I once heard a saying along the lines of "Democrats fall in love, Republicans fall in line." Over the years, i find that to be fairly accurate. Whoever does a better job uniting their party, and swaying independents will win.
Bernie has a lot of very loyal followers but that love doesnt go far beyond them.
As i am posting this, there are reports Warren is backing out of the race. If so, its basically a 2 person race. When it comes to the moderates vs the progressives, moderates have the advantage imo. How many states coming up will bernie win, and win by a large enough margin to build a large delegate count compared to Biden? I can see a lot of states coming up, including large states where if i had to guess, bernie will lose hard.
With all that said, biden hasn't run a good campaign. The debates, fundraising, and the other campaign activities haven't been great. It amuses me how many people forgot this after he won SC and did very well on super tuesday. It is much easier to blame the people in the first 3 states as being out of touch than admit it. Why would/should people vote for you if you dont put any effort in and performed so poorly up to that point? It wasn't until it was do or die for him that he finally showed up. TBH it feels like he just assumed he would win and hasnt put much effort in. Brand and being Obamas guy is what saved him. If he does poorly going forward, i can see sanders winning.
Most of the populace wants a return to "normalcy". What they don't want is a full fledged revolution that tries to tear down long-standing institutions. Americans don't want to hear about how the government is screwing everything up; that is why the loved Obama. He gave a few nice speeches and everybody went back to their own thing (except the neocons with their birthing conspiracy).
Take the New Green Deal for instance. If the climate crisis is as bad as they say, then immediate action will have to be taken. An unprecedented amount of effort will be needed in order to shift our power grid away from fossil fuels. On top of that, they want single-payer healthcare, free college, housing, and many other overhauls, by
2030. This is impossible. Even in small incremental doses, you would find pushback from every corporation that benefits from the production of harmful pollutants that people consume. Not only do they have to be convinced that renewable energy is more profitable, you also have to make them actually believe that climate change is an actual ongoing crisis.
When it comes down to moderates vs leftists, the former will win the foreseeable future. No matter how you twist it, the word "socialism" has been castigated due to decades of Red Scare propaganda. Even if progressive policies are what you would call center right everywhere else, the name alone squanders any chance of it making leeway. It is sad but that is where we are at, nothing will change until the problems are at our doorstep and no longer a distant crackle.
The internet amplifies a very vocal minority that makes itself out be the ones that will launch widespread change, when in reality no one cares enough. The progressives can blame moderates and low information voters all they want, but alienating them will only make things harder.
Bernie in 2020 won 50% of his home state, that is a 36% decrease from 2016. Shocking? Not really. It's widely held suspicion that most of the votes towards Sanders that year were anti-Hillary, and very little thought went towards anything else. Now that there are more tolerable candidates to vote for, he dropped significantly nearly everywhere. As it showed on Super Tuesday, Bernie just isn't that popular when you discount his rabid following. The voters don't need to hear anything of substance from Biden, only that he was Obama's VP.
I don't think the debates count for much anymore. Bloomberg used typical conservative talking points on why Bernie couldn't beat Trump, was roasted on national television, and still beat out or was on par with Warren. If by some miracle that Super Tuesday was a wakeup call for Bernie's coalition, then maybe we will see a shift, but I sincerely doubt it.
