◼ POLITICS Bloomberg Businessweek March 9, 202034
THE BOTTOM LINE The former vice president’s resurgence on
Super Tuesday gives Democratic voters a stark choice for how to
beat Donald Trump in November: moderation or revolution.can persuade Sanders and, more important, his
legions of young followers, to accept him as the
legitimate leader of the party—and one they will
actively support. In a defiant speech in Vermont on
Tuesday night, Sanders gave no sign that he’ll make
Biden’s job any easier. “We cannot beat Trump with
the same old kind of politics,” he said.
To avoid a repeat of the 2016 primary and an
existential crisis for his party, Biden may need to
beat Sanders handily in the delegate race head-
ing into Milwaukee. While that will take time,
Tuesday’s results are about the best start he could
have hoped for.
“Nobody,” says Bob Shrum, a veteran strategist
for Democratic presidential campaigns, “has ever
come back from the dead the way Biden has come
back from the dead.” �Joshua Greencountry—and, especially, the country’s future.
But the “revolution” Sanders has promised has
yet to materialize. Even while winning key states
such as California and Colorado on Tuesday, he
didn’t generate a big influx of new young voters.
In fact, NBC News exit polls showed that 13% of
voters were age 18 to 29, which means they turned
out at only half the rate that seniors did.
In the areas where primary turnout has spiked
this year, such as Virginia, it’s mostly been fueled
by the suburban moderates who drove Democrats’
midterm gains and voted overwhelmingly for
Biden. Although he now must unify Democrats, on
Tuesday night Biden couldn’t resist taking a dig at
Sanders. “People are talking about a revolution,”
he said. “We started a movement.”
The question Democrats face is whether
Biden’s movement or Sanders’s revolution can
manage to assemble the 1,991 delegates neces-
sary to clinch the nomination before arriving at
the party convention in July. If neither candidate
amasses a majority of delegates, it would precipi-
tate an historic—and likely damaging—clash when
Democrats gather in Milwaukee. The last time
a major party convention went beyond the first
ballot was in 1952.
In recent weeks, the specter of a contested
convention generated intense controversy among
Democrats and Sanders supporters over whether
the party establishment could deny him the nom-
ination if he entered with a delegate lead. But as
with so much else this cycle, that concern has
suddenly been turned upside down. For now,
Biden, not Sanders, looks likelier to move for-
ward with a delegate lead—and re-create the
dynamic that divided the party four years ago and
fueled acrimony among Sanders supporters that’s
never abated.
This time Biden, not Clinton, is the anointed
establishment favorite. And his strength with
black voters and other party regulars may be just
enough to prevent Sanders from ever regaining
his delegate lead.
That would also saddle Biden with the same
problem of how to placate frustrated Sanders sup-
porters. “If Biden holds on to his delegate lead,”
says Brian Fallon, a top aide to Clinton’s presi-
dential campaign, “his task will be the same as
Hillary’s in 2016: How do you bring a disaffected
wing of the party into the fold? It would have
been nearly impossible if Bernie had the most
delegates. But it’s still a chore, one that was never
fully accomplished four years ago and contributed
to our defeat.”
Biden’s fate ultimately may rest on whether he