Democratic presidential candidate former South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg visits a caucus site Saturday, Feb. 22, 2020, in Las Vegas. (AP Photo/John Locher)
Pete Buttigieg is likely the last presidential dropout we have ahead of Super Tuesday. Maybe, just maybe, Tulsi Gabbard could drop out, but if a tree falls in a forest and no one is around…
Anyway, the reason you probably shouldn’t expect any more is that the plan is to right now beat Bernie Sanders. He has the most delegates right now and polling shows him performing very well tomorrow. As a result, the rest of the field appears to be uniting to beat him. Mike Bloomberg is hitting him hard, Joe Biden is hitting him hard, and Buttigieg is not going to endorse him, instead freeing up his delegates to go elsewhere.
That leaves the only two other major names still in the race, Amy Klobuchar and Elizabeth Warren. While polling shows that both of their states – Minnesota and Massachusetts – are leaning toward a Bernie win, those two staying in the race will keep the states competitive through tomorrow and keep Sanders from winning more delegates than he’s already slated to win.
With Sanders ahead by nearly double digits in California, the largest state offering delegates tomorrow, the rest of the Democrats have to do everything they can to stop him. That means fighting him on every ground possible and only relenting when it’s time to hand the reins over to Biden (neither of those two will endorse Bloomberg).
There are two problems that will cause things to get crazy tomorrow, though.
The first problem, a problem for everyone involved except Sanders, is that a lot of polling shows Sanders as the popular second choice for voters. Biden has to convince large swaths of the Democratic base that he is the better first choice for moderate voters and the better second choice for those who support Warren, Klobuchar, Buttigieg, etc. That may be a tough sell, considering Biden has not inspired a lot of confidence prior to Saturday’s primary in South Carolina – where he did surprisingly well.
The second problem is a problem that no one can really solve. Polling has been accurate as far as who the winners would be, but in Nevada and South Carolina especially the polling did not show the huge margins that Sanders and Biden respectively won by. That adds another level of chaos to Tuesday night, and it makes things difficult to predict.
Chaos appears to be the big winner of the Democratic primaries.
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