It’s surprising and somewhat disappointing that the Democratic presidential primary has been boiled down as quickly as it has.
A couple of weeks ago, pundits were speculating about a brokered convention, in which four or more candidates would do well enough in the primaries to hang in there until the party convention this summer, when the delegates would sort it out.
Sen. Bernie Sanders, the leader after the first three states voted, even said publicly that if none of the Democratic candidates came to the convention without winning a majority of delegates, the person in the lead still should be nominated.
Joe Biden’s dramatic resurgence ended that, thanks to the heavy support of black voters he received, most critically first in South Carolina, then across several states on Super Tuesday, when about a third of the delegates were awarded. Biden clearly benefitted from the withdrawals of Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar before Super Tuesday, and of Michael Bloomberg few days later.
It was down to a race between Biden and Sanders until two days ago, when Biden increased his delegate lead with victories in Mississippi, Michigan, Missouri and Idaho. It’s hard to see how Sanders can attract enough voter support in the coming weeks to prevent Biden from being nominated.
When the field thinned rapidly Democratic voters got to decide which candidate not only has the right vision but also has the best chance of beating Republican incumbent Donald Trump.
On electability, it’s no contest. Biden is the only one of the two Democrats with a chance to win in November. It would be suicidal of the party to nominate Sanders, an avowed socialist who sounds like a communist at times.
With his past affection for failed states such as Cuba and Venezuela, his class-warfare ideology that would heavily tax success while letting the indebted off their financial obligations, and his expensive proposals such as Medicare for All that would exponentially increase the nation’s already onerous debt, there is no way Sanders has a chance to beat Trump.
Sanders scares more than half the country, and fear is a powerful motivator to vote for somebody else.
Biden also philosophically is where this nation needs to head — not to the extreme of either political spectrum, but somewhere closer to the middle.
He would, for example, try to address the nation’s continuing problem with rising health-care costs not by replacing the Affordable Care Act, as Sanders espouses, or dismantling it, as Trump has tried, but by improving it.
That’s typical of Biden on a host of issues, from gun control to immigration. He is willing to seek the middle ground, trying to forge a consensus that, while it may anger purists at both ends of the political spectrum, is closer to where most Americans’ sentiments hopefully lie.
Although Biden and Sanders are about the same age, they are far apart in philosophy and personality. Biden is hopeful and congenial, Sanders aggrieved and scowling.
Which one is best-suited to challenge Trump and, if successful, to lead the country? Easily that would be Biden.
Voters may have been better served by a centrist Democratic nominee who’s younger. It is bothersome that the Democrats, with four years to work on it, couldn’t develop someone from an earlier generation who had enough smarts and pizzazz to last more than a month into the primary season.
A national cross-section of voters has all but decided, however, that a race between 70-somethings Trump and Biden is its preference.
