By Elliott Brack
Editor and Publisher, GwinnettForum
MARCH 3, 2020 | Watching the Democrats wrangle for the nomination for president is much like watching a sporting event. Except that is long and drawn out, not so much like a fast-paced basketball game as it is an ever-so-boring, several-day cricket match. Add to this that the political commentators have a field day of putting out new views daily based on the sketchiest of information, the little matters that doesn’t amount to much.
In South Carolina’s primary on Saturday, Joe Biden’s smashing victory — he won a majority of the votes in every South Carolina county — turned the presidential contest into a real horse race. Yet with only three days from the South Carolina primary to today’s Super Tuesday voting, the entire picture could turn around by the time the California votes come in around midnight tonight.
Biden
The voting in South Carolina also prompted three contenders — Pete Buttigieg, Tom Steyer and Amy Klobuchar — to drop out of the race. We may hear from young Buttigieg again on the national level. Never a major factor as a candidate, Steyer was entertaining as a new face among the possible. He showed what big spending could do, raising his stature in South Carolina from zero to finishing third with 11 percent of the vote. Minnesota’s Klobuchar will remain in the U.S. Senate and will be heard from again.
What we’ll be looking for in the Super Tuesday results will be which of the major candidates might do so poorly in these 14 states to cause another one of them to drop out of the race. Yet the Buttigieg pull-out might give Elizabeth Warren more strength.
The so-called lead that Bernie Sanders has is not much of a lead in that only four states have had voting so far. Sanders and Biden will keep on battling after tonight.
Sanders
The one factor that hasn’t seen lots of print about Bernie Sanders is that he is technically not a Democrat, but an independent. Add to that his continued fascination with more-open Socialist tendencies, and you ask yourself: will the party back-room regulars and superdelegates allow someone who is not “one of them” to grab the top of the ticket? If so, it could be the signal for a realignment of the Democrats as never before.
Then there is the staying power of Michael Bloomberg, that is, the staying power of his money. With the Democrats continuing to trim the field from the 20 or so that once were seeking the nod, Mr. Bloomberg comes from being unannounced to saying that he is the one person who can directly take on Donald Trump. And he’s making more and more heads turn as the race continues. Of course, he also has the money to stay in the race to the very end.
Forget his policies when Bloomberg was mayor of New York. There are two major elements that bring to question the Bloomberg candidacy. First, he was a Republican when he was the New York mayor, and now he has changed parties. That can hurt him. Second, his age is 77, even older than Donald Trump. Will Democratic hard-liners allow this guy to be their standard-bearer?
Today’s primaries will tell us a lot. Then comes key primaries in several states (among them the key states of Michigan, Missouri, Washington, Arizona, Florida, Illinois and Ohio) before the Georgia primary on March 24.
Georgia’s primary is politically a long way off. Could it be that the Georgia timing might prove to be the turning point in the 2020 Democratic nomination?
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