After a nearly miraculous string of comeback victories, Joe Biden has brought order to the chaos and given Democratic voters what they wanted: an end to the drama.
In a Democratic nominating contest that saw the meteoric rise of Mayor Pete Buttigieg and the dramatic fall of Elizabeth Warren, with a field that initially was so large it required two back-to-back nights to fit all the contenders on the debate stage, it is remarkable that only six weeks after the mayhem of the Iowa caucuses, this race could be all wrapped up.
Four years earlier, a two-person race between Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton dragged out for months. Yet the scrappy Biden team has essentially locked things down and blew Sanders out of the water even in supposedly favorable turf such as Michigan. How did Biden pull it off, when a well-funded Clinton machine facing little opposition besides Sanders in 2016 struggled through contests like Michigan and limped on to the final coronation at the Democratic convention?
There are a few things we have known about the Democratic electorate from the very start of this nomination process. First, Democratic voters value electability over all things. Defeating President Trump is the single issue that unifies and animates the party, from the moderate through the liberal wing. They don’t agree on “Medicare for all” or the so-called Green New Deal, but they all agree that the reelection of Trump is a catastrophe they cannot bear.
On this test, Biden has basically passed among Democrats. In December, even as Biden’s poll numbers in early states took a beating and the impeachment focus on his son Hunter’s business dealings in Ukraine complicated the picture, 8 in 10 Democrats thought it was at least somewhat likely that Biden would beat Trump. While Democratic elites wrung their hands over lackluster Biden debate performances or strange on-the-stump gaffes, Democratic voters mostly shrugged it off. His electability numbers barely budged.
The second thing we’ve known is that Democrats by and large liked the field of options available to them. Not all Democrats liked all options (ahem, Michael Bloomberg), but there was “someone for everyone” (or maybe even a few “someones”) for every voter. In October, 7 out of 10 Democrats said they were “satisfied with their choices,” a figure which has increased during the course of the campaign.
Voters who told pollsters they liked Buttigieg or Warren or whomever were not necessarily off-the-table for someone like Biden. Even when Democrats were considering voting for other candidates, they still liked Biden. And now that it’s down to Biden and Bernie, Biden’s advantage is that Democrats today like him better than they like Sanders, by about a 10-point margin.
This dynamic ran in the other direction for Clinton, as in March 2016 Sanders was slightly more well-liked than she was among registered Democrats. Even though Clinton remained very net-favorable among Democrats throughout 2016, her numbers did slide among Democrats as the primary went on.
In 2016, Democrats were feeling good about their chances to defeat a bruised and divided Republican Party with Trump at the helm. They liked Clinton well enough, but really liked this new-on-the-national-stage Sanders character and didn’t mind seeing the battle drag out a little bit.
In 2020, Democrats are much more risk-averse, much more worried about their prospects of success, and much less enamored of Sanders in general. While Biden has plenty of risks and baggage, they are of a different magnitude and nature than what Clinton brought to the race in 2016. Biden is considered safe, and safe is what it seems a scarred Democratic electorate wants in these turbulent times.
Democrats back in 2016 wanted to see their nominee really work for it.
Democrats in 2020 just don’t want to screw things up.
