US election: Sleepy Joe Biden can’t lose, at least until November

Joe Biden must keep campaigning as if it’s a South Carolina’s make-or-break moment. Picture: AFP

Bernie Sanders badly needed to win the Michigan primary. It was 2016, and he’d lost eight of 12 Super Tuesday contests to Hillary Clinton and split delegates almost equally in the four contests the following weekend.

It looked impossible: the EPIC/Free Press poll said he trailed in Michigan, 31 per cent to Clinton’s 56 per cent. But in a shocker, the Vermont socialist upset the frontrunner, 49.7 per cent to 48.3 per cent, and gained enough ground to stay in the race until the Democratic convention.

This year, Sanders again needed a reset in Michigan, but he didn’t get it. Just the opposite: rural Michigan flipped and crushed him. He also lost every county in Missouri, the closest primary contest in 2016. He barely missed the 15 per cent delegate threshold in Mississippi and lost in Idaho. He won a much smaller victory in North Dakota than he did four years ago and Biden leads him narrowly in Washington state, where votes are still being counted.

Most Democratic leaders and pundits believe the contest is over — and it almost certainly is. As of Thursday, Biden has 861 delegates. He needs 1130 more for the 1991 necessary for a first-ballot victory, or 50.4 per cent of the outstanding delegates. Splitting the vote from here on will give the former vice-president the win. Sanders has 710 delegates and must take 1281 for a majority, or 57.1 per cent of what’s left.

Victory will look even less attainable for Sanders after next week, when Arizona, Florida, Illinois and Ohio vote. In 2016, Clinton swept all four. And the remaining contests offer little hope: in 2016, Sanders collected only 44.8 per cent of their delegates, not markedly different than the 45.6 per cent of all delegates he received that year.

If next week doesn’t go well for Sanders, the suggestions — demands, really — that he concede to Biden will multiply. That might have a big impact on the typical politico hoping to curry favour with party grandees, but Sanders is neither a conventional candidate nor a party man. A lifelong independent socialist, he sees himself as leader of a movement seeking a revolutionary takeover of the Democratic Party and a transformation of the government and country.

Sharing his aggrievement over what they consider a rigged nominating system, many of Sanders’s backers will encourage him to keep fighting, even with pretty slim chances for a multi-ballot convention. Because the scrappy left-winger still wants to influence Biden’s choice of running mate and get the party on record for a socialist agenda, he may well stay in the contest as long as his resources allow.

Sanders also may think he’ll do better in a one-on-one race, raising the stakes for Sunday’s debate (Monday AEDT). It’s perhaps the senator’s last chance to slow the Joe-mentum. But his usual attacks on Biden’s record on Iraq and trade are too backward-focused. Voters are more concerned with future performance, including ­vision and fitness for the job. Yet raising questions about Biden’s mental acuity — his ability to string coherent sentences together — is hard to do without offending some voters.

On Thursday AEDT, Sanders said he would ask Biden where he stands on Medicare for All, climate action, college debt and a “racist criminal-justice system”. If he can’t be the candidate, sounds like he wants to write the platform.

Biden isn’t a particularly good candidate, so why is Sanders running worse than in 2016? Partly because the longer Bernie was on stage, the more concerned traditional Democrats became; his praise of Fidel Castro crystallised their fears. Also, don’t forget that Clinton was a dreadful candidate not only in the 2016 general election, but in the primaries as well.

Looking ahead, Biden must figure out how to keep Bernie’s Brigades voting Democratic this northern autumn. Many of them think they’re more likely to take over the party if Donald Trump beats Biden, derided as Sleepy Joe by the President.

Some Sandersnistas apparently believed that in 2016. Drawing on a YouGov/Harvard study, Tufts professor Brian Schaffner suggests 12 per cent of Sanders’s 2016 primary supporters voted for Trump. This would have resulted in Trump picking up about 48,000 Sanders voters in Michigan, which he carried by 10,704 votes; 51,000 in Wisconsin, which he won by 22,748; and 117,000 in Pennsylvania, which he took by 44,292. That sort of defection Biden may not be able to afford.

While obtaining a delegate majority, Biden must also conciliate Sanders voters. He shouldn’t do that by moving further left.

He’s already made himself a juicy target for Republicans by agreeing with many goofy nostrums of the left during this primary, embracing the framework of the Green New Deal and free healthcare for illegal aliens. Nor should he speculate about future cabinet appointments: nothing says smug and entitled like doing that this early.

The former vice-president must keep campaigning as if it’s South Carolina’s make-or-break moment, while attempting to conciliate Bernie’s backers by emphasising their common ground and greater goal of replacing Trump.

This will be hard to do: many of the Sanders supporters are irreconcilable.

Karl Rove twice masterminded the election of George W. Bush