Super Wednesday

I’m glad that I wrote a column over the weekend about the realistic path Biden had to win.  But even with that, I didn’t go far enough.

I'm not going to go into much detail analyzing things, since I thought MSNBC did a very good job with a particularly strong mix of pundits -- and (more to the point) the results on their own speak volumes.
  
As I write this late on Tuesday night, I'm sure that Bernie Sanders will win California, but what's lost in most of the analysis is that prior to Tuesday the big question was solely if Joe Biden could pick up two points and reach the 15% threshold.  Early voting had him at 17% which is surprising, and if that holds it means he'll end up substantially over the threshold because the story across the country is that BIden's "day of" voting has been extensive.  Indeed, MSNBC has declared that he would reach the threshold.  I think that Sanders was hoping to clean up maybe 300 of the 415 delegates here, and still he’ll get most of them by far – but it appears that his total now might be 200.  Losing 100 delegates you were counting on is a really big deal.
 
I think the four most notable results are – Biden winning Oklahoma by 12 when Sanders won there in 2016 by 10.  Biden winning Massachusetts, a pretty liberal state, even with Elizabeth Warren in the race.  Biden winning in Minnesota, a pretty liberal state – yes, he got Klobuchar’s endorsement, but over the weekend he had 8% in the latest poll, quite a bit short of the threshold…and he won the state. And similarly, Biden far under the threshold in Texas, and winning the state.

There's one other big story, though it's not about results.  It's how strong voter turnout has been for primaries.  This speaks to something I've been writing about for a long time -- how anxious Democrats have been to vote for president since 2016, chomping at the bit.  (And add to this that in many Republican primaries yesterday where there was an opponent on the ballot, Trump lost between 6-12 points. And lest one forgets, in the New Hampshire GOP primary a few weeks ago, Republicans -- knowing that Trump was guaranteed to win in a landslide -- braved the freezing cold and snow and 14.5% voted against him.)

Finally, even not knowing the final results in California yet, I think that, beyond all expectations, it is very likely Joe Biden could come out of Super Tuesday with a lead in delegates.  Before yesterday, if he was within 100 delegates, it would have been considered a very good, important day for him.  This, if it actually holds and keeps moving in that direction, it will be on another level.

I stand by my earlier column – it’s not a prediction, but honestly I think Biden has the best path to get the nomination.  However, there's still a long way to go.  Lots of things can change or go wrong.  Biden was the favorite before, but lost that and was on the verge of being knocked out.  If he screws up in debates, then it’s on him and problematic.  Elizabeth Warren could drop out and endorse Bernie Sanders.  But on the assumption that Joe Biden does the same middle-range, solid, perfectly-okay and on occasion good job he's been doing along the way to this point, he’s now remarkably got the best path.