Bernie Sanders has a big advantage as the primary season kicks off. He's alone on the progressive side, whereas the centrist vote will be split amongst 5 plausible candidates -- Biden, Warren, Buttigieg, Klobuchar, and Bloomberg. So my prediction is that Bernie will win Iowa and New Hampshire, where he is currently leading in the polls. The momentum from these victories will propel Bernie to a win in the 3rd state, Nevada. The leading centrist candidate, Biden, is heavily favored in South Carolina, the 4th state to have a presidential primary. Biden may win there but, at best, it will be an underwhelming victory given expectations.
So, by the end of February, Bernie will be far ahead in the race with Super Tuesday only 3 days away (on March 3 following the February 29 South Carolina primary). The centrist candidates will be in disarray with Biden on the downswing and no clear alternative. The short turn-around from S. Carolina to Super Tuesday will help Bernie and put the centrist Democrats into a big hole following Super Tuesday. It will be at this point that the establishment Democrats rally the wagons and unite behind a single candidate to take on Bernie.
Amy Klobuchar is the only realistic choice for the centrists. Biden has a ton of baggage at odds with what the voters want. And he has low credibility as he attempts to twist his record to fit current preferences (Iraq, Social Security, bankruptcy). Warren's niche was as a bridge from Sanders to centrists, but she burned the Sanders span. Warren is now one amongst many in the centrist camp, and weak there for her equivocation and flirtation with the progressives. Buttigieg hasn't caught on as a serious contender for a broad swathe of the party, include blacks and Hispanics. Bloomberg is a billionaire making a mockery of Democratic ideals. That leaves only Klobuchar as a viable alternative to Sanders.
Klobuchar is something of a Hillary Clinton clone. She is a hardline centrist whose major selling point is that she is a feminist. Certainly there is a large market for this type of candidate in the Trump era. She has no major negatives, and the centrist Dems will coalesce around her in early March as the best possibility to avoid the Bernie tide.
Fortunately for Bernie supporters such as myself, there will not be much time for a Klobuchar movement to take hold. Between the S. Carolina primary on February 29 and Super Tuesday on March 3, there are only 3 days, with 1345 delegates in play on March 3. Another big primary day is March 10, with 362 delegates in play. Another 577 will be in play on March 17. The Klobuchar consensus will have to build very fast to hold its ground against an ascendant Bernie, and it seems unlikely that the dysfunctional center will perform well.
When the smoke clears on March 18, there will only be 1532 delegates left in play, as opposed to 2,439 already committed by the early primaries. 61% of the delegates will have been committed by the time the centrists get their acts together. Sanders' lead may be insurmountable by that time. Klobuchar will have Clinton rump in her camp, but that will be a negative as well as a positive.
If in fact Sanders does have an insurmountable lead on March 18, it will take a month or two for that to sink in. Ultimately, Michael Bloomberg may decide to run as a 3rd party candidate. That would most likely help Bernie as he would then be running against 2 New York billionaires. The electorate may be polarized, but New York billionaires are not that popular that they will be able to win over the majority of American voters across the nation. There will be many defectors on both the left and right, leaving the door wide open for a Sanders victory.
So Sanders can possibly be our next president. If he wins, his job will be very difficult, as he will be trying to govern in the face of great skepticism if not intractable opposition. If there is a 1929/2000/2008 style stock market bust, that may help him convince more people of the need for great change. Populists such as Sanders and Trump would not be doing as well as they are if the country was running smoothly.
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