With New Hampshire’s primary upon us, a victory by Senator Bernie Sanders will lock in his position as the frontrunner for the nomination. He’ll be going into tough battles in Nevada and South Carolina with momentum to challenge former Vice President Joe Biden and looking great in the money race ahead of Super Tuesday.
But he’s probably going to be robbed of the nomination by the Democratic National Committee. Why? Because they fear that he not only cannot defeat President Trump, but he’ll also hamper voter turnout for down-ballot races. They’re certain they need a centrist, which means Biden, South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg, or one of the other Senators, Elizabeth Warren or Amy Klobuchar. Except, it doesn’t. That’s not their plan anymore. The DNC has its sights set on the other guy in the race.
Billionaire Mike Bloomberg is the DNC’s new savior after abysmal performances by Biden. He’s the one who can unify the party. He’s the one with the massive bank account that can help the DNC focus on other races while he spends a couple billion dollars taking on President Trump one-on-one. He’s the person they’re banking on now.
Despite looking good in national polls, the most recent of which put him at 15%, Bloomberg will have a difficult time getting to the magic number of delegates before the Democratic National Convention. In fact, all of them will. And that’s fine as far as the DNC is concerned. Their ultimate plan is to go into the convention with no clear winner, make deals with other candidates to try to hold their delegates in the first couple of voting rounds, then shift a majority of votes to Bloomberg in a brokered convention.
This means the only chance Sanders has of winning the nomination is to win it outright. He needs to accumulate more than half of the delegates before the convention, enough to overcome the super-delegate advantage that will go to Bloomberg. If he can’t win the nomination convincingly, the chances of him winning at all are approaching zero.
Before, there was an assumption that Warren’s delegates would be shifted to Sanders, but that seems less and less likely. Considering how badly her campaign is going, it seems more likely she’ll cut a deal ahead of the convention. She could parlay a VP spot under Bloomberg, though he’s much more likely to find a woman of color to be his running mate. But that doesn’t mean Secretary of State, Secretary of Commerce, or Chief of Staff are off the table. Sanders may come at her with a similar offer, but the DNC will paint his chances as zero and work her into making a Bloomberg endorsement.
If this all sounds sketchy, it’s because it is. And though Bloomberg has the money and is rising in the polls, he’s unlikely to be able to win the nomination himself without a brokered convention. He’s just too distasteful to the radical progressives to earn the delegates necessary for a true victory.
There’s still a chance that Bloomberg could stumble, in which case the DNC will go back to Biden, Buttigieg, or Klobuchar, right? No. They see too many weaknesses in all of these candidates. Their other choice, arguably their first choice, will be to call in Super Woman to save the day. Conspiracy theorists have been saying the plan all along was to keep flack off of former First Lady Michelle Obama, then swing her into the mix at a contested convention. But with Bloomberg already there, the chances of that happening are slim without a Bloomberg faux pas. If Bloomberg trips all over himself, which is distinctly possible considering his penchant for saying stupid things, then they’ll do everything they can to get Michelle Obama to take up the mantle.
Plan C is Hillary Clinton, and if they go down that deep into their bag of tricks they might as well give up immediately following the convention.
There’s a reason Mike Bloomberg has been spending like crazy. He’s not signaling voters per se, though that’s obviously part of it. His real target for the mega-ad buys is the delegates. He wants them to believe he’s the one to back in a contested convention.
