GRAND RAPIDS, Michigan — Joe Biden didn’t just beat Bernie Sanders in Michigan. He buried him.
Though Sanders may decide to keep up his revolution tour for another few months, his loss here leaves him without a plausible path to the Democratic presidential nomination.
Four years ago, this was the site of Sanders’s biggest upset against Hillary Clinton, justifying his decision to keep on fighting her until the very end. But with each winnable state that he loses, Sanders is not only seeing his chances of winning go up in flames, but he’ll make it increasingly difficult to explain why he isn’t dropping out.
The entire theory that Sanders has been pushing through the campaign has been that he would bring in a wave of new voters who would carry him to victory not only in the primaries, but in a general election against President Trump.
Not only has Sanders not brought in new voters, but he’s actually losing ground. He has not been able to make any headway among black voters — a group he lost by 40 points here, according to exit polls. But this time, Sanders is doing much worse among working-class and rural voters.
In 2016, Sanders won Michigan voters earning between $50,000 to $100,000 by 3 points. In 2020, Biden is winning the same group by 12 points. In 2016, Sanders won suburban voters by 3 points and rural voters by 15 points; this time, Biden won suburban voters by 8 points and rural voters by 9 points.
No matter how much enthusiasm Sanders may generate among a swath of young voters, they don’t turn up in large enough numbers to make up for his losses among other groups.
The series of losses Sanders has suffered starting with South Carolina raise serious questions about how much of his support in 2016 was actually merely an anti-Clinton vote. Whereas four years ago, there was a chunk of Democratic voters who wanted to prolong the primary and deny a Clinton coronation, voters are clearly sending a different signal this time — that they want to wrap up the primary and unify around Biden ASAP. In addition to the major win in Michigan, Biden also won Missouri and Mississippi.
Biden has now opened up a delegate lead of 766 to 618 as of this writing, which will only grow once all the votes are in from tonight. Given that there are no winner-take-all states on the Democratic side allowing Sanders to catch up rapidly, Biden’s lead is going to prove insurmountable.
Not only is the math working against Sanders, but so is the map. Many of the strongest states for Sanders, and the largest states, are already off the board. Next week, four large states vote that Sanders lost last time (Florida, Ohio, Illinois, and Arizona). In Florida, which has 219 delegates up for grabs, Biden leads by more than 40 points.
Just a few weeks ago, it seemed that Democrats were facing the prospect of either nominating a socialist or causing a civil war to deny him the nomination. A contested convention appeared more likely than not. Now, it appears they are on the cusp of sticking a fork in Sanders and settling for Biden.
