All Arizonans should know the story of the Phoenix: a bird that died on a funeral pyre but rose reanimated from its ashes to vibrantly fly again.
Is Joe Biden the 2020 Political Phoenix?
Just one week ago, he was declared virtually politically dead by many pundits after faring poorly in Iowa, New Hampshire, and Nevada.
Some thought Bernie Sanders would provide the final nail in his Presidential aspirational coffin with an upset victory in South Carolina.
Others saw Michael Bloomberg as the only viable Pragmatic Progressive alternative to Mr. Sanders going into Super Tuesday.
Then two events happened to improve Mr. Biden’s political fortunes.
The first was a strong debate performance by Biden in South Carolina. Less than stellar showings by both Sanders and Bloomberg at the same event also helped the former Vice President.
The second was the endorsement of Jim Clyburn, the dean of South Carolina politics, the day after the debate.
These two events gave the financially and organizationally strapped Biden campaign the momentum it needed to achieve a landslide victory in South Carolina.
After that victory, the 2020 Political Phoenix started to rise.
First, the Biden campaign, who languished behind virtually all the other campaigns in cash on hand, saw the fundraising valves turn on and started to raise millions of dollars.
Endorsements from people sitting on the sidelines like former Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe and Senator (and 2016 Vice Presidential Nominee) Tim Kaine, former Arkansas Senator Blanche Lincoln, and the widow of the late Senator Ted Kennedy from Massachusetts helped build ground-up support in those three states.
Then, Amy Klobauchur and Pete Buttigieg, seeing no path to the nomination for themselves, decided to suspend their campaigns just before Super Tuesday. They, along with former Presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke then appeared with Biden at two rallies in Texas to show their support for the former Vice President.
Tonight, on Super Tuesday, the 2020 Political Phoenix seems to have risen to catch and possibly surpass Senator Sanders on the race to earn the 1991 delegates to claim the Democratic Presidential Nomination.
So far, Mr. Biden, who had minimal to no ground presence in some of these states, has won Alabama, Arkansas, Massachusetts (where Senator Warren has finished in third,) Minnesota, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia.
Senator Sanders has won his native Vermont (with only about 51 percent of the vote,) Colorado (on the strength of early mail-in ballot voting,) and Utah (how.)
California and Maine are too close to call.
It is too early to foresee what will happen in the contest for the remaining two-thirds of the Democratic delegates.
A lot can happen.
But for tonight, Joe Biden, the Presidential Candidate left for dead, is the 2020 Political Phoenix.
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The Democratic leadership generally gets their way. That’s why Trump is president and the town drunk represents AZ CD2 in the House.
Sorry, folks, I know that was mean about the town drunk. I do wish her well with her recovery, I just don’t want her representing my district.
Obama said if you want me to do something make me. I was thinking we’d need to do that with Clinton if she won in 2016.
Push her to do the right things.
I’m about to be Biden’s biggest fan, it appears, because four more years of the Trump/Kushner crime families will kill this country, but starting November 4th, the DNC needs to get a thorough scrubbing, with bleach, win or no win.
The corporate owned fake Dems need to go, and the Democratic Party needs to get back to its FDR roots.
I think that the damage done to this country (with 10+ months to go) by the Trump/Kushner crime family is going to turn out to be far more invasive than we expect. The consequences of these dire times will be with us for a generation or more.
Biden is going to add the public option to the ACA, get back into the Paris Agreement and the Iran Deal (maybe), and what else? I watched all the debates and never had a sense that he is anything other than a business-as-usual corporate Democrat, certainly not a visionary and certainly not a man who has the courage or the inclination to stand up for the people. He is not a populist by any stretch.
Biden is safety wired into the “glory days” of the Obama Administration, so much so that he didn’t talk about much else at the debates. There certainly wasn’t much reference to his less than stellar pre-Obama career. I don’t forgive those who are okay with invading sovereign nations without justification, turning those nations into rubble and killing hundreds of thousands of people. I’m just not okay with it.
I’ll vote for Democrats in November including the town drunk in CD2. But that’s all they are to me, the party of lesser demons, not really candidates I can be enthusiastic about voting for. Can we slow the hemorrhage long enough to save the republic? It’s not looking good, IMO.