Biden Is Trying To Own The Hillary Spot In This Year’s Primary-- Playing Right Into Trump’s Hands

Paste’s Shane Ryan reported late Monday that Bernie Sanders Is Winning the Donor Race... By a Lot. And he has no billionaires! Almost all there billionaires are either in the Trump camp, the Status Quo Joe camp or The Mayo Pete camp. Regular people like you and I, though, are overwhelmingly in the Bernie camp. We’ll get into that in a moment but first, the most recent Emerson poll reads like this:

• Status Quo Joe- 32%
• Bernie- 25%
• Elizabeth- 19%
• Mayo Pete- 8%
• Yang- 6%
• Tulsi- 4%
• Bloomberg- 3%
• Klobuchar- 2%
• Booker- 2%
• Steyer- 2%

It’s also worth noting that they found that among voters under 50, Bernie leads with 36%, followed by Status Quo Joe (22%), Elizabeth (12%) and Yang (10%). “Examining racial demographics,” wrote the folks at Emerson, “Sanders leads among Hispanic/Latino voters with 36%, followed by Biden with 27%, and Yang with 12%. Among African-American voters, Biden holds a large lead receiving 52% support, followed by Sanders with 19%, Warren with 7% and Booker with 6%. Biden holds a small lead among white voters with 24%, followed by Sanders with 22%, Warren with 17%, and Buttigieg with 15%.” As for the head-to-head match-up among all voters, not just Democrats, both Bernie and Status Quo Joe beat Trump 52-48%, Elizabeth beats him 51-49% and Mayo ties him 50/50. Here’s the breakdown by gender:

OK, now back to Paste:

There is a debate to be had about how much the money race in the 2020 primary (and later, the general election) will influence results, but as of today there is no debate about who’s winning. That’s Bernie Sanders, who has raised over $26 million in the fourth quarter of 2019-- the highest quarterly total of any candidate in 2019-- and who is making a push for five million total contributors by the end of the year. As the Times notes, no other candidate has yet announced reaching three million contributors. Joe Biden is having a better fourth quarter than third, and Elizabeth Warren has slipped by roughly 20 percent, but nobody can match Sanders’ war chest.

…Of course, what’s impressive about Sanders’ numbers isn’t the sheer total, but the way it’s being raised. Unlike his opponents, he doesn’t hold big-money fundraisers, and his average contribution is just $18. The fact that he’s still out-raising his opponents despite getting far less per contribution is a dual indicator of strength.

The question is, will it matter? Sanders’ fundraising prowess tells us a few things we already knew-- his base is loyal, solid, and passionate. What remains to be seen is whether it’s big enough, and whether the money he’s getting from that base can help expand it. In response to the Times story, Biden surrogates said that “we are definitely going to have enough to prosecute a campaign in all 50 states through the primaries.” Which is what they would say, of course, but it may not be that far from the truth-- after a certain point of saturation, the dividends of having millions more may not play a critical role. That’s especially true for someone like Biden, who has all the name recognition he needs and a base of voters that, at the moment, looks larger than Sanders’ base, and just as immovable.

There’s a potential parallel in 2016, when Sanders out-raised Hillary Clinton among small-dollar donations and routinely drew enormous crowds that dwarfed hers. Still, enthusiasm isn’t the same as votes, and though he came close, he couldn’t overtake her. Biden is trying to own the Hillary spot in this year’s primary, where name recognition and strength among seniors and black voters, especially in the South, can’t be overcome by sheer political energy.

On the other hand, what does money, per se, mean when Bloomberg is willing to pointlessly squander more than all the candidates combined spend-- and driving up the rates for ads in the process, by the way?