Let’s put the Democratic presidential primaries in a little perspective.
Yes, the moderates and the party establishment, who clearly don’t want Bernie Sanders to be the nominee (and the party establishment clearly doesn’t want him to be president), have decided to coalesce around one candidate. But we all knew that was likely to happen.
Yes, that one candidate, Joe Biden, did well on Tuesday night.
But the idea that Biden “won” more states than Sanders is a bit misleading. This is not the Electoral College; all of the states allocate convention delegates based on rules that take into account who won which regions. If Biden got more votes in Texas, but Sanders won by an even bigger margin in California, then Sanders “won” those two states.
So what we have now is what a lot of us figured would happen after Super Tuesday: The race is down to two candidates, who have very different agendas. And at this point, as the final delegates are being allocated in California, they are pretty close to tied.
The future debates will likely feature just Biden and Sanders (Elizabeth Warren is “considering her options” and will probably drop out.) There’s a chance – if the moderators aren’t the kind of disaster we have seen in the past – to get beyond personalities and talk about what the actual issues are.
“What’s important is our records and our vision for the future,” Sanders said tonight on the Rachel Maddow show. “I hope very much we will have a straight-up debate about where this country will go.”
Sanders also said that he believes the person with the most delegates should get the nomination – even if that person just has a plurality, not a majority, and even if that person is Joe Biden. Which suggests that Sanders agrees the Democratic Party’s worst nightmare – a brokered convention that defies the will of the primary electorate – is a terrible idea.
The Hill says that the upcoming states favor Biden. Maybe – but the race at this point is so fluid that nobody really knows.
That’s where the race really is after Super Tuesday.
