What happened
In a stunning turnaround, Joe
Biden catapulted to the front of
the Democratic presidential race
this week with a powerhouse
Super Tuesday showing that ef-
fectively narrowed the primary
to a two-person race between the
moderate former vice president
and democratic socialist Sen.
Bernie Sanders. It was an extraor-
dinary comeback for a candidate
who’d stumbled in early debates
and performed poorly in the first
three primaries and caucuses.
Biden’s campaign was revived after
African-American and suburban
voters gave him an unexpect-
edly decisive win in Saturday’s South Carolina primary. Sen. Amy
Klobuchar and Pete Buttigieg both then dropped out and endorsed
Biden, and their backing made Biden the clear choice for moderate
Democrats panicking at the thought of putting the far-left Sand-
ers up against President Trump. On Super Tuesday, Biden won
10 states out of 14, with surprise wins in Maine, Massachusetts,
and Minnesota. The next day, Mike Bloomberg dropped out and
also threw his weight—and potentially his war chest—behind
Biden. “For those who have been knocked down, counted out, left
behind, this is your campaign,” said Biden at a rally in Los Angeles.
Sanders had his share of wins, most notably in delegate gold mine
California, where he held a comfortable lead as The Week went to
press. Faring well with young and Latino voters, he won deci-
sively in Colorado, Utah, and his home state of Vermont. But polls
showed that late-deciding voters broke heavily toward Biden, who
led in the delegate count with 566 to Sanders’ 501 as of Wednesday.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren was far behind with 61 delegates, after suf-
fering a humiliating third-place showing in her home state. Sanders
said he’d called Warren and that she was
“assessing her campaign.”
The rout was a fatal blow for Bloom-
berg, whose late-entry strategy was built
on a $500 million Super Tuesday spend-
ing blitz. Sanders, meanwhile, pledged
he was in for the long haul. “I tell you
with absolute confidence, we’re going
to win the Democratic nomination,” he
said. “You cannot beat Trump with the
same-old, same-old kind of politics.”
What the editorials said
“Hold the revolution,” said The Wall
Street Journal. Just as Bernie Sanders’
leftist takeover of the Democratic Party
was looking like a done deal, “literally
in four days the Democratic race has
turned upside down.” Biden’s “gaffes
and stumbles” may have worried voters,
but “the prospect of an avowed socialist
atop the ticket has scared millions of
Democrats into Biden’s arms.” To prove
he’s the Democrats’ best bet against
Trump, Biden will have to
sharpen his game. He’ll “be back
in the relentless media spotlight,
and his vigor and acuity will be
tested anew.”Voters have “hit the reset but-
ton,” said the San Francisco
Chronicle. It turns out the results
in Iowa and New Hampshire
had no bearing on what the
larger electorate actually wanted.
The Democrats may be divided,
but “even a fractured electorate
can find a single purpose,” said
the Houston Chronicle. “In this
case: to defeat Donald Trump in
November.”What the columnists said
Biden is staging “one of the greatest comebacks in American politi-
cal history,” said Jim Geraghty in NationalReview.com. And not
a moment too soon for the Democratic establishment, who were
looking down the barrel of a “catastrophe,” with House Demo-
crats in swing states “openly fretting that Sanders could cost them
their majority.” Eleven governorships are up for grabs this year,
some in states such as North Carolina and Montana, where “so-
cialism is not an easy sell.” But now Biden has delivered “the worst
beating of a socialist since Rocky fought Ivan Drago.”Super Tuesday’s “clearest message” was the limits of Sanders’ ap-
peal, said Ronald Brownstein in TheAtlantic.com. Despite the pas-
sion of his core followers, Sanders has not generated his promised
large turnout of young and first-time voters. And when it comes
to building a real coalition, “he’s failed on almost every front,”
especially among older and African-American voters. Therein lies
Sanders’ dilemma, said Ezra Klein in Vox.com. As the front-runner,
he needed to find a way to unite the
Democratic Party around him, but
that’s hard to do when you’re running
as a revolutionary with obvious “con-
tempt” for the “corrupt” mainstream
of the party. He’s learning that “if you
treat voters and officials in the party
you want to lead as the enemy, a lot
of people in that party aren’t going to
trust you to lead them.”Sanders is a risky nominee, but
so is Biden, said Paul Waldman in
Washington Post.com. His comeback
“does not change the fundamental
fact that he is simply terrible at run-
ning for president.” On the campaign
trail he’s showing his age, meander-
ing in his speech, giving feeble debate
performances and saying “cringewor-
thy things on a daily basis.” Once
“Trump’s disinformation machine”
turns its full power on old Joe, he
could suffer the same fate as Hillary
Clinton did in 2016. APBiden at victory rally in California: A super Super TuesdayTHE WEEK March 13, 2020
4 NEWS The main stories...
Biden’s historic comeback transforms race
Illustration by Fred Harper.
Cover photos from AP, Reuters, APWhat next?
Biden’s “stunning turnaround” completely
reshapes next week’s Michigan primary, said
Todd Spangler in the Detroit Free Press. It’s a
golden opportunity for Sanders and Biden to
make their case “as the Democrat best poised to
defeat Trump in November,” since Trump won
the pivotal swing state in 2016 by just 10,
votes. “Expect both to hammer at key constitu-
encies,” with Biden banking on black voters and
suburban whites and Sanders courting young
progressives and unions. Missouri, Idaho, Mis-
sissippi, Washington, and North Dakota also hold
contests next week, and if Sanders and Biden
keep trading victories, “a contested convention”
is still in play; FiveThirtyEight.com estimates that
there’s a 60 percent chance that nobody wins a
majority of delegates. If Sanders wins Michigan
decisively, that prospect becomes more likely.
But if Biden continues his momentum with a win
there, he’s likely to get a big haul of delegates in
Florida and Ohio on March 17 and have a clear
path to the nomination.