Biden His Time

Last week, I wrote about whether Bernie Sanders could get the nomination and win the election.  The very short summary of that is -- Yes, I believe so.

Today, we take a look at Joe Biden, following his big win in South Carolina, and seeing if he has a path to getting the nomination.

This is not even remotely a prediction.  It's filled with FAR too many "If's" for that.  But I think all of the "if's" are reasonable ones.  The starting point is that I've seen two final polls for California.  They're different, but the one that's best for Biden, having him in third place with 13% of the vote has been used by the press as being the most accurate.  That leave Biden two points short of the 15% mark needed to be viable in order to get statewide delegates..

And so, we'll head off down that path --

If Joe Biden can pick up the 2% to become viable in California, that will make him viable, and (according to an analysis done by Steve Kornacki on MSNBC) would cut Bernie Sanders delegate count by around 100.. (Given that two moderates, Pete Buttigieg and Tom Steyer, now have dropped out of the race, it would seem that picking up two points is reasonable.)

And if Biden does solidly on Super Tuesday – not remotely winning most of the other states, but just winning only a few states, while finishing second in almost all the others, and no worse than third in any.

And if, as a result of the above, Biden is respectably close in delegate count going into the convention.

Then no one will likely have a majority of the delegates needed to win on the first ballot.

And if no one wins on the first ballot, then we will have a brokered convention -- which frees up delegates for the second ballot, and means that At-Large delegates (largely made up of party leaders) can now vote.

And at that point, the brokering starts.

I think it’s far more likely that, on the moderate candidate end, delegates with coalesce around Biden (with his 50 years as a registered Democrat, 36 years as a Senator, and two terms as Vice President, and most-certainly the favorite of Barack Obama) more than they will for Mike Bloomberg.  And Bloomberg, eventually not seeing a path to the nomination and wanting to stop Bernie Sanders, who he hates and has said he thinks will lose to Trump, will throw his support to Biden.  And it's far more likely that most if not all of the other candidates and former candidates, except perhaps Elizabeth Warren, will throw their support to Biden than to Sanders.

And if all that happens, I think at a brokered convention, Biden will get a majority of the delegates and the nomination.

This is a huge amount of “If’s,” so all this doesn’t mean much in terms of predictions.  But as I said, I don’t think the "if's" are at all unreasonable.  The biggest “If” of the bunch, I think, is getting to 15% in California, which is critical for cutting Sanders’ delegate total in the state by so much, but almost more important, it would be a psychological boost.

On the other hand, "if" any of this things don't happen, the path for Biden becomes far more treacherous.  But those, I think, are the markers to watch.

Which leads to the proverbial ending for all such things --

​We’ll see…