judeling
judeling's JournalAmy's Path
The thing most people miss about Senator Klobuchar is that she never lets tactics overcome strategy and that she thinks things through all the time. While her path to the nomination is difficult it is no longer impossible and a lot better then people think. A lot of it has to do with how well she has run her campaign in a strategic sense.
So lets look at the state of the race today and just how Amy could win this thing.
From the start she always knew her path to the nomination runs through Iowa. Now that she has clearly moved within striking distance there possibilities open up and her strategic choices can have a big effect. First in Iowa she has emphasized lower level endorsements. What that has done is allowed her to have a much more local face to her campaign and to have a pool of experienced operatives/endorsers much closer to the regional and district caucuses. That is a huge advantage in the 15% math.
But more then that with the media forcing the Warren/Buttigieg tiff, she is now in a position to pick up a bunch of support. But so is Sanders. This actually makes sense because Warren and Buttigieg are fighting for the same voters right now.
An entirely plausible outcome right now is for Sanders to win by consolidating in the caucus Warren's more ideological support and for Klobuchar to pick up much of Warren's other support and much of the support Buttigieg has acquired from Warren. That could easily vault Amy into 2nd or 3rd. It would also be a huge shock to the perceptions of the national voting public. At this point Amy is in the best position to have a shockingly better outcome then any other candidate simply because she is not in the national conversation as much.
So on to NH with Amy surging and Warren/Buttigieg fighting for survival. Warren cannot attack it is simply not to her benefit at that point as she needs ideological crossover to beat Sanders, Buttigieg can do so but that hurts his all together now image and Amy has sowed the seeds very well of gender and experience. She has also been laying the groundwork in NH from the beginning. A Sanders win in Iowa will also hurt Biden if not as much. A nick in the inevitability will bring the lingering doubts back to the fore. Klobuchar has always looked to a direct comparison to Biden and she will get it. Again it is quite easy to see that after Iowa a Sanders win with a Biden/Klobuchar following is even more likely. That would be enough for the race to be really down to 3.
Nevada would then be a a test. But now gender politics would be clearly in play. An experienced woman against two older males. That is a hugely interesting dynamic that as the daughter of a union household could really play. I would expect Bernie and Joe to win thare but Amy right there in a 3 way race.
But now SC at this point Sanders is likely to come in with three wins and Biden would be in a must win. If he is in a must win he has already lost.
Which means that going into Super Tuesday we will have Sanders pounding on Bloomberg who is his perfect foil and Klobuchar consolidating the rest of the moderate wing and the electability "win track". At which point it is 2016 with Amy as Hillary without the EMails.
RCV experiment interesting Watch out for Klobuchar
The Concord Monitor used the Primary to do a Ranked Choice Voting Experiment.
.[link:https://www.concordmonitor.com/alternative-voting-ballots-ranked-choice-30987954| (my last free access)
The reason I'm posting this here is in a fluid race peoples deeper choices may become very important. It also reflects how voters are bunching the candidates.
Our experiment showed at least one thing: Some people love ranked-choice voting
By DAVID BROOKS
Monitor staff
Published: 12/9/2019 4:49:58 PM
When the Monitor decided to run a mock Democratic primary using ranked-choice voting, there were two numbers I was particularly interested in seeing.
Here is one of them: 385.
That’s how many usable ballots were mailed in, and it’s a lot. It’s about three times as many as I expected and one of the biggest mail-in responses the Monitor has seen in ages. We even beat Letters to Santa!
To me, this answered the biggest concern about ranked-choice voting: That the complexity will turn off voters. It seems the opposite happened.
I have heard just one negative reader comment about the enormous 16x16 grid, but more than a dozen readers included notes with their ballots expressing enthusiasm, including one who scribbled, “Thanks – this is great!” at the bottom.
Here’s the other number I was interested in: 14.
That’s the number of rounds it took to reduce our original 16 candidates to the point where one of them had a majority of the ballots.
Yes, it’s a lot. In fact, it’s the maximum number possible with 16 candidates, reflecting how divided our readers were about the huge Democratic field.
(snip …)
There were also 19 ballots that didn’t get counted at all later in the process because they left some candidates un-ranked and all their choices were eliminated.
That brings to mind a third interesting number: 156. This is how many ballots ranked all 16 candidates, not skipping anybody.
In other words, more than half of our readers did not have an opinion about everybody on the ballot. Usually, such voters marked the top four or five and left the rest empty – although a few jumped just over the middle rankings and marked one or two candidates at the very bottom, to indicate their displeasure.
And the winner is …
Eventually, we got down to just three candidates who had 152, 126 and 104 votes respectively. We parceled out the 104 votes to the other two. It turned out voters who liked this candidate – Amy Klobuchar, if you must know – had a very strong preference, so almost all of them went to the eventual winner.
The final tally was 224 votes for Pete Buttigieg and 142 for Elizabeth Warren.
Here’s the twist: It was Buttigieg who got the 102 No. 1 votes, meaning he also would have won the election with traditional enumeration. To an extent, the hours that Sarah and I spent moving ballots around and counting and re-counting didn’t change a thing.
It did make one change: Warren was originally in fourth place but was boosted to second because virtually all of Bernie Sanders’ voters chose her as No. 2. This affection didn’t go the other way, however: Warren voters split their No. 2 among a whole host of alternatives.
This is totally unscientific and nothing should be read into it. Except for someone polling at 6% (on a good day) to show up in third indicates there is a lot more underlying support then you may expect.
Klobuchar's Expanding Campaign
Nevada Staff HiresKlobuchar’s campaign announced Friday the Minnesota senator had hired Marina Negroponte to serve as state director and Cameron Miller to serve as Nevada political director. Both held similar roles in the state for O’Rourke’s campaign, which ended this month.
Another indication that the field is more fluid then people think. Amy seems to have had a very good surge in fundraising. This is only the latest in a series of staffing increases. While the funding may be in the nature of a hedge, there is no doubt that the Klobuchar campaign has been slowly expanding and she has been rising in the polls if only marginally.
She is beginning to separate from the bottom of the pack, if only right now in the first two states.
At this point moving from no way to just maybe is a huge step.
Klobuchar Won
Not that she had the Best debate performance (although good) but that she advanced her campaign the most.
Her path has always run through Iowa and her strategy has always been the last person standing on the Left-Center side.
But it's about time that people realize just how good she is at this. She consistently draws the most and most long lasting blood and people don't even notice. Ask Inslee how much "There are Three Women" hurt. It has been her driving that side of the debate from the start. It was her with the I read the Bill and even Billionaires. Up until now having Mayor Pete tag a long and follow her lead was fine, he was bringing voters to the dark side.
In September with Pete following she cleared the Left-Center lane by supporting Biden to an extent. In October she arrested Warren's rise by attacking with Mayor Pete following along.
Tonight she set up Buttigieg. She set the moment up in advance so she would be sure to get asked about the Women on the Stage with his experience. This of course led one of the better moments and had every women in America cheering. But she made sure the point was made later when she came back with the experience and the local office dig. That is when Mayor Pete stepped in it with the "Washington Experience" that is going to haunt him. That made it a Resume fight and one with everyone on the stage.
Amy Won tonight
While all the reviews are not in yet, she did the most to advance her campaign of any of the candidates on the stage.
She had set up Mayor Pete and he stepped right in it.
Sondland Debate and the Primary
Debates are informed by the news of the day. But seldom if ever has there been an event scheduled for the same day that could shape the debate as much as Gordon Sondland’s testimony will, both on the stage and from the viewers. This could turn out to be the purest test of political instincts we have ever seen. What is more it is likely to be playing out right up until the moment they walk on to the stage. How the candidates respond and how that is taken has the potential to even reshape the race. It is really more unpredictable then anyone can know.
Normally with Buttigieg's great DM poll the viewers and the moderators coming in would have extra focus on him. However the news of the day will be on the hearings and Biden will be top of mind.
What is more we cannot know how this will go. There is no way to do any real advanced planning. Sondland is the first political appointee.
Amy K is on the way
Since the October debate Amy has had a lot of good news. While Mayor Pete has been getting the majority of the buzz, quietly but steadily Amy has been solidifying her position.
Qualifying for December ahead of the November debate is huge. As was the influx of cash. With her move into fifth place in both Iowa and New Hampshire she is actually poised to move up at precisely the time the general population is tuning in.
I must admit this is the most optimistic I've been about her chances since the snowstorm start.
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