When Super-Tuesday, March 3 rolls around, it will be missing 62-year-old billionaire Tome Steyer who finished third in the South Carolina primary with 11.3%, not too bad, three percent ahead of 37-year-old former South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg at 8.2%. Steyer announced last night that he was dropping out the presidential race, after spending nearly $200 million. Buttigieg, too, announced today he suspended his campaign, after finishing a distant fourth place behind Steyer in South Carolina. Steyer and Buttigieg’s followers will now decide where to vote on Super Tuesday when 14 states total about 1,357 pledged delegates. Most experts think 77-year-old former VP Joe Biden will collect most of Steyer’s and about half-of Buttigieg’s voters. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) pledged today to continue on through Super Tuesday but another dismal performance would put pressure on her to quit.
Buttiieg figured out that going forward would embarrass himself on Super Tuesday, where his promises to finish well-behind 78-year-old Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Biden. Looming as a wildcard Super Tuesday is 77-year-old former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, whose been polling nationally at 16.4%. No knows whether Super Tuesday will give Bloomberg second thoughts if he finishes in third or fourth place. Bloomberg’s voters, pulling from independent and moderate Democrats, are expected to go to Biden, certainly not Sanders. Sen. Amy Klobushar (D-Minn.) finished in sixth place in South Carolina with 3.2% and won’t make it beyond Super Tuesday. Her votes are likely to go to Biden, since she’s a Midwestern moderate, even though she never gained traction. All in all, Biden stands to win the most votes from recent dropouts.
Looking forward to Super Tuesday, Biden thinks he has a wind at his back, until his next campaign gaffe. Only recently he was telling supporters he was arrested back in the 70s trying to visit jailed South African civil rights icon Nelson Mandela. Biden told supporters yesterday that he misspoke about his arrest, calling it a temporary detainment by South African authorities. “It’s a big boost,” said Biden. “I think it starts the real comeback and we picked up a lot of delegates,” hoping for big things ahead. Biden finished first with 48.4% on the vote in South Carolina. South Carolina has unique voting dynamic with some 50% of Democrat primary voters African American. Whether that translates to a comeback on Super Tuesday remains uncertain. Biden hopes South Carolina will give him momentum on Super Tuesday to put a dent in Sanders’ national lead at 29.6%.
Because there are no winner-take-all states, Democrats proportionally allocate delegates will spread over four remaining candidates, with no one holding a decisive lead. Bernie hopes to keep his momentum going into Super Tuesday, knowing his Democrat socialist label has been met with skepticism. In the Feb. 25 NBC debate, Mayor Pete laid into Bernie for promising more than he could deliver, knowing his Medicare-for-all proposal would cost the U.S. Treasury over $25 trillion. Biden has been especially critical of Bernie’s Medicare-for-all proposal, saying he wants to improve on Obamacare, something needing a fix. Yet Bernie’s Democrats socialist proposals of retiring student debt, paying for free college tuition and providing universal health appeals to many low-income voters. Biden’s done a goof job winning South Carolina stealing Bernie’s thunder.
Bernie’s big problems battling statewide primaries in that the Democrat Party holds 771 Super Delegates that will be awarded at the Democratic National Convention. Bernie needs 1,991 primary or caucus delegates, leaving Party insiders, like former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Rodam Clinton, to allocate Super Delegates. Party leaders don’t like Bernie, recalling in 2016 the grief he gave Hillary before Super Delegates put her over the top to win the nomination. Democratic National Committee officials, like former DNC chief Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz (D-Fl.), conspired actively with Hillary to sabotage Bernie’s campaign. Wasserman-Schultz had to resign in disgrace two weeks before the DNC Convention in Philadelphia. If Democrat Party insiders deny Bernie his due with Super Delegates before the DNC Convention in Milwaukee, Bernie’s followers will lash out.
If Bernie wins a majority of delegates on Super Tuesday, Biden looks ahead to Florida, Georgia, Pennsylvania and Michigan, where he hopes to run well against Bernie. “I feel good about where we are and ultimately people are beginning to focus on the opposition the way they focused on me for a long time,” Joe said, hoping his win in South Carolina can trigger a true comeback. When he finished in fourth place in Iowa, fifth place in New Hampshire and a distant second place to Bernie in Nevada, analysts counted him out. But with Party insiders determined to sabotage Bernie’s campaign, Biden still has the leg up in the race, bound to see Bloomberg, Warren and Klobushar drop out, leaving only Bernie and Biden to fight it out. Bernie knows those 771 Super Delegates loom large when it comes who’s going to win the 2020 Democrat nomination. Joe definitely has the edge.
