To Slow A Bern
Let’s rewind to late January of this year. The city of Lincoln had three inches of ice on the road, Britain and Russia had just announced the first cases of coronavirus within their borders and Joe Biden was killing it in the polls. Biden gathered national support as Democrats supposedly prioritized nominating a candidate that could beat Donald Trump; ahead of the Iowa primary, a poll from Monmouth University projected that 30% of Democrats supported Biden (7% higher than the next candidate), while USC found his support to be at approximately 34% (16% higher than the second-leading candidate). The possibility of securing the party’s nomination was looking likely for the Biden camp.
Fast forward a month, and the landscape for the nomination looks, to say the least, different. No longer is Biden the leader of the pack: instead, bolstered by winning Nevada and New Hampshire, Bernie Sanders is now unequivocally the front-runner for the nomination, polling at 29% (11% higher than Biden, the second-leading candidate). He has surprisingly faced little competition from the other progressives in the race: Elizabeth Warren has continuously underperformed in the primaries so far, and Andrew Yang dropped out of the race after the New Hampshire primary. In his wins, Sanders has mobilized the support of young people, Hispanics, Arabs and working-class whites in droves. His future also looks promising: Sanders is leading in states with large populations that would tremendously boost his campaigns, such as Pennsylvania, Illinois, New York and New Jersey.
It also helped Sanders (and hurt Biden) that much of the moderate vote was split in the first few primaries. However, in a span of 24 hours, Pete Buttigieg and Amy Kobluchar have both dropped out of the race and endorsed Biden. These moderates are joining together in hopes of slowing down Sanders, a candidate that scares the Democratic establishment with his radical agenda. Even with Buttigieg and Klobuchar now endorsing him, Biden still has to contend with the human leech known as Mike Bloomberg, who has somehow garnered significant support from liberals looking for a Democratic version of Donald Trump. Bloomberg hasn’t been on the ballot in the first few states, but he will be looking to siphon votes away from Biden. Sander’s nomination is by no means written in stone - the Biden coalition may unify Democratic voters enough to overtake this race. However, the momentum still belongs to Sanders, and it is clear that we could see the Vermont socialist go up against President Trump in November.
Gabriel Zita is a junior studying psychology.