Everything changes forty-eight hours from now
Considering the manner in which the coronavirus crisis is incrementally shutting down the United States, there are questions about how much longer the 2020 Democratic primary race can continue. Upcoming states like Georgia and Louisiana have postponed their primaries, in order to save people from having to congregate while voting. Here’s the thing: everything changes forty-eight hours from now anyway.
By this time Tuesday night, the four states of Florida, Ohio, Illinois, and Arizona will have been called in favor of Joe Biden. Ongoing coronavirus concerns will probably drive voter turnout downward. But Biden is leading by twenty to forty points in the polls in all of the states. So even if the results are skewed by lower turnout, the huge margins going into it mean that Biden is still going to win them all.
At that point the primary race would effectively have been over, even if the nation weren’t trying to fend off a pandemic, with anyone else in Bernie’s position immediately dropping out. Bernie is of course too stubborn for his own good. But even he’ll have to acknowledge on Tuesday night that with no remaining ability to hold rallies, no remaining media attention for his dead-end campaign, there will be zero reason to remain in the race after Tuesday.
We’ll see if Bernie Sanders has the sense to drop out after Tuesday and push Joe Biden for policy concessions in exchange for a swift endorsement. If Sanders doesn’t do it by Wednesday, the primary race will have fundamentally shifted such that he’ll have no remaining leverage over Biden, and the race – and the nation – will move on without Sanders.
