After having his campaign nearly left for dead following Iowa and New Hampshire, former vice president Joe Biden has now solidified his standing in the Democratic race—and perhaps, once the delegates are all counted, even pulled narrowly into the lead. Building on the momentum borne out of his South Carolina blowout last weekend, Biden had a strong showing on Super Tuesday, with wins throughout the country that staved off previously presumed front-runner Senator Bernie Sanders’s early surge. “It's a good night, and it seems to be getting even better. They don't call it Super Tuesday for nothing,” Biden said in a speech Tuesday night. “I'm here to report: We are very much alive. And make no mistake about it, this campaign will send Donald Trump packing.”

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Biden had a much more robust showing than had been expected even a week ago throughout the Super Tuesday states, from an early landslide win in Virginia—where he earned more than 50% of the vote—to states that were expected to favor Sanders, like Oklahoma and North Carolina. In addition to wins in Alabama, Tennessee, Arkansas, and Minnesota, the former vice president also managed a victory in Massachusetts, where Biden hadn't even campaigned and Sanders, who hails from neighboring Vermont, had previously been viewed as the possible threat to Sen. Elizabeth Warren and her home-state advantage. Around midnight, Biden still remained neck-and-neck with Sanders in Texas, which holds Super Tuesday’s second-biggest delegate haul, after polling nine points behind Sanders as recently as Sunday. (Maine was also too close to call as of press time.)

Sanders still had a strong showing on Super Tuesday, racking up wins in his home state of Vermont, Colorado, and Utah, along with a major victory in delegate-rich California. While the Vermont senator has long touted his ability to turn out young and infrequent voters as a pillar of his “political revolution” strategy, however, there were few signs that actually happened in much of the Super Tuesday electorate—turnout nearly doubled in Virginia over 2016, for instance, but went heavily for Biden. Super Tuesday’s focus on the South also showed Sanders repeating his 2016 failings with black voters, who favored Biden by overwhelming margins. Sanders’s win in delegate-rich California, however, was a big boon for the candidate—and Texas, another delegate gold mine, still has a close enough result that Sanders can expect a significant number of delegates no matter which candidate pulls off the win. As a result, the senator remained optimistic about his prospects Tuesday night, telling supporters, “Tonight, I tell you with absolute confidence we're going to win the Democratic nomination, and we're going to defeat the most dangerous president in the history of this country.” “We're gonna win because the people understand that it is our campaign, our movement that is best positioned to defeat Trump,” Sanders said.

Biden’s strong Super Tuesday performance comes as the moderate wing of the Democratic party had quickly coalesced around the former vice president in recent days. Pete Buttigieg and Sen. Amy Klobuchar dropped out of the race and quickly moved to endorse Biden in Texas Monday night, along with former congressman and hometown hero Beto O’Rourke. Their efforts, the Super Tuesday results suggest, paid off, as Biden emerged as the formidable center-left challenger to Sanders that had been missing in the race thus far. The Super Tuesday results made clear that the race is narrowing into a showdown between the two septuagenarians, and both front-runners directly alluded to the other in their campaign night speeches.

Sanders described the race as now being a “contrast of ideas,” and highlighted Biden’s vote for the war in Iraq, backing from billionaires, past actions regarding Social Security, and other perceived flaws against his own record. “You cannot beat Trump with the same old, same old, kind of politics,” Sanders argued onstage. Biden, meanwhile, didn't hit Sanders quite as directly in his speech—he stopped himself from directly attacking the senator on immigration—but still made a case for electing him over Sanders, whose candidacy has been criticized for potentially hurting down-ballot candidates. “People are talking about a revolution, we've started a movement,” Biden said. “Our campaign reflects the diversity of this party and this nation, and that's how it should be, because it needs to bring everybody along. Everybody. We want a nominee that will beat Donald Trump, and also keep Nancy Pelosi as the Speaker of the House, win back the United States Senate. If that's what you want, join us.” Taking a direct swipe at Sanders’s identification as a democratic socialist, Biden added that voters should support him “if you want a nominee who's a Democrat, a lifelong Democrat, a proud Democrat, an Obama-Biden Democrat.”

Super Tuesday’s narrowing of the Democratic race, however, came at the expense of the other candidates still fighting for the nomination. Warren came in third in her home state of Massachusetts after Biden and Sanders, and failed to win any Super Tuesday state. The pragmatic progressive, who has remained in the race as she pushes herself as a “unity candidate” who can bring together the Democratic Party’s moderate and progressive wings, has long suggested that her strategy is to rack up delegates, rather than first-place wins, however, and will come out of Super Tuesday with delegates from several states. After eschewing the first four primary states and focusing heavily on Super Tuesday, dropping more than $200 million in ad buys alone, former mayor Michael Bloomberg failed to win any Super Tuesday race except for American Samoa, otherwise falling sharply behind Biden and Sanders despite heavily out-spending them. (Bloomberg is “not having the night he paid for,” Brian Williams quipped on MSNBC.) The billionaire will come out of Super Tuesday with delegates, but failed to secure the overwhelming win he had clearly hoped for, instead overshadowed as Biden gets crowned the moderate wing's obvious choice.

While Super Tuesday clarified the narrative of the Democratic primary into that of a two-person race, it still remains to be seen how the candidates who aren't Biden or Sanders will respond. Warren has so far signaled that she’s still planning to be in the primary for the long haul, introducing herself in a speech early Tuesday evening as “the woman who’s going to beat Donald Trump” and telling supporters that “pundits have gotten it wrong over and over.” Her campaign also sent out a fundraising email Tuesday night that suggested the candidate was sticking in the race, looking forward to next week’s primary races and inviting supporters to help them “keep up the momentum.”

Bloomberg, whose advisers had reportedly been pressuring him even before Super Tuesday to drop out and throw his support to Biden, had been similarly clear about his determination to stay in the race going into Tuesday evening's results. The billionaire told reporters Tuesday that he had “no intention of dropping out,” adding, “We're in it to win it.” By the time the Super Tuesday vote became more clear, however, his campaign appeared less bullish, releasing a noncommittal statement that said only the campaign “ha[s] done something no one else thought was possible” and that their “number one priority remains defeating Donald Trump in November.” As that statement suggests, the billionaire's candidacy could potentially be drawing to a close, with the Associated Press reporting that Bloomberg will reassess Wednesday whether he should remain in the race. One Bloomberg adviser told my colleague Gabriel Sherman before Tuesday’s vote that Bloomberg would be prepared to drop out of the race should he suffer a poor Super Tuesday showing—a situation that now may very well come to pass. “He’s not going to stay in and say, ‘Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead,’” the adviser predicted.

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