A6 eZ M2 the washington post.wednesday, march 11 , 2020
has identified ills in an unequal
economic system that they are
feeling acutely. Biden has fared
poorly among younger voters in
part because Sanders and his
agenda speak to them in ways
Biden and his message do not.
Biden and his team have other
work to do and less time than it
might seem to get it done. Even
if Sanders chooses to keep
running far into the spring,
Biden will have to begin to make
a swift pivot toward the general
election, with the goal of turning
a campaign operation that has
drawn criticism even from
prominent supporters into a
machine capable of waging a
general election against the
Trump forces.
Biden won states on Super
Tuesday where he had spent
little or no money, in states
where he had held no rallies. He
was winning because nearly two-
thirds of Democrats appeared to
be looking for a more moderate
alternative to Sanders and Biden
was the last candidate standing.
The deficiencies in his
organization that contributed to
his loss in Iowa cannot go
unattended, say sympathetic
Democrats.
Biden will start a general
election campaign many months
behind the Trump campaign in
identifying the voters who will
make the difference in
November and communicating
directly to them. For the
November election, he will need
to scale up his operation,
sharpen his message and reach
beyond to voters who either
shifted to Trump in 2016 or sat
on the sidelines.
Trump remains the great
unifier of Democrats, but it will
take something more on the part
of both Sanders and Biden to
bring the party fully and
enthusiastically together if the
party is to be ready for what
promises to be a general election
that voters in both parties see as
the most important in their
lifetimes.
[email protected]election 2020
note: north Dakota does not provide vote totals by county. source: edison research
Brittany renee Mayes anD ChiQui esteBan/the Washington PostNorth Dakota
SandersBiden1,1,44.34.33CANDIDATE VOTES%%%DELEGATES37 .4% reporting as of 12:31 a.m.14 delegatesBidenSanders46,40,48.42.97CANDIDATE VOTES%%%DELEGATES86.1% reporting as of 1:12 a.m.Idaho
20 delegatesMichigan
BidenSanders74 9,534,52.37.4127CANDIDATE VOTES%%%DELEGATES87.0% reporting as of 12:48 a.m.125 delegatesMississippi
BidenSanders214,39,81.14.28CANDIDATE VOTES%%%DELEGATES97 .9% reporting as of 12:14 a.m.36 delegatesMissouri
BidenSanders399, 734229,60.34.3018CANDIDATE VOTES%%%DELEGATES99.2% reporting as of 12:09 a.m.68 delegatesWashington
SandersBiden335,333,32.32.1111CANDIDATE VOTES%%%DELEGATESFewer than 10% reporting as of 12:24 a.m.89 delegatesJoe Biden
Bernie Sanders
DELEGATE COUNT GAINED TOTAL
As of 1:24 a.m.753
612
125
67
WINLEAD Boise
Idaho Falls
Pocatello LansingSault Ste. MarieGrand Rapids
FlintDetroitJacksonHattiesburgBiloxiSouthavenJefferson CityKansas CitySt. LouisSpringfieldOlympiaSeattleVancouverYakimaSpokaneDemocratic contest results
352 Delegates at stakeresults next week, just over
60 percent of the pledged
delegates will have been
allocated. A week later comes
the Georgia primary and
probably another big Biden
victory. Given the sudden
momentum shift the campaigns
have experienced, there is little
to give Sanders any confidence
that he can reverse the trends
enough to overtake the surging
Biden.
As a result of Tuesday’s
results, Sanders and Biden now
face new — and different —
challenges. For Sanders, it is
dealing with the question of how
long to keep the fight going in a
year when defeating the
president is the overriding
priority for Democratic voters.
For Biden, it is making the pivot
to a general election campaign,
while bringing unity to his own
party.
Sanders is no quitter. He has
shown in this campaign and in
2016 that keeping on competing
hard and arguing his case are his
default positions. That’s the case
even when the odds look long, as
they did last fall after he suffered
a heart attack and was being
written out of the race, only to
bounce back and, for a time,
become the front-runner for the
nomination.
Now he is the underdog, and
distinctively so, thanks to the
rapid, unprecedented
coalescence around Biden’s
candidacy by former rivals and
millions of voters. That leaves
Sanders — not at this moment
perhaps but sooner than he
might like — with the question
of how long and how hard he
will try to battle against the
former vice president and what
he will urge upon his passionate
following.
Sanders has said repeatedlyThe campaign for
the Democratic
nomination has
moved at warp
speed over the
past 10 days, and
on Tuesday night
it reached a
decisive turning
point. Barring
something unforeseen,
Democrats now know that
former vice president Joe Biden
will be the party’s nominee to
challenge President Trump in
November.
Biden scored a group of
victories over Sen. Bernie
Sanders (I-Vt.) on Tuesday,
adding to the overwhelming —
and unexpected — successes of a
week ago on Super Tuesday. He
romped in Mississippi, where he
was expected to romp. He won
handily in Missouri, where
Sanders came agonizingly close
four years ago, and later added
Idaho. Most important, Biden
won where Sanders could not
afford to lose, in the general
election battleground state of
Michigan.
Biden remains well short of
the 1,991 pledged delegates
needed for a first-ballot victory
at the national convention in
Milwaukee in July. But with
Tuesday’s results, he has
solidified his lead in the delegate
battle and, with the states that
will hold their primaries in the
next two weeks, that advantage
inevitably will grow. Sanders has
little time and few delegates
remaining to be selected to have
much chance of changing the
trajectory.
Arizona, Florida, Illinois and
Ohio hold primaries next
Tuesday. Sanders lost all four to
Hillary Clinton in 2016, in many
cases by big margins. By the
time those four states tally
Next hurdles for Biden:
Party unity, wider appeal
Dan Balz
The Take
percent of the vote.
Four years ago, Sanders
balked at endorsing Clinton
even at the close of the
primaries, after she had won in
California and her victory was
secured. That led to difficult
negotiations between the two
camps and a contentious
opening to the Philadelphia
convention. This year, many
Democrats say the party cannot
afford to go through a repeat of
that experience. What Sanders
decides about his candidacy will
have a profound effect on efforts
to unify the party before, not
after, the convention.
But this is more than an issue
for Sanders. It is of enormous
consequence for Biden as well.
Unity demands something of
those on the losing side, but it
often requires much more of the
winning side. Sanders has a
following, especially among
young voters, for a reason. Henot determine what will happen
on Tuesday, what will happen in
the future.”
In that interview, Sanders put
down his own markers for
success. He said that he believed
he had “a great chance” t o win in
Michigan and Washington.
Michigan was the state that
brought his candidacy back to
life four years ago when he
shocked Clinton by narrowly
winning the state. On Tuesday
night, the state fell into Biden’s
column not long after the polls
closed. It was as crippling a loss
as Sanders has suffered this year.
Meanwhile, the results in
Washington were just beginning
to be reported Tuesday night.
But even if Sanders were to win
Washington, the delegate split
would be far narrower than it
was four years ago, when the
state’s contest was a caucus
rather than a primary and he
won it with more than 70that the Democratic candidate
who has the most delegates —
even if that is a plurality and not
a majority — should be selected
as the party’s presidential
nominee. He first said that when
he believed he would be that
candidate. To day, every bit of
arithmetic and modeling says
that candidate is Biden, with the
odds growing that the former
vice president could assemble a
majority rather than just a
plurality of the delegates going
into the convention.
Asked Sunday by ABC’s
George Stephanopoulos whether
he would drop out of the race if
it were clear that he could not
win a plurality, Sanders hedged.
“Look, we will fight for every
vote that we can, as we’re — as
we try to win this election,” he
said. “I’m not a masochist who
wants to stay in the race that
can’t be won. But right now,
that’s a little bit premature. Let’sCarolyn Van houten/the Washington Post
Former vice president Joe Biden speaks Tuesday at a community center in Columbus, Ohio. After
that state and three others tally votes next week, nearly 60 percent of delegates will be allocated.