Joe Biden’s crushing Super Tuesday victories were not a “coup” against Bernie Sanders, much though the socialist loser’s supporters complain.
Their gnashing of teeth was encapsulated best by Marianne Williamson, herself a onetime presidential candidate, albeit a weird one, who tweeted on Tuesday: “This was not a resurrection; it was a coup. Russiagate was not a coup. Mueller was not a coup. Impeachment was not a coup. What happened [to Sanders] was a coup. And we will push back.”
Most, but not quite all, of this is rubbish. Biden won and is now the most likely nominee because the Democratic Party did what political parties are supposed to do. It pulled itself together to choose the candidate it thinks is best placed to win the White House.
This is especially not a coup because Sanders was not the heir to the party leadership. Coups oust insiders from positions of power. Sanders is, however, an insurgent determined (impotently now) to take over a party of which he is openly contemptuous and not a member.
He simply wanted to take over an organization with a realistic chance of securing the presidency. The party hierarchy, in a state of something near panic since Elizabeth Warren’s campaign began collapsing three months ago, watched and wrung its hands as Sanders became the only plausible nominee in the extreme left lane of the primary race.
But panic turned to decisive action at the eleventh hour. Rep. James Clyburn endorsed Biden in South Carolina. Biden won a thumping victory. Mayor Pete Buttigieg and Sen. Amy Klobuchar capitulated and endorsed him. After months during which he had stumbled and bumbled along the campaign trail, Biden finally showed a spark of life, showed that he could win something, and the party, unspeakably relieved, leaped to his side and proclaimed him its leader. This is clear even though more than half the states still have to cast their primary votes.
Sanders and his fervent army have no grounds to complain. The party they wished to overrun refused to be overrun. Its actual members behaved as party members should, and in doing so, they appear to have turned the tide that was running against them. Betting odds give Biden a nearly 80% chance of being the nominee, and Sanders gets only a roughly 20% chance.
But that doesn’t mean Democrats are now in a strong position for the general election. Now, as the saying goes, comes the hard part. With Biden, Democrats have a champion who polls suggest can beat President Trump: He is better than 5 points ahead of Trump in the RealClearPolitics matchup average. But the bed that Democrats have made for themselves may be much less comfortable to lie in than the party euphoria of Super Tuesday night would suggest.
For Biden is a terrible candidate. His South Carolina win was his first in 30 years. Like flying machines before Orville and Wilbur Wright, Biden has always failed to get any sort of liftoff. He has on all past occasions fallen on his face with a prang. His vote in primary states in past election cycles has sometimes been within the margin of error: in other words, indistinguishable from zero.
Comes the hour, comes the man? Maybe. But there’s room for considerable doubt. Yes, he rolled Bernie Sanders up across the South in Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Alabama, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Tennessee, and Texas. But does anyone seriously believe that Biden won’t surely lose the last six of those to Trump in the general election?
And, as noted, not quite everything Marianne Williamson tweeted was rubbish. Her final sentence, “And we will push back,” is almost certainly a cold and disturbing fact for Biden and the party now following him.
Just as in 2016, some Sanders supporters will vote for Trump, and others will not vote at all, depressing turnout for the establishment candidate of the blue party. Sanders supporters are at the denial stage of their grief. They still have to go through anger, bargaining, and depression before they get to acceptance.
They might get there, but it’s no easy bet that they will. Trump wanted to run against Sanders, and now, he won’t. But the man he faces has never before been remotely able to do what he now needs to do. And he is less capable physically and mentally than ever before.
Biden has emerged as the standard-bearer. With the confidence this brings him, Biden will be Biden. Which might be all Trump needs.
