the airwaves in Pennsylvania, where fracking is an important industry. Democrats aren't complaining quite so much about socialism because they want the votes of socialists. But you can bet your bottom dollar that Republicans will will spend a lot of dollars in florida throughout the election cycle to remind every single person who fled cuba that he has said nice things about fidel castro we're very opposed to the authoritarian nature

of cuba but you know you got it's unfair to simply say everything is bad you know when fidel castro came into office you know what he did? He had a massive literacy program. Is that a bad thing? Even though Fidel Castro did it? And people who fled Venezuela, that he's opposed to intervention in Venezuela, that he said nice things about Daniel Ortega. So he's basically been challenged with kid gloves so far. Republicans are going to unload the heavy machinery.

That's the difference. And he is someone who has consistently identified as a democratic socialist. And I know that that word socialist for, you know, moderates within the Democratic Party, but certainly many Republicans, that's a that's a term that gets caught in their throat. Oh, yeah. And, you know, the news media might make the distinction. And political scientists will make the distinction. And Bernie Sanders will say, well, no, I'm talking about Norway, not Venezuela. But again, you can assume that Republicans and super PACs and large organizations that back them are going to spend a lot of money muddying those waters, so that when voters, moderate and swing voters, go to the polling stations on November 3rd, they're thinking Venezuela, not Norway. And that's why a lot of Democrats are skeptical that Bernie Sanders' lead against Donald Trump holds up in Pennsylvania,

in Florida, and in some of the swing states. Well, that skepticism also seems to be coming from the media and not just from party brass. There's been some really interesting media coverage of Bernie's campaign. I know that MSNBC host Chris Matthews had to actually apologize after he compared Bernie Sanders' performance in the primaries to the Nazi invasion of France. I was wrong to refer to an event from the last days or actually the first days of World War II. Senator Sanders, I'm sorry for comparing anything from that tragic era in which so many suffered, especially the Jewish people, to an electoral result in which you were the well-deserved winner. It was a really bad analogy, but in Chris Matthews' defense, what I think he was trying to say was that after Bernie

Sanders put up such a convincing performance in Nevada that the primary race was over, and he was comparing it to the Maginot Line being overrun by the Nazis. And anyway, not only was it a bad analogy... For the only Jewish candidate in the Democratic Party, it might not have been a good choice. Yeah, well, not only was it a bad analogy, it also proved to be bad analysis, because the race is not over. It clearly isn't. connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem, brought to you in part by National

Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. So I have a sense of what this division is about within the Democratic Party. But practically speaking, can you explain to me what could his rivals do within the party to stop him from getting the nomination? It's weird that I feel like I'm kind of reliving early 2016, where this is the exact same conversation that was happening in the Republican Party about stopping Donald Trump. And the logic then and the logic now is, well, if everyone just gets together and backs another candidate, that person can beat the front runner. At the time, it was Trump. And now people are saying that about Sanders. and backs another candidate, that person can beat the front runner. At the time it was Trump,

and now people are saying that about Sanders. Well, that's not necessarily the way these things work. You know, and it's very difficult to assume that if candidate A dropped out, all of his or her supporters would go to candidate B. Right. That's not the way it works. And so a word of caution to anyone who thinks that anybody but Bernie movement is likely to succeed.

Some Republicans are laughing now. They're like, oh, wow, nice to see the other team going through exactly what we went through in 2016. But so when we get to the convention, what can the kind of stop Bernie camp do? What sort of tools do they have to potentially stop him from taking the nomination? Well, just very simple. Just vote against them on a second ballot. And that includes supporters of candidates who were not viable. Okay, so the third, fourth, fifth place candidates can all, you know, have their supporters or urge their supporters to move into another camp. So you could see someone like Elizabeth Warren, who may be at that point further behind in the number of delegates she had, she may encourage her delegates to support

Bernie Sanders. Exactly. I mean, she might send that signal. Whether they all follow her signal is up to them, and people are free to vote as they choose on a second ballot. And the second thing that happens is superdelegates come into play, party officials, elected members of Congress, former presidents are superdelegates. Barack Obama is a superdelegate. And they constitute roughly 15% of the total delegate cohort. And so that means they could possibly swing an election, likely, I guess, against Sanders, because I don't think a lot of them like Bernie Sanders as a candidate. So yeah, they would get involved on the second ballot, not on the first. They're not allowed to vote on the first ballot.

So just to get this straight, superdelegates are automatically are sent to the convention. And these are people who already have a position within the Democratic Party. Yeah. And frankly, they're the people who used to decide party nominations up until the 1970s. This was the normal way political parties did their business. You know, members of the party, people who are more heavily involved. And frankly, it's closer to what exists in Canada for most political parties did their business, you know, members of the party, people who are more heavily involved. And frankly, it's closer to what exists in Canada for most political parties. And Bernie Sanders actually helped write these current rules after losing the 2016 primary race. You know, he endorsed Hillary Clinton, but but insisted on some changes. And one of those changes is to push

superdelegates off the first ballot so they can't decide anything right away, they would get involved in ballot number two. And so if I get this right, the way it would work is that in the first vote, if one of the candidates receives a majority of delegate support, they would become the nominee. But in the event that there's no candidate who has the majority of votes, that's where there'd be a second vote. And that's when the superdelegates can weigh in as well. Exactly. So here's the way one Democratic insider fundraiser put it to me. If Bernie Sanders wins more than 50% of the delegates, which he currently does not have, if he wins more than 50%, he's the nominee on the first ballot. If he wins 49.5% of delegates, he's not automatically the nominee, but chances are the

party would make him the nominee on the second ballot. People would say, look, he's too close. He's won this thing. Let's just give it to him. But if he wins 30% or 33% and Joe Biden happens to be, for instance, at 31%, if there's a gap like that, so close, well, then it's jump ball. It's a fair game because then people have to decide what to do on the second ballot and then they'll be competing claims of legitimacy. It's interesting because the New York Times spoke to 93 superdelegates about which way they were leaning, who they supported. who they supported, and the vast majority said that they did not support Bernie Sanders, that they wouldn't vote for him if it came to this second round of voting at the July convention. What's behind that?

Well, what's behind that is the history of the Democratic Party. To truly understand this argument, you kind of have to know what happened after the 1960s. So the Democratic Party democratized its nomination process after a couple of very controversial and heated conventions. 1964, a group of African Americans come up from the South to the convention and protest to say, why aren't we allowed to be here? Because essentially, the Democratic Party in the South at that time was essentially a white supremacist organization. Their votes were being excluded. So some of these protesters said, you need to democratize this process. 1968, anti-Vietnam protesters are there and, you know, devolves into a riot and police

brutality in 1968. So the party says, OK, well, we need to open this up to the people. We can't have these things decided in smoke-filled back rooms anymore. Let's let the people choose. And they create the modern primary system. So what do Democratic voters go and do in 1972? The very first thing they do is they elect the most left-wing candidate available, George McGovern. And George McGovern goes on to lose 49 out of 50 states in the biggest electoral bloodbath in history. So Democratic brass then, after losing a majority of elections in that era say okay we need to sort of restore some power to the party leadership to help put its thumb on the scale in favor of candidates they think who can win and they create the super delegate system went on to have a pretty

successful run over the next era and then bernie sanders runs for president in 2016 and complains about the super delegate system was undemocratic, unfair, illegitimate. And he forces some reforms. He forces superdelegates to be pushed off the first ballot, forces the Democratic Party to reduce the number of superdelegates. And they are less powerful today than they were four years ago. But frankly, the rules that exist, which allow a frontrunner to be overtaken on a second ballot, were endorsed by Bernie Sanders. That's so interesting. So the moment we're at today, this kind of struggle between the party brass, the establishment and the Democratic base, that tension has been playing itself out for decades.

It's a pendulum effect, yin-yang. It goes from one to the other, back to the first. And in this particular case, we're moving away, or at least after last cycle, slightly away from the leadership of the party brass towards the grassroots and just the rank-and-file electorate. And now the party brass is starting to sweat that the Democratic voters might elect another George McGovern. I'm not saying brass is starting to sweat that, you know, the Democratic voters

might elect another George McGovern. I don't, I'm not saying that they're accurate in that assessment. I think, I think presidential elections are games of inches and anyone can win. But that's the fear of the Democratic establishment that they're going to get slaughtered and, you know, Donald Trump will control the House, the Senate, and continue to stack the Supreme Court with conservative judges. And it would be a monumental and epical setback for progressives and Democrats if they lose this election. That's the nightmare scenario for the party brass. Sanders' argument is, why am I unelectable?

I'm polling just as well against Trump as all of you, if not better. I've won more delegates. I draw bigger crowds. There's more enthusiasm. And so you can see that sort of tension between, again, the brass and the bass. And it's, you know, playing out in this election cycle as it has ever since the 1960s. That's so interesting. Thank you, Alex, for your insight into this. My pleasure. Since I spoke with Alex, Pete Buttigieg announced that he's dropping out of the Democratic presidential race. The former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, the youngest candidate in this race, finished a disappointing fourth in the South Carolina primary and has tonight, we are told, suspended his campaign.

Alex tells me that this will be a boon for Joe Biden's bid to become the Democratic nominee. That's it for today. Jamie will be back tomorrow. I'm Josh Bloch. Thanks for listening to Frontburner.