Los Angeles Times - 04.03.2020

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International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach, right, of Germany attends the committee’s

executive board meeting in Lausanne, Switzerland, on Tuesday. Olympic leaders said they were confident

that the coronavirus outbreak would not force the cancellation of the 2020 Tokyo Games, set to begin July

24. But half a world away, Japan’s Olympic minister said the contract to hold the Tokyo Games specifies
    only that the event has to be held during 2020, so they could be held later in the year if needed. SPORTS, D

1,000 WORDS: LAUSANNE, Switzerland

Laurent GillieronAssociated Press

COULD VIRUS DELAY OLYMPICS?

For the first

time since

1968, Demo-

crats could

end their

presidential

primaries

with no candi-

date taking

the majority

of delegates

needed to win the nomina-

tion on the first ballot at

their national convention

this summer.

That has prompted

feverish speculation about a

brokered convention, a

fantasy long cherished by

overexcited political report-

ers.

But there’s a more likely

scenario that’s been over-

looked: a bare-knuckle bat-

tle for delegates in June and

July, well before the Milwau-

kee convention starts.

Call it the Overtime

Primary — or, if you prefer,

the Unattached Delegate

Primary. If it happens, it

could be decisive not only

for the nomination, but for

the party’s fortunes in the

November election as well.

Under party rules, the

convention’s first ballot is

decided solely by the 3,

delegates chosen by prima-

ries and caucuses. To win, a

candidate needs a majority

of those delegates — at least

1, 9 91.

But what if, when the

primaries end, none of the

candidates has enough?

Imagine, for example, that

Bernie Sanders has 45%,

Joe Biden has 40% and

other candidates split the

rest.

That’s when the Over-

time Primary kicks in. Even

before the convention opens

on July 13, candidates are

free to woo each others’

delegates. And delegates

are free to switch, especially

if the candidate they origi-

nally supported has

dropped out of the race.

“From June until the

opening of the convention,

it’s going to be a madhouse,”

Elaine Kamarck, a former

aide to Bill Clinton and a

member of the party’s rules

committee, told me.

“The candidates will call

delegates. They’ll call any-

body who might influence

delegates. They’ll cut deals

with labor unions, because

union delegates might

follow their leaders. They’ll

do whatever they can think

of,” she predicted — includ-

ing perhaps dangling a vice

presidential nomination.

That’s called politics.

But it’s an old-fashioned

brand of politics most of us

have never seen in real time.

If the top candidate is

very close to a majority, he

or she can probably get over

the top pretty easily. If

Sanders or Biden wins 48%

of the delegates in the pri-

maries, for example, it

shouldn’t be hard to get to

50%.

“But if nobody’s close,

you could see a lot of horse-

trading,” she told me.

If you listen closely, can-

didates already are honing

their arguments for the

Overtime Primary — the

pitches they’ll make to

delegates who might be

swayed.

Biden warns that a

Sanders nomination could

hurt Democrats’ chances in

congressional, gubernatori-

al and state legislative races

— the so-called down-ballot

races.

“I can win in places

where I don’t think Bernie

can win,” he said. “I can

bring along Democratic

victories up and down the

state.”

Sanders, by contrast,

argues that whoever wins

the most delegates, even if

he doesn’t reach a majority,

should be the presumptive

nominee.

“The will of the people

should prevail,” he said.

That’s the opposite of the

argument Sanders made in

2016, when Hillary Clinton

was in first place and he

trailed in second.

It’s also not what the

party rules say. The rules,

which Sanders helped draft

in 2018, say the nominee

needs a majority, not just a

plurality, of delegates.

“Forty percent at the end

of the day is not enough,”

Tom Perez, chairman of the

Democratic National Com-

mittee, said last month.

If the candidate with the

most primary votes doesn’t

win the nomination, Sand-

ers warned last week, “That

would be a very divisive

moment for the Democratic

Party.”

That’s obviously true;

any hard-fought outcome

will be divisive. But it also

sounds a little like a threat.

In 2016, when Sanders

finished behind Clinton in

both votes and delegates,

Sanders’s campaign man-

ager denounced the process

as “rigged,” and many of his

delegates walked out of the

convention in Philadelphia.

This time, if Biden comes

in second in primary votes

but then cobbles together a

majority of delegates, Sand-

ers supporters will under-

standably be furious again.

And that’s only the first

ballot. It gets worse.

If the first ballot doesn’t

produce a nominee, the

party’s 775 so-called super-

delegates, elected politi-

cians and party leaders, are

allowed to vote in later

rounds.

The addition of the su-

perdelegates would prob-

ably hurt Sanders’ chances,

since most of them are more

moderate than he is.

Cue another walkout.

“If Bernie loses, even if he

loses fair and square, his

people will blame the party,”

Kamarck said. “They’re

doing it already.”

None of these scenarios

look appetizing to Demo-

crats who hope to unite for a

tough campaign against

President Trump. The

president is doing his best

to stoke the division, warn-

ing that Democratic leaders

are trying to steal the nomi-

nation from Sanders.

History suggests that

parties that come out of

their conventions deeply

divided often do badly in the

general election campaign

that follows.

So it’s going to matter

how the process looks:

whether it’s transparent.

Whether the winner is gra-

cious in victory, and the

loser accepts the outcome

without recriminations. If

deals are to be cut, better to

cut them in the open, not a

smoky backroom.

The Democratic conven-

tion won’t be contested,

strictly speaking, if one of

the candidates assembles a

majority one way or another

before the delegates arrive

in Milwaukee.

But it’s almost certain to

be angry and divisive — no

matter who wins. It could be

great political theater too.

That’s all good news for

Trump.

McManus’ column appears

on Sunday and Wednesday.

LETTER FROM WASHINGTON

JOE BIDENand Bernie Sanders in an L.A. debate in December. The race may end in a brokered convention.

Brian van der BrugLos Angeles Times

If nobody wins a majority

We may see a brutal fight for unattached Democratic delegates

DOYLE McMANUS