Bernie Needs Warren to Stay in the Race
Despite the loud calls from Bernie supporters for Warren to drop out after a lackluster Super Tuesday, it’s actually better for Bernie and his supporters if she stays in for at least six reasons:
1. Delegates — the last Morning Consult poll said that Bernie was the 2nd choice of only 40% of Warren supporters (the total of Biden-Buttigieg-Klobuchar was 44%) . Even if we assume a best-case scenario where that increased to 60% going to Bernie, it still means that if Warren drops, Bernie loses all the potential delegates of those 40–60% of her supporters. The delegate total at the end of Super Tuesday is likely going to be Bernie from 60–100 delegates behind Biden. It’s important to Bernie that every possible delegate stay in the progressive fold. Whereas Warren voters might migrate to Biden, her actual pledged delegates would likely not, especially if she tells them where to go. So it’s better to get delegates for down the road than just half her voters now since delegates are more reliably going to support a progressive nominee.
2. Debates — While many Bernie supporters celebrate the abysmal showing of Bloomberg, they should remember that Warren was the billionaire-slayer who took him down to size in the first debate and did more to reduce him to an also-ran than any other candidate. Warren is a great debater and Bernie has already shown a reluctance to hit Joe too hard because he considers him a friend. Having a double-team for the next debates is far better for reducing Biden’s momentum.
3. Progressive positions airtime — with 3 candidates in the race and only 1 moderate, that means there will be more stage time and national attention devoted to progressive ideas. Warren is skilled at making the case for many progressive ideas and if she has a lot of time on stage between now and the Convention, that will shift the mindset of the country further.
4. Leverage — FiveThirtyEight.com has not updated their model with the full Super Tuesday results but before they froze, they were only giving Bernie an 8% of winning an outright majority of delegates before the Convention and a 61% chance of a contested convention. Bernie’s chance of an outright majority of delegates is likely going to be in the 1–5% chance with their model after all the results are in. If he has no other allies at the convention who retain substantial delegates, he has little leverage to either potentially go over the majority threshold on a first vote or extract progressive concessions. By winning a percentage of the delegates (some of whom Bernie could not get if she dropped), Warren would create a situation where a contested convention is at least a bit more likely and either would result in a progressive win (total above 50% on first vote, if she passed hers to Bernie or vice versa) OR the ability to lobby for more progressive policies or a VP slot.
5. Women — There’s been a serious gender skew in voting, with Bernie voters skewing 8% more male and somewhere in the reverse for Warren. In general, women have been less likely to identify with Bernie’s movement, perhaps because of the more aggressive reputation, as well as some of the rhetoric. To keep more women in the progressive fold, having Warren on the stage will engage more than Bernie standing alone, even with a Warren endorsement.
6. Progressive on ramp — what’s increasingly clear is that Warren offers an easier on-ramp to progressive positions than Bernie does, which matters in terms of growing the progressive coalition. In the Super Tuesday results, he only exceeded 36% of the vote in his home state of Vermont. He’s become the clear front-running purist progressive but there may well be the ceiling on that category that others have long talked about. Since Warren has often been the top SECOND choice of other candidate’s supporters, she’s able to bring people into considering progressive positions that might otherwise be turned off by talk of revolution. In a 3-way race, if she can get 15–20% of the vote, peeling close to half of that away from Biden’s support, she and Bernie might together breakthrough the 50% threshold. As long as they work in a collaborative way at the Convention, her being in the race to the end builds the progressive movement.
It’s hard to keep up with the pace of change in the race but it’s clear that with the late-breaking momentum on Super Tuesday, the raft of endorsements, the exit of Bloomberg, and a big infusion of cash, Biden is the odds-on favorite now, which is reflected that betting markets have him pegged at 82% likely now.
The worst thing that can happen is for Bernie supporters to make reactive attacks on Warren supporters with calls to leave the race and back Bernie. There’s been a fair amount of negativity directed at Warren supporters already so that is more likely to propel them further away. And it’s not really the strategic option.
The strategic approach is more about mending fences and recommitting to the goals behind a progressive coalition and assessing the best path forward.
What needs to happen is for progressives to regroup, look objectively, not emotionally, at the new state of the race and to realize that it’s actually a much better move for Bernie and his supporters to have Warren to stay in the race to gather delegates, build the movement, be an effective debater, and ultimately to help progressives get over the infighting that, at this stage, is fatal.
Not only would that be better for the progressive movement, it’s probably the only pathway that doesn’t lead to Biden as the nominee.