Biden may have poured some cold water on the Bern, but has former vice-president Joe Biden succeeded in knocking the forward momentum of Senator Bernie Sanders off the rails?
The unexpected surge of the former vice-president in the Super Tuesday primaries invigorated a campaign which recently looked as if IT was running off the rails.
Biden has fared badly in several key primaries and debates and was trailing Sanders and other candidates in the field of Democratic candidates vying to face off against President Donald Trump in November’s presidential election.
But whether it be a stroke of luck, or strategic planning as his campaign team would no doubt claim, Joe Biden is back on track.
Having swept the Southern states buoyed mainly by the African-American vote, Team Biden was well on its way to locking down Super Tuesday although big wins for Sanders in states like Texas, Colorado, Utah and Vermont kept the flames of the ‘Bern’ alive.
The other big news coming out of Super Tuesday came in the form of a double-whammy.
Billionaire Michael Bloomberg dropped out of the race and then dropped the news that he was endorsing Joe Biden for president.
It could mean that Bloomberg is now likely to divert at least some of the millions he had budgeted for his campaign over to the Biden camp if as he claims is sole objective is to see Donald Trump out of the White House.
If that’s really the plan, Biden's main opponent Senator Bernie Sanders tried to get the public relations jump on him the day after Super Tuesday, with a slick tongue-in-cheek advertising campaign.
Team Bernie produced a political advert edited and purporting to show former two-term president Barack Obama - under whom Biden served as vice-president, singing the praises of Bernie Sanders.
It was not an official endorsement but slickly edited to suggest that Bernie has Obama's backing too.
Previously, two other candidates had dropped out.
The promising mayor Pete Buttigieg and Senator Amy Klobuchar both threw their support behind Joe Biden ahead of Super Tuesday.
But it's still a long way to go and the spectre of Republican President Donald Trump looms large.
The Democratic candidates left in the race including Senator Elizabeth Warren, who lost in her home state Massachusetts on Super Tuesday, were vying for the nod from over 1,300 delegates.
With more primaries to come, the race for the Democrats nomination is all but narrowed down to a two-horse race; Biden versus Bernie.
It’s shaping up as a see-saw battle between the two on the home stretch.
Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders, while not that not far apart on specific policies - and age (they are one year apart; Biden -77 and Sanders -78), are different personalities and package their politics slightly differently.
Biden projects a more centrist perspective while Sanders is viewed as more left-leaning and ‘socialist’ - a more dreaded term in American politics than it is Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean.
What unifies them is their strident opposition to the incumbent, flamboyant and maverick 71-year-old President Donald Trump whom both denounce as undermining American politics and being unfit for the office he now occupies.
At this stage, the run-up to the coming election - including the Democrats candidate selection - is the battle of the septuagenarians…minus one.
But Bloomberg who is 78 is still seen as positioning himself to play a role in the background.
We appreciate your feedback. You can comment here with your pseudonym or real name. You can leave a comment with or without entering an email address. All comments will be reviewed before they are published.
Comments (0)
We appreciate your feedback. You can comment here with your pseudonym or real name. You can leave a comment with or without entering an email address. All comments will be reviewed before they are published.