Bloomberg Out, Biden Resurgent After Super Tuesday Victories While Sanders Takes California

Speaker 1: 00:00 California's early presidential primary on super Tuesday was thought by some to be assure fire King maker California's prize of more than 400 democratic delegates would definitely make one candidate, the obvious front runner, except when it doesn't. Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders won the California primary with 33% of the vote, but former vice president Joe Biden's swept most of the other super Tuesday States ending up with more delegates than Sanders. Joining me to discuss super Tuesday and California's presidential vote are Scott Schafer, senior editor of KQ, EDIS politics and government desk. And Scott, welcome. Hi there. And back with us is political analyst professor Carl Luna. Carl, welcome back. Good to be here. So Scott Sanders was predicting a kind of a bigger win in this state based on the latest polls. What happened? Speaker 2: 00:52 Well, a lot of late deciding voters really went for Joe Biden and I should say, by the way, Maureen, we still have almost half half of the ballots yet to be counted. I was talking to Paul Mitchell, who was the ultimate, uh, voter data guru. I just about an hour ago. And he said that as many as 5 million ballots remain uncounted in California. So we need to, you know, have that caveat when we're talking about results. Uh, but clearly, uh, you know, Bernie Sanders had a good night, uh, but because of the 15% rule where you have to get anybody who gets 15% of the delegates or more gets a share of the statewide and the congressional level delegates, you know, Joe Biden, uh, is going to do reasonably well in California. And even Michael Bloomberg could pick up a few delegates. Speaker 1: 01:37 Michael Bloomberg, Carl has spent a fortune on ads in California. He came in third, it seems from the California primary now with 14% of the vote he has dropped out of the race. Does this support the notion that you can't buy an election? Speaker 3: 01:52 Yeah, you definitely can't buy me 11 election like this Marine, but California has a long history of wealthy people or mr Huffington running for Senate in the 90s, spending a fortune and not seeing that pay off at the polls. You have to have the personal connection with the voters. This is always the myth of self funding campaigns. Steve Francis in San Diego ran for mayor, spend his own money, which meant on election day he had one vote. He can guarantee to him and his wife until you get those small donations, you don't have the assured people showing up at the polls. Speaker 1: 02:20 Let me ask you both and whoever knows, can chime in. What happens to the delicates pledge to a candidate who was no longer in the race? Like the Bloomberg delegates in California? Speaker 3: 02:30 I mean under party rules. I've got to clarify, but I believe when they get to the convention they can actually switch their votes. But Scott, Speaker 2: 02:37 well, I was going to say, I think that, you know, as long as they are pledged to vote on the first ballot for whoever, you know, they were running to represent. But I do think that, you know, if Bloomberg or the others release them and say, please vote for Joe Biden or Bernie Sanders, that uh, that the, yeah, they are allowed to do Speaker 1: 02:53 so. Scott, is it too soon to tell if Bernie Sanders did get many new voters or young voters to the polls? Well, certainly Speaker 2: 03:00 in some of the other States we've been looking at, uh, that was not the case. Uh, if anything, there was a surge of voters, uh, African Americans in particular, uh, in some of the other States for Joe Biden. Uh, but we just didn't see either in Iowa or New Hampshire, any indication that his claim to be the candidate who could bring younger voters, occasional voters to the polls. Th there really wasn't a lot of evidence that he was able to do that. And I haven't necessarily, it's a little, little early still. Uh, but based on the exit polls, I don't, I have not heard that that was the case in California either. Where do you think the results of super Tuesday leave the democratic presidential race? Well, I think you have to say first of all that, uh, Joe Biden has resuscitated his campaign in a way that few could have imagined just a few days ago. Speaker 2: 03:48 Uh, he's clearly now the front runner, both in terms of delegates as well as perception and enthusiasm. Um, there's going to be some pressure probably, or at least a hope on the part of the Sanders folks that Elizabeth Warren gets out. I don't know a that she will, but B, more importantly whether she will actually endorse Bernie Sanders. There was a bit of bad blood between the two of them. I think the most important that the concern among Democrats it was and is that, uh, if Bernie Sanders somehow was denied the nomination, you know, by super delegates or some other way that the democratic establishment blocked him, that he and his voters would basically pack up and not participate in November. But what I'm hearing is that as long as it is a fair fight, and as long as Joe, if Joe Biden comes into Milwaukee either with a majority or plurality of the delegates and he wins the nomination, ultimately I don't think there's going to be the kind of bitterness that we might have seen otherwise. And is Biden going to be winding up at the convention with enough delegates on the first round? Speaker 3: 04:48 Well, I mean, four days ago we would've said no, but he's not only done a Lazarus, he's come back as the $6 million man. That was a major victory, uh, yesterday. The States that are coming up, upper Midwestern States, central States, I mean, Bernie Sanders says best in the West. There's not a lot of that left. Joe Biden is really positioned to move forward and poor California. We moved up our primary thinking we'd be decisive while Texas Stoller thunder. That Texas victory really helps to consolidate Joe Biden's reach across different aspects of the party. And we thought there might be a broker convention. I'm beginning to believe that he is going to win the nomination outright before the convention. You know, conventional wisdom Speaker 2: 05:27 is a, you know, not worth so much. And the conventional wisdom now as both Carl and I are saying is that, you know, really, you know, Biden has taken control here, but he still has the same flaws that he had. Just a, you know, a week ago. He's not the best debater. He's a little rambly, gets lost in his word salads sometimes on the stump. Uh, and so, uh, and, and you know, he's just hasn't been a dynamo when it comes to fundraising. Now, a lot of those problems will be fixed by how he's done in the last 72 hours. But, you know, he's still the same old uncle Cho. I've been speaking with Scott Schaffer's, senior editor for KQ, [inaudible] politics and government desk. Scott, thank you so much. Thank you. And thanks so much to professor Carl Luna for sticking with us through our election show. Thanks, Carl. Thank you.