The Biden Resurgence A very Super Tuesday makes the former Vice President the best Democratic hope to beat Bernie Sanders.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-biden-resurgence-11583298561?mod=opinion_lead_pos1
Hold the revolution. The Bernie Sanders takeover of the Democratic Party took a detour on Super Tuesday as Joe Biden’s political resurrection that began in South Carolina on Saturday continued in the Southeast and expanded into the Middle West and even Bernie Sanders country in the Northeast. Maybe President Trump wished too soon for Mr. Sanders as his opponent.
Literally in four days the Democratic race has turned upside down. Mr. Biden replicated his South Carolina coalition of African-Americans, Baby Boomers and center-left voters for a crushing victory in Virginia with 53.3% of the vote. He won North Carolina more narrowly, but his margin with black Democrats again made the difference. He also won Alabama, Tennessee, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Minnesota, Massachusetts, and by our deadline was competitive in Texas and Maine.
The former Vice President ran away with the vote among late deciders, which means he benefited from the rush of endorsements that followed South Carolina. The party is almost literally lifting the old war horse on its back despite his many gaffes and stumbles. The prospect of an avowed socialist at the top of the ticket has scared millions of Democrats into Mr. Biden’s arms no matter his liabilities.
His strong performance will keep him close to Mr. Sanders in the delegate count, though we won’t know how close until the results in California are clear. But his victories may be most important for restoring credibility to Mr. Biden’s argument that he is the Democrat who is best able to defeat Mr. Trump. His coalition so far is the closest to Barack Obama’s, and the turnout in Virginia was especially impressive at nearly double what it was in 2016. Trump campaign, take note.
Mr. Sanders can point to victories in his home state of Vermont, Colorado, Utah and California. But the biggest night of the primaries carried warnings for the two-time candidate. He lost ground from his 2016 vote share in several states, including Vermont. This suggests he isn’t building his coalition with a surge of new voters as he has promised Democrats.
Mr. Sanders also benefited from early voting but did much more poorly among late deciders. He can talk about millennials all he wants, but Mr. Biden overwhelmed him among voters over age 45 who were 65% of the electorate in Virginia, 62% in Massachusetts, 64% in North Carolina, 66% in Maine, and 67% in Oklahoma, according to exit polls. Older Americans vote more than do young socialists.
Super Tuesday was also a day of reckoning for Michael Bloomberg, who appeared on the ballot for the first time. He won American Samoa and he will pick up delegates in Colorado and some other states by passing the 15% threshold. But the results had to be disappointing for the former New York mayor. He spent $18 million on ads in Virginia but won less than 10% of the vote.
Mr. Bloomberg may fight on, and nine states are on the primary calendar in the next two weeks. But Tuesday’s exit polls weren’t kind as upwards of half of Democratic voters in several states said they would be unhappy if Mr. Bloomberg were the nominee. This suggests he has limited room to grow support even with his TV ads and data analytics. The rationale for Mr. Bloomberg’s campaign was always that Mr. Biden would collapse, and he almost did, but his revival means pressure will build on Mr. Bloomberg to drop out.
The same is true for Elizabeth Warren, though that pressure will come from the party’s left. She suffered the humiliation of finishing third in her home state of Massachusetts and scored relatively few delegates. Her avowed hope that she can stay in the race and win by acclamation at the Democratic convention in Milwaukee if no one has a majority of delegates is wishful thinking. Her identity-politics assaults hurt Mr. Bloomberg but may also have blown up her last chance to be likable.
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All of which probably makes this a two-man race, and that will raise the pressure on Mr. Biden to raise his performance. He has a retooled stump speech that stresses a practical progressivism against Mr. Sanders’s revolution, and healing and compromise against Mr. Trump’s divisiveness. But the former Vice President will be back in the relentless media spotlight, and his vigor and acuity will be tested anew.
Mr. Sanders made clear Tuesday night that he won’t go down easily. He unveiled a list of left-wing populist contrasts with Mr. Biden’s record, including the war in Iraq, “cuts” in Social Security and Medicare, “disastrous trade agreements,” and bankruptcy reform.
The American left sees 2020 as its best chance in decades to take the White House against a vulnerable Donald Trump. With Bernie Sanders, the revolution is never over.
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