On its face, Sen. Bernie Sanders’ (I-VT) Wednesday night comment that “the person with the most votes should be the nominee” could not have been more mundane.
But that answer, given during the Democratic debate in response to a question about whether the pledged-delegate leader should be the top of the ticket at the national convention, not only put Sanders at odds with the rest of the field, but also with Bernie Sanders, himself, four years ago.
“It’s a bit of flip flop from 2016,” Josh Putnam, a political scientist who specializes in delegate selection rules, told The Daily Beast. “He was making the case four years ago that Hillary Clinton couldn’t win the nomination without superdelegates, and the pledged delegates should decide.”
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“He was the one making the argument last time to let the process play out and all that,” Putnam said.
After the 2016 election, the Democratic National Committee’s Unity and Reform Committee voted to dramatically reduce the role of superdelegates, a group of party officials, activists, and loyalists who some progressives argued had had a disproportionately large say in the nominating process for nearly 40 years. While roughly 770 superdelegates remain active in the 2020 contest, a compromise was reached within the party to prohibit them from voting on the first ballot, largely after Sanders’ campaign and his supporters pushed for reforms to cut back their influence overall.
But while Sanders railed heavily in both Democratic primaries against the very notion of superdelegates by calling them “undemocratic,” one of his top advisers conceded at one juncture during the last election that they could come in handy if things got close.
“Nobody has the delegates to win with pledged delegates. It's going to be the superdelegates who are going to have to decide this,” Jeff Weaver, who remains a senior Sanders adviser, said in May 2016, expressing confidence in an interview with NPR that the Vermont senator would close the gap in the end if it came down to that scenario. More recently than that, Sanders advisers reportedly said last year that they hope to be in touch with superdelegates earlier in the election than last time, if even for logistical reasons, suggesting they were still heavily on the campaign’s mind.
While several variables are different this year, including the sheer presence of more candidates beyond a one-on-one race, Sanders’ language on Wednesday night nonetheless shows, unlike in 2016, a desire to wrap the nomination before things drag on too long. And the desire from his rivals, at least at this point, to do the opposite.
“If he thought it was fair to stay in until the superdelegates had voted last time, why is it not fair this time? Craig Smith, a member of the Democratic National Committee, asked. “That was a change being proposed by Sen. Sanders and his supporters,” he added, in reference to the DNC’s vote to ban superdelegates on the first ballot. “It’s a little inconsistent for him now to say nobody else should do what I did.”
Another source directly familiar with delegate selection rules in Democratic primaries said the difference appears to be that Sanders 2020 is on the better side of the delegate race.
“His position right now is whoever has the most delegates should be the nominee. He took a different position [in 2016],” the source said. “Last time he didn’t have the most going into the convention.”
Sanders campaign did not respond to a request for comment.
The rest of the field expressed a collective desire to “let the process play out”—as both Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) and former South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg said Wednesday. In short, they want Democrats to follow the current rules which require a 50 percent-plus-one majority in either round to win the nomination outright. And, as multiple candidates hover between low and mid-single digits in state and national polls, securing a majority in the first round could be harder to envision, the multiple delegate selection experts said.
That desire to game out a variety of scenarios is elevated with fewer candidates dropping out. While some strategists were hesitant to use the phrase “contested convention”—or a convention where two candidates could potentially capture the nomination, others got at the idea by hedging a bit and using different terminology. Ultimately, however, Democrats agreed the very need to ask that question on the debate stage sheds light on the unpredictable nature of the race in the thick of voting. With two contests down and another occurring for Saturday night, there’s hardly a shared sense of certainty about what could ultimately happen at the Democratic National Convention in July.
All of it could be “mindless speculation from a bunch of political operatives,” Smith said, cautioning against drawing too much inference from candidates’ desire to let the process play out past the first few states’ voting. But with the collective desire to see where things go down the line—a response that, by nature, keeps things vague—multiple candidates are also up against political and monetary realities that could complicate the idea of a long lifespan.
For one, there’s money. Biden, Warren, Buttigieg, and Klobuchar are running out of cash quickly, according to tallies of newly released campaign finance reports. Biden has the second most cash on hand of any contender at $7.1 million, followed by Buttigieg at $6.6 million and Klobuchar at $2.9 million. Warren left the quarter with just $2.2 million on hand—and disclosed, before her debate performance reportedly drummed up some support, her campaign had taken out a $3 million loan to keep going, first reported by The New York Times, which her campaign said it has not used. Sanders, in contrast, has a significant lead, with $16.8 million on hand. Bloomberg, the billionaire Democrat who significantly shook up the state of the race after entering in late November, has nearly infinite resources in contrast to spend on his presidential campaign.
And there’s also polls. After disappointing finishes for Biden and Warren in Iowa and New Hampshire, both candidates are looking for a better showing in Nevada’s caucuses, which are significantly more diverse, to turnaround their luck. While Buttigieg, performed well in both Iowa and New Hampshire, faces steeper hurdles on Saturday, having failed to cobble together a coalition that includes broad Latino and black support. Klobuchar, who pulled off a surprise third-place finish in New Hampshire, is in a similar position.
“The ones who complain about the process are typically the ones who are losing,” Putnam said, referencing the candidates who called publicly to keep things going as long as possible. But he conceded there’s ample room for nuance, saying the whole thing could be building up to an “unresolved end to primary season.”
“This time around you’ve got all these folks around,” he said. “There’s still a lot of ways this thing can do. You’d rather beat Sanders now than not.”
