What Went Down In The 2020 Nevada Caucuses

I do wonder if the Culinary Union had gone hard for Biden whether that would have made a difference. He probably wouldn’t have won — but his campaign could have used a strong second place finish.

I misread what was going on with the Culinary Union initially. My understanding, after doing some reporting, is that they were leaning Biden before Iowa and New Hampshire, but backed off after he was bad in the first two states. They figured he might struggle in Nevada and didn’t want to endorse someone who would lose and make the union look weak. It’s not clear, outside of an anti-Medicare-for-All flyer, how hard they went after Sanders. And not endorsing another candidate cleared the way for Sanders.

Sanders seems to be doing better with nonwhite voters, which suggests some of his campaign’s choices may be paying off. They have more prominent black surrogates than 2016, a very intentional strategy of organizing Latino voters, a campaign manager, Faiz Shakir, who is Muslim and Pakistani. Both Sanders and Warren seem to have gone to school on the weaknesses of prior left-wing Democratic candidates (like Howard Dean in 2004 and Sanders in 2016) and tried to adjust for that. I also think that the electorate is changing in ways that are helping Sanders — my guess is that when this primary is over, we will learn that black and Latino voters under 45 voted much differently than those over 45.