The World Turned Upside Down

The dust has settled.

Now, over 24 hours after Super Tuesday, the Democratic Primary field has taken shape. Bernie Sanders, despite running for president for 5 years and having nearly 100% name recognition, was smacked down by Democratic voters in what we in politics call a "butt-whoopin'." Joe Biden dominated the night from start to finish, beginning with a resounding victory in Virginia and ending the next day with a confirmed victory in Maine. In between, he won North Carolina, Arkansas, Alabama, Tennessee, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Oklahoma, Texas, and remains roughly 9 points down in California. Biden even managed to finagle 5 delegates from Bernie Sanders' backyard in Vermont, proving that even the Green Mountain State is sick and tired of Sanders. Within 12 hours of the late-night call for Texas, Michael Bloomberg dropped out of the race, vowing to support new front-runner Joe Biden with his Scrooge McDuckesque piles of cash from now until November 3rd. Bernie Sanders meanwhile was pumping out ads with him and his bestie Barack Obama four years after Sanders tried to primary him and was having unhinged press conferences where he gave his stump speech for the 3084th time this election cycle.

For those of us that have been paying attention, truly paying attention, we knew the hidden power of the Obama coalition and specifically, the power of African-American voters who are the soul of the Democratic Party. We knew that South Carolina was a harbinger of things to come in North Carolina, Tennessee, Arkansas, and Alabama but even for those of us with that knowledge, it was still shocking to see just how fired up these voters were, particularly people of color and suburban women. After all, African-Americans saw through both Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump in 2016 and suburban women led the blue wave in 2018, so it makes sense that they would unite to vote against Sanders in 2020. Combine that with the fact that Sanders has been perfectly content to play to his base and not expand his coalition (sound familiar?) and what you have are Democratic voters looking for someone who can unite all factions of the party, not just the loudest and most boisterous. After seeing Biden's resounding victory in South Carolina, aided by Rep. James Clyburn's endorsement, many Democratic voters were convinced that it was he, and not Bernie Sanders, who could be the great unifier.

More will follow in the coming days, but one underreported aspect of the race is this: Biden won with little to no field staff. Let me repeat that: Biden won with little to no field staff.

As someone who was knee-deep in the trenches in Florida in 2016, this boggles my mind. We had nearly 500 field staff across the state by Election Day 2016. We had field teams in all 44 "regions" of the state from the Florida Keys to Tallahassee from Miami to Tampa. My own region had two separate field offices alone, roughly 10 miles apart and that was in the state's third-most populous county. Even with all the staff and dozens of indefatigable volunteer leaders, we still worked our butts off to meet campaign goals. After 4 months, the Florida Democratic Party had shattered its registration goals and added nearly 500,000 new voters to the voter rolls. Knowing that Barack Obama won Florida by less than a percentage point in 2012, Democratic Party leaders felt extremely confident about this result. On Election Day, the final tally of showed Hillary Clinton with 250,000 more votes in 2016 than Barack Obama had in 2012.

But she still lost.

And she lost because Republicans turned out 440,000 new voters that didn't vote in 2012. They came out in droves and this turnout was completely unexpected. Not once during the campaign had I seen a Trump volunteer and the Trump team only had a single campaign office in the entire state prior to August. But on Election Day and in early voting, they turned up and they turned up in near-record numbers. While we Democrats worked out butts off for 5 months, Republicans sat back and voted even with the Trump campaign pulling its ad funding a month before Election Day. Somehow, someway, Republicans knew that their people would show up. They didn't need a last-minute ad buy or trained, professional field organizers and staff. All they needed was the voters themselves.

Flash forward 40 months and we had a similar outcome last night. Due to limited campaign funds, Joe Biden simply did not have the capacity to have huge field operations in the Super Tuesday states. In Texas, he had a robust 4 offices. In Virginia, he had a single campaign office. The same goes for Massachusetts, North Carolina, and California. Biden did not even have a single campaign office in states that he won such as Minnesota, Arkansas, Alabama, Oklahoma, Tennessee, and Maine. And yet, his voters, his people showed up big time. Nowhere was this turnout more impressive than Virginia, which nearly doubled its turnout from 2016 and had more than 300,000 more voters than its record year of 2008. These were people who were not recruited by a field office or a robust team of volunteers. These were people who were fired up to vote for their guy and they didn't need a field organizer or a multimillion-dollar ad campaign to get that way.

If this pattern holds throughout the rest of the primary (and there's no reason to think that it shouldn't) then this fundamentally changes how we organize presidential campaigns. If folks are already fired up and ready to go, it doesn't make sense to call or canvass them, which has historically been the tactic in previous elections. What this means is that instead of going door-to-door to ask if registered Democrats will be voting in the general election, the Democratic National Committee and all the state parties should instead focus on bringing in new voters to the fray. This means redoubling efforts to combat voter suppression in states like Texas and North Carolina where Republican legislatures have intentionally made it more difficult to vote since the Shelby v. Hoyer decision in 2013. It means donating significant money to Florida (looking at you, Tom Steyer and Michael Bloomberg) to ensure that each and every now-eligible former felon has the financial ability to pay the 21st-century poll tax imposed by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and then upheld by the partisan Florida Supreme Court. And it means making sure to add to the voter rolls in the key states that could swing the United States Senate such as Colorado, Arizona, Maine, and Iowa.

In short, the 2020 election brings a new way of thinking about traditional election strategies and tactics. The energy is there among the base. People, especially women and people of color are pissed off. They will vote in November. But to erase any doubt that may emerge from Russian meddling, from Republican gerrymandering, and from voter suppression, Democrats need to have a resounding victory across the board. Long gone are the days of executing a campaign by repeatedly calling and knocking on the doors of registered Democratic voters. Instead, the focus needs to be on figuring out a way to channel all the energy we saw on Tuesday night into a resounding victory on November 3rd. The Democratic base is already there. Now, we need to bring along others to match their energy and passion. We only have one shot at this thing and we know our opponents will lie, cheat, steal and do anything they can to stay in power. The last thing we want to do is conduct this like a traditional, run-of-the-mill, presidential campaign. It's now time for Democrats to get creative and think outside the box.

Super Tuesday already gave us the blueprint.