About That Youth Vote....

I had a Twitter conversation with a former student, whose intelligence I greatly respect, about the primary.  She is a Sanders supporter and made the argument that many of his supporters have been making online that Bernie will bring all sorts of new voters to the polls and overwhelm whatever negatives his "Socialist" label creates among suburban and rural voters.

Yeah, about that...

As I argued with her, campaigns have been relying on the youth vote for decades.  Certainly since the voting age was lowered to 18. McGovern was the first person to fall into this trap, but hardly the last. They simply don't show up. 

Last night reinforced that. 

Take Texas.  I thought Biden might scrape out a win there, but he wound up winning by 3.5% points (at the moment). It turns out Houston is bigger than Austin.  Or look at Virginia.  There was a massive increase in voter turnout, but most of that support went to Biden. In 2016, about 785,000 people voted in the Virginia primary.  This year it was over 1,300,000. Sanders won 35% of the vote in 2016, but only 23% this time around, despite actually winning 30,000 more votes.

For better or worse, the 2020 Democratic coalition begins with African Americans but then goes through the suburbs. While Sanders' supporters will lament the shift to the center to cement those votes, the unpleasant reality for them is those people vote. The self-reinforcing echo chamber of social media led them to believe they represented a revolutionary majority, but that was never the case.  Even Sanders' strong 2016 showing can increasingly be seen as "anti-Hillary" rather than the truly broad-based foundation to win the 2020 election.  If anything, it demonstrates that his support is capped at around 25-30% of the Democratic electorate.

Perhaps he would've been the best nominee.  As I've written, I highly doubt it.  As 2020 will be a referendum on Trump, Biden seems like a decent foil for him. 

Biden does have manifold flaws.  As his campaign comes back under the spotlight, he needs to pivot to rallies with canned speeches and - as his money picks up - paid media.  Mike Bloomberg needs to drop out and send his media team to work for Joe.

As others have written, South Carolina and Super Tuesday simply returned us to the pre-Iowa landscape.  It's back to being Bernie v Biden, just like it was for most of the fall.