The earth has shifted over the last seven days. The Democrats’ 2020 primary has suddenly become a two-person race in which Joe Biden has a distinct advantage over Bernie Sanders.
Merely weeks ago Sanders was king of the Democratic hill.
Now he’s just staring uphill.
Last weekend there were five major candidates still in the primary fight, and Sanders was threatening to build an insurmountable delegate lead. But in the span of 72 hours, two leading moderates dropped out and the party’s establishment wing sprinted into Biden’s camp.
The former vice president used the extraordinary rush of momentum to seize a delegate advantage on Super Tuesday. And with Sanders struggling to unify the progressive wing behind him (Elizabeth Warren is out but has refused to endorse), he enters another multistate primary test on Tuesday facing the prospect that Biden could soon build an insurmountable delegate lead.
Sanders can get back on track in Michigan with a big win. But it’s a mistake to focus too much on one state. After all, Sanders won Super Tuesday’s biggest delegate prize, California, and still finished the day with fewer delegates than Biden.
With that warning, Michigan deserves attention this week.
The Midwestern state offers the largest trove of delegates on Tuesday and, almost as importantly, serves as a huge symbolic test of Sanders’ remaining political strength. Michigan helped rescue his candidacy four years ago, and it sits as one of three key battlegrounds Democrats desperately need to win in November.
Going in this time, Sanders’ team had been supremely confident about his standing with the state and its large working-class population — at least until last week’s shakeup. Sanders knows he will not win them all, but he can’t afford to lose this one.
Biden has plenty of experience as a front-runner. And he hasn’t always fared so well under the bright lights that go with it. After nearly being forced from the race last month following a dreadful start, the 77-year-old gaffe-prone Democrat gets another chance to prove he belongs on top.
He will benefit from a lack of establishment alternatives should he stumble. He’ll also benefit from the new phase of the race, which has essentially become a series of national contests where voters won’t get to see the candidates as closely as they did in Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, and South Carolina.
Still, make no mistake: Biden will face a new wave of fire from the right and the left this week as he seeks to tighten his grip on the Democrats’ presidential nomination.
Since dropping out of the race, Warren’s silence has been notable. As a crush of establishment Democrats raced to line up behind Biden, the fiery progressive senator has refused to endorse her closest ideological ally, Sanders.
There was obvious tension between Warren and Sanders during the primary, yet the same could be said of the many moderate candidates who are now standing behind Biden. Every day Warren sits on the sidelines hurts Sanders. He desperately needs a united progressive wing to defeat Biden, yet key pieces of Warren’s coalition are holding back until she makes her move.
Tuesday, America will know if this silence will have dramatic short- and long-term consequences for the far-left.
The Associated Press contributed to this article