Updated March 11 at 1:56 a.m.
Four years ago this week, Michigan Democrats handed Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) an unexpected victory and revived his foundering presidential campaign. On Tuesday night, history did not repeat itself.
Former vice president Joe Biden won Michigan’s make-or-break Democratic primary by what appeared to be a decisive margin. With 88 percent of precincts reporting early Wednesday morning, Biden was leading Sanders 53 to 37 percent.
The margin appeared to be far wider in other states that voted on “Big Tuesday.” In Missouri, Biden led Sanders 60 to 35 percent, and in Mississippi 81 to 15 percent. Both states were called for the former vice president as soon as polls closed Tuesday evening.
By early Wednesday morning, it appeared that Biden had also prevailed in Idaho — a state Sanders had won by 57 points in 2016. Sanders was leading only in Washington and North Dakota, though both races were too close to call.
The senator from Vermont had hoped to spend Tuesday chiseling away at the nearly 100-delegate lead Biden held going into the night. He had also hoped to demonstrate in Michigan that he could win the sort of midwestern swing state that will be essential to defeating President Donald Trump this fall.
Instead, by early Wednesday morning Biden’s delegate lead had grown to at least 160, and he had demonstrated the ability to defeat Sanders in every region of the country.
Speaking Tuesday evening in Philadelphia, Biden sounded as if he had already won the Democratic nomination, praising Sanders the way one would a vanquished foe.
“I want to thank Bernie Sanders and his supporters for their tireless energy and passion,” Biden said during a speech at the National Constitution Center. “We share a common goal, and together we’ll defeat Donald Trump.”
Biden and Sanders had both planned to hold rallies in Cleveland on Tuesday evening, but they canceled their respective events after Ohio public health officials raised concerns about the spread of coronavirus.
Sanders flew home to Burlington and watched the results come in from his home in the New North End. National reporters covering his campaign lingered in the lobby of Hotel Vermont throughout the evening, waiting for him to deliver public remarks. But by 10:15 p.m., his staff said that, for the first time this year, he would not address supporters or the press on an election night.
What comes next for Sanders isn’t clear. He is scheduled to travel to New York City on Wednesday to appear on NBC’s “Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon,” but his schedule is otherwise wide open. His staff signaled that he would take part in Sunday’s debate in Arizona before next week’s primaries. But with a delegate comeback becoming less and less probable, Sanders is likely to face calls to exit the race.
The latest round of voting came a week after Sanders performed poorly on Super Tuesday, when one-third of Democratic delegates were up for grabs. Biden won 10 of 14 states that day, including several that seemed Sanders-friendly: Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota and Texas. The Vermont senator’s margin of victory in California, where he’d hoped to run up the score, appeared to be just 7 percent.
Heading into this week’s contests, Biden had already claimed at least 670 delegates, compared to 574 for Sanders, with dozens more yet to be assigned due to ongoing counts in California, Colorado and Utah, according to the New York Times.
In the days after Super Tuesday, two more candidates dropped out of the race — former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) — leaving just Biden, Sanders and Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii) standing.
Biden’s rapid resurgence yielded several more endorsements from former foes. In the past week, Bloomberg, Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) and Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) all lined up behind him. Meanwhile, Warren, a progressive ally of Sanders’, remained on the sidelines. Sanders did pick up one key endorsement on Sunday from civil rights leader Jesse Jackson Sr., whose 1988 presidential campaign Sanders supported.
Since Biden turned around his campaign late last month with a blowout victory in South Carolina, Sanders has stepped up his criticism of the former vice president’s record. At a press conference last Wednesday in Burlington, he said that Biden was “going to have to explain” his support for the Iraq War, unpopular trade deals, entitlement reform and the 2008 Wall Street bailout. “Joe and I have a very different vision for the future of this country — and Joe and I are running very different campaigns,” Sanders said.
The senator from Vermont has long prided himself on his refusal to air negative television advertisements. That changed last week when he debuted an ad highlighting a 1995 speech in which Biden calls for a spending freeze on Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. After distancing himself from the Democratic “establishment,” Sanders also released a new ad featuring former president Barack Obama praising him at the 2016 Democratic National Convention.
In this week’s contests, 352 delegates — or 9 percent of the total — were on the line. Next week, even more are. The March 17 primaries feature Florida, Illinois, Ohio and Arizona, which collectively dole out 577 delegates.
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Only a debate knockout can save Bernie’s staggered campaign.
Will he come out swinging or will he throw in the towel against old Joe?
Bernie needs to submit. If he truly means what he says it is time to go all in supporting Biden and stop tearing down the obvious Democratic candidate. The only reason he performed so well in 2016 was Hilary’s massive deficiencies as a candidate. He misread the electorate this time and went full-frothed Socialist. America answered with a definitive and resounding NO THANK YOU! Now it is time to be a big boy and accept reality, which is not a Bernie strong-suit. Try to fight it out, play dirty and tear down the Dem candidate and Bernie will be Trump’s best friend. There is no saving Bernie’s staggered campaign.
Stick a fawk in Sanders because he’s done and berndt.
I believe any debate performance is simply too late. Upcoming big States have early voters already decided, like AZ and FL…
The only thing Bernie changed in his messaging from 4 years ago is eliminating ‘millionaires’ from his choice of words. Everything else is the same.When voters on the left go with a gaff-a-day low energy old man like Joe, you gotta know they just ain’t buying Bernie’s vision.
Back to being a Senator…
Now that the DNC and their media apparatus have short sheeted Bernie again it’s time to get behind Dementia Joe so he can beat Nixon like a drum.
Like they say in Boston,
It’s ovah! I
Bernie was toast the minute Wall Street’s favorite black guy, Barak Obama picked up the phone and told Mayor Pete and Klobachar to get out of the race before Super Tuesday. The DNC donor class was not going to have Bernie as the nominee. Period.
Now the “choice” is between the racist, openly corrupt and ignorant Trump and the Man from Creditcardlandia, Joe Biden, who seems to be mentally slipping away before our very eyes. The DNC is fumbling this election the same way Trump is fumbling the government’s response to Covid-19.
Wall Street wins either way. All the signs of an empire in decay are plain to see, except to the MAGA Hatters and Neo-liberals.
Communist Bernie has crafted a career out of fooling the clueless Vermont liberals and Burlington’s elitist crowd in particular, while accomplishing absolutely nothing beyond making himself a millionaire, and his empty, angry and hollow rhetoric hasn’t fooled America.
He’s old and America sees right through his angry shtick, because America likes America. Given his track record and his rhetoric, he’d likely find Venezuela more to his liking.
He deservedly got his ass handed to him, then flew home to his safe space, and like he’s done to the Vermont press for years, he “would not speak publicly Tuesday night”.
I suppose it would be too much to hope he goes back to Brooklyn, where he can commiserate with AOC, and they can convince each other how wonderful they are.
“Bernie was toast the minute Wall Street’s favorite black guy, Barak Obama picked up the phone and told Mayor Pete and Klobachar to get out of the race before Super Tuesday.”
Got any evidence for your theory? And congrats on the racism, by the way.
So instead of a delusional billionaire, we’ll get a senile millionaire. So much for getting someone who actually cares about the rest of us. Trump doesn’t care about anyone who isn’t a rich white male, and Biden, well… He doesn’t remember his own name.
“So instead of a delusional billionaire, we’ll get a senile millionaire.”
The other choice was a hypocritical millionaire, who hasn’t learned anything since Das Kapital was published, who’s older than Biden, who’s had at least one heart attack, and who deluded himself and his cult-of-personality followers into believing that America’s youth was going to “rise up in revolution” and sweep him into the White House.