Biden and the DNC's super Tuesday
Joe Biden had a huge night on Super Tuesday. He won the majority of the states thanks to a huge win on Saturday in South Carolina which solidified him as the anti-Bernie candidate and a behind the scenes push by Barack Obama, and likely the DNC, to convince Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar to drop out and to endorse Biden as the moderate standard bearer for the party.
Less than a week ago, Bernie would have expected to clean up in New England, which was not to be as he only won his home state of Vermont, to be competitive in Virginia and North Carolina, where Biden won handily, and to win in Texas and Minnesota which both also went to Biden. He did better in the west winning Colorado and Utah, and is the likely winner in California, which was the biggest prize of the night.**
However, it does seem convenient for Biden and the DNC that California, where Bernie was always expected to do well, was the only state to have voting issues as people had a hard time using the machines and polling locations seemed unprepared for the sheer number of people turning up to vote. Seems odd that there are only ever issues where Bernie's campaign is expected to have important victories, and then when the issues are "resolved" Bernie somehow under-performs compared to what's expected. Not at all suspicious.
It's also important to note that while Buttigieg and Klobuchar were obviously forced to drop out of the race to help Biden ahead of Super Tuesday, Elizabeth Warren was not.
If Elizabeth Warren was serious about the progressive principles she's claimed to hold during her political career she would drop out of the race, endorse Bernie, and become a great surrogate for him on the campaign trail. If she was serious about these principles she would have done this after South Carolina to help Bernie as much as possible prior to Super Tuesday. She could have had at least a somewhat mitigating effect on the moderate firewall that the Biden campaign, Obama, and the DNC created with Buttigieg and Klobuchar.
As it now appears that Warren is considering dropping out of the race soon we'll have a clearer picture about what she wants the Democratic Party to be going forward, but the damage her campaign did to Bernie, the candidate she's ostensibly closest to ideologically and whose "Medicare For All" plan she's endorsed and campaigned on herself, on Super Tuesday cannot be overstated.
I don't know what she'll do when she finally drops out of the race, but my gut tells me that Michael Malice is correct and that she stayed in the race with the intent to harm Bernie on Super Tuesday. He might otherwise have won states like Massachusetts, Minnesota, and Texas if not for her. That's all speculation, of course, but it's not implausible. And she would almost certainly be a top contender, if not the front-runner, for Biden's running mate were he to win the Democratic nomination. She's already proven she's willing to sacrifice her professed principles to satisfy her political ambitions so there's every reason to suspect that she's been colluding with the Biden campaign to hurt Bernie.
*Some notes about the map I used in the header image: The source of the map is the presidential election map from 270-to-Win, so the numbers underneath the state identifiers indicate electoral college votes and can be disregarded for the purposes of the Democratic Primary. The dark blue indicates states that Joe Biden has won, and the yellow indicates states that Bernie Sanders has won. I gave the state of Iowa to Bernie instead of Pete Buttigieg because the raw numbers indicate that Bernie got more votes than Pete. In reality, we have no idea what happened in Iowa and I still feel that the delegates from that state should be voided. The map also does not include American Samoa which does not have electoral college votes, but does participate in primaries. Michael Bloomberg won American Samoa winning five of its six delegates, with the last delegate going to Tulsi Gabbard who was born there.
**At the time of publishing, both California and Maine have not been called for any candidate, but it appears as if Bernie will win California and that Biden will win Maine. On the map I provided I colored the states with the likely victors, but that could still change. I will update this postscript if it becomes necessary to make a correction.