What to look for as the wide-open job interview for the Democratic Presidential Nomination continues.

The job interview for the Democratic Presidential Nomination is wide open.

All the talk about Joe Biden as the front-runner is misleading. In the last four national polls (Economist/YouGov, Politico/Morning Consult, Harvard-Harris, IBD/TIPP), Biden averages 29%. But under the basic Democratic proportional representation rules for delegate selection, that does not get him anywhere near a majority of the Convention delegates.

But it is also significant that the putative “left” candidates — Elizabeth Warren (19%) and Bernie Sanders (16%) — poll nowhere near a majority. Together, they currently are the choices of only a little more than 1/3 of the Democratic voters.

This could be interpreted to suggest that nearly 2/3 of the voters are not ready to go to the putative left-wing for their nominee, but more than half of that 2/3 are not sold on Biden, either.  Very possibly because they are not convinced that he will hold up over time as the most electable candidate.  This is not an unreasonable concern, given what we have seen recently. Also, there is likely a concern that Biden is insufficiently focused on the future, in contrast to his understandable emphasis on restoring what has been lost since Trump succeeded Obama as President.

Still, it is also important to be aware that the Party rules for apportionment of delegates generally require 15% to get any delegates at all, state by state. As noted above, in an average of the last four national polls, only Biden (29%), Warren (19%), and Sanders (16%) meet the 15% threshold for getting delegates. (Kamala Harris and Pete Buttigieg each average 5%; all the other candidates poll lower, in the aggregate of 11%; undecided are at 13%. ) This could change, as  campaign unfolds. But it is important to note that, at the moment, a Warren/Sanders alliance would get 55% of the delegates, albeit only 35% first-choice support.  This might not bode well for the general election, where the voters who will swing the election mostly lean more to the “center” — whatever that is.

So where does that leave the race?  It seems to me that Biden's ceiling may be where is he now, and he could lose altitude if he cannot demonstrate that he is as sharp as his main competitors.  This will certainly be the case if general election polling continues to show that he is not the only candidate running ahead of Trump.  But then where do the "non-left" voters go? (Note:  I am fully aware that many voters might not be looking closely at the ideological differences between the candidates, given the agreement in the field on so many important matters.)

I doubt they would go to Sanders.  He actually IS a democratic Socialist, if one defines the term as someone who has faith that government programs invariably will result in better results for people, notwithstanding the limitations we all witness in dealing with any bureaucracy, even those presumably responsible to the voters, rather than stockholders.  His unwillingness to concede that Capitalism is often at least a necessary evil puts a hard cap on the support he could get in a general election -- even one against Trump.  And I suspect that a majority of the Democratic electorate does not buy into Sanders' approach, and will not be convinced otherwise in the next months.

They could go to Warren.  Here is why, and how.  First, Warren's diagnosis of the Capitalism's ills in America is tied directly to the inability of the federal government to keep from being held hostage to big business.  Her approach is straight-up New Deal:  That Capitalism is a great economic engine, but if it is not regulated properly, it becomes a runaway train that smashes everything in its path and eventually will run off the rails -- as it did the the era of the Great Depression.  That is why she says, correctly, that she is a Capitalist who understands Capitalism's limitations, and is motivated to protect the people from its excesses, collateral damage, and corruption.

But Warren's problem, at this point at least, is that her adherence to a pretty quick transition to Medicare for All, wiping out the viable option for private insurance plans through employment, is not one that most voters are willing to try.  It is one thing to do what was done with Obamacare, changing the health care system to help those not insured or underinsured, without requiring those who were reasonably satisfied with their private insurance (including so much of the middle class and the unionized work force) to take a chance on a completely new system.  It is quite another to ask the satisfied/reasonably satisfied to give up what they have, in the hope that a new bureaucracy would not mess things up for them. While Warren has indicated that she understands that there may be many ways to get to universal health care, so far I see no real sign that she will back away from the quick and absolute transition.  To the extent that the Biden supporters and other "non-left" voters are focussed on issues (and general election pitfalls), this could be the biggest hurdle for Warren.

Harris has tried to split the difference on health care, but at the last debate, she did not really seem to fully understand the proposal put out by her campaign, and the proposal itself did not really seem to deal with the fundamental problem of gutting Obamacare in favor of a Medicare for All system.  She just seemed to stretch out the transition a bit.  Then there is the question of why Harris has not been able to take advantage of her temporary "breakout" at the first debate.  This is where she has a lot of work to do -- and where she might not be able to fix the perception (and maybe the reality) of her being just another ambitious politician.  When it turned out that her current position on bussing is essentially no different than Biden's, she lost a lot of credibility.  Ditto, when her responses to tough questions amounted to "we should study that," without explaining the pros and cons of different approaches (e.g., voting by the incarcerated).  Ditto, when she makes substantive assertions about her own accomplishments, which are, to put it charitably, exaggerations. as she did recently when she falsely said she had sued Exxon when she was California Attorney General,   While Harris is a talented debater, she has great flaws -- for example, during the Kavanaugh hearings, she implied she had information to hammer Kavanaugh with, dared him to deny the information, but then never came forward with the information.  So far, Harris has not proven herself ready for prime time.

Buttigieg is an entirely different story.  His "Medicare for All Who Want It" does, in fact, bridge the gap between the left and the center.  He provides a direct route to universal health care with the government option without taking away private insurance with which so many are comfortable.  He says this will give the private insurance industry one more chance to improve; and suggests that "if people like me are right," his proposal would be a "glide-path to Medicare for All."  This sort of aggressive action coupled with a sense of humility is refreshing, and I think will be attractive both in the the general election and in actually governing.  There is a reason that so many in the media love to interview him:  Buttigieg consistently answers questions directly and thoughtfully. This strength even shows up on the issue as to which he his most vulnerable:  His failure to "get it done" (his words) regarding policing in South Bend.  Buttigieg does not pretend he has solved problems he has not solved, and his discussions of race consistently show a deep understanding of the nature and scope of the challenges we face as a nation.  He may not be the first choice early on of many African American voters, but if, for example, the impression he has made on Al Sharpton is any indication, he will earn their respect -- and support as the field narrows, and certainly in the general election, should he get the nomination.

Will Buttigieg's strengths translate to votes in the early states?  That is the advantage of having small-population states, where retail politics are possible, early in the process.  He has raised enough money to make his case, and then be ready for Super Tuesday. 

So the job interview continues.  FWIW, if it comes down to Warren or Buttigieg, I think the Party and the Country will have good, sound choices.  And if Warren does win, I hope she will do with Buttigieg what she did with Jay Inslee -- simply appropriate his good ideas.  This job interview is not only to test the candidates, but to test the substantive policy proposals they make.  Would that we had such a process in 2016, with a field of more than two or three candidates.

Finally, I think it would be useful to understand that if we win the war (the election), but do not win the peace (governance after the election), we likely will have yet another "shellacking" (President Obama's phrase) in 2022, just as we did in the first Clinton mid-term in 1994 and the first Obama mid-term in 2010.  That is why we had 16 years of Democrats in the White House, but only four years of ability to get big things done.

We must break that pattern. We need a president who will not only win the election, but will be able to provide aggressive, effective leadership to get a lot done right out of the box -- and will be able to sell it to the electorate.  Obama seemed to think that if he did governance right, the politics would take care of themselves.  On this, he erred.  I suspect Obama would agree.  Given Biden's expressed expectation that he would be able to work across the aisle with Congressional Republicans, as if those politicians were like the winged monkeys at the end of The Wizard of Oz (who became "good" once the Wicked Witch as vanquished), I do not know if Biden really understands that the Congressional Republicans will be as obstructionist as they were in the Obama years.  We need to find out if the candidates are acutely aware of this dynamic.