
Biden's Big Blowout! EVERYONE, WE LOVE YOU, PLEASE RELAX.
There's very good news from Super Tuesday, no matter who you've been backing.
How are you feeling this morning? It's OK to feel things. Depending on whom you've been supporting for the Democratic nomination, you are either happy, sad, pissed, tired, elated, resigned, chilled out, fired up, ready to go, angry, or some combination of all of these things, after the results of the Super Tuesday primaries. Take a day to feel it if you are feeling it, and then we got work to do. (You may remain happy and fired up and ready to go, if that's what you were already feeling. We are not saying "Get over your joy, Mister NerdWeird!")
Here's your Wonkette roundup for Super Tuesday!
So What Happened Last Night?
Joe Biden slayed some dragons last night, and came out with a solid lead in the current delegate count. If current trends stay the way they are — and we're at a point in the primary where we have every reason to believe they will — then the likelihood of a brokered convention went way down last night. The situation we don't have this year, which should relieve you no matter which candidate you've been backing, is indecision among primary voters, at least not so far. Once Biden pulled that absolute blowout in South Carolina and candidates started dropping out, late-breaking voters said, "Fine, I'm in for Uncle Joe. Let us go forth and beat the shit out of Donald Trump in November, so that maybe someday we can wake up without the crippling fear that comes with Donald Trump being president."
Joe Biden won last night (boldindicates that it was, by math standards, ablowout):
Virginia(by 30 points)
North Carolina(by almost 20 points)
Alabama(by 47 points holy shit )
Tennessee(by 17 points)
Arkansas(by 18 points, with a little vote still out)
Oh wow, those were all inbold.
Biden also won a few states he wasn't necessarily supposed to win, by smaller margins. He took Oklahoma. He took Minnesota, after Amy Klobuchar dropped out. He took Massachusetts, not just from Bernie Sanders but also from Elizabeth Warren. And with most of the vote in, Biden took TEXAS. Biden was not supposed to take Texas.
Sanders meanwhile scored a blowout win in his home state of Vermont, garnering approximately half the vote. He also won Colorado and Utah.
As for states still not called, Maine is a nail-biter, and delegate-rich California, which Sanders is expected to take, is technically too early to call. But it doesn't appear to be a blowout, so its richness of delegates will be spread out.
Oh, So You Don't Want To Talk About Michael Bloomberg's Big Win In American Samoa.
Oh shit fiddlesticks! We forgot to mention in the last section the biggest win of the night!
Michael Bloomberg spent eleventy gabillion moneys to win ... American Samoa and a veritable handful of delegates from other states! Therefore MSNBC just reported that Bloomberg is dropping out, GOODBYE MICHAEL BLOOMBERG!
It's anyone's guess where Bloomberg's vote will go (Biden) once he's off the (Biden) ballot. (He immediately endorsed Biden.) For instance, Bloomberg racked up vaguely respectable numbers in Utah and Colorado that, if that vote had gone to Biden, would have made him the winner in Colorado, and would have made Utah something more like a Sanders/Biden tie. In the South, the absence of Bloomberg would have made Biden's blowouts even more blowy .
Meanwhile Elizabeth Warren — and we know that among the Wonkette readership and staff she is many of y'all's favorite, and we love you very much — will come out with some delegates in Massachusetts and Colorado, and appears to have also hit the delegate threshold (15 percent) in Minnesota and Utah. Make of that what you will, but Politico reports on the uncertainty of where her campaign goes next.
The difference between Warren and Bloomberg — we mean numbers-wise, as we could spend a WHOLE DAY writing about the differences between them as human beings , and she would win that contest by all the numbers algebra ever produced — is that with Bloomberg's exit, we can be pretty sure where his supporters go. With Warren, it's a lot more of a mixed bag, as average primary voters aren't quite as ideological as Online Twitter Voters. Our point is that some of her support would probably go to Sanders, some would probably go to Biden. Warren and Bloomberg leaving the race doesn't redound to the two front-runners equally, is our point. (We'd note here that according to current popular vote totals, which are updating all the time, Bloomberg and Warren appear to have received approximately the same number of votes last night, though she comes out of last night with a few more delegates.)
And we are sorry, Sanders supporters, but he is very underperforming his 2016 numbers, even with a winnowed candidate field.
Sanders 2016 2020 MN 61% 30% AK 29% 20.8% OK 51.9% 25.1% VA… https: //t.co/JPT26RElvu
— Jason Johnson (@Jason Johnson) 1583293861.0
So What's Next?
Here's the thing: Last night was supposed to be a map that was very favorable to Bernie Sanders, with big gets like Texas and California and Massachusetts and so forth. He really needed to keep Biden out of a delegate majority. That didn't happen.
Next week's primaries promise a lot more gains for Biden, as do the week after that. Next Tuesday, we have Idaho, Michigan, Missouri, Mississippi, North Dakota and Washington. The week after that, we have Arizona, Illinois, Florida and Ohio.
Things are probably going to keep going the way they went last night. Probably .
Relax! There Is Good News, Even If You Do Not Believe There Is Good News! If You Are Already Happy About Last Night, Then You Already Know About The Good News!
Remember what we said about how we now have a pretty good idea where this primary is going to go, and that you should be relieved that American Democratic primary voters aren't indecisive this time? That Biden might have a pretty good chance of hitting the 1,991 delegate threshold all by his lonesome, without even facing a brokered convention?
We promise that would make everybody's life so much happier, and increase enthusiasm and turnout in November, so we can beat the shit out of Donald Trump.
By the way, speaking of turnout, OH MY GOD, did you hear about Virginia and Texas? Turnout in Virginia doubled from 2016. With 57 percent of the vote counted, Texas voter totals have flown past the 1.4 million who voted in the 2016 Democratic primary. People are motivated.
THAT IS GOOD.
So, What Did Voters Say Last Night?
That they want Donald Trump out more than anything in the world, which is exactly what many polls about the primary have been saying for ages. We wrote last week about a new survey from SeniorLiving.org that asked people what they fear the most, even more than their own death, and for Democrats, the top choice was Trump being re-elected in November. So now that it appears that Biden is going to be the one to win it, they are getting behind him. Which is funny, because that is precisely where this primary race started.
We also know from data/pollster person extraordinare Rachel Bitecofer,who almost exactly predicted the results of the 2018 midterms, that "negative partisanship" is the single most predictive factor for Democratsand Republicans, and that the team that's the most pissed off and gets the most people to the polls to vote against the other side wins. We have been saying this (we personally, not necessarily all of Wonkette) for most of the primary season, but average voters this time don't really care to debate the minutiae of healthcare policy. They want better healthcare, definitely, and that's important.
But they really want to kick the shit out of Trump.
So What Should We Do?
If your candidate is still in and you haven't voted yet, vote for your candidate! But also be ready to see the writing on the wall and unite behind the winner, whoever that may end up being, but we probably have a good idea who it is. (Wonkette even sells coffee cups with his face on them!)
We did not vote for Joe Biden in the Tennessee primary. It is not important who we voted for, but the point is that he cleaned house in our state last night, and looks like he's gonna keep doing it. So we are going to do this, because we, too, are fucking relieved that it looks less and less like we're going to have a knock-down drag-out fight to the convention.
So ... get ready! We are going to kick the shit out of Donald Trump in November, and like a common Shake 'n Bake, you are going to help!
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Agreed. Each person must make their own decision.
You can't handle the results of actual people voting for someone other than your choice? I see. That is a difficult pill. But you know, that's what happened. So go ahead, sit this one out. Vote (ish) for Trump. The thing you don't get to do though is whine about it later. But hey, you know what? You will whine. You will continue to fail to see that we all have the same objectives. You'll set yourself up as the "only ones who knew." I hear it coming. Here's the thing I will spell out for you. No one is shutting down progressives. Bernie can't even win primaries. No one put a gun to anyone's head telling them who to vote for. He is NOT the savior. He will NOT get elected. AND WE JUST WANT THE ORANGE GORILLA OUT OF OFFICE. That's all. If that's not something you want to pull a lever for, I don't know what else to tell you.