It’s the eve of the Iowa caucus and many Democratic primary voters are still undecided. Defeating trump is a top priority, and (hence) it’s a topic with lots of deceptive spin in the media. To better understand this question it’s worth looking at some numbers to contrast with the “wisdom” of the talking heads.
Buttigieg and Bloomberg are not even serious candidates. Buttigieg is running to raise his own profile, and Bloomberg just wants to ensure Bernie and Warren don’t win enough delegates to clinch the nomination on the first ballot. So let’s narrow our focus to the top 3 candidates: Biden, Sanders, and Warren.
The RealClearPolitics average of general election matchup polls between each of these options and trump currently show Biden with 5.4% above trump, Bernie with 3.7%, and Warren with 1.7%. But we should not take these numbers too seriously — many matchup polls in 2016 showed Clinton defeating trump.
In the general election the right wing media machine is going to go nuclear on whoever the Democrats nominate, so we can’t take these numbers at face value. In particular, I think Biden’s apparent strength here is an illusion, as I explain next. If you already agree and aren’t thinking of voting for Biden, skip to the next section.
Not Biden (skip if you already agree)
Let’s remember where we are right now in history. An extra from the film Home Alone 2 is currently POTUS, despite all the assurances from almost every pundit during 2015 and 2016 that he was not a serious candidate. Part of the reason that a clown was able to win the election is that the Democratic Party coalesced around a deeply flawed, establishment candidate. Whatever your own feelings about the establishment, it’s worth remembering that many of the decisive (swing) Electoral College votes come from states where de-industrialization has made many people resentful of places like Washington DC and New York City (Wall Street) that have disproportionately benefited from globalization.
For these reasons, Democrats should avoid nominating Joe Biden or Michael Bloomberg. Both men have closets full of skeletons, and both are deeply associated with the establishment — both DC and Wall Street. Neither have a proven ability to win elections in places like Michigan. Neither are capable of actually exciting the base of the Democratic coalition. Biden’s record on the issues has almost all the same negatives as Clinton, maybe even more. His current lead in the matchup polls reflects the fact that he hasn’t been the focus of even a fraction as much negative coverage compared to Clinton in 2016, but if he is the nominee we can safely assume it will be like a horror movie with all the skeletons coming out of his closet.
Right now Joe Biden’s only appeal is that many voters seem to think he has the best chance of beating trump. That perception will evaporate the moment he shows any weaknesses. If we want someone who can actually excite the Democratic base (which is also necessary for fundraising — an area where Biden is extremely weak), can turn out marginal voters like young people and independents, isn’t strongly associated with all the worst things the Democratic Party has done in the last few decades, we must avoid nominating Biden.
Bernie or Warren?
I’ll keep the focus narrowly on electoral criteria rather than policy differences. The nominee has to beat trump, but to do that they must first have the best chance of winning the primary and becoming the nominee. For the sake of simplicity, let’s first agree that both Bernie and Warren have a better chance of defeating trump than Biden simply due to not being deeply flawed establishment figures. Neither voted for the Iraq war, both have railed against the corrupting influence of money in politics, and both have already been sustained targets of negative right wing media. For these reasons I am less worried that their matchup poll numbers will sink before the general election.
If you have personal reservations about Sanders due to the term “socialism,” there was a recent matchup poll that specifically reminded voters of this and found Sanders does not appear to suffer from the attack. In the graph below, the left columns are the results from asking voters “Bernie or trump?,” the middle columns were for “Democrat Bernie or Republican trump?,” and the prompt for right columns included an attack saying Bernie is a socialist who wants a government takeover of healthcare and open borders. It seems that voters trust Bernie does not have nefarious motives, they know him well enough to know what he stands for regardless of labels.

So for the sake of argument, let’s now assume that Warren and Bernie both would win the general election. Now the question becomes: which of them has a better chance to beat the dangerously weak establishment candidate and become the nominee?
Current national polling averages (from RCP or 538) show Biden in the mid 20’s, Bernie in the low 20’s, and Warren at 15%. So Bernie apparently has an advantage right now, he is closer to being able to beat Biden. The numbers are similar in Iowa and Nevada, and Bernie is in 1st place in New Hampshire. It is very likely that Warren will not win any of the early states, and start falling behind Biden in delegates before the first Super Tuesday. She may actually win zero delegates in some of these states.
It looks increasingly likely that Warren will come in 3rd place at best throughout all of February, and the 538 projections currently show her also only coming in 3rd place at best in every Super Tuesday state.
This evidence seems overwhelming that Bernie is, at least currently, closer to being able to beat Biden, and that this will soon become even more true. There’s another kind of question and another type of polling data to consider: what about each candidate’s “ceiling,” that is, if open minded supporters of each candidate considered switching to the other in order to beat Joe, who should switch? For this we can consider polling data about the 2nd choices of voters who say Bernie or Warren is their 1st choice. Among Sanders supporters, about 30% say they would go to Warren vs 28% to Biden. It’s an almost even split, meaning that if Bernie dropped out Warren would not close the gap to Biden and Biden would become a stronger front-runner after his closest opponent dropped out. On the other hand, Warren supporters would go 32% to Bernie and only 23% to Biden, a significantly larger boost to Biden’s current strongest opponent.
There are other types of polling evidence suggesting Warren simply will not be able to beat Joe. I won’t cite any particular polls, but in general Warren’s numbers are very weak among non-white voters, while Bernie tends to be a close 2nd place to Joe or even ahead of him among Hispanic voters.
It’s gotta be Bernie
At this point it would take a miracle for Warren to come from so far behind to pass Biden in the primary. In a contested convention the Democratic Party establishment will almost certainly choose some kind of compromise that makes nobody happy. Many of them don’t like Warren or Bernie, and if they pick someone like Klobuchar who almost no primary voters are choosing as their first choice the Democratic Party as a whole will suffer. Warren’s only path to the nomination is a long shot bet on being the compromise choice at a contested convention, but let’s think about that for a moment: will the marginal voters who are excited about populist outsider choices like Sanders or Yang unite behind a candidate hand picked by the party establishment at a brokered convention? It seems highly unlikely to me. The primary has to end with one of Bernie or Warren as the clear front runner.
I personally like Warren, and I have a lot of friends who do too. I attended her rally in Washington Square Park and was very impressed by her speech about the labor movement from the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory disaster to the New Deal. If Sanders were not in the race and already in a better position to beat Biden I would think Warren is the best candidate by a long shot. But unfortunately, all the current evidence points to Warren not even coming close to defeating Biden, and this would remain true even if Bernie were out of the picture.
tl;dr
If you are in an early state and thinking about how to vote, please consider carefully these two things: (1) Biden’s apparent lead in general election matchup polls will shrink the closer people pay attention to his record, and (2) the only candidate who appears positioned to beat Biden in the primary, avoiding a dangerously messy contested convention, and to seize the current populist moment in history from the far right, is Bernie Sanders.
If you’re not in an early state but have friends who are, consider sharing this with them!
