There are millions of votes left to be cast in the Democratic primary contest, but the outcome appears fairly set. Joe Biden will likely be the Democratic nominee for president, having won a blowout victory in Mississippi and victories in Missouri and Michigan. As expected, Biden continued to dominate with black voters—in Mississippi, he won 87 percent of black voters—but he also won white voters and voters without college degrees.

Biden finds himself in the ascension thanks to the insidious concept of electability. Voters are not flocking to the polls because they are moved by the dazzling prospect of a Joe Biden presidency. In many cases he’s winning states in which he’s barely shown his face. But a majority of the Democratic base is convinced that Biden is the safe bet to win against Trump, and they value the way that certainty feels more than policy.

In every state that has voted so far, majorities have come out in favor of Medicare for All (specifically, replacing private insurance with a single government plan). They won’t get it anytime soon. In an interview this week, Joe Biden was asked if he would veto Medicare for All if it were sent to his desk; he said that he would “veto anything that delays providing the security and the certainty of health care being available now.” He went on to criticize the price tag of the policy, naturally without noting that the increased government spending would replace private, individual spending on things like insurance premiums, copays, deductibles, and a slew of surprise bills that drag Americans from the sickbed into bankruptcy. In Mississippi, 62 percent of voters support the plan; the candidate who has taken the most contributions from the health care industry is on track to win the state by massive margins.



Biden has also locked up the nomination with shockingly little support from voters under 40. The electorate this time around was old: More than one in three voters in Missouri was over 65. In 2018, 17 percent of Missouri residents were over 65. Missouri seniors make up almost twice as much of the voting population as they should. In that state, voters between the ages of 18 and 44 went for Sanders—by 42 points, 68 percent to 26 percent. Can being shunned by the young but loved by the old carry Biden to a general election win? He will have to hope so.



Despite Biden’s clear success in convincing voters that he has the best shot at defeating Trump, there are already troubling indications that those in his own camp are worried this might not be the case. South Carolina Representative Jim Clyburn, whose endorsement of Biden was likely crucial to his wide margin of victory in the Palmetto State’s primary and the ensuing media narrative of Biden’s resurgence, told NPR tonight that the Democratic National Committee should “step in” and cancel debates, since Biden appears to be the “prohibitive favorite.” He added that a longer primary makes it more likely that Biden “gets himself into trouble” before the general. James Carville, too, called for an early end to the primary. It is reasonable to conclude that senior Democrats are worried about Joe Biden’s increasingly baffling speech patterns—or, put more honestly, the fact that he sounds like he is in the midst of a worrisome decline in mental acuity.

