The Next President Of The United States...

Reading the last dregs of the 2020 tea leaves, late Monday night, November 2:

My track record took a severe hit four years ago when, like so many supposedly intelligent and well-informed pundits, I predicted that Hillary Clinton would defeat Donald Trump and win the presidency. Unlike most others, I did lay out a possible Trump path to victory, but I didn't think he would actually take it. I also missed on two U.S. Senate seats. Despite this stain on my reputation, I'm back to make a fool of myself in a public forum once again. Many of my peers gave up on making predictions after 2016, but it takes more than one badly blown call to retire my crystal ball.

(Just to refresh your memory, I did bounce back and get both of this year's presidential nominees right, correctly predicting before the primaries that Joe Biden and Donald Trump would square off in November—and Biden was hardly the trendy pick. In fact, I've never missed on the Republican nominee, going 12-for-12, dating back to 1972. I'm 10-for-12 on picking the Democrat, but now I'm only 9-for-12 on calling the winner of the general election, a no-longer-so-robust batting average of .750. In baseball, that would make you a superstar, but in politics, it just makes you wrong.)

So who's going to win tomorrow?

Well, here's one scenario: the polls are off again, underestimating the strength of President Trump's support. His massive late rallies energize his base, he matches the record early turnout by Democrats with an overwhelming mobilization on Election Day, and he just barely hangs on to the key swing states of Florida, North Carolina and Ohio, while fending off the Blue Charge in Texas, Georgia, Arizona and Iowa. There does appear to be some polling momentum in the president's favor in Pennsylvania, and the campaigns know it, which is why we saw both tickets descend on the Keystone State again in the campaign's final hours. So let's say Biden locks up Wisconsin and Michigan, but loses his birth state of Pennsylvania, where enough rural white voters stick with Trump to give him a second term, with just 279 electoral votes, despite losing the popular vote to Biden again. Here's what that map would look like:

This is probably the best case scenario for the president. 

But I see no way Trump wins the popular vote, despite the insistent predictions of the many ardent Trumpkins in my Twitter feed (as USC political scientist Bob Shrum told me today, "The Twitterverse is not the voting universe. The Twitterverse was not the voting universe in the Democratic primaries. If you followed Twitter, you would have thought Biden had no chance.")

So Trump could make history again, becoming the only president to be impeached and win re-election, and the first to lose the popular vote twice but still win.

That's not what the polls suggest will happen, though. And yes, I know: the public polls are crap, They were wrong in 2016 and they could be just as wrong again. But here's the thing: the polls would have to be more than twice as wrong to blow it in 2020. I mean, colossally off the mark, the worst since 1948, and maybe even worse than that.

Let's examine that for a second. Four years ago, the average of the final, credible, reputable national polls gave Hillary Clinton a three to four point lead over Donald Trump. In fact, she won the popular vote by about two percent, which is pretty darn close. What she didn't do was carry Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, because of apathy among Black and progressive Democrats, in particular. The failure of maybe 100,000 of them to vote across Milwaukee, Detroit and Philadelphia gave Trump razor-thin margins in those three states, and the presidency. The polls in those states overestimated her turnout and underestimated his, in some cases because of underweighting of the rural white voters who carried Trump to victory. But even if that happened again, even if the same polls were off by just as much, it wouldn't be enough for Trump to overtake Biden. 

Biden's lead has shrunk a bit in the closing 48 hours of this race, but it's still in the 7-8 point range, nationally. If the polls are as wrong as last time, he still wins the popular vote by about five points. If they're wrong in the direction they were in 2012, when they didn't foresee the massive turnout for Barack Obama, he wins by ten or twelve. But as we know all too well from both 2000 and 2016, winning the national popular vote, even by millions of votes, doesn't guarantee you the keys to the White House (does the White House actually have keys? If it does, the Secret Service probably carries them for its occupant).

So what will happen in the key swing states? Biden has narrow leads in many of them, but seems to be fading in Iowa, and Trump is closing the gap in Pennsylvania, Florida, Arizona and North Carolina. Biden could run the table and win them all, achieving an historic landslide no one thought possible in this highly polarized era. If he turns Texas and Georgia blue, and flips the states I just mentioned, and maybe Ohio too, he could even achieve a Reaganesque 400+ electoral votes. It would be an historic repudiation of a sitting president, and the country could look as blue as this:

But...no. I do think President Trump has played the closing days as well as he could after running a pretty dreadful campaign for months. The way his followers see it, he beat COVID19, he's on the stump around the clock, he's telling them what they want to hear, and that sure beats Joe Biden wearing a mask, stumbling through uninspired platitudes and holding "rallies" of a hundred socially distant people honking their car horns. I think Trump has tightened this race considerably, against all odds. So here's my bold prediction:

POPULAR VOTE
Joe Biden 50.8%

Donald Trump 45.1%

Those numbers could mean Biden beating Trump by almost ten million votes, far beyond Clinton's two million vote margin in 2016, when about 136 million Americans voted. This time, it looks like we will top 150 million and maybe even approach 160. At 150, that would mean Biden netting more than 76 million votes, to about 67 million for Trump. If Biden's margin is really this large, it is very difficult to imagine Trump still winning the Electoral College, and imagine the uproar if he does. 

But I don't think he will. I predict that Trump does hold serve in Florida, Texas, Georgia, Iowa and Ohio. But I think Biden upsets Trump in North Carolina, ekes out a win in Arizona, retakes Wisconsin and Michigan and scores a narrow win in Pennsylvania. That would give Biden 305 electoral votes, turning the tables on Trump's 2016 margin. That would look like this:

It's also conceivable that Biden wins Florida, which would get him to 334, or that he loses both Arizona and North Carolina and wins with just 279. In that case, Pennsylvania truly ends up being pivotal. But my final call is:

ELECTORAL VOTE

Joe Biden 305

Donald Trump 233

I could be wrong. I was four years ago. Unlike in past years, I have not been on the campaign trail since February, because of the coronavirus pandemic. It's much harder to tell what's going on from my home radio studio in Oakland than it is if I were out following the candidates, as in a normal year. But that's my best guess, and if 2020 has taught us anything, it's that you do what you can, accept what you get, and be grateful for another day.

Oh, one more thing: the Democrats hold the House and retake the Senate. Democrats flip GOP Senate seats in Arizona, Colorado, North Carolina, Maine and one of the two seats in Georgia, and Steve Bullock pulls a surprise in Montana, while the Republicans reclaim Alabama, for a net Democratic gain of five, giving them a 52-48 edge in the new Senate. The GOP hangs on in one of the Georgia races, Iowa, South Carolina, Kentucky, Texas and Alaska.

Tune in Tuesday night (or Wednesday morning, or maybe not until Friday!) and let's see how I, and more importantly, America, did.

July 4, 2020

I had the great honor and privilege of being asked to be this year's Patriotic Speaker at the 59th annual Claremont neighborhood July 4th Parade in Berkeley, California. Each year since 1961, hundreds of neighbors have gathered to celebrate Independence Day with a parade, patriotic songs, entertainment and a guest speaker. The assignment is to deliver a "patriotic and uplifting speech" on the meaning of the day. I found the challenge a little bit daunting, given recent events. This year, the entire celebration had to be virtual, with the parade canceled and the performances and speeches recorded and posted on YouTube instead. Here's what I chose to say.

Friends and neighbors, my fellow Americans,

Today, the United States of America is 244 years old. Like many double centenarians, she is showing her age. This year, it’s more than the usual aches and pains and creaky joints that come with being almost a quarter of a millennium old. No, at 244, America can no longer see. She can’t hear. She’s fallen and she can’t get up.

Luckily, this country was founded by resilient people. Many of them were racist, genocidal, puritanical zealots, yes, but no one can doubt their pluck and resolve. And over the course of those 200+ years, her genetic makeup has been improved by the arrival of so many others from all over the world, generations of people just as determined and self-reliant as those first settlers, but with a more enlightened and ennobled view of the world around them and the people in it.

So today, as America lights the candles on a cake that she no longer has enough teeth to eat, we are here, standing ready to help her back to her feet. She’s been knocked flat before. She was torn apart by a Civil War that nearly killed her. She’s endured financial panics and deadly pandemics. In my father’s time, she had to fight back against the double roundhouse punch of a dire Depression and the existential threat of Nazism. So I’m here to declare that America does have the gumption to not only survive 2020, but to be rejuvenated by it, to emerge a stronger, better nation.

There is no sugarcoating what we’ve been through these last four months. We’ve lost beloved family and dear friends and neighbors. Our very way of life has spun into confusion and chaos. We’ve all had to make extraordinary sacrifices for the greater good. And just as we settled into a new way of being in the world, that world was ripped apart again, by yet another senseless, inexplicable, horrifying illustration of how much America has yet to learn.

But look how we’ve responded. How many miles we’ve walked through this neighborhood. How many smiles we’ve shared with neighbors we hadn’t met before. How many new nooks and crannies and front yard idiosyncrasies and garden gnomes we’ve discovered that we’d never had the time to notice. How many helping hands we’ve extended to feed and nurture those in desperate, dire need. How bravely so many of us have placed ourselves in harm’s way to help our fellow citizens survive.

And how many of us have raised our voices to say, it is time that America gets cataract surgery, and a better hearing aid, so that she can, at long last, see, and hear, and listen, to the very people who helped make her what she is, and can transform her into a greater version of herself. We may never be able to right historic wrongs, but we can certainly make sure she treads a different path in the centuries to come. We can read her the words of the new prophets, written in chalk on the sidewalks of this neighborhood. So many of our ancestors came here to be free. Too many others had their freedom stolen and were forced to help an uncaring America fulfill her dreams, while it obliterated theirs. But today, we must move forward as one, not ignoring our divisions, pretending racism doesn’t exist, but learning from them, healing them and, someday, closing them for good.

At 244, let us hope America is ready, finally, to truly become the land of the free. These last months have proven, yet again, she is already the home of the brave.

Happy Birthday America. Let us help you to your feet.

A Show Of Weakness

The presidentially endorsed “law and order” approach to peaceful political protest that we saw too many times over the past two weeks often flouts the law and it certainly doesn’t keep order. A militaristic “show of force” against peaceful demonstrators is antagonistic and counterproductive, and that’s been proven over and over again throughout American history. I wouldn’t expect President Trump to understand that, since he’s new to this and seems to govern by ego, but American police departments have known for decades that it’s a mistake to attack unarmed, law-abiding citizens. But since the killing of George Floyd, we have seen unprecedented displays of unprovoked violence by law enforcement officers against civilians peacefully exercising their First Amendment rights, including members of the media. And we’ve seen, time and again, how firing tear gas, pepper spray, pepper balls and “non-lethal bullets” at crowds of protesters only escalates conflict and leads to greater damage, more injuries and less trust and support of law enforcement.

In Oakland I was stunned to witness the police reaction to the protests. It’s one thing to go after looters and vandals. They can, and should, be identified and apprehended. But they’re a tiny minority. The vast majority of people protesting George Floyd’s death are just, well, protesting. There’s nothing illegal about that. To the contrary, protest is one of the foundational principles of our country. There’s simply no reason for riot cops to declare a peaceful gathering of Americans, no matter how large or how disruptive it may be to traffic, an “illegal assembly” and then break it up by force. It doesn’t work. It makes people madder. It doesn’t prevent violence, it causes it. It triggers the very thing the police presence is supposed to deter.

Here’s an example: In the summer of 1997, a monthly bike ride through San Francisco devolved into confrontational chaos. For five years, on the last Friday of the month, “Critical Mass” had been bringing hundreds of riders to The City’s downtown, both as a celebration of cycling and a protest of how hostile and dangerous the streets were for bikers. In 1996 and ’97, the events grew larger, with cyclists numbering in the thousands, often blocking major thoroughfares and snarling rush hour traffic. The mayor at the time, Willie Brown, was determined not to let these renegade riders hijack his City. So he ordered the SFPD to enforce the traffic laws and crack down on the bikers. Riot cops set up lines. Bikers were “kettled” on the streets and arrested by the dozens. Clogged intersections became battlegrounds. Some bikers brawled with cops, others with angry commuters tired of stewing in their stranded cars. Bikes were destroyed, their riders hauled away. The evening commute was a mess, downtown a war zone.

Over months of covering these protests, often broadcasting from a bicycle, I observed that left to their own devices, the Critical Massers would block an intersection briefly, whoop and holler, declare victory, get back on their bikes and move on. Only when the police arrived and created conflict by drawing battle lines and ordering the bikers to disperse did the protesters stand their ground and go to war with the cops. The monthly showdowns were increasingly destructive and, for the City, expensive. Why not, I wondered, just facilitate the rides, as the police had done in the past? Stop traffic when the bikes show up, let the cyclists have their way for a few minutes, then escort them on their way? Follow them through town, halt cross traffic so no one gets hurt, but let them make their point without trying to arrest them. Cops could even ride along with them.

Frustrated by the ineffectiveness of their militarized approach, Mayor Brown and the cops eventually returned to those very tactics. Nothing else was working and they came to their own conclusion that they had to try something different. Of course, it was a success. What had been a tense monthly clash became a peaceful celebration, a festival on wheels that eventually attracted families and children and became a mainstream cultural event. The City stopped spending a fortune on overtime, downtown businesses and motorists no longer had their windows smashed and their property destroyed, and over time, the cyclists, and the City at large, won. The bicycle advocates became a powerful political force, and today San Francisco is one of the most bike-friendly cities in America, with hundreds of miles of bike lanes and more in the works (although debate rages on within the cycling community about the effectiveness of Critical Mass, and over the pace of improvements to the City’s cycling infrastructure).

The notion that de-escalation would be more successful than applying force was not new. Countless studies and numerous government commissions had already reached that same conclusion over decades of research.

Yet here we are, a generation later, and America’s urban police departments still see traffic-stopping political protest as an excuse for armed conflict. It’s not. It just doesn’t work. Knocking down disabled people, gassing women and children, punching media in the face, just antagonizes and alienates Americans, and reinforces the message of the demonstrations. Using unjustifiable violence against nonviolent people who are protesting unjustified violence proves the protesters right: “Look, the cops are using violence again, even though it’s completely unnecessary.” Go after looters, sure. Target those who are ransacking Target. When police are attacked, they need to defend themselves. But gassing a peaceful crowd incites vandalism and looting, and galvanizes their allies. Disarmament, engagement and opening a dialogue with protesters defuses tension and prevents the very trouble the cops fear.

In college I took a course on national security policy from Lyman Kirkpatrick, a legendary former high-ranking CIA official. He was a fascinating but intimidating figure. We assumed, my classmates and I, that he not only knew where the bodies were buried, he had buried some of them himself. The course included a unit on the appropriate use of force, and when it was preferable to diplomacy. To our surprise, Kirkpatrick’s lesson was that force is almost never called for, and it should only be used as an absolute last resort. Force, he taught us, is destabilizing and destructive, rarely achieves the desired aim, and in almost every instance, a better result can be obtained through dialogue and diplomacy. Citing his own experiences during World War II and as one of the original officers of what became the CIA, and later leading U.S. intelligence efforts in Asia and Cuba, he taught us that history is littered with costly and avoidable military mistakes. There are exceptions, of course; fighting and defeating Hitler, rather than appeasing him, was inarguably necessary, for example. But a trigger-happy commander in chief might well have ignited a thermonuclear world war during the Cuban Missile Crisis, rather than effect a peaceful result through de-escalation. A show of force, he argued, is almost always a show of weakness, of fear, rather than strength.

Yes, the battles in our streets are on a much smaller scale, and don’t threaten humankind, but the same lessons apply. In the Bay Area, at least, none of the George Floyd protests turned into “riots” until the police lit the fuse. A few dozen opportunistic criminals stealing things from stores is not a riot. It’s a smash-and-grab crime spree. Thousands of panicking people fleeing clouds of toxic smoke, with some induced to turn and fight back, set fires, throw bottles and trash cans and debris at the cops, becomes a riot. And using gas during a respiratory pandemic, when numerous studies suggest it could help spread the coronavirus, is especially dangerous and foolish.

We ask a lot of our law enforcement officers. We expect them to be patient and tolerant, to know when their lives are really in potential jeopardy and when they’re not, to make life-or-death decisions in a split second and always get them right. It’s a really tough job, one most of us could not and are not willing to do. But it’s not too much to ask that they not show up at a picnic and turn it into a wildfire because someone in the crowd may have a pack of matches in his pocket. Especially when decades of experience and research have already shown that they, and we, are much better off when they just let the people have their say.

Under Attack

I got tear gassed Friday night while covering the George Floyd protest in downtown Oakland. It was the first time I’d been hit with gas by police since 2003 in San Francisco, during a demonstration against the second Persian Gulf War.

The police didn’t target me on Friday. I was in the middle of a crowd of demonstrators, doing my job, when officers fired gas canisters without warning. They’d been pelted with bottles and firecrackers and sworn at for more than an hour, and frankly, moments before, I had marveled at their restraint. But then came the flash bangs, and the gas, and I was unable to flee fast enough to escape the noxious cloud that overtook everyone, including quite a few members of the media. Elsewhere around the country, journalists have been targeted directly during this spasm of protest triggered by the police killing of Floyd after he was accused of passing a bogus $20 bill in Minneapolis. I have friends and colleagues who have been hit hard with rubber bullets, dragged to the ground and arrested, hauled off in handcuffs without explanation, despite displaying valid press credentials, carrying obvious equipment and cooperating with police officers who refuse to explain why they’re arresting journalists. Many are journalists of color, left to wonder whether it's their profession, or their skin, or some combination of the two, that drew fire.

We know we take chances out there. I’ve been doing this for more than 35 years. We calculate the risks and do whatever it takes to get the story/the shot/the sound, without putting our lives in too much danger. I’ve covered literally hundreds of demonstrations that turned chaotic and violent. During the Rodney King riots in Los Angeles in 1992, I was shot at by a looter and escaped by driving my rented subcompact through a gauntlet of burning buildings, the flames so intensely hot that I sped down the center stripe to keep the car from exploding. Once, a barricaded suspect fired at me while I covered a police standoff in the Bay Area, one bullet ricocheting off the pavement near my foot, another whistling past my ear. Covering countless demonstrations and wildfires, earthquakes and terrorist attacks, I’ve had too many close calls to count. Some would call me lucky. Others would be fair to call me a fool. Sometimes, as we check our VU meters to make sure we’re getting good audio of the whizzing bullets, or forget our surroundings while framing the shot of the cop with the riot gun, we somehow imagine we’re protected by an invisible force field, that as duly credentialed members of the Fourth Estate we are immune to the deadly forces cutting people down around us. Or maybe that’s just me.

Of course, we’re not. We’re just committed journalists, passionate about what we do. We believe we are necessary to a free and informed democracy. Our nation’s founders thought so too, enshrining our rights in the Constitution of the United States, and the courts have recognized and upheld those rights, time after time after time. But now, in this most perilous time when we are needed to bear witness and amplify voices more than ever before, those rights are not only in jeopardy, they seem to have evaporated. The media are held in contempt, not respect. The President of the United States openly derides us, calling us “Fake News” and “The Enemy of the People.” On Sunday, he tweeted that the “Lamestream Media” are “truly bad people with a sick agenda.” So it’s no surprise that so many people, including law enforcement officers and looters who use legitimate protest as cover for their crimes, see us as adversaries and targets, ignore our press passes and pleas, and knock us to the ground, both figuratively and literally. We diligently avoid interfering with the performance of the cops’ jobs, but some of them keep us from doing ours.

Even so, as targeted as journalists may feel right now, we still have enormous privilege compared with many, if not most, Americans. In my case, I’m a white man. I have press credentials, issued by the San Francisco Police Department and the State of California. I have my employer’s corporate attorneys to bail me out. If I get busted or hurt, it will be a “mistake” that brings a public apology. George Floyd couldn’t say the same. Nor could Eric Garner. Nor Michael Brown.

Friday night in Oakland, I tried to climb an onramp to cover protesters who had blocked Interstate 880. The entrance was blocked by police cars and crawling with heavily armed riot cops. They shouted for me to stop. Told me to turn around and go back. Shined a bright light in my face. From 30 or 40 feet away, I yelled “Media!” I shouted “I’m with KCBS, just trying to see what’s happening on the highway!” They barked, “Move back! Now!” I kept advancing. They tensed and stepped toward me. Some raised their guns. I was holding a three-foot long black pipe, part of a microphone stand I cannibalized at the start of the coronavirus pandemic so I could conduct socially distant interviews in the field. It dawned on me that it could easily be mistaken for a weapon. That they couldn’t hear my shouts over the hovering helicopter, the M80s and flash bang grenades going off down the block. That in the swirl of smoke just after nightfall, there was no way they could make out the press passes around my neck, the KCBS Radio logo on my vest, or even the CBS News emblazoned on my baseball cap. I stopped. I showed them my hands, hoping they didn’t think the mic stand in one of them was the barrel of a rifle. They kept their lights and weapons pointed at me as I slowly backed away, waved submissively, and then turned and walked as quickly as I could away from them. And all I could think was: Thank God I am white. 

That’s the reality of life in America, 2020. Yes, we journalists have become targets too, and it’s not right. It’s not legal. It’s not good for the country. But when it was all over, when I had washed the teargas out of my eyes and filed my radio stories and tweeted my last video, I went home to my comfortable house and my wife and kids knowing that I could go out the next day, wearing my N95 mask, without feeling like a target simply because of the color of my skin. And thanks to my status as a journalist, I will continue to have a front row seat to history and a backstage pass to life. I may have to dodge a few more bullets, but only if I put myself in harm’s way to do my job. Not when I go to a store. Or for a jog. Or simply walk down the street. America has a responsibility to protect those of us who tell its stories, who reveal its truths, who keep its citizenry informed. We, in turn, have an awesome responsibility to speak the truth about that citizenry, about this nation. Our society endures these violent convulsions every few years and nothing ever changes. Buildings get torched, windows get smashed, people get hurt and angry and tired and sad. Eventually, emotions subside, broken glass gets swept up, and life returns to what we call normal. Which, for me, is a life of extraordinary privilege and opportunity, but for those who don’t look like me and have the protections and access that I do, is a daily stroll through fear and anxiety. Too often for them, an innocent outing or yes, sometimes, a petty crime, leads to an indefensible murder, an inexplicably horrible moment of inhumanity like the killing of George Floyd and too many more before him.

And the sad, brutal truth is: Nothing. Will. Change. It never does. The racism won’t ever go away. How can it? Too many Americans don’t want it to. They don’t even believe it’s real.

Once, maybe a dozen years ago, during a similarly chaotic night of protest in Oakland, a police officer approached me and said, “I’ve been watching you all night. You move really fast. You never stand still, and you’re really quick. You’d be really hard to kill.” I wasn’t sure whether to thank her for the compliment, or express how unnerved I was that she had actually contemplated the difficulty of gunning me down.

Yes, we journalists are targets now. We’re not used to it, and it’s wrong. But black and brown Americans are targets every day, and have been for centuries, and they are terribly used to it, and as we advocate for our own protection, let’s not get lost in our indignation and forget to tell the truth about that.

Leaving Las Vegas

A few random observations and some key takeaways after spending four days in Las Vegas covering the Nevada Caucus, from Wednesday's Democratic Debate through the caucuses themselves on Saturday...

(Caveat: I boldly predicted before the Iowa Caucus that Joe Biden will be the Democratic nominee, so I see no reason for you to believe I have any idea what I'm talking about.)

NO SURPRISE: BERNIE SANDERS IS NOW THE FRONTRUNNER

It may surprise you to read that I'm not surprised by Bernie's momentum, since I said Biden would be the nominee. But we expected Sanders to win Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada. All the polling data suggested he would. The surprises haven't been at the top; they've been just below, where Pete Buttigieg has outperformed and Biden has underperformed. I was taken aback by the size of Sanders' Nevada victory. He built a formidable operation, especially among the Latino community, and he got a lot of first-time voters to caucus for him. With 88% counted, Sanders has 47% of the vote, Biden's a distant second at 21%, and Buttigieg placed third with about 14%. Sanders won the Latino vote in a landslide, beating Biden 53-16% (according to our CBS News Elections and Survey Unit, which conducted entrance polling across Nevada), and he won handily among younger voters and independents. He even matched Biden among moderates: Biden, Sanders and Buttigieg essentially split the middle-of-the-road vote, getting between 21 and 23% each. If Sanders can replicate that coalition—young first-time voters, Latinos and moderates—he can win in an awful lot of places.

Joe Biden working a union BBQ in Las Vegas. He was literally kissing babies.

BUT IT'S NOT OVER YET
No, it isn't. Sanders is rolling now, with what would be unstoppable momentum for a Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, John Kerry or Al Gore. But he is not they (them are not he?). He is the most lefty potential nominee since George McGovern 48 years ago, and the moderate opposition remains fractured. As long as it is, Sanders will win the most states, and the most delegates. But will he amass a majority by June? And if he doesn't, will the rest band together to stop him on a second or third ballot at the convention? There is already mounting pressure on Biden, Buttigieg or Amy Klobuchar to drop out. None of them will, not before Super Tuesday (March 3). If one of them, or Mike Bloomberg, can emerge as the Not Bernie and coalesce the center and center-right (inasmuch as there is one) of the Democratic Party around them, it's still possible that consensus mainstream candidate could overtake Sanders. But time, and delegates, will run out, soon.

BUT IF THEY DON'T, YES, BERNIE CAN WIN
I know the conventional wisdom is that President Trump would crush Crazy Bernie in November. I'm here to say it ain't necessarily so. Galvanized 20-somethings, Latinos, women, a nice slice of moderates and Anyone But Trump voters would add up to a very large number of people in November. In 2016, about 13 million Latinos voted, up from 11 million in 2012. It's not unreasonable to project at least 15 million will vote in 2020, even more if Sanders were to pick a Latino running mate. Voters under 29 were the only age group to increase their turnout in 2016. Imagine the surge in their number if Sanders were the nominee (confession: I still do not get the obsession 20-somethings have with a white-haired, 78-year-old Jewish man with a thick Brooklyn accent. They adore his policies, but he still strikes me as a most improbable vehicle for their hopes and dreams). Believe it or not, there are many Americans who voted for Obama, but then backed Trump in 2016, and that same "He's something new and different" impulse would move many of them to Sanders this time. We could have three straight presidents completely unlike any who preceded them. Our latest CBS News poll—completed before Sanders won Nevada—has him beating Trump head-to-head, 47-44%, the best showing of any of the Democratic candidates. So don't assume that nominating Sanders clinches a second term for Trump.

Elizabeth Warren came to her Las Vegas HQ to thank volunteers the morning after her debate triumph

EARLY VOTING SUCKS
That is, if you're Elizabeth Warren. I always vote on Election Day, because I want every last bit of information about the candidates before I cast my ballot. There are a lot of Nevadans—and Warren campaign staffers—who are kicking themselves right now, wishing Wednesday's debate had come a few days earlier, or that Nevada hadn't debuted early caucus voting this year. Warren crushed it in that debate, and it showed in her Caucus Day support. She lagged far behind in early voting, but fared much better on Saturday. She wound up in fourth place, with about ten percent, but if everyone had voted Saturday, she probably would have cracked the top three. She gets a chance to make another strong impression this Tuesday.

Covering Elizabeth Warren in Las Vegas, as seen on Showtime's "The Circus"

TOM STEYER COULD COST JOE BIDEN SOUTH CAROLINA
The San Francisco hedge fund billionaire outspent the field in Nevada, and he's doing so in South Carolina, too. A disproportionate number of my Lyft drivers in Las Vegas were women of color, and every single one of them told me they were voting for Steyer. He didn't do very well in Nevada, but he's poised to play spoiler in South Carolina. Our latest CBS News poll has him running a close third there, and in the last three months, he and Sanders have taken away half of Biden's support among African American South Carolinians. Steyer has invested a huge amount of time and money in the Palmetto State, much of it in black neighborhoods and media. He has just qualified for Tuesday's debate in South Carolina (you can hear it live on KCBS Radio). It's not likely he could actually win, but if he were not in the race, Biden would probably take the state easily, reviving his campaign. Because he is, Sanders has a real chance to win it instead, which would pretty much destroy Biden's hopes.

Pete Buttigieg woos union members at a Mexican restaurant Friday night in Vegas

LAST, BUT NOT LEAST...
There's no more colorful place to cover a campaign then Las Vegas. It sure beats the snows of New Hampshire and Iowa. At the Bellagio caucus site, among the voters I interviewed: a rescue scuba diver for Cirque du Soleil's "O" show, a floral designer for the hotel (she's a horticulturist who's a member of the Teamsters!), several housekeepers and maintenance workers, a blackjack dealer and a cocktail waitress, all of them in their corresponding work attire. Sadly, no showgirls with fuchsia ostrich feathers on their heads, although I have seen that at past Nevada caucuses. In the days between the debate and the caucus, I raced around town to cover Trump supporters attending a presidential rally, and candidate appearances all around Vegas. Bernie had the biggest turnouts, by far, but Warren generated a lot of buzz after the debate. Biden's act seemed sleepy and worn. Buttigieg and Klobuchar focused on more rural areas, away from the more liberal Vegas core. The Strip was crackling with energy, with a heavyweight championship fight, a NASCAR race and the Caucus all happening on the same weekend. The Democratic circus has moved on now, leaving the glitz and glamour behind. Now it's on to South Carolina, and then to Super Tuesday, to see if Bernie-mentum can sustain its hot streak, or whether one of the moderates can pull an inside straight and keep the Democratic Party from going all-in on the Democratic Socialist from Vermont.

Union housekeepers check in to vote in Saturday's Nevada Caucus at the Bellagio in Las Vegas

Tune in Tuesday night February 25 at 5pm Pacific, 8pm Eastern for the next Democratic presidential primary debate, co-sponsored by CBS News and airing on KCBS Radio, KPIX 5 and your local CBS TV station.

Why it Will Be Biden Vs. Trump

Yes, the Sovern Nation blog is back, mainly because I have a 44-year record to maintain of boldly (sometimes foolishly) predicting the eventual Democratic and Republican presidential nominees before the first caucus and primary ballots are cast.

Although I've been scoffed at by Republican operatives who insist I'm too much of a Left Coast Snowflake to even find the pulse of GOP primary voters, let alone take it, I've actually never been wrong on the Republican side: I'm 11-for-11 picking the GOP standard-bearer, dating back to 1976. The Democrats have proven a bit trickier; I'm only 9-for-11 there. But that's not a bad track record, given the volatile, unpredictable nature of modern American politics, especially in the Trump era.

Which brings us to 2020. Here we sit, on the eve of the Iowa Caucus, and the Democratic race remains too close to call. There are still eleven (as of this writing; don't be surprised if the field is winnowed by the time the New Hampshire primary results come in on February 11) candidates in the running. There are four or five especially viable contenders who could conceivably lead the party into the general election against President Trump.

So let's dispose of the easy call first: barring completely unforeseen circumstances like sudden death or alien invasion, Donald Trump will again be the nominee of the Republican Party. He will be acquitted of the impeachment charges against him this Wednesday, he will roll through the formalities of the GOP nomination process, and he will be a formidable, historically well-funded adversary in November.

And whom will the Democrats nominate to oppose him?

Let's go through the field and eliminate candidates, one by one:

It won't be: Colorado Senator Michael Bennet, Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick, or businessman Andrew Yang (despite the fervent zeal of the #YangGang).

Despite her common sense appeal in the Midwest, her s-l-o-w climb in the polls and her improving debate performances, it won't be Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar either. She may well place high enough in Iowa to survive, but it's hard to see where she breaks through after that.

Despite his relentless, self-funded ad campaign, it won't be San Francisco billionaire Tom Steyer. His surprising rise in the polls in South Carolina and elsewhere won't last once the top tier contenders focus their energy on those states.

That leaves five possible nominees: former Vice President Joe Biden, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg, and former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg.

The Iowa caucus is a bit of a toss-up, but Sanders seems poised to win both it and New Hampshire eight days later. It doesn't actually matter much who "wins" Iowa, because it's likely that Sanders, Biden, Buttigieg and Warren will all come away with delegates, and the spread among them is likely to be negligible. It'll be more about perceived momentum and exceeding or disappointing expectations, and what that means in terms of campaign contributions, media coverage and buzz in the days after Iowa. If Bernie's more motivated and passionate supporters turn out in greater numbers, he will take Iowa. If the pragmatists can sway the undecided with their caucus night arguments, Biden will probably eke out a narrow victory. If Klobuchar, Yang and other more moderate candidates fail to meet the requisite 15% support threshold to be viable at individual caucus sites, their voters may trot over to the Biden camp and push him over the top. Warren has a strong ground game and could still surprise. But no matter what, the top four contenders—and maybe Klobuchar, too—should emerge from Iowa with their hopes intact.

Then comes New Hampshire, in Bernie's backyard, and it will be a shocker if he doesn't win there. Then Nevada, where there's been much less polling, but it appears to be a Biden-Sanders dogfight, though Sanders may be pulling away. Then South Carolina, where Biden's deep support among African American voters gives him a significant advantage, although if Sanders sweeps Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada, his momentum may help him close the gap. Warren has built a deeper field operation in more states than most of the others, so even if she fails to win any of these early contests, she's likely to hang on through Super Tuesday and try to accrue delegates.

Add this all up, and 2020 looks a lot like 2016: it's a battle (again) for the soul of the Democratic Party, between the progressive wing, eventually led once again by Bernie Sanders, and the moderate, centrist, Clinton-Obama wing, led this time by Joe Biden instead of Hillary Clinton. Sanders has an edge in that the progressive vote is split mostly between him and Warren, while the moderates are splintered among Biden, Buttigieg, Klobuchar, Yang, Bloomberg and Steyer. So as long as that's true, Sanders may become the perceived frontrunner, with all the momentum that brings.

But once the field starts to narrow, the moderates are likely to coalesce around Biden. Even though Bloomberg is bankrolling a massive push in the Super Tuesday states, and racking up endorsements from big city mayors in places like California, it's hard to see him overtaking Biden, and even he admits that if his campaign falters, he will get in line behind Biden and spend whatever it takes to help him beat Trump. Sanders has a more fervent following, but as we've seen over and over again since 2016, it has its ceiling. Even combining the Sanders and Warren voters into one bloc probably isn't enough to beat Biden, if and when he's the last moderate standing.

Biden's Achilles heel is that fewer of his supporters are rabidly pro-Joe. They just want to beat Trump, they feel comfortable enough with him, and they're desperately afraid that Sanders or Warren (or Buttigieg) will lose in November. So there's this perceived electability advantage for Biden, which may or may not be based on anything more real than polls, which is a pretty slim reed on which to hang hope. They're not that crazy about Uncle Joe, many think he's too old, too male and too white, and too given to missteps and malaprops, but they think he's their best, if not only, hope. He's the Obi-Wan Kenobi of the 2020 Democratic field.

Sanders, meanwhile, has a zealous base of younger voters who believe he will upend the establishment like no one before him, but there don't seem to be as many Bernie true believers as there are we-must-stop-Trump-no-matter-what-and-Biden-is-our-best-bet voters. This primary electorate seems motivated by fear and anxiety, more than anything else. They are afraid the Democrats will blow it, and they are terrified of four more years of Trump.

That's why I think, in the end, more Democrats will come home to Biden and play what they think is the safe hand, than will take a chance on an admitted "Democratic Socialist" who wants to do away with their private health insurance (anathema and a dealbreaker to many mainstream Democrats, which has cost Warren some support). The corporate core of the Democratic Party will go all out to keep Sanders from being their nominee, and the vanquished moderates will quickly fall in line behind Biden. It will be another long, protracted fight. It may well go all the way to the convention in Milwaukee in July. Sanders could well enter the DNC with more delegates than Biden, but I think Biden will end up at the top of the ticket (I wouldn't be at all surprised to see a Biden-Klobuchar ticket, even though a Biden-Kamala Harris pairing is trendier at the moment). Bernie could still pull this out. He could win decisively in both Iowa and New Hampshire, and carry that momentum into the ensuing states. He could win California, the biggest Super Tuesday prize, in a landslide. He could make his nomination seem inevitable—which I think would just drive the party's mainstream leadership into more of a panic, fueling an Oh-My-God-It's-George-McGovern-All-Over-Again angst. But the powers that be in the Democratic Party will stop at nothing to keep Bernie from topping their ticket, and those are powerful forces—a force that I think is with Joe Biden. By default, then, Biden, not Sanders, not Warren, not Buttigieg, not Bloomberg, will be the Democratic nominee and face President Trump in November.

There you have it: Biden vs. Trump. Not exactly out on a limb. Possibly completely wrong. Feel free to check back in November and bombard me with ridicule when it's Warren vs. Pence.