World

US2020: Super Tuesday

Joe Biden rises from political death

Joe Biden rises from political death
Democratic presidential candidates Senator Bernie Sanders, left, and former US vice president Joe Biden. (Photos: EPA-EFE / Larru W Smith | PA-EFE / Etienne Laurent)

As far as political shocks go, Joe Biden’s success in the March 3rd Super Tuesday multiple state primary vote is a contemporary return from the living dead. But can it last?

In the Bible, it is written that Jesus brought Lazarus of Bethany back to life after Lazarus had been dead for four days. And, of course, as the Gospels also say, Jesus was himself returned from the beyond. Such miracles abounded in the stories recounted in ancient texts, although such miraculous occurrences have become less frequent in our own more sceptical era.

In the world of politics, however, there have been metaphorical returns from beyond the grave, even in our own time. Most famous, perhaps, have been Winston Churchill’s return to power in 1940 after years in Britain’s political wilderness, as well as the return to Beijing’s Forbidden City of a clutch of senior leaders after the general chaos of, and their personal humiliations and rustications during, China’s Cultural Revolution.

In the US, the gold standard for such a political miracle must surely have been Richard Nixon’s successful presidential run in 1968, after those six years of absence from national politics that followed his embarrassing defeat for the California governorship in 1962, after having also lost a presidential bid in 1960. To this list, we can now add another unlikely miracle in the shape of Joe Biden’s amazing run in the Super Tuesday primary of 3 March.

After embarrassing defeats in Iowa, New Hampshire, and Nevada, the mantle of presumptive frontrunner for the nomination had slipped badly from Biden. Instead, the Vermont democratic socialist senator, Bernie Sanders, had seized the momentum, claiming his movement of the underclass – black, brown and Asian-Americans, students, the poor, the working class, and anybody else identified as the would-be downtrodden – would coalesce into an unstoppable revolutionary force in the US. (But sometimes one should not believe one’s own press releases.)

In the face of all this rapturous feeling for Sanders, first there was South Carolina. The primary on Saturday was a sign of much worse to come a few days later for the insurgent Vermont senator.

In South Carolina, Biden’s chances were borne aloft by an effusive endorsement by that state’s well-loved, African-American, and very powerful congressman, James Clyburn, coming just before the vote. Bringing together support from many other, less well-known local Democrats, and thereby affirming Biden’s close ties to the state’s African-American community built up over decades, amid a still-crowded field of candidates, Biden crushed his opposition. 

He nearly doubled Sanders’ vote total, thereby ensuring Biden would get the lion’s share of the state-wide delegate pool, as well as every delegate picked among those voted by a win in every single county. That is one rare act of political resurrection. Or, as veteran political reporter Dan Balz of The Washington Post observed:

“There are few commodities more valuable in political campaigns than momentum, and, right now, Biden is blessed with it in abundance for the first time in his campaign.” Or, perhaps, in his entire political life.

But there was more to come. 

Three days later, in the Super Tuesday multi-state primary, a vote that took place simultaneously in every region of the US, Biden unexpectedly won nine of those states, including several Sanders had been widely expected to triumph in, such as Texas and Minnesota. And Biden even beat Senator Elizabeth Warren – the other progressive-leftist candidate – in her home state of Massachusetts.

Sanders gained victories in Vermont, Colorado and Utah, while the counting was still ongoing in Maine and California. It is expected Sanders will win in California, but by a much closer margin than had previously been anticipated, thereby enforcing a division of the delegate totals there.

While all of this was going on, Pete Buttigieg and Senator Amy Klobuchar both dropped out of the hunt and endorsed Biden. Then, on Wednesday, multibillionaire and former New York City mayor Mike Bloomberg similarly dropped out after spending $500-million on advertising, staff operations and so forth, and winning exactly one primary: tiny American Samoa. 

While the cynics charged Bloomberg was buying the election, and in defiance of the conventional wisdom about the centrality of money in politics, that candidate’s colossal failure helps remind that money must link to the candidate’s discernible strong qualities in the eyes of voters too. Bloomberg has now endorsed Biden as well, suddenly leaving the field largely a two-man race, pitting the two wings of the party – leftist and moderate centre – to slug it out in the remaining primaries.

Yes, Warren remains in the chase officially, but a failure to win one’s home state primary is effectively a disqualifier in most minds. If the people who know you best decline to pick you, why should anyone else, goes the logic.

There are still numerous state primaries to go in March and even some thereafter, but in each one of these it now becomes an unsubtle, direct fight between just two candidates. What this probably means is that the chance of a stalemate on the first ballot in July at the nominating convention has now become less likely, as votes and delegates are no longer going to be sliced up between four or five candidates.

Even at this stage of the campaign and well before the general election campaign that begins in earnest in September, there are several takeaways. The first of these is that almost anything can happen, and it is foolish to make pronouncements about the future until it arrives. Much better to explain why what happened happened and how – and why it was inevitable!

Second, the vaunted wave of supporters for Sanders’ revolution has largely not materialised. In some states, he gained fewer votes than in 2016, and in the aggregate, while the number of voters casting ballots has grown significantly in many states, this did not include that many young voters. Or, as the Post’s Philip Bump observed:

“Sanders’s candidacy is predicated on the idea that he will expand the Democratic voting base, a promise that would seem to suggest that he’d gain support over time, not lose it. All of that, again, was before voting began Tuesday. On Tuesday night, Sanders continued to underperform relative to four years ago.”

Instead, African-Americans and suburban college-educated voters did show up, but they voted for Biden. Moreover, according to exit polls, many voters waited until the day of the vote before deciding whom they would support, thereby further casting doubt on the fervour and commitment of the Sandernistas as actual voters in many states – as opposed to attendees at rallies or ranting on social media.

Moreover, some people are whispering darkly about some kind of cabal of the party establishment, led by former president Barack Obama, operating with people like the now non-campaigning candidates, and in conjunction with that dreaded mainstream press. But realistically, politics is a game for grownups. If you can’t take your lumps as they come along, enter a different competition… maybe competitive Scrabble.

Further, it is virtually impossible to see so many people operating in concert, without one word leaking out all over the place about this plot. And in any case, how much power can a former president really have in a competition that is so wide open, with so many thousands of consultants and advisers eager to tell their side of things? 

In essence, as commentator/columnist Erol Louis argued on CNN on Wednesday afternoon, now that the people have spoken, those ostensible leaders and former candidates just took the hint.

Still, although it is still too early, far too early, to say the race is over, people are already murmuring about two key questions. The first is how a Biden candidacy will determine who his running mate will be – Amy Klobuchar? Elizabeth Warren? Pete Buttigieg, or yet some other figure? 

Second is how well can Biden be toned and tuned up for what will be a devastatingly bruising fistfight of a campaign with incumbent President Trump? Virtually no one is prepared to assert that Biden is the modern incarnation of the Roman senator Cicero, often called the finest debater of his era, let alone Abraham Lincoln or Benjamin Disraeli. But, his warmth and empathy are often noted. Accordingly, how he turns those attributes into the compelling anti-Trump platform that many voters are longing for could be key.

But let us not get ahead of ourselves. There are still many primaries left, and there are still innumerable chances for a campaign-killing gaffe or two to change everything around, all over again. 

And now, maybe, we shall get to see some real debating about healthcare, foreign policy, climate change, education, and everything else voters are actually anxious to learn more about from the candidates. DM

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