So this is interesting
Today went about as poorly for Bernie Sanders as it possibly could have. He needed to win Michigan in order to keep even slight hope alive of making a comeback, and instead he lost Michigan by double digits. Throw in the huge blowout losses for him in Mississippi and Missouri today, and the blowout he’ll face in Florida next Tuesday, and it’s over for him. But there’s the interesting part.
Bernie didn’t give a speech tonight. Granted, he was already planning to give a speech to a room with no crowd tonight, thanks to coronavirus precautions. But in the end, he decided not to give a speech tonight at all. Instead he went home to Vermont and called it a night.
This suggests that he’s at least considering dropping out of the race. That doesn’t mean he’ll announce anything tomorrow. Before finalizing anything, he would probably want to at least speak with Joe Biden about which policies he can convince Biden to adopt, in exchange for Bernie’s swift exit and prompt endorsement. We don’t have any way of knowing what kind of mood Bernie is in right now, or how much Biden might be willing to give him right now.
But the reality is that if Bernie Sanders is sitting at home tonight even considering dropping out, that would seem to put him on an inevitable path to exiting long before the convention. If Bernie remains in the race long enough to get blown out in Florida next week, his negotiating power with Biden will start to plummet rather precipitously, and he knows it.
