WILL DEMOCRATS TURN-OUT AS BIG IN NOVEMBER, AS ON SUPER TUESDAY?

…Voters waited for hours to vote on Super Tuesday

Some states are closing polling sites in the communities of blacks and Hispanics

There is one thing that came out of the latest Super Tuesday elections.

That one thing is that the idea that the Democratic Party was headed toward the extreme left, has been greatly exaggerated.

The vast support for Joe Biden over Bernie Sanders on Super Tuesday shows exactly the fact that the Democrats do not want to jump on the MEDICARE FOR ALL or the GREEN NEW DEAL bandwagon.  They instead are for going toward those items gradually, and that fact should scare the bejesus out of Donald Trump and his supporters.

The overall support for Biden shows that the idea that the Democrats want a “Revolution” are also greatly exaggerated by those such as Bernie Sanders, the self-described “democratic socialist” or by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (OAC), the very visible, young New York representative that supports these far left views.

Those Trump team members that continue to describe the Democratic Party as being a “Far left organization” must be upset to see such strong support for Joe Biden.  You can bet that they will be trying to hang the “extreme liberal position” on all of the Democrats, but based on the latest elections, “that dog won’t hunt!”

You can also bet on the fact that the Republicans will now double their efforts to go after Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, and his former position on the board of the corrupt Ukraine gas company.

We can tell that this is getting to President Trump as his Twitter feed has lamented that Bernie Sanders is being mistreated and Trump is concerned that the race is also being rigged against him.  No doubt the Russian bots will be adding to that chorus as well.

But then, what would you expect?

Trump is obviously so terrified of former vice president Joe Biden, that he had felt compelled to commit an abuse of his power that eventually led to his impeachment.

The campaign for the 2020 Democratic nomination has taken an abundant share of 180 degree turns, and there may well be more to come. The speed of which this situation has formed has been unlike anything in political history.

But at least for now, the party has returned to its original political position, which is that the man who served as No. 2 during Barack Obama’s presidency is the Democrats’ safest bet to bring an end to Trump’s presidency.

The exit polls have indicated exactly that, and the Democratic voters in the 14 states that cast their ballots on Super Tuesday would prefer a president who would return to Obama’s policies over someone like Bernie, who would chart a much more liberal direction.

Biden dominated among both the conservative and the moderate primary voters, which was not exactly a surprise.  But Biden also did well among those who called themselves somewhat liberal, especially those who live in the Southern states.

In the early going of this primary season, Biden’s shaky performance had raised understandable doubts about his capability as a candidate to carry the party across the finish line.  In debates and on the stump, he often seemed to be not the best choice.

Biden had finished miserably in Iowa and New Hampshire, and he ran a distant second to Sanders in Nevada.  It began to appear that in a large field in which the moderate vote would be split among a handful of credible candidates, the Vermont senator would win pluralities in enough states to forge ahead in the race for convention delegates.

That prospect horrified many of us who believed that picking Sanders would guarantee a second term for Trump, possibly by a landslide.  So on Tuesday, voters across the Democratic coalition were taking their lead from the African Americans in South Carolina who had lifted Biden to a resounding victory three days before, they decided to hoist Biden on their own shoulders.

It did help that much of the party establishment, including several of Biden’s former rivals who had left the race, quickly got aboard his effort. This was a show of collective purpose that Republicans had been unable to muster in their 2016 effort, when they appeared desperate to stop Trump’s hostile takeover of their party.  We unfortunately know how that all turned out, and we have been paying for it for almost 4 years.

Then, when the former New York mayor, Mike Bloomberg, whose campaign of financial “shock-and-awe” failed to do either on Super Tuesday, he gave up his own bid.  He has since also thrown his backing of his tens of millions of dollars, apparently to Biden.

Now, the once-robust candidacy of Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), who was humiliated when she placed third in the state that had elected her twice, her candidacy is apparently, also near its end. There is no path forward for her, and the only question now is whether Warren will endorse Sanders or Biden.  Or will she decide that she will remain more relevant if she doesn’t endorse either candidate

Sanders has what he needs, which is his intensely loyal supporters and a seemingly bottomless supply of contributions.  He can therefore continue in the race right up to the party convention this summer in Milwaukee.  But the results so far do not back up his claim that he can bring an army of new voters with him and beyond to November.  There is no evidence that he can achieve that goal.

On Super Tuesday, the states that showed the biggest primary turnout gains over 2016, among them, Virginia, North Carolina and Texas, they were all won by Biden.  And here in California, where Sanders is ahead in the polls, which will still be counting the final ballots for a week or so.  But many of those votes for Sanders were mailed in weeks before the election.  Would those voters still be in support of Sanders today…?

The reality of Super Tuesday is that the Democrats should not fear what lies ahead, even if there is a long and robust battle between the only two people who still have a shot at the nomination.  

At the end of it, the country will have a far clearer idea of what the party stands for and so will Donald Trump and his party.

The truth will be told if the Democrats do not turn-out in force in November.  They will then get what they deserve if Trump succeeds in the end game.

And we will all be responsible for another negative shot being aimed at the longest experiment of a nation and its democracy.

Copyright G. Ater 2020