That's the tenor of the stories, particularly about Iowa caucus voters. There's something wrong with all of the leading candidates. What if it turns out to be the fatal flaw?
It is frustrating, which is why so many are undecided. Now that Iowans vote in just a few weeks, the anxiety increases. The polls are tight, the number of undecideds is high. It seems likely that many will not decide until the last minute, so for one thing, it matters what happens in the country and in the world in these next several weeks. But even with that, the outcome may hinge on a thousand last second decisions based on...anything at all.
So it seems like a wide-open contest, at least among the seven candidates on the Iowa debate stage. And then there are the candidates playing a different game, especially billionaire Michael Bloomberg, who is trying to make his mark in later primaries.
But is that the true state of the race? Perhaps. But it may also be all but over.
That's possible especially now because of reaction to Trump's Iran misadventure, which not only made frighteningly real the dangers of an unhinged chief executive, but redirects attention to the general chaos he engenders. Suddenly some knowledge and experience in foreign affairs has come to the fore, so it is no big surprise that some recent Iowa polls show Vice-President Joe Biden slightly ahead.
Those particular jitters may subside before the voting but the idea of an experienced, steady hand is outweighing doubts about age and Biden's possible political liabilities. If Biden wins Iowa, and finishes first or second in New Hampshire, he's very close to the nomination. He's the only candidate who is doing well over time in all or nearly all the primary states to come.
It's hard to evaluate the latest Bernie Sanders boom, since the Trump people are so much in favor of it, and so skillful in manipulating news and social media (which unfortunately are beginning to merge.) But Bernie does start with a fervent base. He is as ever the wild card.
Iowa voters are fully capable of producing surprises which would boost other candidates, but Joe Biden has the best chance for an actually definitive win.
Because in the Big Picture, Biden has one current advantage that in the end is insurmountable if he keeps it--he is the only candidate popular with black voters. He started this process that way, and none of the other candidates have changed the basic situation.
Until another candidate can secure black votes, that candidate will not be nominated. Party officials understand that a Democratic candidate cannot win without the black vote. It is not sufficient, but it is necessary. Big turnouts of black voters are essential in all the key states.
Perhaps a calculation could be made that young voters are more likely to fail to vote than black voters, if they aren't sufficiently enthused by the candidate. But young white voters showing up to vote are typically unpredictable in any case. And any candidate who makes the climate crisis a major issue will likely motivate young voters. One would expect that Biden understands this.
The Democrat who wins the nomination will have Barack Obama campaigning beside him. But that image may powerfully motivate Obama voters who stayed home or switched sides in 2016, if the candidate Obama is standing beside is once again Joe Biden.
I am not taking sides here. But this is how I see the nominating process at this moment.
Probably the most substantive political article I've read this campaign season was a recent New York Times piece by political data analysts Sean McElwee and Brian F. Schaffner, who studied two groups: Obama voters who switched to Trump in 2016, and Obama voters who didn't vote in 2016.
In 2018 Democratic congressional candidates won back about a third of the millions of Obama voters who stayed home in 2016. Half are black, 70% are women. They appeared to be motivated by candidates who campaigned on core Democratic issues, and they were also self-motivated to vote against Trump.
About a fifth of the smaller number of voters who switched to Trump, voted for Democratic congressional candidates in 2018. This was not primarily because they came to dislike Trump, but because they were drawn by particular issues. The issues they favored contain some surprises: they want gun control, Medicare for All and for efforts to address the climate crisis, like the Green New Deal. They are less progressive on immigration, race and gender issues. What they didn't want to hear about were the so-called identity issues.
These surveys strongly suggest that a strong issues-oriented campaign that focuses on the climate crisis, healthcare and gun control as well as economic issues can bring more Democrats to the polls to vote for a Democratic candidate. (The authors also note that the Wesleyan Media Project found that the 2016 Clinton campaign "aired fewer issue-based ads than any other presidential candidate since they started collecting data in 2000." )
This analysis is limited, and certainly doesn't go into the microclimates of the key electoral college states. But it does suggest the possibility that an effective issues-oriented campaign is more important than a hero candidate. This doesn't seem intuitively likely, but perhaps it is the key to at least a narrow victory. Whatever solace that may bring at this point.
One perhaps off-center impression I got from the Iowa debate is this: of the candidates on stage, none is likely to ever run for President again, except if one of them is elected in 2020. But several of the candidates who have dropped out likely will seriously consider running again. Many hoped for a generational change election this year. That doesn't look like it will happen in 2020. But it will happen next time. Assuming there is going to be a next time.
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