His main rival, Senator Sanders, who just last week was odds-on favourite for the nomination, is now fighting as the underdog. A week really is a long time in politics.
Mr Bloomberg’s withdrawal will help Mr Biden’s campaign in three important ways. Firstly it will prevent any further splitting of the vote between moderate candidates. After the departures of Mr Bloomberg, Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar in recent days, Biden now has the moderate lane entirely to himself, a massive advantage in this contest.
.@MikeBloomberg, I can’t thank you enough for your support—and for your tireless work on everything from gun safety reform to climate change. This race is bigger than candidates and bigger than politics. It’s about defeating Donald Trump, and with your help, we’re gonna do it.
— Joe Biden (Text Join to 30330) (@JoeBiden) March 4, 2020
Ironically – for now – it is the liberal Senator Sanders who is being forced to compete for left-leaning voters against fellow liberal Elizabeth Warren, which is why progressives are placing so much pressure of Senator Warren to also quit the race.
Secondly, Mr Bloomberg’s departure and his endorsement of Mr Biden provides an almost bottomless pit of money for the Biden campaign which has struggled to raise money and build a serious national campaign infrastructure.
Mr Bloomberg showed by spending an astonishing $US500 million on his own campaign that he is not shy about throwing huge amounts of money at what he says is his main aim of defeating Donald Trump.
Mr Bloomberg’s financial support for Mr Biden will not only help Mr Biden in his fight against Senator Sanders – if Mr Biden wins the nomination, Mr Bloomberg’s cash will also be used to help Mr Biden take on Mr Trump.
And thirdly, Mr Bloomberg’s decision to quit and back Mr Biden, coming so soon after the endorsements of Mr Buttigieg and Senator Klobuchar, sends a powerful message of unity from the moderate wing of the Democrat party that they are willing to do what it takes to prevent the nomination of Senator Sanders whose socialist agenda would, in their view, gift the election to Mr Trump.
Senator Sanders can still come back from these series of hits and be competitive in this race, but for now he is looking more than a little punch-drunk at the remarkable turn of events.
Another lesson from Mr Bloomberg’s departure is that voters need a real, human candidate to vote for, not the artificial construct that Mr Bloomberg offered them through his $US500 million advertising blitz.
Most voters only knew Mr Bloomberg from his slick campaign commercials.
He rarely engaged with voters in person on the campaign trail, rarely took questions from audiences and when he did finally appear live on the debate stage people were shocked by his low energy, robotic performance.
He had no choice but to drop out, firstly because he was never going to win and secondly because his continued presence would have seen him accused of indirectly helping Senator Sanders.
It means that Mr Biden goes into the next phase of this race with the wind at his back, a situation that seemed unthinkable just a week ago.
Cameron Stewart is also US Contributor for Sky News Australia
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