Politics is really something. In the span of about five days, Joe Biden has gone from being largely written off to being the presumed front-runner. Last week, conventional wisdom assumed there was no way to stop Bernie Sanders from marching his way to the nomination.
The tide has turned. Between his dominating South Carolina victory on Saturday — followed by the departures and endorsements of Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar — and last night’s impressive performance in Super Tuesday states, Biden has a clear delegate advantage and a clear path to taking the nomination. Funny how so little time can change so much, with just a small shift in momentum.
Even so, if I were a Democrat, I wouldn’t be terribly enthused this morning. It’s a relief, even as a conservative, to see Democratic voters pulling back from giving the nod to a socialist. That’s a good thing for America. But is there much reason to have confidence in Biden himself?
I covered his campaign on the ground in Iowa and it wasn’t difficult to see why he finished so far behind his rivals there. Here’s how I put it in that profile for the NR print magazine:
Biden’s events over the course of the week continually drew tiny crowds, and his speeches were increasingly rote, unfocused, and lackluster. On the stump, he sounds depleted of energy, substituting occasional bursts of anger for the enthusiasm his voice lacks. The Saturday before the caucuses, his campaign stops in Cedar Rapids and Waterloo attracted just a few hundred people each, compared with thousands not just for Vermont senator Bernie Sanders but even for his surrogates.
Obviously, something has changed, because Biden pulled off a great night. But nothing about him has changed at all, only the dynamics of the race. At first glance, I think a big part of what’s happened is that Biden wasn’t on the trail for a month in all of the states that voted last night. When you watch him in debates, and even more so in person, he doesn’t look like a guy who can comfortably go toe-to-toe with Trump, let alone the remaining Democrats. He might be the most appealing remaining candidate on paper, and he probably has been that candidate all primary long, but like I’ve written before, campaigns don’t happen entirely on paper. And in the flesh, Biden should give Democrats a lot of reasons to be nervous.