He won them two presidential elections, but Democrats are increasingly ready to put President Barack Obama in their rear view, according to exit polls from the Super Tuesday slate of primaries, which showed a startling number of party faithful saying it’s time to move on.
Mr. Obama remains popular in the Deep South, where black voters play an outsized role in Democratic politics, but from Maine to Minnesota, voters said they are no longer thrilled with the man who brought them the first universal health care plan and flexed his executive pen to grant a deportation amnesty to “Dreamers,” to ink a deal with Iran and to commit the U.S. to curbing greenhouse gases.
Instead, the party’s heart now belongs to Sen. Bernard Sanders, the democratic socialist who won’t even call himself a Democrat but who has completely rewritten the party’s agenda.
Even in states where Mr. Sanders got clobbered Tuesday, such as North Carolina, his idea to replace Obamacare with a more expansive “Medicare for All” plan wins majority support. Ideas such as tuition-free public college are backed by more than 70%, according to NBC’s early exit poll tallies.
In states where Mr. Sanders was triumphing, such as California, Medicare for All was backed by 56%, and free public college had 75% support.
Socialism itself was viewed favorably by 53% of those surveyed in California.
Unfortunately for Mr. Sanders, voters who love his ideas didn’t necessarily cast a ballot for him.
In state after state, beating President Trump in November was far more important to voters than picking someone who was ideologically on the same page.
More often than not, those voters picked Mr. Obama’s former running mate, onetime Vice President Joseph R. Biden.
Former Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, a Biden supporter, speaking on CNN, said Democrats are paralyzed with fear that Mr. Sanders will lead them into electoral doom.
He pointed to the number of members of Congress who served with both Mr. Biden and Mr. Sanders and picked Mr. Biden.
“They want him at the top of the ticket because they think they can keep their seat,” he said.
Mr. Sanders insists he is electable and promises to build a movement that will draw in massive numbers of new voters who could swamp the coalition Mr. Trump is trying to rebuild from his 2016 win.
“We are going to defeat Trump because we are bringing together an unprecedented grassroots, multigenerational, multiracial movement,” Mr. Sanders said at his election night party.
But exit polls suggested that wave of voters hasn’t materialized.
In North Carolina, seen as a swing presidential state, just 16% of voters said they had never cast ballots in a party primary before. Even then, Mr. Sanders won less than half of them.
In Texas, just 13% were first-time primary voters. Mr. Sanders again won less than half of them.
Even in states Mr. Sanders was winning, more voters said Mr. Biden was the best bet to beat Mr. Trump.
Mr. Biden says he can put together the Obama coalition that won in 2008 and 2012, and that may be true from a demographic standpoint.
Yet on the issues, Mr. Sanders said he is driving the conversation.
Asked explicitly about the Obama legacy and whether they wanted to see his policies return, a striking number of Democratic voters Tuesday say they’re looking to move on.
A Washington Times tabulation of exit poll data found that across the states that voted this week, about half pined for the Obama years. But nearly 40% said Democrats need to be more liberal than Mr. Obama.
Even in states such as Oklahoma, it was about even between those who wanted the Obama years back and those who wanted to move on.
Mr. Biden seemed to acknowledge that discontent. While celebrating the “Obama-Biden” accomplishments such as Obamacare, he said “that’s not enough.”
“This is just a start,” he said.
Mr. Obama has largely stayed out of the 2020 race, though the Democratic candidates have heatedly debated his legacy.
Billionaire Michael R. Bloomberg has been running ads giving voters the impression that Mr. Obama was a major fan of his during his tenure as New York mayor.
Mr. Biden, meanwhile, tells voters he is the Obama pick because he served alongside the president for eight years — though the former vice president has pointedly broken with his former boss on issues such as immigration by implicitly criticizing the record number of people deported during their time in office.
Mr. Sanders’ candidacy has created a significant dilemma for party leaders, who must grapple with the chance that if he doesn’t win the nomination, many of his supporters won’t back the eventual Democratic nominee.
In state after state, at least 10% of voters said they might not vote for the nominee, depending on who it is.
In Texas, those voters were about evenly split, with Sanders and Biden supporters about even in the percentage that said they can’t guarantee voting for the eventual Democratic nominee.
Elsewhere in the exit polling, health care remained the top issue for Democratic primary voters, with climate change and income inequality sparring for second place, depending on the state. Fixing race relations was a distant fourth.
• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.
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