Shock and Awe
The clear winner of Super Tuesday was former Vice President Joe Biden. He won the South: North Carolina, Virginia, Alabama, Tennessee, Arkansas, and Oklahoma. Oh, and by the way, he won Texas as well. He won in the North: Massachusetts and Minnesota. Maine, with 91% of the vote counted, is still to close to call. And while he didn’t win in the West, with Colorado decided for Sanders, and California likely to do the same: he did well enough in those states to stay close to the total number of delegates that Senator Sanders earned.
In short, Joe Biden won Super Tuesday. He will likely have the delegate lead when all of the counting is done (which will be a while, California mail-in ballots aren’t due into the boards of elections until Friday). And Biden did all of this, without a campaign staff on the ground in most of those states, and without a television ad anywhere.
When it’s all said and done, if Joe Biden earns the nomination, Congressman Jim Clyburn of South Carolina is the reason. His heartfelt endorsement of Biden the Wednesday before the South Carolina primary changed the entire track of Biden’s campaign. The former Vice President’s overwhelming South Carolina victory, based largely on his strength in the black communities, altered the national perception. When Clyburn said, “Joe knows us,” he anchored Biden support. It carried over to the rest of the South, and obviously much of the rest of the nation.
Slogging it Out
Now we are looking at slogging it out, primary by primary, throughout March, April and May. Biden’s lead will certainly not be insurmountable, and the dedication of Senator Sanders and his followers is legendary. If there’s a way to make hard work pay off in votes, the Sanders campaign will find it.
But the calendar will not be kind to Bernie. Next Tuesday’s contests: in Idaho, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, North Dakota and Washington leave only two states where Sanders has a solid chance of success. But in Michigan the latest polling shows Biden up by 6%, and Washington polling is pre-South Carolina. Even then Sanders may have to struggle. And the St. Patrick’s Day contests in Alaska, Florida, Illinois, and Ohio the next week are even more likely to be “Biden Country”.
The end of March may find Biden with a seemingly insurmountable lead, but both candidates will certainly fight it out to the bitter end. The last six primaries: South Dakota, District of Columbia, Montana, New Jersey, and New Mexico; take place on June 2.
Staying In
Elizabeth Warren and Mike Bloomberg are faced with a serious question: do they continue in the campaign or not. Warren has years of work invested in her quest for the nomination, and heartfelt views and concerns about America. If she stays in, she will be, rightly or wrongly, constantly blamed for cutting into Bernie Sander’s delegate count. Her only path forward to the nomination is as a compromise candidate in a brokered convention at Milwaukee in July, an outcome that is looking less likely then it did twenty-four hours ago.
And Mike Bloomberg, well, as the Beatles sang, “Money don’t buy me love”. Divide the $500 million spent into the number of votes he earned on Super Tuesday – about $300 per vote. Bloomberg is a “data” guy; I expect he will soon decide that his presence as a candidate is no longer viable. It wouldn’t surprise me though, if we went through another week or so before he does. Cutting your losses at half-a-billion dollars has got to be tough to do.
The conventional wisdom suggests Warren votes go to Bernie, and Bloomberg votes go to Joe. I’m not sure that’s completely true, I think a lot of Warren supporters are backing a strong woman for President. I’m not sure what direction they take when that is no longer an option. But I do think Bloomberg voters either go to Biden, or don’t vote at all.
Looking for the Revolution
Bernie Sanders has promised that a revolution of young and disaffected voters will rise-up to support his candidacy. But it hasn’t happened yet. The huge turnouts in many of the Super Tuesday states weren’t Bernie-backers; they were black folks and white suburban women. They didn’t show up to vote for Bernie, they came for Joe. And that encourages more moderate Democrats to support Biden.
That is because, while Sanders preaches Democratic-Socialism, what he promises is a whole new voting block to defeat Donald Trump. That promised up swelling of Sanders supporters didn’t show when he needed them on Super Tuesday. If he can’t count on them in the primaries, then it raises huge concerns about defeating Trump in the general election.
Biden needs to organize. The momentum of South Carolina and Super Tuesday will only carry him so far: he requires staff on the ground, and ads on social media and television. The money will roll in, but “staffing up” is harder to do. Amy Klobuchar and Pete Buttigieg can help, but if Bloomberg does decide to withdraw, there is an entire national campaign on site and ready to go.
But historically, regardless of the outcome in Milwaukee, Biden’s victories on Super Tuesday will go down in American history, beside Harry Truman’s “Dewey Wins” Presidential victory of 1948 and John McCain’s 2008 South Carolina turn around. To go from a campaign on life-support after Nevada, to a clear shot at the nomination today, is more than remarkable.
Democrats, as Tom Perez said, need to “…fall in love, then fall in line”. After Milwaukee, all of our eyes need to be on a single prize, removing Donald Trump from the Presidency, and saving our nation. Bernie or Joe, we need to be one party with one mission.
