LOS ANGELES — Before the polls closed in California on Super Tuesday, and possibly days before the full results from the two largest states would be known, Joe Biden took the stage in front of an enthusiastic crowd to say he might have defeated Sen. Bernie Sanders.

“They told us when we got to Super Tuesday, it’d be over. Well, it may be over for the other guy!” he said to roars of approval in Los Angeles.

“We are very much alive,” he shouted.

Biden soon settled into an abridged version of the updated stump speech he’s been giving since his resounding win in South Carolina. In contrast to the long evenings he'd spent over the past 10 months sticking around to shake every hand and grasp every shoulder in relatively small crowds at his events, he stuck around to talk to many people Tuesday night but left dozens still clamoring to meet him as he wrapped up.

Not long after Biden left the stage, California’s polls closed and the Associated Press immediately called the state — the biggest Super Tuesday prize — for Sanders. Biden, though, had the kind of night that was unthinkable for him three weeks ago, when he bailed out of New Hampshire hours before results would place him a distant fifth and raise doubts his campaign would last the day.

North Carolina, Virginia, Alabama, Tennessee, Arkansas, and Oklahoma all fell into the Biden column Tuesday. So did Minnesota, where he received a late assist from Sen. Amy Klobuchar, who suspended her campaign Monday and quickly endorsed his. And in Massachusetts, he beat both Sanders and the state’s senior senator, Elizabeth Warren, in a total surprise.

Early Wednesday morning, Biden officially won Texas, the second-largest state on the map on Tuesday, and a state that Sanders badly hoped to win himself.

Biden’s confidence, already on the upswing since South Carolina, was reinforced. After months when he could do no right, for the next 72 hours it seemed like Biden could do no wrong. In the days between primaries, he had scored endorsements from Klobuchar and Pete Buttigieg, another recent dropout, and from another former rival, former Texas representative Beto O’Rourke.

Aides to the former vice president could hardly contain themselves on Twitter. It was a somewhat ironic home run trot — over the first 10 months of his campaign, they often trashed the social media platform and wound up on the receiving end of its users’ endless criticism and attacks. The real conversation wasn’t happening there — the real voters weren’t there, this logic went, and so the campaign would not be fooled into fighting its battles or getting too distracted there.

But there Biden’s team was Tuesday night, tapping out #Joementum as fast as their fingers could. And, just before 9:30 p.m. ET, the candidate's Twitter account dropped an eight-second meme saturated in swagger.

“I ain’t dead,” the 77-year-old Biden, says — in footage from his interview for a New York Times endorsement he didn’t receive. “And I’m not gonna die.”