New Hampshire Postmortem: A Win is a Win

New Hampshire turned out to be a squeaker for Bernie Sanders, not the robust five-plus-point victory I was anticipating. Bernie ended the night edging out "Wall Street Pete" Buttigieg by approximately 2%, or about 3,500 votes, and tying him in pledged delegates with nine.

Not a stellar night. My initial takeaway is that the moderates did very well. If you add the New Hampshire vote totals for Buttigieg, Klobuchar and Biden, you come away with a 52% majority.

But a win is a win. And for the first time during the Democratic primary season, given that Iowa melted down last week, you had a conventional old school victory speech broadcast live a little north of prime time on the East Coast. Bernie gave a great speech; his crowd was electric. I'm sure the rich were clutching at their pearls all across the nation.

So all and all a good night. Then this morning, expecting a foghorn of pro-"Wall Street Pete" spin from the corporate media, I am pleasantly surprised by how balanced -- hence, positive for Bernie -- the reporting is. First, Lisa Lerer and Shane Goldmacher of The New York Times in "5 Takeaways From the New Hampshire Primary":

Mr. Sanders won the most votes in Iowa, even if he narrowly lost the delegate battle. He won the New Hampshire primary. His support among people of color has grown in polls, while his chief competitor for those voters, Mr. Biden, has been fading in the overall contest. He has climbed to the lead in some national polls. And he is raising more money — and has more money — than any of his rivals who are not billionaires.

Meet the new front-runner of the 2020 Democratic primary.

Next, Nate Silver in "Sanders Is The Front-Runner After New Hampshire, And A Contested Convention Has Become More Likely":

I’m going to be relatively brief here as I’m writing this at 2 a.m. in the morning. But let’s take the Sanders conclusion first. The model’s contention that he’s the closest thing to a frontrunner in this race seems inescapable to me. Sanders won the popular vote in each of the first two states (and he may eventually win the state delegate equivalent vote in Iowa). He leads in national polls (having recently overtaken Joe Biden). He’s raised a ton of money. He polls fairly well in Nevada (or at least he did back when people bothered to poll it). And he has a reasonably diverse coalition that should net him at least some delegates in almost every state and congressional district.

As for Silver's prognostication of a brokered convention, let's wait and see how Bloomberg does on Super Tuesday. If Bloomberg can garner 30% of the pledged delegates on March 3, as Silver has speculated previously, well, yes, I suppose a brokered convention is a strong possibility. Bloomberg's defense of stop and frisk is not going to help him on Super Tuesday though.

For the time being, let's revel in the limited media bounce both Amy Klobuchar and Pete Buttigieg are receiving in the corporate press. If even the mainstream mind managers are reticent to trumpet the moderates' path to victory, we know a rocky road for centrist neoliberals lies ahead.

Biden is, at this point, the walking dead. Blacks, just like everyone else, love a winner. And a winner Joe Biden is not. Will people of color over the next several weeks find something to love in corporate overlords Buttigieg, Bloomberg and Klobuchar? No.

The rich have blotted out the horizon. It's time to deal them a blow and stop them from hoarding our future. Bernie, however imperfect, is the vehicle for delivering that blow. Let's get moving.