Bernie Sanders has officially won the Democratic New Hampshire primary.  Pete Buttigieg came in a close second.  Amy Klobuchar had a respectable third place.

I will have a more detailed post coming up on Bernie Sanders and the implications of him possibly getting the nomination.

First, I’ll address Andrew Yang, who received 2.8% of the vote.  He has dropped out of the presidential race.  For some reason, politicians refer to it as suspending the campaign.

Andrew Yang was at least interesting and, at times, intelligent.  A few people thought he stood a chance.  I said early on that his form of welfare was too blatant. The Democrat’s like to promote a form of welfare that equates to trickle-down economics.  They want the government to spend money by handing it to bureaucracies, which then trickles down some money to the welfare recipients after administrative costs.  Yang’s welfare was too direct and too obvious.  This could not be tolerated by the statists.

Tom Steyer (3.6%) tried to buy his way in, but even with that, he was too boring to gain any traction.  I can’t really identify one thing he stands for.  There were rumors he was dropping out, but his campaign says he is still running.  His money couldn’t buy him a personality or any ideas.

Elizabeth Warren is quickly fading, as she received 9.2% of the vote.  She had that brief surge last year, which surprised me.  She comes across as so phony to me, so I guess it took the voters a few weeks to discover that.  I put her chances very low at this point.

Joe Biden has completely imploded.  Actually, he imploded a long time ago with hair sniffing and idiotic comments.  But it took the Democratic establishment this long to realize that it probably isn’t a good idea to put him on the debate stage with Donald Trump.  He is going to have to have a very good showing in the upcoming primaries in the next few weeks.  At this point, I think he is done.  The establishment and the voters realize that there are probably better ways to challenge Trump.

Amy Klobuchar had a strong showing in New Hampshire, but I don’t think it will last.  She received 19.8%, which is a decent showing considering all of the candidates.  Still, I think she sounds like a nervous wreck and would be a complete disaster against Trump.  I don’t fault someone for not being a good speaker or sounding really nervous, but it is not the kind of trait people look for in a president.

Tulsi Gabbard received 3.3% of the vote in New Hampshire.  This is a very poor showing, especially for a state like New Hampshire where an undeclared voter can vote in the Democratic primary. It is also home to the Free State Project, which means there are many thousands of hardcore libertarians living there.

Tulsi had a nice appearance on Ron Paul’s Liberty Report last week.  Even with that, there is something lacking.  She has many good qualities, and obviously her foreign policy is by far the best of the candidates.  This is why I followed her more closely than others.  But she still doesn’t come across strong enough.

It is easy to draw comparisons between her campaign and the Ron Paul campaigns of 2008 and 2012. There are similarities, but also many differences.  There were no Tulsi Gabbard blimps.  There were no “paint the town Tulsi” events.  It is easy to see why.  Maybe I will explore this further in a future post.

I have now gone through all of the major candidates except for three.  These are the three with the best shot at the nomination at this point.

First, there is Mike Bloomberg.  I had not really taken him too seriously up to this point.  He might be the one person that I underestimated.  He was not on the New Hampshire ballot, so we don’t really know where he stands, other than from polling.

Bloomberg is spending a boatload of money on advertising.  He has said he could spend $2 billion.  I don’t think I so much underestimated Bloomberg’s ability to be likeable as much as I overestimated the intelligence of some of the Democratic voters.

This is the party that says they want to keep money out of elections.  They say that Russia interfered with the 2016 election by spending $50,000 in Facebook ads.  So along comes a guy who has not been in any debates, and he thinks he can just buy the nomination for himself with an advertisement blitz.  Maybe he is right.  It’s amazing how many people can be persuaded based on advertising and empty slogans (although it didn’t work for Steyer – see above).

Maybe I am being a little too hard on the Democrat voters.  They are desperate to beat Trump, and they have realized that Biden is a dud.  Maybe they think Bloomberg is their best hope at this point.

We have no idea how Bloomberg will do when he is actually on the ballot, but his poll numbers have risen.  Still I would put Sanders and Buttigieg ahead of him at this point.

Aside from Bloomberg, my predictions have been really accurate up to this point.  I was predicting Sanders from the leftwing and Buttigieg from the establishment to be the main contenders.  There are stories out there now that Buttigieg has ties to the CIA.  I have no idea if this is correct, but it wouldn’t surprise me.  He is certainly an establishment favorite at this point.  I think they would take anybody who is dependable (to the establishment), who comes across as likeable, and who can put together a coherent sentence.

I believe the race is between these two at this point, with Bloomberg as a possible third.

The problem for the DNC and the establishment is that all of these candidates are splitting the votes. Bernie is getting his 25%, while the rest of the crowd is splitting all of them up.  The establishment would prefer to narrow down the list so that the anti Bernie people can consolidate their votes.

With the delegate game, it isn’t clear how things will go.  Bernie could get a plurality but still fail to get the nomination. There are a lot of talks now about a brokered convention.  This is coming from the party that likes to say that Trump wasn’t really elected because he didn’t win the popular vote.  Yet, they may be faced with a situation where Bernie has the highest percentage of votes but doesn’t get the nomination.

The pro Bernie people will see through it more this time.  They will know that the nomination was stolen away from their guy.  I think there will be a decent percentage of them who really will not vote for the Democratic nominee in November 2020 if they feel this way.

If it isn’t a brokered convention where someone like Hillary steps in, then I think it is between Sanders, Buttigieg and Bloomberg.  It may take a while before we gain clarity on this.  All I know is that I like seeing the establishment squirm.