Chronicle Editor
WASHINGTON — As the returns rolled in on Super Tuesday, Joe Biden’s aides were flabbergasted.
Huddled at their headquarters in Philadelphia and snacking on candy carted in from the nearby “Nuts to You,” Biden’s campaign was braced for a long night of election results, according to a senior member of the campaign staff.
The team was cautiously optimistic after a resounding victory in South Carolina and a subsequent consolidation of the moderate wing of the party behind the former vice president. But their goals were still modest: Run up the margin as much as possible in most of the Southern states, and stay competitive in Texas and California.
Not only was the campaign meeting those goals, it was notching victories in places where resources had been withdrawn and field staff had been redeployed, like Massachusetts and Minnesota, and later Maine. There was no television in the conference room where Biden’s senior aides were holding the hourly meeting. But with each win, a loud cheer would erupt from the aides in the press area and at the front of the office, interrupting the meeting as everyone ran to the television screens to catch the latest victory.
Just a few days earlier, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders was the race’s undisputed front-runner. Biden’s campaign appeared ill-equipped to pull off the comeback necessary to win. The fractured field of six top candidates seemed poised to split delegates on Super Tuesday, setting up the possibility of a contested convention.
But during the week and a half between the morning of South Carolina’s primary and this past Tuesday’s elections, three candidates got out of the race and endorsed Biden, and the former vice president racked up victories and delegates in 15 states to become a strong favourite for the Democratic presidential nomination.
Sanders has insisted that he is not leaving the race, but as the pair headed into yesterday’s debate, the reversal of their fortunes could not be starker. Conversations with more than a dozen Democratic operatives and aides to Sanders and Biden offers a window into how the campaigns experienced the dramatic re-shaping of the 2020 race and how that transformation sets the stage for the contest’s next chapter.
The elements of Biden’s comeback during that 10-day span clicked into place. His aides had feared he would not be able to recover from a third or fourth place finish in Nevada. But his second-place finish in Nevada cleared the way for South Carolina Rep. Jim Clyburn’s pivotal endorsement.
Black voters — the historical arbiters of Democratic contests — coalesced behind Biden in virtual lockstep in South Carolina and later several more Southern states, even as Sanders continued to win young voters and Latinos. One-time rivals Amy Klobuchar, Pete Buttigieg and Beto O’Rourke all stepped forward in the 48-hour period that followed the Palmetto State primary to anoint Biden as the best candidate to confront Trump. — CNN
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