Joe Biden has the momentum

Joe Biden’s Super Tuesday success should give heart to US Democrats working to see their party nominate a plausible candidate to take on Donald Trump in November. Whether Barack Obama’s former vice-president can sustain the momentum of his surge against what had appeared to be the unstoppable candidacy of far-left democratic socialist Bernie Sanders remains to be seen. But exit polls across the 14 Super Tuesday states showed a movement in voter sentiment following Mr Biden’s unexpectedly strong win in South Carolina last weekend that could presage a dramatic shift in the race for the Democratic nomination and the contest against Mr Trump.

The exit polls showed Democrats prioritising “electability over issues”, with six out of 10 saying that defeating Mr Trump was their main priority. By a similar margin late deciders made up their minds only in the past few days, opting strongly for the moderate Mr Biden rather than Senator Sanders’s spendthrift socialism. This helped turn the race for the Democratic nomination upside down, with Mr Biden posting significant victories across a string of states, including Texas, Arkansas, Alabama, Minnesota, Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee and Oklahoma. He achieved a remarkable unexpected victory, too, in Massachusetts, home state of left-leaning senator Elizabeth Warren, pushing her into third place behind Senator Sanders in what was another telling win for Democratic moderates.

The momentum was strongly with Mr Biden. The prospect of seeing an avowed socialist at the top of the Democratic ticket clearly spooked many voters. It would be wrong, however, to see it as having been in any way terminal for Senator Sanders’s campaign. To the contrary, he won the biggest single prize, California, with its 415 delegates, and was in a tight race with Mr Biden for 228 Texas delegates. Significantly, he lost ground from his 2016 vote share, including his home state of Vermont, perhaps a portent of things to come. If there was a loser it was Mike Bloomberg who, in appearing on the ballot for the first time, spent $US215m ($326m) on advertising and ended up winning only in American Samoa, with its six delegates to the Democrats’ convention. In Virginia Mr Bloomberg spent $US18m compared with $US360,000 by Mr Biden, who went on to post a 53.3 per cent win. Senator Sanders, who had high hopes of winning the state, was on 23 per cent and Mr Bloomberg on 9.7 per cent. No wonder Mr Trump tweeted that Mr Bloomberg was “the biggest loser by far”.

But the message for Mr Trump is that after months of debilitating incoherence, infighting and foolishly allowing Senator Sanders to make the running, the party’s moderates have finally woken up to the possibility his socialist extremism could lead them to the most devastating defeat since Richard Nixon trounced George McGovern in 1972. When the US, like most countries, is confronted by economic headwinds, Senator Sanders’s agenda, summed up in the friendly Washington Post as “Free stuff for everyone”, at an estimated cost of $US60 trillion over 10 years, looks even more bizarre. The Democrats’ nominating convention is not until July. Super Tuesday elected just 1357 of the 3979 delegates who will decide the party’s nominee. Mr Biden is no shoo-in. But he has boosted claims to be the moderate Democrat with the best chance of beating Mr Trump.