 So, we're about a week out from Super Tuesday and about a third of all delegates are up for grabs. Here in Texas alone, over 200 delegates are at play, making this state the second largest delegate trove on March 3rd behind California. In other words, Texas will be awarding more delegates that day than the first four states to already vote combined. How candidates place here in the state may determine who starts leaving and staying in the race. So question looming over all of this is whether Bernie Sanders has enough momentum heading into Super Tuesday to eventually go on to win the nomination. And so the question that I kind of wanted to start off with and post to you guys is how much will that momentum here in Texas determine how Sanders does in the state and how other candidates who are still in the running perform? I get to define momentum. Thanks. Thanks, man. Yeah. You know, I think the answer is a, Jonathan, who knows? But I think you have to give Sanders some significant advantage and they're doing pretty smart things in terms of exploiting the advantage they have. I think it's interesting to try to operationalize what we mean by momentum. I mean, I don't really know what that is in some level other than the increase in media attention. But one thing you have to look at as a smart strategy on the Sanders campaign is they spent the weekend here. Everyone else was somewhere else in the country kind of because they had to be. And here the Sanders campaign was fishing where the fish are by being in the big cities in Texas, particularly hitting El Paso, San Antonio. And remember the delegate count in Texas is not equally distributed. It's proportional to the Democratic vote by Senate district because elections, as we've learned, has to be absolutely as complicated as possible. And you know, even in Travis County where, you know, they range, the allocation ranges from two to ten and they were in areas where there were lots of delegates and it's smart. Yeah. I mean, I've been struck by Senator Sanders' travel choices. I kind of have a maxim when it comes to covering primaries and that is don't listen to what they say, watch their feet and watch their bank accounts. And what I mean by that is their rhetoric is often cheap, but you can measure their intent about where they're competing, whether it's within a state or whether it's in a multi-state primary by watching where they're spending their money on the air and on the ground and where they're going physically, where they're sending the candidate. And you could just sort of see in the days before Nevada, they kept having Sanders across the border over to California for events. And then even before they had finished counting the votes in Nevada, well, in fairness they still haven't finished counting the votes in Nevada, but in the early processes of counting the votes in Nevada, you know, Bernie left the state and was in San Antonio. If you watched his victory speech on Saturday night, it was in San Antonio. And that to me was sort of striking because he wants to lay down a marker here and there's just not a lot of time between, you know, Nevada and Super Tuesday. So he's been here. I think the other reason why he wanted to get here, hit all those markets, and by the way, he hit, yeah, El Paso, San Antonio, Houston and Austin in a few days. And the previous week on Valentine's Day, he was in Dallas or the Metroplex broadly. So he's basically gotten to all the major media markets in the state in about a week's spam. And I think part of the reason why he wanted to do that is because he wanted to have flexibility this week to get to South Carolina more. Now, for a long time, Senator Sanders had downplayed South Carolina. He fared poorly there in 2016, and I think he viewed Biden as very strong in the state. And so the sort of standard Sanders line was that we're going to win Iowa and New Hampshire and Nevada. We're going to do well in South Carolina. And he would always say do well in South Carolina or do better than people expect in South Carolina. He would never promise to win there. Well, something funny changed over the weekend. He won Nevada so big, and this field is so fractured that I think he sees South Carolina as his chance to land a knockout blow on Biden and the rest of the field. And we have the story in today's paper, a little plug here. There we go. You can still get the broad sheet here in Austin right there on the off lead. But the lead of the story is he's playing to win in South Carolina. His top advisor says that to us on the record, they are going to be up in every media market in the state there this week. They are adding events in South Carolina, even as we speak, Ed Morales there to get him in the state. Because they see that if they beat Biden there, Biden's effectively done. And then Super Tuesday basically ratifies his nomination. And so I think that's a long way of saying, I think part of the reason why he wanted to be in Texas early was to give him the flexibility of spending more time in South Carolina to potentially win a state he never thought he was going to win. Yeah. And you're kind of getting at something that I should have asked at the front end of this question, which is, you know, Elizabeth Warren has had people on the ground for her campaign here in the state since August. Mike Bloomberg has easily the largest campaign operation here in the state as he's been playing, you know, to win these Super Tuesday states. I mean, how do those two, if you just want to kind of pull those two candidates out of the race and kind of highlight what they've been doing here in the state, how does that compare to, again, let's, I was referring to it broadly as Sanders' momentum, maybe it's something else. But Alex, do you have any thoughts or takeaways on how the on the ground game that people like Warren or Bloomberg and maybe more recently Pete Buttigieg have been doing compared to what Sanders' travel schedule and, you know, recent recent showings in early voting states have kind of prompted us to think. Right. I think there are two types of presidential candidates at this point. There are the candidates who were in Texas and in other Super Tuesday states prior to Iowa and New Hampshire. Then there are the candidates who are kind of parachuting in now, I'd say Buttigieg is in that camp, Klobuchar is in that camp. And they're coming in here and trying to build this ground game kind of a late scramble before March 3rd. As far as how, you know, what really matters, I mean, we haven't seen how Bloomberg will perform so far. We won't see that until Super Tuesday. But he has built the most prominent ground game in the state. Warren had that, then Bloomberg came along and opened a bunch of state offices, was hiring daily, announced that he would have folks on the ground who's opening all these offices again. So it'll be interesting to see if he can cut into any of the support that Sanders has got or any of the support that even Biden has in the state. But I feel like that might be too soon to tell right now. Given how South Carolina plays out this coming weekend, I mean, let's just start with you, Jonathan, who, you know, let's just say that the field is still as is by the time Super Tuesday comes around. Who has the most to lose and the most to gain in Texas? Oh, well. I think Biden would certainly have the most to gain here. If he could win this state, it would be a major setback for Sanders, who after Nevada, I think has high hopes and states that have large populations of Hispanic voters. And so if Biden was to win here, that would sort of, I think, reestablish him as the chief alternative to Sanders, somebody that can make inroads in diverse states and sort of throw a sort of obstacle in the way of Bernie's perceived path to the nomination. I think the most to lose here, certainly Bernie, given his margin in Nevada, a state with somewhat similar demographics to Texas. And also, I think Bloomberg, who spent a lot of time here, certainly a lot of money here, and I think he wants to show that he can win big states. And obviously, this is one of them. I think not winning here would be a challenge for Bloomberg. But look, I mean, you just looked at the back of the envelope. Sanders wins California and Texas and wins them by healthy margins, especially in those parts of the state that are delegate rich. He probably creates a lead that's hard for anybody to overcome. I kind of liken Democratic delegate math to a wishbone offense. For those in this room who are Texans of the old school, you'll appreciate this. It'll give you some bad memories of Oklahoma games past. When you have a wishbone offense and you're down three touchdowns in the third quarter, it can be very hard to come back because there's only so much you can gain back on the ground if you don't have an air attack. It's hard to climb out of a hole in a wishbone. Democratic primaries, it's hard to come back in proportional primaries because you can only gain so many delegates as you come back because you're usually splitting them with whoever's still in the lead. So it's hard to come back. That's why these early races are so important. And if you hear folks say it's still early, yeah, but that's kind of like the old Yogi Bear Line. It gets early late, it gets late early, I guess. Had it backwards too early in the morning for me. But it gets late early because, again, if you establish a lead, that is a tough thing to overcome as long as you have a solid base of support and you yourself are gaining delegates in every contest going forward. And certainly Bernie Sanders, if nothing else, had a solid base of support. So that's why Super Tuesday is so critical. It's why California and Texas are so crucial. If he does win big in both of these states, he gets that delegate lead and he still has a split field, it's hard delegate-wise to catch up to him. Doesn't mean he's gonna get 50 plus one at the end of the primary, which is obviously the big question now, when you get a majority or a plurality. But it is hard to catch up, especially, and we haven't talked about this yet, if folks won't drop out. This is the big question, will people drop out? Nobody wants to drop out because they all say, well, why should I drop out? And you can always find some rationalization. I won the second state, or I came in third in the first state, or I had a great debate performance, I raised $14 billion in the last three hours. You can always find some rationalization to stay in. That's the nature of these campaigns. But if there's no coalescence, if you won't drop out of the race, because the other guy should, or the other gal should, then guess what? You're splitting delegates, Bernie's getting his share, usually the most, and we are where we are. I'm just trying to think of a basketball metaphor to add to the baseball and football metaphors. Well, it was more this yogi that was baseball. That's just a figure. Yeah. You know, I'm off to the anyways. I think I would just focus in, I think there's nothing to really disagree within that, I mean, but I am interested, of course not, but I'm interested in, I'm very interested in Sanders, and I'm sorry, I'm very interested in Bloomberg, same thing, not because I think he's gonna do well, but because, I mean, it's, you know, it's kind of one of the most interesting test cases in an election with a lot of them in terms of how he's doing. And in our polling, and in most of the polling, Bloomberg's ability to just sort of leap over all of these people that have been campaigning for a year and polling returns, you know, what is his limit? And so, and Texas is a really good test case for him, because you would think if he was gonna run well somewhere, this would be one of the places he would run well. Yeah, I mean, especially if he can, you know, win votes via TV advertising, but I gotta say, the Nevada results should be eye-opening for Michael Bloomberg. Tom Steyer outspent everybody else running, collectively, you can add them all up, and he still outspent them, and by a large sum, I think he put $15 million on Nevada TV, and guys, there's basically two markets in Nevada, there's Las Vegas and there's Reno, that's the state. There are two markets. He put up $15 million on TV. It didn't get him anything. I mean, I think he got, like, what, 5%, 4% there? And he was polling actually at, like, 10-11 for a while, Steyer was in Nevada, but in reality, I mean, a little different in the caucus than the primary, but still, that, if I'm Michael Bloomberg and I see that kind of spending and that kind of polling strength on paper versus the reality of what he got, I'd be a little concerned. Yeah. Jim, UT in conjunction with the Texas Tribune a few weeks ago put out a poll showing Sanders leading Biden. Maybe it was for the first time that you guys, in the series of polls that you guys have been doing, leading Biden by two points, as within the margin of error. You know, something that's kind of been on my mind, and I think others here, is if you had conducted that poll, let's say, today, or maybe after Nevada, how would that poll look different? Well, you know, it will certainly look different. I think the trend lines that we caught in that poll, and, you know, trying to poll right now, I mean, no matter when you're polling, you're in the middle of a very noisy environment. So we were polling during the impeachment vote, Iowa happened early in the cycle, New Hampshire happened a couple days after we came out of the field. So I think we've seen those trend lines continue in which, you know, Sanders continues to consolidate his support. Biden continues to, you know, not so much collapse here, but certainly not grow at all. I mean, I think he was down a point between February and October. And I think that's why I agree with Jonathan in terms of, you know, Texas is a real big test. I mean, this is pretty obvious in terms of two per Tuesday. But Texas is a particularly acute test for Biden as well. And so I think those trends are almost certainly continuing, and that's also why I'm interested in Bloomberg. Bloomberg, was it 10 in that poll? You know, does he have room to grow or not? So I think if we were to go in there, and there's been another poll since then that showed that, I think, maybe morning consult or somebody like that, but, you know, that showed Sanders a little higher, Biden's still fairly flat, and everyone else kind of stuck. You know, and I think, you know, the other story that I think Cassie actually, you know, that Alex actually explains very well, you know, why that's important is that the ground game of Warren doesn't seem to have done much here. I think they've kind of peeked out. And, you know, Buttigieg and Klobuchar coming and trying to do something now seems to me to be, you know, completely ineffectual, frankly. I mean, I could be wrong, but I were not seeing any traction in the polling. And part of it is they just don't have any presence here. There's not enough money. There's, you know, not enough ground game, not enough vast investment in now, not enough time. Right. Another question, I think we briefly talked on just touched on, you know, the delegates and how Texas has a quite confusing process. And I'm curious, how do you guys think that that that the way that Texas hands out its delegates, I think there's 228 up for grabs, 79 at large, and then 30 ish for GOP and Democratic held Senate seats. And then, you know, they're all dispersed in terms of a candidate needing to hit 15% even start to before they can even start to think about getting that kind of where they get a certain number of those delegates. Alex, how is the or maybe just pose this broadly to the panel? How is that delegate strata or how is that process for how they hand out delegates been informing campaign strategies as they've been here? No, we're talking about Sanders leading in the polls by didn't close second. But how do you think they're approaching getting the kind of delegates that they need to be getting here in Texas? Well, from my understanding, and please correct me if I'm getting anything wrong here. The areas where you can pick up the most delegates are in more suburban districts from what I understand. I think in Austin, here in Kirk Watson's a Senate seat, he has the most delegates, I think available for pick up 10 delegates. Right. So we see a lot of presidential candidates who are visiting the state visiting those more suburban areas where there are more delegates to pick up. As far as those rural areas of the state, I haven't seen too many Democratic candidates actually going into the suburbs and talking to voter going into the rural areas of Texas and talking to voters there. But I mean, that's where I think Bloomberg's advantage comes in. He doesn't have to physically go down to these areas of the state, but he could just flood the rural airwaves with Bloomberg ads. And that might speak volumes to people out there because they're not seeing any prominent ground game from other Democrats, but they're seeing this one candidate who's speaking to them, whether they agree with it or not. But it might cause them to pay attention to that candidate more. Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, sort of alluding to this earlier, there are some funny little hidden pockets out there that you wouldn't think people would go that, you know, actually show some of the underlying changes that we've been seeing in the state in the last few years in which there are districts where Republicans still hold the Senate seat. But they're in the range of the they're in the five to nine range in terms of the number of doubt of delegates that are allocated. So and they are they're sort of those suburban exerbinaries outside of outside of Houston and Dallas for example. But the trick about that is particularly with Bloomberg in the race is balancing what you get by showing up and what you get by just saturating the media markets. And you still come back to the same problem you have here. You know, Jonathan was referring to the fact that you know, Nevada has essentially two media markets that you're going to pay attention to a lot more than that in Texas. And it's just more logistically complicated. And so to hit those suburban districts and the suburban and exerbin pockets of votes, you still wind up doing things like the Sanders campaign did, which is making appearances in the major cities. And, you know, I mean, Jonathan had the other paper here too that had Bernie said the local paper that had Bernie Sanders on the front page. A visual aid, please, sir, if you could give it another play. I mean, that's, you know, for a lot of folks. That's yeah, that's in it. You know, this is in every supermarket and every major urban and suburban market, not because the statesman is there, mind you, but in the other major papers. And that does a lot of work for you in reaching those those not what we would think of as those nonintuitive pockets of votes, I think. And you know, if you're going to try the, you know, the rural markets, I mean, you know, go with God, but if you're going to go to Cal Celigar's district center, you know, 31, there's two delegates there up near Amarillo, Midland, the art vote and Marfa. Well, the hipster delegates are double in this process, right? Under the rules, you get double delegates from Marfa because it's so it's so cool. Yeah, exactly. There are no needs that badly. Yes. But I think hip, I think my Bloomberg, so switching gears slightly, I want to talk about, let's again, let's go ahead and imagine a scenario in which Sanders is at the top of the ticket come November, and he's taking on Donald Trump. Here at the state level, there's been a whole lot of talk about whether Democrats can flip the Texas House. And obviously, the big prize there is Democrats would have a seat at the table in the once in a decade redistricting process. So Alex, I know that you've been covering this a little bit just a lot of talk on the ground about coalition building. Would a Sanders or maybe the better question is, how would Sanders affect these Democrat chances of flipping the Texas House, you know, some in the party, that there's been some talk about, you know, he's too polarizing, his message can't resonate with as big of a, you know, a wing or a faction of the party is as maybe as needed to carry those down ballot candidates into office at the Texas House level. So we recently got rid of one punch voting. So I think that's helpful to know because you can't just go into a ballot box and say, oh, I'm going to vote all Democrat or all Republican, you have to look at the first cycle, right? Which, yeah, so you have to look at each candidate individually and assess whether you want them in office. So I feel like some, it's very likely that you see these more moderate Republicans or maybe even moderate Democrats, maybe not feeling super comfortable with a Sanders presidency, maybe not feeling super comfortable with a Trump presidency. So you're going to have to assess that but as far as how that will affect down ballot, I don't really know if there will be an impact because you're you can vote for someone different at the top and then kind of change your vote as you go down the ballot. Jim, do you have thoughts? Yeah, I mean, well, I mean, on one hand, there's obviously massive bedwetting going on among Democrats about Sanders in terms of the Democratic establishment or ranting and raving if you're James Carville. You know, look, at some point, you have to admit, you know, you have to recognize the Sanders is performing in the polls with Democratic voters. And he's performing increasingly broadly. I mean, as Jonathan was alluding to, they're making inroads in the African American vote. And that is where you need the expansion, in part, because if you look at the, you know, we did a pretty detailed breakdown of the last poll in Texas. And, you know, the the heart of Sanders support in the heart of the sentiment that the Democratic Democratic candidates in the state are not liberal enough or progressive enough now is among college educated white urban liberals. And so that's not where the growth needs to be. So I think in terms of thinking about what's going to happen down ballot, I think there's doubts on both sides. I mean, not to go too far back. But I mean, you know, one, we did, you know, the legislature did away with one punch voting on the general assumption that it was going to help Republicans. And then Republicans started getting wiped out again in the in some of these urban elections, and then started having trouble in the suburbs as Alex is alluding to. And now there's some buyer's remorse on that, which we saw was kind of not the headline. But that was one of the topics of conversation between the speaker and Michael, Michael Quinn Sullivan that perhaps that wasn't such a good idea for Republicans. So I don't think anybody really has a good model for what the impact of straight ticket voting is going to be. I was been on panels with Republican consultants, Democratic consultants, and you ask this question and they go, Yeah, I don't know. You know, we know there's going to be ballot roll off there always is even with one punch voting. I mean, it stands to reason that's going to that would go up all things being equal. But with, you know, if this turns out to be a Trump Sanders race, all things aren't equal. Who knows, right? I mean, a lot of concern, obviously, about Sanders on top of the ticket among traditional Democrats. I think you'll see that especially acute in Texas. It's because of the nature of the democratic growth here. I'm not telling you anything you guys don't know. But, you know, the democratic growth in the midterms here came from suburban slash urban districts in the state that historically had been more Republican leaning, but that were coiled from Trump's brand of public anism and have become sort of Lizzie Fletcher or calling out, you know, all red Democrats, at least temporarily. Do they stay in the democratic column down the ballot if Bernie's on top of the ticket? I think that's the fear of a lot of Democrats is that that just that makes it difficult for the voters who voted Democrat in the midterms to stick with them in 2020, if Bernie's on top of the ticket, and it creates pressure on the all reds and the Fletchers to pull off some pretty, you know, fancy legwork to sort of separate themselves from the top of the ticket. You know, I would add a caveat to that though a little bit because one thing that helped Democrats in those suburban races, particularly in terms of, you know, remember a lot of those gains that was a midterm election, and the democratic gains were in sub state level districts, and they were in districts in those areas that were rapidly growing. And it's still an open question. You know, to my mind, what how much of that was swing voters? How much of that was actually? Well, the change in the composition of the electorate, even if they were not first time voters, but new voters in that district, because those districts do not look the same by a long shot as they did when they were drawn in 2011. Those redistricting maps were very ambitious. They've now been sort of exhausted in a lot of places. And so you know, I mean, I think all things being equal, of course, you know, nominating a, you know, a presidential candidate that's not been a Democrat for most of his life and is on one end of the ideological spectrum. I mean, there are clear hazards there. But I'm not sure, you know, we're we have to work, you know, the worry there are so much swing voters, is it his democratic turnout? Yeah, and I guess to that end, I mean, Alex, if we want to talk about messages, candidate messages to the extent it matters, I mean, whose message among the field of candidates now helps or hurts Texas Democrats the most? I would say that Sanders' message is obviously different from a Mike Bloomberg message. But as far as hurting Democrats up and down the ballot, TVD, I'd say, I think that a lot of, and I think you alluded to this earlier, that a lot of moderate Democrats are saying, you know, we need to coalesce behind one moderate candidate, neither two, in order to take down Sanders. But as he said, like, no one, no one wants to drop out, no one wants to be the person to drop out, help coalesce behind maybe a more moderate candidate who could help down ballot candidates. So unless and lesser until that happens, it's hard to see basically how that will pan out. Yeah, I think that the question of Sanders versus somebody else like Biden or Bloomberg on top of the ticket gets to the age old issue of turnout versus persuasion. I mean, this is like, this is old hat for the political science crew. But, you know, the Bernie nomination would help Democrats in the sense that they would not have a mobilization problem, especially with younger voters, who would be eager to come to the polls because not only would they have a chance to vote out Donald Trump, who they find appalling, but they would be excited about the nominee broadly. Bloomberg or Biden, you may, you may make it easier to keep some of those folks in the all red and Fletcher districts on board. But do you galvanize voters, especially younger voters in a way that you typically need? And that would be the challenge to me. No. This is why Obama was a unique figure for Democrats, right? Because he did both mobilization and persuasion, right? I mean, that is what is so essential in modern politics is a nominee who can both galvanize turnout among people who otherwise are not terrible political and get them excited, but also appeal to those folks who are broadly in the sort of political middle. And Obama was able to do both of those things twice. And obviously, Hillary couldn't couldn't do that. And, you know, John Kerry couldn't do that in 04. And that's the challenge for Democrats this time around is, is there somebody in the field that can do both? And there doesn't seem to be one right now. And now you make that might not be necessary against a deeply flawed and weak incumbent. But it's harder if you nominate someone that can do one but not the other. Jonathan, you covered the 2016 presidential race pretty yeah, I'm still covered. Are there any parallels? Are there any parallels? And I guess it just some things that we're talking about now seem to deja vu almost my second yogi barric quote of the morning, right? deja vu all over again. It's remarkable how similar the circumstances are. It was really clear to me for the first time when we did a poll actually, the more registered to the poll and sort of early to mid January, we did a poll later in January, in Iowa. And you can see what's happening like Bernie had taken a lead. And he's taken a lead in part because the would be Bernie alternatives were fractured. And so you could sort of see it then and now it's just sort of come to life and in Technicolor, it's extraordinary. You've got somebody who has a really intense appeal in a faction of the party that has not proven to be a majority of the party yet, but as an intense faction of the party, running against more conventional opponents who are dividing votes, who all have convinced themselves that they would be the best alternative and that they shouldn't drop out. And who by the way spent much of the past six months, not targeting the front runner, but targeting each other, because they had also convinced themselves that I've got to win my so called lane first, and then I can figure out what to do with that sort of ideological candidate who is a little bit out there, but probably won't be there when all of a sudden done. Well, guess what? That is that that person is now the front runner. I mean, who can forget Bernie Sanders being used in the debates last year as a foil, somebody at least Bernie is honest about his play. And I mean, he's telling us up front, he's going to raise taxes. I mean, he was not used as somebody or was not seen as somebody who was the candidate to be. He was seen as somebody who was kind of a lever to attack other candidates. And now here we are, where he's become the sort of unambiguous front runner. And also I think in both scenarios it underscores how ossified the traditional parties have become and how the perceived notions of establishment strength have really, really faded. There's just not much that can be done when you've got a candidate with intense support running in a divided field. And like every campaign, it doesn't matter who's winning momentum drives momentum wins beget wins. And if you are winning in a primary people like winners and they rally around winners, I mean, look at the size of Bernie's crowds over the weekend. And so, you know, he basically splits Iowa with Buddha judge. He wins New Hampshire. And then he wins Nevada Bay. Those things, those things pick up off each other. And that's why he's now going for the win in South Carolina, because he thinks that he's in a different place than he was there a month ago. Why? Because he's three, you know, when it comes to the popular vote. And so he has the sheen of a winner now. And that matters in primaries. And so yes, to answer your question, it is, it is very reminiscent of four years ago. And we're now dealing with the same questions. Will this go to a convention? Can the candidate be stopped at the convention by party insiders? I think it will be difficult. What is different? And this is important. We mentioned this earlier. The delegate rules are different. Republicans have winner take all their capitalists, man. If you get the most votes in a state, you know, South Dakota or Utah, whatever, you're getting every delegate in that state, you know, Democrats like to share trophies, right? You know, you had a good soccer year, everybody gets trophy, right? Democrats split their their delegates, right? So they don't do winner take all. And so every state is proportional. So it doesn't matter who the candidates if they're not winning, you know, 95 to five, they're gonna they're gonna share delegates. So that does ensure a longer race, usually, to get to the nomination. Jim, you were here in 2016. I was here. I wasn't I wasn't as many places as Jonathan. I mean, you know, I mean, directing polls, you know, what I was thinking is he was discussing this is, you know, the incredible capacity for humans to not learn in terms of what's going on on the Democratic side in this weird replication of what they saw. And I think totally, you know, it's, it's, it's interesting to see that dynamic replace itself. And I was talking to folks before we started, you know, the human psychology of the people that are still in the race and the inability to stand down, even though you're there's a rational reason to do that is pretty incredible. And it underlines, I think the difficulty of designing rules that funnel competition in a in a productive way. I mean, one could make the argument. I mean, Tom Perez has been getting a lot of heat and some of that's deserve and some of it's not. But I think whatever happens here, the debrief is going to include looking at the way that the candidate field was winnowed on the Democratic side, you know, to do the kind, you know, pick up on the contrast that Jonathan was setting up. And, you know, I'm probably not the, you know, I'm the last person in some ways to say this, but, you know, the way that they incorporated polling into that was totally crazy because it it ultimately overvalued name recognition in the final account too early. So, you know, Biden's Biden's early running was inflated because of his name recognition. It inflated his strength as a candidate. And it made a front runner out of somebody that frankly has not proven to have all these tools in the kit to be a front runner in my view. And he was a paper tiger and they're they're paying for that. You know, and if you think about what this race would look like and not because I was a champion of either one of these candidates. But imagine how different the dynamic in this race would be if Biden had been forced out earlier, maybe even Buttigieg, who I think, you know, is becoming kind of this also a weird kind of wizard of boss candidate. And instead, Kamala Harris, Cory Booker, you know, not to play to the home crowd, maybe even Castro had lasted longer and been able how about Bethel? So I, you know, I think that that's that's an example, I suppose, but stop raising El Paso, but another but another can, you know, if the way of Canada looked differently, and there were, you know, some African American candidates vying for the African American vote, who were actually recognized by the majority of African American candidates, which, you know, that which Harrison and Booker never had time to achieve. Now I'm not saying I have another perfect alternative strategy, but the strategy they used to win no candidates in retrospect is not going to is not going to age well. So I think there will be a lot of critiques about the Democrat nominating system, because Democrats love doing that. If Bernie is the nominee. I think some of those are valid. I'd make a larger point, though, I think celebrities so dominates politics today, and the capacity to to be famous or to enjoy fame, the harness fame is the dominant rule today. I, Barack Obama and Donald Trump don't have a lot in common. But one of the things they do have in common is they were celebrities. They were celebrities. And that is everything in today's politics. Look, when somebody like me sees this paper in the hotel this morning, that's a good headline for burning. And that's like, that's going to be great in the primary. And then I'm thinking to myself, how many folks under the age of 40 who live in suburban Austin are going to look at the hard copy of this paper today? Right? I mean, it kills me because I work for newspaper. I love print papers. But look at that. And you know what does break through though? Celebrity, being famous, being viral online, being part of the cultural fabric. And part of me thinks, yeah, if the democratic rules were different, maybe a Cory Booker, maybe one of the governors could have sort of broken through. But part of the problem is that they weren't famous. I mean, Steve Bullock in Montana, okay, he had a great resume. Oh my gosh, two term democratic governor from a red state in the West, you know, in rural America. Guess what, if you can, if you're not famous, or if you can't become famous, a la mayor Pete, you're going to have a hard time. But that's just sort of the rules of politics today. And I think if Bernie becomes the nominee, it'll be in part because he's a cultural phenomenon. He's 100% name ID, or almost, you know, in this country, he has a he's an SNL character, you know, and that matters. That really matters. If he was to walk down 6th Street, everybody would know Bernie Sanders. The college kids who are just down there having a few pops like they would know who he is, right? I mean, you can't say that about many candidates. And that that I think matters. And I think that even more than the debate rules, I think is increasingly what drives politics today. What I would say to that, though, is that I think they all know that I think the Democrats are there. And what you do is you design processes to balance that out. And I think I would agree that, you know, we're not on a point. It's also new in that sense that nobody knows how to do that, right? And so you know, there's going to be a conversation, I think, not now and not even probably in four years about, you know, is this the road we want to go down? Is there anything we can do about it? And maybe we can. I'm not sure you can. I'm not either. Yeah, I just think politics is now in the grip of the celebrity culture. And I think that that's what drives this stuff now more than anything. People don't care about your your resume, your experience or qualifications. You know, Barack Obama had been in the Senate for about a half an hour. It didn't matter. That wasn't the point, right? Donald Trump had never served in any office in his life, was pretty open about the fact that he didn't know a lot of stuff about how government worked. Didn't matter. Mayor Pete, 37 year old mayor of a city the size of Lubbock to be generous, didn't matter. And in fact, the fact he was mayor of South Bend was almost beside the point, right? He caught on because he appealed to Democratic donors and like a third of a Democratic base in a way that like a lot of Democrats historically do. He was impressive, articulate and made folks feel good about the future. That's like the secret sauce for a third of the Democratic Party, right? The fact that he was a young guy and was mayor of this city was like who cares about how many budgets he balanced or what his record on criminal justice was? Like no, he was good at a town hall and he speaks well. Like that is the whole deal. And the idea that like people are now, well, he didn't have sort of three terms. I mean, you hear me Klobuchar rattling off all the bills that she sponsored. And there's some folks that care about that, but most just don't, right? They just they don't care that much about the fact that you've gotten substantive things done in your time in office as a qualification for higher office. That's just the trend that we're on, you know? I mean, but I think a celebrity becomes, I mean, just not to beat this to death, but a celebrity becomes an asset, though. I mean, you mentioned Beto earlier, there are there are limit cases, right? Because then celebrity becomes like, oh, I need to become a celebrity to do this. And you know, I think Beto O'Rourke ran into the limits of your one's ability to do that. Now, one could say he just ran into a bigger celebrity, a bigger and better celebrity, which he did. That was it. I mean, again, there is a slice of the Democratic Party that always wants to fall in love, right? Always. And it's they're not ideological, all right? They're not they're not the sort of Bernie crowd. They just want to feel good about the country, the future of the country, and the capacity to be better as a country. And you can go back in the history of Democratic politics and you can find these candidates. And Beto wanted to be that candidate, right? And then guess what? A funny thing happened in Austin, Texas. And Mayor Pete came down here at South by Southwest and had that town hall on CNN. And that third of the Democratic Party that wants to fall in love, found a new bright, shiny guy to fall in love with, right? Goodbye, Beto. Hello, Pete. We have a few more minutes just for discussion here and then we'll turn it to you guys for questions. So you have stuff start thinking about it. We will get to you here in a moment. Want to finish with a theoretical question? Those are my favorites. Alex, Jonathan, are people starting to talk about, you know, what happens if we get to Milwaukee in August? And Sanders, let's just say he he wins Texas. He wins California and somehow comes up short from having a majority of the delegates. I mean, what happens? And just asking if people are talking about it and what are what people are starting to maybe theorize happens. Because we'll be here before we know it. I don't know if I can speak too much to this, but I did. I was at Sanders, Israeli and Austin yesterday, and I did talk to a few voters and ask the question, you know, has Sanders built up this momentum in the early state so far? That'll make it hard, if not impossible for another Democrat to, you know, take him down from this top spot that he seems to have. And one of the answers I got was like, well, yes and no, he's built this momentum. Yes, he's going to take this into Texas and does South Carolina, all these other states. But that's what happened in 2016. He had all the had all this momentum early on and then Hillary just kind of swooped in and ended up winning the Democratic nomination. So I definitely think there is a question, you know, how big that momentum, this early momentum will be in a couple months from now. So I think we're going to have to wait until May, June, just really see if he's able to capitalize on that or if there's another candidate that's going to swoop in. I don't know who that candidate would be. I don't think anyone knows at this point, but it'll be interesting to see if he can maintain that lead that he has right now or if someone else will kind of come, you know, in Milwaukee and where you serve what Bernie has so far. Every political reporter wants to cover a convention. OK, it's in our DNA. We are hardwired every four years to do a reandance praying for a contested convention of back room intrigue and deals and betrayals and the whole nine yards. So we're all secretly cheering and rooting for that. But kidding aside, a lot of us will ride again on what happens here in California and the other states on Super Tuesday. Bernie wins overwhelmingly. I think it's going to be hard to deny him the nomination and he'll probably wrap it up much sooner than the convention. But if this is still a divided party and given those delegate rules that we talked about, then I think it's very possible that we'll go into Milwaukee in which nobody has a majority of the delegates. Now, the question looming over all this is if Bernie isn't the lead, does he have 48 percent of the delegates needed or does he have 33 percent? It's a very different scenario, right? If it's 48 and he's on the doorstep of a majority, it's really hard to deny him the nomination. If he's got basically a third or a little more, it's a different ballgame because then he's more of a factional candidate. He's not somebody that's been able of the course of six months to unite the party. He's somebody who's been able to sort of sort of energize a faction of the party. And I think that can make it much more interesting. And the great irony of ironies is that those super delegates who got so much attention in 2008 and then in 16 because of the controversy over their role, the Sanders engineer reforms of the DNC after 16 made it so the superdelegates did not have a vote on the first ballot. They have now been rendered mute on the first ballot. The superdelegates, which to professional memories, basically is members of Congress, some state lawmakers, governors, labor leader, sort of party insider types, former presidents. They have a vote only on the second ballot. That's only when their vote is binding. So they only come into play in the scenario in which somebody does not have a majority. So they could play a crucial role after all, despite the efforts to emasculate them if they are, if they are needed on the second ballot. And, you know, given who they are, and if Bernie is somewhere well short of a majority, I think that they may be open to a different option. Now, that would cause havoc in the party and the Bernie folks would scream bloody murder. I mean, it'd be the melee on Lake Michigan this summer. I'm already seeing it in my head. But you can certainly see a scenario where they would try to find some kind of compromise deal in which, you know, we're going to nominate somebody else, but we'll put a sort of stand-in-guess person as VP or something like that, right? But we're long ways from that. And we'll have more information, I think, a week from tomorrow here. Yeah, I mean, I have the counter-reaction in the sense that, you know, getting older and talking to a lot of reporters and watching everybody chomp at the bit for a brokered convention and that it never happens. It is a little more likely this time, I think. But I think two things. One is, you know, so what Jonathan alludes to the, you know, it's going to be hard to deny Sanders in the, especially in the Democratic Party, the nomination if he goes in with, you know, close to half or more, depending on what he has. And there's no clear, you know, consensus candidate on the other side. And even if there is, if he's got a prohibitive majority, it's that, it's prohibitive. The other thing to remember is, you know, this is where going back to 2016 matters. Don't overestimate the courage or the dedication of political elites here. If the Sanders train starts to start to leave the station, a bunch of people that have been, you know, again, wetting their pants or, you know, talking, projecting doomsday scenarios about Sanders, there will be defections and people will get on board. You know, I mean, people will start seeing it as who their interest. Yeah. Yeah. The Chris Christie. Remember, Chris, yeah, got on board with Trump pretty early last time. I mean, Mick Mulvaney. And that was an important. But I mean, early the primary, though, like that, who is that indicator of, well, maybe we'll be OK with Bernie after all. Like, who is that governor or senator who, you know, if the party wants Bernie, I can see where the party's going with this, you know, who is that Chris Christie figure this time, who kind of lays hands on on Bernie as this is this is OK after all. And by the way, I can see how the wind's blowing at my party. Right. And I'm going to go in that direction. And I may not be president. Maybe a cabinet thing would be nice. Who is it? We would love to turn it over to questions now. So if you have one, raise your hand. Jess will bring you a mic. Good morning. Each of you spoke to this, but I would wonder if each of you would speak in more detail about the effect of the Sanders on the ability of the Democrats to retain the majority of the U.S. House and hopefully obtain the majority of the U.S. Senate. Some analyses of the states where the Democrats hope to have a chance to take this U.S. Senate look at a program of Medicaid for all and no higher education tuition and leave in debt, but particularly on 60 minutes last night, all the people that Bernie is going to raise the taxes on really concerns an awful lot of the Democrat supporters in the states, which they hope they can take from the Democrats. If each of you would speak to that as to whether that Beltway inside the Beltway issue really has any effect ultimately, but it seems like we're talking about two different things. Who's more likely to get the Democratic nominee for president? But what is the effect really on something very critical? And that is, as the Democrats say, getting rid of Moscow, Mitch and trying to get control of the U.S. Senate as well as retaining control of the U.S. House. So how does a Sanders on the top of the ticket impact Democrats' chances for flipping the U.S. Senate and retaining majority in the U.S. House? Well, I don't think it would be helpful for Doug Jones in Alabama. This is a safe bet. But look, it didn't matter who the Democrats. I mean, the Democrats could have exhumed Bear Bryant and they could have nominated him and he wouldn't have cured Alabama this year as a Democrat. So that probably that was probably already cast. But the Sanders deals asymmetrical, right? Because there's no question that in some of these states, you just take Colorado, which, you know, Democrats have really done well in recent years because of the suburban realignment to the Democratic Party. You know, could that create challenges in suburban Denver? Yes. Would John Hickenlooper be strong enough, given his status as a former governor to overcome it, perhaps, but it creates challenges. You look at Arizona. It's fascinating, right? Because Sanders has deep appeal among Hispanics, younger Hispanics, especially that could help in Arizona. At the same time, there's a lot of voters in Phoenix and suburban Phoenix who voted for Kirsten Cinema, who are open to voting for Democrats. It may be harder if Barney's on top of the ticket there. Maine was a fascinating place. Maine is America. Like the two Americas are both in Maine. You've got like rural Maine vast expanses of rural Maine, which very much reflect for working class white America. You go up there, you just close your eyes and if the accident was different, you could be in Alabama. Well, Barney could actually do like well, given his working class sort of stick up there. At the same time, parts of coastal Maine further south that are more kind of silk stocking Republican, very much open to voting for Democrats, don't like Trump. That could create challenges, right? So the Barney issue is fascinating. I think it cuts both ways. He helps any hurts. I think the House is a little different. I think the House, you can see why Democrats are more concerned. He's more problematic, I think for the House, because the Democratic gains in 2018 did come almost universally in suburban and urban America. And a lot of college educated women were the ones who gave Democrats the House 2018. And that's just not where Bernie's strength is, right? Bernie's strength is not in River Oaks in Houston, right? That's just that's that's not going to be an asset for Democrats. And you can take the River Oaks of Houston and you can drop it in places across the country where Democrats won Salt Lake City, Oklahoma City, Charleston, suburban Richmond. Those are just not places where Bernie's going to be helpful. OK, you know, I just didn't want to jump in. You know, I mean, I think, you know, I would put it this way, I don't know either. I think it's going to be very localized and since it's going to be localized, the House is going to be more sensitive to that. I agree with Jonathan. I don't think it's automatically the death knell that the that the Sanders opponents are saying right now are trying to raise the alarm on right now. I think it's, you know, there's a classic kind of debate in political science to campaigns matter and it goes back and forth. And I think this time, actually, the campaign is going to matter because you know, you have to figure out how to keep the focus on issues if you're the Democratic candidate that the focus on issues in the debate in in the debate writ large, not the debates themselves, that will play to your advantage and the Trump campaign is very good at being relentless at driving the agenda and an incumbent president always has the advantage on that. So there are things to be worried about if this is a campaign about free college. Yeah, it's a problem. If it's a campaign about health care, it's going to depend on how Sanders modulates his message. We've not seen a Bernie Sanders as a general election candidate. If I had to guess, I would guess that modulation is not his strong point, but people can surprise you. And so I think we're going to have to see how that shakes out, honestly, Gaylord. Just a quick one. You talk about the impact of celebrity and politics. We think about the increasing polarization of the electorate. In what ways do you think a Sanders Trump campaign will either galvanize or suppress voter turnout? You either love them or you hate them viscerally. Any comment on that? I mean, look, I think the voters who typically are the portion of the electorate that typically is least likely to show up in American politics is the youth, the kids, if you will, they don't usually vote. And I think with Bernie at the top of the ticket, for voters who are under 30, who are typically the hardest for campaigns to get out, it would be an easier task for Democrats. And so I think it's a question about turnout. It makes it easier. Now, would that be offset by a massive 60 plus turnout of, you know, baby boomers and silent generation folks who don't like Bernie and believe it's all folly, well, perhaps, but they're usually already voting anyways, you know, and that's the Bernie bat, by the way. The Bernie bat is I can mobilize a just a mass of new voters that can offset any defections. The challenge there is that that hasn't really been tried. Right. I mean, we've heard that promise before, but it hasn't really been tried. And the Obama, you know, again, Obama was different. Obama mobilized new voters, but he also was able to win swing voters too. You know, I mean, I think you have to I think you have to expect a high turnout election this time if it's Sanders versus Trump, you know, because now, you know, the flip side of that is, you know, I mean, in this way, 2018 in Texas is a pretty good example of the kind of Jonathan alludes to that. And you've got one campaign going, you know, a colleague of mine always says, you know, show me a campaign that says it's going to it's going to win by mobilizing new voters and I'll show you a campaign that didn't win. Right. And there's always a counter reaction, right. So it's one thing to go out and say, we're bringing all these new voters in and in Texas in 2018, what we saw is that the heavily resourced Republican Party at the last minute when they saw just how much that was happening in the early vote, then the final early voting numbers on the Friday before Election Day spent a bunch more money and really went to the ramparts and probably in my view, saved Ted Cruz. And by the way, the realignment in Texas that got a lot of attention last year or two years ago was what was happening in the cities and suburbs. But what was so striking, if you go across rural Texas and you look at how Beto did against Ted Cruz in rural Texas, and this is the candidate who famously went to every community in Texas who did not want to leave communities behind. He didn't just campaign the big cities here. He went to every county. Beto Aurora was outperformed by Barack Obama in 2008 across rural Texas. Barack Obama running against the war hero John McCain, a first term senator with an African name, did better in rural Texas than on Anglo Democrat 10 years later. Why? Because in those 10 years, the realignment continued a pace and rural Texas became more and more distant from any Democrat and who the Democrat was sort of immaterial. And that's I think part of the risk of why Beto lost is because the margins in rural Texas went from that for Democrats to that. Well, now that's another place where I would also get composition in those districts because, you know, we did a poll in conjunction with the Tribune and the Rural Funders Collective a couple of years ago. You know, the main concern in those districts or one of the big, you know, concerns when you poll people is that young people are leaving. And that's the only thing that's going on. Those districts are getting less populated. They're losing population and the people they're losing are young people who have to vote for Democrats and that are also going to these districts that are changing. They're moving to cities and suburbs and not going home. Yeah. Yeah. I think we're out of time, Jess. We are out of time, guys. Thank you so much for joining us today. Please give these awesome panelists a big round of applause. Thank you. Thank you so much.