Trump the real New Hampshire winner
Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., narrowly edged out former South Bend, Indiana, mayor Pete Buttigieg in Tuesday’s New Hampshire primary. The real winner, however, was President Donald Trump.
Sanders’ triumph establishes the self-described socialist as the Democratic front-runner. Party leaders know this creates a real risk in November, and not just against Trump. Sanders would be the first major party nominee who has never belonged to that party. Even Trump had the decency to join the party he was trying to hijack. But the 78-yearold Sanders has always been a socialist, not a Democrat, and is proud of that even today.
His cause is, as he puts it, revolution, not victory. He has been opposed to the American form of liberal democratic capitalism all of his life, and that remains his touchstone even as he has veered away from the less mainstream causes he embraced when younger. His signature issues, such as the replacement of private health insurance with a single, government-run plan, are unpopular among the broader electorate. That means moderates who dislike Trump will be forced to choose between policies they fear and a man they dislike. If they choose to hold their nose and vote for Trump and the Republicans, that could cost Democrats dearly up and down the ballot.
The returns show how real this fear is. Sanders again did best among the young and the poor. He ran up his margins in New Hampshire cities such as Manchester and Nashua and college towns such as Keene and Durham. He did extremely poorly in educated suburban communities such as Bedford and Merrimack. Democrats will win the first set of areas regardless of who the nominee is. The second set, however, is open to voting for Republicans. Sanders might push them to do just that.
The exit poll shows this starkly. Fifty-one percent of Democratic primary voters thought Sanders’ policies were too liberal; only 4% of these voters backed him. Only 8% backed him among people who opposed replacing private health insurance with his Medicare-for-all. Only 9% supported him among the nearly onethird of voters who thought uniting the country was the most important feature they wanted in the next president. These figures flash a huge red warning light to Democrats, since moderate independent voters are much likelier to share all these stances than are hardcore Democratic activists.
These data suggest Democrats could unite to defeat Sanders, but that brings us to the second reason Trump won big last night: Those voters are currently hopelessly divided. Buttigieg and Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., essentially split the vote among these people, giving neither a reason to drop out. Meanwhile, former
New York mayor Mike Bloomberg waits in the wings with his billions saturating the airwaves all alone in Super Tuesday states. He is rising quickly in the polls but has not yet displaced his rivals. Klobuchar’s newfound strength suggests she will get the funds and free media coverage to improve her standing as well. Former vice president Joe Biden also sits in the wings, banking on support from black voters in the now-crucial South Carolina primary. The third or so of the Democratic Party that wants a strong, vocal progressive is rapidly coalescing behind Sanders while the two-thirds that don’t is split four ways.
This means the odds of a brokered convention are rising every day. Democrats allocate their delegates in proportion to each candidate’s vote share as long as a person gets 15% of the vote statewide or in congressional or state senate districts. About 40% of delegates will be allocated after Super Tuesday, and if three or four moderates are breaking that threshold, Sanders can win as many states as he wants without getting close to a majority of delegates. That means moderates can team up on him at the convention and cut a deal to deny him the nomination. That will infuriate his supporters no matter how much he gamely falls in line.
Trump, on the other hand, piled up an impressive win on the Republican side, crushing former Massachusetts governor Bill Weld by an 86-to-9 margin.