Voters to the rescue

Tuesday was a very good day. In the nick of time, Democratic voters, bucking the haranguing far left that often dominates debate, made a powerful statement where it counts, at the polls — turning out in large numbers to consolidate behind Joe Biden as the standard-bearer of a sensible but still progressive vision of the future that has a fighting chance to take down Donald Trump in November.

The nomination is far from sealed; Bernie Sanders and his supporters remain a formidable force. Biden will have to keep his ground game sharp and, through strong debate performances, reassure those worried that his scattered way of speaking is just who he’s always been, not the advancing effects of old age.

But count it as healthy indeed that the party seeking to unseat a dangerous and unethical president now won’t, by virtue of fragmenting its own sane center, back into supporting Sanders’ utterly ungrounded promises, which are doomed to drag down down-ballot candidates and consign Democrats to the fate of British Labour, which Corbynism carried over the cliff in December.

Tuesday, in wildly different states from the South to the Midwest to the Northeast, Democrats said they do not want to spend $60 trillion-plus on new federal programs. They do not want to ban all fracking, decriminalize illegal border crossings, wipe away all student loan debt and abolish all private health insurance.

The young people whose frustrations have fueled Sanders’ rise deserve realistic proposals for fixing the problems that fuel their passions, and a chance at making it into the middle class without being forced into bankruptcy by their college debt and medical bills.

The nation must not wind up with a choice between a divisive demagogue who resonates with one fringe and an uncompromising zealot who riles up the other. It needs sanity, competence, decency and the possibility of unity to prevail. That’s what Joe Biden is offering.