OK, here’s what needs to happen. Like, today. Right now.
Mayor Pete? You have a bright future. You speak well, and your quip about Trump being stuck in the ’50s and Bernie being stuck in the ’60s deserves to live on. But the town you ran has fewer people than my Center City Philadelphia neighborhood, so you need more seasoning. Time to quit the race.
Midwest Amy? Time to go join Uncle Dick in the deer stand. You’re much needed in the Senate. You peaked in New Hampshire. You and Pete will be footnotes on Super Tuesday and beyond. You both should bow out – take a hint from Tom Steyer – and clear the center-left lane for Joe Biden.
Not-ready-for-prime time Mike? Your billionaire bucks can buy umpteen ads, but they can’t mask your in-person arrogance or trump your track record with blacks and women. Nobody wants to hear you grumble anymore about how women in your employ didn’t like your jokes. Spend whatever you want to help the future Democratic ticket; otherwise, get out of the way.
Because it’s abundantly clear, in the wake of last night’s South Carolina blowout, that Joe Biden is back from the walking dead and best positioned on the center-left to stop the old socialist with the tricky heart whose pipe dreams and ideological stigma would be appetizers on Donald Trump’s plate.
It’s high time – if it’s not already too late – for Democrats to stop divvying up the anti-Bernie majority. Enough is enough. Biden will be a tad fragile on Super Tuesday (14 states – and one-third of all delegates – are at stake), and he needs to harness anti-Bernie sentiment if there’s any hope of steering Democrats away from the cliff.
So thank you, South Carolina, for bringing much-needed clarity to the Democratic clustermuck. At last check, Joe is now a strong second in the national delegate count, trailing Bernie 57 to 53.
In South Carolina, Bernie was opposed by 80 percent of the voters. (Some “front-runner” he is.) Joe beat Bernie by nearly 20 points in the final tally, and he topped Bernie in nearly every demographic: whites, blacks, men, women, college grads, no college degrees, independents, even very liberals. And in the most important metric – the voters who wanted the candidate best able to beat Trump – Biden swamped Bernie 52 to 17 percent.
Did Bernie win big with any group? Oh yeah, people under age 30, the vanguard of his “revolution.” But only 11 percent of the voters were under 30. Once again, Bernie’s sales job didn’t work. He keeps saying that the bigger the turnout, the better he’ll do – but the South Carolina primary turnout was 40 percent bigger than it was in 2016, and Bernie still got clobbered. In fact, he lost the first-time primary voters by 7 percent.
No Democrat (or, in Bernie’s case, a non-Democrat) can win the nomination, much less a November election, without decisive support from black folks – especially black women. South Carolina was the first contest with a sizeable black electorate (55 percent of the turnout), and they put Biden back in play. And it wasn’t just because Biden was Barack Obama’s veep. As countless black voters told reporters, their top priority is to get rid of Trump (for obvious reasons), not to vote for a pie-in-the-sky dreamer like Bernie. That’s a luxury they can’t afford.
One voter, Chris Richardson, had another shrewd reason: “Black voters know white voters better than white voters know themselves. So yeah, we’ll back Biden, because we know who white America will vote for in the general election in a way they may not tell a pollster or the media.”
But black turnout won’t be as dominant in any of the Super Tuesday states (with the possible exception of Alabama), Bloomberg and the other center-left spoilers will be on the ballots in competition with Biden, and Biden has barely sustained a TV or digital presence. Bernie’s ground game – particularly in delegate-rich California – has been strong, particularly (and to his credit) in the Hispanic community, and he may have banked a huge lead among early voters. Biden has won the big headlines today, and thus a favorable “narrative” going into Tuesday, but it may not matter unless a huge pool of late deciders sustain his Joe-mentum.
California is particularly crucial, because its 415 delegates are more than one-fifth of the total needed to win the nomination. Biden has scant chance to win California. His goal is to get 15 percent of the statewide vote, and 15 percent in each congressional district; if he reaches those thresholds (the latest CBS News poll says he will), he’s eligible to win some delegates. If he falls short of 15 percent – along with the other center-lefters, canceling each other out – Bernie will grab the lion’s share and take a big step toward becoming unstoppable. (Elizabeth Warren, whose candidacy is on fumes, is likely to clear 15 percent.) It’s the same deal in Texas, the second-biggest Super Tuesday state, where Bloomberg is on the ballot, with enough ad bucks to undercut Biden’s momentum prospects (although the CBS News poll shows Biden running a strong second).
So South Carolina could prove to be merely an upbeat blip. Unless Biden’s center-left rivals get out of the way, the Democrats will likely proceed with their slow-motion car wreck. We’ll know more, for better or worse, in 72 hours.