Super Tuesday primaries give Biden the edge

As former vice-president wins 10 of 14 states in US, Sanders fights to keep his candidacy alive

Bernie Sanders went into last week's Super Tuesday primaries poised to break away from the 2020 Democratic presidential candidate pack. A week later, he is fighting to keep his candidacy alive.

That is due to Joe Biden's stunning performance on March 3, when he won 10 of the 14 states holding primaries.

The former vice-president will get another chance to build on his delegate lead this Tuesday as six states go to the polls－Idaho, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, North Dakota and Washington state.

Heading into Tuesday, Biden had accumulated 664 pledged delegates, while Sanders had tallied 573.

What is significant about Michigan is that Sanders, 78, won the state's Democratic primary in 2016 against Clinton, but Biden, 77, this year has opened up a big lead on the senator from Vermont.

Five polls posted on realclearpolitics.com on Monday showed Biden with substantial double-digit leads in the battle for Michigan's 125 pledged delegates, the most up for grabs in the six states voting Tuesday.

Sanders has been going after Biden for his support of the revamped North American Free Trade Agreement of 1994, and a 2000 bill that normalized trade with China by granting it most favored nation status.

"If we are going to defeat Trump in Michigan, in Pennsylvania, and in Wisconsin, it will be very hard for a candidate who voted for these disastrous trade agreements," Sanders said in Detroit on Friday.

"We're not looking for a revolution," Biden said at a campaign event Monday in Flint, Michigan.

Much has been made of the similarity of the two major Democratic candidates left standing－both white men in their late 70s. They are vying to challenge Trump, who is 73, in November.

Pundits have wondered how an increasingly diverse US population－having elected a black man, Barack Obama and having witnessed the rise of women's "me too" movement－can produce a 2020 Democratic field without diversity.

The last two major Democratic candidates to drop out of the race also are white, billionaire Michael Bloomberg, 78, and Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, 70.

What the pundits and media are learning is that Americans are unpredictable voters. While age, sex and race are factors, they are not the overriding ones. Voters do consider the economy and social stability.

The importance of those two factors has been heightened in recent weeks with a massive sell-off in the stock market due to the spread of the novel coronavirus.

While issues, such as free healthcare and college tuition and fewer restrictions on immigration have gotten much attention in the Democratic Party the past couple of years, voters demonstrated last week that they weren't quite ready to fully embrace those positions.

"Democrats, by voting for Biden over Sanders, are coming down on the side of restoring American institutions. They are voting for a revival of those institutions, not a revolution," Juan Williams, a commentator for Fox News, wrote in a piece for The Hill, a political website, published Monday.

That moderation is being credited for repositioning Biden as the frontrunner. He has also been helped by endorsements by former candidates: Bloomberg, Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, and Pete Buttigieg, the former mayor of South Bend, Indiana.

He picked up two more key endorsements, that of Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey on Monday, and Senator Kamala Harris of California, on Sunday.

The endorsements by the two African American senators is expected to increase Biden's standing with black voters.

Sanders, a self-proclaimed democratic socialist, sees the Democratic establishment lining up against him, as it was accused of doing for Clinton in 2016.

"One of the things that I was kind of not surprised by is the power of the establishment to force Amy Klobuchar, who had worked so hard, Pete Buttigieg, who, you know, really worked extremely hard as well, out of the race," Sanders said Sunday on ABC's This Week.

A sign that Biden would bounce back was his easy victory in the South Carolina primary on Feb 29.

Biden also reminds voters he was Obama's vice-president, a tactic that resonates with many Democratic voters. Obama, however, has not endorsed Biden so far.

Sanders won the support Sunday of civil rights leader Jesse Jackson, a onetime presidential candidate.

To win the nomination on the first ballot at the Democratic convention in July in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, a candidate needs 1,991 pledged delegates.

Considering Biden's strong support among the Democratic establishment, even if he didn't have enough votes to win on the first ballot, the second ballot would include the votes of 771 superdelegates, many of whom are current and former Democratic politicians and party power brokers, most of whom would be expected to favor Biden.