Thread by @AlexandraErin

Yeah, this is where I think a lot of Bernie fans are going wrong. He stands a better chance of getting a windfall from her the longer she stays in.

Whereas if she drops out, Biden has a clearer path past Bernie.

https://twitter.com/thor_benson/status/1234249973723734020

The idea that she's siphoning progressive votes away from Bernie assumes that everybody is voting on a very simplistic, one-dimensional decision-making process. It also ignores the fact that Bernie's votes consist mainly of (1) his base and (2) new voters he mobilizes.

Her policies are progressive but her sales pitch is aimed more at the center. Her presence in the race grows the progressive vote and gets people who might otherwise vote for Biden looking to the left.

If she drops out... even if she drops out and endorses Bernie... the people who *would have* voted for her are going to go back to "Well, who do I like?" And her nod might get some of them over the hump to Bernie's camp, maybe, sure. Some of them.

But then we're back to a single progressive voice in the race, a single progressive choice on the ballot.

Right now everybody's focused on the idea that she could "force" a brokered convention, but if she bowed? We'd be looking at a chance that Biden walks away with it all.

Not a *definite* outcome. I want to emphasize that! Because people seem to want to fixate on one possibility as inevitable way, way too early. If you think Bernie absolutely ycan't lose *unless someone is being underhanded* then you don't fear a Biden/Bernie head-to-head at all.

Because you have identified the skullduggery: why, it's that wily snake woman, Liz Warren! Bernie's not heading for a clean victory with her in the race, but he's the Natural Winner, so if we can change that one thing, his victory is assured!

No sure things in politics, though.

"But what about second choice polling and head-to-head match-ups?"

You know what we're terrible at, as a species?

Figuring out what we'd actually do in a hypothetical situation, when we're asked about it at a considerable remove from that hypothetical situation.

If hypothetical match-ups were anything to go on, Democrats as a party would basically walk away with every election, because people love voting for the Democratic candidate in a hypothetical match-up.

Then, somehow, between the poll and the voting booth... stuff happens.

The past 48 hours or so has been a hypercompressed version of the ongoing saga of Bernie voters discovering that people are allowed to play politics in politics. I know, it's shocking.

I think Bernie's actual campaign is a little more prepared for that than the rank-and-file.

But trust me that there are people in Biden's ever-expanding camp who are ready to move on The Warren Vote as soon as it's freed up.

And yeah, Bernie's the stated second choice of a lot of Warren voters.

But if you think getting those voters would be as easy as getting Warren out of the way: ask yourself why he's not their first choice.

Bernie voters, you'll tell us over and over again that Warren's the inferior knock-off of Bernie. That if you support progressive policies there's no reason not to be Bernie Number One.

And I don't agree. I like Warren for practical reasons. But there's something to this!

And Bernie voters, a lot of you are convinced that Warren is a literal snake-headed demon sent from Centrist Hell to destroy the last best hope of humanity.

But she'd be your number two on stated policy, wouldn't she? If you could trust her.

So imagine... just imagine... that there may be voters out there who like Bernie on policy but don't like him. They might say "He's my second choice."... because that's easy to say when the first choice is on the table.

Take Warren out, and whatever reason the individual voter had for picking Warren over Bernie remains. It might be something they liked about Warren. It might be something they disliked about Bernie.

In the latter case, he might remain their second choice.

Getting Warren out of the race lowers the chance of a brokered convention, yes. It hastens the shrinking of the race into a two-person match-up between Bernie and Biden.

But it doesn't guarantee a Bernie victory. It doesn't make the progressive win a slam-dunk.

I've been saying since Iowa that you can't judge the course of the race by the first couple of contests. And I was told that no, it's in the bag -- unless someone meddling meddler meddles!!! -- and then South Carolina happened and Biden won by more than Bernie's camp expected.

Tuesday is going to be the first day we get a GLIMPSE of the real shape of the race. Nobody's got a clue what it actually looks like. We'll have a clue, ideally, tomorrow night.

Be honest - how many Bernie fans who are sure they know exactly how it's going to go honestly believed he'd be fighting tooth and nail for the top spot in the Iowa caucus with Mayor Pete Buttigieg?

Most of you thought he'd walk away clean with spot number one, and/or that his chief rival would be the anointed establishment heir of Biden.

People are still telling me the second choice stats. I know. Sanders is my second choice, too, and I will vote for him in the Maryland primary if Warren isn't in the race by the end of April (and I think it's more likely she'll be out than in by then).

But.

This isn't a Game Boy RPG where there's four stats and you can get the same random encounter if you take the same number of stats. It's real life. Things are complicated. People are complicated. "Second choice" for a lot of people means "the best person I'll never vote for."

I just... there's a level of doublethink here where Bernie's campaign is this titanic unstoppable juggernaut who is the natural victor in any contest but also this delicate sensitive instrument that the slightest amount of sand in the gears can derail.

You're afraid of a brokered convention because you fear the idea of a victory you assume belongs to you can be "stolen" from you. You constantly site the cultural force behind Bernie to try to influence the outcome before it's even happened, and yet you're sure brokered = loss.

"There's no progressive victory coming out of a brokered convention. THEY won't allow it."

This is the Democratic Party. "THEY" aren't as organized or unified as you think. "THEY" do actually care about both appearances and the greater good, even if they disagree with you.

If Bernie comes in with the most delegates he's going to have a lot of bargaining power. I know somebody read the rules on a podcast where in the second round the delegates are released and the superdelegates come in and declared "AND THIS IS WHERE THE FIX IS IN".

But that's where the politicking happens. See above, re: you're allowed to play politics in politics. If Bernie's got the high count going in, he's going to be a force on the floor in round two.

You're comparing a brokered convention in which a victory Bernie didn't actually win yet is "stolen" to him vs. him coasting to assured Natural Victory as the Natural Victor. But the second hypothetical doesn't exist. He could lose. He could lose outright. Biden could take it all

I don't know what Warren's ultimate plan is. Racking up as many delegates as she can for the convention isn't likely to be about a single outcome, but making sure she has some say in a brokered convention so she can steer it towards the best possible outcome.

In the meantime, racking up as many delegates as she can on the way to the convention is also the strategy for trying to win outright. Which doesn't seem likely, but again, there have already been surprises.

There's no way to know how many people would be voting Warren if they weren't listening to "electability" fears. I know it's a bigger number than 0. I don't know if it'd be a big enough number to make a difference. No one does, or can.

But until we get to the point where a vote for her would actually guarantee a Biden or Bloomberg victory -- not the point where the way some people imagine things HAVE TO happen in their heads says so -- I'm going to vote Warren on the principle that "electability" is a myth.

If we had ranked choice voting, I'd put Bernie as number 2 and if Warren is really hopeless my vote would go to him, unless he turned out to be hopeless, too. So fight for ranked choice voting instead of arguing with me, maybe.

A brokered convention, if we're assuming Bernie will come with a lot of delegates, is a superior outcome to an outright Biden victory. It provides an alternate win condition instead of a total loss. It's not something to fear, just because some superdelegate floated a scheme.

Like I said, though. We'll begin to see the shape of the race tomorrow. The landscape could completely change. And while there's a lot of focus on Super Tuesday, of course even more contests will follow.

Whether it's better for Warren to drop out at some point or ride it all the way to the convention is going to depend on what happens between now and the convention. And saying she's planning for the long haul doesn't mean she won't be flexible.

She's got to be prepared for the long haul in case there's a need for her to stay in. Frankly, I think Bloomberg is a pretty strong reason for her to stay in. I've been talking in terms of Biden vs. Bernie but we don't know what he'd be able to do if she were out of the way.

TL;DR - it's a primary, vote for the person you think would make the best president, that's what primaries are for. They all vote Trump in head-to-head match-ups, which is good, but also people love voting D in the abstract a lot more than they do in reality, which is bad.

If everybody who is voting tomorrow who thinks Warren would make a better president than anyone else on the ballot actually voted for her, I believe her path to victory would be a lot more apparent.

I could be wrong.

We'll never know, though.

/thread