Super Tuesday turned out to be just that for former vice-president Joe Biden in his bid for the Democratic party’s presidential nomination. For democratic socialist Bernie Sanders, not so much.
The clash between Biden and Sanders was a clear ideological battle. Biden wants to restore decency and dignity to the presidency, expand the Affordable Care Act to ensure universal healthcare, and boost the wages of the middle class.
Sanders wants a revolution: an 8% wealth tax, banning private health insurance which more than 160 million Americans have and replacing it with a single-payer system, eliminating college student debt, and raising income taxes across the board.
Faced with that stark choice Democratic voters sent a loud and decisive message that they prefer Biden’s plan for meaningful change building on the legacy of the Obama, and to an extent Clinton, presidencies.
Much to the chagrin of Sanders supporters, and with apologies to Gil-Scott Heron, it appears that the revolution will not be televised.
The best forecast of the delegate count post Super Tuesday (ballots are still being counted in California and Maine) is that Biden will have about 670 delegates, Sanders 589, Mike Bloomberg 104, Elizabeth Warren 97, Pete Buttigieg 26, and Amy Klobuchar 7. A total of 1991 delegates are required to secure the nomination.
Buttigieg and Klobuchar dropped out of the race before Tuesday and have endorsed Biden. On Wednesday morning Bloomberg — after a relatively poor showing on Tuesday — dropped out and endorsed Biden.
Bloomberg spent more than US$500 million in 16 weeks on his own campaign, has a personal fortune of around US$60 billion, and is determined that Donald Trump be defeated. He has 2400 staff in 100 campaign offices paid up through the November general election.
Bloomberg’s endorsement of Biden means more than some delegates at the Democratic National Convention in July. It means Biden no longer splitting the moderate vote with anyone, and the prospect of Bloomberg’s resources more the reverses the financial and “ground game” advantage Sanders has enjoyed to date.
On top of that, most upcoming states are a toss-up between Biden and Sanders, but that’s before the recent surge in momentum for Biden which will tilt things his way. The once exception is Florida, which already leans strongly in favour of Biden and is delegate rich.
Less than a week ago a lot of commentators were questioning whether Biden had any feasible path to the nomination. Now it is Sanders whose path seems unclear.
It is still possible that neither Biden nor Sanders will get the 1991 delegates required to win the nomination outright on the first ballot at the convention. But it is now looking highly likely that Biden will have more delegates than Sanders going into the convention. Given the role that so-called “superdelegates” (essentially Democratic party insiders) play on the second ballot it is inconceivable that Biden would lose under such a scenario.
If Sanders really wants Donald Trump to be defeated in November then he should do the gracious and decent thing and drop out of the race.
To his credit, Sanders has built an incredibly loyal following of dedicated supporters and he has animated younger voters. But by hanging in the 2016 race for too long, and showing somewhat tepid support for Hillary Clinton when she became the nominee, he contributed to Donald Trump being elected president.
One would hope that he does not make the same mistake in 2020. But I bet he will.
At his heart Sanders is a fanatic who thinks the entire US political and economic system is rotten. He’s not interested in changing it, he wants to break it and start again. He thinks pharmaceutical companies that produce life-saving drugs but make a lot of money are evil. He thinks being a billionaire, or taking money from one, is immoral.
Sanders won’t change his mind, or his tone. But Democratic voters have made up their minds. They want meaningful evolution, not revolution. And that’s what they will get from Joe Biden.
Richard Holden is professor of economics at UNSW Business School.
“If Sanders really wants Donald Trump to be defeated in November then he should do the gracious and decent thing and drop out of the race.” Trump is going to wipe the floor with Biden. Biden may not even win Delaware, assuming he keeps his wits about him and stops sniffing women’s hair until November.
He is worse than the worst imaginable caricature of a ‘70s white shoe wearing Gold Coast canal developer.
AOC in 2024 will be the last hope for the planet; a win for Ivanka Trump will mean good night nurse.
Those two names, Clinton and Obama, are exactly why Biden will cop a flogging from Trump. They’re the reason Trump was elected in the first place, right or wrong, and invoking their names is electoral poison to the very people whose minds and votes the Democratic Party would like to change.
Crikey could do better than this tired frame of Bernie as a crazy ‘fanatic’.
Holden’s analysis would benefit from taking off the neoliberal blinkers for a moment and trying to understand why Bernie Sanders has built up such a significant base of support with the working class.
The health care model in the US is broken: pharmaceutical companies do produce life-saving medicine, but they price gouge on essentials like insulin (making a real life-or-death choice even for those lucky to have insurance due to the expensive gaps). These costs inflated by outrageous marketing spends and profiteering – most of the research and innovation is done inside public institutions. Most of their research is about finding the next money-spinner (drugs for rich people with chronic conditions) with critical areas like antibiotics neglected because it is unprofitable.
Billionaires have demonstrated they can buy the system. Even as Bloomberg loses, he wins, his cool half-a-billion of advertising reminding the party who really funds them, making sure they don’t threaten his or his fellow billionaires business interests. Sanders is a threat to all of them, especially Democratic party insiders who know they must keep him out at all costs if they want to continue having cushy well-paid jobs within the party, or at associated lobbyists and think-tanks.
At this point, the only candidate who should be dropping out is Warren – she’s spit the progressive vote away from Bernard Sanders and dragged him ‘left’ on narrow, media-class issues, of little interest to mainstream voters. She’s unelectable on account of her years of leveraging a non-existent First Nations identity, her unconvincing switch from a hardcore Republican, and her almost-but-non-quite commitment to Medicare-for-All (as always, the devil is in the details). She appeals to a narrow technocratic/professional class audience bedazzled by her ‘plans’, but little more, coming across to most as a wealthy grifter.
By threatening to massively change the system (not blow it up, as Richard asserts, seemingly unaware of the difference between anarchism and socialism), Bernie Sanders has built up a following from those worn down by years of stagnant wage growth and precarious health care coverage, carrying too much debt to think about the day to day, and given the rare chance to vote for a candidate they know is not ‘of the system’ and won’t compromise like Biden, Buttigieg, Klobuchar, and yes, even Warren.
I agree entirely but the primary problem for Sanders is that he has no hope of getting his agenda through Congress, given how divided it is. Hence, although I philosophically support Sanders, Biden offers the only hope forward for some incremental improvement and I suspect a great number of Democrats are thinking the same.
Not so sure about Biden offering hope going forward. He and many of his supporters seem to think they can return to the good old days of Obama whose people are partly to blame for Trump. While Sanders is clearly not a fanatic, many of his supporters are, shall we say, somewhat overenthusiastic.
As Paul Walkman has said in a recent Washington Post article, both Biden and Sanders are risky, but in different ways:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/03/03/sanders-is-terribly-risky-nominee-so-is-biden/?itid=ap_paulwaldman
Also, it would be wise to check out another article by Zack Beauchamp in Vox before putting your money on Biden:
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2020/3/4/21164083/super-tuesday-results-joe-biden-win-ukraine
Oh dear, Richard does’nt like democratic socialism does he, obviously quite happy with the 45 million Americans living below the poverty line, and the 25 percent who could die from coronavirus without the administration lifting a hand, and that wont change under Biden. Perhaps Richard could read Guy Rundle for a bit of historical balance.
Good comment Christopher
We are ever increasingly let down by the promise of objectivity and rigor associated with the epithet ‘professor’, but alas it’s a job title, not a qualification. It is always shocking when an academic commits hyperbole to the page; “fanatic”, wow. Makes me wonder if ‘Business School’ is part of an academy at all. Maybe it should be more of a TAFE training thing, or an IPA internship?
Where to start with this biased ignorant nonsense ?
Super Tuesday is traditionally the real start of primaries season. The smaller states beforehand have little bearing. Bernie got the most delegates in the biggest state that voted this week, California which most pundits like this one magically overlook.
Biden did well enough for a change so all of a sudden he’s the great white hope front runner. Reminds of the similar drivel about Humphrey in 68.
Sanders is correct that much about the US economy as lived under by a majority of Americans is rotten. That’s quite a different thing from advocating total revolution which he isn’t. Wealth taxation of some sort and getting big corporates to pay tax and better wages is a good thing.
Biden may talk of another go at a proper national health system but there’s no way it’ll happen with him. Obama’s very modest reforms were fifty years in the making. Trump removed them and no surprises that his promised new improved system has gone precisely nowhere.
Any talk of best forecasts straight after Super Tuesday is foolish and denies history and reality.
Biden is more readily electable than Trump at this stage. Sanders shouldn’t be written off and would end up being a much better president. There’s no way most of his agenda would get through Congress but he’d shake things up and would wind back military spending.
You can find much better than this article Crikey. I can only assume it was free or at minimal cost.
Well said
Of course an economist will hope for the status quo to be preserved. To actually look at the way America “works” and not see that things need to drastically change, not “evolve” you need to wear a practicing economist’s blinkers and carry a white cane.