If you want to know why Joe Biden just had the best night of his political life as a non-veep candidate, read Ezra Klein. Here's an excerpt…
It's not that Sanders is running a weak campaign. But he is, in a way, running the wrong campaign. He's the frontrunner for the Democratic nomination — at least he was until tonight — but he's still running as an insurgent. The political revolution was supposed to close the gap between these realities: If Sanders could turn out enough new voters, he could sweep away the Democratic establishment and build his own party in its place. But going all the way back to Iowa, that strategy failed. Sanders won as a Democrat, not a revolutionary, and he needed to pivot to a strategy that would unite the existing Democratic Party around him.
But it's hard to move from treating the Democratic Party establishment with contempt to treating it like a constituency, and so far, the Sanders campaign hasn't.
I don't think last night was as disastrous for Sanders as some of the pundits, on MSNBC especially, made it out to be. He may turn out to have made an impressive showing here in California — after all, he got my vote — but since that's unreported yet, it was mostly just good news for Biden. Also, the media loves comebacks. If they'd been counting Sanders out and he'd bounced back big, most of them would have been just as orgasmic.
Seems to me it's all about that question with which I was wrestling: Do I support the person I wish were in the Oval Office or do I support the one most likely to get there? I'm guessing Biden did well because more voters came down on the side of the latter. I wish someone could fabricate a poll question that would give us some insight into that.
I like Bernie. I voted for Bernie. But Klein's right that Joe's trying to unite the party around him and Bernie's trying to get everyone in the party to just surrender to him. That's a tougher sale, especially to voters who think the most important goal in this election is not to pass the Sanders agenda but to get rid of the Trump one first.