Primary Positions, Con't

It's time to start referring to Joe Biden as the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, and everyone knows it except for Bernie Sanders and his dead-enders.

Joe Biden’s decisive victories in Florida, Illinois and Arizona Tuesday effectively put the Democratic nomination out of reach for Bernie Sanders.

The former vice president won all three states by wide enough margins that he now has a majority of all delegates pledged so far, and more than half of the almost 2,000 he needs to secure the nomination at the party’s national convention this summer.

As in past victories, Biden was propelled by strong support from women, African-Americans, older voters and those who described themselves as moderates or conservatives, according to surveys conducted by the Associated Press. But he also won half of all voters aged 30-44, cutting into Sanders’s claim to younger voters. Sanders still won two-thirds of voters under 30, however.

“It’s clear, I think, the first day of the general election will start tomorrow,” said former Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe, who has endorsed Biden.

With the spreading coronavirus forcing businesses to send workers home and campaigns to abandon traditional rallies and events, Biden delivered televised remarks from his house in Delaware rather than give a victory speech in a crowded ballroom.

He spoke mostly about what the country needs to do to confront the crisis of the pandemic, “calling it a national emergency akin to a war.” But he also made an appeal for unity to the core of Sanders supporters whose votes he’ll need in the general election.
Unity Message

“To the young voters who have been inspired by Senator Sanders, I hear you, I know what’s at stake, I know what we have to do,” Biden said in his remarks. “Our goal as a campaign and my goal as a candidate for president is to unify this party and then to unify the nation.”

Biden won black and Latino voters, white and Asian voters, urban, rural, and suburban voters.  The only category where Sanders actually beat Biden was voters under 30, and you can see by the 40-point margins Biden had in the overall total how much of a difference that made.

It's time for Sanders to wrap it up, but he won't because he didn't four years ago, just like the Hillary PUMAs didn't 12 years ago, because we can't stop spending six or seven months of a contested election year tearing each other down rather than the GOP.

So Bernie will continue to snipe at Biden for four more months while the country literally burns with fever and disease, when instead those resources could be used to go after Trump, but what do I know, I'm just a dude with a blog.