From a journalist’s perspective, the comeback of Joe Biden is a terrific story. From a citizen’s perspective, it’s…well, it’s…um, what is it? There is nothing wrong with voters choosing an establishment candidate after a semi-fair fight. (The rebel will always face more obstacles, almost by definition, so complaints on that front must be limited.) But was this the best establishment candidate for the times? Did people think that Joe Biden would have a better shot at besting Donald Trump than any other establishment candidate who was still in the race? Few honest people would answer yes and yes. Everyone knows that Biden has way more baggage and way less facility with words or, it now seems, thought, than someone like Amy Klobuchar. But the only establishment candidates left in the race as of a week ago were Biden, Klobuchar, and Pete Buttigieg. (Add Mike Bloomberg and Elizabeth Warren if you like, but their cases are different.) It couldn’t be Biden who dropped out for Buttigieg or Klobuchar. So they dropped out for him. It seems to have worked.

To watch the party machinery prop up Biden and wheel him toward the convention will be either entertaining or despair-inducing, depending on your tendencies. Biden is without a doubt the funniest candidate in the race, if not by design. No other candidate will tell a rally, “We hold these truths to be self-evident. All men and women created by—you know, you know the thing.” But the problem is—you know. We all know. At this point the best hope for Democrats appears to be Trump’s collapse rather than Biden’s rise. We’ll come back to that point.

Bernie Sanders enjoyed a big win in California, a formidable achievement, in addition to picking up victories in Colorado, Utah, and Vermont. It’s too soon to do a premortem on his campaign. But coming second to Biden in Maine and Massachusetts and Minnesota was not good. He is now, once more, the underdog. Was this inevitable? Few things are, and people will replay the game in their minds. (Recriminations are a beloved tradition in political life.) Some will say it was the fault of Elizabeth Warren, since she split the left. Some will say it was the fault of the woke, who pushed Sanders toward fringier positions, especially on border enforcement. Some will say Bernie’s supporters were too rough, while others will say Bernie’s approach to his rivals was too gentle. Some of this he can’t change, even if he’d like to. Some of it he can. We’ll see. Bernie is far from out, but he is down.

Warren, who appears to want a kingmaking role in the 2020 convention, remains in the race, but not without suffering for it. In her home state of Massachusetts, she came in third behind Biden and Sanders. She was outperformed among black voters in Virginia and North Carolina by none other than Mike Bloomberg. Bloomberg also beat her in Oklahoma, her other home state. Warren was always the candidate of journalists and academics more than ordinary voters, but still. The main effect of her continued run will be to sink the candidacy of Bernie Sanders. She must know this, and it means either that she thinks Sanders would be worse than Biden or that…well, you can have your theory, and I’ll have mine. Let’s leave it there. It’s a free country.

Mike Bloomberg, with all his campaign spending, has been a one-man stimulus package to counteract the downturn caused by the coronavirus. We owed it to the economy to give the man a few states and keep him in the race for another month or two. But no. He hovered around 15% in most states—highs of over 20, lows of under 10—which wasn’t enough to make him the guy who just bought it all. He dropped out Wednesday morning and endorsed Biden, putting a strain on the local economies of upcoming primary states counting on his deep pockets. But he’ll always have American Samoa.