Bernie Sanders eked out a win here in New Hampshire yesterday. No real surprise there. At this writing, with 97 percent of precincts reporting, Sanders has 73,470 votes – approximately half the total he received four years ago in what was then only a two-person contest against Hillary Clinton.
Upon being declared the winner Sanders spoke to his supporters last night.
Our campaign is not just about beating Trump. It’s about transforming this country.”
But Sanders didn’t win by much. Just 4,000 votes, a bit more than a percentage behind and receiving the same nine delegates as Sanders, is Pete Buttigieg. In campaign appearances here in New Hampshire, Buttigieg presented himself as less radical than Sanders. You don’t have to choose between a revolution on one hand and the status quo on the other he said at a rally Monday night.
Buttigieg said this to his supporters late last night.
I know that when you talk this way, you might get dismissed as a naïve newcomer. But, a fresh outlook is what makes new beginnings possible. It is how we build a new majority.”
But if Sanders and Buttigieg are in the lead paragraph, three other candidates are in the body of the story.
First, there is Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar, who clocked in at a very respectable third place finish with just under 20 percent of the vote. That strong showing gives her some momentum leaving the state.
People of New Hampshire, because of you we are taking this campaign to Nevada. We are going to South Carolina. And we are taking this message of unity to the country.
But if it’s good news for Amy Klobuchar it is very bad news for two previous front-runners. First, there’s Joe Biden. As we have been reporting, it has been the consensus opinion that the Democratic establishment has been pinning its hopes on Biden as an antidote to the severely radical Bernie Sanders. Democratic leaders fear that a Sanders candidacy will lead to Electoral College disaster in November. Yet Joe Biden finished a very distant fifth last night. So dismal were Biden’s prospects yesterday that he left town early and headed for South Carolina, saying this on the way out of town.
You know better than anybody, I’ve been saying it from the very beginning. This is the first inning of the first four caucus and primaries.”
Elizabeth Warren, also at one time a front-runner, didn’t do much better. She finished a poor fourth with less than ten percent of the vote.
So, what are the takeaways from New Hampshire?
First, Sanders is a force to be dealt with and the Dems are going to have to work their complicated nominating system very hard if they don’t want him to wind up as the nominee.
Second, Pete Buttigieg has momentum, but he is widely perceived to have a real problem with African-American voters – a key Democratic voting block.
Third, completely ignored by the media is the fact that Donald Trump got over 130,000 votes yesterday. For practical purposes, the Republican race is uncontested and yet Trump received 92 percent as many votes as the first two Democratic candidates combined.
And thus the fourth takeaway. It’s a long way to November. But for Democrats, it may be an even longer way to the convention in July.