Strong Super Tuesday for Make America Boring Again

Bernie Sanders win in California Tuesday is a real win. But the other states' results mean that the day didn't come close to being the blowout his supporters would have liked to see. Biden's streak of wins, including in Massachusetts and (apparently at this writing) Texas is impressive. We won't know for a while yet what the delegate counts will be in California. There is a 15% threshold statewide to win any delegates and how the vote sorted out by Congressional district also affects the delegate count. But it looks like only Sanders and Biden and maybe Michael Bloomberg are likely to surpass the minimal hurdle to win delegates. Depending on how the final count shakes out, Sanders could win a majority of the California delegates if Bloomberg doesn't make the hurdle.

A few things seem pretty obvious immediately afterward. Maybe the most impressive is how well Biden did in large states like California and Texas while having a minimal field operation and his own campaign not having much money to spend on media buys compared to Sanders. His high name recognition and the weekend consolidation of the centrist wing of the party after Biden's South Carolina win came through for him. It's definitely now a Sanders vs. Biden race, with Bloomberg apparently on the verge of backing out.

It sounds from the early results that the Sanders' campaign's goal of activating new primary voters wasn't achieved in most places. And his vote skews young, while older voters are more likely to participate.

Sanders is definitely the anti-establishment candidate and that's how he consistently has positioned himself. Now he'll have to make that work in a head-to-head contest with Biden. Elizabeth Warren is still a minor factor. But based on the polling of her supporters, it's hard to tell at this point whether her presence in the race benefits either Sanders or Biden more.

The punditocracy processes primary results especially through as though voters make their choices along a consistent left-to-right ideological scale. And no amount of contrary evidence seems to be able to shake them off that approach. At this point, Biden undoubtedly benefits from a comfort factor, i.e., Make America Boring Again. No doubt a worthy goal in comparison to the Malicious Orange Clown Show that we've experienced for the last three years.

It may be near-impossible for pollsters to measure. But I wonder to what extent Trump's bumbling, irresponsible handling of the coronavirus crisis may have boosted the return-to-normalcy mood among Democratic voters on Tuesday.

Biden's victory speech focused around familiar and optimistic Democratic platitudes (quoted by Karoli Kuns, Biden Celebrates Big Super Tuesday Victory: 'We Are Better Than This President' Crooks and Liars 03/03/20):

This is about the future. It's not about the past. It's about our children and grandchildren about leading in this country and leading the world once again. We have to remember who we are. This is the United States of America. It is time for America to get back up. And once again, fight for the proposition that we hold these truths to be self-evident that all men and women are created equal, endowed by the creator with certain inalienable rights.
We saw it often in school but don't realize how profound it is. We never lived up to these words, but until this president we never walked away from it. Ladies and gentlemen, I believe with every fiber of my being that's who we are. Let's get back up. We are a decent brave, resilient people. We can believe again but we are better than this moment. We are better than this president.

Charlie Pierce evoked the memory of Warren G. Harding to remark on the appeal of a comfort vote (It Looks Like Democratic Primary Voters Want a President They Can Ignore 4 or 5 Days a Week Esquire Politics 03/04/2020):

It’s plain now that, for the moment, anyway, a large part of the Democratic primary electorate is hungering for a president that it can ignore for four or five days a week. ...

I will grant you that the Harding precedent doesn’t bode well for a possible Biden presidency. However, what he’s been pitching ever since South Carolina is essentially the same appeal, with Sanders (and, to a lesser extent, Warren) in the roles of revolution, agitation, surgery, and so forth. It was the theme of all three endorsement speeches presented at the big hootenanny in Dallas; of course, it was Pete Buttigieg’s raison d’etre for his own campaign, so that wasn’t a stretch at all. The comfy shoes are triumphing.

The coronavirus crisis is a dramatic instance where boring and competent is dramatically better than bad know-nothing melodrama.