Why Amy Klobuchar isn’t dropping out today – and why Joe Biden supporters should strategically want her to stay in
Pete Buttigieg dropped out of the race today. This hands a definite win to Joe Biden, though with Super Tuesday just two days away, it’s difficult to calculate the precise size of the impact. This has led to questions about whether Amy Klobuchar, who is performing about as poorly as Buttigieg, would also drop out today. But that didn’t happen – and Biden supporters should actually be rooting for her to stay in the race for at least a bit longer.
Last week Palmer Report pointed out that, based on the mathematical trends and the established rules, we were likely headed to a brokered convention. We got some strange looks for this at the time. But now FiveThirtyEight says a brokered convention is indeed likely, and this morning Joe Biden went on television and made clear that he intends to win a brokered convention if there is one.
The reality is that if no one has 50% of the delegates heading into the convention, the two key factors in determining the nominee will be who has the largest minority of votes, and who is the most unifying figure. The latter is obviously Joe Biden, considering how divisive Bernie Sanders is being toward everyone who isn’t part of his base. But for Biden to make a case, he’s got to have a substantial minority of delegates; let’s say 35% or more. This is where the Amy Klobuchar math comes in.
Klobuchar is leading Bernie Sanders in her home state of Minnesota by six points, in both recent polls in the state. If she stays in the race through Tuesday and wins the state, it’ll take a number of delegates away from Sanders. Then if we get to the convention and Klobuchar releases her delegates and encourages them to vote for Biden, most of them will. The math gets complicated, but the bottom line is that for now, every delegate that Sanders doesn’t win is a delegate that has a good chance of shifting to Biden later.
This also applies to Elizabeth Warren. She’s on track to pick up at least some delegates in California and Massachusetts on Tuesday. She hasn’t demonstrated a clear preference for which other candidate she’d like to see be the nominee (beyond clearly not wanting it to be Mike Bloomberg). But the reality is the majority of her delegates, if released at the convention, would also likely shift to Biden.
In fact, Pete Buttigieg – who no doubt would prefer Biden over Sanders – probably only dropped out today after looking at the math and seeing that if he stayed in the race, he’d have pulled more delegates from Biden than from Sanders. Again, these things always come down to math. Amy Klobuchar may not be planning to drop out at all. But if she is, she’s doing Biden a favor by staying in a bit longer.
