You will hear plenty of reasons why Vermont socialist senator turned 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders can’t beat Hillary Clinton: his appearance, his oratorical skills, his insistence on retail politics rather than negative ads, his political views.
But the biggest obstacle in Sanders’ way would also apply to Martin O’Malley, Jim Webb, Lincoln Chafee, even Elizabeth Warren: reassembling the coalition that defeated Hillary in the 2008 Democratic primaries.
So stunning of an upset was Clinton’s loss that we tend to forget how narrow it actually was. She lost the cumulative popular vote in the Democratic primaries by just 0.1 percent of the vote. Her margin of defeat be can be bumped up to 0.4 percent with estimates from some caucus states that didn’t release popular vote totals; it can be erased with other assumptions.
Clinton won California, New York, Florida, Texas, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Indiana. Those are among the biggest primaries. She won New Hampshire after coming in third in Iowa. Clinton went to the Democratic National Convention with 1,639.5 pledged delegates to Barack Obama’s 1766.5, enough that the super delegates could still have delivered her the nomination (instead they voted 463 to 257 for Obama).
It’s easy to see how Sanders or Webb could rally the working-class white Democrats who voted for Jerry Brown in 1992. You can also imagine Sanders or O’Malley collecting the votes of affluent white liberals who backed Howard Dean in 2004, Bill Bradley in 2000, Paul Tsongas (to some extent) in 1992 and Gary Hart in 1984.
Obama beat Hillary and won the Democratic nomination by marrying the Dean vote to a majority of black primary voters. Clinton loyalist Paul Begala derided this as a coalition of “eggheads and African Americans,” saying it wouldn’t be good enough to win.
Begala was wrong. Clinton lost her lead when she lost the black vote. In October 2007, a CNN poll found the New York senator and former first lady was beating Obama among black registered Democrats by 57 percent to 33 percent. She was winning 68 percent of black Democratic women to Obama’s 25 percent.
“The ‘sistah’ vote is paying off handsomely for Hillary Clinton,” Democratic political strategist Donna Brazile crowed. “It’s not only getting her the women’s vote. It’s also getting her the black vote.”
That didn’t last long. The Democratic primary electorate in South Carolina was 55 percent black. Obama won 78 percent of their vote and 55 percent of the total, trouncing Hillary. Bill Clinton responded with comments critics perceived as race-baiting: “Jesse Jackson won South Carolina in ’84 and ’88. Jackson ran a good campaign. And Obama ran a good campaign here.”
On Super Tuesday, 82 percent of black Democratic primary voters nationally supported Obama. Only 17 percent voted for Clinton. She lost black men 85 to 14, black women 80 to 18. Majority black electorates delivered Obama primary victories in Southern states like Alabama and Georgia.
Without supermajorities of black voters, Obama doesn’t beat Hillary. Any 2016 Clinton challenger will need to either replicate Obama’s performance among those voters or find some other group of voters large enough to offset the difference. That won’t be easy to do.
Sanders represents a 96 percent white state, one of the least diverse in the nation. He can probably win some eggheads, but an Obama-like share of African Americans is going to be a challenge.
