Joe Biden’s Super Tuesday wins leave Bernie Sanders behind

Former Vice President Joe Biden — taking his once-moribund campaign off life support — surged with strong wins in Super Tuesday voting.

Biden was credited with victories in Virginia, North Carolina, Alabama and Tennessee.

Sen. Bernie Sanders began the evening with a win in his home state of Vermont and later Colorado.

A total of 1,344 delegates were up for grabs in Super Tuesday voting in 14 states from Maine and Massachusetts to California and Texas.

Biden’s wins in heavily African American states complemented the former vice president’s victory in last weekend’s South Carolina primary. Virginia was especially key because Sanders and billionaire former New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg heavily contested it over the past week.

A once-jumbled race arrived at the most pivotal night of the primary as an increasingly well-defined battle between leftist Democrats who back the likes of Sanders and Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren and centrists preferring Biden. A wild card was Bloomberg, who skipped the primary’s first four states but poured more than $500 million of his personal fortune into TV advertising in Super Tuesday states and faced increasing pressure to prove it was all worth it.

Some good news for the former mayor came in the U.S. territory of American Samoa, where he took five of its six delegates. The final one went to U.S. Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii.

On the Republican side, President Trump blew away former Massachusetts Gov. Bill Weld in the Bay State by a 75-point margin, MassGOP said in a Tuesday night release.

“Tonight, Massachusetts Republicans embraced Donald Trump, and those who would splinter and divide the Republican Party have fallen flat once again,” said Massachusetts Republican Party Chairman Jim Lyons.

At a Sanders supporters’ watch party at Democracy Brewing in downtown Boston Tuesday night, Bernie backers said the Vermont senator had the best chance against Trump in November.

“Here’s a guy who’s been consistently standing up for the same values and priorities for at least 40 years,” said Jesse Clingan, 42, who’s also a Somerville city councilor. “The other candidates have a lot of baggage, and have made changes in their politics through the years. Bernie is speaking the language of the working class, and I think he has the strongest chance of taking on Trump.”

Moderate candidates lining up behind Biden, he added, won’t work at the end of the day.

“I don’t think the American public is as gullible as people might think,” Clingan said. “I think that people will look at this and understand that the establishment is scared, and is scared for good reason.”

The big prizes — Texas and California — account for 643 delegates. That’s about a third of the nearly 2,000 needed to clinch the nomination. In all, Super Tuesday offered about 34% of all the total delegates up for grabs nationwide.

The Biden and Sanders camps began ramping up attacks on each other Tuesday, each team sending out fundraising missives blasting the other as it increasingly looked like they would emerge the two leaders after Super Tuesday.

After U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar and former South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg dropped out and quickly backed Biden, pressure mounted on Bloomberg to do the same.

But Bloomberg campaign manager Kevin Sheekey said as polls began to close that his candidate would “absolutely not” drop out Tuesday.

“No matter how many delegates we win tonight, we have done something no one else thought was possible. In just three months we’ve gone from 1% in the polls to being a contender for the Democratic nomination for president,” Bloomberg said from Florida.

Bloomberg said while his rivals spent a year focusing on the first four states, “I was out campaigning against Donald Trump.”

Associated Press contributed to this report.

from Boston Herald https://ift.tt/38qWOVz