POLITICS
Bernie and Pete: Front Runners?
How much have Iowa and New Hampshire told us about the Democratic primary fi ght?
BY PAUL SCHINDLER
In the two Democratic contests
played out to date, the
most striking result is that
in both the two leaders were
a democratic socialist and an out
gay man, with Vermont Senator
Bernie Sanders and former South
Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg grabbing
roughly a quarter of the vote
each in Iowa andNew Hampshire.
What was different about New
Hampshire from Iowa was that
Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar
came from a fi fth place fi nish
in a neighboring state to a strong
third in faraway New England,
where she won nearly a fi fth of the
total votes.
The big losers in New Hampshire
were Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth
Warren, who won only nine
percent of the vote, and former Vice
President Joe Biden, whose just
over eight percent fi nish means he
needs to prove himself in Nevada
and, especially, South Carolina, or
his electability argument, the centerpiece
of his campaign, will collapse
completely.
For now, Warren is effectively being
outfl anked on the progressive
side by Sanders and is making up
no ground in the more moderate
lane, with the strength of Buttigieg
and now Klobuchar — this despite
the Massachusetts senator’s shift
late last year to a more qualifi ed
endorsement of her earlier support
for Medicare for All, a bedrock
Amy Klobuchar speaks at a February 11 campaign rally in New Hampshire.
plank in Sanders’ platform.
An article of faith among Biden
supporters is that South Carolina’s
large African-American community
— who make up an estimated
60 percent of Democratic primary
voters — represent a fi rewall for
him, but the New Hampshire results
raise questions about that.
According to CNN exit polling
data, Blacks made up fi ve percent
of the vote in New Hampshire,
Latinx voters, two percent, and
Asian Americans, one percent.
Sanders captured 32 percent of
non-white voters (the data was not
broken down in any greater detail),
while Biden scored 16 percent, just
one point better than Buttigieg and
fi ve better than Klobuchar.
In fact, FiveThirtyEight.com’s
tally of polling in South Carolina
TWITTER/ @AMYKLOBUCHAR
shows that Biden has dropped from
a high of just under 50 percent to
32.7 percent as of last week. Sanders
has grown to about 17 percent,
with Buttigieg, Warren, and former
New York City Mayor Michael
Bloomberg all polling in the high
single digits.
Sanders got a rap in 2016 for
not attracting African-American
voters — though that pattern was
not uniform across all primaries. If
he can show, in Nevada and South
Carolina, that he can take the fi ght
to Biden in Black communities, he
will have gone a long way toward
his claim in his New Hampshire
victory speech that he is running
a “multi-racial campaign.”
The other part of that claim was
that his push is “multi-generational.”
His success there is more limited.
In New Hampshire, he captured
18 to 29-year-olds resoundingly
and also had a plurality of those 30
to 44, but he signifi cantly trailed
Buttigieg and Klobuchar among
those 45 and older.
The fl ip side of this is that Buttigieg
underperforms among young
people — his own age cohort. And
his bigger challenge — more telling
than in the case of Sanders — is
whether he can attract signifi -
cant numbers of Black voters. His
stumbling response in last week’s
debate on the question of African-
American marijuana arrests in
South Bend certainly did nothing
to help that cause — and enthusiastic
turnout by Black voters will
be crucial in swing state big cities
like Philadelphia, Detroit, Milwaukee,
Miami, and Atlanta come November.
The wild card in all of this is
Bloomberg, who is reported to have
already spent more than $350 million
in his nationwide media blitz.
He will fi nally be in the mix come
Super Tuesday on March 3.
Already, without contesting a
single vote, he has shot to 14 percent
nationwide in the Real Clear
Politics average of polls — ahead of
Warren, Buttigieg, and Klobuchar
who have all been at it a year or
more. Only an improving Sanders
and a fading Biden outpace him.
So are the frontrunners Bernie
and Pete? Is Amy in that mix? Are
Joe and Elizabeth history? And
what about Big Bucks Mike?
Bloomberg’s Classist View of Trans Rights, Midwest
Comments from 2016 could land Dem hopeful in hot water in heart of primary season
BY MATT TRACY
Democratic presidential
candidate Mike
Bloomberg, the former
New York City mayor,
told a crowd at Britain’s Oxford
University in 2016 that people
from the American Midwest do not
believe in transgender rights and
that it is educated and wealthy
people — not the masses — who
support equal rights, according to
a video that recently surfaced.
“If you want to know if someone
is a good salesman, give him the
job of going to the Midwest, and
picking a town, and selling to that
town the concept that some man
wearing a dress should be in a
locker room with their daughter,”
Bloomberg said in a clip posted on
Twitter by journalist Walker Bragman.
“If you can sell that, you can
sell anything. I mean, they just
look at ya and say, ‘What on earth
are you talking about?’ And you
say, ‘Well, this person identifi es
as her gender as different than
what’s on her birth certifi cate.’…
‘What do you mean? You’re either
born this or you’re born that.’”
The billionaire’s sweeping generalizations,
which were made
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February 13 - February 26, 2 8 020 | GayCityNews.com
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