Yesterday, Illinois, Florida and Arizona all held their Democratic primaries. Joe Biden swept all three. He had the biggest victories in Florida and Illinois, winning 61.9% and 59.1% respectively. In Arizona, Biden won 43.6% of the vote to Bernie Sanders 31.6% of the vote. All told, Biden picked up 249 delegates to Sanders’ 116 delegates. Biden’s delegate lead is almost insurmountable.
Mr. Biden, the former vice president, won by wide margins in Florida and Illinois and also carried Arizona, sweeping the night and achieving a nearly insurmountable delegate lead. The emphatic outcome could greatly intensify pressure on Mr. Sanders to end his campaign and allow Democrats to unify behind Mr. Biden as their presumptive nominee.
The routs in Florida and Illinois, two of the biggest prizes on the national map, represented both a vote of confidence in Mr. Biden from most Democrats, and a blunt rejection of Mr. Sanders’s candidacy by the kind of large, diverse states he would have needed to capture to broaden his appeal beyond the ideological left.
In the two biggest states voting on Tuesday, Florida and Illinois, Mr. Sanders failed. Mr. Biden carried Illinois by a wide margin, keeping intact his winning streak in the large Midwestern primary states, after previously winning in Minnesota and Michigan. And the victory in Florida was a particularly sharp repudiation of Mr. Sanders; many moderate and conservative Hispanic voters in the state had recoiled from his past praise of leftist governments in Latin America, including his admiring remarks about certain achievements of Fidel Castro’s Cuba.
But the day of voting may have been most notable for the disruptions to the electoral calendar. The turmoil caused by the coronavirus upended plans for a primary election in Ohio, where state officials postponed voting scheduled for Tuesday, in an abrupt maneuver that barely survived last-minute legal scrutiny. Four other states have also taken steps to delay their primary elections until late this spring, with Maryland on Tuesday becoming the latest to push back voting.
In the states that did vote, there were signs that the virus had dampened voter turnout, and that the Democratic presidential campaigns and other party leaders were not engaged on Tuesday in the traditional all-out push to drive supporters to the polls. Still, more than a million people cast ballots early or by mail in advance of Tuesday’s primaries, according to election officials in the three states, suggesting that the contests could represent a clear enough statement on the trajectory of the Democratic campaign.
From what I saw of Biden’s speech – Sanders did not make a speech last night – Biden was conciliatory towards Sanders and his supporters. Which is good politics for him, even if ALL of us know that if Sanders had won anything big, his supporters would have been complete douchebags and run around demanding everyone kiss the ring (which is exactly what happened when Sanders performed well in Iowa and New Hampshire). And just FYI, I never expected Sanders to drop out before July. And even then, he’ll probably take it to the convention yet again. All of the Sanders sympathizers claiming that Bernie “just wants to be heard” and “wants to push Biden to the left” are out of your minds. Sanders is on an ego trip and he’s still letting his supporters think that he can win. He and his bros are going to try to f–k up another election, mark my words.
Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.
Especially now with everything going on and with it becoming increasingly clear he is not getting the nomination, the right thing to do would be to bow out instead of forcing people to go out and vote in a pointless primary in the middle of a pandemic.
That’s a good point. He could save lives by dropping out. But he is just as likely to whine that covid 19 cost him the nomination, and the bros will be out screaming this pandemic was a conspiracy by the establishment to force him out.
If primaries continue, there needs to a big push now to give absentee ballots to anyone who asks, with no restrictions.
My state has a checkoff list for why you are voting absentee. One is if you don’t expect to be present on Election Day, which will fit…. There are other options that could be finagled to count on this situation, but they really should just lift all restrictions and make sure every registered voter gets an application to send in now.
Then we can push for the same in the general election, preventing Trump from delaying that election and from messing with the machine votes as the Republicans have done since 2006.
That’s a very good point and you’re absolutely right. It could be important to set this as precedent come November
Yes, there have to be mail-in ballots now for every state. You’re right that there is a huge advantage to that–it’s basically getting the hand-marked, paper ballots that we know will prevent corruption.
Bernie should’ve dropped out like last week. If he pulls the same thing he did in 2016, I will lose it. I just can’t with the idiot section of his supporters who don’t understand how politics work and claim “rigged!” when things don’t go their way.
Biden could save lives by dropping out too. In fact let’s save lives by calling off the primaries and the general election and just give Trump the presidency for another four years. 🙄
😂 This is the equivalent of “I know you are, but what am I?” Why on earth would Biden drop out with this many primary votes?!
Apparently to ‘save lives’ 😄
Right now on CNN – reporting that Bernie is assessing his 2020 bid. So hopefully he’ll drop out, like now.
That is exactly what he needs to do. He should get 100 percent behind Joe as well. History will not remember him well if he doesn’t.
History already won’t remember him well. He sealed that fate in 2016, to say nothing of his behavior this cycle.
@betsy – I am not a conspiracy theorist, but your comment has me wondering if he wasn’t a bit intentional about disrupting Clinton purposefully. I can imagine he assumed he would be more likely to successfully run against/compete with Trump in 2020 but he would have less chance of a successful run against Hillary. He’s been in politics long enough to consider the long game.
If Bernie is serious about his campaign being a movement – he can do a lot more for that not being the POTUS. I think he would hate the job, anyway. He’s still in the Senate and has all sorts of options to keep pushing for changes in the Senate and out in public. He thinks he is the only one who cares about such things, but other Democrats (including Joe Biden) also care.
I love Bernie as the Senate gadfly, but he doesn’t work well with people not lock-step with his ideas and has trouble compromising. Others in the primary were more pragmatic and more capable of dealing with the realities that not everybody agrees on what to do and it isn’t all because of Trump and Moscow Mitch McConnell.
I would have voted for Warren in the primary, but Joe also has the temperament that we need in a POTUS. He doesn’t really seem to be ego-driven and wants to work with others to come up with good solutions. That includes Bernie, if some of his supporters (or Putin’s bots pretending to be supporters) can stop having tantrums and threatening to pick up their marbles and go home.
Bernie needs to push for his ideas with Biden, not claim to be a victim of the Big Bad DNC. Bernie pulls in a decent amount of votes, and that is good because it gives his ideas more leverage. But there are other reasons than the Big Bad DNC for Joe getting so many more votes.
Those results are pretty clear, he won everything by a big margin.
If Bernie does drop out, I truly hope he swings all his support to Biden. If they work together, they could do a lot of good.
That gives me a little hope he will drop out, but he’s such a stubborn narcissist. And both he and especially his “advisers” want to keep the money flowing in.
I voted by mail (for Biden) 2 weeks ago to save myself a trip. Glad now that I did.
I agree. It’s time for Bernie to drop, endorse and help Biden. It will give Biden the opportunity to announce his VP selection, and gain additional private financial help in campaigning.
I liked Joe’s speech although it isn’t stopping the relentless narrative that he has dementia. The Bernie Bros were raging last night that this was election fraud, irresponsible to not postpone the election in the midst of Covid, saying that only boomers were dumb enough to go out and vote, on and on and on.
That last part is not true. So many of my friends’ kids were happy and proud to vote yesterday for the first time. And the youth in Chicago actually came out in force to work as election judges when the seniors who usually are in charge rightly decided to stay home. Presumably if they worked the polls they also voted, too.
Really big news in IL was Marie Newman defeating 8-term creepy anti-choice rep Dan Lipinski. Thanks for the added boost of support from Elizabeth Warren supporters from all over who channeled their energy into this race after Warren ended her bid.
Sometimes I wonder how many of those social media warriors are bots/trolls from who knows where. I’m sure there are real “bro’s”, but some of it seems so reminiscent of 2016.
If they are so vocal and active for their candidate, why didn’t they successfully get their demographic group to the polls? It makes no sense.
I agree, the trolls and bots are amplifying this for sure. And you’re right that it’s weird that the young demographic that claimed to support him in polls aren’t turning out. All I know is the sooner Sanders drops out the better.
It is irresponsible not to postpone the primaries, to be honest, but frankly, I doubt it would’ve made much of a dent in this. If his support wasn’t showing up in the early primaries, I doubt it was going to show up in a place like Florida that overwhelmingly went to Clinton in the primary in 2016. I think a lot of the frustration is a denial of the reality in front of them that Bernie did not get across to as many people as they thought, which is frustrating from a progressive perspective but not surprising given the demographic tension in the Democratic party right now.
Albeit, I don’t where this narrative of ~old people aren’t taking it seriously~ is coming from. Plenty of young people are being careless, too, because they aren’t expecting to be hurt and don’t have the maturity or experience to understand the long term consequences. If they didn’t show up to the primaries yesterday, I suspect that’s more out of apathy than anything else.
I voted in the Primary in FL yesterday. I was the only voter there – normally there would have been a line to get in. It should have been postponed due to the virus. 😒
It absolutely should have been postponed. So very disgusted by my gov in Illinois who completely ignored the wishes of most in the state and the election board. Putting workers and the public at risk. And oh yeah, Illinois had its first death from COVID-19 yesterday, there’s that. Apparently not a concern to the asshats in Springfield.
VOTE BY MAIL FOR ALL.
AZ Voter here. I went out and voted for Biden yesterday. There were still little old ladies helping with handing out voting sheets, etc. I work with (although currently working from home) a bunch of Bernie bros (women actually). I tried asking them one day, why? All they kept ranting was, “Bernie’s got plans”… I didn’t even try arguing against them. There’s no use. But I’m glad Biden did well here, I was worried.
Side note, Biden needs to pick his VP… I can’t stand waiting to see who it is. I want Kamala Harris! I love her 🙂
Kamala all the way!
Voted yesterday in FL. Not gonna lie I was a little concerned, especially since most of our poll workers are 65+, but there were only a few people there and I got in and out in less than 5 minutes. They should have postponed it, but I think Biden would have won here anyway.
Everyone should be able to vote by mail. Period. Virus or no virus.
Biden is clearly the presumptive nominee. Bernie has no path to the nomination. There will be no brokered convention. Bernie should drop out, but he won’t. He’s a narcissist.
Tom Perez said the primaries will continue. Okay, fine, but cancel the convention. Not only is it prudent, it’ll prevent the Bernie or Bust people from having a platform to disrupt and damage Biden.
I was thinking before that it would be useful to see the final numbers for Bernie (as an indicator of support for his proposals), but maybe with the COVID-19 situation that’s not such a good idea. Although if absentee ballots are used, maybe it won’t matter so much.
But I forgot about the summer conventions. We are likely to need social distancing and even lockdowns still by summer the way things are going, or else we will end up unflattening the cases vs time curve.
Maybe they should plan for virtual conventions now. Stream it everywhere – YouTube and websites. Archive it so people can watch what they want and when. Use conference call technology for delegates.
I am so worried going into this next election. You know Trump’s supporters are in too deep now to turn back, and I’m afraid fear and/or apathy will keep people at home. But I talk to SO MANY Bernie supporters – and I say this as someone who was intending to vote for him since I can’t have Warren – who keep up the argument that we can’t win without him, that he’s the one who can change Trump supporter’s minds, but I’m like….*THEN WHERE ARE HIS VOTERS.* Where are they in the primary?? There’s a very real disparity in their minds versus the actual numbers that are being reported, and it frustrates me how many are leaning on conspiracy theories than realistically examining what is going wrong here.
I’ve already had one say they won’t be voting for Biden if he wins because they’re not in a swing state, and I’m like…..my state wasn’t considered a swing state in 2016 because we hadn’t gone red in thirty years. I knew a lot who thought that way and didn’t vote for Hillary for that reason in 2016. What an ugly surprise we all woke up to the day after that election when PA went for Trump because Jill Stein and Gary Johnson managed to take enough of the <1% of voters that gave Trump all 20 of our delegates. There is no safe state at this point.
“I’ve already had one say they won’t be voting for Biden if he wins because they’re not in a swing state,”
I thought about that earlier in the season when Sanders won the early primaries. I’m in New York and I’m confident that the democratic candidate won’t need my vote. But then I realized that it’s not fair of me to expect the swing state people to do all the heavy lifting. How can I tell people to suck it up and vote for a candidate they have problems with because he’s way better than the alternative if I won’t do that myself. So even though I’m really disappointed that I won’t get to vote for Warren, and I’m confident that NY will not be a close race, I will vote for whoever the democratic nominee is.
It’s not just about heavy lifting – it’s the influence saying things like that online has on people who are in swing states. I’m not joking that when I say I knew A LOT of people who “protest voted” in 2016 in Pennsylvania and then woke up shocked when it backfired horribly. It annoyed me because it was just…so privileged. Like, how nice that some of you get to have ~clean hands~ while the rest of us desperately hope we did enough to make sure the absolute worst doesn’t happen.
And then it did anyway because they didn’t even both to show up and vote for CONGRESS, which is the larger part of why we’re in the mess we are right now.
I’m not a Sanders Sympathizer at all, but his speech last week really sounded to me like he saw the writing on the wall and wanted to use his leverage to push Biden on certain issues. I don’t know if he had a moment of clarity during that speech and then got over it or if I just read it wrong, but I stopped thinking that a few days later as his delegates pretty viciously (and not fairly in my opinion) went after Biden on tv all week and I haven’t finished the debate yet, but he was definitely not about party unity in what I saw.
Hopefully yesterday’s results knocked some sense into him.
I think in 2016, Bernie originally ran to influence the Democratic platform. Then at some point, he got POTUS fever.
I like him and his ideas, but doubt he would get much done as President. He just isn’t detail oriented and doesn’t work well with people of diverse opinions. But he certainly succeeded in influencing the platform, and he will do so again. Will that be enough for him? I hope so.
I hope so too.
I also like his ideas (but not him) and I agree that I don’t think he’d get much done as President, for those the reasons you gave.
I voted for Bernie in AZ. I’m no Bernie bro. He needs to drop this week. He has lost. I’m not happy about it but I’m also not going to live in denial like the average trump voter. I will say I really hope Biden changes his tune about certain things, especially Medicare for All. If I were a single issue voter that would be my issue and thus far I have been deeply disappointed with Biden’s plans for healthcare. We’ll see what happens. November is still a long way away. I’ll still vote for Biden but it would be real nice if he comes through on certain issues so it doesn’t feel like such a gut punch.
I think Biden is capable of listening and changing. Medicare for All is popular even among Trump voters. Hillary Clinton was coming around and said she was open to the idea of Medicare age being lowered into the 50s, which is when premiums start to climb ever upward fast. That would be a start.
The ACA was a good start but had to compromise too much – it still was the first light at the end of the tunnel I had seen in decades. Before it was implemented, I had to quit insurance for a few years because my deductible tripled and they wanted 53% of my income for the premium.
COVID-19 certainly shows how lacking our current healthcare system is. Americans were worried about being wiped out financially even by the cost of testing while our counterparts in similar countries just went to the doctor or the hospital. They had already paid for their healthcare based on their income through taxes, and a much much smaller percentage of their income than we pay for premiums. They get more bang for their buck-equivalent also.
We also are going to need a citizen bailout because people have to be able to stay on lockdown or nearly or else our healthcare system is toast. But that means no income for most people. Likewise for businesses that will be closed. Yoo, hoo – Andrew Yang, please step up to the podium!
Clinton didn’t really need to “come around” to universal healthcare. She rallied to get that through in the 1990s and was squashed viciously by the Republican congress that was in power then, too. I imagine her hesitation was more an experienced pragmatism from seeing how little could be done with the current opposition in place. That’s what everybody really needs to wake up to if they want universal healthcare. They need to flip Congress and keep it flipped.
FL voter here. Despite everything, voter turnout was still higher than in 2016. We have early voting in addition to vote-by-mail which most certainly helped.
Bernie, save some face and use the fact that you can do more for this country back in DC right now than on the campaign trail. End your campaign, put your support behind Biden, and get over it.
I’m wondering if we going to even have a normal convention this year….The way they’re talking about this pandemic it may stretch into summer.
Sadly I think it’s the end of the road for Bernie. He wanted to get America off fossil fuels by 2030. Now we have a ‘choice’ between Trump, who doesn’t believe in climate change, and Biden, who’ll pay lip service to it but will be too beholden to the fossil fuel industry to take the required action. It’s like being a vegetarian and getting told you have a choice between beef or lamb.
At that point you eat the decorative lettuce leaf under said beef or lamb but you sure don’t fund the mega butcher shop vs the small butcher shop. And I think it’s pretty clear which team is which…
The meat comes from the same butcher’s shop on Wall Street.
Flip the Senate, and you won’t have to care about what Biden said on the campaign trail. He’s not an idiot. If his party hands him Medicare for All or green energy bills that they passed through both houses of Congress, he’s not going to veto them. Good presidents can change their position on things if faced with the reality of the cultural changes around them.
That would require a majority of Democrats to put ordinary Americans before big business and is therefore unlikely.
Those candidates are voted in by the public and know their political careers hinge on pleasing the public. Start building up progressive campaigns from the bottom up and actually voting in the mid-term and state/local elections, and progressive Democrats can actually start seeing their labors pay off. Political action isn’t sitting around waiting for a Superman to come and rescue you. It’s a lot of legitimately hard, constant work.
Bernie is much too selfish with his “my way or the highway” ideals to drop out. The Bernie bro’s are nothing but a bunch of trolls paid by Putin anyway. Every time I see one of those idiots post, I want to ask them how the weather is in Siberia.
I think one thing that this virus has taught us is how valuable casting the vote by mail in ballot is.