Biden must ease Sanders out gracefully
After a head-spinning, feverish fortnight that began in South Carolina and careered through Mississippi, Missouri, Michigan and beyond, Joe Biden is now the presumptive nominee of the Democratic party.
In winning four of six states (one was still undecided) on Tuesday, Biden has opened a commanding lead. While it remains mathematically possible for Bernie Sanders to win the nomination in
July, it is suddenly politically improbable.
Biden’s victories in Idaho, Mississippi, Missouri and Michigan have effectively denied Sanders the prize he has sought in two campaigns over the last six years. In a magical kingdom, Sanders could still get there. But the odds are long and the cost great.
Sanders did not address his supporters Tuesday night — a breach of protocol, if not faith — and hurried home to Vermont. He said Wednesday afternoon that he is staying in the race. It means that he will compete in the Florida,
Arizona, Illinois and Ohio vote on March 17. He will lose there, too.
It’s over. The big question is when Sanders, a narcissist, will accept that. He might listen to George Aiken, the crusty Republican who represented Vermont in the Senate for a generation. When asked how the United States should leave the war in Vietnam, he said, in so many words: “Declare victory and get out.”
His insurgency successful, Sanders can declare victory. In a sense, he has won the party primary. He has moved the party left. He has made Democrats more progressive on health care, income inequity, immigration, women’s rights and social welfare. Biden is called a moderate but he is more progressive now than Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton.
With his victory, Sanders can go home. His refusal to quit now means that he will debate Biden in Phoenix on Sunday. There will be only two of them on stage. Biden is more uneven and unpredictable in free-ranging debate than in scripted appearances (which is why he now speaks briefly, from a teleprompter, avoiding gaffes or eruptions).
Why continue? To remain in the race threatens what Sanders wants most: to defeat Donald Trump. In 2016, Sanders refused to quit when he fell behind Clinton, then took his campaign to the party convention in Charlotte. He waged a bitter fight against Clinton and
“the establishment.” Only when it was clear he could not win did he endorse the nominee, belatedly and grudgingly. She has not forgiven him.
Fending off the challenge from Sanders well into the spring, Clinton was unable to unify the party and prepare for the general election. It was one reason — though not the only one — she lost to Trump.
This year, Sanders has run a spirited campaign that some call a movement. He carries a catalogue of grievance and offers a new social democracy. The problem is that not enough Democrats are joining the revolution, and fewer are manning the barricades.
Sanders has not generated higher turnout or expanded his coalition. Young people, in particular, have not turned out. It is Biden who has forged a new coalition: women, the elderly, moderate suburbanites and black Americans.
And now, in an America in the throes of a contagion — with the markets crashing, the economy faltering and people trembling — no one wants the revolution. On the day the WHO declared the coronavirus a global pandemic, they want safety.
Biden sees this. He knows the map is unfavourable to Sanders in the next two weeks. If Sanders could not win Michigan, with its white working class, he cannot win Ohio. If Sanders could not win Texas, with its blacks and Latinos, he cannot win Arizona.
Biden is trying to accommodate Sanders and ease him out the race without alienating his loyalists, whom Biden will need in the fall. That may mean giving Sanders a role at the convention in Milwaukee, such as a prime-time speaking position or a hand in writing the party platform. Or, naming a progressive as Biden’s running mate.
In his remarks Tuesday, Biden was poised, dignified, measured and generous. He did not boast or gloat. Most of all, he was presidential — as America once knew it.
Biden attacked Trump, as if he were now the enemy. And he thanked Sanders and his supporters, as if their proud campaign were over.
If the universe unfolds as it should, it soon will be.