Former Vice President Joe Biden went into Super Tuesday as an underdog, but after winning at least nine of the 14 primaries, he ended the night in pole position, or close to it. Biden began his surge with big victories in the South, fed by lopsided support from black voters and white suburbanites, and he ended by scoring an upset victory in Texas over Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), the previous frontrunner.
"A big problem for the Sanders theory of this race is that when turnout is high, he wins," The Washington Post's David Weigel noted. "Turnout is way up, but the most reliable new voters are Biden-curious suburbanites." The "Sanders coalition is sticky, but so far, it's static," CNN's Jeff Zeleny adds. "Sanders has argued again and again that he can build the biggest coalition of voters," but "in many cases his votes have gone down" from 2016. Sanders did increase his support among Latino voters, CNN's Zachary Wolf points out, but the young voters he promised would turn out for him failed to materialize.
The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
"Sanders didn't get wiped out on Tuesday night — far from it," Ezra Klein writes at Vox. "But he is, in a way, running the wrong campaign," positioning himself as "an insurgent facing down a corrupt Democratic establishment" when he notched his early victories "as a Democrat, not a revolutionary." Sanders "needed to pivot to a strategy that would unite the existing Democratic Party around him," Klein adds. His plan to "turn out enough new voters" to "sweep away the Democratic establishment and build his own party" failed from the start, and Team Sanders quickly needs to accept that "if you treat voters and officials in the party you want to lead as the enemy, a lot of people in that party aren't going to trust you to lead them."
-
Ted Cruz teases big 2028 movesIN THE SPOTLIGHT The Texas Republican is playing his cards close to his chest, even as others in Washington start looking for hints about the arch-conservative’s future
-
The 9 best dark comedy TV shows of all timeThe Week Recommends From workplace satire to family dysfunction, nothing is sacred for these renowned, boundary-pushing comedies
-
Music reviews: Rosalía and Mavis Staplesfeature “Lux” and “Sad and Beautiful World”
-
Court strikes down Texas GOP gerrymanderSpeed Read The Texas congressional map ordered by Trump is likely an illegal racial gerrymander, the court ruled
-
Trump defends Saudi prince, shrugs off Khashoggi murderSpeed Read The president rebuked an ABC News reporter for asking Mohammed bin Salman about the death of a Washington Post journalist at the Saudi Consulate in 2018
-
Congress passes bill to force release of Epstein filesSpeed Read The Justice Department will release all files from its Jeffrey Epstein sex-trafficking investigation
-
Trump says he will sell F-35 jets to Saudi ArabiaSpeed Read The president plans to make several deals with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman this week
-
Judge blasts ‘profound’ errors in Comey caseSpeed Read ‘Government misconduct’ may necessitate dismissing the charges against the former FBI director altogether
-
Ecuador rejects push to allow US military basesSpeed Read Voters rejected a repeal of a constitutional ban on US and other foreign military bases in the country
-
Trump pivots on Epstein vote amid GOP defectionsSpeed Read The president said House Republicans should vote on a forced release of the Justice Department’s Jeffrey Epstein files
-
Trump DOJ sues to block California redistrictingSpeed Read California’s new congressional map was drawn by Democrats to flip Republican-held House seats
