Two weeks out from Super Tuesday and the California primary, Senator Bernie Sanders has reportedly pulled out with a big lead in a new poll of Democratic voters in the state.
Sanders is polling with an 18- or 19-point lead ahead of challengers Joe Biden and Elizabeth Warren, according to the poll conducted by the Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC) over the last week and a half. Sanders is showing 32 percent likely to vote for him in the California primary, with 14 percent saying they'll choose Biden, and 13 percent opting for Warren. Former mayors Pete Buttigieg and Michael Bloomberg each trail behind with 12 percent, and Amy Klobuchar is all but a no-go for Cali with just 5 percent, per the Los Angeles Times.
Biden and Warren each had double-digit drops since the PPIC's last poll in January, though can we really trust polls in a state as big as this when no one answers their phone anymore? What the poll does suggest is that likely voters who do answer their phones are coming around to Bernie in light of his early-state victories. And PPIC chief Mark Baldassare says that "Sanders’ support among Latinos and younger voters" in California is an important factor.
The PPIC also says its polls have a margin of error of 5.7 percent.
Not everyone is happy about this! And Mike Bloomberg in particular is banking on a big number in California and other Super Tuesday states to make his candidacy at all viable. And now that Bloomberg is starting to poll at all, his rivals are expected to have their knives and fangs out on the debate stage tonight in Las Vegas.
I can personally report a fair bit of chatter in my Facebook circles over this new piece from The Atlantic which dredges up an old Democratic Party grievance against Bernie Sanders. Reportedly, old Bernie was chomping at the bit to run for president way back in 2011, and he was seriously discussing giving Barack Obama a primary challenge in Iowa. Fellow Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy, according to the report, was one of the people whom Sanders confided in about his plans, and Leahy ran to Jim Messina, Obama’s presidential reelection-campaign manager, to warn him — and to get someone to dissuade Sanders.
The whole incident allegedly had Obama's camp spooked, because as Messina tells The Atlantic, "every [sitting] president [in history] who has gotten a real primary has lost a general."
Meanwhile, onetime New York gubernatorial candidate and portrayer of Miranda on Sex and the City, Cynthia Nixon, just published an opinion piece on NBC News saying, that the "panicked" Democratic establishment is calling for a "unity candidate" not realizing that that candidate is Bernie. "Can we step back for a moment and acknowledge that our ever-widening income inequality and the inability of a staggering number of Americans to make ends meet are the circumstances Trump exploited to get elected?" Nixon writes. "If we can, how then can we not support the candidate who is addressing head-on the economic circumstances that the vast majority of Americans face?"
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