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Welcome to the official home and wonderful world of Pulitzer Prize Winning Political Cartoonist Michael P. Ramirez, daily editorial cartoonist for the Las Vegas Review Journal |
Could a Warren/Sanders Team-up Topple Biden?
Maybe. But it is hard to imagine Sanders endorsing Warren until and unless Warren defeats him consistently and by a significant margin in several early states. IRA STOLL | 9.2.2019 4:00 PM. REASON Call it the socialist scenario—the risk that Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren could combine forces to defeat Joseph Biden in the Democratic primary. The RealClearPolitics polling averages have Biden leading Sanders and Warren nationally and in the early-voting states of Iowa and New Hampshire. But these same polls show the "not Biden" vote represented by Sanders and Warren to be larger than the level of Biden support. If that vote were combined rather than split, the socialist scenario says, it could result in a Democratic presidential nominee who is either openly socialist, like Senator Sanders, or an ideological ally of Sanders, like Senator Warren, who says she is a capitalist but who is campaigning with a call for an annual wealth tax and for what she calls "big, structural change." The possibility is generating concern from Americans who are more cautious about "big, structural change." The concern is heightened because Biden is old enough that he can seem vulnerable rather than inevitable. As is often the case with socialism, however, the fantasy is some distance from reality. The primary campaigns of the previous presidential cycle are familiar precedents and somewhat reassuring ones, at least for those who aren't Sanders or Warren enthusiasts. On the Republican side in 2016, the fact that there were more "not Trump" voters than Trump voters wasn't ever enough to stop Trump; the "not Trump" vote was fractured among a variety of candidates such as Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, and Ted Cruz, just as the "not Biden" vote is currently split. The way these contests are structured, with a large field of candidates, you don't really need a majority, just a strong plurality, at least until the nominating convention. read more |
The Dave Sussman Show
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