The Math That Could Add Up to a Sanders Nomination

Moderate Pete, moderate Amy, moderate Joe? Only relative to the avowed socialist Sanders. Consider, for example, some of Pete's comments: "The Electoral College needs to go . . . ." "We should not be laughing at [court packing]." Let's do "a glide path to Medicare for all." "Is a gun a tool or an idol?" Okay, so Pete and his husband didn't honeymoon in the USSR. But is Pete really moderate by most American standards? Klobuchar is closer to being moderate, while Biden is just done. But both of them are also on the record with some pretty extreme statements that would be used against them by the Pubs if nominated. The Dems' best option is a brokered convention and a re-boot. And Bloomberg is not the answer, as he has some pretty weird statements out there too. Trump is primed to win unless he shoots himself in the foot, which remains a possibility.

This is looking an awful lot like the Rs in 16. Trump never got a majority and everybody else felt like they had a shot all the way through. If Pete had Amy's share, it would have been a big step toward a united force against Trump. Wouldacoulda... sigh. If some elder statesmen or women could take him under their wing, it would be a service to the country.

One would have thought that the slap they took for pushing Hilary down our throats in 2016 (see NYT headline when Bernie won in Michigan!) would have made the Democratic establishment and the NYT more respectful of the will of the electorate. No such luck. I'm not naturally a Bernie supporter but I am disappointed by the craven dissing of this candidate.

I think it’s comical that the DNC is pinning their hopes on a Republican oligarch who bribed his way into the democratic primaries, is bribing elected officials for endorsements, and gaining in the polls due to $200 million pay-for-play ad buys. All to fight a Democratic Socialist who is more democratic than the neoliberal candidates AND the Republican oligarch they put up to fight him. #Bernie2020 #NotMeUs

I wish the NYT would quit trumpeting Sanders' hypothetical non-electability. It is as bad as the birther nonsense hurled at Obama.

Sanders can't beat Trump. Bloomberg!

The massive, absurd capacity of pundits, editors, and now Cohn, to ignore the fact that Buttigieg has gone step for step with Sanders is amazing. The candidates barely entered the first turn of a long race, but these two are neck and neck. Yet all we read is that Sanders is running away from the field, as if we can't trust our own eyes. Klobuchar picked up her pace, but she's still way back. Unlike Buttigieg, she hasn't faced the glare of being in the front. She may never. We're told that South Carolina and Nevada will slow Klobuchar and Buttigieg to a crawl. Trouble is, Buttigieg has been discounted since day 1. According to the media, he's never won a debate. He's not the editor's choice. The media says young people aren't interested in Buttigieg, people of color aren't either. I'm sure these journalists are very wise. Yet Buttigieg is neck and neck with Sanders. I, too, discounted Buttigieg. He couldn't keep up his string of insights. But now I think maybe he can. He's the only person at the last debate who got applause for lines that weren't canned. The others all have their touch points, where fans cheer. Buttigieg actually thinks.

Bernie SANDERS is the People's President...!!! Bernie SANDERS is the Next President of the United States of America, so get over yourselves New York Times! SANDERS is the Only Saving Grace for the Corrupted Greed from the Corporations that Control and Own our Corrupted government and our Corrupted Country!!! SANDERS is the Only one that will FIGHT Tooth and Nail to insure that We the People are financially protected from the Criminal Banking Cartel Criminal Wall Street Rico Enterprise Criminal Syndicate Cartel Health Insurance Carriers Criminal Syndicate Cartel Pharmaceuticals SANDERS will Fight for Real Civil & Criminal Justice Reforms SANDERS will remove the Corrupted Judges sitting in City- State & Federal Courts who willfully deprive those of their due process and constitutional Rights under Law SANDERS will Enforce laws that protect Jobs, Housing, Education, the ADA Disabled and Much more The Endless Brazen Hypocrisy from the Status Quo New York Times is Truly Sickening & Unconscionable...!

Bernie SANDERS is the People's President...!!! Bernie SANDERS is the Next President of the United States of America, so get over yourselves New York Times! SANDERS is the Only Saving Grace for the Corrupted Greed from the Corporations that Control and Own our Corrupted government and our Corrupted Country!!! SANDERS is the Only one that will FIGHT Tooth and Nail to insure that We the People are financially protected from the Criminal Banking Cartel Criminal Wall Street Rico Enterprise Criminal Syndicate Cartel Health Insurance Carriers Criminal Syndicate Cartel Pharmaceuticals SANDERS will Fight for Real Civil & Criminal Justice Reforms SANDERS will remove the Corrupted Judges sitting in City- State & Federal Courts who willfully deprive those of their due process and constitutional Rights under Law SANDERS will Enforce laws that protect Jobs, Housing, Education, the ADA Disabled and Much more The Endless Brazen Hypocrisy from the Status Quo New York Times is Truly Sickening & Unconscionable...!

It will come down to Bloomberg and Bernie. Bernie is excitement and ideas and progress and Bloomberg is establishment and safety and managerial competence. For president, Americans go for excitement and ideas. The foundation of Bernie's candidacy is hope for a long term future. The foundation of Bloomberg's candidacy is fear of trump. Progressivism is hope. Conservatism is fear. Bernie will be our next president.

It's increasingly looking like Democratic "moderates" or "centrists" are the new boogeyman of politics as everybody rushes to join the progressive/Sanders bandwagon. At least that's the impression I get, as well as it being the main reason why I'm not part of that movement. I'm also undecided about who will get my vote, but I'm sure it won't be Bloomberg because I'm one of those New Yorkers who remembers well what his tenure as Mayor was like here and still don't forgive him for essentially buying his way into an unprecedented third term after granting the City Council a raise, and probably face-time at his Bermuda vacation paradise. Besides, haven't we had enough of über-wealthy presidents in the White House? For some reason they act like they can do what they want, whenever they want to because well, they can.

Nate, excellent analysis but you don’t accurately characterize the 15% proportional representation threshold. All through your analysis you seem to assume that candidates must receive 15% of the vote statewide to receive delegates. That isn’t accurate. Two/thirds of each state delegation is apportioned by the results in congressional districts while one-third is apportioned on the basis of the statewide vote. This makes it even more likely that multiple candidates can emerge with delegates in states. As an example a candidate might receive 12% of the statewide vote in CA but cross the 15% threshold in a dozen (or more) congressional districts. That candidate would win a large number of delegates. Several candidates could be in this position in larger states with large congressional delegations. This makes it even more likely that no candidate would achieve (or even come near) the 1991 delegates needed for nomination on the first ballot. And if there is a second ballot (for the first time since 1952) 740 unpledged Super-delegates will be allowed to vote. You should model various potential scenarios out. This could be a helluva year —the politicos dream come true.

It is not factually correct to say that there is no doubt that center-right, or moderate Democrat candidates, combined, have more support that more progressive candidates. The latest Monmouth national poll shows that support level to be even. Yang and Steyer have very unconventional positions and their supporters cannot be lumped in with Bloomberg's. Furthermore, Bloomberg's numbers are entirely untrustworthy because his positions and past have not been publicly scrutinized. When they are, his support among minorities will drop to zero.

Your headline says it all. I didn't even have to read the rest of your piece. Here is what the democrats have to do if they want to win in Nov. 1-Do not identity/social engineer obsess. It was lethal to Hillary. Do not go back on core values but concentrate on the below. 2-Address issues that Trump demagogued in swing states ie war, immigration and blue collar job loses especially with moderate progressive ideas. 3-Be careful of past mistakes that can kill your candidate's chances ie Bernie with the socialist label, Mayor Pete being gay, Bloomberg with stop and frisk and kill the gun lobby etc. etc. With the exception of Mayor Pete, come closer to the center without sacrificing basic principles if you want to win swing states. Right now Biden, albeit in trouble, fits the bill. Continue with him unless he starts to sink after S. Carolina and then support anybody who has the biggest lead against Trump in the polls especially in swing states.

In other words, we actually have to wait for votes to be cast and counted.Novel.Necessary.

I remember seeing Robert F. Kennedy campaign in Brooklyn in 1968. The enthusiasm and hope he generated and the wide diversity of his supporters are very similar to the campaign of Bernie Sanders in 2020.

The Sanders supporters are the face of all of us. The ages are young to old and every race and color. Bernie Sanders is fighting for all of us. He has our backs and offers hope that I have not seen in my lifetime. My first presidential vote was in 1980, for Pres. Carter. If you think Bernie is not good for the country, you have not been paying attention.

The most recent YouGov/Economist poll asks Dem voters which candidates they are considering supporting in the primaries. Bernie led with 45% and was followed not by Buttigieg or Klobuchar, but by Biden and Warren, both of whom presently appear to be in free fall. We also know from the latest Morning Consult poll that the second choice of most Biden and Warren voters is Bernie. You can speculate and game it out as many ways as you want, but Bernie very clearly has the most viable path to the nomination. He is likely to come in first in Nevada and first or second in South Carolina and to win most states on Super Tuesday. It is very doubtful that the rest of the party will unite around a single anti-Bernie candidate for the simple reason that while he may not be a lot of people's first choice, he is widely liked and trusted and has the highest overall favorability of any candidate. The "Never Bernie" crowd undoubtedly includes a lot of very well-paid cable news panelists but does not account for much of the actual electorate. I have little doubt that the Dem establishment & their many mouthpieces in the corporate media, all working for the interests of the 1%, will do everything in their power to prevent Bernie from getting the nomination including major forms of election fraud. We will fight those battles as they come. But the American people are not as stupid as the establishment thinks & can see what is happening. If they are able to prevail, Bernie will be president.

Michael Bloomberg is not the right choice for Democrats. He's a billionaire, liberal Republican with a strategy to get elected by moderate Democrats who are shell shocked and scared of Mad King Donald the Vindictive. All anyone needs to see is what happened to NYC during Mike's twelve year reign. Despite his deceptive advertising he did nothing to help the tens of thousands of small businesses that were decimated by rents that more than tripled over his twelve years. Same with housing rents. More than tripled. Just like Trump he ignores or pays to overturn laws that inconvenience him. Like two term limits! He did nothing whatsoever for minorities but harass and arrest them and nothing for the middle class but drive them out of the city or cough up half their pay for rent. He should run for President of Bermuda. That's where he spends the majority of his free time when he's not at one of his other 5 homes. Michael Bloomberg is the face of wealth inequality. And we're supposed to elect him to fix it?

More biased anti - Bernie reporting. Glad to see you guys are sticking close to your corporate talking points and following the money. Even in victory you choose a negative slanted headline. Yet when any of the corporate approved candidates shoot up a 1/10th of a percent they get glowing headlines. Your bias is 100% obvious and people are on to the scam. Sorry to say you guys are going to end up disappointed one way or another. If Bernie is robbed again this time - be prepared to see the end of the Democratic party as we know it. The only solution will be a 3 party system for a large majority of Americans.

This election is not the end but the end of the beginning of The Purge of the corporate, Republican-lite branch from the dominate mainstream of the Democratic Party. The origins of this branch membership were the "Limousine liberals" that Spiro Agnew made unwelcome in the Republican Party who took refuge in the Democratic Party. With their middle-class interests and fueled by newly unregulated corporate resources of wealth, they became the dominant force in the Democratic Party. There was a void in the Democratic Party when the segregationist, states-rights, Dixie-Crats left. The Dixie-Crats were not purged but fled the Democratic Party when courted by the Nixon's ""Southern Stratagy" and found that were able supply a core voting block to a states-rights, segregationist-transformed Republican Party. The poor and working class were left powerless with no Franklin D. Roosevelt believer upon which to rely. The problem is the electoral college is highly biased toward rhe rural voter in rural states. President Roosevelt had a guaranteed Southern Democratic block of rural states. Bernie Sanders has only shown strong support in areas dominated by urban voters.

The DNC will do anything, up to and including kidnaping Bernie and sequestering him at the South Pole, to keep him from getting the nomination. Just watch.

The Upshot claims: "That includes the former New York mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, who despite not being in either contest can claim with some credibility that Iowa and New Hampshire were a strategic victory for his campaign as well." In what parallel universe? The truth is that Bloomberg is going nowhere. He is a former Republican who for years operated the racist stop-and-frisk plan that terrorized and humiliated millions of African-Americans in New York. And let's not forget that Bloomberg endorsed Joe Lieberman in his campaign against Ned Lamont (who is now Connecticut's Democratic governor). Yes, Bloomberg thought that Lieberman, Dick Cheney's favorite Democrat, the guy who championed the invasion of Iraq, who questioned the patriotism of everyone who opposed the war, who just weeks after claiming he would be a lifelong Democrat, campaigned for Republican John McCain, was "his guy." That plutocrat going nowhere, no matter how much The Times tries to puff him up.

Here we go again. Bernie trembling from Times columnists who are missing the zeitgeist. "His support in national polls remains low...". Well, everyone else's is lower. And why is a contested convention "a specter"? If the moderate wing of the Democratic Party is in disarray, whose fault is that? Maybe so-called moderate policies are unpersuasive.

This search for the lowest common denominator... as the only..and best way..to defeat that blinking, bright ,old ,orange 'caution sign' I fear may be a search in vain....a search without a vision Maybe a Sanders vs Bloomberg debate . for the future of the soul ....of the Democratic party.. would be good for the country ..?

If the convention comes with 35% Bernie and 70% others, the 70% will be able to figure it out. Duh.