Lorie Shaull, St Paul, United States

Despite the Panic of the Corona Virus, several states held their presidential primaries. Granted, Kentucky and Ohio have delayed their own primaries. The winner of the day cannot be doubted: Joe Biden has won in impressive fashion in Florida, Illinois, and Arizona. As Biden’s momentum will edge him closer to the needed 1990 delegates needed to win outright. Sitting at 1153, Biden has about three hundred more delegates pledged to him than his closest opponent, Bernie Sanders.

Bernie has needed to pick off larger and further left-leaning states to stay competitive, and all signs show that he has failed. Arizona and Florida are both less radical, with larger elderly populations and Hispanics. Illinois might yet have been a rock for Bernie to stand on. Barack Obama’s home state may have provided a left-wing base of stalwart voters. A victory there could have given Sanders much-needed momentum to build a further base. Nonetheless, he lost Illinois. All these factors portend to end Bernie’s chances to win the nomination.

Bernie always had an uphill battle running as the ultimate outsider. He tried building new coalitions against the normal Democrat establishment. To win like that, a candidate must either overcome the entire weight of the party’s structure, or else be able to divide and conquer. The former is almost impossible.: you can’t win if your entire strategy is to outlast everyone. At the very least, the strongest establishment candidate will face you one-on-one. Then it’s just a matter of having the most money and support.

The latter strategy, divide and conquer, is rare, but it does happen, as it did 2016. Donald Trump used his exceptionally high name recognition to steal enough voters from all the major contenders to take an early lead. The Republicans then had no viable establishment candidate after Bush dropped out. Donald Trump only needed pluralities to win a lot of winner-take-all primaries. By the time even two other major candidates remained, no one could catch Donald Trump, and he rode a massive wave to the nomination.

Sanders’s best shot was to sweep the early primaries, land an upset victory in the South Carolina primary, then come close to sweeping the Super Tuesday contests. He could then ride that wave and get enough candidates to win in the first ballot. That was his only hope. He couldn’t hope to win in a contested election. The super-delegates are beholden to the DNC’s choice. He also couldn’t afford to get into a neck and neck race with an establishment candidate. He fell into the latter, and his candidacy is left dying on the vine. Sanders has 883 pledged delegates, but over 1/3 of them have come from Texas and California.

As long he has money, Sanders won’t drop out. His pledged delegates will have a large influence in the formation of the party platform. He may be able to parlay his delegates into a cabinet position, too. That’s about the best he can hope for. Unless Biden’s mental capacities make a grotesque turn for the worse, he now has all the momentum. Biden has the establishment backing, the money, and now ability to run as the true front-runner.

One more thing: Sanders’s supporters may cry foul, claiming the party cheated Sanders. This is only true in the sense that the deck was stacked against Sanders from the beginning. There is no evidence of electoral fraud or illegal activity against Sanders. Sanders knew his campaign was an uphill battle in both 2016 and 2020. That he was the first runner-up is more telling of the position of the Democrats than his inability to win.

Did the party coalesce around Biden? Yes. Did a bunch of candidates drop out at the moment most beneficial to Biden? No doubt. Did the party and mainstream media show favor to Biden the entire time? 100%. But none of that was illegal or even cheating. The party makes the game, sets the rules, and officiates the play as it sees fit. Bernie knew all this and attempted to win in spite of all that. It is like a poker player complaining that tournament was rigged because the eventual winner had ten times as much betting money as did at the end. Even if the runner-up won two straight hands, the leader could simply wait for a better hand and run the game out.

Although the math hasn’t shut him out, Bernie Sanders has no practical chance. The likelihood of a turnaround in fortunes is microscopic. His play to get a major youth vote has flopped. His main supporters don’t stack up to the number and influence of Biden’s supporters. Biden need only to keep doing what he’s doing, and a first ballot victory is almost assured. Only the future will hold what will happen next.