Joe Biden just clinched it
Considering he’s been the only candidate left in the race for a couple months now, it’s perhaps anticlimactic news that Joe Biden has mathematically clinched the 2020 Democratic nomination for President tonight, according to the AP. But there’s still something important about this development.
To be clear, Biden would have clinched a lot sooner if not for the fact that the pandemic forced several states to delay their primaries, resulting in a longer wait for Biden to reach 1991 delegates. It’s just one day sooner than Hillary Clinton clinched the nomination in 2016. But more importantly, Biden’s major challengers have all endorsed him weeks or months ago, meaning there has been time for their respective bases to gradually adjust to the idea of Biden being the nominee, and to start to align themselves behind him.
Of course the nation is in a very different position right now than it was during the 2016 election. Donald Trump’s increasingly deranged abuses of power have given decent people of all political leanings cause to unite behind the only candidate who’s in position to stop him.
But let’s not forget that Joe Biden took on one of the largest and most talented Democratic primary fields in history, and he still managed to pretty much defeat the entire field by Super Tuesday, so he must be doing something right. This isn’t just about Trump, or just about the pandemic, or just about civil instability. Joe Biden is the nominee for good reason – and now he’s the official nominee.
