The Democratic primary debate heated up this weekend, with the debate and the results from Nevada coming in. This weekend appears to be a large victory for Bernie Sanders, who is projected to win Nevada by a considerable margin. Former Vice President Joe Biden, who did not do well in New Hampshire or Iowa, is in second with Pete Buttigieg trailing in third. But why is all this important? What does it mean as we look to the future? More importantly, will the Democrats be able to defeat current President Donald Trump?
To begin, we have to understand why Nevada is such a big deal this election cycle. For starters, the Democrats have had a rough start to the election season. In the beginning, there were simply too many candidates running for office. Currently, there are eight potential candidates: Biden, Bloomberg, Klobuchar, Sander, Buttigieg, Warren, Gabbard, and Steyer. However, 30 other candidates have already dropped out of the running, meaning the Democrats had around 38 potential presidential candidates. The number of candidates was particularly harmful during the earlier primary debates. In an effort to gain more attention, the candidates would argue amongst themselves. This was problematic, because instead of having discussions about their proposed policies, they insulted each other, essentially doing the Republican party’s job for them. In my opinion, the Democrats failed to present a united front to complete their ultimate goal, which is to have a Democrat in the White House. Instead, the Democrats confused voters by having too many candidates, and appeared weak when they were all trading insults.
Image of the Democratic candidates during the July 2019 debate
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Source: Vox
Off to a rough start, the Democrats needed a big win in Iowa, and instead, unfortunately, they were faced with a disaster. For the first time, Iowa decided to make the caucus more accessible to everyone, by allowing virtual caucusing. An app was launched, despite many security concerns from DNC leaders. Even before the night of February 3, many people had troubles with the app, in that it was complicated to download as it was not available in official app stores. This was particularly debilitating for citizens who are not as “tech savvy” as younger generations are. NBC News reports that “Out of 1,765 precincts, only 624 people logged into the live version of the app and 439 successfully submitted results using the technology, according to Iowa Democratic officials, or about a quarter of precinct chairs. The rest resorted to calling — waiting on hold for hours — or even texting in their results.” The race was a close call between Bernie Sanders and Pete Buttigieg, with both candidates claiming victory at some point. The entire situation made the Democrats appear to be disorganized, and further divided the party itself. Consequently, New Hampshire and Nevada became critical caucuses, perhaps providing clarity in the race, and giving Democrats an opportunity to appear strong.
Luckily for the Democratic party, the New Hampshire primary went off without a hitch. However, the race was incredibly close between Bernie Sanders and Pete Buttigieg again. Bernie Sanders came in first, with 25.7% of the vote while Pete Buttigieg received 24.4% of the vote. Surprisingly, candidate Amy Klobuchar came in third with 19.8% of the vote. Amy Klobuchar is a moderate candidate, who has not been polling particularly well, nor is she raising the amount of funds the Buttigieg, Sanders, and Warren have raised. Her success in New Hampshire may indicate that voters are not as ready for the rising socialist movement on the far left. However, New Hampshire did not offer any clarity as to who voters were identifying with given how close the race was between the top three candidates. As a result, the Nevada caucus became incredibly important.
Image of Amy Klobuchar following her success in New Hampshire
Source: Los Angeles Times
Given all the background information, we can now analyze why the Nevada caucus results are so important. As I mentioned earlier, Bernie Sander won big, receiving 46.8% of the votes. Joe Biden received 20.4% of the votes, and Pete Buttigieg received 13.9% of the votes. Amy Klobuchar’s success in New Hampshire was not reflected in Nevada as she got 4.2% of the vote. What caught my eye in particular about this race was how well Joe Biden did. He has not been doing well in the past caucuses and he is doing poorly in the debates. Joe Biden is hoping to carry the momentum of his success in Nevada to South Carolina, where he hopes that the historical support from black voters will earn him a win. However, Bernie Sanders proved that he can reach out to all demographics based on the Nevada results. He did particularly well with younger people and Latino voters, who are supposed to be a critical voting bloc this election cycle. Buttigieg did not do as well as he hoped, which may not come as a surprise given that he does not poll well with minority groups in America. However, he is challenging the results in Nevada due to alleged irregularities. I believe this is problematic because it again shows a divide in the Democratic party, which will ultimately hurt their chance of defeating the current president Donald Trump.
I believe that the Nevada caucus was finally a success for the Democratic party. It began to shed some light on who voters prefer to be the Democratic candidate for president and there were no major mistakes. However, I believe Buttigieg challenging these results is problematic. South Carolina will be important to determine which candidate does better with minority voting blocs, groups that can change the course of the election but are often not reached out to by Democratic candidates. What are your opinions on the Nevada results? Do you agree that it helped the Democratic party? Do you have a different take on what they mean?
I was very suspicious about many parts of the Iowa caucus, with a few key suspicions that have shaped my view on Buttigieg as a candidate. He claimed victory extremely early on, late in the night of the caucus, even though almost no results had been actually reported. This is problematic since one of his campaign advisor’s wife owns the company that created the caucus reporting app. This conflict of interest was never directly addressed by Pete, however we heard reports of DNC conspiring against Bernie, with a hope to force a brokered convention to keep him from winning the nomination. This is due to Bernie’s anti-establishment ideology, which is counter to the establishment that runs democratic candidate nomination. I find it interesting that all candidates would like the candidate with the most delegates to win the nomination in the event of no majority winner, except for Bernie. He believes that the person with the highest total popular vote should get the nomination. For a party that has been touting the end of the electoral college for years, and one that champions the popular vote as the true metric of public opinion/voting, why would all the remaining candidates except Sanders say no to using the popular vote to nominate the democratic candidate? I find this hypocritical.
I like your focus on Nevada, and now that we have some more information as time has passed, I think that South Carolina will be even more important. This is because Biden is projected in the polls to win pretty big there, and he may be able to carry this momentum into super Tuesday where a third of all delegates are up for grabs. However, http://www.fivethirtyeight.com projects that if Sanders is to win South Carolina, he will virtually sweep all of the super Tuesday states and almost certainly go on to win the nomination. His chances of winning SC now are low, but until we have those results it will still be interesting to guess about what might happen.
Something I think about often is the disparity between the claims the other candidates make about Sanders and the empirical data we have on these claims. A big one is that they claim he will not beat Trump because he is too radical. So why does he beat Trump in virtually every national poll and almost always outperforms the other democratic candidates? Remember that Trump was incredibly radical, and according to the logic of the other candidates and the media there should have been no way for Trump to win the presidency. What Trump was able to do was energize his base and allow that energy to ripple through the entire party until he basically became the party. Bernie has proven time and time again that he can energize his base and the American public. If the candidates want to claim that Sanders won’t beat trump and that they instead would, I would like to see a poll that says so.
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/latest_polls/general_election/
Hey there Luisina,
Choosing the Nevada Caucus and its results as the subject of your civic issues blog was a great choice considering its relevance to today’s politics and the ongoing election. It made for an interesting read, and I enjoyed hearing your perspective and your justifications for this. Overall, I agree with your justification of why the state of Nevada is so important to the Democratic Party in the race to defeat current President Donald Trump.
In particular, I agree with your statement that early on in the election, the Democrats were doing the Republicans’ job for them. As you addressed, an obvious way that they did this was by targeting each other when they should have been targeting their opponent; however, I believe that there are other ways in which the Democratic party is lacking besides this.
Specifically, I think that in its current state, the Democratic party lacks adequate scaffolding. Currently, there is really no distinct candidate that would actually win against Donald Trump. The Democratic candidate, in my opinion, should appeal not only to Democratic voters but also to Republican voters who do not particularly like Trump. However, there are currently eight candidates, and the candidates that are popular within the Democratic party, such as Sanders and Warren, are supportive of more extreme socialist policies.
As supported by your commentary on Amy Klobauchar’s success in New Hampshire, the left is likely not ready for a socialist movement, and the right is definitely not. With this said, I believe that if any of the more socialist candidates are nominated, Donald Trump will ultimately win the election. This is because according to the most recent Gallup tracking poll, America remains a center-right nation with 37% of Americans calling themselves conservative, 35% moderate, and just 24% liberal (https://news.gallup.com/poll/15370/party-affiliation.aspx).
With this said, I agree that the Nevada Caucus results were important for the Democratic party, but I only think this is the case because it showed a unifying preference for Bernie, and this unity is far stronger than the insult-based, democrat vs. democrat tactics that have been ongoing recently. However, I think that if the Democrats really want to succeed in this election, they need to further consider the results of New Hampshire and consider selecting a more moderate candidate to bolster support from both sides.
Personally, I found your Civic Issue blog on the presidential race and its flaws to be very well written, very organized, articulated perfectly, and clear and concise to the point that you were trying to get across. Your information on the different states, and the weight that they hold within the election was very good information to include in your blog. The reason for why I found this specifically to be really good and informational is because it was information that as a citizen I should know, and understand. Actually, not only should I know and understand this information, but I should also know and be willing to accept the risk of having the wrong President that is not truly for the people. To me, the best part of your blog post was in the beginning of each you were able to tie everything together to make for an even more intriguing piece. YOur ability to keep your reader interested in what you are writer, it is imperative that one is able to consistently draw their readers back in with each new set of details. However, with all that is good, there are always still things that you could potentially improve on. I do not have too many things that I believe you should change or tweak. The main thing for me is to include some more colorful language, some more pictures- just so the read is easier on the eyes, and lastly, another piece about the topic so I can read some more. Lol, great job
https://www.austincc.edu/history/inres10a4style.html
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2020/president/ia/iowa_democratic_presidential_caucus-6731.html