 I think it's evident that Joe Biden is still sailing and he's riding high on this announcement boost that he got. And data indicates that he actually has cut into Bernie Sanders support pace, meaning that people who would otherwise be supporting Bernie Sanders are now supporting Joe Biden since he decided to enter. Now that is weird. But nonetheless, this is what the data indicates. So my instinct when I see this is we need to try to grapple with this reality and take away from this information that allows us to reach these people. Because if you would have supported Bernie had Joe Biden not entered the race, then that tells me that you don't necessarily know about the policy differences. Now there's a couple of polls that came out that asked Joe Biden supporters who would be their second choice in the event Joe Biden decided to not run. Now before I tell you the results, if you had to guess who would it be? Someone like Kamala, someone like Beto O'Rourke, Pete Buttigieg, because ideologically speaking they're more closely aligned. However, according to a Harris X poll, that's not actually the case. According to Biden supporters, their second pick at 27% is surprisingly Bernie Sanders. So Joe Biden is number one, Bernie Sanders is their number two. In third we have Kamala Harris at 15%, Beto O'Rourke in fourth at 11%, Pete Buttigieg following closely with 10%, Warren at 8%, Gillibrand at 7% and Booker at 6%. Now instinctively you've got to be thinking this must be an outlier. This must be the one poll that claims that Bernie Sanders really is Joe Biden's support base's second choice, right? Well no, because according to a poll by the morning consult it found that largely the same holds true because Bernie Sanders is still Joe Biden's supporters second choice at 31%. Kamala again is in third with 13%. And here Elizabeth Warren jumps a little bit and she is their fourth choice at 10%. Now one more poll that I want to show you is from Monmouth which was conducted in mid April and it found that if Joe Biden didn't run Bernie would have gained an additional seven points. So taking as a whole what this data indicates, what it tells us is that even if it's hard to believe there's considerable overlap between Joe Biden's base of support and Bernie Sanders' base of support. And maybe not the core bases of support but nonetheless there's overlap there. Now it's weird if I were a mainstream media news pundit what would I chalk this up to? Well I'd say you know we can explain this away by the fact that voters just gravitate towards the old white men and that's why they're opting for Joe Biden as their number one and Bernie Sanders as their number two and possibly vice versa but that's not actually what I think is happening here. That's an oversimplification in fact I don't think it explains this at all. What I think is happening here is that Bernie Sanders now probably has the second highest name recognition and what we really underestimate often times in politics is how powerful an advantage candidates have if they have name recognition. I mean look at 2016 Donald Trump defeated 17 or 16 Republican establishment candidates because every single person in the country knew who Donald Trump was. And now who has the highest name recognition in the Democratic field? Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders. So if you're a voter and you just kind of vaguely think that all of the candidates are ideologically similar, who are you going to choose if you're not necessarily 100% behind one candidate? Well you say you know Joe Biden, I liked him, I thought that you know the last eight years under Obama were okay. So my second choice I guess would be Sanders. I don't think that they've put much thought into this and I don't think this is about policy. I mean it's obviously not about policy because ideologically you have Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders who are complete opposites so it can't be about policy. So in my mind this is about name recognition and the reason why Bernie Sanders is their number two is because they just know who Bernie Sanders is now. He's the most popular politician in America. So what this tells us is strategically the way that we combat this and we make Bernie their number one is we educate these people about policy. If we are going and knocking on doors for Bernie for phone banking and text banking for Bernie we have an opportunity to convert these voters because this tells me that they haven't decided to back Biden 100% and they're still gettable. All we have to do is educate them about Bernie's platform, about his record and I think these people are winnable. Now another factor that I think is helping Biden here is he's still coasting off the nostalgia from the Obama years but what we need to do as Bernie supporters strategically is convince these people that there's a real fundamental difference between Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders and how Bernie would actually improve their lives whereas Joe Biden is about maintaining the status quo and how he's actually vulnerable. If electability is what people care about which is another aspect and maybe they're voting for Joe Biden because of electability we need to convince them that we just tried this strategy we just tried running a centrist like Joe Biden in 2016 and we have a reality television show star as president so what we need to do is get someone who is the antithesis of Donald Trump because that's going to be our best bet that's going to be our ticket to the white house so this is certainly a poll that is weird it doesn't make sense at first but if you think about it just going off of name recognition that is such a powerful force and now thankfully it's working to our advantage to a degree however Joe Biden he just he has more name recognition than Bernie and as a result in spite of his garbage record this is really benefiting him being part of the Obama team is benefiting him so grapple with these polling results look at this data and don't just reject it try to adapt and figure out a way to reach these people because this is a good sign if Bernie's their number two they just are misinformed about the policy differences between Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders so the goal as Sanders supporters is to reach them and ultimately convert them now there's still time the debates I think really is going to make or break this primary but we need to do what we can to get the message out that if you are in support of these popular policies like Medicare for all Biden does not support them Biden does not believe we should legalize marijuana nationwide he's out of touch so we have to tell them and educate them about Joe Biden and I think it's as easy as that now maybe we'll get other results that demonstrate maybe it's not name recognition maybe you know it's some other reason but nonetheless this is what we have currently to work with and we need to use this information to our advantage and when these people over simply put win them over