We promised last week that the leader board in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination would look much different today than it did then.
Promise made. Promise kept.
This morning, former Vice President Joe Biden is waking up at the end of the best week of his political life. This time eight days ago, Biden’s campaign was being written off. In runs for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1988, 2008 and up until this past Saturday in 2020, Biden had never won a single state primary. Plagued by gaffes of legendary magnitude that led to openly expressed concerns that a few marbles had fallen out along the way, Biden’s campaign was in trouble.
Facing certain defeat in New Hampshire last month at the hands of Bernie Sanders, Biden left the state before the polls even closed and headed for South Carolina – calling the state his “firewall.”
That firewall held. Biden got the first state presidential primary win of his career in South Carolina this past Saturday. It was a big win for Biden when nothing less would do. All of a sudden, Biden was back in it.
And then came yesterday – Super Tuesday as it is called – the biggest single day on the primary season calendar. A total of 1,357 delegates of the 1,991 needed to win the nomination on the first ballot were in play from 14 states and American Samoa yesterday. No candidate can expect to win the nomination without having a good day on Super Tuesday.
It wasn’t just a good day for Biden, it was a spectacular day – the best of his political career. With votes still being counted at this writing, it appears that Biden won nine states yesterday – including Texas. As of this writing, Biden now holds the delegate lead at 453, followed by Bernie Sanders at 373 followed by essentially no one. Elizabeth Warren and Michael Bloomberg together have only 57 delegates. Buttigieg and Klobuchar have dropped out.
Elizabeth Warren, having lost even her home state of Massachusetts, will have to drop out, too. The only question is when.
Which brings us to former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg. One of Bloomberg’s favorite sayings is, “In God we trust, otherwise show me the data.”The data for Bloomberg is not good. It’s in fact downright ugly.
Bloomberg’s strategy was to sit out the initial primary states of Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina in order to concentrate on the Super Tuesday states. Having carpet bombed those 14 states with nearly two-thirds of a billion dollars worth of media buys, Bloomberg won only American Samoa outright and collected only 18 delegates out of the 1,357 that were in play. That comes to $33.3 million per delegate.
It’s now a two-man race between Biden and Sanders. Biden has 50.8 percent of the delegates selected so far. Sanders has 41.8 percent. If Biden can win his current proportion of the remaining delegates between now and June, he wins the nomination on the first ballot.
Last week, it was advantage Sanders. This morning, it’s advantage Biden.