Bernie Sanders IS IN trouble….
Democrats are rallying to Joe Biden…
Sanders won’t have enough of a base ….
He’s running out of places to win…
Senator Bernie Sanders has canceled a planned rally in Jackson, Miss., and will instead travel to Michigan on Friday, a striking indication that his presidential campaign is shifting its focus to the Midwest and largely ceding another Southern state to former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., according to people familiar with the plans.
After holding a rally in Phoenix on Thursday night, Mr. Sanders had been scheduled to travel to Jackson on Friday for a rally focused on racial justice.
The change in plans suggests that Mr. Sanders will not challenge Mr. Biden for the support of black voters in the South — a vital base in the Democratic Party — and is instead going all-in on the Midwest as he tries to compete with Mr. Biden for working-class voters there. Black voters in the South have overwhelmingly backed Mr. Biden to this point, and on Super Tuesday their support lifted him in states like Alabama, North Carolina and Virginia.
In Alabama, Mr. Sanders won only 9 percent of black voters, compared with 72 percent for Mr. Biden, according to exit polls. Mr. Biden outperformed Mr. Sanders among black voters in Virginia by more than 50 points, and by 40 points or more in Texas and North Carolina. In several states, Mr. Sanders came in third among black voters, behind not only Mr. Biden but also Michael R. Bloomberg.
The dramatic shift in his schedule was also an acknowledgment that he had not improved his standing among black voters in the South four years after his first run for president. In 2016, he faced criticism for his inability to organize support from black voters, a weakness that contributed to his loss to Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primary….
At this point, size does matter. Just sayin’.
My guess is this was planned when Sanders campaign thought they’d be up a couple hundred delegates after Super Tuesday and that Biden and Bloomberg would be splitting the southern vote.
If that had happened moving in on Mississippi would have been seen as a sign they were looking to finish off Biden.
Now that there’s been a huge reversal of fortune they have to put all their effort on saving face in Michigan, where Bernie snagged an upset in 2016.
and certainly not a lot of black Democrat primary voters in Michigan, right? How dare he turn his back on Mississippi!
Oh, that coyly racist Sanders..
I didn’t mention anything about race
No, it wasn’t about you. Your theory sounds right. It was about the tone of the post.
If Sanders can’t win Michigan I think he goes from being an actual contender for the nomination to being a “movement” candidate from then until the convention–like Kucinich or Buchanan
(((Harry Enten)))
@ForecasterEnten
It’s not easy to see how Sanders wins Michigan unless something changes (which it could). Biden crushed in Minnesota. He won in mostly white New England states (home region for Sanders/Warren). He led in latest poll in MI and half of that was pre-SC.
Nate Silver
@NateSilver538
About 26% of the delegates are set to be awarded over the next 19 days, in states that in the aggregate are fairly poor for Sanders. And he’s heading into these contests with what’s probably something like a 7-point deficit in national polls, quite possibly worse.