Episode 4: What's going on in Virginia this Super Tuesday?

Once in a while, the national politics story and the Virginia politics story are the same story. We’re just around the corner from Super Tuesday (March 3), when Virginia and a raft of other states hold primaries for the Democratic nomination for President.

What can we expect in Virginia as we head toward the Super Tuesday vote?

In this episode, former Charlottesville city councilor Kristin Szakos shares the mood of Virginia Democrats as she does canvassing.

Then an in-depth conversation with Paul Freedman, professor of Politics at the University of Virginia.

Read the Transcript:

Nathan Moore  0:00  

This is Bold Dominion: an explainer for state politics in a changing Virginia. I'm Nathan Moore.

Well, once in a while, the national politics story and the Virginia politics story are the same story. We're just around the corner from Super Tuesday, when Virginia and a raft of other states hold primaries for the Democratic nomination for president. The four early-voting states are a tiny fraction of the almost 4000 total Democratic delegates nationwide. UVA politics professor Paul Freedman is here to lay it out for us.

Paul Freedman  0:34  

Super Tuesday is not just sort of a big deal, it's a huge deal. It's Super Duper Tuesday, and that's because for the first time this year we see huge states, right? Sure, Virginia, with our 99 delegates, is part of Super Tuesday, but so is North Carolina with 110, Texas with 220, and the big enchilada, California with 415 delegates. So, what's going on in Virginia?

Nathan Moore  1:09  

That's our question for today. What can we expect in Virginia as we head toward the Super Tuesday vote? We're starting today's episode with some boots on the ground. Kristin Szakos is a former Charlottesville city councilor. This year, she's canvassing for Elizabeth Warren's campaign, and she's had an awful lot of conversations with Virginia Democrats.

Kristin Szakos  1:28  

It's been interesting talking to folks about kind of who they support in this primary because a lot of people are really still kind of waffling around and trying to figure out who to support. And I think a lot of Democrats have PTSD from the last national election. And they're, they're thinking, you know, gosh, we didn't see that coming and so we need to figure out how to do this so we don't- so that doesn't happen again. And I think that some of the- the push toward, you know, people like Mayor Bloomberg has been this attempt to like- maybe he's not really what we stand for as Democrats but but but By golly, he could beat Trump. And so I think, you know, we're all trying to handicap the race and figure out who can win. And I, I've taken the approach that I think people should just pick who they like, and then work like hell for whoever wins. That's kind of where I've come down.

Nathan Moore  2:15  

Leading into Super Tuesday, what concerns are people expressing? What are you hearing?

Paul Freedman  2:18  

Well, I think, you know, for the national office of president, a lot of people really are just worried. The anxiety level is high. The consequences of a loss in November for Democrats, is, you know, many people consider it catastrophic. We've seen an erosion of civil rights, we've seen an erosion of the environment, we've seen an erosion of, of the rule of law, things that make a lot of us feel like that's what our country is supposed to be about, even if we've never quite lived up to it. And that that those things are being pushed even further back makes us kind of question what this country is and how we always considered ourselves. Talking about values of Virginia, you know, what are the values of the United States and are those no longer values that are upheld? So I think that, when any kind of risk has super high consequences that makes it very anxiety provoking, and people are anxious. I find, you know, you were saying that I'm kind of boots on the ground, I do stuff. That's- that's my response to anxiety, I find that that action is the best antidote to anxiety. And so for me, going door-to-door knocking for anybody helps me worry about it less because I feel like at least I'm doing something.

Nathan Moore  3:30  

On social media, there's an awful lot of people who seem very, very sure that X candidate just isn't gonna win. How do they- how do they know that? 

Kristin Szakos  3:40  

They don't. This is why I don't use my crystal ball at all, because you look foolish if you're wrong.

Nathan Moore  3:47  

So when I say what's gonna happen on March 3 here, Virginia-

Kristin Szakos  3:49  

I'm gonna vote.

Nathan Moore  3:50  

Right. What are the takeaways to think about how Virginia is forming itself as a polity heading into this election?

Paul Freedman  3:57  

The things that are happening in the state legislature are giving me some hope. We've seen a state legislature that has really done some dirty tricks over the years to keep good things down; to kill bills, to disappear bills, to make sure that people were held in a status quo that serves some people and not others. And to see that breaking down so quickly in the state legislature year, gives me hope that that you know, at the national level that some of the damage that's being done there can also be repaired, and that maybe we can not only repair it, but actually move forward in repairing some older damage as well.

Nathan Moore  4:36  

Kristin, thank you so much. 

Kristin Szakos  4:37  

Thank you. 

Nathan Moore  4:38  

Kristin Szakos is a former Charlottesville city councilor. So I'm recording this episode about a week before Super Tuesday. Passions are running pretty hot amongst a lot of Democrats. But one thing most people agree on is that so much can change between now and Super Tuesday. And that Super Tuesday will be a pivotal moment in the 2020 primary season. Virginia isn't the biggest state, but our 99 delegates are a significant chunk of the Democratic primary total. So how will Virginia's vote go? Paul Freedman is a professor of politics at the University of Virginia.

Paul Freedman  5:10  

So, what's going on in Virginia? One thing to keep in mind about our primary here in Virginia is that we have an open primary, which means we can have Democrats voting, we can have Independents voting, we can even have some Republicans voting. And what that's going to mean is that a candidate who can appeal to moderate Independents, moderate Republicans, is going to do better here in Virginia than she or in this case he would nationally. And so I think part of the appeal here in Virginia for a candidate like Bloomberg in an electorate that's going to include perhaps a third non-Democratic voters-

Nathan Moore  5:56  

Is it that high? 

Paul Freedman  5:56  

Well, let me put it differently. The Monmouth Survey had about a third Independent/Republican respondents, and about two-thirds Democratic respondents.

Nathan Moore  6:08  

And that is who they considered likely voters. 

Paul Freedman  6:09  

Exactly, exactly. 

Nathan Moore  6:10  

Go figure.

Paul Freedman  6:11  

So that- that's their estimate. 

Nathan Moore  6:12  

Yeah. 

Paul Freedman  6:14  

So you've got at least the potential to see greater appeal to a candidate like Mike Bloomberg, right? Who is making his potential appeal to moderates, independents, moderate Republicans, a centerpiece of his case that he is the most electable in a matchup against Donald Trump.

Nathan Moore  6:38  

So, you know, a lot of these political conversations, we can talk about the polls, we can talk about the issues sometimes that drive them. What are the values that we're seeing them speak to? What values are they hoping to resonate with voters?

Paul Freedman  6:51  

Well, one thing that I think all of these candidates would embrace -- have embraced -- in their stump speeches and their ads, both on television and in social media and on the debate stage, is the value, as they see it, of defeating Donald Trump in November, right? This is, really I think, if there's anything that unites Democrats, it is that, right? And... so much of the conversation that Democrats seem to be having among themselves is precisely about electability. About whether or not a Sanders or a Warren is somebody whose policy stands are too far from what a majority of Americans in a general election are- are willing to endorse. What is striking is the extent to which I think everybody on the debate stage in Nevada is to the left of where Barack Obama was in 2008, right? The center of gravity within the party has shifted considerably as the candidates themselves acknowledge even the- the most conservative versions of Medicare For All (Who Want It) are more progressive than the Medicare For All that was not even a possibility in 2009. So, the value of electability is one that I think is on everybody's mind and that is really structuring a lot of this campaign. Um-

Nathan Moore  8:27  

What does electability actually mean? I want to tease that out some, because it is a term that gets thrown around a lot. And it's this oddly nebulous thing where people are almost, you know, sort of voters who are talking, citizens talking amongst themselves, are almost like, assuming a lot of things about other voters.

Paul Freedman  8:43  

Right. Now, that's a really good point, right? Electability is at the same time really simple and really complicated, right? It's really simple: we all know what it means, who can beat the opponent in November, right? What is the probability that candidate A versus candidate B/C/D will win in a contest against President Trump. But it's more complicated than that, as you are suggesting, in that we don't really know what policies, what positions, what sorts of appeals are going to be effective are going to be sufficient. And, you know, speaking as a political scientist, many of us thought we knew a whole lot more before 2016, then, then then we do now. I think there's a collective sense of, maybe it's humility, maybe it's uncertainty. But you're right. Some of these considerations can become self-fulfilling prophecies, right? If I assume that a candidate with this label or these characteristics or this gender is unelectable, and if we all make that assumption, then yeah, that's going to mean that that he/she is unelectable. If I assume that everybody else is going to find my preferred candidate unelectable, then indeed, that can, in turn become something of a self-fulfilling prophecy. We have some information, we have some, you know, knowledge of how voters tend to behave. I don't think it's a stretch to suggest that the label socialist, is something that the Sanders campaign will need to grapple with, right?

Nathan Moore  10:38  

It's more like an FDR New Deal or LBJ's Great Society-type social democracy when it comes to, like, the rubber meets the road- 

Paul Freedman  10:45  

Right. But that's also not what people hear, right? They hear a word that has been demonized, vilified, for- for decades of our political history, right? I'm not saying it's insurmountable. I'm simply saying it needs to be mounted, if you will. There needs to be an effort to explain, to defang that label and it's almost surely going to be a very tough road to hoe for candidate Sanders.

Nathan Moore  11:17  

You've got, you've got Bernie Sanders with a lot more support among young people, then among older folks. Um, how much can be explained by by that? By that- that kind of label?

Paul Freedman  11:28  

Good-

Nathan Moore  11:29  

-people who didn't grow up with the race here? 

Paul Freedman  11:31  

I think that's absolutely true. Here in Virginia, Sanders has the support of 35% of 18 to 49 year olds, right? Now, that's a big category. That's just the breakdown given here. I suspect that among 18 to 24 year olds, it's even more than 35%. Among senior citizens, 10% right? These are Democratic-likely voters, and according to this Monmouth poll, only 10% of seniors support Bernie Sanders. 32% of seniors in this poll -- here in the Commonwealth -- 32% support Mike Bloomberg. This generational divide among Democrats is absolutely striking. And I think you're absolutely right, Nathan, 65-year olds grew up in a world in which socialism was a bad word, right? My students, we have grown up in a world in which socialism, as a label, does not have that power, right?

Nathan Moore  12:39  

And capitalism has been seen as a source of problems at times.

Paul Freedman  12:42  

Absolutely. Absolutely. So it's a striking, it's a striking generation gap. Now, I said a moment ago that if Bernie Sanders is is the nominee, he'll have a tough road to hoe, but he may be able to hoe it for exactly these reasons. That he has such a strong base of support among young people in particular. Indeed, increasingly among people of color. In this survey, Sanders and Bloomberg each have 18% support among black voters. Joe Biden has 37%. 

Nathan Moore  13:26  

Right. 

Paul Freedman  13:28  

Joe Biden has been, I think, discounted, understandably, after his relatively poor showings in Iowa and especially New Hampshire. And this is why, this is one reason that the uniformity- the racial and ethnic uniformity of these early states really matters, generally, it matters in particular this year. Biden has much greater support and has had much greater support among Democrats of color; Latinos, but especially African Americans, particularly in South Carolina. And so as we think about what may change as we head into South Carolina and then into Super Tuesday, it may be that he is able to re-emerge as as a leading candidate. But it may be that he does just fade away.

Nathan Moore  14:28  

It's it's a tricky one because you watch his polling numbers and it was a plummet. I mean, pretty much tracking almost one to one with Bloomberg's rise.

Paul Freedman  14:38  

Yeah, exactly. And I think it's a combination of Bloomberg stepping in to absorb some of these former Biden supporters who, you know, essentially became up for grabs as they became disaffected leading up to and then certainly coming out of Iowa and New Hampshire. But also Mike Bloomberg has put a lot of money into Virginia. 

Nathan Moore  14:59  

A lot of money. 

Paul Freedman  15:00  

He's up on the air, but he's also building an infrastructure. And you know, what does money buy in politics? It buys really an air game and a ground game. And we've seen the air game I think anybody in the Commonwealth who's turned on a television show or tried to watch a video on YouTube, or engaged with social media for five minutes has seen a blitz, a barrage of Bloomberg advertisements, in fact, driving over to the studio today, I heard a radio ad for Mike Bloomberg. It wasn't, I'm sorry to say, 91.1-

Nathan Moore  15:15  

Youtube. You weren't listening to my station, we don't have commercials here!

Paul Freedman  15:39  

Right, right, no it was a long Grateful Dead song and I- tuned out for one minute- 

Nathan Moore  15:47  

And heard a Bloomberg ad-

Paul Freedman  15:48  

I heard a Bloomberg ad, and then I came back. So Bloomberg's been everywhere. He has a he has an office downtown in Charlottesville. I don't know about you, I've had precisely two campaign workers knock on my door this season, both of them from the Bloomberg campaign. We're seeing something that is literally unprecedented. We have never seen a candidate jump into the race on November 24th, a mere two months before the first voting and rise from under 5% to 22%? Nationally, Mike Bloomberg is essentially tied with Joe Biden at about 16%. They're both behind Sanders who's got about a quarter of the democratic vote at this point. So Sanders, the front runner, but with Biden and and and Bloomberg, right behind him. And this is, I mean, it's because of advertising.

Nathan Moore  15:49  

Yeah. 

Paul Freedman  15:50  

Mike Bloomberg has spent an estimated 330 million dollars on television ads across the country, including about 3 million dollars here in the Commonwealth. Trump has spent 25 million dollars on Facebook. Bloomberg has spent 46 million dollars on Facebook, right? Before Bloomberg got into the race, the story about digital advertising was the supremacy, the dominance of the Trump campaign. And so it's difficult to overstate the extent of the Bloomberg investment in advertising. And that means so much because advertising is the way in which candidates can completely control their message, what they look like, what they sound like, what music is involved, what other people, what images. This is all under the complete control of the candidate and that's not true in debates. And that's not true in face-to-face encounters.

Nathan Moore  18:06  

Alright, hang tight for a minute. We're gonna take a quick break and come back for the second half of our conversation with UVA politics professor Paul Freedman.

You're listening to Bold Dominion: an explainer about state politics in our changing Virginia. We're on Spotify, Apple Podcast, Stitcher, SoundCloud and wherever fine podcasts are served. Learn more and subscribe at bolddominion.org. Bold Dominion is a member of the Virginia Audio Collective, a group of podcasts based at WTJU 91.1. FM, virginiaaudio.org. Let's get back to Paul Freedman, professor of politics at the University of Virginia. You know, I'm struck by this depiction of our democracy as sort of a billionaire's game at this point. Where you've got, you know, billionaire Mike Bloomberg going up against billionaire Donald Trump, and they're both buying lots of ads on billionaire Mark Zuckerberg's platform, as documented in billionaire Jeff Bezos' Washington Post and the Republicans, you know, check out billionaire Rupert Murdoch's Fox News instead. I mean, what's that mean for our democracy?

Paul Freedman  19:20  

Well, that's a really good question. Let's be clear about something very important. This election did not create these billionaires. 

Right? What we are seeing is the, the manifestation of a economic and social and cultural reality that has been going on the whole time, right? What's different is what you just suggested, right? That oh, now we see them, right? And so, you know, let's be specific in terms of what what we find objectionable, right? Are we objecting to the existence of billionaires? Right? If so, you've got a good friend in Elizabeth Warren. Right? Are we objecting to their visibility? Well, I hope not, right? This is us facing up to a reality that has already been there. Are objecting to the role of money in politics? That is certainly worth paying attention to- thinking about and deciding whether or not we think it's appropriate for democracy to be so available to... to money. But that's not new in 2020, either, right? That has been with us from the beginning. And we have at various points in our political history cared more or less about the role of money in politics. I'm not suggesting that that abated, but it was not at the top of the agenda. But I think it's getting there now for all of the reasons that that you've suggested, and certainly Mike Bloomberg is bringing into stark relief, the... the power of money. The political power of money. I don't think that's going to fade away. I think concerns about that- whether whether you think that this constitutes buying democracy, buying a presidency, distorting the process. You know, many of these candidates who have worked very hard to build a campaign on the basis of many, many, many hundreds of thousands of small donors think that that's either how it should be done or how they have to do it, right? But the power- the political power of money in the context of political campaign, that's not new in 2020. 

Nathan Moore  19:33  

Right. 

Right, of course. We're turning a little bit to the values of some of these candidates. You know, Biden and Bloomberg kind of look at their messaging and their issues, and it feels like the values there are electability, the values to beat Trump, the values to kind of get back to normal. You look at like a Sanders or Warren and the value is much more like economically progressive vision. 

Paul Freedman  22:22  

Right. 

Nathan Moore  22:24  

So I'm wondering if, here in Virginia, where you do see Biden and Bloomberg pulling above the national- above their national averages. Do a lot of Virginia Democratic voters, Democratic primary voters just seek the normal?

Paul Freedman  22:40  

I think the question of, you know, what's the future trajectory of the country is, is a critical one. And there is, as you've suggested, a strain of thinking, maybe even a yearning, to go back. To- I think for many Democrats, there is a deeply felt desire to press rewind, and go back to some point, right, certainly prior to November of 2016, and then start, start the tape from that point, right? Get back on to whatever track we left off of, and in that sense, return to the normal history, the history that we thought would play out. Right? And so I think that that is a palpable desire for many Democrats. But for many other Democrats, I think there is a strong sense of no, we're not going back. We can't go back. There's nothing to go back to. And we want a candidate who will articulate a a vision of a future that is, that is better that is that leaves all of this behind by moving forward not by moving back, that embraces a positive, affirmative vision of what this country can be. And, you know, I think there's a sense in which this profound split in visions for the future maps on to assumptions and maybe fears about electability. Right. And so, it may be that some voters like the idea of moving forward into a world in which yeah, we've got universal health care, the way Bernie Sanders is describing it, but don't think that that is possible, right? Given the fact that the electorate in November is, you know, here in the Commonwealth but nationally is not going to look like the electorate on Super Tuesday. 

Nathan Moore  25:08  

Right. 

Paul Freedman  25:09  

I want to... I think it's really important as we head toward Super Tuesday to appreciate how much is in flux. And that, as we were saying earlier, although it feels like this election campaign has been going on forever, it's still at the very beginning and there are so many developments that can shape the state of the race and the- and the outcome. It's really important to keep that in mind. Even a even a good survey of voters in a given state or a national sample of voters is a snapshot. And in this most recent snapshot of voters here in the Commonwealth by Monmouth University, they asked who you support- 11% didn't know, were undecided. But they went further: the the folks who did express a preference. were asked, "Are you firmly decided on your candidate choice, or are you open to the possibility of voting for a different candidate on primary day?" Only 25% were firmly decided.

Nathan Moore  26:24  

No kidding. 

Paul Freedman  26:25  

44% were open to voting for a different candidate on primary day, which again, was only two weeks after the survey was conducted. 18% said there was a high possibility that they would change their minds. And so I think it's really important for us to keep this degree of fluidity in mind and to remember how dynamic this process is.

Nathan Moore  26:58  

So this is gonna post about a week before Super Tuesday. I mean, this is all, none of that matters. It's all gonna change.

Paul Freedman  27:05  

Well, we have a snapshot of what things look like a couple of weeks out. But look, this is why, you know, it's it's fascinating to watch these developments and to see these dynamics change and to, you know, to watch the the kinds of appeals that these candidates are making and the sorts of reception... The kind of reception that they're getting from from voters, not just here in Commonwealth but across the country.

Nathan Moore  27:35  

Paul Freedman is professor of politics at the University of Virginia. Thanks to him and to Kristin Szakos, former Charlottesville city councilor we heard from earlier in the show. Bold Dominion is online at bolddominion.org. Go ahead and subscribe. You know you want to. tThanks so much to our assistant producer, Aaryan Balu. I'm Nathan Moore, and I'll talk with you again next time.