Addisu Demissie - who ran Cory Booker's campaign - on the Democratic primary

Addisu Demissie ran Cory Booker’s presidential campaign and has an expert resume in Democratic campaigns. Right now he's an undecided voter in California. We talked about what's going to happen in the California primary on March 3, how the South Carolina result will impact Super Tuesday, and what happens to Bernie going forward.

We also talked about Addisu's thoughts about why Booker's campaign couldn't get the kind of momens that Pete Buttigieg and Elizabeth Warren had last year, which vaulted them into frontrunner status in a super-crowded field.

We began by discussing the chaotic state of the Democratic primary, and the similarities between Bernie Sanders’ path to the nomination and Donald Trump’s in the 2016 Republican primary. Just as Trump did, Sanders is winning the most delegates with only 30 percent or so of the vote, because the rest of the field is split among several other candidates. In the past, parties had the ability to limit the number of candidates running so there would be a consensus candidate who represented the majority of the party. But parties don’t have that power anymore, leading to what we discussed as a “collective action problem.” Everybody knows what needs to happen — the majority of the Democratic Party needs to unite around one candidate — but nobody is able to make it happen. 

It’s a function of our fractured, atomized politics, and of course if you’ve been listening to this podcast, you know that it’s at the very center of why this podcast even exists. I’ve been looking at this problem for a few years now. 

Addisu and I talked about why younger black voters support Bernie, and older ones generally don’t. I also wrote a piece about this today with my colleague Brittany Shepherd -- which you can read by clicking here. It’s interesting to think of young black voters as a lifeline for Bernie that didn’t exist so much in 2016, helping him win with around 30% in these primaries, and as a bridge to their older friends and relatives if Bernie is the nominee and needs robust turnout from the African-American community. 

And we talked about Bernie’s chances of beating Trump. I liked Addisu’s take on this, which is basically that trying to forecast it right now is probably a fool’s errand.

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