The Awakening of Moderate Democrats

The party’s center is forming a coalition around Joe Biden to face Bernie Sanders.

Moderate Democrats are playing catch-up, creating a pro-Biden front to avoid what happened four years ago. At the time, their Republican opponents were also pulverized, and the Democratic Party failed to form a coalition to impede the nomination of an anti-establishment candidate, supported by only a third of their voters in the primaries.

The Donald Trump lesson sounded an alarm that centrist Democrats do not want to see repeated with Bernie Sanders. The Super Tuesday map favors the Vermont senator, who has to win the majority of California and Texas delegates, the two most populous states in Tuesday’s (March 3) contest.

Former Vice President Joe Biden is behind in the race. His campaign was energized after his victory in South Carolina and the withdrawal of three candidates almost simultaneously: investment banker Tom Steyer, former Mayor Pete Buttigieg and Sen. Amy Klobuchar.*

Moderates woke up for Super Tuesday, pragmatically speaking. Buttigieg and Klobuchar immediately endorsed Biden, who was also endorsed by another former presidential candidate, former Rep. Beto O’Rourke, though without any guarantee that their supporters will follow Biden.

The idea is to galvanize moderate Democrats and, perhaps later, Republican dissidents, in support of the veteran former Delaware senator and Barack Obama’s vice president, and his mantra: “[We are] not looking not revolutions, [but] results.”

The sudden anti-Sanders coalition has not seemed to surprise the senator, who defines himself as a democratic socialist. "I'm proud of the grassroots organizations that we have. Look, we are taking on the establishment, who is really nervous. To all of Amy and Pete’s millions of supporters, the door is open,” Sanders said.

Will it be too late for Biden? Everything points to the main contest dragging on between him and Sanders. Michael Bloomberg and Elizabeth Warren are the underdogs who could disrupt the numbers for either side, respectively.** At last, the Democrats arrive at Super Tuesday focused on the showdown between two dissonant current candidates, with the risk of prolonging the race until the Democratic National Convention in Milwaukee in July, which would adversely affect the party.

*Editor’s note: Presidential candidate Joe Biden won primaries in Virginia, North Carolina, Alabama, Tennessee, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Texas, Minnesota and Massachusetts on March 3. This commentary was published prior to the results of the Super Tuesday elections.

**Presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg ended his campaign on March 4.