Super Tuesday fallout: Who is the frontrunner to take on Donald Trump
As Democrats prepare to do whatever it takes to topple Donald Trump, the party elders are already working to line up behind former Vice President Joe Biden, leaving Bernie Sanders alone at the altar – again, writes Sarah Blake.
World
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When our reporter arrived at Joe Biden’s primary victory party in a South Carolina college basketball stadium last week, he asked the young man signing in the press when the former vice president would be likely to take the stage and make his speech.
“Ha, good question. Joe works on ‘Joe time’ so it’s hard to know,” the staffer said with a laugh.
“Joe time” has certainly turned the race for the Democratic candidacy on its head. And there is a growing feeling that at the end of “Joe time”, one time frontrunner Bernie Sanders will once again be left out in the cold.
The 77-year-old Mr Biden was all but written off after woeful showings in the first few contests. All the while, he kept smiling and assuring his worried supporters that change was coming. Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada – where he had faltered – were mere warm-ups, he insisted, and his campaign proper would start in the fourth primary.
“I’m gonna win South Carolina,” Mr Biden said when asked in the lead up to the vital poll in the Palmetto State if he’d resign from the race if he lost. “I’m gonna win South Carolina,” he repeated when asked again if he was ready to suspend his bid.
His spectacular victory marked the real start of the Democratic race to take on US President Donald Trump. This moment – where he won about 50 per cent of the vote to second-placed Bernie Sanders with a paltry 15 per cent – including 60 per cent of the black vote, to Pete Buttigieg’s two per cent – was defining
“Thank you, thank you, thank you, South Carolina!” Mr Biden enthused when he finally walked out to address an his adoring crowd last Saturday night.
“For all of those of you who have been knocked down, counted out, left behind – this is your campaign. Just days ago, the press and the pundits had declared this candidacy dead. Now, thanks to all of you, the heart of the Democratic party, we’ve just won and we’ve won big because of you.
“I told you all that you (South Carolina) could launch a candidacy. You launched Bill Clinton (and) Barack Obama to the presidency. Now you launched our campaign, on the path to defeating Donald Trump.
“This campaign has taken off! So join us!”
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And join him they did. In Super Tuesday polls Mr Biden stole the lead from the former frontrunner, Bernie Sanders, so convincingly that what had started as the most crowded field in Democratic history was yesterday stripped back to a two-way race.
Hawaiian congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard is still officially a candidate but has won just one of the 1991 delegates she would need to snag the nomination, compared to Mr Biden’s 602 and Mr Sanders’ 538.
Moderates “Mayor Pete” Buttigieg, Amy Klobuchar and Tom Steyer folded first, pulling out before Tuesday and swinging in behind Mr Biden.
That left him battling for centrist support with the race’s most unknown quantity, the unconventional tilt by former New York mayor Mike Bloomberg, who injected A$750 million of his own money into flooding the Super Tuesday states with political advertising.
It was difficult to turn on a television in those 14 states ranging from Maine to California over the past four months without hearing a Bloomberg pitch for president. But by Wednesday, after he managed to win just the offshore territory of American Samoa, an humiliated Mr Bloomberg ceded his support to Mr Biden.
If you combine Mr Bloomberg’s spend with that of fellow anti-Trump billionaire Tom Steyer, close to a billion Australian dollars were blown on two of the biggest ego-stroking wastes of time in history. Mr Bloomberg has since he announced he would deflect his formidable and highly paid campaign team and funding into backing the eventual nominee.
Yesterday, the progressive Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren also bowed to growing pressure to withdraw from the race, after she had come third in the primary vote in her home-state on Tuesday and not fared better in any other contests.
“I refuse to let disappointment blind me, or you, to what we’ve accomplished,” Mrs Warren had told her campaign staff.
“We didn’t reach our goal, but what we have done together, what you have done, has made a lasting difference. It’s not the scale of the difference we wanted to make, but it matters.”
But unlike her fellow candidates, Mrs Warren did not stick to her left-wing lane and automatically swing her support behind Mr Sanders.
The pair had campaigned on almost identical platforms of free public college, wiping student loan debt, government funded healthcare for all, reducing fossil fuel use with an immediate ban on fracking.
But during yesterday’s press conference outside her Massachusetts home, Ms Warren said she wasn’t ready to endorse any other candidates.
“Let’s take a deep breath and think about this for a little bit longer,” she said.
“We don’t have to decide that this minute.
“I need some space and I need a little time right now.”
Ms Warren had been considered an early leader in the presidential race, topping national polls in November, but slipped in recent months. She was emotional yesterday as she spoke about how she had met “so many” young women and little girls while campaigning and was disappointed for them that they “are going to have to wait four more years,” to see a woman lead the country.
“One of the hardest parts of this is all those pinky promises,” she said, adding that her gender had become “the trap question” for her and the other female candidates.
“If you say, ‘Yeah, there was sexism in this race,’ everyone says, ‘Whiner!’” Ms Warren said.
“If you say, ‘No, there was no sexism, about a bazillion women think, ‘What planet do you live on?’”
Polls suggest Mr Sanders and Mr Biden can expect approximately equal uplift from her departure, with a Morning Consult poll taken early this week showing 43 per cent of her supporters would back Mr Sanders and 36 per cent Mr Biden as their second choice.
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For all the Super Tuesday hype, it’s worth remembering that just 40 per cent of the delegates, which decide the nominee, have been awarded so far.
The tightened race has focused the campaigns, and Amy Klobuchar will spend this weekend stumping for Mr Biden in Michigan, which is one of five states voting next Tuesday and will also loom large in the general campaign as one of a handful of swing states that could decide November’s result.
A week later Florida, the biggest remaining prize, will turn out. A St Pete poll yesterday gave Mr Biden a 49 point lead over Mr Sanders in the Sunshine State, with the cast-out Mr Bloomberg still faring better than the Vermont senator.
But Mr Sanders, who closely lost the 2016 candidacy to Hillary Clinton, is by no means on the back foot, accusing establishment Democrats of co-ordinating to work against him and plot a repeat of his last tilt at the presidency.
It seems likely Mr Biden and Mr Sanders will arrive at the Democratic convention in July with the result still in the air. This almost certainly means the moderate Mr Biden will be backed in by the party elders, who fear President Trump will use Mr Sanders’ left-wing policy agenda to bury the Democrat.
This could again leave Mr Sanders alone at the altar. But for Democrats who still hold onto a hope of stopping a second-term Trump presidency, it’s a case of whatever it takes.