The race to challenge Trump

It was early in the morning of Tuesday 4th February that people all over the world started to tune into the latest developments of the Iowa caucus results, expecting to find out who had struck the first blow in the race to be the Democratic Party nomination to run for President of the United States in November of this year.

Catastrophically for The Democratic Party, a major technical malfunction had manifested itself in the app that they had developed to allow ‘precinct captains’ to report results. It crashed, meaning that nearly 1,600 districts were forced to try and report their results by phone, with almost all trying to call at the same time, crashing the line.

It was an absolute humiliation for the party, whose first primary of the race was billed as a blockbuster. President Trump revelled in the chaos, tweeting “The Democrat Caucus is an unmitigated disaster. Nothing works, just like they ran the Country. Remember the 5 Billion Dollar Obamacare Website, that should have cost 2% of that. The only person that can claim a very big victory in Iowa last night is “Trump”.”

Primaries

To briefly explain the purpose of caucuses, or primaries, it should be said that it’s quite a complicated process and quite different to party leadership contests in the UK.

Every state has a certain number of delegates to allocate, which is determined by a range of factors including how big the state is, how Democratic they lean and when they vote.

Each state holds a vote, and these are broken down into precincts, where organisers will run votes, and each precinct has several delegates which is selected in a similar manner to how the state is.

The Democrats have four states which vote early in every election: Iowa on February 3, New Hampshire on February 11, Nevada on February 22, and South Carolina on February 29.

While these primaries are thought of as crucial for campaign momentum because they go first, they only account for 4% of the total pledged delegates.

Runners and Riders

With that covered, and the first two primaries counted, who are the men and women hoping to win the confidence of the party to face Trump?

Bernie Sanders

The veteran Vermont senator is seen as the most left-wing of the candidates and missed out relatively narrowly to Hillary Clinton in the 2016 race.

After the first two primaries Sanders, it could be argued, has had one of the best showings, coming a very close second in Iowa and narrowly first in New Hampshire, but with these being two of the whitest and richest states to vote, the question must be whether he can maintain the momentum throughout the campaign.

A proud and vocal ‘democratic socialist’, Bernie’s key policy pledges are Medicare for all and the Green New Deal. Medicare for all would change America from an insurance-based healthcare system into ‘single payer’, similar to the NHS in the UK. The Green New Deal, on the other hand, is mainly credited to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and is summarised by the New York Times as “calling on the federal government to wean the United States from fossil fuels and curb planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions across the economy. It also aims to guarantee new high-paying jobs in clean energy industries.”

Bernie has a fanatical following and has consistently polled above Trump in a head-to-head, but it should be noted that all the Democratic candidates do, and so did Hillary Clinton.

Pete Buttigieg

The man with the hard to pronounce name (Boot-e-jej), and a complete unknown prior to this campaign, has been arguably (more on that later) the surprise package of the Democratic race.

The former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, didn’t even figure in the national consciousness until he ran unsuccessfully for the chairmanship of the Democratic National Committee.

He is, however, the first openly gay candidate to run for the highest office in the country and has proved to be a formidable fund raiser, bringing in millions relatively early in his campaign. He is also the youngest candidate, at 38, and has pitched himself as the totem of generational change.

A little too old to be considered a millennial, Buttigieg is still young enough to have been born in the 1980’s and would be the youngest President in US history, should he win the election. ‘Mayor Pete’ has also, seemingly successfully, pitched himself as the moderate centrist candidate in comparison with Sanders’ and Elizabeth Warren’s relatively radical agenda.

It says something of the seismic shift in the left-right political landscape in the US that the front-runners to face Trump later this year are a 78-year-old self-confessed socialist and an openly gay Gen-X former mayor who is considered a moderate.

Elizabeth Warren

Warren is furiously battling Sanders for the support of the Democrats’ new, mainly millennial and radical, membership base for their nomination as the most left-wing.

Warren’s credentials could hardly be more apt – she literally wrote the book on how to exert more control over Wall Street and introduce wealth taxes and was eventually blocked from her dream job (Head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau) by the Republicans.

Unfortunately for Warren, she has had to spend most of the campaign attempting to separate herself from Sanders rather than pushing forth with her own ideas and, as The Atlantic put it “Where Sanders talks about revolution, her description of the American economy amounts to a restoration. She wants to return to another era, when the economy (and government) was less captured by Big Business.”

Whilst they broadly agree with policy, Warren is seen as a much more original thinker than Bernie, but she’s struggled to show it. She has also performed relatively badly in the first two legs of the primaries, coming anywhere between third and fifth. It doesn’t bode well, but the broad expectation is that she’ll battle on to Super Tuesday, where fifteen states vote. It also includes California and Texas which as the two most populous states carry the most delegates.

Joe Biden

‘Sleepy Joe’ as Trump would have you remember him. Biden seemed at first as though he may well just storm this contest when he entered. He has consistently polled first across the nation and - as former Vice-President to Obama – appeared to be the sensible choice.

That was until Iowa and New Hampshire, where Biden has done, to put it mildly, horrendously. He hasn’t even managed to break over 10% of the vote and came an enormous 40,000 votes behind Sanders and Buttigieg.

The moderate, the centrist, whatever you might want to call it, Biden was also the second oldest candidate and if his performances don’t improve quickly and markedly in the next few contests then he’s looking dead in the water, if he isn’t already mortally wounded.

Biden could have easily survived coming second or third in these states, but such poor showings are now making people wonder whether Democratic members, and the country at large, want as clean a break from Obama and Clinton as possible.

Momentum is very important in these races not just with voters, but also with donors as they must be wondering whether it’s time to swing behind Buttigieg as their centrist unity candidate.

Amy Klobuchar

Full disclosure – even I hadn’t heard of her before Iowa, and I’ve been following this race fairly closely since the beginning. I’m by no means an expert but I’m happy to say I had no idea this was coming.

I said earlier, under my bio of Mayor Pete, that we’d come back to the surprise package, and it could well be that Klobuchar takes that title as the contest wears on. Even she mustn’t have been expecting a performance like this in the first two races, coming third in New Hampshire with almost 20% of the vote, knocking Warren into fourth and under the 10% required to get any delegates at all.

In terms of ideology she’s considered in the same centrist moderate wing as Biden and Buttigieg, sharing a lot in terms of policy opinion, but holding the advantage, some might argue, of gender.

It really is too early to call any confident predictions on this one, but she could make this race very interesting indeed.

Michael Bloomberg

The former New York mayor and billionaire is another centrist moderate of sorts, but is very much hamming up the tough guy act in terms of being the best to beat Trump.

Bloomberg isn’t set to enter the race until Super Tuesday, where the majority of delegates can be won, but you have to imagine with Biden already struggling so badly to win over hearts and minds with a very similar pitch you’d be surprised to see Bloomberg suddenly clean up.

Again though, a very tough one to call.

Summary

It’s early, but there have already been some fascinating questions thrown up. The most prominent, I believe, to be whether Bernie can keep up his momentum? My gut instinct says that the real battle here is between Bernie and Pete. One absolutely crucial factor will be how much of the African American vote Bernie can carry through the more diverse states. Sure, he’s popular with millennial and middle-aged rich whites because they can afford to be radical, but will the message carry through?

Secondly, will the centrist field narrow over the coming weeks? Bernie’s biggest advantage right now is that Klobuchar, Buttigieg, Biden and Bloomberg are splintering the moderate vote between four candidates whilst he appears to be winning the race of two radicals.

The key question for the Democratic centrists will probably be when they encourage Biden to throw in the towel and get in line behind one of the others, whether that be Klobuchar or Buttigieg. My instinct says that what’s likely to happen is that Bloomberg will do well in California but struggle elsewhere, whilst Buttigieg will continue to impress, forcing Biden and Bloomberg to fold. Warren, I also feel, will have to do extraordinarily well on Super Tuesday to hang on, and I expect to see a Bernie/Mayor Pete contest in the end.