There's Something About Amy
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I'm Henry Olson, and this is The Horse Race. This week, I'll be joined by Robert Robb, editorial columnist at the Arizona Republic, as we do a deep dive into one of the most important states in this year's election, the Grand Canyon State of Arizona.

and Rui Teixeira, senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, who will dissect the state of the Democratic race for me after the New Hampshire primary. All this, plus the ad of the week and the undercard. The horses are at the starting gate. They're off!

This week on Round the Horn, I am joined by one of the nation's great experts, both in political demography and in all things democratic politics. Rui Teixeira is a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress and the author of two great books, The Emerging Democratic Majority and The Optimistic Leftist. Rui, welcome to The Horse Race. Glad to be here, Henry.

Well, Tuesday night was a humdinger, as they used to say. Where does the Democratic race stand after Sanders' win and the Clovis surge? Well, that's the big question. Already this has been dissected to the nth degree by an army of pundits. So I'm not sure how much new I have to add. I mean, the things that struck me are, well, I did flag this on my blog that

It seemed to me based on. And your blog is called The Optimistic Leftist for people. Also, I have a Facebook page where I post even more excellent content. So people should feel free to visit that as well. But anyway, I did see the Klobuchar thing coming pretty much. It seemed clear to me that based on the debate, her crowds movement in the tracking polls, Biden's.

absolutely incontrovertible free fall that she was likely to do quite well. And of course she did. She came in third and basically right around 20 percent right with Buttigieg a little higher and Sanders in first place. The Sanders thing was entirely expected, but he didn't do quite as well as some people thought. The turnout wasn't as high as people thought. So he seems to have pretty much trashed Warren in the so-called

progressive lane or whatever, the left wing lane. But it's not like he overwhelmed the moderates as well. Clearly, there's this massive moderate vote out there, which is completely fragmented at this point.

So going into Super Tuesday, you've got Sanders in the lead, but he's going into a lot of states where his weaknesses among, for example, non-white voters might hurt him. But then again, not as much as it's going to hurt people like Klobuchar and Buttigieg. This is Biden's last stand, but it seems like the air is going out of the balloon pretty fast, even before Super Tuesday. For example, Biden doesn't do well in South Carolina, which...

I am now suspecting might happen. But we'll see. We'll see. I think it's very fluid. I mean, the Klobuchar finish clearly shows us just how fluid the race is. Bloomberg's about to jump in.

you know, it doesn't take a lot of imagination to see how this could be moved around quite a bit. Right now, the 538 model gives Sanders a plurality chance of winning the nomination. But coming up in the outside lane, of course, is, you know, no one gets the majority of the delegates at all. You have a brokered convention. So, yeah. So that's my take. I don't think there's anything particularly new there. But then again, you know, armies of pundits have been there before me.

Well, you know, let's before we get to Super Tuesday, let's talk about Nevada or Nevada. I'm never sure how to pronounce that. It's Nevada. Nevada.

So Nevada comes next, and that comes unlike other places. Nevada votes in a caucus and on a Saturday. And on a Saturday afternoon, it's like the trifecta of unconventionality, which I suppose fits Nevada to a T. But before that, we have a debate. And this is the first debate where I believe Michael Bloomberg might qualify. Has he or has he not? Do you know that?

I do not know that. Well, it's pathetic when both of us don't know the answer to this, but that's just how mixed up this campaign season is. And also how much they changed the debate qualifier characteristics. Those goalposts are moving fast. But at the very least, you're going to have the top five candidates from last night. I'm not convinced Tom Steyer has qualified because I think he needs a couple more qualifying polls, but...

We saw what a debate can do because Klobuchar was moving up slowly but turbocharged after her debate performance last Friday. Her campaign says they raised $5 million between Friday night and Tuesday and say they raised $2.5 million last night alone, which suddenly means she has money to compete in these states.

Exactly. Tell my listeners how Nevada differs from the first two states and how that might impact the relative standings of these different candidates, even if nothing were to change from Iowa. Just a different demographic base of the electorate will mean that we should expect different results.

Right. Well, we know that Nevada, of course, is a heavily Latino state and a very organized and mobilized Latino state. That obviously favors a caucus format. Now, that could be both good and bad for Sanders, right? Because on the one hand, he's shown some strength among Latino voters, both nationwide and in Nevada. But on the other hand, you have the culinary union in Nevada,

being, you know, outright opposed to him. And they're probably the chief mobilizer of the Latino vote in Nevada and presumably would play a strong role in these caucuses. So even though you look at the polling data and you think, wow, this could be really great for Sanders, when you're talking about mobilization on the ground, something like caucus participation, you know, he does have a massive force moving against him because the

The culinary union in Nevada is arguably the strongest private sector union in the entire United States. So if they don't like you and they don't like him because of his Medicare for all plan, they don't like the Medicare for all plan because they have an absolute killer health care plan. They've negotiated the good old fashioned way by being a union. So it's a little bit hard to suss out exactly how that's going to come down.

But, you know, Sanders could once again be in a position where he looks good going into the state, but actually doesn't quite do as well as people expected him to do. So I think that's a real possibility. You know, Biden clearly needs to make some sort of a serious showing here. And we just don't.

you know, by all rights, he should. I mean, he's been he's pulled there pretty well over time. But now all the polls are days, you know, days too old because he's falling so far so fast that we've got to see new polls to capture where he really is. And the minds of people at least have some reasonable probability of showing up at the Nevada caucus. So, you know, that's a big question mark. And then you get Buttigieg and Klobuchar have shown essentially zero strength among nonwhites.

moving into a state where they have to compete for it on white votes to really make an impression. And then that problem gets even worse in South Carolina, when it's primarily black voters and black voters are more friendly to Biden. Obviously, though, again, that may be falling precipitously. And judging from the polls, what we've seen so far, neither Buttigieg nor Klobuchar has particular strength among black voters. So if that sounds confusing, it's only because it is.

And we haven't even talked about the man, you know, Bloomberg's billions. You know, I'm waiting for for the chant to start up at Bernie's rallies. Make him spend it all. Make him spend it all. Right. Right. You know that Bloomberg will not be.

On the ballot in South Carolina, of course, Nevada as a caucus doesn't have a formal ballot, but he's not been organizing or spending there. So we should once again expect that Bloomberg will not be a factor in either state. But he has had the airwaves largely to himself in the 14 Super Tuesday states. And while tracking always lags behind actual expenditures, Bloomberg

Just extrapolating, I think he's already spent half a billion dollars. And we haven't even gotten to a state that he's on the ballot yet. So a lot of people in the pundit class are saying, well, you know, all this dust up over on the so-called moderate lane just means Michael Bloomberg can come up and hoover it all up. And, you know, and as they say over in Britain, Bob's your uncle. There's your nominee. Tell me why that's jumping to conclusions five times faster than we should be.

Oh, I think there's a number of good reasons for that. I mean, I think Bloomberg's activities so far prove that you could buy significant votes if we measure them by polls in an uncontested market. What it hasn't proved is that once the market becomes contested, he can really do that well. So he'll have a chance to show that at Super Tuesday. But I think there's a lot of reasons for skepticism. I mean, basically, a lot of Democrats really hate him.

They don't like Bloomberg. They think he's buying his way in the race. They think he's a member of the billionaire class. They don't like some of the things he's done in the past. His favorability ratings are rather poor among Democrats. So, you know, unless people become convinced, I mean, if Biden and Klobuchar dropped out simultaneously to endorse Bloomberg, the only way to stop Sanders, and Warren did too, maybe, I guess I believe in him.

But it's not at all clear to me he's going to do that great at Super Tuesday. By virtue of how much money he's going to spend, he will get more than fractional percentages of the vote. But will he steamroller over the other moderate, so-called moderate candidates? I'm very skeptical of that.

Of course I could be wrong, you know. I've been wrong before. I was wrong in 2016. So then you've got this weird opportunity, you know, throughout almost everyone's political life, our experience has been a quick winnowing down to a two-person race on the Democratic side.

And I think the last time where that wasn't the case was perhaps the 1972 convention, although you could argue that the Jesse Jackson, Gary Hart thing in 94 was kind of a three-person race. But Jackson's appeal was so limited to a small group of people that it was effectively a two-person race. And suddenly –

Because the Democratic Party – and this is something I keep getting asked or people keep saying, oh, this is like 2016 in the Republican Party, to which I say –

A, no, it's not. And then, you know, channeling the old Saturday Night Live, you know, blank, you ignorant blank. You know the rules. That the Republican Party, being a party in favor, as anyone would say, greater levels of inequality, permit and encourage lots of winner-take-all delegates. So you could go in or contest. So you could go in like Donald Trump did and get 33 percent of the vote in South Carolina and 100 percent of the delegates. But the Democrats being...

paragons and paladins of fairness and equality, to be a little more facetious, insist on strict proportionality, and not only at the statewide level, but at the regional level, so that all of these big states are divided into multiple congressional districts, each with effectively its own contest, where you have to get 15% of the vote. So Sanders wins,

With 25 to 30 percent, he doesn't get much more than 25 to 30 percent of the delegates. So how does that play into the incentive for all of these people to do something that's never been done before in our lifetime, which is stay in the race precisely because they have or can convince themselves that they've got a shot to get over that threshold? And if they've got over that threshold, they're players.

Yeah, well, look, if the second most probable outcome, according to the 538 model now, is that nobody gets the majority of delegates going into the convention, then why wouldn't you stay in if you think you've got a shot at piling up at least the threshold figures and a little bit more in many, many contests to come? You could be a player. You could maybe...

you know, get into a position where a brokered convention would really benefit you. I mean, a lot of it comes down to do they believe, and I think most of them do, that Bernie Sanders has a ceiling. If his ceiling is like basically what he's getting,

25, 30 percent at the most. I mean, why wouldn't you stay in it, provided, you know, the air isn't completely going out of the balloon like it may be with Joe Biden? Yeah. You know, Joe Biden can't hit 15 percent. Then what the hell is the point of him staying in? Not much. Right. But if you're Amy Klobuchar and you think that.

You know, I'm going to have the money and I'm going to be hitting states where I can do well and I can hit that threshold and beyond and maybe consolidate even more moderate support. Maybe Buttigieg will crash. Maybe Biden will get out and endorse me. I mean, why not? Yeah. Why not? I mean, the system is set up to maximize the probability of a brokered convention almost. Right. I mean, it just typically doesn't happen because of other dynamics. But it seems to me this year is set up perfectly to take that.

that underlying structure, which should have a brokered convention as a very, very possible outcome and make it a reality.

Well, you know, South Carolina is particularly of interest to me because, you know, as you mentioned, it's dominated by African-American voters. 60 to 66 percent of the voters there will be African-American. So, you know, you've got the case that if Joe Biden were to sink to getting only 30 percent support among African-Americans and say 10 percent of non-African-Americans, he could win South Carolina with 22 percent of the vote.

And if he does that, why not stay in? Because six of the 14 states that are voting on Super Tuesday are in the South, which are also strong African-American contingents. Other states that are voting have African-American communities that are non-trivial. And suddenly after Super Tuesday, about 40 percent of the delegates are committed. And, you know, unless everybody were to suddenly drop out, there's no chance.

theoretical way or post-physical way for Bernie Sanders to get a majority of delegates because even if other people dropped out, somebody would survive and be contesting him. So why aren't we looking at five or six serious candidates on Super Tuesday absent the most unexpected of collapses that we've seen in political history?

Yeah, I mean, I think there's well, I mean, one reason why you might not see that is, let's say Biden doesn't make the threshold in South Carolina. Doesn't he have to drop out then? But maybe not. I don't know. But that's why I mentioned the percentage of the vote is that like he'd have to drop to like 20 percent of the African-American vote to not make the threshold in South Carolina. But I mean, that could happen. He could like crater even more among white voters. I mean, that's true. I just don't I just think it's.

You know, there's a high, there are a lot of tail outcomes here for Biden at this point, which are ceasing to be tail outcomes because he's falling so far so fast. So I don't rule anything out. But yeah, I think, you know, the idea that Nevada and South Carolina are going to win in the field much at this point, I would say is not a probable outcome. I'd say it's an improbable outcome. I'd say it's more probable what you're saying that we'll go into Super Tuesday with

Probably the people we see now. I mean, you see Warren dropping out, Biden dropping out. I mean, almost no matter what happens, it would have to be a real oddball kind of outcome. And plus, you'd really have to be convinced that as a candidate, this is it. My time has come. I must drop out. I mean, people are now saying Warren, for example, is toast.

But but again, I think that, you know, the logic you've laid out about the way the delegate selection process is going to work, how much is at stake in Super Tuesday? You know, the perception Sanders has a ceiling.

I mean, I think it all fits together. Yeah. You know, this is going to be, as a number of people have remarked, a long, drawn-out process in all probability. So I was deep diving into Elizabeth Warren's support in the New Hampshire exit poll, and it struck me two things. One is that her support skews very much to the Democratic left, that the group she did best among were people who self-described themselves as very liberal, the

People she did best among among issues were people who were concerned about economic inequality, which suggests that she is taking votes away from Bernie Sanders. But then you look at her demographic perspective and she skews to women. She does best among educated people and does particularly well among upper income people. All the groups of people who have not voted for Bernie Sanders so far.

So if she were to get 6% in Nevada and 6% in South Carolina and say, I'm only going to run in my home state of Massachusetts. I'm just going to try and be a favorite daughter, to use the play on the old favorite son. Where do you think her voters would go? Would they go with their ideology or would they go with their class? Hmm.

Yeah, I think that, I mean, because a lot depends on that with respect to Sanders ceiling is that aside from like Tom Steyer or Andrew Yang voters, her voters are the only group out there that ideologically line up with Sanders voters. And if he can't attract them, his ceiling is pretty darn low. Yeah, well, I mean, it depends on how we conceive of it as Sanders voters.

candidacy. Is it is he truly just a generic candidate of the left or is there something more going on there? And I think that to understand Sanders support, we have to think of it as almost more of a movement and a movement, particularly among young people and particularly among folks who basically think the system is completely broken and respond to the kinds of kind of rhetoric that Sanders employs. But that's not everybody.

who's on the left. It's not even everybody who's very liberal. I think college educated, liberal white women do not think of the world that way. They don't think of America that way. They don't think that they're not as hostile to the Democratic Party as a party. So they're less interested in signing on to a movement that just wants to

essentially blow it up and thinks it's completely worthless. So but I think that is a lot of his appeal with younger voters. So I actually one thing that occurred to me thinking about Sanders and the level of turnout we've seen in Iowa and Wisconsin is, yeah, he's killing it among younger voters, but that doesn't necessarily translate into voters.

you know, Sanders favorite trope about how he's going to win a general election, which is going to turn out a gazillion people to vote for him because they all agree with what he has to say. I mean, if we look at the last great wave of youth turnout, which was in 2008, what was that about? That wasn't about people who were like super left wing who were young. They were about people who wanted to change, who were hopeful, who thought Obama represented something different. And now that included as a subset, I would say,

the same kind of people who wind up supporting Bernie Sanders today. But it also includes a lot of other people who

are liberal, but not that liberal, maybe moderate, maybe just, you know, looking for something really different and fresh and want a different direction in the country. And I mean, wouldn't, can't the argument be made that those kind of young people today are really mostly concerned with getting rid of Trump and having a new direction for the country and aren't necessarily in the Bernie camp? So this is just a long-winded way of saying, I mean, I think that

you can definitely make the case that Sanders' candidacy is quite limited, even on the terms that he himself has set. So I just think that that's really something to think about. And if that's true, then to get back to your question about college-educated white liberal women, it's not clear to me they're going to go to Bernie. And they may, in fact, go.

You know, why not Klobuchar? Why not the best? Why not someone who can beat Trump? I mean, she's pretty progressive. They're all pretty progressive. Yeah. And it's not clear to me these college educated white suburban liberal women are necessarily that convinced that it would be a total tragedy if Bernie wasn't elected and Klobuchar was the candidate instead.

So you see what I'm saying? I just think that the assumption that Sanders has this tremendous attraction for all people who consider themselves quite liberal and quite left is not probably true. And so what you're saying is Bernie Sanders is kind of like political Marmite. Some people love it, but a lot of people hate it.

Yes, and that is, you know, again, that gets back to our idea of a ceiling on his support and certainly suggests that the Warren-type voter, if in fact she disappears, is

may not in fact consolidate with Sanders in the so-called progressive lane. So meanwhile, I'm sitting there last night watching all of this unfold as the data come in and I simultaneously have my Twitter feed open and there's Trump. He can't resist himself, throwing out sarcastic insults, like Tom Steyer. There's that brief moment when the rumor was he was going to drop out and Trump tweets out,

$19 million for 4% of the vote. Not as easy to do what I did, is it, Tom? And he's kind of like the gift that keeps giving in some ways to the Democratic Party.

How much should we be concerned if we are, you know, I'm obviously a conservative and not rooting for a Democratic victory, but for people who are rooting for a Democratic victory, how much should the impending dust-up and the prospect of a months-long fight that human

Human nature being what it is will get increasingly bitter, followed by a deal. You know, either the candidates will deal amongst themselves or the party's superdelegates will come in and force a deal, i.e. a broken convention. And all this happens ends up in July.

How much should Democrats be concerned that all of this will cost them a chance to beat Trump because so much bitterness and anger will come up? And how much is Trump ultimately going to be a unifying factor among Democrats, regardless of how much they end up hating each other after five months of warfare? Yeah, I guess I'm persuaded that

At the end of the day, the key factor, you know, is the five letter word Trump. And Trump will continue to be Trump in the manner you described. He's going to continue to give ammunition to the Democrats. I mean, look at this budget proposal he came out with. I mean, it's a matter of political malpractice that the candidates who are currently running don't seem to have much time to focus on that. But given the right candidate,

actually running in the general election, I think the amount of ammunition here is enormous. So I would be less concerned with the drawn out process than I would be concerned about that drawn out process eventuating in a candidate who can't really operationalize all that anti-Trump sentiment. All the people who have proven it in the economy, that don't approve him as president, all the people who think

We need a totally new direction in politics, but they don't want to go too far. All the people who want a public option but don't necessarily want Medicare for all. All the people who want to be nice to immigrants but don't want to have open borders. I mean, I think that's the key question. So even if there's a drawn out process that results in a candidate who can run the campaign, run a smart campaign and basically operationalize all the sentiment out there that makes Trump

incumbent who should have a difficult time being reelected, I think everything will probably be okay. But you could have the worst of both worlds. You could have a drawn out process of results and a candidate, perhaps one whose last name begins with S, who would not be ideal for leveraging that underlying anti-Trump sentiment. That's what I'd worry about as a Democrat. I think the process is the process.

At the margin, it's probably not the greatest thing for it to be drawn out, but I don't think that's key. So last couple of questions here. It gets to this point. Let's throw a scenario that I don't think is unreasonable. Sanders gets somewhere between a third and 40 percent of the delegates, not including the superdelegates, well short of what he needs.

And somehow under somebody's aegis, you know, the deal gets made and he does not win and he does not get put on the ticket. And he stands up on the convention floor and

You know, gives his best imitation of Ronald Reagan in 1976, trying to cheer up the movement of people who aren't terribly happy with the Democratic Party at the time when they'll feel that he was unfairly denied and says, you know, basically what you say. Five letters, T-R-U-M-P.

How persuasive is that, that people who will feel that they will have been jobbed for a second time, because many of them feel that that's what happened to Sanders the first time, how persuasive would Sanders be in quelling their discontent? Or do you think that even among people who think of themselves as part of a movement who are at war as much with the Democratic establishment as with the Republican Party, that they'll just suck it up and vote against Trump?

Well, that is the big question about a non-Sanders outcome. I know a lot of people are worried that these so-called Bernie bros will just refuse to vote for Democrats. You'll get a lot of non-voting. You'll get a lot of third party defections. You'll even get some defections to Trump. The question, I think, is we saw some of that in 2016 and we saw some of those fears.

Do we think it's going to be better, the worse, or the same as the level of defection we saw in 2016? So far, when you really delve into the data, it's not clear that we're going to have any, you know, we're likely to have any greater level of defection in 2020 than in 2016 from those kinds of voters, maybe even a little bit less. I mean, and where this is all in advance of us having the general election and being in the crosshairs. So, yeah.

I tend to definitely lean to the side that running against Trump will solve most of these problems, even though I do think there'll be some defection. But do I think there'll be catastrophic defection? I don't think so.

I don't think so. But again, I want to hasten to add that I've been wrong before, and 2016 was a great example in terms of the actual outcome, which actually was not driven by defection. That's a myth. But anyway. So then my last question is, we get to this Donnybrook in Milwaukee, and...

Is it possible in the old days you would enter in with lots of, you know, old days meaning like the 1920s or the teens, you'd go in and there'd be three or four candidates fighting it out. And the only way they broke the logjam was to literally pick somebody who wasn't in the race, the prototypical dark horse candidate.

Is it possible in this day and age that if you've got Amy and Pete and Michael and Joe, roughly equivalent in delegates, and nobody persuades a majority of the superdelegates to throw in behind them? So like you've got four. Is it possible that we could see a dark horse?

a non-candidate candidate be the only way to stop Sanders, if that is in fact that there's a majority to stop Sanders? They're definitely behind that idea. Immovable of that. And they can't agree on the person to lead the ticket. Is it possible that you will see somebody plucked out of semi-obscurity and accept the Democratic Party's nomination? Oh, sure. I think it's possible. The question is...

You know, how possible? How probable? And I, you know, I have no idea. But clearly it's a possible outcome. You could probably get long ads in it in Vegas, but it's a possible outcome. I mean, let me throw that back to you. So then to say, to quote Jim Carrey from Dumb and Dumber, you say there's a chance. Right. So, I mean, if in fact that did happen, let's just...

say, you know, the improbable happens and this does obtain as a scenario, who do you think they'd pick? Do you have any idea? Who do you think they should pick? I

Who should they pick? Well, that's the sort of thing where you could imagine an Elizabeth Warren being drafted back, although she would be a candidate, but at that point a non-candidate. Hillary Clinton's never going to let go of running for re-election in 2020 because we know she won the first time.

I think that would be a nonstarter for obvious reasons. But you'd see pressure. You'd see people dreaming about a Michelle Obama ticket at the top of the ticket. But she's obviously never wanted to do it. But what happens when literally everybody you've ever respected comes? It's you or Trump. Right.

So I don't know. I think about the only name that's been ever mentioned in this cycle that I definitely take off the list is Oprah Winfrey. I cannot see reaching outside of people who have not do not have significant political experience. How about some governor? Exactly. Who would you say would be one of the problems is there aren't Democratic governors who have had a whole lot of experience. Well, there's Gretchen Whitmer, right?

She did very well on the response to the State of the Union address, and I thought, second spot on the ticket. But under this environment, could she be first spot on the ticket? Well, that would be a risky but high upside play. Yeah, yeah. All right, well, let's start the boomlet. Yeah. Although I have to say, every time I hear Gretchen Whitmer, I think of Gretchen Wiener from Mean Girls.

So our slogan could be Whitmer for president, make fetch happen. Yeah. All right. Rock on, brother. Rock on. And by the way, check out Rui's blog, The Optimistic Leftist. And for those of you on Facebook, every weekend he will post science fiction book of the week. It's a really cool feature if you're into that. Rui, thank you for joining me on the horse race. Thank you, Henry.

This week's Undercard will look at Minnesota's 7th Congressional District. It's represented by Colin Peterson, who will be running for his 16th term in the House of Representatives. Yes, he was elected in 1990. And in that time, he has risen to become one of the most powerful Democrats in Congress. He is the chair of the House of Representatives.

Agricultural Committee, which, given the extremely rural and farming nature of his district, is perhaps the best thing that he can hope for. He's delivered for his constituents for years in the way that Agricultural Committee chairmen usually do, making sure the subsidies flow to as many people as possible.

In most political years, he would be considered untouchable, well-known, well-liked, and somebody who's delivered for his constituents. He's the archetype of the congressman who gets reelected. But times are changing. People care more about partisanship than personality, and that has put him in the Republican Party's crosshairs.

To see why, we just have to take a look at the district. In 2008, it was carried by John McCain, but with only 50% of the vote and a 3% margin over Barack Obama. In that environment, somebody like Colin could cross-appeal to Republicans and Republican-minded independents. He had an easy re-election that year.

Flash forward to 2012. Mitt Romney does better. He gets 54% of the vote and beats Obama by 10 points. But Peterson still doesn't have a serious challenge. He wins by over 25% of the vote.

But now we have the current age where people are more sharply polarized than ever before. He's had nondescript opponents in each of the last three elections, but hasn't been able to break 55 percent in any of them. In fact, his margin keeps declining. The Republican got 45.5 percent in 2014, a little over 47 percent in 2016, and last year held him to a 52-48 victory, all without the benefit of national party aid.

Why is this the case? Well, why is it the case in almost any place? Take a look at how Donald John Trump did in the district. Recall that it's a Republican-leaning seat before Trump. Afterward, it's a Republican vote sink. Trump got 62% of the vote, crushing Clinton by 31%. And it's not just Trump. In 2018, Democrats swept the board in Republican, formerly Republican areas. But here...

The Obama-Trump voters stuck with the Republican Party. Amy Klobuchar, who's now running for president, won this seat by less than two-tenths of a percent of the vote while she was carrying the state by 24 points. Two other Republicans running statewide lost pretty handily across the whole of Minnesota but carried this seat by 15 or 17 points. That's an average difference on the Republican favor of over 25%.

This is now a safe Republican seat, and it's the most endangered seat that Nancy Pelosi's Democrats hold. Colin Peterson has finally attracted a serious challenger, former Lieutenant Governor Michelle Fishback.

She's not raising a huge amount of money. As of December 31st, she had only a quarter million dollars on hand. But then again, you don't need a whole lot of money in this district. Forty percent of the district is in the Fargo, North Dakota media market, one of the smallest and one of the most inexpensive in the country. Most of the rest of the district is in Minneapolis-St. Paul, not cheap but not hugely expensive.

They'll be communicating across television, radio, and through mail and digital ads with a group of voters who are well-disposed to receive a Republican message. And they're the sort of voters who are more likely to turn out in a presidential race than they were in 2018.

Ninety-three percent of this district is white, and 72 percent are whites without a college degree. That's Donald Trump and the modern Republican Party's core constituency, and they're likely to be out in droves to reelect their man. It's not an accident that Colin Peterson was the only House Democrat to oppose both articles of impeachment. He knows the seat that he represents, and he's trying to come back.

But if Colin Peterson comes back, it would defy everything we know about modern politics today. It would mean the person has triumphed over the party. It would mean that money has triumphed over message.

This is a seat that will be hardly fought over, but it is one that if the Republicans can't pick up, they have 0% chance of regaining the House. So on election night, watch rural Minnesota, the part of Minnesota that borders North and South Dakota. If that's not a seat that's flipped from blue to red, it's going to be a very bad night for the Republican, indeed. That's my thoughts on this week on The Undercard. ♪

This week on State of Play, I'm joined by Robert Robb, the editorial columnist at the Arizona Republic and a longtime expert observer of Arizona's political scene. Robb, welcome to The Horse Race. Good to be with you. Well, Arizona has been known for a long time as a Republican state, notwithstanding electing a couple of moderate Democrats as governor. And the last...

year, or last election year, surprised many people who hadn't been following the state closely by electing a Democrat, Kristen Sinema, to the United States Senate. Can you tell us a little bit about how Arizona's politics have changed over the last few years and why? Well, certainly the Democrats had a very good election in Arizona in 2018.

That followed an uncharacteristic drought. No Democrat won a statewide office in Arizona from 2006 until 2018. And in addition to the U.S. Senate victory, they won a couple of statewide state offices as well.

The common explanation for this is changing demographics in the state, and certainly Democrats have narrowed somewhat the registration advantage that Republicans enjoy in the state and narrowed somewhat the turnout advantage that Republicans have enjoyed as well. But there's still a...

decisive Republican registration advantage and Republicans in 2018 were still over 40% of the vote. So my unconventional explanation is that it's not so much changing demographics as a return to ticket splitting in Arizona. We had a rich tradition of it before 2006. People

People would commonly elect Republicans and Democrats in the same election cycle. And if you look at the exit polls, there was the Republican nominee, Martha McSally, lost a significantly larger share of the Republican vote than did Kyrsten Sinema lose the Democratic vote. In fact, she lost virtually none of it.

So my own view is it was sort of a return to norm for Arizona and being more independent-minded and more ticket splitting. So who are these new ticket splitters and what's making them suddenly decide that straight Republican doesn't suit them anymore? I don't – I think we will have to have a couple more election cycles before we –

determine whether it's new people coming into the state. We have a lot of population growth and migration from other states with different attitudes. The Latino vote in 2018 wasn't significantly larger than it had been in previous elections. That's often one of the aspects that are cited as an explanation of how Arizona is turning more

But it also might just be a return to norm. Now, I do believe in 2018 there was a anti-Trump effect. I believe that he was partially responsible for the larger ticket

ticket-splitting by Republicans, and I think independence in 2018 went pretty solidly for Democrats. And I do believe that that was in part an anti-Trump effect. Also, the Republicans fielded some pretty weak candidates in some of these races. I wouldn't put Martha McSally in that camp, but I think she made some pretty profound strategic errors in the way that she

conducted her campaign. But Trump only carried Arizona by three and a half percentage points. Mitt Romney carried it by nine. And changing demographics do not explain over four years that notable gap in performance. I think Trump is a relative weak candidate in Arizona.

And in 2018, his weakness infected up and down the ballot. When I looked at Arizona, Republicans lost four, I believe, state House seats, three in the Phoenix area, one in the Tucson area, lost other statewide races in addition to McSally. And it seemed to be the decline was most evident among college graduates, people who

would live in Scottsdale or other middle-to-upper-middle-income communities. Is that something that is continuing, that this sort of what we've seen elsewhere in the country, a shift of suburban-educated, one-time Romney Republicans, is that something that –

Arizonans see as well? And if so, is it something that seems to be continuing or is maybe the hot economy beginning to bring them back to their past patterns? Well, and as you know, in real politics, it turns down to compared to whom. And

that the Democrats are well on their way to nominating people who also are not likely to do very well in Arizona. But I do believe that Trump has a net negative effect on Republican performance in Arizona, both in terms of a slightly larger number

crossover vote by Republicans, but more significantly in Arizona, it's pretty solid opposition to him among independents. Independents are actually the second largest party

party, although they're not a party in Arizona. We have more registered independents than we had Democrats. And in 2018, I believe that they went pretty strongly up and down the ticket for Democrats with a few exceptions, such as Doug Ducey running for governor, who had a pumping victory. And obviously, it got a lot of independent votes. But generally, I think that Trump

moved independents who do tend to be volatile in Arizona elections. They do tend to go towards either party, move them pretty solidly in the Democratic camp. And I don't think that has changed. And I think it will require a Democratic nominee to change it.

So one of the things that's distinct, there's a couple of things that are distinctive about Arizona compared to many swing states. First, as you mentioned, is the Latino population, which is somewhere around a little under 20 percent of all voters are from a Hispanic heritage. Do you see any evidence that Hispanic voters are mobilizing to an unusual degree or are they just not as energized about this situation?

about Trump as some of these independents who might be college-educated whites are? For several election cycles now, there's been triumphant press releases

um, issued by various, uh, Latino and democratic organizations about all the Latinos that they have, um, signed up, um, and registered to vote. But in the 2018 exit poll, um,

Latinos were only 18% of the turnout, and that wasn't notably higher than in past elections, at most a percentage point or two. So certainly the potential exists there. And as a border state, Trump's anti-illegal immigration efforts do not play well with that community. So

It has the potential to be in effect, but I believe the explanation for the 2018 outcome wasn't a rise in Latino turnout. It was a...

decisive tilt towards the Democrats by independence. Democrats also reduce the turnout disadvantage that they have to a certain degree. It wasn't a large effect, but they did narrow the turnout advantage that Republicans have. I think that was motivated by anti-Trump sentiment. You would know better about this than me, but

It appears on a national level, paradoxically, that we're seeing more enthusiasm by Republicans for this election than Democrats. So I don't know whether the anti-Trump sentiment has sort of fatigued and receded. And I don't know how that will play in Arizona if Democrats can't.

again reduce the turnout disadvantage that they historically have faced in the state. One of the things that also makes Arizona unique is the dominance of one city and metropolitan area. I believe Phoenix's Maricopa County cast about 60% of the statewide vote, and the media market coming out of Phoenix probably adds another 10 or 15% to the reach.

How does a Republican and how does a Democrat approach politics in a state dominated by one media market and one metropolitan area to the extent that Arizona is dominated by Phoenix?

Well, and Democrats have substantially reduced the registration disadvantage in Maricopa County. And Maricopa County, which used to be considerably more conservative than the balance of the state, actually has become more in the middle of the state in terms of

For example, voting to legalize recreational marijuana. Maricopa County just doesn't have the same sharper conservative voting record, and this is one place where Democrats have

significantly reduce their registration disadvantage. That's been partially upset by Republican gains in the balance of the state and particularly the rural areas. A candidate has to be competitive in Maricopa County.

Martha McSally suffered, I think. She came from Pima County to the south of the state, the Tucson area. Hadn't really introduced herself to voters here before being thrust into a pretty sharply contested primary and general election. But you can't win usually exclusively in Maricopa County. We

Republicans have done a good job of piling up votes in the rural counties. And the turnout in the Tucson area, which tends to be more Democratic, is an important factor for Democrats. If a Republican can minimize what a Democratic candidate gets coming out of the Tucson area,

He or she is in good stead in the balance of the state, but certainly you are correct. Maricopa County, the Phoenix metropolitan area overwhelms the rest of the state in terms of population, and that just grows. Maricopa County is growing much more rapidly than the balance of the state, and that disproportionality is increasing.

So last question, what factors are you looking at as you gauge the strength or weakness of either McSally or Trump or McSally's opponent, who's likely to be astronaut Mark Kelly, given the amount of money he's been raising, or whoever the Democrat comes out? Are there things that are usually the canaries in the coal mine, a

or I guess the lizards in the desert, since we're talking about Arizona, that give you an early warning of the trends that will come to pass on Election Day? Well, again, the outcome in 2018 was anomalous and contrary to a decade's worth of history, although if you go deeper back, it is phenomenal.

more reflective of how Arizona used to perform at the ballot. What I will be watching are the voter registration trends. If Arizona is indeed turning more purple, you would anticipate Republican voters

registration advantage to dissipate. That's happening to a little bit, but not to the extent that you would anticipate if we were truly becoming a toss-up state, rather than one where a Republican has a decisive advantage, and even if there's crossover voting, there has to be something wrong with the Republican candidate in order to lose the election. If

The registration numbers close more rapidly than they have been, then that would be obviously a very good sign for the prospects of a Democrat. Also, partisan registration has increased faster than independent registration in the state.

That might be a function of people wanting to vote in the Democratic primary in order to vote in the presidential primary in Arizona. You have to be registered with the party that's holding the election. Independents can vote in Arizona.

primaries for state offices, but not for presidents. So as we're approaching a presidential primary here for the Democrats, there will be a tendency for people who might otherwise register independent or register Democrat to vote in that primary. But even despite that, you're not seeing a sharp narrowing of the registration advantage of Republicans. Its advantage is that

within 1,000 votes of what it was in the 2018 election. So that's what I will be watching is whether those registration trends narrow. Well, Rob, thank you for educating me and our listeners on the trends and ins and outs of Arizona politics. And I hope you can join me later this year again to see where things stand later on the horse race. Thanks for having me and we'd be happy to do so.

Joe Biden may be sinking from view in the presidential race, as in New Hampshire's primary, he got under 10% of the vote and received no delegates. But boy, his team can turn out ads. This week's ad of the week is another one from the Biden campaign entitled Pete's Record. Let's listen. Barack Obama called Joe Biden... Best vice president America's ever had. But Pete Buttigieg doesn't think much of the vice president's record. Let's compare. When President Obama called on him,

Joe Biden helped lead the passage of the Affordable Care Act, which gave health care to 20 million people. And when park goers called on Pete Buttigieg, he installed decorative lights under bridges, giving citizens of South Bend colorfully illuminated rivers. Both Vice President Biden and former Mayor Buttigieg have taken on tough fights. Under threat of a nuclear Iran,

Joe Biden helped to negotiate the Iran deal. And under threat of disappearing pets, Buttigieg negotiated lighter licensing regulations on pet chip scanners. Both Vice President Biden and former Mayor Pete have helped shape our economy.

Joe Biden helped save the auto industry, which revitalized the economy of the Midwest and led the passage and implementation of the recovery line, saving our economy from a depression. Pete Buttigieg revitalized the sidewalks of downtown South Bend by laying out decorative brick.

And both Biden and Buttigieg have made hard decisions. Despite pressure from the NRA, Joe Biden passed the Assault Weapons Ban through Congress. Then he passed the Violence Against Women Act. And even when public pressure mounted against him, former Mayor Pete fired the first African-American police chief of South Bend. And then he forced out the African-American fire chief, too. We're electing a president. What you've done matters.

This is a 90-second ad, which means it's not geared to be listened to or watched on television in part. It's more of a digital ad that can also be chopped up into 30-second segments or 60-second segments. And it has wonderful portions that can be clipped together into a hard-hitting 30-second spot, particularly geared for the now all-crucial South Carolina primary.

Let's take a look at what this ad starts with. It starts with identifying Joe Biden with Barack Obama.

Barack Obama remains incredibly popular among Democrats, but he is especially popular among African-American Democrats. And lo and behold, South Carolina is a state that will be dominated by African-American Democrats. Between 60 and 66 percent of the Democratic turnout in the South Carolina primary will be African-Americans. So he starts off with a positive identification of him with the most popular president among this group in Democratic Party history.

He has Obama putting him in positions of responsibility with respect to very important issues and high interest issues among Democratic voters. Health care, gun control, violence against women. This ad portrays Joe Biden as a leader and one entrusted by, again, the popular Barack Obama to carry the president's agenda through a difficult Congress.

The music here reinforces this with an insistency and a vibrancy that suggests both importance and energy. It's in part important for Joe Biden because of his age. He doesn't always come across as being the most energetic and vibrant person. Or if he does, he kind of comes across as being maybe too energetic and too vibrant. But this strikes that right balance of seriousness and energy that people want in a president.

Moreover, the words of the spoken language are on the screen. You have a hard time following it? It's on the screen for you to read. You can read and watch and listen all at the same time. It's a marvelously choreographed ad. Then we get to the hits on Pete Buttigieg. Now, the reason he's going after Pete Buttigieg is because

Buttigieg has finished first and second in the first two states, but he's also the candidate who has made the most inroads among Biden's group. Besides African-Americans, he's made inroads among whites without a college degree. So by hitting Buttigieg, he has an opportunity not only to reinforce himself among African-Americans, but to grab back some of the vote share that can transform him into a frontrunner again. And he makes Buttigieg look like, well,

An irrelevant nincompoop. That the sort of issues that you take care of in a city are far less important. And he highlights some of the least important and particularly does it with music that displays lightness and irrelevance. While the things he picks out, things like illuminating bridges or putting down decorative bricks, are in four parts.

What you would do as a mayor to make a downtown area look and feel more vibrant again but clearly pale in comparison to like saving the free world, saving the economy and saving women and children and men from death and violence, which is what he says that he's done. But then let's take a look at that core constituency.

The last thing he hits Buttigieg on is firing the first African-American police chief and then firing the first African-American fire department head.

This is meant to remind African-American voters that Pete Buttigieg not only isn't one of you, he's somebody who actually is actively opposed to you. It's meant to make sure that even if Buttigieg keeps his hold on the white working class, he makes no inroads into the African-American vote. And if Joe Biden can...

dominate the African-American vote, even if he gets only 30 or 40 percent of the African-American vote, he has a very good chance of winning the South Carolina primary and reversing the entire narrative that says he's a crashing candidate rather than a rising candidate.

Pete's record is a positive ad for Biden. It is a negative ad on Buttigieg that hits both Buttigieg's strength, white working class voters, and keeps him from making inroads into his weakness, African-American voters. It is perfectly tailored to resurrect the Biden campaign in South Carolina. And that's why it's this week's ad of the week.

That's it for this week's Horse Race. Next week, I'll be joined by The New York Times' Peter Baker, Steve Sibelius of the Las Vegas Review-Journal, and Steve Kornacki of MSNBC. This has been the Horse Race. I'm Henry Olson, and I'll see you next week in the Winter Circle.