“The corporate establishment is getting nervous,” Sanders warned a crowd of 9,500 people in San Jose, a refrain he reprised in front of thousands more in Los Angeles hours later. “The political establishment is getting nervous as well. Some in the Democratic establishment are saying, ‘My God, look at the turnout here!’”

The effect of Buttigieg’s withdrawal from the race is unclear, with his supporters potentially going to any number of other candidates, including Sanders. On Twitter on Sunday, he congratulated Buttigieg "for running a strong and historic campaign" and went on "to welcome all of his supporters into our movement."

But it is Biden, more than any other contender, who is desperate for a consolidated field that will offer him a head-to-head race with Sanders.

And on Sunday, Sanders himself implicitly cast the contest as a two-person race, tearing into Biden over his votes for the Iraq War, trade agreements and bankruptcy legislation — part of a critical riff that has grown in size and scope.

Former Vice President Joe Biden. | Matt Rourke/AP Photo

“Joe Biden is a friend of mine,” Sanders said to boos in San Jose, which went on for so long that he felt compelled to step in and stop them.

“No, no, no,” he interjected. “But we’ve got to be honest about which campaign can beat Trump,” he added, arguing that Biden’s record would not create the kind of excitement needed to win.

Biden’s campaign has been riding an uncharacteristic high in recent days, raising much-needed money while needling reporters and pundits who doubted his prospects in South Carolina. In crowing, the campaign is hoping that it can keep its momentum going into Super Tuesday.

Kate Bedingfield, Biden’s deputy campaign manager and communications director, wrote on Twitter, “Let’s play a game. You name a county in South Carolina, I will tell you @JoeBiden won it. Go.”

But it is Sanders, not Biden, who is best positioned to dominate on Super Tuesday, most of all in California, where he carried over a massive organization of supporters from his failed run in 2016.

Sanders said volunteers have already knocked on more than one million doors in the state. In Los Angeles on Sunday night, he told a roaring crowd that “with your help on Tuesday, we’re going to win the Democratic primary here in California.”

He added, “The candidate who wins in California has an excellent chance to win the Democratic nomination.”

If Sanders wins California, it will be because of that organization — which has allowed him to almost singlehandedly co-opt a state where centrist Democrats failed this year to coalesce around an alternative.

Former Gov. Jerry Brown, a relatively moderate icon in California who endorsed Clinton over Sanders in 2016, has been silent. So has his successor, Gov. Gavin Newsom, and the state’s junior senator, Kamala Harris, who ended her own campaign in December.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein endorsed Joe Biden, to little effect.

Instead, the crowds that Sanders began building four years ago, when he made his last stand in California with a spate of rallies up and down the state, are propelling him forward.

Eve Ensler, author of “The Vagina Monologues,” led the crowd in San Jose in a call-and-response that touched on the themes of Sanders’ campaign, closing with “Not me, us! Not me, us! Not me, us!”

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Sanders campaign co-chair and local Congressman Ro Khanna framed Sanders’ priorities as falling in perfect harmony with this liberal state. “Silicon Valley is more than the tech CEOs!” Khanna railed.

He recalled talking with a woman recently in South Carolina, who told him, “we‘re not just one movement. We’re many movements within the movement,” listing a diverse coalition of people from different backgrounds and jobs.

“And she’s right,” Khanna said. “The screams of struggle for dignity and equality are converging at this moment ... and a man (Sanders) will lead us to the dawn of a new progressive era.”

Noting that Sanders is “knocking it out of the park” with young voters, Bonnie Castillo, executive director of National Nurses United and the California Nurses Association, suggested Sanders’ success in California is in part because young people “are open to new and bolder ideas.”

In 2016, the actor and comedian Dick Van Dyke told Sanders’ supporters in Los Angeles, voters “weren’t quite getting" what Sanders said.

This time, he said, “they are.”