Four days before the New Hampshire primary I received a puzzling text from a Biden adviser. “How about 4, 3, 2, 1?” he wrote. “Huh?” I replied.

He explained: “Iowa 4, New Hampshire 3, Nevada 2, South Carolina 1.” Joe Biden had come in fourth place in the Iowa Caucuses a few days before and, as often happens to those who do poorly in Iowa, was falling in the polls in New Hampshire. I got the point of the exercise. In danger of finishing out of the top three slots in both Iowa and New Hampshire, Biden was in dire straits. No candidate, since 1972, had ever gone on to become the Democratic nominee after having such a poor performance in the first two states. The campaign needed an argument they could make to the press for how he could stay alive until the South Carolina primary, which Biden expected to win. The message—4-3-2-1—wasn’t a strategy, as much as an expression of what the campaign hoped would happen. That could seem like an oddly passive posture for a candidate who had gone from being the prohibitive front-runner when Biden entered the race last April to life support, but I understood the dynamics of the 2020 race well enough to know that some Hail Mary change in strategy was unlikely to precipitate a dramatic improvement in Biden’s standing.

It started with a presidential impeachment trial, ended with a pandemic, and held enormous stakes for the country. Still, the yearlong Democratic primary campaign has felt like a largely bloodless affair. Even with the largest and most diverse field in history, there were few moments of the kind of magic or dramatic collapse that usually punctuate primaries. Democrats seemed too exhausted by the Donald Trump circus to allow much drama to infect their race, and too traumatized by Trump’s surprise victory in 2016 to allow themselves to believe in magic in 2020. The campaign was stuck in low gear, and Joe Biden wasn’t going anywhere.

I did not need to voice any of this to my Biden friend. He knew at that point there was little the campaign could do to break the losing trajectory Biden appeared to be on. Voters knew Joe Biden well. They were either going to decide that he offered what they were looking for—and prove the theory to be true—or not. Instead, I offered gentle skepticism: “Do you really think you can come in third in New Hampshire?”

So I didn’t criticize the 4-3-2-1 theory, or point to an alternative strategy that could change the losing trajectory Biden seemed to be on. The support was either going to be there for Biden—and prove the theory correct—or it wasn’t. Instead, I was merely dubious: “Do you really think you can come in third in New Hampshire?”

Iowa

It’s a mistake to think of a presidential campaign as a mirror image of the one that preceded it, but we do it all the time. For both the Democrats who were devastated by Trump’s victory and the press who were blindsided by it, the instinct to look back at 2016 to find our orientation and parallels for 2020 is powerful. I imagined, incorrectly, as it turned out, that the 2016 Republican primary would be a model for this year’s Democratic race. Like Republicans then, the 2020 Democrats had a large field in which most of the contest was centered on the question of who was best to take on the formidable nominee on the opposing side.

In my mind, Joe Biden was likely to be the Jeb Bush of this cycle—an early but ultimately weak front-runner whose support reflected pangs for the last presidency more than anything to do with the party’s future. Bernie Sanders, who was alienating to mainstream leadership but had a committed base of support, could be the Trump-like outsider who took advantage of the divisions in a large field and captured the nomination. By the time I arrived in Des Moines a week before the Iowa caucus, Sanders seemed to be on that path. He started the new year leading the all-important Des Moines Register poll, and from what I could see on the ground in Iowa, his campaign was a house on fire.